Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) is an America singer-songwriter, author, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems of both the civil rights movementsDylan sang “Blowin’ In The Wind” at the Washington D.C. concert, January 20, 1986, which marked the inauguration of Martin Luther King Day. Gray, 2006, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 63–64. and of the opposition to the Vietnam War. Dylan's latest studio album, Together Through Life, was released on April 28, 2009.Dylan's early lyrics incorporated political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying existing pop music conventions and appealing widely to the counterculture. While expanding and personalizing musical styles, he has explored many traditions of American song, from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, and even jazz and swing.Dylan performs with the guitar, piano and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the "Never Ending Tour". Although his accomplishments as performer and recording artist have been central to his career, his songwriting is generally regarded as his greatest contribution.Throughout his career, Dylan has won many awards for his songwriting, performing, and recording. His records have earned Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Awards, and he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008, a "Cultural Pathway" was named in Dylan's honor in his birthplace, Duluth. In 2008, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Life and career

Origins and musical beginnings

Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham)Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 14, gives his Hebrew name as Shabtai Zisel ben AvrahamA Chabad news service gives the variant Zushe ben Avraham, which may be a Yiddish variant was born in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota,Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 14 and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. Research by Dylan’s biographers has shown that his paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the antisemitic pogroms of 1905.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 12–13. His mother's grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in America in 1902. In his autobiography Volume One, Dylan writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Istanbul.Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One, pp. 92–93.Dylan’s parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age six, when his father was stricken with polio and the family returned to his mother's home town, Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood. Robert Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio—first to blues and country stations broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana and, later, to early rock and roll.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 38–39. He formed several bands in high school: The Shadow Blasters was short lived, but his next, The Golden Chords, lasted longer and played covers of popular songs. Their performance of Danny and the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone off.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 29–37. In his 1959 school yearbook, Robert Zimmerman listed as his ambition "To join Little Richard."Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 39–43. The same year, using the name Elston Gunnn, he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and providing handclaps.An interview with Bobby Vee suggests the young Zimmerman may have been eccentric in spelling his early pseudonym: "[1] was in the Fargo/Moorhead area ... Bill [2] was in a record shop in Fargo, Sam's Record Land, and this guy came up to him and introduced himself as Elston Gunnn--with three n's, G-U-N-N-N." Bobby Vee Interview, July 1999, Goldmine Reproduced online:Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 41–42.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 26–27.Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis in September 1959 and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His early focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in American folk music. In 1985 Dylan explained the attraction that folk music had exerted on him: "The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings."Biograph, 1985, Liner notes & text by Cameron Crowe. He soon began to perform at the 10 O'clock Scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 65–82.This is related in the documentary film No Direction Home, Director: Martin Scorsese. Broadcast: September 26, 2005, PBS & BBC TwoDuring his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan". In a 2004 interview, Dylan explained: "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free." In his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan acknowledged that he was familiar with the poetry of Dylan Thomas.Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One, pp. 78–79.

1960s: Busy Being Born

Relocation to New York and record deal Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year. In January 1961, he moved to New York City, hoping to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill with Huntington's Disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One, p. 98. Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and was the biggest influence on his early performances. Dylan would later say of Guthrie's work, "You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live." As well as visiting Guthrie in the hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie's acolyte Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles (2004).Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One, pp. 250–252.From February 1961, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village. In September, he eventually gained public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote a positive review in The New York Times of a show at Gerde's Folk City.Robert Shelton, New York Times, 1961-09-21, "Bob Dylan: A Distinctive Stylist" reproduced online: The same month Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester's eponymous third album, which brought his talents to the attention of the album's producer John Hammond. Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records in October. The performances on his first Columbia album, Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with two original compositions. The album made little impact, selling only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even.Scaduto, Bob Dylan, p. 110. Within Columbia Records, some referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously, and Johnny Cash was also a powerful ally of Dylan. While working for Columbia, Dylan also recorded several songs under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, for Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 157–158. during the Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963]]Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962. He legally changed his name to Robert Dylan, and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman. Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was notable both for his sometimes confrontational personality, and for the fiercely protective loyalty he displayed towards his principal client.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 283–284. Dylan would subsequently describe Grossman thus: "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming." Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond being replaced as the producer of Dylan's second album by the young African American jazz producer Tom Wilson.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 115–116.By the time Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was released in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as both a singer and a songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labelled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 138–142. "Oxford Town", for example, was a sardonic account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.Shelton, No Direction Home, p. 156.His most famous song of the time, "Blowin' in the Wind", partially derived its melody from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block", while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo.The booklet by John Bauldie accompanying Dylan's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 1961–1991 (1991) says: "Dylan acknowledged the debt in 1978 to journalist Marc Rowland: Blowin' In The Wind' has always been a spiritual. I took it off a song called 'No More Auction Block'—that's a spiritual and 'Blowin' In The Wind follows the same feeling. pp. 6–8. The song was widely recorded and became an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting a precedent for many other artists who would have hits with Dylan's songs. "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was based on the tune of the folk ballad "Lord Randall". With its veiled references to nuclear apocalypse, it gained even more resonance when the Cuban missile crisis developed only a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 101–103. Like "Blowin' in the Wind", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" marked an important new direction in modern song writing, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with a traditional folk form.Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin, pp. 329–344.While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin also included a mixture of love songs and jokey, surreal talking blues. Humor was a large part of Dylan's persona,Scaduto, Bob Dylan, p. 35. and the range of material on the album impressed many listeners, including The Beatles. George Harrison said, "We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful."Mojo magazine, December 1993.The rough edge of Dylan's singing was unsettling to some early listeners but an attraction to others. Describing the impact that Dylan had on she and her husband, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying."Hedin (ed.), 2004, Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader, p. 259. Reproduced online: Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through more immediately palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan's advocate, as well as his lover. Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him onstage during her own concerts.Joan Baez entry, Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 28–31.Others who recorded and had hits with Dylan's songs in the early and mid-1960s included The Byrds, Sonny and Cher, The Hollies, Peter, Paul and Mary, Manfred Mann, and The Turtles. Most attempted to impart a pop feel and rhythm to the songs, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces. The cover versions became so ubiquitous that CBS started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan.""Mixed Up Confusion", recorded during the Freewheelin' sessions with a backing band, was released as a single and then quickly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records."Biograph, 1985, Liner notes & text by Cameron Crowe. Musicians on "Mixed Up Confusion": George Barnes & Bruce Langhorne (guitars); Dick Wellstood (piano); Gene Ramey (bass); Herb Lovelle (drums) Protest and Another Side In May 1963, Dylan's political profile was raised when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been informed by CBS Television's "head of program practices" that the song he was planning to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues", was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with the censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the program.Dylan had recorded "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" for his Freewheelin album, but the song was replaced by later compositions, including "Masters of War". See Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 114–115. By this time, Dylan and Baez were both prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.Dylan performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "When the Ship Comes In"; see Heylin, Bob Dylan: A Life In Stolen Moments, p. 49. Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a-Changin', reflected a more politicized and cynical Dylan.Gill, My Back Pages, pp. 37–41. The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary, real life stories, with "Only A Pawn In Their Game" addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger.Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin, pp. 221–233. On a more general theme, "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "North Country Blues" address the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings".By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 200–205. These tensions were publicly displayed when, accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a drunken, rambling Dylan questioned the role of the committee, insulted its members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself (and of every man) in Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.Part of Dylan's speech went: "There's no black and white, left and right to me any more; there's only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking of anything trivial such as politics."; see, Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 200–205. in upstate New York, 1963]]Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964, had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal, humorous Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare". "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are romantic and passionate love songs, while "Black Crow Blues" and "I Don't Believe You " suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan's music. "It Ain't Me Babe", on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role his reputation had thrust at him.Shelton, No Direction Home, p. 222. His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic "Chimes of Freedom", which sets elements of social commentary against a denser metaphorical landscape in a style later characterized by Allen Ginsberg as "chains of flashing images,"In an interview with Seth Goddard for Life magazine (July 5, 2001) Ginsberg claimed that Dylan’s technique had been inspired by Jack Kerouac: "(Dylan) pulled Mexico City Blues from my hand and started reading it and I said, 'What do you know about that?' He said, 'Somebody handed it to me in '59 in St. Paul and it blew my mind.' So I said 'Why?' He said, 'It was the first poetry that spoke to me in my own language.' So those chains of flashing images you get in Dylan, like 'the motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen and her silver studded phantom lover,' they're influenced by Kerouac's chains of flashing images and spontaneous writing, and that spreads out into the people." Reproduced online at: and "My Back Pages", which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 219–222.In the latter half of 1964 and 1965, Dylan’s appearance and musical style changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary songwriter of the folk scene to Folk-Rock pop-music star. His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointy "Beatle boots". A London reporter wrote: "Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo."Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 267–271; pp. 288–291. Dylan also began to spar in increasingly surreal ways with his interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane TV show and asked about a movie he was planning to make, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, "No, I play my mother."Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 178–181. Going electric His March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was yet another stylistic leap.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 181–182. The album featured his first recordings made with electric instruments. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and was provided with an early music video courtesy of D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Dont Look Back.Gill, My Back Pages, pp. 68–69. Its free association lyrics both harked back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and were a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.Marqusee, Wicked Messenger, p. 144.By contrast, the B side of the album was interpreted by some folk fans as a conciliatory gesture: four long songs where Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 168–169. "Mr. Tambourine Man" had already been a hit for The Byrds, and would become one of his best known songs; while "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" and "It's Alright Ma " would be acclaimed as two of Dylan's most important compositions.Shelton, 2003, No Direction Home, pp. 276–277.In the summer of 1965, as the headliner at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since his high school days with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums) and Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano).Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 208–216. Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. As one version of the legend has it, the boos were from the outraged folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set.Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked an outraged response from the folk music establishment.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 305–314. Ewan MacColl wrote in Sing Out!, "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside traditions formulated over time ... But what of Bobby Dylan? ... a youth of mediocre talent. Only a non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel."Sing Out!, September 1965, quoted in Shelton, No Direction Home, p. 313. On July 29, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording "Positively 4th Street". The lyrics teemed with images of vengeance and paranoia,"You got a lotta nerve/To say you are my friend/When I was down/You just stood there grinning" Reproduced online: and it was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community—friends he had known in the clubs along West 4th Street.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 186. Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde In July 1965, Dylan released the single "Like a Rolling Stone", which peaked at #2 in the U.S. and at #4 in the UK charts. At over six minutes in length, the song has been widely credited with altering attitudes about what a pop single could convey. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech during Dylan's inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said that on first hearing the single, "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind".Springsteen’s Speech during Dylan’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, January 20, 1988 Quoted in Bauldie, Wanted Man, p. 191. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine listed it at #1 on its list of "The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The song also opened Dylan's next album, Highway 61 Revisited, titled after the road that led from Dylan's Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans.Gill, 1999, My Back Pages, pp. 87–88. The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar and Al Kooper's organ riffs. "Desolation Row" offers the sole exception, with Dylan attempting to convey surreal references of a variety of figures in Western culture over the course of the song's eleven and a half minutes. Andy Gill wrote, "'Desolation Row' is an 11-minute epic of entropy which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of iconic characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse" Gill, My Back Pages, p. 89.In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts and set about assembling a band. Mike Bloomfield was unwilling to leave the Butterfield Band, so Dylan mixed Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew with bar-band stalwarts Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, best known at the time for being part of Ronnie Hawkins's backing band The Hawks. On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan's electric sound. The band's reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 189–90.While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with a cadre of top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came down from New York City to play on the sessions.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 238–243. The Nashville sessions produced the double-album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan later called "that thin wild mercury sound"."The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." Dylan Interview, Playboy, March 1978; see Cott, Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews, p. 204. Reproduced online: Al Kooper described the album as "taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion": the musical world of Nashville and the world of the "quintessential New York hipster" Bob Dylan.Gill, My Back Pages, p. 95.On November 22, 1965, Dylan secretly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 193. Some of Dylan’s friends (including Ramblin' Jack Elliott) claim that, in conversation immediately after the event, Dylan denied that he was married. Journalist Nora Ephron first made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline “Hush! Bob Dylan is wed.”Shelton, No Direction Home, p. 325.Dylan undertook a world tour of Australia and Europe in the spring of 1966. Each show was split into two parts. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second half, backed by the Hawks, he played high voltage electric music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 244–261. The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England. Rolling Stone review of live album of concert said, "This isn't rock & roll; it's war." At the climax of the concert, one fan, angry with Dylan's electric sound, shouted: "Judas!" to which Dylan responded, "I don't believe you ... You're a liar!" He then turned to the band and, just within earshot of the microphone, said "Play it fucking loud!"Dylan's dialogue with the Manchester audience is recorded (with subtitles) in Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home. They then launched into the last song of the night with gusto—"Like a Rolling Stone". Motorcycle accident and reclusion After his European tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures on him continued to increase. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show they could screen.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 215. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a finished manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had already scheduled an extensive concert tour for that summer and fall.On July 29, 1966, the brakes on Dylan's Triumph 500 motorcycle locked on a road near his home in Woodstock, New York, throwing him to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries were never fully disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 217–219. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized. Commenting on the significance of the crash, Dylan expressed some bitterness at the way he had been treated: "When I had that motorcycle accident ... I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin' for all these leeches. And I didn't want to do that. Plus, I had a family and I just wanted to see my kids."Cott, Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews, p. 300. Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Down The Highway, concludes that the crash offered Dylan the much-needed chance to escape from the pressures that had built up around him. In the wake of his accident, Dylan withdrew from the public and, apart from a few select appearances, did not tour again for eight years.Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing film footage of his 1966 tour for Eat the Document, a rarely exhibited follow-up to Dont Look Back. A rough-cut was shown to ABC Television and was promptly rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 216. In 1967 he began recording music with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, called "Big Pink".Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 222–225. These songs, initially compiled as demos for other artists to record, provided hit singles for Julie Driscoll ("This Wheel's on Fire"), The Byrds ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Nothing Was Delivered"), and Manfred Mann ("Quinn the Eskimo "). Columbia belatedly released selections from them in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, more and more of the songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on various bootleg recordings, culminating in a five-CD bootleg set titled The Genuine Basement Tapes, containing 107 songs and alternate takes.Marcus, The Old, Weird America, pp. 236–265. In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they first worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves The Band,Helm, Levon and Davis, This Wheel's on Fire, p. 164; p. 174. thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville. Back in the recording studio after a 19-month break, he was accompanied only by Charlie McCoy on bass, Kenny Buttrey on drums, and Pete Drake on steel guitar. The result was John Wesley Harding, a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on both the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a departure not only from Dylan's own work but from the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s musical culture.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 282–288. It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan himself would later acknowledge as definitive.Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968.Shelton, No Direction Home, pp. 395–399. Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was virtually a mainstream country record featuring instrumental backing by Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay Lady Lay", which had been originally written for the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, but was not submitted in time to make the final cut.Gill, My Back Pages, p. 140. In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash's new television show, duetting with Cash on "Girl from the North Country", "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Living the Blues". Dylan next travelled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight rock festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival far closer to his home.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 248–253.

1970s: Shelter From The Storm

In the early 1970s critics charged Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Rolling Stone magazine writer and Dylan loyalist Greil Marcus notoriously asked "What is this shit?" upon first listening to 1970's Self Portrait. In general, Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received. Later that year, Dylan released New Morning, which some considered a return to form. In the same year Dylan co-wrote "I'd Have You Anytime", "Nowhere to Go" (also known as "When Everybody Comes to Town"), and "If Not For You" with George Harrison. "I'd Have You Anytime" and "If Not For You" appeared on the ex-Beatle's triple album All Things Must Pass. Harrison and Dylan recorded "If Not For You" together for Harrison's 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass with Dylan on harmonica. Future Yes drummer Alan White stated that John Lennon also played on "If Not For You" on the recording for All Things Must Pass. Dylan's surprise appearance at Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted much media coverage, reflecting that Dylan's live appearances had become rare.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 328–331.Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock Studios, a small studio in New York's Greenwich Village. These sessions resulted in one single, "Watching The River Flow", and a new recording of "When I Paint My Masterpiece". On November 4, 1971 Dylan recorded "George Jackson" which he released a week later. For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin Prison that summer.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, ´pp. 342–343.In 1972 Dylan signed onto Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing the role of "Alias", a member of Billy's gang who had some basis in history.C. P. Lee wrote: "In Garrett's ghost-written memoir, The Authentic Life of Billy The Kid, published within a year of Billy's death, he wrote that 'Billy's partner doubtless had a name which was his legal property, but he was so given to changing it that it is impossible to fix on the right one. Billy always called him Alias. Lee, Like a Bullet of Light: The Films of Bob Dylan, pp. 66–67. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has proven its durability as one of Dylan's most extensively covered songs. Artists to have covered the song include Bryan Ferry, Wyclef Jean and Guns 'n' Roses. Return to touring touring in Chicago in 1974.]]Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new record label, David Geffen's Asylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired. On his next album, Planet Waves, he used The Band as backing group, while rehearsing for a major tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young", which became one of his most popular songs.Sounes, 2001, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 273–274. Christopher Ricks has connected the chorus of this song with John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn", which contains the line "For ever panting, and for ever young."Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin, p. 453. As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan",Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, p. 354. and Dylan himself commented: "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental."Dylan's comment in booklet notes to Biograph, 1985, CBS Records. Biographer Howard Sounes noted that Jakob Dylan believed the song was about him.Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a haphazard collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively cover songs), which was widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, p. 358. In January 1974 Dylan and The Band embarked on their high-profile, coast-to-coast North American tour. A live double album of the tour, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records. After the tour, Dylan and his wife became publicly estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and quickly recorded a new album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 368–383. Dylan delayed the album's release, however, and re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother David Zimmerman.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 369–387. During this time, Dylan returned to Columbia Records which eventually reissued his Asylum albums.Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [3] often so trashy they sound like mere practise takes."Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, p. 383. In Rolling Stone, reviewer Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." However, over the years critics have come to see it as one of Dylan's greatest achievements, perhaps the only serious rival to his mid-60s trilogy of albums. In Salon.com, Bill Wyman wrote: "Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-'60s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years." Novelist Rick Moody called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape."Hedin, Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader, p. 109. with Allen Ginsberg, on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975.]]That summer Dylan wrote his first successful "protest" song in twelve years, championing the cause of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who had been imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote "Hurricane", presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its 8:32 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking at #33 on the U.S. Billboard Chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour was a varied evening of entertainment featuring many performers drawn from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, and violinist Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street, her violin case hanging on her back.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 579. Allen Ginsberg accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was simultaneously shooting. Sam Shepard was initially hired to write the film's screenplay, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.Shepard, Rolling Thunder Logbook, pp. 2–49.Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an almost travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 386–401,Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 408. The spring 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour was released until 2002's Live 1975.The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling and improvised narrative, mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews and had a very brief theatrical run.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 313. Later in that year, Dylan allowed a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, to be more widely released.Lee, Like a Bullet of Light: The Films of Bob Dylan, pp. 115–116.In November 1976 Dylan appeared at The Band's "farewell" concert, along with other guests including Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's acclaimed cinematic chronicle of this show, The Last Waltz, was released in 1978 and included about half of Dylan's set. In 1976, Dylan also wrote and duetted on the song "Sign Language" for Eric Clapton's No Reason To Cry.Dylan's 1978 album Street-Legal, recorded with a large, pop-rock band, complete with female backing vocalists, was lyrically one of his more complex and cohesive.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 643. It suffered, however, from a poor sound mix (attributed to his studio recording practices),Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 480–481. submerging much of its instrumentation until its remastered CD release nearly a quarter century later. Born-again period In the late 1970s, Dylan became a born-again ChristianSounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 323–337.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 490–526.Dylan Interview with Karen Hughes, (The Dominion, Wellington, New Zealand), May 21, 1980; reprinted in Cott (ed.), Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews, pp. 275–278; reproduced online: and released two albums of Christian gospel music. Slow Train Coming (1979) featured the guitar accompaniment of Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) and was produced by veteran R&B producer, Jerry Wexler. Wexler recalled that when Dylan had started to evangelize to him during the recording, he replied: "Bob, you're dealing with a sixty-two-year old Jewish atheist. Let's just make an album."Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 501–503. The album won Dylan a Grammy Award as "Best Male Vocalist" for the song "Gotta Serve Somebody". The second evangelical album, Saved (1980), received mixed reviews, although Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone declared the album was far superior, musically, to its predecessor. When touring from the fall of 1979 through the spring of 1980, Dylan would not play any of his older, secular works, and he delivered declarations of his faith from the stage, such as:}}Dylan's embrace of Christianity was unpopular with some of his fans and fellow musicians.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 334–336. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody". By 1981, while Dylan's Christian faith was obvious, Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that "neither age (he's now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament."

1980s: Trust Yourself

thumb|right|200px|Bob Dylan performing in June 1984]In the fall of 1980 Dylan briefly resumed touring for a series of concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective", where he restored several of his popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded the next spring, featured Dylan's first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with explicitly Christian songs. The haunting "Every Grain of Sand" reminded some critics of William Blake’s verses.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 215–221.In the 1980s the quality of Dylan's recorded work varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Critics such as Michael Gray condemned Dylan's 1980s albums both for showing an extraordinary carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs.Gray, Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan, pp. 11–14. The Infidels recording sessions, for example, produced several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Most well regarded of these were "Blind Willie McTell" (a tribute to the dead blues singer and an evocation of African American historyGray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 56–59.), "Foot of Pride" and "Lord Protect My Child".Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 354–356. These songs were later released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 1961-1991.Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded his next studio album, Empire Burlesque.Sounes, 2001, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 362. Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker has said he felt he was hired to make Dylan's album sound "a little bit more contemporary".Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 362.Dylan sang on USA for Africa's famine relief fundraising single "We Are the World". On July 13, 1985, he appeared at the climax at the Live Aid concert at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia. Backed by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, Dylan performed a ragged version of "Hollis Brown", his ballad of rural poverty, and then said to the worldwide audience exceeding one billion people: "I hope that some of the money ... maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe ... one or two million, maybe ... and use it to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks."Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 367. His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 365–367.In April 1986, Dylan made a foray into the world of rap music when he overdubbed vocals on one verse of "Street Rock", recorded by rap star Kurtis Blow. The collaboration was conceived by veteran songwriter/producer Wayne K. Garfield with support from former Dylan back-up singer Debra Byrd and was released on Blow's album Kingdom Blow.Gray, 2006, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 63 In July 1986 Dylan released Knocked Out Loaded, an album containing three cover songs (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the traditional gospel hymn "Precious Memories"), three collaborations with other writers (Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. The album received mainly negative reviews; Rolling Stone called it "a depressing affair", and it was the first Dylan album since Freewheelin' (1963) to fail to make the Top 50.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, p. 595. Since then, some critics have called the eleven-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, 'Brownsville Girl', a work of genius.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 95–100. In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured extensively with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with The Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This album received some very negative reviews: Allmusic said, "Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead." After performing with these musical permutations, Dylan initiated what came to be called The Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a tight back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan would continue to tour with this small but constantly evolving band for the next 20 years.In 1987, Dylan starred in Richard Marquand's movie Hearts of Fire, in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up-rock-star-turned-chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation (played by Rupert Everett).Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 376–383. Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—"Night After Night", and "I Had a Dream About You, Baby", as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 599–604.Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988. Bruce Springsteen's induction speech declared: "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual." Dylan then released the album Down in the Groove, which was even more unsuccessful in its sales than his previous studio album.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 385. The song "Silvio", however, had some success as a single. Later that spring, Dylan was a co-founder and member of the Traveling Wilburys with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty returning to the album charts with the multi-platinum selling Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1. Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990, which they released with the unexpected title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 638-640.Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Rolling Stone magazine called the album "both challenging and satisfying".Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One, pp. 145–221. The track "Most of the Time", a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans.Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin, pp. 413–20. The religious imagery of "Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.Scott Marshall wrote: "When Dylan sings that 'The sun is going down upon the sacred cow', it's safe to assume that the sacred cow here is the biblical metaphor for all false gods. For Dylan, the world will eventually know that there is only one God." Marshall, Restless Pilgrim, p. 103.

1990s: Not Dark Yet

Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. The album contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo"; this was later explained as a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four at that time.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 174. Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the stellar line-up, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly. Dylan did not make another studio album of new songs for seven years.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 391.In 1991, Dylan was honored by the recording industry with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, and Dylan performed his song "Masters of War". Dylan then made a short speech which startled some of the audience. Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, pp. 664-665. Heylin quotes the speech: "My daddy once said to me, he said, 'Son, it is possible for you to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. If that happens, God will believe in your ability to mend your own ways.' "The next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering old folk and blues numbers: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), featuring interpretations and acoustic guitar work. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim",Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 423. penned by a 19th century teacher and sung by Dylan with a haunting reverence. An exception to this rootsy mood came in Dylan's 1991 songwriting collaboration with Michael Bolton; the resulting song "Steel Bars", was released on Bolton's album Time, Love & Tenderness. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He claimed his wish to perform a set of traditional songs for the show was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on a greatest hits package.Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, pp. 408–409. The album produced from it, MTV Unplugged, included "John Brown", an unreleased 1963 song detailing the ravages of both war and jingoism.With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch,Heylin, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, p. 693. Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami's Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension. Late that spring, before the album's release, Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon."Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 420. He was back on the road by midsummer, and in early fall performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a sermon based on Dylan's lyric "Blowin' in the Wind".Sounes, Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan, p. 426.September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. Rolling Stone said "Mortality bears down hard, while shots of gallows humor ring out." This collection of complex songs won him his first solo "Album of the Year" Grammy Award (he was one of numerous performers on The Concert for Bangladesh, the 1972 winner). The love song "Make You Feel My Love" became a number one country hit for Garth Brooks.In December 1997 U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful."

2000s: Things Have Changed

In 2000, Dylan's song "Things Have Changed", penned for the film Wonder Boys, won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. The Oscar (by some reports a facsimile) tours with him, presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier."Love and Theft" was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 556–557. The album was critically well-received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards. Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.In 2003 Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his "born again" period and participated in the CD project The Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan. That year also saw the release of the film Masked & Anonymous, a collaboration with TV producer Larry Charles that had Dylan appearing in a cast of well-knowns, including Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an “incoherent mess”; a few treated it as a serious work of art.In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, Volume One. The book confounded expectations. Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-'60s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, pp. 136–138. in November 2005.]]Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film biography No Direction Home was broadcast in September 2005. It was shown on September 26-27, 2005, on BBC Two in the United Kingdom and PBS in the United States. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006 and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007. The accompanying soundtrack featured unreleased songs from Dylan's early career.May 3, 2006, was the premiere of Dylan's DJ career, hosting a weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections revolving around a chosen theme. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1930s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and The Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics as "great radio," as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references with his sardonic humor, while achieving a thematic beauty with his musical choices. Music author Peter Guralnick commented: "With this show, Dylan is tapping into his deep love—and I would say his belief in—a musical world without borders. I feel like the commentary often reflects the same surrealistic appreciation for the human comedy that suffuses his music."thumb|200px|left|Dylan, the Spectrum, 2007On August 29, 2006, Dylan released his Modern Times album. In a Rolling Stone interview, Dylan criticized the quality of modern sound recordings and claimed that his new songs "probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em." Despite some coarsening of Dylan’s voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as "a catarrhal death rattle") most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and "Love and Theft". Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976's Desire.Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby". Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine, and by Uncut in the UK. On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released The Collection, a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.August 2007 saw the unveiling of the award-winning film I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, bearing the tagline "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". The movie uses six distinct characters to represent different aspects of Dylan's life, played by Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. Dylan's previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its nameGreil Marcus wrote: "There is nothing like 'I'm Not There' in the rest of the basement recordings, or anywhere else in Bob Dylan’s career. Very quickly the listener is drawn into the sickly embrace of the music, its wash of half-heard, half-formed words and the increasing bitterness and despair behind them. Words are floated together in a dyslexia that is music itself â€“ a dyslexia that seems to prove the claims of music over words, to see just how little words can achieve."; see Marcus, The Old, Weird America, pp. 198–204. was released for the first time on the film's original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Eddie Vedder, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens, and Tom Verlaine.On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo. As part of this campaign, Mark Ronson produced a re-mix of Dylan's 1966 tune "Most Likely You Go Your Way ", which was released as a maxi-single. This was the first time Dylan had sanctioned a re-mix of one of his classic recordings.The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan’s commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This first became evidenced in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade.Dylan also devoted an hour of his Theme Time Radio Hour to the theme of 'the Cadillac'. He first sang about the car in his 1963 nuclear war fantasy, "Talkin’ World War III Blues", when he described it as a "good car to drive—after a war". Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper Will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII. The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by Will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.Over a decade after Random House had published Drawn Blank (1994), a book of Dylan's drawings, an exhibit of his art, The Drawn Blank Series, opened in October 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany. This first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made earlier in 2007 from the original drawings. The exhibition's opening also premiered the release of the book Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series. In an interview with The Times in July, 2008, Dylan ended with what may have been an endorsement of presidential candidate Barack Obama:}}In October 2008, Columbia released Volume 8 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, Rare And Unreleased 1989-2006 as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley. The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about "rip-off packaging" from some fans and commentators.Michael Gray expressed his opinion in his Bob Dylan Encyclopedia blog The release was widely acclaimed by critics. The plethora of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to Uncut's reviewer: "Tell Tale Signs is awash with evidence of (Dylan's) staggering mercuriality, his evident determination even in the studio to repeat himself as little as possible."During 2008, Dylan began curating a project to set some of Hank Williams' "lost" lyrics to music, overseeing contributions from Jack White, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, and Norah Jones. The idea for the project, which was sanctioned by Hank Williams' estate, originated after music publisher Acuff Rose entrusted Dylan with some of the so-called "Shoebox Songs", a collection of notebooks and drafts that had been kept by Williams' widow.Bob Dylan latest studio album, Together Through Life, was released on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan's website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song, and "then the record sort of took its own direction". Dylan also acknowledged the contributions of backing musicians Mike Campbell, the guitarist with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and David Hidalgo, the multi-instrumentalist with Los Lobos. Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter.The music video for the single "Beyond Here Lies Nothing", was directed by Nash Edgerton. Nash Edgerton The video features a montage of black-and-white photographs from Bruce Davidson’s 1959 Brooklyn Gang photo essay; this work of photojournalism also supplied the cover of the album.The album received largely favourable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon of work. In Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke wrote: "Together Through Life is a mixed bag of this decade's Dylan — impulsive, caustic, sentimental, long done with the contrived details of contemporary record-making. The album may lack the instant-classic aura of Love and Theft or Modern Times, but it is rich in striking moments, set in a willful rawness." Dylan critic Andy Gill wrote in The Independent that the record "features Dylan in fairly relaxed, spontaneous mood, content to grab such grooves and sentiments as flit momentarily across his radar. So while it may not contain too many landmar