Don't miss this chance for tickets to see the legendary Bob Dylan! To not know the name Bob Dylan is to not know music. Where would we be without Bob Dylan? Lyrically speaking - lost.
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24th, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. He was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, where he began writing poems as a child. He taught himself how to play guitar and piano in his early teens and formed a couple of bands. Influenced by the early rock of Elvis Presley, Little Richard and country and folk singers Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan was destined to become famous.
In 1959, while attending the University of Minnesota, he began playing local clubs. It was also around this time he decided to change his name to Bob Dylan. In the summer of 1960 while staying in Denver, Colorado, after meeting blues man Jesse Fuller, Dylan decided to make music his profession.
He dropped out of school in 1961 and headed to New York to live out his dream. He began playing small clubs and coffee houses in Greenwich Village and quickly began to make a name for himself.
It was an early show in Gerde's Folk City in the Village that prompted a story to be written about him in the NY Times. The review was read by Columbia A&R man John Hammond who soon signed Dylan to his first record deal. Dylan's debut offering was released in 1962. The self-titled album was compromised of folk and blues standards and only contained two original pieces. However, his next release was a different story. After his first album he began feverishly writing songs, and The Freewheelin Bob Dylan was released in 1963 containing nothing but original songs.
By the time his third album, The Times They Are A-Changin was released in 1964, Dylan was a concert hit. Later that same year Dylan released Another Side of Bob Dylan, which was exactly that, his least topical release thus far. 1965 also brought two albums, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, which was his first full-fledged rock & roll album and included the hit single Like A Rolling Stone. The song clocked in at six minutes, which was unheard of at the time. Later in '66 Dylan released the double album Blonde on Blonde, which went on to sell over ten million copies.
For the years to come Dylan would release album after album: John Wesley Harding in '67, Nashville Skyline in '68, the double LP Self Portrait in 1970 and four months later New Morning. 1971 brought his book Tarantula and also his first American concert appearance in five years. Dylan continued throughout the early '70s with movie roles and soundtrack scores but it wasn't until 1974 that Dylan released his first number one album, Planet Waves. He followed with two more number one albums, Blood on the Tracks in 1975 and Desire while he was on tour in '76.
Street Legal was released in '78 and was followed by the live album At Budokan in 1979. After doing a series of Christian albums, Dylan returned to secular recording. In 1983 he released Infidels and while on tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1986 released Knocked Out Loaded. Then in 1988 Dylan began what became known as The Never-Ending Tour, which took him through the late '90s.
Dylan released five more albums in the '90s: Under the Red Sky (1990), Good As I Been to You (1992), World Gone Wrong (1993), MTV Unplugged (1995) and Time Out Of My Mind (1997). Dylan has been awarded with the Kennedy Center Honor, has won an Academy Award for Best Song with Things Have Changed and has been covered by hundreds of performers over the years. Needless to say he still continues to sell out shows and has written himself a legend in time.
