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Bob Dylan: A Legend Essay

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Bob Dylan: A Legend

"An artist inoculates his world with disillusionment," said the infamous writer, Henry Miller. Robert Allen Zimmerman, grandchild of Welsh-Jewish immigrants, was born on May 24, 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota, near Duluth. About fifteen years later, he took on the name Bob Dylan unknowingly stamping himself and his name in folk music history forever.

Dylan began writing poetry and song lyrics at a young age and came to the name of Bob Dylan after the poet Dylan Thomas. In 1959, Dylan attended the University of Minnesota emphasizing folk music but soon dropped his education to pursue his interest in music, his obsessions with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. …show more content…

Some fans called Dylan "leader of protest-song era of early sixties."

In 1965, Dylan shocked the fans with a mixture of "folk, rock, folk-rock, protest songs, electric blues, and Nashville style country." He was screaming freedom through songs such as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" when all that seemed to work was war. Even in his album Another Side of Bob Dylan, a lot of his poetry is printed and simply by reading it, one can feel his spirit, his voice. The cover poetry spells "to" as if it were "t" just to feel his rhythm.

In 1966, Dylan suffered from a motorcycle accident and spent a few months home recovering from not only the pain but the rumors of brain damage and death. This forced him to drop out of "the gypsy life of concert tours for a while." After many months of close to solitary confinement, Dylan produced The Basement Tapes. At this point, he sold 58 million albums and 500 songs. (www.radio.hazak.com)

Not long after The Basement Tapes, Dylan seemed to focus more on the spiritual aspect of his own life by sharing how he felt about different issues in his songs. Even the loved "All Along the Watchtower" is based from Isaiah's images in the Bible. (www.radiohazak.com.) It was not until 1978 that Dylan made the following statement, "I told you the times they are a-changin' and they did. I said the answer was blowin' in the wind and it was. I'm

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