Biography
Bob Dylan is one of the world’s most influential cultural figures. During the past five decades he has released 48 albums and written over 600 songs including ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ and ‘Make You Feel My Love’. Selling over 110 million records around the world, his songs have been covered more than 5,000 times by artists as diverse as the Byrds, the Rolling Stones, Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Jarret, Guns N’ Roses, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Marley, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young and Adele. Dylan’s music has been recognised and honoured with many awards around the world, among them an honorary doctorate of music from Princeton University, New Jersey, in 1970 and another from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in 2004. In 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991. His song ‘Things Have Changed’ from the film Wonder Boys (2000) won him an Academy Award in 2001. Dylan has been on a late career streak since 1997, when his Time Out Of Mind album gained three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. He received a special Pulitzer Prize Citation in 2008 for his ‘profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power’. In 2012 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian accolade. From his performances in Greenwich Village coffee houses, festivals and rallies in the early 1960s to his stadium concerts of the 1970s and his subsequent worldwide tours, Dylan has built his musical reputation on the strength of his live appearances. He has played no fewer than 100
shows a year since 1988 and has performed alongside other major artists such as Joan Baez, Tom Petty, George Harrison, the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Bono, Jack White and Bruce Springsteen. Although Dylan is best known as a singer and song-writer, he is also a writer, film director, actor, radio broadcaster and visual artist. His experimental collection of writings, Tarantula , was published in 1970 and his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One (2004), became an international bestseller. Dylan has both directed and acted in a number of films, making his first appearance in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and more recently co- writing and starring in Masked and Anonymous (2003). A collection of his drawings and sketches made while on a tour of America, Europe and Asia between 1989 and 1992 was published as Drawn Blank in 1994. These pieces were reworked and first exhibited in Germany (2007), and then at the Halcyon Gallery, London (2008). In 2010 the National Museum of Copenhagen featured his Brazil Series , and in 2013 his exhibition Face Value opened at London’s National Portrait Gallery.
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