Name	40th
Date	February 25, 1998
Venue	Radio City Music Hall, New York, New York
Host	Kelsey Grammer
Network	CBS
Next	1999
Last	1997

The 40th Grammy Awards were held on February 25, 1998. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Rock icon Bob Dylan, Alison Krauss, and R. Kelly emerged as the big winners winning three awards each.

Award winners

Record of the Year

*John Leventhal (producer) & Shawn Colvin for "Sunny Came Home"

Album of the Year

*Daniel Lanois (producer) & Bob Dylan for Time Out of Mind

Song of the Year

*John Leventhal & Shawn Colvin (songwriters) for "Sunny Came Home" performed by Shawn Colvin

Best New Artist

*Paula Cole

Alternative

Best Alternative Music Performance

*Radiohead for OK Computer

Blues

Best Traditional Blues Album

*John Lee Hooker for Don't Look Back

Best Contemporary Blues Album

*Taj Mahal for Señor Blues

Children's

Best Musical Album for Children

*Roger Nichols, Kris O'Connor (producers) & John Denver (producer & artist) for All Aboard!

Best Spoken Word Album for Children

*John McElroy (producer) & Charles Kuralt for Winnie-the-Pooh

Classical

Best Orchestral Performance

*Pierre Boulez (conductor) & the Cleveland Orchestra for Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique; Tristia

Best Classical Vocal Performance

*Cecilia Bartoli for An Italian Songbook (Works of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini)

Best Opera Recording

*Michael Woolcock (producer), Georg Solti (conductor), José van Dam, Ben Heppner, Herbert Lippert, Karita Mattila, Alan Opie, Rene Pape, Iris Vermillion & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Best Choral Performance

*Robert Shaw (conductor) & the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus for Adams: Harmonium/Rachmaninoff: The Bells

Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)

*David Zinman (conductor), Yo-Yo Ma & the Philadelphia Orchestra for Premieres - Cello Concertos (Works of Danielpour, Kirchner, Rouse)

Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra)

*János Starker for Bach: Suites for Solo Cello Nos. 1 - 6

Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without conductor)

*Claudio Abbado (conductor) for "Hindemith: Kammermusik No. 1 With Finale 1921, Op. 24 No. 1" performed by members of the Berliner Philharmonic

Best Chamber Music Performance

*Emerson String Quartet for Beethoven: The String Quartets

Best Classical Contemporary Composition

*John Adams (composer), Kent Nagano (conductor) & the Hallé Orchestra for "Adams: El Dorado"

Best Classical Album

*Steven Epstein (producer), David Zinman (conductor), Yo-Yo Ma & the Philadelphia Orchestra for Premieres - Cello Concertos (Works of Danielpour, Kirchner, Rouse)

Composing and arranging

Best Instrumental Composition

*Wayne Shorter (composer) for "Aung San Suu Kyi" performed by Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter

Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television

*R. Kelly (songwriter) for "I Believe I Can Fly" (from Space Jam)

Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television

*Gabriel Yared (composer) for The English Patient

Best Instrumental Arrangement

*Bill Holman (arranger) for "Straight, No Chaser" performed by The Bill Holman Band

Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s)

*Slide Hampton (arranger) for "Cotton Tail" performed by Dee Dee Bridgewater

Country

Best Female Country Vocal Performance

*Trisha Yearwood for "How Do I Live"

Best Male Country Vocal Performance

*Vince Gill for "Pretty Little Adriana"

Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal

*Alison Krauss & Union Station for "Looking in the Eyes of Love"

Best Country Collaboration with Vocals

*Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood for "In Another's Eyes"

Best Country Instrumental Performance

*Alison Krauss & Union Station for "Little Liza Jane"

Best Country Song

*Bob Carlisle & Randy Thomas (songwriters) for "Butterfly Kisses" performed by Bob Carlisle / Jeff Carson / the Raybon Brothers

Best Country Album

*Rick Rubin (producer) & Johnny Cash for Unchained

Best Bluegrass Album

*Alison Krauss & Union Station for So Long So Wrong

Folk

Best Traditional Folk Album

*BeauSoleil for L'amour ou la Folie

Best Contemporary Folk Album

*Bob Dylan for Time Out of Mind

Gospel

Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album

*Jars of Clay for Much Afraid

Best Rock Gospel Album

*dc Talk for Welcome to the Freak Show: dc Talk Live in Concert

Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album

*The Fairfield Four for I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray

Best Contemporary Soul Gospel Album

*Take 6 for Brothers

Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album

*Peter York (producer) for Amazing Grace 2: A Country Salute to Gospel performed by various artists

Best Gospel Choir or Chorus Album

*Myron Butler, Kirk Franklin & Robert Searight II (choir directors) for God's Property From Kirk Franklin's Nu Nation performed by God's Property

Historical

Best Historical Album

*Amy Horowitz, Jeff Place & Pete Reiniger (producers), David Glasser & Charlie Pilzer (engineers) for Anthology of American Folk Music (1997 Edition Expanded) performed by various artists

Jazz

Best Jazz Instrumental Solo

*Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton for "Stardust"

Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Individual or Group

*Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny for Beyond the Missouri Sky

Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance

*Joe Henderson for Joe Henderson Big Band performed by the Joe Henderson Big Band

Best Jazz Vocal Performance

*Dee Dee Bridgewater for Dear Ella

Best Contemporary Jazz Performance

*Randy Brecker for Into the Sun

Best Latin Jazz Performance

*Roy Hargrove's Crisol for Habana

Latin

Best Latin Pop Performance

*Luis Miguel for Romances

Best Tropical Latin Performance

*Ry Cooder for Buena Vista Social Club

Best Mexican-American/Tejano Music Performance

*La Mafia for En Tus Manos

Best Latin Rock/Alternative Performance

*Los Fabulosos Cadillacs for Fabulosos Calavera

Musical show

Best Musical Show Album

*Jay David Saks (producer) for Chicago the Musical performed by Various Artists featuring Ann Reinking, Bebe Neuwirth, James Naughton & Joel Grey

Music video

Best Short Form Music Video

*Aris McGarry (video producer), Mark Romanek (video director) & Janet Jackson for "Got 'Till It's Gone"

Best Long Form Music Video

*David May, Glen Ballard (video producers), Steve Purcell (video producer & director) & Alanis Morissette (video producers, director & artist) for Jagged Little Pill, Live

New Age

Best New Age Album

*Michael Hedges for Oracle

Packaging and notes

Best Recording Package

*Al Quattrocchi, Hugh Brown & Jeff Smith (art directors) for Titanic - Music as Heard on the Fateful Voyage performed by various artists

Best Recording Package - Boxed

*David Gorman, Hugh Brown & Rachel Gutek (art directors) for Beg Scream and Shout! The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul performed by various artists

Best Album Notes

*Chuck Pirtle, Eric von Schmidt, Jeff Place, John Fahey, Jon Pankake, Kip Lornell, Luc Sante, Luis Kemnitzer, Neil V. Rosenberg & Peter Stampfel (notes writers) for Anthology of American Folk Music (1997 Edition Expanded) performed by various artists

Polka

Best Polka Album

*Jimmy Sturr for Living on Polka Time

Pop

Best Female Pop Vocal Performance

*Sarah McLachlan for "Building a Mystery"

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance

*Elton John for "Candle in the Wind 1997"

Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal

*Jamiroquai for "Virtual Insanity"

Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals

*John Lee Hooker & Van Morrison for "Don't Look Back"

Best Pop Instrumental Performance

*Sarah McLachlan for "Last Dance"

Best Dance Recording

*Giorgio Moroder (producer & artist) & Donna Summer for "Carry On"

Best Pop Album

*Frank Filipetti (producer) & James Taylor (producer & artist) for Hourglass

Production and engineering

Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

*Frank Filipetti (engineer) for Hourglass performed by James Taylor

Best Engineered Album, Classical

*Michael J. Bishop, Jack Renner (engineers), Erich Kunzel (conductor) & the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra for Copland: The Music of America (Fanfare for the Common Man; Rodeo, etc.)

Producer of the Year, Non-Classical

*Babyface

Producer of the Year, Classical

*Steven Epstein

Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical

*Frankie Knuckles

R&B;

Best Female R&B; Vocal Performance

*Erykah Badu for "On & On"

Best Male R&B; Vocal Performance

*R. Kelly for "I Believe I Can Fly"

Best R&B; Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal

*Blackstreet for "No Diggity"

Best Rhythm & Blues Song

*R. Kelly (songwriter) for "I Believe I Can Fly"

Best R&B; Album

*Erykah Badu for Baduizm

Rap

Best Rap Solo Performance

*Will Smith for "Men in Black"

Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group

*Puff Daddy, Faith Evans & 112 for "I'll Be Missing You"

Best Rap Album

*Stevie J. (producer) & Puff Daddy & the Family (producer & artist) for "No Way Out"

Reggae

Best Reggae Album

*Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers for Fallen is Babylon

Rock

Best Female Rock Vocal Performance

*Fiona Apple for "Criminal"

Best Male Rock Vocal Performance

*Bob Dylan for "Cold Irons Bound"

Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal

*The Wallflowers for "One Headlight"

Best Rock Instrumental Performance

*The Chemical Brothers for "Block Rockin' Beats"

Best Hard Rock Performance

*The Smashing Pumpkins for "The End Is the Beginning Is the End"

Best Metal Performance

*Tool for "Ænema"

Best Rock Song

*Jakob Dylan (songwriter) for "One Headlight" performed by The Wallflowers

Best Rock Album

*John Fogerty (producer & artist) for Blue Moon Swamp

Spoken

Best Spoken Word Album

*Charles Kuralt for Charles Kuralt's Spring

Best Spoken Comedy Album

*Chris Rock for Roll With the New

Traditional pop

Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance

*Tony Bennett for Tony Bennett on Holiday

World

Best World Music Album

*Milton Nascimento for Nascimento

Special merit awards

MusiCares Person of the Year

Luciano Pavarotti

Grammy Legend Award

Luciano Pavarotti

Trivia

The 1998 Grammys had several memorable and shocking moments. Among them:

Wu-Tang Clan member Ol' Dirty Bastard interrupts Shawn Colvin's Song of the Year acceptance speech to protest the Clan's loss in the Best Rap Album category.

Immediately after performing "How Do I Live", LeAnn Rimes loses Best Female Country Vocal Performance to Trisha Yearwood's cover version of exactly the same song.

Aretha Franklin performs the aria "Nessun Dorma" after standing in for Luciano Pavarotti at the last minute.

During a Bob Dylan performance, a shirtless backup dancer named Michael Portnoy rushes to the front of the stage with the words "Soy Bomb" written on his chest.

When presenting the nominees for Album of the Year Usher referred to Bob Dylan as Bill Dylan by accident.

Paula Cole gives the finger during her performance of "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?"

References

Category:1998 music awards 040

Name	Shawn Colvin
Background	solo_singer
Born	January 10, 1956Vermillion, South Dakota, United States
Origin	Carbondale, Illinois, United States
Instrument	Vocals, guitar
Genre	Rock, contemporary folk
Occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter
Years active	1970s–present
Label	Columbia (1989-2004)Nonesuch (2005-present)
Url	www.shawncolvin.com

Shawn Colvin (born January 10, 1956) is an American singer-songwriter and musician.

Childhood and early career

Colvin was born in Vermillion, South Dakota. Her formative years were spent in the town of Carbondale, Illinois, where she attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She learned to play guitar at the age of 10. Her first public concert was at age 15 at the Southern Illinois University campus. Colvin cites Joni Mitchell as a primary influence on her music, and her initial performances reflected that.

Career

Music

Colvin began working in the music scene in earnest in the late 1970s, first in Austin, Texas and then nationally. She moved to New York City in 1980, where she became involved with the Fast Folk cooperative in Greenwich Village.

She met music partner John Leventhal during this time; Leventhal became Colvin's producer on several albums. Colvin often lends her talent to contemporaries in the music business; she can be heard singing the backing vocals on the Suzanne Vega hit, "Luka". Vega returned the favor, singing backup on Colvin's "Diamond In The Rough", from her debut album, Steady On. Early in their careers, Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter formed a friendship that led to their frequently guesting on one-another's recordings: Colvin lent her vocals to Carpenter's 1992 recordings "The Hard Way" and "Come On Come On", and Mary Chapin returned the favor on Colvin's "Climb On a Back That's Strong", from Colvin's Fat City album. She also contributed in the studio and onstage to several Bruce Hornsby songs.

Colvin spent a short time in 1987-1988 with the North Carolina-based experimental string band the Red Clay Ramblers.

In 1988, Colvin was asked to perform a "trio" concert with fellow folk singer/songwriters Cheryl Wheeler and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The three performed two consecutive nights to critical acclaim at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. During these performances, Colvin performed several songs which appeared on her first two albums. The performances were recorded at the soundboard, but they were never released officially.

Colvin also has connections with singer/songwriters Julie Miller and Buddy Miller. Shawn became involved musically with the Millers when all three were working in Austin in the late 1970s/early '80s. Shawn provided backing vocals on Julie's first three solo albums (now out of print) released in 1990, 1991 and 1993.

Colvin's first several albums did not sell in substantial numbers, although she won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Recording for her debut album, Steady On (1990). After several albums of original work, Colvin released Cover Girl, a collection of cover versions. During this period, she also toured as Richard Thompson's opening act and back-up singer. She also sang "I Don't Want to Live on The Moon" with Ernie on Sesame Street, Ernie sang when Colvin said "hi" to him.

Colvin experienced breakthrough success with A Few Small Repairs in October 1996. The single "Sunny Came Home" reached the US Top Ten, and won Grammy Awards for Song and Record of the Year. She has released several subsequent albums which were nominated for Grammys, and she has also released a greatest hits album and a collection of Christmas music.

Colvin was the guest vocal artist on the Lisa Loeb single "Falling in Love". She performed at various Lilith Fair music festivals. Colvin's song "Nothin' on Me" served as the theme song to the Brooke Shields situation comedy Suddenly Susan. She also has been featured on the live music show Austin City Limits and played at the 2003 Austin City Limits Music Festival. She appeared in a 2001 tribute to Joni Mitchell that was broadcast on TNT.

Colvin appeared on The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (Bobfest) - October 16, 1992, at the Madison Square Garden, NYC. She performed "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" with Roseanne Cash and Mary-Chapin Carpenter. She was part of the group of artists who performed "Knockin' On Heaven's Door." Both performances (including a picture of her) can be found on "Bob Dylan - The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration" (Columbia 4740000 2)

Colvin appeared on Live from Abbey Road, which aired on Channel 4 in the UK and the Sundance Channel in the USA. Her live session recorded at Abbey Road Studios was shown on an episode with Nerina Pallot, The Zutons and Ray LaMontagne.

In 2007, Colvin released a single titled "Crazy", a cover of the Gnarls Barkley song.

Colvin released a 15-song Live collection on June 23, 2009 on Nonesuch . The album was recorded live in San Francisco during a three-night stint at Yoshi's in July 2008.

Television and film

Colvin made a few appearances on the comedy series The Larry Sanders Show, in the episodes "The Young Intern" (where she performed an acoustic version of "Polaroids") and "The New Writer" (where she performed an acoustic version of "Get Out of This House"). Colvin also ended the final episode of The Larry Sanders Show with an acoustic cover of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?".

She has made two guest appearances on animated comedy series The Simpsons as Rachel Jordan, lead singer for Christian rock band Kovenant (not related to the Norwegian black metal rock band The Kovenant). She first appeared in "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily", where Rachel wins widower Ned Flanders' heart. Later, in the episode "I'm Goin' to Praiseland", Ned dates Rachel, only to scare her off when he tries to turn her into a version of his deceased wife Maude. The two promptly get back together at the end of the same episode. She has not been mentioned in the series since then.

Colvin played country music legend Kitty Wells in a role in Crazy, a film that features a number of contemporary artists as music stars of the past.

Colvin's rendition of "Viva Las Vegas" can be heard during the closing credits of the Coen Brothers film, The Big Lebowski.

Colvin appeared in a Season 2 episode of The L Word, "Land Ahoy," as herself.

On HBO's show Treme, Colvin appeared as herself in performance in New Orleans at the House of Blues in the second season's episode #4: "Santa Claus, Do You Ever Get the Blues?".

Awards and recognition

Grammy Awards

*1991: Best Contemporary Folk Album — Steady On

*1998: Record of the Year — "Sunny Came Home"

*1998: Song of the Year — "Sunny Came Home"

Grammy Nominations

*1994: Best Contemporary Folk Recording — Fat City

*1994: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance — "I Don't Know Why"

*1995: Best Contemporary Folk Album — Cover Girl

*1997: Best Pop Album — A Few Small Repairs

*1997: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance — "Get Out of This House"

*1998: Best Female Pop Vocal Performance — "Sunny Came Home"

*2009: Best Contemporary Folk Recording - "Shawn Colvin Live"

Video Premiere Award Nomination

*2001: Best Original Song - "Great Big World" (The Little Bear Movie)

Discography

Albums

Other contributions

One Fine Day (film) Track 5: "Someone Like You" - (CD) - Sony - 1996

''Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours]' Track 7: "The Chain" — (CD) — Atlantic Records — 1998

Elmopalooza! Track 6: "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon" (with Ernie) — (CD) — Sony Wonder — 1998

Armageddon Track 6: "When the rainbow comes" — (CD) — 1998

Runaway Bride Track 8: "Never Saw Blue Like That Before" — (CD) — Sony — 1999

Serendipity Track 7: "When You Know" — (CD) — Sony — 2001

107.1 KGSR Radio Austin - Broadcasts Vol.10 Track 7: "Not a Drop of Rain" — (CD) — 2002

Track 3: "Whole New You" — (CD) — 2002

Track 5: "Secret Gardens" — (CD) — Wildflower — 2008

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - Outbound - Track 3: "A Moment So Close" (Vocals) - (CD) - 2000

See also

Music of Austin

References

External links

Official Website

These Four Walls

Rock On the Net Artist page

Yahoo Music Artist page

VH1 Artist page

Public radio special (2-hr), produced by Paul Ingles, rock historian

Category:1956 births Category:American female guitarists Category:American female singers Category:American folk singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Living people Category:People from Clay County, South Dakota Category:People from Austin, Texas Category:People from Carbondale, Illinois Category:Fast Folk artists

Name	Shania Twain
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Eilleen Regina Edwards
Alias	Eilleen Twain (1967–1992)
Born	August 28, 1965Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Genre	Country pop
Years active	1993–present
Occupation	Singer-songwriter
Label	Mercury Nashville
Url	www.shaniatwain.com

Shania Twain, OC (; born Eilleen Regina Edwards; August 28, 1965) is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the mid 1990s with her album The Woman in Me (1995), and achieved worldwide success with her 1997 album Come On Over, which became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold over 40 million copies worldwide and is the 9th best-selling album in the U.S. Her 4th album, titled Up! was released late 2002. To date it has sold 20 million copies worldwide.

A five-time Grammy Award winner, Twain has also achieved major success as a songwriter, winning 27 BMI Songwriter awards. and is ranked as the 10th best-selling artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era. She was also ranked the 72nd Artist of the 2000–10 decade by Billboard. Most recently, Twain will have her own series, Why Not? with Shania Twain, that premiered on the on May 8, 2011. She received a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 2, 2011 in recognition of her star-studded career.

Early years

Shania Twain was born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, daughter of Sharon (née Morrison) and Clarence Edwards. Her parents divorced when she was two and her mother then moved to Timmins, Ontario with Eilleen and her sisters Jill and Carrie Ann. Sharon married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwa, and they had a son together, Mark. Jerry adopted the girls, legally changing their last name to Twain. When Mark was still in diapers, the Twains adopted Jerry's baby nephew, Darryl, after Darryl's mother passed away. Because of her connection to her stepfather, in the past, people had presumed Twain's ancestry was Ojibwa, but she stated in an interview that her biological father was part Cree. Through her maternal grandfather, she is a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier. Her maternal grandmother, Eileen Pearce, emigrated from Newbridge, Kildare, Ireland.

Eilleen Twain had a hard childhood in Timmins. Her parents earned little and there was often a shortage of food in the household. Eilleen did not confide her situation to school authorities, fearing they might break up the family. In the remote, rugged community, she learned to hunt and to chop wood. Sharon and Jerry's marriage was at times stormy, and from a young age, Eilleen witnessed violent fights between them. Sharon struggled with bouts of depression. In the summer of 1979, while Jerry was at work, at Eilleen's insistence, her mother drove the rest of the family south to a Toronto homeless shelter for assistance. Sharon returned to Jerry with the children in 1981. In Timmins, Twain started singing at bars at the age of eight to try to make ends meet, often earning twenty dollars between midnight and one in the morning performing for remaining customers after the bar had finished serving. Although she expressed a dislike for singing in those bars, Twain believes that this was her own kind of performing arts school on the road. She has said of the ordeal, "My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought 'I hate this'. I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived". Twain wrote her first songs at the age of ten, Is Love a Rose and Just Like the Storybooks which were fairy tales in rhyme. She states that the art of creating, of actually writing songs, "was very different from performing them and became progressively important".

Music career

Career as Eilleen Twain

At 13, Eilleen was invited to perform on CBC television's the Tommy Hunter Show. While attending Timmins High and Vocational School in Timmins, she was also the singer for a local band called "Longshot" which covered Top 40 music.

After graduating from Timmins High in June 1983, Twain was eager to expand her musical horizons. After the demise of the band Longshot, Twain was approached by a cover band led by Diane Chase called "Flirt" and they toured all over Ontario. In the autumn of 1984, Twain's talents were noticed by Toronto DJ Stan Campbell who wrote about her in a Country Music News article: "Eilleen possesses a powerful voice with an impressive range. She has the necessary drive, ambition and positive attitude to achieve her goals". Bailey later said "She sang a few songs that she had written, and I thought to myself, this kid is like nineteen years old, where does she get this? This is from a person who's lived sixty years". where Twain spent much time practicing in 1985.]] Bailey acquired the contract from Stan Campbell and Twain moved into Bailey's home on Lake Kenogami where she practiced her music every day for hours. In the fall of 1985, Bailey took Twain down to Nashville to stay with a friend, record producer Tony Migliore, who at the time was producing an album for fellow Canadian singer Kelita Haverland and Twain was featured on the backing vocals to the song Too Hot to Handle. She also demo-ed songs with Cyril Rawson but the demos were without success, partly due to Twain's wish to become a rock singer, not a country artist. After five months she returned to Canada and moved in with Bailey in a flat in downtown Kirkland Lake. There she met rock keyboardist Eric Lambier and drummer Randy Yurko and formed a new band, moving three months later to Bowmanville, near Toronto. In late summer 1986 Mary Bailey arranged for Twain to meet John Kim Bell, a half Mohawk, half American conductor who had close contacts with the directors of the Canadian Country Music Association. Bell recognized Twain's ability as well as her looks and the two began secretly dating.

It was then on November 1, 1987, that Twain's mother and stepfather died in a car accident back in Timmins. As a result Twain moved back to Timmins to take care of her younger siblings and then took them all to Huntsville, Ontario. There, she supported them by earning money performing at the nearby Deerhurst Resort.

1993–1994: Shania Twain

A couple of years passed and Twain's siblings got older and moved out on their own. Twain assembled a demo tape of her songs and her Huntsville manager set up a showcase for Twain to present her material to record executives. She caught the attention of a few labels, including Mercury Nashville Records, who signed her within a few months. During this time, she changed her name to Shania, an Ojibwa word which means "on my way".

Twain's self-titled debut album was released in 1993 in North America and garnered her audiences outside of Canada. The album only reached No.67 on the US Country Albums Chart, but it gained positive reviews from critics. The album failed to sell significant copies initially, although Twain's future success generated enough interest for the album to be certified platinum six years later by the RIAA, denoting sales of over a million. The album yielded two minor hit singles in the United States with "What Made You Say That" and "Dance with the One That Brought You". The album was more successful in Europe, where Twain won Country Music Television Europe's "Rising Video Star of the Year" award. Ironically all the songs selected for The Woman in Me were rejected by Mercury Records for her first album. Record executives were stunned when they listened to the album. It was unlike anything else in country music.

The Woman in Me was released in the spring of 1995. The album's first single, "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" went to No.11 on the Billboard Country Chart. This was followed by her first Top 10 and No.1 hit single, "Any Man of Mine". Twain had further hits from the album, including the title track which peaked at No.14 and three additional No.1 hits: "(If You're Not in it for Love) I'm Outta Here!", "You Win My Love", and "No One Needs to Know". The album was a quick breakthrough. Shania performed selected international venues and television shows with Nashville guitarist Randy Thomas (co-writer of the song "Butterfly Kisses") and Stanley T., formerly with the Beach Boys. Mercury Record's promotion of the album was based largely upon a series of sexy music videos.

The Woman in Me won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well as the Academy of Country Music award for Album of the Year; the latter group also awarded Twain as Best New Female Vocalist.

Worldwide success

1997–2001: Come On Over

In 1997, Twain released her follow-up album, Come On Over. This was the album that would establish her as a successful crossover singer. Slowly, the album started racking up sales. It never hit the top spot, but with the multi-chart hit single "You're Still the One", sales skyrocketed. Other songs like "Don't Be Stupid", "You've Got A Way", "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!", "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "From This Moment On" joined the 12 songs that eventually saw release as singles. "From This Moment On" is a duet with singer Bryan White and there was even a pop version as well.

The album stayed on the charts for the next two years, going on to sell 39 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album of all time by a female musician. It is also the eighth biggest-selling album by any type of artist in the US.

2002–2004: Up!

After a change in management – QPrime replaced Landau — and a two year break, Twain and Lange returned to the studio. Up! was released on November 19, 2002. About a year later, Twain kicked off the Up! Tour in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on September 25, 2003.

Up! was released with three different discs – country/acoustic (green CD), pop/rock (red CD), and world/dance (blue CD). Up! was given four out of five stars by Rolling Stone magazine, and debuted at No.1 on the Billboard albums chart, selling 874,000 in the first week alone. It remained at the top of the charts for five weeks. Up! reached No.1 in Germany, No.2 in Australia and the Top Five in the UK and France. In Germany, Up! was certified 4x platinum and stayed in the Top 100 for one and a half years.

The international music disc was remixed with Indian-style orchestral and percussion parts recorded in Mumbai, India. The new versions were produced by Simon and Diamond Duggal, brothers from Birmingham, England. They were originally invited to contribute parts to the pop version of "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" which retained the Indian influence.

Twain's popularity in UK was reflected by numerous appearances on the long-running music show Top of the Pops, performing singles from Come on Over from 1999. In 2002 an entire special show was dedicated to her on sister show TOTP2, in which Twain herself introduced some past performances of her greatest hits and new singles from Up!

The first single from the album, "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" became a top 10 country hit in the US, after debuting at an impressive No.24 after only five days of airplay; but only made the Top 40 on the pop charts. It was a much bigger hit on the other side of the Atlantic, released in a pop version, the single hit No.4 in the UK. In Australia, Germany and France the song reached the Top 15 in each case. The follow-up single "Up!" reached the Top 15 in the US country charts but failed to reach the pop Top 40.

The second European single became the mid-tempo song "Ka-Ching!" (which was never released as a single in North America) with lyrics where Twain was criticizing unchecked consumerism. The song eventually became another smash hit in the important European markets, reaching No.1 in Germany and Austria and other European countries, the UK Top 10 and the Top 15 in France. The third single from the album would be the most successful in the US. The romantic ballad "Forever and For Always" was released as a single in April 2003 and peaked at No.4 on the country chart and No.1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and made as well the Billboard Top 20. Again success was even bigger on the other side of the Atlantic with "Forever and For Always" again reaching the Top 10 in both, the UK and Germany. Further singles were "She's Not Just a Pretty Face" a country Top 10 hit, while the last US single, "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing", made the Top 20 on both Country and AC.

Due to the enormous European success of Up! and its first three singles, two more singles were released in the second half of 2003 with up-tempo "Thank You Baby" (#11 in the UK, Top 20 in Germany) and just before Christmas the romantic, acoustic ballad "When You Kiss Me", at least a minor hit in both territories. The title track "Up!" also saw a single release in a limited edition of European countries, such as Germany, in early 2004. In January 2008, Up! had sold 5.5 million copies in the U.S. and was certified by the RIAA as 11x platinum (the organization counts double albums as two units).

In August 2005, she released the single "Shoes" from the Desperate Housewives soundtrack.

2006 onwards

At the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 16, 2007, Twain said she was currently writing songs for a new album, and was doing a "lot of soul searching" and "indulging in the writing."

Twain joined Canadian singer Anne Murray on the song "You Needed Me" on Murray's album released November 13, 2007 in Canada, and on January 15, 2008 in the U.S. On November 12, 2008 Twain made her first television appearance since her split from ex-husband Robert "Mutt" Lange, where she appeared as a surprise presenter at the 42nd CMA Awards.

In early January 2009, Internet forums were reporting that Twain was planning to make an announcement regarding her new album on January 26, 2009 but on the 22nd a spokesperson from Mercury Nashville told Country Weekly that no new album would be coming "anytime soon".

In June 2009, Twain released a letter to her fans explaining the delays in the release of her next album. In August 2009, at a conference in Timmins, Ontario, a spokesman for Twain's label said a new record from the singer is still "nowhere in sight". On August 17, 2009, EW announced that Twain would be a guest judge on American Idol in Chicago, for the show's August 30 and 31 episodes. On January 1, 2010, Shania carried the Olympic Torch through her hometown as part of the 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay.

Why Not? with Shania Twain; new music

In April 2010, Twain announced plans for her own TV show, entitled Why Not? with Shania Twain. The show debuted on May 8, 2011 on . Twain returned to American Idol as a guest mentor for a week where the top 6 contestants showcased her songs. After the conclusion of the ninth season Shania was very close to becoming a judge but ultimately it was Jennifer Lopez who got the job.

More recently, in September 2010, it was confirmed that Twain was to release her first biography, From This Moment On, on May 3, 2011, and the cover work for the book was released on March 2, 2011.

On March 27, 2011, Shania was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Following her appearance, Shania revealed that she is writing music and that new music will be heard soon.

In May 2011, Twain confirmed in an interview with Perez Hilton that she will release her first new single in six years, "Today Is Your Day", after the finale of Why Not? with Shania Twain. Twain previewed the song in the first episode of the series. In the next few months, Twain plans to return to the studio to finish her fifth studio album. "Today Is Your Day" was officially released to iTunes and country radio on June 12, 2011.

On June 8, 2011, at a press conference at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Twain announced that she will headline Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas for two years.

Late in 2005, Twain partnered COTY to produce her namesake fragrance "Shania" by Stetson. A second fragrance was released in September 2007, called "Shania Starlight".

Personal life

Twain married music producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange on December 28, 1993, and they have a son, Eja (pronounced "Asia") D'Angelo who was born on August 12, 2001. On May 15, 2008, a spokesperson for Mercury Nashville announced that Twain and Lange were separating after Lange had an affair with Twain's best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. Their divorce was finalized on June 9, 2010. On December 20, 2010, Twain's manager confirmed that Twain was engaged to Swiss business executive Frederic Thiebaud, the ex-husband of Marie-Anne Thiebaud. They married on January 1, 2011 in Rincón, Puerto Rico.

Twain practices Sant Mat, which calls for daily meditation and vegetarianism.

Awards and honours

In addition to her various awards for her singles and albums, Twain has received a number of personal honours:

She was named the 1999 Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association; Twain was the first non-US citizen to win the CMA award.

Twain was ranked No.7 in Country Music Television's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002. In 2003, Twain was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. The city of Timmins (located in Ontario, Canada) renamed a street for her, gave her the key to the city, and built the Shania Twain Centre in her honour. On November 18, 2005, Twain was invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada. Twain was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the Juno Awards on March 27, 2011. On June 2, 2011, Twain received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her star is the 2,442nd Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Category of Recording.

Discography

;Albums

1993: Shania Twain

1995: The Woman in Me

1997: Come On Over

2002: Up!

;Compilations

2001: The Complete Limelight Sessions

2004: Greatest Hits

See also

Music of Canada

List of best-selling music artists

References

Further reading

External links

Shania Twain official website

Category:1965 births Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:Canadian contraltos Category:Canadian country singer-songwriters Category:Canadian country singers Category:Canadian expatriates in New Zealand Category:Canadian expatriates in Switzerland Category:Canadian female singers Category:Canadian pop singers Category:Canadian vegetarians Category:Canadian people of English descent Category:Canadian people of First Nations descent Category:Canadian people of Irish descent Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Juno Award winners Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Musicians from Ontario Category:Officers of the Order of Canada Category:People from Timmins Category:People from Windsor, Ontario Category:World Music Awards winners Category:Canadian people of French descent

Name	Bob Dylan
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Robert Allen Zimmerman
Alias	Elston Gunnn, Blind Boy Grunt, Bob Landy, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Tedham Porterhouse, Lucky/Boo Wilbury, Jack Frost, Sergei Petrov
Origin	New York, New York, U.S.
Birth date	May 24, 1941
Birth place	Duluth, Minnesota, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano, keyboard, bass
Genre	Rock, folk rock, folk, blues, country, gospel
Occupation	Musician, songwriter, producer, visual artist
Years active	1959–present
Label	Columbia, Asylum
Associated acts	Traveling Wilburys, The Band, Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Shadow Blasters, The Golden Chords
Url

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman; May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet and painter. He has been a major figure in music for five decades and has had immense influence on popular music. and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan proceeded to revolutionize perceptions of the limits of popular music in 1965 with the six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone,"

His lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social and philosophical, as well as literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie, 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.

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.

Since 1994, Dylan has published three books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. 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."

Life and career

Origins and musical beginnings

Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham) was born in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, 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. His maternal grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902.

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. 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. In his 1959 school yearbook, Robert Zimmerman listed as his ambition "To follow Little Richard."

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." 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.

During his Dinkytown days, Zimmerman began introducing himself as "Bob Dylan". In his autobiography, Dylan acknowledged that he had been influenced by the poetry of Dylan Thomas. 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." who was seriously ill with Huntington's Disease in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital. 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." 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).

From February 1961, Dylan played at various clubs around Greenwich Village. In September, he gained some public recognition when Robert Shelton wrote a positive review in The New York Times of a show at Gerde's Folk City. 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. 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. Within Columbia Records, some referred to the singer as "Hammond's Folly" and suggested dropping his contract. Hammond defended Dylan vigorously. While working for Columbia, Dylan also recorded several songs under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, for Broadside Magazine, a folk music magazine and record label. Dylan used the pseudonym Bob Landy to record as a piano player on the 1964 anthology album, The Blues Project, issued by Elektra Records. Dylan subsequently said of Grossman, "He was kind of like a Colonel Tom Parker figure ... you could smell him coming."

From December 1962 to January 1963, Dylan made his first trip to the United Kingdom. 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. At the end of the play, Dylan performed "Blowin' in the Wind", one of the first major public performances of the song. While in London, Dylan performed at several London folk clubs, including Les Cousins, The Pinder of Wakefield, and Bunjies. "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. 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. 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. 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.

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, 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."

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." 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. 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.

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."

"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."

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.

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." Dylan and Cash also recorded a series of duets, including Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings," but they were not 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.

1970s

In the early 1970s, critics charged that Dylan's output was of varied and unpredictable quality. Rolling Stone magazine writer and Dylan loyalist Greil Marcus notoriously asked "What is this shit?" upon first listening to 1970's Self Portrait. In general, Self Portrait, a double LP including few original songs, was poorly received. Later that year, Dylan released New Morning, which some considered a return to form. In November 1968, Dylan had co-written "I'd Have You Anytime" with George Harrison; 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.

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". On November 4, 1971 Dylan recorded "George Jackson," which he released a week later. Dylan contributed piano and hamony vocals to Steve Goodman's album, Somebody Else's Troubles, under the pseudonym Robert Milkwood Thomas in September 1972.

In 1972, Dylan signed onto Sam Peckinpah's film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, providing songs and backing music for the movie, and playing the role of "Alias," a member of Billy's gang with some historical basis. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has proven its durability as one of Dylan's most extensively covered songs.

Return to touring

touring in Chicago, 1974]]

Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new record label, David Geffen's Asylum Records, when his contract with Columbia Records expired. On his next album, Planet Waves, he used The Band as backing group, while rehearsing for a major tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young," which became one of his most popular songs. As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan", and Dylan himself commented: "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental." Biographer Howard Sounes noted that Jakob Dylan believed the song was about him. In January 1974, Dylan returned to live touring after a break of seven years; backed by The Band, he embarked on a high-profile, coast-to-coast North American tour, playing 40 concerts. A live double album of the tour, Before the Flood, was released on Asylum Records. Soon, Columbia Records sent word that they "will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold". Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, apparently miffed that while there had been millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour, Geffen had managed to sell only 700,000 copies of Planet Waves. Dylan delayed the album's release, however, and re-recorded half of the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother David Zimmerman.

Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practise takes." In Rolling Stone, reviewer Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." Novelist Rick Moody called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape." with Allen Ginsberg, on the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975]]

That summer Dylan wrote a lengthy ballad championing the cause of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who had been imprisoned for a triple murder committed in Paterson, New Jersey in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote "Hurricane", presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its 8:32 minute length, the song was released as a single, peaking at No.33 on the U.S. Billboard Chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's next tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. The tour was a varied evening of entertainment featuring about one hundred performers and supporters drawn from the resurgent Greenwich Village folk scene, including T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Joni Mitchell. David Mansfield, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson, Joan Baez, and violinist Scarlet Rivera, whom Dylan discovered while she was walking down the street, her violin case hanging on her back. Allen Ginsberg accompanied the troupe, staging scenes for the film Dylan was simultaneously shooting. Sam Shepard was initially hired to write the film's screenplay, but ended up accompanying the tour as informal chronicler.

Running through late 1975 and again through early 1976, the tour encompassed the release of the album Desire, with many of Dylan's new songs featuring an almost travelogue-like narrative style, showing the influence of his new collaborator, playwright Jacques Levy. The spring 1976 half of the tour was documented by a TV concert special, Hard Rain, and the LP Hard Rain; no concert album from the better-received and better-known opening half of the tour was released until 2002's .

The fall 1975 tour with the Revue also provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara, a sprawling and improvised narrative, mixed with concert footage and reminiscences. Released in 1978, the movie received generally poor, sometimes scathing, reviews and had a very brief theatrical run. Later in that year, Dylan allowed a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, to be more widely released.

In November 1976, Dylan appeared at The Band's "farewell" concert, along with other guests including Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's acclaimed cinematic chronicle of this show, The Last Waltz, was released in 1978 and included about half of Dylan's set. In 1976, Dylan also wrote and duetted on the song "Sign Language" for Eric Clapton's No Reason To Cry.

In 1978, Dylan embarked on a year-long world tour, performing 114 shows in Japan, the Far East, Europe and the US, to a total audience of two million people. For the tour, Dylan assembled an eight piece band, and was also accompanied by three backing singers. Concerts in Tokyo in February and March were recorded and released as the live double album, Bob Dylan At Budokan. Reviews were mixed. Robert Christgau awarded the album a C+ rating, giving the album a derisory review, while Janet Maslin defended it in Rolling Stone, writing: "These latest live versions of his old songs have the effect of liberating Bob Dylan from the originals." When Dylan brought the tour to the US in September 1978, he was dismayed the press described the look and sound of the show as a 'Las Vegas Tour'. The 1978 tour grossed more than $20 million, and Dylan acknowledged to the Los Angeles Times that he had some debts to pay off because "I had a couple of bad years. I put a lot of money into the movie, built a big house ... and it costs a lot to get divorced in California." It was described by Michael Gray as, "after Blood On The Tracks, arguably Dylan's best record of the 1970s: a crucial album documenting a crucial period in Dylan's own life". However, it suffered from poor sound recording and mixing (attributed to Dylan's studio practices), muddying the instrumental detail until a remastered CD release in 1999 restored some of the songs' strengths.

Born-again period

Dylan's embrace of Christianity was unpopular with some of his fans and fellow musicians. Shortly before his murder, John Lennon recorded "Serve Yourself" in response to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody". By 1981, while Dylan's Christian faith was obvious, Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that "neither age (he's now 40) nor his much-publicized conversion to born-again Christianity has altered his essentially iconoclastic temperament."

1980s

, Spain, 1984]] In the fall of 1980 Dylan briefly resumed touring for a series of concerts billed as "A Musical Retrospective", where he restored several of his popular 1960s songs to the repertoire. Shot of Love, recorded the next spring, featured Dylan's first secular compositions in more than two years, mixed with explicitly Christian songs; the song "Every Grain of Sand" reminded some critics of William Blake's verses.

In the 1980s the quality of Dylan's recorded work varied, from the well-regarded Infidels in 1983 to the panned Down in the Groove in 1988. Critics such as Michael Gray condemned Dylan's 1980s albums both for showing an extraordinary carelessness in the studio and for failing to release his best songs. The Infidels recording sessions, for example, produced several notable songs that Dylan left off the album. Most well regarded of these were "Blind Willie McTell", a tribute to the dead blues musician and an evocation of African American history, "Foot of Pride" and "Lord Protect My Child". These three songs were later released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.

Between July 1984 and March 1985, Dylan recorded his next studio album, Empire Burlesque. Arthur Baker, who had remixed hits for Bruce Springsteen and Cyndi Lauper, was asked to engineer and mix the album. Baker has said he felt he was hired to make Dylan's album sound "a little bit more contemporary". His remarks were widely criticized as inappropriate, but they did inspire Willie Nelson to organize a series of events, Farm Aid, to benefit debt-ridden American farmers.

In April 1986, Dylan made a brief foray into the world of rap music when he added vocals to the opening verse of "Street Rock", a song featured on Kurtis Blow's album Kingdom Blow. Dylan's next studio album, Knocked Out Loaded, was released in July 1986 and contained three cover songs (by Little Junior Parker, Kris Kristofferson and the traditional gospel hymn "Precious Memories"), plus three collaborations with other writers (Tom Petty, Sam Shepard and Carole Bayer Sager), and two solo compositions by Dylan. One reviewer commented that "the record follows too many detours to be consistently compelling, and some of those detours wind down roads that are indisputably dead ends. By 1986, such uneven records weren't entirely unexpected by Dylan, but that didn't make them any less frustrating." It was the first Dylan album since Freewheelin' (1963) to fail to make the Top 50. Since then, some critics have called the 11-minute epic that Dylan co-wrote with Sam Shepard, 'Brownsville Girl', a work of genius.

In 1986 and 1987, Dylan toured extensively with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sharing vocals with Petty on several songs each night. Dylan also toured with The Grateful Dead in 1987, resulting in a live album Dylan & The Dead. This album received some very negative reviews: Allmusic said, "Quite possibly the worst album by either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead." After performing with these musical permutations, Dylan initiated what came to be called The Never Ending Tour on June 7, 1988, performing with a tight back-up band featuring guitarist G. E. Smith. Dylan continued to tour with this small but constantly evolving band for the next 20 years. Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack—"Night After Night", and "I Had a Dream About You, Baby", as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "The Usual". The film was a critical and commercial flop. Dylan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January 1988, with Bruce Springsteen's introductory speech declaring, "Bob freed your mind the way Elvis freed your body. He showed us that just because music was innately physical did not mean that it was anti-intellectual.

When Dylan released the album Down in the Groove in May 1988, it was even more unsuccessful in its sales than his previous studio album. Michael Gray wrote: "The very title undercuts any idea that inspired work may lie within. Here was a further devaluing of the notion of a new Bob Dylan album as something significant." The critical and commercial disappointment of that album was swiftly followed by the success of the Traveling Wilburys. Dylan co-founded the band with George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, and in the fall of 1988 their multi-platinum Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached number three on the US album chart, Despite Orbison's death in December 1988, the remaining four recorded a second album in May 1990, which they released with the unexpected title Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

Dylan finished the decade on a critical high note with Oh Mercy produced by Daniel Lanois. Dylan critic Michael Gray wrote that the album was: "Attentively written, vocally distinctive, musically warm, and uncompromisingly professional, this cohesive whole is the nearest thing to a great Bob Dylan album in the 1980s." The track "Most of the Time", a lost love composition, was later prominently featured in the film High Fidelity, while "What Was It You Wanted?" has been interpreted both as a catechism and a wry comment on the expectations of critics and fans. The religious imagery of "Ring Them Bells" struck some critics as a re-affirmation of faith.

1990s

Dylan's 1990s began with Under the Red Sky (1990), an about-face from the serious Oh Mercy. The album contained several apparently simple songs, including "Under the Red Sky" and "Wiggle Wiggle". The album was dedicated to "Gabby Goo Goo"; this was later explained as a nickname for the daughter of Dylan and Carolyn Dennis, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, who was four at that time. Sidemen on the album included George Harrison, Slash from Guns N' Roses, David Crosby, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Elton John. Despite the stellar line-up, the record received bad reviews and sold poorly.

In 1991, Dylan was honored by the recording industry with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from American actor Jack Nicholson. The event coincided with the start of the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, and Dylan performed his song "Masters of War".

The next few years saw Dylan returning to his roots with two albums covering old folk and blues numbers: Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), featuring interpretations and acoustic guitar work. Many critics and fans commented on the quiet beauty of the song "Lone Pilgrim", penned by a 19th century teacher and sung by Dylan with a haunting reverence. In November 1994 Dylan recorded two live shows for MTV Unplugged. He claimed his wish to perform a set of traditional songs for the show was overruled by Sony executives who insisted on a greatest hits package. The album produced from it, MTV Unplugged, included "John Brown", an unreleased 1963 song detailing the ravages of both war and jingoism.

With a collection of songs reportedly written while snowed-in on his Minnesota ranch, Dylan booked recording time with Daniel Lanois at Miami's Criteria Studios in January 1997. The subsequent recording sessions were, by some accounts, fraught with musical tension. Late that spring, before the album's release, Dylan was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart infection, pericarditis, brought on by histoplasmosis. His scheduled European tour was cancelled, but Dylan made a speedy recovery and left the hospital saying, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon." He was back on the road by midsummer, and in early fall performed before Pope John Paul II at the World Eucharistic Conference in Bologna, Italy. The Pope treated the audience of 200,000 people to a homily based on Dylan's lyric "Blowin' in the Wind".

September saw the release of the new Lanois-produced album, Time Out of Mind. With its bitter assessment of love and morbid ruminations, Dylan's first collection of original songs in seven years was highly acclaimed. One critic wrote: "the songs themselves are uniformly powerful, adding up to Dylan's best overall collection in years." This collection of complex songs won him his first solo "Album of the Year" Grammy Award.

In December 1997, U.S. President Bill Clinton presented Dylan with a Kennedy Center Honor in the East Room of the White House, paying this tribute: "He probably had more impact on people of my generation than any other creative artist. His voice and lyrics haven't always been easy on the ear, but throughout his career Bob Dylan has never aimed to please. He's disturbed the peace and discomforted the powerful."

2000s

Dylan commenced the new millennium by winning his first Oscar; his song "Things Have Changed", penned for the film Wonder Boys, won an Academy Award in March 2001. The Oscar (by some reports a facsimile) tours with him, presiding over shows perched atop an amplifier.

"Love and Theft" was released on September 11, 2001. Recorded with his touring band, Dylan produced the album himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. The album was critically well-received and earned nominations for several Grammy awards. Critics noted that Dylan was widening his musical palette to include rockabilly, Western swing, jazz, and even lounge ballads.

In 2003, Dylan revisited the evangelical songs from his "born again" period and participated in the CD project . That year also saw the release of the film Masked & Anonymous, which Dylan co-wrote with director Larry Charles under the alias Sergei Petrov. Dylan played the central character in the film, Jack Fate, alongside a cast which included Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz and John Goodman. The film polarised critics: many dismissed it as an "incoherent mess"; a few treated it as a serious work of art.

In October 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, . The book confounded expectations. Dylan devoted three chapters to his first year in New York City in 1961–1962, virtually ignoring the mid-'60s when his fame was at its height. He also devoted chapters to the albums New Morning (1970) and Oh Mercy (1989). The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award.

Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film biography No Direction Home was broadcast in September 2005. It was shown on September 26–27, 2005, on BBC Two in the UK and PBS in the US. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself. The film received a Peabody Award in April 2006 and a Columbia-duPont Award in January 2007. The featured unreleased songs from Dylan's early career.

Dylan earned yet another distinction in a 2007 study of US legal opinions and briefs that found his lyrics were quoted by judges and lawyers more than those of any other songwriter, 186 times versus 74 by The Beatles, who were second. Among those quoting Dylan were US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, both conservatives. The most widely cited lines included "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "when you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose" from "Like a Rolling Stone".

Modern Times (2006–08)

May 3, 2006, was the premiere of Dylan's DJ career, hosting a weekly radio program, Theme Time Radio Hour, for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections revolving around a chosen theme. Dylan played classic and obscure records from the 1930s to the present day, including contemporary artists as diverse as Blur, Prince, L.L. Cool J and The Streets. The show was praised by fans and critics as "great radio," as Dylan told stories and made eclectic references with his sardonic humor, while achieving a thematic beauty with his musical choices. In April 2009, Dylan broadcast the 100th show in his radio series; the theme was "Goodbye" and the final record played was Woody Guthrie's "So Long, It's Been Good To Know Yuh". This has led to speculation that Dylan's radio series may have ended.

On August 29, 2006, Dylan released his Modern Times album. Despite some coarsening of Dylan's voice (a critic for The Guardian characterised his singing on the album as "a catarrhal death rattle") most reviewers praised the album, and many described it as the final installment of a successful trilogy, embracing Time Out of Mind and "Love and Theft". Modern Times entered the U.S. charts at number one, making it Dylan's first album to reach that position since 1976's Desire.

Nominated for three Grammy Awards, Modern Times won Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album and Bob Dylan also won Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "Someday Baby". Modern Times was named Album of the Year, 2006, by Rolling Stone magazine, and by Uncut in the UK. On the same day that Modern Times was released the iTunes Music Store released , a digital box set containing all of his albums (773 tracks in total), along with 42 rare and unreleased tracks.

In August 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released—bearing the tagline "inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan". The movie uses six distinct characters to represent different aspects of Dylan's life, played by Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. Dylan's previously unreleased 1967 recording from which the film takes its name was released for the first time on the film's original soundtrack; all other tracks are covers of Dylan songs, specially recorded for the movie by a diverse range of artists, including Eddie Vedder, Mason Jennings, Stephen Malkmus, Jeff Tweedy, Karen O, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Richie Havens, and Tom Verlaine.

On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo. As part of this campaign, Mark Ronson produced a re-mix of Dylan's 1966 tune "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)," which was released as a maxi-single. This was the first time Dylan had sanctioned a re-mix of one of his classic recordings.

The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan's commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This first became evidenced in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria's Secret lingerie. Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper Will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII. The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by Will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.

In October 2008, Columbia released Volume 8 of Dylan's Bootleg Series, as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley. The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about "rip-off packaging" from some fans and commentators. The release was widely acclaimed by critics. The plethora of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to Uncut's reviewer: "Tell Tale Signs is awash with evidence of (Dylan's) staggering mercuriality, his evident determination even in the studio to repeat himself as little as possible."

Together Through Life, Christmas in the Heart (2009)

Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan's website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, "Life Is Hard," "the record sort of took its own direction". Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter.

The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon of work. Andy Gill wrote in The Independent that the record "features Dylan in fairly relaxed, spontaneous mood, content to grab such grooves and sentiments as flit momentarily across his radar. So while it may not contain too many landmark tracks, it's one of the most naturally enjoyable albums you'll hear all year."

, April 28, 2006]]

In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., making Bob Dylan (67 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart.

On October 13, 2009, Dylan released a Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, comprising such Christmas standards as "Little Drummer Boy", "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus". Dylan's royalties from the sale of this album will benefit the charities Feeding America in the USA, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme.

The album received generally favorable reviews. The New Yorker commented that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to "some of his croakiest vocals in a while", and speculated that Dylan's intentions might be ironic: "Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there's not a wink in the childish optimism of 'Here Comes Santa Claus' or 'Winter Wonderland' is to ignore a half-century of biting satire." In USA Today, Edna Gundersen pointed out that Dylan was "revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers." Gundersen concluded that Dylan "couldn't sound more sentimental or sincere".

In an interview published by Street News Service, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: "There wasn't any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too." The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 86, indicating "universal acclaim". In the same week, Sony Legacy released Bob Dylan: The Original Mono Recordings, a box set which for the first time presented Dylan's eight earliest albums, from Bob Dylan (1962) to John Wesley Harding (1967), in their original mono mix in the CD format, accompanied by new liner notes by Dylan critic Greil Marcus.

On April 12, 2011, Legacy Recordings released Bob Dylan in Concert – Brandeis University 1963 . The recording was taped at Brandeis University on May 10, 1963, two weeks prior to the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. The tape had been discovered in the archive of music writer Ralph J. Gleason, and had previously been available as a limited edition supplement to The Bootleg Series Vol. 9. The recording carries liner notes by Dylan scholar Michael Gray. Gray writes, "(The) Dylan performance it captured, from way back when Kennedy was President and the Beatles hadn't yet reached America, wasn't even on fans' radar.... It reveals him not at any Big Moment but giving a performance like his folk club sets of the period... This is the last live performance we have of Bob Dylan before he becomes a star."

The extent to which his work was studied at an academic level was demonstrated on Dylan's 70th birthday on May 24, 2011, when three universities organised symposia on his work. The University of Mainz, the University of Vienna, and the University of Bristol invited literary critics and cultural historians from Europe and the US to give papers on aspects of Dylan's work. Other events, including tribute bands, intellectual debates and simple singalongs, took place around the world, as reported in The Guardian: "From Moscow to Madrid, Norway to Northampton and Malaysia to his home state of Minnesota, self-confessed "Bobcats" will gather today to celebrate the 70th birthday of a giant of popular music."

Never Ending Tour

, 2006]] The Never Ending Tour commenced on June 7, 1988, and Dylan has played roughly 100 dates a year for the entirety of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century—a heavier schedule than most performers who started out in the 1960s. By the end of 2010, Dylan and his band had played more than 2300 shows, anchored by long-time bassist Tony Garnier, multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron and guitarist Charlie Sexton. To the dismay of some of his audience, Dylan's performances remain unpredictable as he alters his arrangements and changes his vocal approach night after night. Critical opinion about Dylan's shows remains divided. Critics such as Richard Williams and Andy Gill have argued that Dylan has found a successful way to present his rich legacy of material. Others have criticised his vocal style as a "one-dimensional growl with which he chews up, mangles and spits out the greatest lyrics ever written so that they are effectively unrecognisable", and his lack of interest in bonding with his audience.

Dylan's performances in China in April 2011 generated controversy. Some criticised him for not making any explicit comment on the political situation in China, and for, allegedly, allowing the Chinese authorities to censor his set-list. Others defended Dylan's performances, arguing that such criticism represented a misunderstanding of Dylan's art, and that no evidence for the censorship of Dylan's set-list existed.

Dylan responded to these allegations of censorship by posting a statement on his website: "As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play."

In April 2011, Dylan performed concerts in Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Australia. Dylan's website has published details of Dylan's 2011 tour of Europe, Israel and the US from June to August, commencing in Cork, Ireland, and concluding in Bangor, Maine.

Artist

Over a decade after Random House had published Drawn Blank (1994), a book of Dylan's drawings, an exhibit of his art, The Drawn Blank Series, opened in October 2007 at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany. This first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made earlier in 2007 from the original drawings. The exhibition's opening also premiered the release of the book Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series, which includes 170 reproductions from the series.

From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series.

Discography

Awards

Personal life

Family

Dylan married Sara Lownds on November 22, 1965. Their first child, Jesse Byron Dylan, was born on January 6, 1966, and they had three more children: Anna Lea, Samuel Isaac Abraham, and Jakob Luke (born December 9, 1969). Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Dylan, born October 21, 1961). She is now married to musician Peter Himmelman, an Orthodox Jew. In the 1990s his son Jakob became well known as the lead singer of the band The Wallflowers. Jesse Dylan is a film director and a successful businessman. Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced on June 29, 1977.

In June 1986, Dylan married his longtime backup singer Carolyn Dennis (often professionally known as Carol Dennis). Their daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, was born on January 31, 1986. The couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' Dylan biography, Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan in 2001. Dylan now lives in Malibu, California, when not on the road.

Religious beliefs

Growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan and his parents were part of the area's small but close-knit Jewish community, and in May 1954 Dylan had his Bar Mitzvah. Around the time of his 30th birthday, in 1971, Dylan visited Israel, and also met Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the New York-based Jewish Defense League. Time Magazine quoted Dylan saying about Kahane, "He's a really sincere guy. He's really put it all together." Later, Dylan downplayed the extent of his contact with Kahane.

For a period during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bob Dylan publicly converted to Christianity. From January to April 1979, Dylan participated in Bible study classes at the Vineyard School of Discipleship in Reseda, California. Pastor Kenn Gulliksen has recalled: "Larry Myers and Paul Emond went over to Bob's house and ministered to him. He responded by saying, 'Yes he did in fact want Christ in his life.' And he prayed that day and received the Lord."

By 1984, Dylan was deliberately distancing himself from the "born-again" label. He told Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone magazine: "I've never said I'm born again. That's just a media term. I don't think I've been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come." In response to Loder's asking whether he belonged to any Church or synagogue, Dylan laughingly replied, "Not really. Uh, the Church of the Poison Mind." In 1997 he told David Gates of Newsweek:

In an interview published in The New York Times on September 28, 1997, journalist Jon Pareles reported that "Dylan says he now subscribes to no organized religion."

Dylan has been described, in the last 20 years, as a supporter of the Chabad Lubavitch movement and has privately participated in Jewish religious events, including the bar mitzvahs of his sons and attending Hadar Hatorah, a Chabad Lubavitch yeshiva. In September 1989 and September 1991, Dylan appeared on the Chabad telethon. Jewish news services have reported that Dylan has visited Chabad synagogues; on September 22, 2007 (Yom Kippur), he attended Congregation Beth Tefillah, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was called to the Torah for the sixth aliyah.

Dylan has continued to perform songs from his gospel albums in concert, occasionally covering traditional religious songs. He has also made passing references to his religious faith—such as in a 2004 interview with 60 Minutes, when he told Ed Bradley that "the only person you have to think twice about lying to is either yourself or to God." He also explained his constant touring schedule as part of a bargain he made a long time ago with the "chief commander—in this earth and in the world we can't see."

In a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan promoting his Christmas LP, Christmas in the Heart, Flanagan commented on the "heroic performance" Dylan gave of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and that Dylan "delivered the song like a true believer". Dylan replied: "Well, I am a true believer."

Legacy

Bob Dylan is one of the most influential figures of the 20th century, musically and culturally. Dylan was included in the where he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation". Biographer Howard Sounes placed him among the most exalted company when he said, "There are giant figures in art who are sublimely good—Mozart, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Shakespeare, Dickens. Dylan ranks alongside these artists."

Initially modeling his style on the songs of Woody Guthrie, and lessons learned from the blues of Robert Johnson, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 60s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". Paul Simon suggested that Dylan's early compositions virtually took over the folk genre: "[Dylan's] early songs were very rich ... with strong melodies. 'Blowin' in the Wind' has a really strong melody. He so enlarged himself through the folk background that he incorporated it for a while. He defined the genre for a while."

When Dylan made his move from acoustic music to a rock backing, the mix became more complex. For many critics, Dylan's greatest achievement was the cultural synthesis exemplified by his mid-'60s trilogy of albums—Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In Mike Marqusee's words: "Between late 1964 and the summer of 1966, Dylan created a body of work that remains unique. Drawing on folk, blues, country, R&B;, rock'n'roll, gospel, British beat, symbolist, modernist and Beat poetry, surrealism and Dada, advertising jargon and social commentary, Fellini and Mad magazine, he forged a coherent and original artistic voice and vision. The beauty of these albums retains the power to shock and console."

One legacy of Dylan's verbal sophistication was the increasing attention paid by literary critics to his lyrics. Professor Christopher Ricks published a 500 page analysis of Dylan's work, placing him in the context of Eliot, Keats and Tennyson, and claiming that Dylan was a poet worthy of the same close and painstaking analysis. Former British poet laureate, Andrew Motion, argued that Bob Dylan's lyrics should be studied in schools. Since 1996, academics have lobbied the Swedish Academy to award Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Dylan's voice was, in some ways, as startling as his lyrics. New York Times critic Robert Shelton described Dylan's early vocal style as "a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie's old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk's." David Bowie, in his tribute, "Song for Bob Dylan", described Dylan's singing as "a voice of sand and glue". Dylan's voice continued to develop as he began to work with rock'n'roll backing bands; critic Michael Gray described the sound of Dylan's vocal on his hit single, "Like a Rolling Stone", as "at once young and jeeringly cynical". As Dylan's voice aged during the 1980s, for some critics, it became more expressive. Christophe Lebold writes in the journal Oral Tradition, "Dylan's more recent broken voice enables him to present a world view at the sonic surface of the songs—this voice carries us across the landscape of a broken, fallen world. The anatomy of a broken world in "Everything is Broken" (on the album Oh Mercy) is but an example of how the thematic concern with all things broken is grounded in a concrete sonic reality."

Dylan's influence has been felt in several musical genres. As Edna Gundersen stated in USA Today: "Dylan's musical DNA has informed nearly every simple twist of pop since 1962." Many musicians have testified to Dylan's influence, such as Joe Strummer, who praised Dylan as having "laid down the template for lyric, tune, seriousness, spirituality, depth of rock music." Other major musicians to have acknowledged Dylan's importance include John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Ferry, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Syd Barrett, Cat Stevens, and Tom Waits. More directly, both The Byrds and The Band, two 1960s contemporary groups with some measure of influence on popular music themselves, largely owed their initial success to Dylan: the Byrds with their hit of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and subsequent album; and the Band for their association with him on tour in 1966, on retreat in Woodstock, and on their debut album featuring three previously unreleased Dylan songs.

There have been dissenters. Because Dylan was widely credited with imbuing pop culture with a new seriousness, the critic Nik Cohn objected: "I can't take the vision of Dylan as seer, as teenage messiah, as everything else he's been worshipped as. The way I see him, he's a minor talent with a major gift for self-hype." Similarly, Australian critic Jack Marx credited Dylan with changing the persona of the rock star: "What cannot be disputed is that Dylan invented the arrogant, faux-cerebral posturing that has been the dominant style in rock since, with everyone from Mick Jagger to Eminem educating themselves from the Dylan handbook." Joni Mitchell described Dylan as a "plagiarist" and a "fake" in a 2010 interview in the Los Angeles Times, while responding to a suggestion that she and Dylan were similar since they had both changed their birthnames. Mitchell's comment led to discussions of Dylan's use of other people's material, both supporting and criticising Dylan.

If Bob Dylan's legacy in the 1960s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music, now that he has reached the age of 70, he has been described as a figure who has greatly expanded the folk culture from which he initially emerged. As J. Hoberman wrote in The Village Voice, "Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock 'n' roll. No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minnesota, would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world's first and greatest rock 'n' roll beatnik bard and then—having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning—vanish into a folk tradition of his own making."

Footnotes

References

External links

BobDylan.com – Official web site, including lyrics and touring schedule

Expecting Rain – Dylan news and events, updated daily

BobLinks – Comprehensive log of concerts and set lists

Bjorner's Still on the Road – Information on recording sessions and performances

Dylan and the Media – An analysis of Dylan's media relations

Bob Dylan: The Early Years – slideshow by Life magazine

Bob Dylan Turns 70: Rare Interviews and Songs – video by Democracy Now!

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