Happy 70th Birthday, Mr. Tambourine Man
"I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.”
— Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s iconic career has spanned five decades, from his more-or-less traditional folk music of the early ‘60s, followed by his blueprints for protest songs, then his pop-oriented personal songs, and then a dramatic shift to enigmatic rock before going country and eventually using his music to preach about born-again Christianity. Most recently, he seems to have reverted to his roots.
It completes a circle, since in the early ‘60s the young Dylan heard the first reissue of Robert Johnson’s music and, he says, “Johnson’s words made my nerves quiver like piano wires”. In Chronicles, Dylan says it was the combination of Robert Johnson’s “dark night of the soul” and Woody Guthrie’s “hopped-up union meeting sermons”, that came together and gave him his own voice.
Dylan considers himself to be a folk singer. “Folk music was a reality of a more brilliant dimension,” Dylan says in Chronicles.
Born in humble beginnings as Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota on May 24, 1941, he taught himself to play the harmonica, guitar and piano. Since 1962, Dylan has released 34 studio albums, recorded some 500 songs and played 3,000-plus shows.
In June 2011, he kicks off a summer tour through nine countries on three continents, as the next leg of his self-titled “Never Ending Tour.”
“May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung."
— Bob Dylan
|
 |
 |
|
 |
