Bob Dylan, the greatest songwriter of his era, turns eighty on Monday. A dominant presence for more than sixty years, Dylan has made an indelible mark on the history of rock and roll, in part by not treating age and longevity like most here-and-gone performers. The New Yorker has covered him from the start.
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This week, as a birthday celebration, we’re highlighting a selection of pieces celebrating the musician and his virtuosity. In “The Crackin’, Shakin’, Breakin’ Sounds,” from 1964, Nat Hentoff visits Dylan in the studio and catches the artist in the first stages of his meteoric recording career. (“Wiry, tense, and boyish, Dylan looks and acts like a fusion of Huck Finn and a young Woody Guthrie. Both onstage and off, he appears to be just barely able to contain his prodigious energy.”) In “The Wanderer,” Alex Ross follows Dylan on the road during his Never Ending Tour, which has defined the most recent decades of his seminal performances. (“It’s hard to pin down what he does: he is a composer and a performer at once, and his shows cause his songs to mutate, so that no definitive or ideal version exists. Dylan’s legacy will be the sum of thousands of performances, over many decades.”) In “Bob Dylan’s ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ Hits Hard,” Amanda Petrusich argues that the musician’s most recent album, his first of original songs in eight years, is remarkably attuned to the cultural moment. In “Never Ending Bob Dylan,” Howard Fishman recalls how he became a Dylan zealot in his teens. Finally, in “Bob on Bob,” Louis Menand examines the evolution of Dylan’s musical style—from protest songs to popular music. This weekend, sit back and explore our catalogue of stories about this iconic artist.
—David Remnick
Never Ending Bob Dylan
On his 1988 tour, as Dylan was at the nadir of his commercial and artistic relevance, I saw beauty achieved in a way that was ugly, alternative, and outside.
