Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941, and grew up in the iron-mining town of Hibbing, where his family was part of a small Jewish community. As a teenager he listened to rock and roll on distant radio stations and formed school bands; at university in Minneapolis he turned to folk music and the example of Woody Guthrie. In 1961 he moved to New York and the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village, and released his first album the following year.

Songs such as Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin’ became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements, but Dylan resisted the role of spokesman. In 1965 he went electric, and on Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde his lyrics grew dense, surreal and allusive, drawing on the Bible, the blues, ballads and modern poetry while remaining unmistakably songs. The decades since have brought reinventions — country, gospel, the confessional Blood on the Tracks, the late darkness of Time Out of Mind — and an almost unbroken life on the road. On the page he has published the experimental prose of Tarantula, the memoir Chronicles: Volume One, and The Philosophy of Modern Song.

In 2016 the Swedish Academy gave him the Nobel Prize for creating new poetic expressions within the American song tradition, the first time it had gone to a musician and a decision that prompted wide debate about what literature is. Dylan stayed silent for days, did not attend the ceremony, and delivered his Nobel lecture in June 2017, reflecting on Buddy Holly, Moby-Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and the Odyssey. He continues to record and tour.