How do you analyze the songwriting of an artist whose writing spans 60 years and over 70 albums, in a career that has seen many phases, with many hits and misses? An artist who spent most of his career eschewing labels and dodging questions about his craft? It’s just not possible. Instead, we’ll focus on the key phases and dive into some of the principal songs that define those eras, hopefully revealing something about the craft from one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Dylan.
The Protest Song Years and the Woody Guthrie Torch
Dylan’s first album, the eponymous 1961 Bob Dylan, was recorded when the Duluth, Minnesota, native was only 20. Brandishing an acoustic and a harmonica, Dylan flew through 18 covers of traditional folk and country blues tunes along with two originals that he wrote himself. The album showcases a raw, still-emerging Dylan on his Gibson J-50, flatpicking his way through songs by early legends like Jesse Fuller, Bukka White, and Blind Lemon Jefferson — sometimes offbeat and with characteristic missed notes here and there.
The two original songs on Bob Dylan, “Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody,” are where Dylan’s pure, unbridled songwriting talent and technique really shine. “Talkin’ New York” is a talking-blues-country tune done true to the form made famous in early 1920s by Chris Bouchillon and carried forward by Woody Guthrie.
Dylan takes the form and makes it his own, stringing together dry, witty, autobiographical lines that give listeners a thorough glimpse into his arrival in New York as a young, maybe not entirely naive, troubadour singer. While Bouchillon and Guthrie seemed to use the form primarily as loose storytelling with little care for strict rhythm and meter, Dylan owned the form and delivered the impressive 47 lines with a relaxed, fluid, near-perfect meter.
“Song to Woody” is an unabashed love letter to the Depression-era “Dust Bowl Troubadour” who championed workers’ rights and launched the protest song movement. That same year, Dylan sang this song to the ailing Guthrie at his bedside. Guthrie was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease the year prior and remained essentially incapacitated for the next seven years until his death in 1967.
I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
The song begins with two simple lines revealing Dylan’s awareness at the time of the legacy he owed so much to and was continuing on. Luckily for Dylan, when he played the song for Guthrie on that infamous day, January 29, 1961, the still-precocious Guthrie gave him his blessing and a card that read simply, “I ain’t dead yet.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DbwUCZ4w2g
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, released in 1963, was his proper introduction as a songwriter in his own right. Featuring 11 original tunes, including the protest anthem “Blowin’ in the Wind” that became a massive hit for the trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, this was the album that turned the youth of America and Europe on its ear and effectively launched Dylan into the stratosphere of superstardom.
“Blowin’ in the Wind,” along with “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” showcased Dylan’s penchant for ultra-catchy melodies and long narrative lines. Whereas his hero Guthrie tapped into the grit and grime of the working class with raw intensity, Dylan did the same but in a more boldly poetic, melodic fashion that was perfectly timed for the emerging civil rights movement, as well as the growing pop music industry and the youth who would drive it.
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
These lines from “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” exemplify Dylan’s genius for compelling imagery and intriguing turns of phrase. A voracious reader of American poetry and fiction, Dylan seemed to channel the spirit of Walt Whitman’s epic “Leaves of Grass” in this early song, cataloging the landscape around him in imagery and emotion as well as wry political commentary.
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” would, in many ways, be the blueprint for Dylan’s songwriting for much of his early work: poetic imagery, story songs, and bit of self-revelation sprinkled in here and there.
In 1964, The Times They Are A-Changin’ and Another Side of Bob Dylan took this blueprint and ran with it in grand fashion. Released just months apart in the same year, the two albums contained 21 original compositions that left no doubt in the critics’ minds that Dylan was a songwriting force all his own. And the title track of the former, much like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” again put Dylan center stage of the protest movement.
Bringing It All Back Home was released in 1965. A seismic shift in focus from the protest and story songs of his previous releases, it featured an electric A side and an acoustic B side — a bold move that was a portent of things to come and immediately offended much of his audience who had essentially crowned him their “Folk Prince.”
Side A kicks off with the raucous, electrified “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” an up-tempo, 2-minute rocker that was Dylan’s first Top 40 hit. In a 2004 interview, Dylan observed, “It’s from Chuck Berry, a bit of ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ and some of the scat songs of the ’40s.”
The tune showcases Dylan’s mastery of lyrical delivery with rhythmic lines that land on top of one another in a near-impossible-to-breathe fashion — a feat of form that many would try to imitate. It is also a song that easily paved the way for dozens of country-rock bands that would explode in the mid to late 1960s, such as the Byrds.
The acoustic side B might have given his devoted folk listeners hope that he would stick with the mode that had endeared him to the masses, but they were decidedly let down. Instead, what they got was the visionary masterpiece “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
We don’t have space to thoroughly explore the originality — the pure genius — of this seminal song. Where his songs on the previous two albums were centered in the wheelhouse of story and protest, “Mr. Tambourine Man” conjured a playful, dreamscape narrative that bordered on the surreal and seemed to invite escape from the harsh realities of the world Dylan had previously focused on.
An ode to an ambiguous, pied piper figure, “Mr. Tambourine Man” features the classic long narrative lines but catapults the listener out of the familiar and into dreamy territory filled with compelling but elusive metaphors.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMc8jcvTZdQ
In many ways, it would be the song that made it clear to the world that Bob was not going to stay put in the cement boots of their expectations. He would, in short order, kick those boots off in dramatic, electrified fashion — and then walk off the edge of the earth.
The Electric Reveal
If Dylan’s devoted folk audience was hoping that the electric side A of Bringing It All Back Home was a misguided one-off, the release of Highway 61 Revisited would squash that hope forever. Eight of the nine tracks were recorded with a full electric band, drums a-blazing.
The album kicks off with “Like a Rolling Stone.” A Hammond B3-soaked rocker that walks in similar dream-like territory as “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man,” its central refrain, “How does it feel?” acts as a kind of question to anyone who may have followed the intoxicating sounds of the pied piper in the former.
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?
“Like a Rolling Stone” also seems to be a veiled autobiography, a challenge to the myopic segment of his followers who wanted him to stay forever their folk mouthpiece. “The mystery tramp” in this case is Dylan himself, staring back at those who would keep him boxed in, and his vacuous gaze makes it clear he’s no longer their pawn.
If they still didn’t get it or believe it, on July 25, 1965, at the Newport Jazz Festival, Dylan, backed by an absolute dream band that included Mike Bloomfield, delivered his first all-electric performance with half the attendees tapping their feet and the other half booing. An era had passed; the tunesmith was now out of his cocoon and about to fly.
The Motorcycle Incident, the Disappearance, and the Band
From late 1965 to May 1966, Dylan toured America and Europe. Backed by Ronnie Hawkins’ band, the Hawks, Dylan and company continued to shock and awe audiences with his new sound. The reactions ranged from surprise to delight to downright hostility. There were many nights when large portions of the audience would walk out mid-performance. Objects were thrown at the stage; fights between fans broke out over disagreements about his new direction. Some welcomed his new sound; others refused to let go of the “old” Dylan.
By the time the tour wrapped, Dylan was exhausted, dismayed, and more than a little angry. He felt misunderstood and under siege. He decided time off was in order. Retreating to his home just outside Woodstock, New York, he holed up with his new wife, Sara. Sometime in the afternoon on July 29, 1966, Dylan was driving home from a nearby friend’s home and crashed his 1964 Triumph T100, cracking a vertebra in his neck and leaving him with road rash and bruises.
Dylan took the occasion to not only convalesce but also hide from the public eye. He would not tour again for almost eight years.
Rumors swirled. Some maintained he had died. Others went so far as to suggest that he was too embarrassed by his “disastrous” electric phase to show his face. In interviews many years later, Dylan said simply that he needed time away to focus on his marriage and his growing family.
What the public couldn’t possibly have known is that not too long after the accident, Dylan, along with his backing band, the Hawks, began jamming and recording at a secluded home outside West Saugerties, New York. The home, affectionately known as Big Pink for its color, would be ground zero for the recording of over 100 songs that were released almost a decade later as The Basement Tapes.
Finally, in 1974, Dylan and the Hawks (now known as the Band), came out of seclusion and began playing live, loose, rocking shows. Gone were the earnest fans who clung to Dylan as their folk savior. Hard rock and metal ruled the airwaves, so crowds had no problem with an electrified Dylan.
When he released the double live album Before the Flood — a reimagining of 21 Dylan tunes — most critics and fans embraced it as a brilliant live masterpiece. Dylan sounded unhinged and fervent, his reedy, nasal voice a bit lower, ragged, and graveled. It was the beginning of a new era for not only Dylan but the country as a whole.
Born Again, the Wayward ’80s, and a Masterpiece
The details are murky, and Dylan has only addressed the topic in interviews in a guarded, veiled manner, but in 1978, he had a conversion experience to Christianity.
His next three releases, Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love, were all Christian-themed works that explored faith, apocalyptic themes, and personal confession. This phase alienated many of Dylan’s followers, while at the same time it brought in legions of Christian fans.
Dylan would release no less than seven albums through the ’80s. Most of these albums were not well received by critics or his audience. Many saw Dylan as washed up, confused, and artistically adrift.
The early 1990s were not much better. He released only four albums over the decade. The first three garnered little more than lukewarm reviews. Then in 1996, he reconnected with producer Daniel Lanois and started work on what many would come to view as a midlife masterpiece: Time Out of Mind.
Released in 1997, Time Out of Mind featured beautifully moody, intensely personal songs that critics hailed as a triumphant return to form and then some. Songs like “Not Dark Yet,” “Cold Irons Bound,” and “Make You Feel My Love” ran the gamut from confronting mortality and regret to tender sentiment.
Time Out of Mind would go on to win three Grammy Awards. Dylan hit the road in support of the album and found a revitalized fan base flocking to his shows. Fans and critics alike noted Dylan’s vocal delivery seemed clearer, more articulate than it had in years. And some of the ace musicians he had surrounded himself with for the recording of the album were also backing him on tour, which brought a brilliant foundation to both his new material and his classic catalog as well.
The Past 20 Years
Dylan has released only eight albums since Time Out of Mind. Each one has been by all accounts a commercial and critical success. He has not recorded an album of original material since 2012’s Tempest. True to form for an artist approaching a 60-year career and staring at his eighth decade on this planet, he has covered tunes by some of his musical heroes as a way to both pay respects and put his own spin on their material. He even released an entire album of Sinatra covers with 2015’s Shadows in the Night.
Just when it might have seemed Bob Dylan had written the last chapters of his creative life, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. The Swedish Academy awarded Dylan the prize for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
While some bristled at the idea that Dylan’s work somehow represented literature, most welcomed the honor bestowed, pointing out the fairly obvious to anyone with an open mind: he was and is a poet, through and through. A sampling of lyrics from early in his career to later shows a keen eye on the human condition, both historical and personal.
From 1964’s “Mama, You Been on My Mind”:
When you wake up in the mornin’, baby, look inside your mirror
You know I won’t be next to you, you know I won’t be near
I’d just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear
As someone who has had you on his mind
From 2001’s “Mississippi”:
Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way
Of his own songs, Dylan said the following in 2015:
All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way.
And oh, what a door he opened — and continues to open — as one of the greatest American songwriting troubadours.