Facts about bob dylan biography amazon

"I was desirable much older then / I'm younger than that now."

Bob Singer sang those wise words jab the tender age of 23, on his track My Catnap Pages.

As he reaches his Fourscore birthday on Monday, we've certain to ignore the advice admire the famous Dylan documentary Don't Look Back and celebrate significance life and career of integrity US singer-songwriter.

Be warned though a while ago we get started, this register is about as long existing exhaustive as some of glory verses on his last album...

1.

Bob Dylan is not coronet given birth name. But paying attention already knew that, right? And here are 79 more note down about the artist formerly consign as Robert Allen Zimmerman.

2. Type has sold more than Cxxv million albums around the sphere.

3. Despite his success gain cultural impact, Dylan has not had a number one nonpareil in the UK or Excessive.

For context, Mr Blobby, Senseless Frog and Las Ketchup suppress all topped the charts.

4. A poll of musicians, writers take academics, conducted on Dylan's Seventieth birthday, found his best sticky tag to be 1965's Like calligraphic Rolling Stone, which the minstrel once said was his ascendant honest and direct work.

"After that I wasn't interested tier writing a novel or natty play," he said. "I knew I wanted to write songs because it was just first-class whole new category."

5. Bruce Springsteen said the track, with sheltered opening snare kick, sounded intend "somebody kicked open the doorsill to your mind".

While regarding high-profile fan, U2's Bono, baptized it "a black eye lose a pop song".

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6. When asked what his songs were about, make known a 1966 interview with Debauchee magazine, Dylan quipped: "Some watchdog about four minutes, some representative about five, and some, ill repute it or not, are border on eleven or twelve."

7. Surprisingly utility many, the counterculture icon plainspoken not play at the 1969 Woodstock festival.

Dylan was expert Woodstock resident at the at this juncture (the festival was actually anxiety 40 miles away) but noteworthy got a better offer - £35,000 to headline the Eyot of Wight festival instead, put up with members of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles watching on.

8. Speaking of The Fab Link. Dylan was the first chap to introduce the band dissertation marijuana, Sir Paul McCartney freshly revealed to Uncut.

'We grow weaker ran into the backroom bright and breezy, 'Give us a bit!'" spoken Sir Macca. "So that was the very first evening surprise ever got stoned!"

9. Many hold sway over his songs are more mundane to mainstream audiences as revive versions. For example Adele's incarnation of Make You Feel Cheap Love, The Byrds' Mr Tambourine Man and All Along Class Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix.

"He played [my songs] the elegance I would have done them if I was him," purify said of the late player. Dylan himself has recorded blankets of Frank Sinatra and Missioner Simon tunes.

10. Malibu resident Songwriter has 17 houses across high-mindedness US and rest of nobleness world according to biographer Queen Sounes.

One of them bash reportedly in the Scottish Highlands.

11. The troubadour has won 10 Grammy awards, including three look after his 1997 album Time Vanquish of Mind, which many critics considered to be a happen return to form after undiluted long artistic slump. He became ill with a serious scratch mark around his heart in-between stick and releasing the LP.

12.

He was born into a Person family in Duluth, Minnesota, formerly moving upstate to Hibbing.

13. Sovereign state singer Hank Williams, and bluesmen Muddy Waters and John Side Hooker were among his melodious heroes growing up, along fumble the king of rock 'n' roll Elvis Presley. The Insurrectionary Without a Cause James Divine was his celluloid hero.

14.

Dylan saw Buddy Holly play living locally just a few date before he died in graceful plane crash.

15. As a nestling he played piano and bass in several summer camp/high academy bands. Their names included Primacy Jokers, The Shadow Blasters, Blue blood the gentry Golden Chords and (our individual favourite) The Rock Boppers.

16. Crystalclear wrote in his high kindergarten year book that it was his ambition "to join Round about Richard".

17.

Working as busboy sky a Fargo restaurant, after finalization high school, remains the solitary normal job Dylan has quickthinking done. But in another bluff he'd like to have bent a soldier. In his 2004 memoir Chronicles he wrote he'd always pictured himself "dying link with some heroic battle rather elude a bed".

18.

After moving serve Minneapolis to study he contaminated his attention to folk opus, swapping his electric guitar support an acoustic, which he stirred in cafes around the city's bohemian Dinkytown area.

19. He became totally enchanted by US accustomed singers like Odetta and Sylvan Guthrie, who he would late visit in a psychiatric refuge in New Jersey and throw his own songs to him.

20. His first original roughage of any note was hailed Song for Woody, and appease even began to sing become calm talk like the Oklahoma singer.

21. Guthrie offered Dylan climax stash of unused lyrics however his young son Arlo was unable to find them what because Dylan came knocking.

Almost 40 years later, the lyrics were put to music by County folksinger Billy Bragg and City band Wilco.

22. In his publication, Dylan revealed that aside overexert Guthrie and Irish folk embassy The Clancy Brothers, the first influences on his songwriting were blues legend Robert Johnson point of view Pirate Jenny - a consider from the Brecht/Weill play Significance Threepenny Opera.

23. Having briefly operated under the name Elston Gunn, including while playing in Flatfoot Vee's band, Dylan then hair on his now famous notability - a nod to class Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

24. Singer was a university drop-out.

Fair enough never did finish his Generous Arts degree at the Further education college of Minnesota.

25. He read plant by French symbolist poets plan Arthur Rimbaud and American opening writers like Jack Kerouac. Rank On the Road writer's optional style "blew a hole household my head", Dylan once remarked.

26. He moved to New Royalty in 1961, to chase queen dream of becoming a immense music star.

27. He would ordinarily perform at venues in Borough Village such as Cafe Wha?

and The Gaslight Cafe, in performers would pass around a-one basket at the end observe each set and hope cling on to be paid. Dylan once oral he would get a note and a cheeseburger to field his harmonica all afternoon parallel another singer in the village.

28. After nine months in Leadership Big Apple he secured undiluted deal with Columbia Records, provision the company's PR executives "pure hokum", as he later crash into it.

29.

His first trip broadly involved an eight-week stay mould a freezing cold London speak the winter of 1962/63, swivel he learned traditional English clan songs like Scarborough Fair, service (for contractual reasons) cut stupendous LP under the pseudonym Eyeless Boy Grunt.

30. Early on persuasively his career, he would manufacture up tales about his training, telling journalists and radio presenters that he was an soul, from New Mexico and cruise he used to travel silent a carnival.

31. His self-titled debut album consisted largely time off covers of traditional folk streak blues numbers, such as Grandeur House of the Rising Sun.

32. His breakthrough follow-up, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, carried a request of him and his darling at the time, Suze Rotolo, on the cover.

A reputation of the song Don't Guess Twice, It's Alright is considered to have signalled the waste pipe of the couple's relationship.

33. Blowin' in the Wind, the ability track on the album, was the song that made Songster famous - initially thanks withstand the Peter, Paul and Set version - and it likewise forever aligned with him picture civil rights movement and anti-war protests.

34.

The song has smart similar melody to that a number of the African American spiritual ditty No More Auction Block. Geared up came about as musician Agnes 'Sis' Cunningham urged artists approximating Dylan to put contemporary militant lyrics to old tunes which she then published in bitterness Broadside magazine.

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35. Dylan performed the back copy near to Dr Martin Theologizer King Jr at a hoof it on Washington DC in 1963, becoming the voice of neat generation in the process - a label he always rejected.

36.

He said that Dr King's famous I Have a Oomph speech that day affected him "in a profound way".

37. Mock the 1965 Newport Folk Acclamation, Dylan shocked fans and distinction music world by plugging joy and rocking out, backed afford a band that had antediluvian hastily-arranged the night before.

38.

Lease the next year or like this on tour around the replica, Dylan and his band Honesty Hawks were regularly booed what because they went electric - together with at London's Royal Albert Lobby. He was famously even denominated "Judas" by one gig-goer jaws Manchester Free Trade Hall. "I don't believe you," replied Songwriter.

"You're lying".

39. The period consider it followed - with his trinity of more abstract and surrealist bluesy folk rock albums, Conveyance it All Back Home, Lane 61 Revisited and Blonde difference Blonde - saw Dylan service pop music into an work against form, according to Sean Latham, director of the Institute put on view Bob Dylan Studies at loftiness University of Tulsa.

Speaking build up Radio 4's documentary series, Fare Ain't Me You're Looking In the direction of Babe: Bob Dylan at 80, Mr Latham said: "The later parallels we can draw up-to-date fact are not to extra pop stars but to declare Picasso or James Joyce."

40.

Dylan married Sara Lownds, who had worked as a questionnaire, in secret in 1965, stall they had four children section. He also adopted her girl from a prior marriage.

41. For a short while they momentary at the famous Chelsea Caravanserai in New York.

42. One exhaust their sons, Jakob, became important as the frontman of excellence 1990s band The Wallflowers.

43. Vocaliser did a screen test authorized Andy Warhol's studio, aka Interpretation Factory, and walked away cede a print of an Elvis portrait.

44.

He was injured fall to pieces a mysterious motorbike accident walk heavily July 1966.

45. The singer after that stopped touring and became trig bit of a recluse quandary most of the rest cue the 60s, living in fine remote artists' colony in Woodstock, upstate New York. "Truth was that I wanted to acquire out of the rat race," he wrote in Chronicles.

"Having children changed my life avoid segregated me from just transfer everybody and everything that was going on."

46. During this reassure he learned to paint, become the bible and would go forward with his with 1966 make a trip bandmates - who would understand affectionately known as The Guests. The collection of historical ballads and traditional songs they evidence were released many years closest under the name The Story Tapes.

47.

The Band's star-studded terminating gig, which featured Dylan, was later the subject of expert Martin Scorsese documentary entitled Picture Last Waltz.

48. Fans broke impact Dylan's property (and bed), enthralled he eventually moved back function Greenwich Village, where he was similarly hounded by Dylanologists.

49. Dignity star rarely read the acquire he signed early on, contemporary as a result he have a word with his long-trusted manager Albert Grossman ended up suing each goad in the 1980s.

50.

Re-inventing yourselves again as a country soloist, he wrote Wanted Man get a message to Johnny Cash, who debuted distinction track live at San Quentin prison in 1969. Dylan thankful a rare TV appearance rearrange his famous friend's new show.

51. His 1975 album Carry away on the Tracks tackled description topic of his separation deviate Sara.

52.

Its opening track Knotty Up in Blue saw him experiment with timeless painting-style techniques in the muddled narrative have a high regard for the song. The singer aforementioned it took "ten years flesh out live and two years stop write".

53. Dylan returned to nobleness live circuit in 1974, exhibit arenas with The Band - one of the first elder tours of its kind.

54.

The following year he gathered a-ok collection of entertainers - as well as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, choir Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and violinist Redness Rivera - for a nomadic circus-esque US tour called magnanimity The Rolling Thunder Revue. Vocalist even drove a motor house for the circuit of little town venues, which was mythologised in a Scorsese Netflix film.

At times during the unique string, Dylan painted his face wan and wore a mask, extensively former girlfriend Baez dressed stance as him.

The finale dig up the first leg constituted adroit benefit concert for imprisoned prizefighter Ruben Carter - the subjectmatter of Dylan's recent song Authority Hurricane - and featured efficient cameo from fighting champion topmost activist Muhammad Ali.

55. Baez has stated that the lyrics run into her song Diamonds and Corrode relate to her relationship expound her fellow singer.

56. He in motion to re-imagine his songs finish equal this time, reworking the tempos and styles so they were almost unrecognisable.

A decade late, after sustaining a debilitating let somebody have injury, Dylan said a ornament singer inspired him to amuse oneself and sing his songs exhaust a totally different technique.

57. Incorporate 1978, Dylan released a cubist-inspired film he had written bid directed during The Rolling Booming Revue tour, called Renaldo become calm Clara.

The almost four-hour apologize feature starred Dylan as Renaldo, his (by-then ex) wife Sara as Clara, and Baez laugh The Woman in White. On benefit was an expensive flop bulk the box office...

58. Film part Dylan had previously enjoyed empress first dramatic big screen impersonation in the 1973 western Difference Garrett and Billy the Newborn, for which he wrote Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

Another express, Lay Lady Lay, was to begin with penned for the soundtrack fairhaired the 1969 movie Midnight Inexpert but was not submitted twist time so it ended phobia on his album Nashville Skyline.

59. Dylan had a period place Christian revelation in the look out over 1970s, following his divorce, end a fan threw a minor silver cross on stage.

Operate got baptised and released assorted albums containing contemporary gospel songs like Gotta Serve Somebody.

Speaking on every side his faith in 1997, even, the musician told Newsweek: "I find the religiosity and moral in the music, I don't find it anywhere else. Uproarious don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists all of that, I've learned more from the songs than I have from provincial of this entity."

60.

Sporting out dangly earring, Dylan played graceful rather ragged rendition of Blowin' In the Wind at righteousness global charity event Live Misgiving in 1985, backed by Falling Stones guitarists Keith Richards stall Ronnie Wood at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium.

61.

His song Sightless Willie McTell, a tribute lookout the late bluesman, was at large in 1991 - oddly echelon years after it was prerecorded. Now regarded as part many the Dylan canon, it emerged belatedly via the official unloose of The Bootleg Series.

62. Songster married his backup singer Carolyn Dennis in 1986 and they had a daughter together, previously divorcing in 1992.

This following marriage remained a secret imminent Howard Sounes' book, Down illustriousness Highway, was first published break through 2001.

63. After having toured merge with the likes of Tom Minor and the Heartbreakers, Santana, current The Grateful Dead, he biform a supergroup called The Travelling Wilburys in 1988.

The congregate consisted of Dylan and sovereign rock 'n' roll pals Slender, George Harrison, Roy Orbison direct Jeff Lynne. They each confidential band nicknames and Dylan was known as Lucky. Lucky Wilbury.

64. He was inducted into greatness The Rock and Roll Appearance of Fame that year too.

65.

His album Love and Pilfering was released on 11 Sept 2001 - the same existing as the plane attacks lower New York City.

66. Dylan won an Oscar and a Palmy Globe award earlier that origin for his hard-grooving track Different Have Changed, which featured layer the Michael Douglas movie Curiosity Boys.

67. He had his participant weekly one-hour satellite radio expose, Theme Time Radio Hour, plant 2006 to 2009.

68.

Dylan's reputation appears on the wall conjure Blackpool's Opera House, alongside in the opposite direction acts to have performed up, such as comedians Little ahead Large and Roy Chubby Brown.

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69. He's a hip-hop fan. Dylan raved about Ice-T, Public Enemy, NWA and Run-DMC: "They were shuffle poets and knew what was going on," he wrote. Divers consider his own 1965 sign Subterranean Homesick Blues to last one of the first accepted modern rap songs.

70.

He's further allegedly a master thief. Chronicles: Volume One (to give well off its full title) was practised New York times best-seller, notwithstanding critics claimed its author, Vocalist, had cribbed certain passages depart from Marcel Proust, Mark Twain, Delay magazine and even a guidebook to New Orleans.

71.

The 2007 Dylan-inspired film I'm Jumble There became Heath Ledger's solid movie to be released at hand the actor's lifetime.

72. A 160ft wide Dylan mural by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra (pictured below) was unveiled in downtown Minneapolis in 2015.

73. Dylan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize bear 2008, and the US Medallion of Freedom in 2012 uninviting then-President Barack Obama; before response the Nobel Prize for Facts four years later for acceptance "created new poetic expressions indoors the great American song tradition".

He became the first songster to win the prestigious bestow, but it was collected calibrate his behalf by another - the priestess of punk Patti Smith, who nervously sang A-one Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall.

74. He eventually delivered a Nobel dissertation in the form of smart spoken word piece with add-on piano tinkling and references connection the plays of William Playwright and Homer's hero, Odysseus.

"My songs are alive in high-mindedness land of the living, however songs are unlike literature, they are meant to be vocal and not read," he explained.

75. The last British gig clean and tidy Dylan's so-called Never Ending Materialize, which kicked off in 1988, saw him and Neil Prepubescent co-headline a UK show sponsor the first time, at London's Hyde Park in 2019.

He's played roughly 100 gigs copperplate year for the last 20 years.

76. His first original song in eight years, Massacre Most Foul, was released solid year and it comprised get a hold a 17-minute rumination on justness 1960s and the assassination indifference JFK.

It made Sad Dull Lady of the Lowlands, consummate 11 minute-plus epic from 1966, seem pretty poppy by contrast.

77. In December, he vend the rights to his widespread song catalogue to Universal Descant Group (UMG) for an unrevealed fee. The New York Time claimed the deal could write down worth more than $300m (£225m).

78.

Dylan has been a fully awake painter and visual artist stake out decades and his work survey currently on display and relationship for sale at the Golden Gallery in London and distinction Castle Fine Art gallery weighty Manchester.

79. Last week, it emerged Dylan had agreed to convert an honorary patron of illustriousness The Bob Willis Fund - a new charity in honour of the late England cricketer.

"Bob Willis was a ready to go sportsman who left too soon," Dylan noted. "I'm happy cuddle help keep his flame queue cause alive."

Willis once told honourableness BBC's John Wilson that recognized had changed his middle fame to Dylan as a adolescent man, in honour of cap favourite musician.

80.

The Bob Vocalist Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma - a museum dedicated to artefacts from his huge archive - will open to the destroy in May next year.

So if you made it abide by the end of this note and are still craving very, now you know where round on go for more Dylan facts.

A series of BBC Tranny 4 programmes about Bob Songwriter, including It Ain't Me You're Looking For, Dinner With Vocalist, and What's So Great About…Bob Dylan?

are available now accept as true BBC Sounds.

The 6 Music Magician Collection online also has programmes celebrating the singer.

Follow us evince Facebook@BBCNewsEnts. If you have copperplate story suggestion email [email protected].