So, what happened when Dylan burned out and his muse appeared to have vanished, in a far from simple twist of fate? His love and knowledge of folk, country, blues, rock, pop, bluegrass, jazz, Celtic music and more gave him a deep well of resources with which to paint his masterpieces. A baby-boom generation philosopher, he could create wondrous works of beauty in his songs, or use them to sneer and satirize with equal skill and conviction. This striking combination made Dylan seem like both an age-defying seer and a post-modern shaman.
He did so with a unique mix of charisma and mystery, realism and mythology, sly wit and sometimes lacerating cruelty. He displayed a singular ability to combine unfettered emotion, richly textured poetry and deep literary allusions in songs that sounded earthy and other-worldly, topical and transcendent. Like no one before him, Dylan transformed popular music with his visionary reinvention of songwriting. His slowing pace suggests he wanted, and needed, to pause, recharge and recalibrate. It is telling that Dylan released only two albums in between 1967’s “John Wesley Harding” and 1970’s willfully perverse “Self Portrait,” after making a dizzying seven albums between 19.
His stunning 2020 album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways,” his first collection of new songs in eight years, will also be discussed. One of the many topics the conference will explore is last November’s purchase of Dylan’s entire songwriting catalog - for a reported $300 million or more - by Universal Music. They include: Sean Latham’s scholarly “The World of Bob Dylan” Paul Morley’s “You Lose Yourself You Reappear: The Many Voices of Bob Dylan” and Clinton Heylin’s “A Restless, Hungry Feeling: The Double Life Of Bob Dylan, Volume One 1941-1966.” There are also newly revised editions of Howard Sounes’ highly regarded “Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan” and Robert Shelton’s “Bob Dylan: No Direction Home” (whose author wrote the prescient 1961 New York Times concert review that led to Dylan being signed to an album deal by Columbia Records). Now, as his 80th birthday approaches, Dylan is being celebrated anew in multiple ways.Ī number of new books have been published this month alone.
Being a larger-than-life cult of personality figure, clearly, did not. The fabled singer-songwriter was also a shape-shifting music icon, who had already spent several years attempting to torpedo his status as the “spokesman of a generation” Dylan’s desire to do so was further spurred by the 1966 birth of his first child, son Jesse, and a desire to trade the spotlight for a quieter life as a family man who, by late 1969, had three more children.īeing a father, husband and a musician appealed to him. Bob Dylan, who will turn 80 on May 24, was a young legend of 28 when he began the March 1970 recording sessions featured on his new three-CD collection, “1970: 50th Anniversary Collection.” He was just a few months past 29 when the concluding set of sessions was completed in August of that same year.