A cooperative ("coop"), co-operative ("co-op"), or coöperative ("coöp") is an autonomous association of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual social, economic, and cultural benefit.^[1] Cooperatives include non-profit community organizations and businesses that are owned and managed by the people who use its services (a consumer cooperative) and/or by the people who work there (a worker cooperative).

Various aspects regarding cooperative enterprise are the focus of study in the field of cooperative economics.

The Cloyne Court Hotel, a student housing cooperative in Berkeley, California, United States.

Consumers' cooperative shops in the UK formed the world's first mass cooperative movement

Origins[link]

Cooperation dates back as far as human beings have been organizing for mutual benefit. Tribes were organized as cooperative structures, allocating jobs and resources among each other, only trading with the external communities. In alpine environments, trade could only be maintained in organized cooperatives to achieve a useful condition of artificial roads such as Viamala in 1473.^[2] Pre-industrial Europe is home to the first cooperatives from an industrial context.^{[citation needed]}

Robert Owen (1771 - 1858) was a social reformer and a pioneer of the cooperative movement.

In 1761, the Fenwick Weavers' Society was formed in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, Scotland to sell discounted oatmeal to local workers.^[3] Its services expanded to include assistance with savings and loans, emigration and education. In 1810, Welsh social reformer Robert Owen, from Newtown in mid-Wales, and his partners purchased New Lanark mill from Owen's father-in-law David Dale and proceeded to introduce better labour standards including discounted retail shops where profits were passed on to his employees. Owen left New Lanark to pursue other forms of cooperative organization and develop co-op ideas through writing and lecture. Cooperative communities were set up in Glasgow, Indiana and Hampshire, although ultimately unsuccessful. In 1828, William King set up a newspaper, The Cooperator, to promote Owen's thinking, having already set up a co-operative store in Brighton.^{[citation needed]}

The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, founded in 1844, is usually considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, used as a model for modern co-ops, following the 'Rochdale Principles'. A group of 28 weavers and other artisans in Rochdale, England set up the society to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. Within ten years there were over 1,000 cooperative societies in the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

Other events such as the founding of a friendly society by the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1832 were key occasions in the creation of organized labor and consumer movements.^{[citation needed]}

Social economy[link]

In the final year of the 20th century, cooperatives banded together to establish a number of social enterprise agencies which have moved to adopt the multi-stakeholder cooperative model.^[4][5] In the last 15 years (1994–2009) the EU and its member nations, have gradually revised national accounting systems to "make visible" the increasing contribution of social economy organizations.^[6]

Organizational and ideological roots[link]

The roots of the cooperative movement can be traced to multiple influences and extend worldwide. In the Anglosphere, post-feudal forms of cooperation between workers and owners, that are expressed today as "profit-sharing" and "surplus sharing" arrangements, existed as far back as 1795.^[7] The key ideological influence on the Anglosphere branch of the cooperative movement, however, was a rejection of the charity principles that underpinned welfare reforms when the British government radically revised its Poor Laws in 1834. As both state and church institutions began to routinely distinguish between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, a movement of friendly societies grew throughout the British Empire based on the principle of mutuality, committed to self-help in the welfare of working people.^{[citation needed]}

Friendly Societies established forums through which one member, one vote was practiced in organisation decision-making. The principles challenged the idea that a person should be an owner of property before being granted a political voice.^[4] Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (and then repeatedly every 20 years or so) there has been a surge in the number of cooperative organisations, both in commercial practice and civil society, operating to advance democracy and universal suffrage as a political principle.^[8] Friendly Societies and consumer cooperatives became the dominant form of organization amongst working people in Anglosphere industrial societies prior to the rise of trade unions and industrial factories. Weinbren reports that by the end of the 19th century, over 80% of British working age men and 90% of Australian working age men were members of one or more Friendly Society.^[9]

From the mid-nineteenth century, mutual organisations embraced these ideas in economic enterprises, firstly amongst tradespeople, and later in cooperative stores, educational institutes, financial institutions and industrial enterprises. The common thread (enacted in different ways, and subject to the constraints of various systems of national law) is the principle that an enterprise or association should be owned and controlled by the people it serves, and share any surpluses on the basis of each members' cooperative contribution (as a producer, labourer or consumer) rather than their capacity to invest financial capital.^[10]

The cooperative movement has been fueled globally by ideas of economic democracy. Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that suggests an expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders. There are many different approaches to thinking about and building economic democracy. Both Marxism and anarchism, for example, have been influenced by utopian socialism, which was based on voluntary cooperation, without recognition of class conflict. Anarchists are committed to libertarian socialism and they have focused on local organization, including locally managed cooperatives, linked through confederations of unions, cooperatives and communities. Marxists, who as socialists have likewise held and worked for the goal of democratizing productive and reproductive relationships, often placed a greater strategic emphasis on confronting the larger scales of human organization. As they viewed the capitalist class to be politically, militarily and culturally mobilized for the purpose of maintaining an exploitable working class, they fought in the early 20th century to appropriate from the capitalist class the society's collective political capacity in the form of the state, either through democratic socialism, or through what came to be known as Leninism. Though they regard the state as an unnecessarily oppressive institution, Marxists considered appropriating national and international-scale capitalist institutions and resources (such as the state) to be an important first pillar in creating conditions favorable to solidaristic economies.^[11][12] With the declining influence of the USSR after the 1960s, socialist strategies pluralized, though economic democratizers have not as yet established a fundamental challenge to the hegemony of global neoliberal capitalism.

Meaning[link]

Cooperatives as legal entities[link]

A cooperative is a legal entity owned and democratically controlled by its members. Members often have a close association with the enterprise as producers or consumers of its products or services, or as its employees.^{[citation needed]}

In some countries, e.g. Finland and Sweden, there are specific forms of incorporation for cooperatives. Cooperatives may take the form of companies limited by shares or by guarantee, partnerships or unincorporated associations. In the USA, cooperatives are often organized as non-capital stock corporations under state-specific cooperative laws. However, they may also be unincorporated associations or business corporations such as limited liability companies or partnerships; such forms are useful when the members want to allow^{[citation needed]}:

1. some members to have a greater share of the control, or
2. some investors to have a return on their capital that exceeds fixed interest,

neither of which may be allowed under local laws for cooperatives. Cooperatives often share their earnings with the membership as dividends, which are divided among the members according to their participation in the enterprise, such as patronage, instead of according to the value of their capital shareholdings (as is done by a joint stock company).

Identity[link]

Cooperatives are based on the cooperative values of "self-help, self-responsibility, democracy and equality, equity and solidarity" and the seven cooperative principles:^[13]

1. Voluntary and Open Membership
2. Democratic Member Control
3. Member Economic Participation
4. Autonomy and Independence
5. Education, Training and Information
6. Cooperation among Cooperatives
7. Concern for Community

Cooperatives are dedicated to the values of openness, social responsibility and caring for others. Such legal entities have a range of social characteristics. Membership is open, meaning that anyone who satisfies certain non-discriminatory conditions may join. Economic benefits are distributed proportionally to each member's level of participation in the cooperative, for instance by a dividend on sales or purchases, rather than according to capital invested.^[13] Cooperatives may be classified as either worker, consumer, producer, purchasing or housing cooperatives.^[14] They are distinguished from other forms of incorporation in that profit-making or economic stability are balanced by the interests of the community.^[13] Co-ops can sometimes be identified on the Internet through the use of the .coop gTLD. Organizations using .coop domain names must adhere to the basic co-op values.

The United Nations has declared 2012 to be the International Year of Cooperatives (IYC) ^[15]

Types of cooperative governance[link]

Retailers' cooperative[link]

A retailers' cooperative (known as a secondary or marketing cooperative in some countries) is an organization which employs economies of scale on behalf of its members to receive discounts from manufacturers and to pool marketing. It is common for locally owned grocery stores, hardware stores and pharmacies. In this case the members of the cooperative are businesses rather than individuals.^[16]

The Best Western international hotel chain is actually a retailers' cooperative, whose members are hotel operators, although it refers to itself as a "nonprofit membership association." It gave up on the "cooperative" label after some courts insisted on enforcing regulatory requirements for franchisors despite its member-controlled status.^{[citation needed]}

Worker cooperative[link]

A worker cooperative or producer cooperative is a cooperative, that is owned and democratically controlled by its "worker-owners". There are no outside owners in a "pure" workers' cooperative, only the workers own shares of the business, though hybrid forms exist in which consumers, community members or capitalist investors also own some shares. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective or majority ownership by the workforce, or the retention of individual, collective or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis).^[17] A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that the majority of its workforce owns shares, and the majority of shares are owned by the workforce.^[18] Membership is not always compulsory for employees, but generally only employees can become members either directly (as shareholders) or indirectly through membership of a trust that owns the company.^{[citation needed]}

The impact of political ideology on practice constrains the development of cooperatives in different countries. In India, there is a form of workers' cooperative which insists on compulsory membership for all employees and compulsory employment for all members. That is the form of the Indian Coffee Houses. This system was advocated by the Indian communist leader A. K. Gopalan. In places like the UK, common ownership (indivisible collective ownership) was popular in the 1970s. Cooperative Societies only became legal in Britain after the passing of Slaney's Act in 1852. In 1865 there were 651 registered societies with a total membership of well over 200,000.^[19] There are now more than 400 worker cooperatives in the UK,^[20] Suma Wholefoods being the largest example with a turnover of £24 million.^{[citation needed]}

Spanish law permits owner-members to register as self-employed enabling worker-owners to establish regulatory regimes that support cooperative working, but which differs considerably from cooperatives that are subject to Anglo-American systems of law that require the cooperative (employer) to view (and treat) its worker-members as salaried workers (employees).^[21] The implications of this are far-reaching, as this requires cooperatives to establish authority driven statutory disciplinary and grievance procedures (rather than democratic mediation schemes), impacting on the ability of leaders to enact democratic forms of management and counter the authority structures embedded in the dominant system of private enterprise centred around the entrepreneur.^[22]

Volunteer cooperative[link]

A volunteer cooperative is a cooperative that is run by and for a network of volunteers, for the benefit of a defined membership or the general public, to achieve some goal. Depending on the structure, it may be a collective or mutual organization, which is operated according to the principles of cooperative governance. The most basic form of volunteer-run cooperative is a voluntary association. A lodge or social club may be organized on this basis. A volunteer-run co-op is distinguished from a worker cooperative in that the latter is by definition employee-owned, whereas the volunteer cooperative is typically a non-stock corporation, volunteer-run consumer co-op or service organization, in which workers and beneficiaries jointly participate in management decisions and receive discounts on the basis of sweat equity.^{[citation needed]}

Social cooperative[link]

A particularly successful form of multi-stakeholder cooperative is the Italian "social cooperative", of which some 7,000 exist. "Type A" social cooperatives bring together providers and beneficiaries of a social service as members. "Type B" social cooperatives bring together permanent workers and previously unemployed people who wish to integrate into the labour market. They are legally defined as follows:^[23]

• no more than 80% of profits may be distributed, interest is limited to the bond rate and dissolution is altruistic (assets may not be distributed)
• the cooperative has legal personality and limited liability
• the objective is the general benefit of the community and the social integration of citizens
• those of type B integrate disadvantaged people into the labour market. The categories of disadvantage they target may include physical and mental disability, drug and alcohol addiction, developmental disorders and problems with the law. They do not include other factors of disadvantage such as unemployment, race, sexual orientation or abuse.
• type A cooperatives provide health, social or educational services
• various categories of stakeholder may become members, including paid employees, beneficiaries, volunteers (up to 50% of members), financial investors and public institutions. In type B cooperatives at least 30% of the members must be from the disadvantaged target groups
• voting is one person one vote

A good estimate of the current size of the social cooperative sector in Italy is given by updating the official Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (Istat) figures from the end of 2001 by an annual growth rate of 10% (assumed by the Direzione Generale per gli Ente Cooperativi). This gives totals of 7,100 social cooperatives, with 267,000 members, 223,000 paid employees, 31,000 volunteers and 24,000 disadvantaged people undergoing integration. Combined turnover is around 5 billion euro. The cooperatives break into three types: 59% type A (social and health services), 33% type B (work integration) and 8% mixed. The average size is 30 workers.^{[citation needed]}

The volunteer board of a retail consumers' cooperative, such as the former Oxford, Swindon & Gloucester Co-op, is held to account at an Annual General Meeting of members

Consumers' cooperative[link]

A consumers' cooperative is a business owned by its customers. Employees can also generally become members. Members vote on major decisions and elect the board of directors from amongst their own number. The first of these was set up in 1844 in the North-West of England by 28 weavers who wanted to sell food at a lower price than the local shops. A well known example in the United States is the REI (Recreational Equipment Incorporated) co-op, and in Canada: Mountain Equipment Co-op.^{[citation needed]}

With its 414,383 employees, 7,736,210 members and a turnover of €50Bn per year growing at a steady rate of 4.41%,^[24] Legacoop^[25] of Italy is arguably the world's biggest federation of cooperatives.^{[citation needed]}

The world's largest consumers' cooperative is the Co-operative Group in the United Kingdom, which offers a variety of retail and financial services. The UK also has a number of autonomous consumers' cooperative societies, such as the East of England Co-operative Society and Midcounties Co-operative. In fact, the Co-operative Group is something of a hybrid, having both corporate members (mostly other consumers' cooperatives, as a result of its origins as a wholesale society), and individual retail consumer members.^{[citation needed]}

Japan has a very large and well-developed consumer cooperative movement with over 14 million members; retail co-ops alone had a combined turnover of 2.519 trillion Yen (21.184 billion US dollars [market exchange rates as of 15 November 2005]) in 2003/4.^[26]

Migros is the largest supermarket chain in Switzerland and has around 2 million of the country's 7.2 million population as members.^{[citation needed]} Switzerland's second-biggest supermarket chain, Coop is also a cooperative. In 2001, it merged with 11 cooperative federations which had been its main suppliers for over 100 years.^{[citation needed]} As of 2005, Coop operates 1,437 shops and employs almost 45,000 people. According to Bio Suisse, the Swiss organic producers' association, Coop accounts for half of all the organic food sold in Switzerland.^{[citation needed]}

Euro Coop is the European Community of Consumer Cooperatives.

Business and employment cooperative[link]

Business and employment cooperatives (BECs) are a subset of worker cooperatives that represent a new approach to providing support to the creation of new businesses.^{[citation needed]}

Like other business creation support schemes, BECs enable budding entrepreneurs to experiment with their business idea while benefiting from a secure income. The innovation BECs introduce is that once the business is established the entrepreneur is not forced to leave and set up independently, but can stay and become a full member of the cooperative. The micro-enterprises then combine to form one multi-activity enterprise whose members provide a mutually supportive environment for each other.^{[citation needed]}

BECs thus provide budding business people with an easy transition from inactivity to self-employment, but in a collective framework. They open up new horizons for people who have ambition but who lack the skills or confidence needed to set off entirely on their own – or who simply want to carry on an independent economic activity but within a supportive group context.^{[citation needed]}

New generation cooperative[link]

New generation cooperatives (NGCs) are an adaptation of traditional cooperative structures to modern, capital intensive industries. They are sometimes described as a hybrid between traditional co-ops and limited liability companies. They were first developed in California and spread and flourished in the US Mid-West in the 1990s.^[27] They are now common in Canada where they operate primarily in agriculture and food services, where their primary purpose is to add value to primary products. For example producing ethanol from corn, pasta from durum wheat, or gourmet cheese from goat’s milk.^[28]

Types of cooperatives[link]

Housing cooperative[link]

Co-op City in New York is the largest cooperative housing development in the world with 55,000 people.^[29]

A housing cooperative is a legal mechanism for ownership of housing where residents either own shares (share capital co-op) reflecting their equity in the cooperative's real estate, or have membership and occupancy rights in a not-for-profit cooperative (non-share capital co-op), and they underwrite their housing through paying subscriptions or rent.^{[citation needed]}

Housing cooperatives come in three basic equity structures^{[citation needed]}:

• In Market-rate housing cooperatives, members may sell their shares in the cooperative whenever they like for whatever price the market will bear, much like any other residential property. Market-rate co-ops are very common in New York City.
• Limited equity housing cooperatives, which are often used by affordable housing developers, allow members to own some equity in their home, but limit the sale price of their membership share to that which they paid.
• Group equity or Zero equity housing cooperatives do not allow members to own equity in their residences and often have rental agreements well below market rates.

Members of a building cooperative (in Britain known as a self-build housing cooperative) pool resources to build housing, normally using a high proportion of their own labour. When the building is finished, each member is the sole owner of a homestead, and the cooperative may be dissolved.^{[citation needed]}

This collective effort was at the origin of many of Britain's building societies, which however developed into "permanent" mutual savings and loan organisations, a term which persisted in some of their names (such as the former Leeds Permanent). Nowadays such self-building may be financed using a step-by-step mortgage which is released in stages as the building is completed.^{[citation needed]}

The term may also refer to worker cooperatives in the building trade.^{[citation needed]}

Utility cooperative[link]

A utility cooperative is a type of consumers' cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a public utility such as electricity, water or telecommunications services to its members. Profits are either reinvested into infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "patronage" or "capital credits", which are essentially dividends paid on a member's investment into the cooperative. In the United States, many cooperatives were formed to provide rural electrical and telephone service as part of the New Deal. See Rural Utilities Service.^{[citation needed]}

In the case of electricity, cooperatives are generally either generation and transmission (G&T) co-ops that create and send power via the transmission grid or local distribution co-ops that gather electricity from a variety of sources and send it along to homes and businesses.^[30]

In Tanzania, it has been proven that the cooperative method is helpful in water distribution. When the people are involved with their own water, they care more because the quality of their work has a direct effect on the quality of their water.^[31]

Agricultural cooperative[link]

Grain elevators are used by agricultural cooperatives in the storage and shipping of grains.

Agricultural cooperatives or farmers' cooperatives are cooperatives where farmers pool their resources for mutual economic benefit. Agricultural cooperatives are broadly divided into agricultural service cooperatives, which provide various services to their individual farming members, and agricultural production cooperatives, where production resources such as land or machinery are pooled and members farm jointly.^[32] Agricultural production cooperatives are relatively rare in the world, and known examples are limited to collective farms in former socialist countries and the kibbutzim in Israel.^{[citation needed]}

Agricultural supply cooperatives aggregate purchases, storage, and distribution of farm inputs for their members. By taking advantage of volume discounts and utilizing other economies of scale, supply cooperatives bring down members' costs. Supply cooperatives may provide seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, fuel, and farm machinery. Some supply cooperatives also operate machinery pools that provide mechanical field services (e.g., plowing, harvesting) to their members.^{[citation needed]}

Agricultural marketing cooperatives provide the services involved in moving a product from the point of production to the point of consumption. Agricultural marketing includes a series of inter-connected activities involving planning production, growing and harvesting, grading, packing, transport, storage, food processing, distribution and sale. Agricultural marketing cooperatives are often formed to promote specific commodities.^{[citation needed]}

Credit unions and cooperative banking[link]

The Co-operative Bank's head office in Manchester. The statue in front is of Robert Owen, a pioneer in the cooperative movement.

Credit unions are cooperative financial institutions that are owned and controlled by their members. Credit unions provide the same financial services as banks but are considered not-for-profit organizations and adhere to cooperative principles.

Credit unions originated in mid-19th century Germany through the efforts of pioneers Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch and Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen. The concept of financial cooperatives crossed the Atlantic at the turn of the 20th century, when the caisse populaire movement was started by Alphonse Desjardins in Quebec, Canada. In 1900, from his home in Lévis, he opened North America's first credit union, marking the beginning of the Mouvement Desjardins.^[33] Eight years later, Desjardins provided guidance for the first credit union in the United States,^[34] where there are now about 7,950 active status federally insured credit unions, with almost 90 million members and more than $679 billion on deposit.^[35]

While they have not taken root so deeply as in Ireland, credit unions are also established in the UK. The largest are work-based, but many are now offering services in the wider community. The Association of British Credit Unions Ltd (ABCUL) represents the majority of British Credit Unions. British Building Societies developed into general-purpose savings & banking institutions with "one member, one vote" ownership and can be seen as a form of financial cooperative (although nine 'de-mutualised' into conventionally owned banks in the 1980s & 1990s). The UK Co-operative Group includes both an insurance provider CIS and the Co-operative Bank, both noted for promoting ethical investment.

Other important European banking cooperatives include the Crédit Agricole in France, Migros and Coop Bank in Switzerland and the Raiffeisen system in many Central and Eastern European countries. The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and various European countries also have strong cooperative banks. They play an important part in mortgage credit and professional (i.e. farming) credit.^{[citation needed]}

Cooperative banking networks, which were nationalized in Eastern Europe, work now as real cooperative institutions. A remarkable development has taken place in Poland, where the SKOK (Spóldzielcze Kasy Oszczednosciowo-Kredytowe) network has grown to serve over 1 million members via 13,000 branches, and is larger than the country’s largest conventional bank.^{[citation needed]}

In Scandinavia, there is a clear distinction between mutual savings banks (Sparbank) and true credit unions (Andelsbank).^{[citation needed]}

The oldest cooperative banks in Europe, based on the ideas of Friedrich Raiffeisen, are joined together in the 'Urgenossen'.

Federal or secondary cooperatives[link]

In some cases, cooperative societies find it advantageous to form cooperative federations in which all of the members are themselves cooperatives. Historically, these have predominantly come in the form of cooperative wholesale societies, and cooperative unions.^[36] Cooperative federations are a means through which cooperative societies can fulfill the sixth Rochdale Principle, cooperation among cooperatives, with the ICA noting that "Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures."^[37]

Cooperative wholesale society[link]

According to cooperative economist Charles Gide, the aim of a cooperative wholesale society is to arrange “bulk purchases, and, if possible, organise production.”^[36] The best historical example of this were the English CWS and the Scottish CWS, which were the forerunners to the modern Co-operative Group.^{[citation needed]}

Cooperative Union[link]

A second common form of cooperative federation is a cooperative union, whose objective (according to Gide) is “to develop the spirit of solidarity among societies and... in a word, to exercise the functions of a government whose authority, it is needless to say, is purely moral.”^[36] Co-operatives UK and the International Cooperative Alliance are examples of such arrangements.^{[citation needed]}

Cooperative party[link]

In some countries with a strong cooperative sector, such as the UK, cooperatives may find it advantageous to form a parliamentary political party to represent their interests. The British Cooperative Party, the Canadian Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and United Farmers of Alberta are prime examples of such arrangements.^{[citation needed]}

The British cooperative movement formed the Cooperative Party in the early 20th century to represent members of consumers' cooperatives in Parliament. The Cooperative Party now has a permanent electoral pact with the Labour Party, and has 29 members of parliament who were elected at the 2005 general election as Labour Cooperative MPs. UK cooperatives retain a significant market share in food retail, insurance, banking, funeral services, and the travel industry in many parts of the country.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

	Cooperatives portal
	Organized labour portal

References[link]

Notes[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2011)

Bibliography[link]

Further reading[link]

• Llewellyn, D. and Holmes, M. (1991) 'In Defence of Mutuality: A Redress to an Emerging Conventional Wisdom', Annals of Public and Co-operative Economics, Vol.62(3): pp. 319–354 (p. 327).
• Armitage, S. (1991) 'Consequences of Mutual Ownership for Building Societies', The Service Industries Journal, October, Vol.11(4): pp. 458–480 (p. 471).
• Rasmusen, E. (1988) 'Mutual banks and stock banks', Journal of Law and Economics, October, Vol.31: pp. 395–421 (p. 412).
• Masulis, R. (1987) 'Changes in Ownership Structure: Conversions of Mutual Savings and Loans to Stock Charter', Journal of Financial economics, Vol.18: pp. 29–59 (p. 32).
• "Consider the Collective: More than business as usual" by John Emerson, 2005. Article on graphic design and printing cooperatives.
• "Consumer Co-operatives in a Changing World" edited by Johann Brazda and Robert Schediwy (ICA), 1989
• Consumers' Co-operative Societies, by Charles Gide, 1922
• Co-operation 1921-1947, published monthly by the Cooperative League of America
• Cooperative Peace, by James Peter Warbasse, 1950
• Cooperatives: Principles and practices in the 21st century, by Kimberly A. Zeuli and Robert Cropp, 2004
• Problems Of Cooperation, by James Peter Warbasse, 1941
• The History of Co-operation, by George Jacob Holyoake, 1908
• "For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements, and Communalism in America," PM Press, by John Curl, 2009
• "The International Co-operative Movement" by Johnston Birchall, 1997
• Cooperative Social Enterprises: Company Rules, Access to Finance and Management Practice in the Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 5., Issue, 1 by Rory Ridley-Duff, 2009.
• Developing Successful Worker Co-ops, London: Sage Publications by Cornforth, C. J., Thomas, A., Spear, R. G. & Lewis, J. M., 1988.
• Reluctant Entrepreneurs, Open University Press by Paton, R., 1989.
• Making Mondragon, New York: ILR Press/Itchaca, by Whyte, W. F. & Whyte, K. K., 1991
• Understanding Cooperatives, a curriculum on cooperative business for secondary school students.
• India: Re-inventing cooperatives by increasing youth involvement
• "The New Cooperativism" in Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, Vol. 4, Issue 1 (2010)

External links[link]

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article co-operation.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cooperatives

• Canadian Co-operative Association
• Co-operatives UK
• DEBUuT, Business Cooperative of the Brussels Region
• International Co-operative Alliance
• International Confederation of Popular Banks
• Venezuela's Cooperative Revolution from Dollars & Sense magazine
• The National Co-operative Archive – holds records relating to all aspects of the co-operative movement.
• The European Union Project “Credit Cooperatives – Russian Federation” official web site
• Twin Oaks Communities Conference Conference focused on education about Cooperative Living
• United Nations 2012 International Year of Cooperatives (IYC) official website

Bob Dylan
Dylan onstage at the Azkena Rock Festival, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, June 26, 2010
Background information
Birth name	Robert Allen Zimmerman
Also known as	Elston Gunnn, Blind Boy Grunt, Bob Landy, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Tedham Porterhouse, Lucky/Boo Wilbury, Jack Frost, Sergei Petrov
Born	(1941-05-24) May 24, 1941 (age 71) Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.
Origin	Hibbing, Minnesota, U.S.
Genres	Rock, folk, folk rock, blues, blues rock, country, gospel, country rock
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, producer, visual artist, poet, writer, director, screenwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards, harmonica
Years active	1961–present
Labels	Columbia, Asylum
Associated acts	Joan Baez, The Band, The Byrds, Johnny Cash, Mark Knopfler, Grateful Dead, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Traveling Wilburys
Website	bobdylan.com

Bob Dylan ( /ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades.^[1][2] Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights^[3] and anti-war^[4] movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965.^[5] However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.

Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,^[6] Robert Johnson,^[7] and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard,^[8] Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.^[9]

Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards, and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his greatest contribution is generally considered to be his songwriting.^[1]

Since 1994, Dylan has published three books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries.^[10][11] As a songwriter and musician, Dylan has received numerous awards over the years including Grammy, Golden Globe, and Academy Awards; he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."^[12] In May 2012, Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.^[13]

Life and career[link]

Origins and musical beginnings[link]

Bob Dylan was born "Robert Allen Zimmerman" (Hebrew name שבתאי זיסאל בן אברהם [Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham])^[14][15] in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota,^[16][17] and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Iron Range west of Lake Superior. His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1905.^[18] His maternal grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902.^[18] In his autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan writes that his paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Kars, Turkey.^[19]

Dylan's parents, Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone, were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community. Robert Zimmerman lived in Duluth until age six, when his father was stricken with polio and the family returned to his mother's home town, Hibbing, where Zimmerman spent the rest of his childhood. Robert Zimmerman spent much of his youth listening to the radio—first to blues and country stations broadcasting from Shreveport, Louisiana and, later, to early rock and roll.^[8] He formed several bands while he attended Hibbing High School. The Shadow Blasters was short-lived, but his next, The Golden Chords, lasted longer and played covers of Little Richard rock and roll^[20] and other popular songs.^[21] Their performance of Danny and the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" at their high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone off.^[22] In 1959, his high school yearbook carried, beneath his photo, the caption: "Robert Zimmerman: to join 'Little Richard'."^[20][23] The same year, using the name Elston Gunnn [sic], he performed two dates with Bobby Vee, playing piano and providing handclaps.^[24][25][26]

Zimmerman moved to Minneapolis in September 1959 and enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where his early focus on rock and roll gave way to an interest in American folk music. In 1985, Dylan explained the attraction that folk music had exerted on him:

The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.^[27]

He soon began to perform at the 10 O'clock Scholar, a coffee house a few blocks from campus, and became actively involved in the local Dinkytown folk music circuit.^[28][29]

During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan".^[30] In his autobiography, Dylan acknowledged that he had been influenced by the poetry of Dylan Thomas.^{[31][a 1]} Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, Dylan remarked: "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."^[32]

1960s[link]

Relocation to New York and record deal[link]

Dylan dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City, hoping to perform there and visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie,^[33] who was seriously ill with Huntington's Disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.^[34] Guthrie had been a revelation to Dylan and was the biggest influence on his early performances. Describing Guthrie's impact on him, Dylan later wrote: "The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them ... [He] was the true voice of the American spirit. I said to myself I was going to be Guthrie's greatest disciple."^[35] As well as visiting Guthrie in the hospital, Dylan befriended Guthrie's acolyte Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Much of Guthrie's repertoire was actually channeled through Elliott, and Dylan paid tribute to Elliott in Chronicles (2004).^[36]

From February 1961, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village. He befriended and picked up material from many folk singers in the Village scene, including Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, Odetta, the New Lost City Ramblers, and Irish musicians Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers.^[37] Dylan later described Liam Clancy as "the best ballad singer I ever heard."^[38] In September, Dylan gained some public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote a positive review in The New York Times of a show at Gerde's Folk City.^[39] The same month Dylan played harmonica on folk singer Carolyn Hester's eponymous third album, which brought his talents to the attention of the album's producer, John Hammond.^[40] Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records in October. The performances on his first Columbia album, Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of familiar folk, blues and gospel material combined with two original compositions. The album made little impact, selling only 5,000 copies in its first year, just enough to break even.^[41] Within Columbia Records, some referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously. In March 1962, Dylan contributed harmonica and back-up vocals to the album Three Kings and the Queen, accompanying Victoria Spivey and Big Joe Williams on a recording for Spivey Records.^[42] While working for Columbia, Dylan also recorded several songs under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt,^[43] for Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label.^[44] Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on the 1964 anthology album, The Blues Project, issued by Elektra Records.^[43] Under the pseudonym Tedham Porterhouse, Dylan contributed harmonica to Ramblin' Jack Elliott's 1964 album Jack Elliott.^[43]

With Joan Baez during the civil rights "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom", August 28, 1963

Bob Dylan in November 1963

	"Blowin' in the Wind" noicon Blowin' in the Wind was, according to critic Andy Gill, "the song with which Dylan's name is most inextricably linked, and safeguarded his reputation as a civil libertarian through any number of changes in style and attitude."[45]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Dylan made two important career moves in August 1962. He legally changed his name to Bob Dylan,^[46] and signed a management contract with Albert Grossman.^[47] Grossman remained Dylan's manager until 1970, and was notable both for his sometimes confrontational personality, and for the fiercely protective loyalty he displayed towards his principal client.^[48] Dylan subsequently said of Grossman, "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming."^[29] Tensions between Grossman and John Hammond led to Hammond being replaced as the producer of Dylan's second album by the young African American jazz producer Tom Wilson.^[49]

From December 1962 to January 1963, Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom.^[50] He had been invited by TV director Philip Saville to appear in a drama, The Madhouse on Castle Street, which Saville was directing for BBC Television.^[51] At the end of the play, Dylan performed "Blowin' in the Wind", one of the first major public performances of the song.^[52] The film recording of The Madhouse on Castle Street was destroyed by the BBC in 1968.^[51] While in London, Dylan performed at several London folk clubs, including Les Cousins, The Pinder of Wakefield,^[53] and Bunjies.^[50] He also learned new songs from several UK performers, including Martin Carthy.^[50]

By the time Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was released in May 1963, he had begun to make his name as both a singer and a songwriter. Many of the songs on this album were labeled protest songs, inspired partly by Guthrie and influenced by Pete Seeger's passion for topical songs.^[54] "Oxford Town", for example, was a sardonic account of James Meredith's ordeal as the first black student to risk enrollment at the University of Mississippi.^[55]

His most famous song at this time, "Blowin' in the Wind", partially derived its melody from the traditional slave song "No More Auction Block", while its lyrics questioned the social and political status quo.^[56] The song was widely recorded and became an international hit for Peter, Paul and Mary, setting a precedent for many other artists who had hits with Dylan's songs. "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" was based on the tune of the folk ballad "Lord Randall". With its veiled references to nuclear apocalypse, it gained even more resonance when the Cuban missile crisis developed only a few weeks after Dylan began performing it.^[57] Like "Blowin' in the Wind", "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" marked an important new direction in modern songwriting, blending a stream-of-consciousness, imagist lyrical attack with a traditional folk form.^[58]

While Dylan's topical songs solidified his early reputation, Freewheelin' also included a mixture of love songs and jokey, surreal talking blues. Humor was a large part of Dylan's persona,^[59] and the range of material on the album impressed many listeners, including The Beatles. George Harrison said, "We just played it, just wore it out. The content of the song lyrics and just the attitude—it was incredibly original and wonderful."^[60]

The rough edge of Dylan's singing was unsettling to some early listeners but an attraction to others. Describing the impact that Dylan had on her and her husband, Joyce Carol Oates wrote: "When we first heard this raw, very young, and seemingly untrained voice, frankly nasal, as if sandpaper could sing, the effect was dramatic and electrifying."^[61] Many of his most famous early songs first reached the public through more immediately palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez, who became Dylan's advocate, as well as his lover.^[62] Baez was influential in bringing Dylan to national and international prominence by recording several of his early songs and inviting him onstage during her own concerts.^[63]

Others who recorded and had hits with Dylan's songs in the early and mid-1960s included The Byrds; Sonny and Cher; The Hollies; Peter, Paul and Mary; The Association; Manfred Mann; and The Turtles. Most attempted to impart a pop feel and rhythm to the songs, while Dylan and Baez performed them mostly as sparse folk pieces. The cover versions became so ubiquitous that CBS started to promote him with the tag "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan."^[64]

"Mixed Up Confusion", recorded during the Freewheelin' sessions with a backing band, was released as a single and then quickly withdrawn. In contrast to the mostly solo acoustic performances on the album, the single showed a willingness to experiment with a rockabilly sound. Cameron Crowe described it as "a fascinating look at a folk artist with his mind wandering towards Elvis Presley and Sun Records."^[65]

[edit] Protest and Another Side

In May 1963, Dylan's political profile was raised when he walked out of The Ed Sullivan Show. During rehearsals, Dylan had been informed by CBS Television's "head of program practices" that the song he was planning to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", was potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Rather than comply with the censorship, Dylan refused to appear on the program.^[66]

	"The Times They Are a-Changin'" noicon Dylan said of "The Times They Are a-Changin'": "This was definitely a song with a purpose. I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close and allied together at that time."[27]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

By this time, Dylan and Baez were both prominent in the civil rights movement, singing together at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963.^[67] Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a-Changin', reflected a more politicized and cynical Dylan.^[68] The songs often took as their subject matter contemporary, real life stories, with "Only A Pawn In Their Game" addressing the murder of civil rights worker Medgar Evers; and the Brechtian "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" the death of black hotel barmaid Hattie Carroll, at the hands of young white socialite William Zantzinger.^[69] On a more general theme, "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "North Country Blues" address the despair engendered by the breakdown of farming and mining communities. This political material was accompanied by two personal love songs, "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "One Too Many Mornings".^[70]

By the end of 1963, Dylan felt both manipulated and constrained by the folk and protest movements.^[71] These tensions were publicly displayed when, accepting the "Tom Paine Award" from the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an intoxicated Dylan brashly questioned the role of the committee, characterized the members as old and balding, and claimed to see something of himself (and of every man) in Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.^[72]

Bobby Dylan, as the college yearbook lists him: St. Lawrence University, upstate New York, November 1963

Another Side of Bob Dylan, recorded on a single June evening in 1964,^[73] had a lighter mood than its predecessor. The surreal, humorous Dylan reemerged on "I Shall Be Free #10" and "Motorpsycho Nightmare". "Spanish Harlem Incident" and "To Ramona" are romantic and passionate love songs, while "Black Crow Blues" and "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" suggest the rock and roll soon to dominate Dylan's music. "It Ain't Me Babe", on the surface a song about spurned love, has been described as a rejection of the role his reputation had thrust at him.^[74] His newest direction was signaled by two lengthy songs: the impressionistic "Chimes of Freedom", which sets elements of social commentary against a denser metaphorical landscape in a style later characterized by Allen Ginsberg as "chains of flashing images,"^[75] and "My Back Pages", which attacks the simplistic and arch seriousness of his own earlier topical songs and seems to predict the backlash he was about to encounter from his former champions as he took a new direction.^[76]

In the latter half of 1964 and 1965, Dylan's appearance and musical style changed rapidly, as he made his move from leading contemporary songwriter of the folk scene to folk-rock pop-music star. His scruffy jeans and work shirts were replaced by a Carnaby Street wardrobe, sunglasses day or night, and pointy "Beatle boots". A London reporter wrote: "Hair that would set the teeth of a comb on edge. A loud shirt that would dim the neon lights of Leicester Square. He looks like an undernourished cockatoo."^[77] Dylan also began to spar in increasingly surreal ways with his interviewers. Appearing on the Les Crane TV show and asked about a movie he was planning to make, he told Crane it would be a cowboy horror movie. Asked if he played the cowboy, Dylan replied, "No, I play my mother."^[78]

Going electric[link]

Dylan's April 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home was yet another stylistic leap,^[79] featuring his first recordings made with electric instruments. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", owed much to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business";^[80] its free association lyrics have been described as both harkening back to the manic energy of Beat poetry and as a forerunner of rap and hip-hop.^[81] The song was provided with an early music video which opened D. A. Pennebaker's cinéma vérité presentation of Dylan's 1965 tour of England, Dont Look Back.^[82] Instead of miming to the recording, Dylan illustrated the lyrics by throwing cue cards containing key words from the song on the ground. Pennebaker has said the sequence was Dylan's idea, and it has been widely imitated in both music videos and advertisements.^[83]

The B side of Bringing It All Back Home consisted of four long songs on which Dylan accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica.^[84] "Mr. Tambourine Man" quickly became one of Dylan's best known songs when The Byrds recorded an electric version that reached number one in both the U.S. and the U.K. charts.^[85][86] "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" and "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" were acclaimed as two of Dylan's most important compositions.^[84][87]

In the summer of 1965, as the headliner at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan performed his first electric set since his high school days with a pickup group drawn mostly from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums) and Jerome Arnold (bass), plus Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano).^[88] Dylan had appeared at Newport in 1963 and 1964, but in 1965 Dylan, met with a mix of cheering and booing, left the stage after only three songs. One version of the legend has it that the boos were from the outraged folk fans whom Dylan had alienated by appearing, unexpectedly, with an electric guitar. Murray Lerner, who filmed the performance, said: "I absolutely think that they were booing Dylan going electric."^[89] An alternative account claims audience members were merely upset by poor sound quality and a surprisingly short set. This account is supported by Kooper and one of the directors of the festival, who reports his audio recording of the concert proves that the only boos were in reaction to the emcee's announcement that there was only enough time for a short set.^[90][91]

Nevertheless, Dylan's 1965 Newport performance provoked a hostile response from the folk music establishment.^[92][93] In the September issue of Sing Out!, singer Ewan MacColl wrote: "Our traditional songs and ballads are the creations of extraordinarily talented artists working inside disciplines formulated over time... 'But what of Bobby Dylan?' scream the outraged teenagers... Only a completely non-critical audience, nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such tenth-rate drivel."^[94] On July 29, just four days after his controversial performance at Newport, Dylan was back in the studio in New York, recording "Positively 4th Street". The lyrics teemed with images of vengeance and paranoia,^[95] and it was widely interpreted as Dylan's put-down of former friends from the folk community—friends he had known in the clubs along West 4th Street.^[96]

[edit] Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde

	"Like a Rolling Stone" noicon Dylan's 1965 hit single, which appeared on the album Highway 61 Revisited. In 2004, it was labelled the Greatest Song of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine.[97]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

In July 1965, Dylan released the single "Like a Rolling Stone", which peaked at No.2 in the U.S. and at No.4 in the UK charts. At over six minutes, the song has been widely credited with altering attitudes about what a pop single could convey. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech during Dylan's inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said that on first hearing the single, "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind".^[98] In 2004, and again in 2011, Rolling Stone Magazine listed it as number one on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".^[97][99] The song also opened Dylan's next album, Highway 61 Revisited, titled after the road that led from Dylan's Minnesota to the musical hotbed of New Orleans.^[100] The songs were in the same vein as the hit single, flavored by Mike Bloomfield's blues guitar and Al Kooper's organ riffs. "Desolation Row" offers the sole acoustic exception, with Dylan making surreal allusions to a variety of figures in Western culture during this epic song, which was described by Andy Gill as "an 11-minute epic of entropy, which takes the form of a Fellini-esque parade of grotesques and oddities featuring a huge cast of celebrated characters, some historical (Einstein, Nero), some biblical (Noah, Cain and Abel), some fictional (Ophelia, Romeo, Cinderella), some literary (T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound), and some who fit into none of the above categories, notably Dr. Filth and his dubious nurse."^[101]

In support of the record, Dylan was booked for two U.S. concerts and set about assembling a band. Mike Bloomfield was unwilling to leave the Butterfield Band, so Dylan mixed Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks from his studio crew with Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm, best known at the time for being part of Ronnie Hawkins's backing band The Hawks (later to become The Band).^[102] On August 28 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the group was heckled by an audience still annoyed by Dylan's electric sound. The band's reception on September 3 at the Hollywood Bowl was more favorable.^[103]

While Dylan and the Hawks met increasingly receptive audiences on tour, their studio efforts floundered. Producer Bob Johnston persuaded Dylan to record in Nashville in February 1966, and surrounded him with a cadre of top-notch session men. At Dylan's insistence, Robertson and Kooper came down from New York City to play on the sessions.^[104] The Nashville sessions produced the double-album Blonde on Blonde (1966), featuring what Dylan later called "that thin wild mercury sound".^[105] Al Kooper described the album as "taking two cultures and smashing them together with a huge explosion": the musical world of Nashville and the world of the "quintessential New York hipster" Bob Dylan.^[106]

On November 22, 1965, Dylan secretly married 25-year-old former model Sara Lownds.^[107] Some of Dylan's friends (including Ramblin' Jack Elliott) claim that, in conversation immediately after the event, Dylan denied that he was married.^[107] Journalist Nora Ephron first made the news public in the New York Post in February 1966 with the headline "Hush! Bob Dylan is wed."^[108]

Dylan undertook a world tour of Australia and Europe in the spring of 1966. Each show was split into two parts. Dylan performed solo during the first half, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica. In the second half, backed by the Hawks, he played high voltage electric music. This contrast provoked many fans, who jeered and slow handclapped.^[109] The tour culminated in a famously raucous confrontation between Dylan and his audience at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England on May 17, 1966.^[110] An official recording of this concert was finally released in 1998: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966. At the climax of the evening, a member of the audience, angered by Dylan's electric backing, shouted: "Judas!" to which Dylan responded, "I don't believe you ... You're a liar!" Dylan turned to his band and said, "Play it fucking loud!"^[111] as they launched into the final song of the night—"Like a Rolling Stone."

During his 1966 tour, Dylan was frequently described as exhausted and acting "as if on a death trip".^[112] D. A. Pennebaker, the film maker accompanying the tour, described Dylan as "taking a lot of amphetamine and who-knows-what-else."^[113] In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, Dylan said, "I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things... just to keep going, you know?"^[114] In 2011, BBC Radio 4 reported that, in an interview which Robert Shelton had taped in 1966, Dylan claimed that he had kicked a heroin habit in New York City: "I got very, very strung out for a while... I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it."^[115] Some journalists questioned the validity of this confession, pointing out that Dylan had "been telling journalists wild lies about his past since the earliest days of his career."^[116][117]

Motorcycle accident and reclusion[link]

After his European tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures on him increased. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show they could screen.^[118] His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a finished manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had already scheduled an extensive concert tour for that summer and fall.

On July 29, 1966, Dylan crashed his 500cc Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle on a road near his home in Woodstock, New York, throwing him to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries were never fully disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck.^[119] Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized.^[119] Dylan's biographers have written that the crash offered Dylan the much-needed chance to escape from the pressures that had built up around him.^[119][120] Dylan confirmed this interpretation of the crash when he stated in his autobiography, "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race."^[121] In the wake of his accident, Dylan withdrew from the public and, apart from a few select appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years.^[122]

Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began editing film footage of his 1966 tour for Eat the Document, a rarely exhibited follow-up to Dont Look Back. A rough-cut was shown to ABC Television and was promptly rejected as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience.^[123] In 1967 he began recording music with the Hawks at his home and in the basement of the Hawks' nearby house, called "Big Pink".^[124] These songs, initially compiled as demos for other artists to record, provided hit singles for Julie Driscoll ("This Wheel's on Fire"), The Byrds ("You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Nothing Was Delivered"), and Manfred Mann ("Mighty Quinn"). Columbia belatedly released selections from them in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Over the years, more and more of the songs recorded by Dylan and his band in 1967 appeared on various bootleg recordings, culminating in a five-CD bootleg set titled The Genuine Basement Tapes, containing 107 songs and alternate takes.^[125] In the coming months, the Hawks recorded the album Music from Big Pink using songs they first worked on in their basement in Woodstock, and renamed themselves The Band,^[126] thus beginning a long and successful recording and performing career of their own.

In October and November 1967, Dylan returned to Nashville.^[127] Back in the recording studio after a 19-month break, he was accompanied only by Charlie McCoy on bass,^[128] Kenny Buttrey on drums,^[129] and Pete Drake on steel guitar.^[130] The result was John Wesley Harding, a quiet, contemplative record of shorter songs, set in a landscape that drew on both the American West and the Bible. The sparse structure and instrumentation, coupled with lyrics that took the Judeo-Christian tradition seriously, marked a departure not only from Dylan's own work but from the escalating psychedelic fervor of the 1960s musical culture.^[131] It included "All Along the Watchtower", with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9). The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix, whose version Dylan later acknowledged as definitive.^[27] Woody Guthrie died on October 3, 1967, and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1968, where he was backed by The Band.

	"Lay Lady Lay" noicon "Lay Lady Lay", on the country album Nashville Skyline, has been one of Dylan's biggest hits, reaching No.7 in the U.S.A.[132]
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Dylan's next release, Nashville Skyline (1969), was virtually a mainstream country record featuring instrumental backing by Nashville musicians, a mellow-voiced Dylan, a duet with Johnny Cash, and the hit single "Lay Lady Lay."^[133] Variety magazine wrote, "Dylan is definitely doing something that can be called singing. Somehow he has managed to add an octave to his range."^[134] Dylan and Cash also recorded a series of duets, but only their recording of Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" was used on the album.

In May 1969, Dylan appeared on the first episode of Johnny Cash's new television show, duetting with Cash on "Girl from the North Country", "I Threw It All Away" and "Living the Blues". Dylan next travelled to England to top the bill at the Isle of Wight rock festival on August 31, 1969, after rejecting overtures to appear at the Woodstock Festival far closer to his home.^[135]

1970s[link]

In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Rolling Stone magazine writer Greil Marcus notoriously asked "What is this shit?" on first listening to Self Portrait, released in June 1970.^[136][137] In general, Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received.^[138] In October 1970, Dylan released New Morning, which some considered a return to form.^[139] In November 1968, Dylan had co-written "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison;^[140] Harrison recorded both "I'd Have You Anytime" and Dylan's "If Not For You" for his 1970 solo triple album All Things Must Pass. Dylan's surprise appearance at Harrison's 1971 Concert for Bangladesh attracted much media coverage, reflecting that Dylan's live appearances had become rare.^[141]

Between March 16 and 19, 1971, Dylan reserved three days at Blue Rock Studios, a small studio in New York's Greenwich Village. These sessions resulted in one single, "Watching the River Flow", and a new recording of "When I Paint My Masterpiece".^[70] On November 4, 1971 Dylan recorded "George Jackson", which he released a week later.^[70] For many, the single was a surprising return to protest material, mourning the killing of Black Panther George Jackson in San Quentin Prison that summer.^[142] Dylan contributed piano and harmony vocals to Steve Goodman's album, Somebody Else's Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas in September 1972.^[143]