Bob Dylan

The American singer-songwriter and musician Bob Dylan is one of the most important recording artists on the planet. A cultural icon, his work has had a profound influence on popular music since the 1960s. First gaining fame as a folk singer with songs that addressed the subjects of the Cold War and the civil rights movement, he later revolutionised rock music. But Dylan is an artist of contradictions. A magnetic performer who remains fiercely private. One of the wealthiest musicians of his generation who dresses like a vagabond. A womaniser who has penned some of the world’s most tender love songs. But how did a suburban boy from Minnesota become one of the world’s most famous artists? Why does he inspire such fierce devotion and myth-making? And after six decades of songwriting and performing, how can we begin to characterise his legacy? This is a Short History Of Bob Dylan. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Michael Gray, the pioneer of Dylan Studies, and the author of the first critical study of Bob Dylan’s work, Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan. Written by Nicola Rayner | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact Check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. ⁠A Short History of Ancient Rome⁠ - the debut book from the Noiser Network is out now! Discover the epic rise and fall of Rome like never before. Pick up your copy now at your local bookstore or visit ⁠⁠noiser.com/books⁠⁠ to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

  It is Sunday, July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, one of the most anticipated events on the American folk calendar.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Darkness has fallen on a gently rolling field crammed with eager music fans.

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  46-year-old Pete Seeger, an elder statesman of this music community and a member of the festival board, now emerges from backstage.

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  Slim, with a receding hairline, he crosses the empty stage and adjusts the microphone. It's almost time for the headline act.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  24-year-old Bob Dylan is a rising star, but the folk community still feels a sense of ownership over him. It was Newport, after all, that helped to make his name. Even so, Seeger is a little nervous right now. He's heard rumours of the afternoon's sound check, murmurs that not all the instruments in the set are acoustic.

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  Now, the performer himself appears at the edge of the stage and gives him a nod.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Seeger introduces Dylan and steps aside, and the audience erupts.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  But when he steps out of the shadows, onto the dark stage, he looks nothing like the young troubadour they know and love. Gone is the traditional folk uniform, of jeans and workshirt. In their place is a black leather jacket that could have come straight from London's Carnaby Street. He still wears his harmonica holder around his neck, but in his hands is an electric guitar, something the folk purists see as a symbol of capitalism.

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  With his band behind him, Dylan begins defiantly strumming his song "Maggie's Farm".

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  The noise of the electric instruments hits the audience like a shockwave.

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  There's some scattered applause as the audience tries to work out what's going on. Some cover their ears, while others lean forward, caught up in the raw, unfiltered energy, feeling something new crackle through the summer air.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Seeger, though, is unimpressed. Folk music is about the lyrics, the message, and in this cacophony, he can barely hear a word. From his spot near the edge of the stage, Seeger sees his response reflected in the crowd: raised eyebrows, confusion, even anger.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  He marches over to the soundboard in a backstage marquee. A couple of engineers, headphones on, are hunched over the deck, fine-tuning with the various knobs and sliders. Seeger, though, demands that the sound is adjusted to at least attempt to make this unconventional set fit in at this celebration of traditional music. When he's refused by a couple of Dylan supporters, including his manager, Seeger threatens to find an axe to do the job himself. And he's not the only one who's furious. The majority of the crowd is now booing at some volume, their dissatisfaction audible even over the loud music.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  As Seeger storms around backstage, looking for something to make good on his threat, Dylan's set is over, almost as soon as it began. The star leaves the stage after just three songs.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Amid a smattering of applause, punctuated with more booing, Peter Yara, another festival organizer, makes his way onstage and begs Dylan to come back on.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Eventually, though he’s visibly shaken, the singer relents. Seeing that he’s now holding an acoustic guitar, the crowd cheers. And when Dylan asks if anyone has a harmonica, a few clatter onstage. “Thank you very much,” he says, bringing a round of laughter. At least temporarily, Dylan is friends with his audience again. Fitting a harmonica into his rack, he begins to play “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Pete Seeger exhales. But what he and the rest of the audience don’t know is that they have witnessed a key moment in musical history: Bob Dylan has gone electric.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  The American singer-songwriter and musician Bob Dylan is one of the most important recording artists on the planet. A cultural icon, his work has had a profound influence on popular music since the 1960s.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  First gaining fame as a folk singer, with songs that addressed the subjects of the Cold War and the civil rights movement, he later revolutionized rock music. Bob Dylan is an artist of contradictions: a magnetic performer who remains fiercely private; one of the wealthiest musicians of his generation who dresses like a vagabond; a womanizer who has penned some of the world’s most tender love songs.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  But how did a suburban boy from Minnesota become one of the world’s most famous artists? Why does he inspire such fierce devotion and myth-making? And, after six decades of songwriting and performing, how can we begin to characterize his legacy? I’m John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of Bob Dylan.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  On May 24, 1941, the boy who will one day become Bob Dylan is born, Robert Allen Zimmerman, in the city of Duluth, in northern Minnesota.

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  His is a middle-class Jewish family, and he is close to his grandparents, who fled pogroms in modern-day Ukraine to settle here. He is nearly five when he is joined by a younger brother, but shortly afterwards, his father is struck by polio, leaving him bedridden and unemployed.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Michael Gray is the pioneer of Dylan studies, and the author of the first critical study of Bob Dylan's work, Song and Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  The family moved from Duluth to Hibbing, Minnesota, which is a mining town further north. It's not a large-population sort of a place, but it sprawls over a huge acreage. And Dylan was lucky because he went to an exceptional high school. He went to Hibbing High School, which had been built by the mining company. It has a sort of castellated frontage. It has solid marble steps and solid brass handles, and it has the most extraordinary concert hall. There's a Canadian critic who once said that, "After appearing on the school stage in Hibbing,

• 7:49Speaker 02

  every auditorium Dylan has played ever since has been just a little bit of a letdown."

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Once his father is strong enough, he starts to run a hardware store, while Bob begins to learn the piano and guitar. On the family radio, who listens to the crooning of Bing Crosby and Hank Williams, and at night, tunes in to the raw blues of Howlin' Wolf.

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  Through the 1950s, Bob becomes increasingly obsessed with music. He is born at exactly the right moment to absorb the explosive arrival of rock and roll. Hearing Elvis Presley, he later says, feels like busting out of jail. He begins playing in bands. With the most successful of these, the Golden Chords, he gives a notorious performance at his high school in which he bounces so wildly at the piano that the pedal breaks. Less impressed than the students, the principal cuts his microphone and pulls the curtain.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  As a teenager, Bob's musical talent, charm, and piercing blue eyes make him a favorite with the girls, who, as he later puts it, "bring out the poet in him." At school, he also earns a reputation for storytelling, though not all of the legends he invents about himself stand up to fact-checking.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  In the school yearbook, he's still going by his real name, but soon he'll choose himself a new one.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  He renamed himself very early on in his career, and he did so... There's no set answer to that. There really isn't. I mean, it's absolutely typical of Dylan that he does not give straight answers. It may be that he just liked the sound of the name from the poet Dylan Thomas, who he was certainly aware of, but on the other hand, it might be that he just liked watching American television, cowboy films, and cowboy TV in the 50s, and Matt Dillon felt differently, was one of the characters that everyone knew about.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Either way, by 1959, when he enrolls in a liberal arts program at the University of Minnesota, he's settled on the stage name that will eventually accompany him to international fame.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  As a student, he discovers the records of folk artists. In particular, Woody Guthrie, whose songs about the struggles of working people are so very different from what's often played on the radio.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  At the beginning of the 1960s, American radio had squeezed rock and roll off, and it had been replaced by very pretty, harmless little pop songs by people who were all called Johnny and Bobby and so on. You know, really awful records like Johnny Tillotson had a big hit called "Send Me The Pillow You Dream On", and there started to be a lot of Bizikato strings on the records and so on. And compared to all that, Woody Guthrie sounded so real.

• 10:56Speaker 03

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• 11:25Speaker 01

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free

• 12:10Speaker 01

  on Noiser Plus.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Dylan begins performing covers as a solo artist and soon becomes a fixture on the local folk circuit. Emulating Guthrie in his preference for jeans, workshirts, and newsboys' caps, he even copies his hero in the way he holds his cigarettes. In January 1961, he drops out of his studies and leaves for New York City, determined to meet his hero and seek his own fortune.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Dylan arrives in New York in January 1961, just as John F. Kennedy is sworn in. But the country the new president inherits is restless and divided. Racial violence grips the South as the Civil Rights Movement gathers force, and nuclear conflict feels closer as the Cold War intensifies. Against this backdrop, Greenwich Village hums with creative energy. The folk revival is in full swing, breathing new life into traditional music and using it to address the social issues of the day.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Armed with his guitar and harmonica, it's here that Dylan hones a repertoire that largely consists of covers of Woody Guthrie and other folk and blues songs. In between gigs, he tracks his idol down, locating him at a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. Though Guthrie has been diagnosed with Huntington's disease, a neurological condition, he still gathers weekly with family and friends for dinner.

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  Deploying his gift of the gab, Dylan talks his way into one of these evenings, leaving with a small keepsake: a card on which Guthrie has scrawled "I ain't dead yet."

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Back in the village, Dylan's reputation grows fast. One of his first major compositions is "Song to Woody", adapting the melody from Guthrie's ballad "1913 Massacre". Dylan's slurred delivery echoes his idol's sound, though Guthrie's is accentuated by his illness. But in writing his own songs, Dylan sets himself apart in a musical environment in which most big stars rely on other people's material. However, it's not all work and no play. In the summer of 1961, Dylan meets a captivating seventeen-year-old and falls in love.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Susie Rotolo, who came from a very left-wing Italian-American family, she introduced him to radical theatre in New York, as well as to radical politics. And so he encountered a whole other strand of theatrics and storytelling in that way too.

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  These influences make their way into his performances, and he adopts a slightly bumbling, scruffy stage persona reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin. Leaning into his fondness for myth-making, he also regales audiences with invented stories of his itinerant youth spent travelling with carnival folk.

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  In September 1961, he plays a gig that changes his fortunes.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  He was the support act to a group that was being reviewed by a guy called Robert Shelton, folk music critic of The New York Times. And he was so taken with Bob Dylan as the support act that he gave him a big writer in The New York Times. And that helped to get Columbia Records to sign Dylan, which was quite a coup for Dylan.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Six months after signing with Columbia, he releases his eponymous debut album. It draws primarily on traditional songs, but sales are disappointing. Within a month, though, he's back in the studio, this time recording original material. One is a song entitled "The Death of Emmett Till", about the 1955 racist murder of a fourteen-year-old African-American boy, and a song titled "Blown in the Wind". Deriving its melody from a 19th-century anti-slavery song, it is built around a series of rhetorical questions, and it will change Dylan's life.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  The most important thing about "Blowing in the Wind", which white America did not necessarily register at the time, was the fact that it spoke to the civil rights movement, to black Americans who had been struggling. It resonated with everyone early on when it came out, "Blowing in the Wind", because it was enigmatic, it wasn't too explicit, it had a poetic quality that carried you through, and it was totally unlike "Send me the pillow you dream of", and so many people recorded it, I mean, it's just phenomenal how many cover versions there were, even at that time, immediately.

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  The song appears on Dylan's second album, "The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan", released in May 1963, an album which marks his breakthrough to mainstream success.

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  With an image of him and Rotolo strolling through Greenwich Village on the cover, the album includes personal ballads such as "Don't Think Twice It's Alright", as well as politically-charged songs like "Masters of War" and "Hard Rains Are Gonna Fall", which critique the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis.

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  The resulting recognition leads to a slot at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island, and it's here that he is joined onstage by renowned singer and activist Joan Baez.

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  With flowing dark hair and a voice Dylan describes as "too pretty", Baez often performs barefoot, embodying the free-spirited ethos of the movement. Though their initial connection was all about the music, by now they are romantically involved, though Rotolo remains on the scene for a while longer. When he's in love, Dylan's girlfriends find him magnetic and attentive, but he guards his independence closely and is capable of being distant and cutting. This tension of wanting devotion without feeling that he's being owned runs through both his romances and his songs. Soon after, they appear together at Newport, Baez invites him to join her on tour.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  In terms of Joan Baez, it was firstly, and in the end, more importantly, a public relationship, because it was a professional relationship. Joan Baez was first of all important to Dylan because she introduced him as a guest artist while she was touring, and that introduced him to a wider, bigger crowd of people, bigger audiences than he had achieved by himself.

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  The striking pair take to the stage to sing at a Washington protest in August 1963, where more than 200,000 people have gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, demanding racial equality, economic justice, and an end to segregation. Though they're certainly a big draw, the event is best known for Martin Luther King Jr.'s electrifying "I Have a Dream" speech. Yet while the singer sympathizes with the causes of the moment, he rarely marches in the way Baez does. For Dylan, the music always comes first.

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  That summer, his second album sells up to 10,000 copies a week. The man Baez affectionately calls "her little vagabond" is fast becoming a star in his own right. In October 1963, plans are afoot for a solo concert at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall. The show sells out, but behind the scenes, trouble is brewing. Dylan has been weaving elaborate stories for a Newsweek profile, playing up the persona of the traveling bard he's invented for himself, and suggesting he is estranged from his family.

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  The illusion collapses when his proud parents attend the concert and speak openly to a reporter. The resulting article exposes the gap between Dylan's constructed troubadour image and his conventional middle-class roots.

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  Seething, and not a little humiliated, Dylan will be more careful with reporters in the future.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  He's certainly pretty, and he doesn't want someone to come up to him and tell him how wonderful he is, you know. He doesn't do small talk. You can see this in a public forum as well in the way that he handles the press. Other people, even Elvis Presley, the great smoldering teddy boy rebel of the 1950s, handling the press, it would be yes sir and no ma'am. Yeah, he was a polite southern boy, and Dylan was the first one who just didn't answer questions properly in that way. He's been his own person, certainly, very much in every way.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  His resulting suspicion of the press certainly doesn't make him better behaved, however. Weeks after Kennedy's assassination, he accepts the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, a prize given to a public figure for commitment to social justice. After drinking too much at the cocktail reception, Dylan gives a speech that questions the purpose of the committee, mocks its members, and even suggests a sense of fraternity with Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. This reaffirmation of his refusal to be anyone's spokesperson sees him booed off the stage. Yet his third album, released in 1964, contains some of his most enduring protest songs,

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  including the title track, "The Times They Are A-Changin'", a rallying cry for social transformation.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  From this point, Dylan has to contend with life in the limelight. Besieged in his dressing room after one packed LA concert, he considers escaping through a bathroom window. The frenzy continues outside the venue, where two young women are discovered hiding in his car.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  He was very young. The last time he was able to just mess around in America was 1964, sixty years ago. And since then, he's said things like, "I can look through a window of a barroom somewhere, and everything just looks how it is. And I know that if I walk in, the whole atmosphere will have changed."

• 22:51Speaker 01

  His international stature growing, he now plays gigs across Europe. And despite the rumours of further affairs, his complicated relationship with Bia continues, though Rotolo eventually decides she's had enough. Dylan's fourth studio album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, is recorded in a single evening on June 9, 1964. Perhaps reflecting his growing rejection of the role of political spokesperson, the record is more introspective, with songs such as "It Ain't Me Babe" exploring the complexities of romantic relationships. This shift away from traditional folk themes comes with a change of wardrobe, as he jettisons the jeans and work shirts of his early career in favour of sharp tailored jackets and dark

• 23:36Speaker 01

  sunglasses.

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  It's a time of change in Dylan's love life, too. When he meets the model Sarah Lowndes in 1964, she is already married, though the relationship is unravelling. And while Dylan himself is still involved with Joan Bia's, her busy touring schedule means she remains oblivious to the new relationship, even when Dylan starts living with Sarah and her three-year-old daughter at a New York hotel.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  For his next album, he chooses to work for the first time with a full, electrically amplified band. There are no rehearsals, no detailed plans, he just starts strumming and the other musicians leap in. Titled "Bringing It All Back Home", it aims to reclaim rock and roll for America, since the genre's shift to the UK with bands like The Beatles.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Songs like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" bring a new electric energy, while Side Two offers acoustic numbers, including "Mr. Tambourine Now." But overall, it's not an album for folk purists.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Oh, the purity, the holiness of folk music. He was the person who emerged from the folk scene with these great protest songs, with these great critiques of American capitalism and America's war machine and all the rest of it. And for him to go electric, it was like him selling out to commerce. That was a sort of established, received wisdom at the time, you know? That if he was picking up an electric guitar and singing stuff that sounded like rock and roll, he had sold out.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Reaching number six in the charts, the album is his most successful yet.

• 25:28Speaker 03

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• 25:57Speaker 01

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, "Real Dictators" returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On "Short History Of," we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On "Real Survival Stories," a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In "Jane Austen Stories," Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in "Sherlock Holmes Short Stories," Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in "The Sign of Four." Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free

• 26:42Speaker 01

  on Noiser Plus.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  In the spring of 1965, Dylan embarks on a triumphant UK solo tour. As well as Joan Baez, he's accompanied by a film crew who shoot a behind-the-scenes documentary called "Don't Look Back." The footage shows Dylan running rings around British journalists and holding court with his entourage at the Savoy Hotel, while a forlorn-looking Baez is increasingly ignored.

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  Eventually, she calls it a day and goes home.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Flush with his new commercial success, Dylan buys a rambling house in the hills above Woodstock, New York, where he plans to live with Sarah and the child they're soon to welcome. Meanwhile, he works at crafting what will become one of his most famous songs, "Like a Rolling Stone."

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, it's very long. American radio demanded that songs not be more than two and a half to three minutes, but "Like a Rolling Stone" was six minutes and more. But also, it was a very vituperative example of the dramatic monologue, that is, a song which is clearly addressed to one other person, but that other person is never allowed to get a word in edgewise. But another thing about the song was that structurally and lyrically, it was just very direct and biting. Plus, it starts with an absolutely marvelous snare drum bang. It's really kicking off in every sense.

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  Bruce Springsteen, a teenager in New Jersey, is bowled over by the song, later saying that "the opening snare sounded like somebody had kicked open the door to your mind."

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  Not long after the release of "Like a Rolling Stone" in July 1965, Dylan performs the song at the Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, sending shockwaves through the folk community.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  In November, he quietly marries Sarah and adopts her oldest daughter Maria, before the couple are joined by their baby Jesse Dillon the following January. But even that's not enough to keep Dillon from the studio or from heading out to perform in Europe and Australia just months later.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Around this time, friends notice that he is looking strung out and thin. Though he always maintains he can take or leave drugs, when it comes to marijuana, there often seems to be more taking than leaving. This tour is perhaps most famous for a moment at the Manchester show in May. Disgruntled by the electric nature of the set, between songs, an audience member heckles Dillon by shouting, "Judas!" Dillon fires back, "I don't believe you. You're a liar."

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  Before turning to the band and telling them to play loud, launching into a ferocious rendition of "Like a Rolling Stone."

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Before long Dillon is physically and emotionally exhausted. Burned out from releasing seven albums in four years and the associated relentless touring schedule, he retreats to his home in Woodstock, New York. One day, in the middle of summer, he attempts to blow away the cobwebs on the open road.

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  It is the morning of July the 29th, 1966. With the remote, tree-lined road unspooling in front of him like a dark ribbon, Bob Dillon rides low over the handlebars of his Triumph Tiger motorcycle.

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  Sarah's car follows, not far behind, but even so, this feels like a rare moment of solitude. There is no crowd, no flashing cameras, no one waiting to ambush him. Just the freedom of the road and the glimpses of sky breaking through the canopy.

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  The only sounds are the steady thrum of the engine and the rush of wind tearing past his ears.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Dylan's hair lifts and falls with the rush of the air flying by. When he glances into the mirror, his face is pale and pinched. There are shadows beneath his eyes, deepened by weeks of travel and too many sleepless nights. Gripping the handlebars, his long fingers are stained with nicotine.

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  The engine's pitch shifts, working harder now as the road begins to climb. The asphalt is uneven here, cracked and littered with loose grit. Heat rises off the surface in faint ripples.

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  Then, through a sudden break in the trees, the morning sun bursts through.

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  For a split second, Dylan is blinded by the glare, and he squeezes the brake in response. The rear wheel locks, and the Triumph shudders violently.

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  Handlebars twisting in his hands, the bike fishtails, rubber screaming against asphalt. The ground rushes up to meet him as the motorcycle slides out from under his legs.

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  In this single, violent moment, the pace of his life finally catches up with him.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Precisely what happens when Dylan falls off his motorcycle remains shrouded in mystery. Some report he is rendered unconscious with a broken neck, others that he emerges relatively unscathed. Dylan himself claims he suffers several broken vertebrae. Whatever the truth, after the accident, he withdraws somewhat from public life, retreating to a more private existence with his wife and young family.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  During the late 60s, he and Sarah have three more children: Anna, Samuel, and Jacob. For Dylan, it is a necessary period of rest and respite.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Well, I think he'd have killed himself otherwise. He's obviously very stoned a good deal of the time. What's remarkable is that, you know, he can go on stage and do this recitation, if you like, of these very long, complex songs. On the one hand, very stoned. On the other hand, he is word perfect, without ever a falter of any kind. Every single noise and pause that he creates in all that time on stage is exactly what he wants done. But, you know, there's a limit to living that kind of self-abusive life.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  And, yeah, I think he needed to change.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  It's during this period that he turns to making relaxed, informal music at home, jamming with his bandmates, experimenting with melodies, and improvising nonsensical lyrics to old favourites. Characterised by their intimate, earthy sound, the resulting recordings are collected together in a series called The Basement Tapes. Circulating initially in the burgeoning bootleg market, they become prized by collectors and are officially released as an album in 1975. Returning to the studio in 1967, Dylan now leans into a gentler, more country-influenced sound to produce John Wesley Harding. The album includes "All Along the Watchtower",

• 34:22Speaker 01

  a song that gains wider fame after Jimi Hendrix covers it the next year. Yet even as he attempts to withdraw from public life, he is not left alone. Obsessive fans continue to pursue him, such as A.J. Weberman, a self-styled Dylanologist who is notorious for rifling through the star's garbage. A quiet life proves elusive, and Dylan finds he can't step out of the limelight forever.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  For a long time, his output is uneven and he remains reclusive. 1974, though, sees him embark on his first major tour in more than seven years. But on the road, he fails to remain faithful to his wife, and a rift develops between the pair.

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  It is the collapse of his marriage, many say, that inspires one of his greatest albums, Blood on the Tracks. A searingly personal collection of songs, recorded and released when he is 33, it is seen as a return to form.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  He'd been influenced by Joni Mitchell's album Blue. "Tangled Up in Blue" is one of the songs on Blood on the Tracks. And that may be one of the playful interpretations of the title of that song. This person who had been so deeply and thoroughly associated with the 1960s, an era that was now over. Blood on the Tracks proved that he was an artist for the future and not just a hippie from the 60s. It offered the promise that you could go on having a substantial career, still breaking boundaries and so on, right through.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  If you were Bob Dylan and you could do that in 1975, then everyone could have a longer career than they assumed was possible.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Over the next year, he undertakes a carnival-like touring project called The Rolling Thunder Review, with a rotating cast of collaborators, including the musicians Scarlett Rivera, rambling Jack Elliot and Joni Mitchell, and the poet Allen Ginsberg. Joan Bayers rejoins Dylan on stage around the same time that she releases her own take on her romance with him. Her song, Diamonds and Rust, evokes an enigmatic former lover with eyes bluer than Robin's eggs and becomes one of her greatest successes. Alongside Sara Dillon, she also appears in his experimental film Ronaldo and Clara, which blends concert footage with surreal dramatizations of his life and relationships.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  But as well as mining his personal life for material, he also returns to political music.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  After reading the autobiography of Ruben Carter, an African-American boxer who many believe to have been wrongly convicted of murder, Dylan visits him in prison in New Jersey. Moved by his story, Dylan not only co-writes a song about him entitled "Hurricane", but also drums up public support with benefit performances. In spite of his efforts, Carter remains in prison until 1985, when his convictions are finally set aside.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  The album that opens with "Hurricane", closes with a song called "Sarah", a tribute to Dylan's wife that one critic calls "a fevered cry of loss", posing a sincere devotion.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  But despite inspiring some of Dylan's most beautiful songs, Sarah is struggling. Being the wife of a mercurial womanizing rock icon is not easy. In 1977, she files for divorce, taking primary custody of their children. Though the kids spend holidays with their father, who remains a loving and affectionate parent.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  It is said that Sarah's ongoing silence about her time with Dylan is a condition of the settlement.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Reeling from the split and further disappointment when Ronaldo and Clara is badly received, Dylan embarks on a long world tour. During one date in San Diego, a fan tosses a silver cross onto the stage, and Dylan picks it up and begins to wear it. Shortly after, he experiences a moment of spiritual transformation and converts to Christianity.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  A pair of explicitly Christian albums follow in the early 1980s. Dylan also stops playing some of his former hits.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  It was embarrassing to some of us because it seemed to suggest that he had done a complete vault fast on radicalism. The person who had sung "Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters", was now singing "There's only one authority, that's the authority on high". But, having said all that, I have to say that he was deeply familiar with the Bible. Always, always had been. And you know, it's perhaps not very noticeably, but it's there in early songs. Times are changing, I mean, it's full of biblical stuff. About the last one now will later be first, first one now will later be last, all those phrases.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  And so when Dylan found Jesus, he said, you know, I'd always been interested in the Bible as literature. It never occurred to me to take it as belief. And so when he did, it gave him, you know, the scope to embellish and develop his own deep knowledge of biblical text into song. And so some of that work has remained well worth having.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  His 1983 album Infidels is seen as more successful. But overall, the 1980s is not a good period for him.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  It was a terrible decade, but for Dylan, I think, you know, he was older. He had the kind of weariness that descends on us in middle age. And I think that he'd probably used far too much alcohol as a personal habit in his life.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Despite losing his way as an artist, Dylan is firmly established as a global megastar. Invited by Irish musician Bob Geldof, he contributes to the charity single We Are The World, with artists including Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. The record spends four weeks at number one. And in July 1985, Dylan appears at the Philadelphia edition of Live Aid, performing with Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. The following year, Carolyn Dennis, one of Dylan's backing singers, gives birth to his sixth child. In the summer of 1986, she and Dylan wed in Los Angeles. But the contract is filed with the L.A. County Court Registrar as a confidential marriage.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Though Dylan is no more faithful to his new, secret wife than he was to Sarah, he is a better father than husband, and is as dedicated to his youngest daughter Desiree as he is to his other five children.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Towards the end of the 80s, Dylan begins what fans call his never-ending tour. Though not its official title, it sees the restless star commit to a life on the road. Like the wandering folk singers of old, it casts Dylan in one of the few roles he is happy in: that of the modern troubadour.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  By 1992, after just six years, his second marriage is over. Dylan returns to his roots with a pair of stripped-back albums consisting of folk covers. And although he performs at events marking the inauguration of the new president Bill Clinton the following year, his public role feels more that of a heritage figure, rather than a contemporary force.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  In the mid-1990s, Dylan gives up drinking and his creativity revives.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  The result is his first album of original material in seven years. "Time Out of Mind" will contain some of the most powerful songs of his later career. Among them are the much-covered "Make You Feel My Love" and "Not Dark Yet". The latter, in its exploration of mortality, will come to be seen as strangely prophetic.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Before the album is released in May 1997, Dylan falls seriously ill with pericarditis, an inflammation of the sac around the heart. The news of the potentially fatal condition flies around the world. "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon", says Dylan, once he's out of the woods.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  The release of "Time Out of Mind" sees a full-scale renaissance of a different sort. The album wins three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and Dylan's artistic revival gathers momentum. In 2001, he wins an Oscar and a Golden Globe for "Things Have Changed", a song written for the film "Wonder Boys".

• 43:22Speaker 01

  And even in his late 60s, Dylan remains on the road, a travelling musician in a changing world.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  But despite the accolades and the global fame, there are still, just occasionally, moments of anonymity.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  It is July the 23rd, 2009. A rainy afternoon in Long Branch, a quiet beach town in New Jersey.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Twenty-four-year-old police officer Kristy Bubble is at her desk filing reports and sipping lukewarm coffee when the radio crackles with a message from dispatch.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  A concerned resident has called to report a scruffy old man wandering along her street, peering into the windows of an empty house.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Kristy sighs, picks up her car keys, and heads out into the rain.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  As she drives through the drizzle, she spots him. A slight, hunched figure, with a hood pulled over his head.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Getting closer, she sees the old man is wearing two raincoats layered over each other, as well as sweatpants and black boots that are sinking into the grass.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  She pulls up nearby and steps out of the car,

• 44:41Speaker 01

  approaching cautiously before introducing herself and asking his name. The man pauses, then lifts his gaze to her. His face is craggy, with blue eyes so piercing they are almost unnerving.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  In a voice that sounds roughened by years of hard living, he says he is Bob Dylan.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Kristy blinks, unconvinced. She's seen pictures of Bob Dylan, of course, but this scruffy, rain-soaked man doesn't match any image she remembers. Perhaps noticing her uncertainty, he explains that he is in New Jersey to play a show in nearby Lakewood. For all the strangeness of the encounter, there seems to be nothing threatening about the man. If anything, he has a quiet, disarming charm. Kristy stops a passerby and asks him for a second opinion. "Does this gentleman look like Bob Dylan?" The young man gives him the once-over, then shakes his head and moves off, as confused as the officer. Just to be absolutely certain,

• 45:48Speaker 01

  she asks the stranger to repeat his name one last time. He smiles, as if privately amused by something. He says that he was actually born Robert Zimmerman.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Christie sighs, then gestures to her patrol car and asks him to come with her.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  He lifts a hand in silent assent and climbs into the backseat.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  When Christie asks where he's staying, he tells her he's at the hotel by the sea. She knows the one and pulls away from the curb, the passenger chatting amiably as they drive.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Asked where he's from, he says he has houses all over the world, adding casually that he'd been thinking of buying the empty place he'd been peering into. Christie glances at him in the rearview mirror, wondering how much of this can be true, if any, considering that he looks for all the world like he's homeless.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  But as she slows to a stop outside the hotel, she sees the string of tour buses and doubt begins to creep in.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  The moment she pulls up, an officious-looking man strides over and opens the car door. Her blue-eyed passenger climbs out and thanks her, before he's hustled away by the man who turns out to be his manager.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Startled, Christie almost forgets herself before asking the manager for identification. After a few minutes, he returns, holding a passport which proves to her that despite her instincts and all evidence to the contrary, the man she just met was indeed not destitute, but a global megastar. As she returns to the car and starts to drive away, she realizes she's going to have a story to tell, back at the station.

• 47:38Speaker 03

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• 48:07Speaker 01

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, "Real Dictators" returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen's stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews, and in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Speculation about the New Jersey incident suggests Dylan was searching for Bruce Springsteen's former home, where "Born to Run" was written. As well as painting and drawing, investigating the lives of rock musicians is one of the star's hobbies. Dylan's late-career ascent continues unabated. In 2012, he received the highest civilian honor in the United States: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At a White House ceremony, he is awarded the medal by President Barack Obama, who says, "There is not a bigger giant in the history of American music." Then, in 2016, an announcement from Sweden surprises the world. Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

• 49:44Speaker 01

  for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. But even some of Dylan's fans have mixed feelings about the award.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  One of the great things about the Nobel Prize is that it's financially very, very big, and therefore would be so life-changing and so affirmative for someone who was just a freelance writer, effectively. And Bob Dylan, he's not just a writer, he's not just in literature, he's music and he's theatre. And so, it seems an uncomfortable fit to give him the Nobel Prize for Literature. I mean, you know, having thought that in theory he shouldn't get it, I was thrilled when he got it. But it's controversial because, you know, not everyone in literature departments of American

• 50:39Speaker 02

  or British universities thinks that he's all that good, let alone one of the greats.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yet for many Dylan is indeed one of the greats. One of the first major artists to write his own material. He laid the foundations for the modern singer-songwriter. Over the course of his career, he has created more than 600 songs and sold in excess of 125 million records worldwide. But more importantly, his lyrics brought poetic ambition, social commentary, and literary depth to rock music.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  He is like no other singer in that he puts so much emphasis on variety of expression and so much emphasis on immediacy of communication. There's something about his voice that abolishes the gulf between the performer and the audience. You listen to one of his early solo recordings, it's just straight through from his mouth to your ear, as it were. And he has an extraordinary ability to vocalise in such a way that in a song where he's repeating

• 51:54Speaker 02

  a title line, for example, at the end of each verse, he never repeats it in exactly the same way. Most people have one voice, and Bob Dylan is more like a ventriloquist, he has any number of voices.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Dylan has appeared or been represented on screen numerous times, from documentaries directed by Martin Scorsese to the recent biopic A Complete Unknown, which stars Timothy Chalamet as the young Dylan. In 2007's I'm Not There, the star was played by six actors, including Cate Blanchett, a cinematic nod to the many sides of his public persona.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Ever the shapeshifter, Dylan's constant reinvention, from protest singer to electric rock pioneer and beyond, has influenced generations of artists and permanently expanded the possibilities of popular song. To this day, well into his ninth decade, he continues to tour with the same restless momentum and commitment to his art that has defined his long career.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of Sir Francis Drake.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  I think people are still so interested in Francis Drake today. Because of his complexity, I think is one of them. Because there are different aspects to his story that people can pull out, depending on the point that they're trying to make about England as a nation.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

• 53:47Speaker 03

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