Biograph - Bob Dylan

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks	Flawless
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Not applicable
Value for Money

Advantages:	Outstanding Lyrics
Disadvantages:	Absoloutly none

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Bob Dylan celebrates his 60th birthday this month, it is he I have to thank for my name, and I was weaned on Bob Dylan. My father was and still is a huge fan! For as long as I can remember as soon as he's had a drink, he'll look at me and grin I know what’s coming next, "Corrina Corrina hey girl your on my mind. I've got a bird that whistles, I've got a bird that sings, but if I ain’t got Corrina I ain’t got a thing". Bob Dylan was to him and I grew up to believe the greatest songwriter in the land. He would tell his songs as a story in a way that he hoped I would understand. Translated and explained with passion and obvious admiration. Was there any wonder I grew up intrigued by this man? One of my favourite albums is Biograph on it are tracks that in one way or another represent sometime in his life.

Tracks on album
Lay, Lady, Lay
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
If Not for You
I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
I'll Keep It with Mine
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Blowin' in the Wind
Masters of War
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Percy's Song
Mixed Up Confusion
Tombstone Blues
The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar
Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
Like a Rolling Stone
Lay Down Your Weary Tune
Subterranean Homesick Blues
I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
Visions of Johanna
Every Grain of Sand
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)
Mr. Tambourine Man
Dear Landlord
It Ain't Me, Babe
You Angel You
Million Dollar Bash
To Ramona
You're a Big Girl Now
Abandoned Love
Tangled Up in Blue
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
Positively 4th Street
Isis
Jet Pilot
Caribbean Wind
Up to Me
Baby, I'm in the Mood for You
I Wanna Be Your Lover
I Want You
Heart of Mine
On a Night Like This
Just Like a Woman
Romance in Durango
Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)
Gotta Serve Somebody
I Believe in You
Time Passes Slowly
I Shall Be Released
Knockin' on Heaven's Door
All Along the Watchtower
Solid Rock
Forever Young

ROBERT ALLEN ZIMMERMAN

Bob Dylan came into this world on the 24th May 1941; he was named Robert Allen Zimmerman. His family settled in small town called Hibbing, Minnesota, after they had lived for a short time in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Gallup, New Mexico. His grandparents were Jewish and his father was a middle-classed owner of a hardware store. His many talents began to show at an early age, by the time he was ten he had started writing poems and by the time he was in his early teens he had taught himself how to play the piano and guitar. He performed in bands with his school friends calling themselves the Golden Chords and The Rock Boppers. His ambition as a teenager was to join Little Richard. He left Hibbing late in 1959 to go to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Overwhelmed by music he began to trace rock and roll back to its roots. Music soon became his main interest. He started hanging around with the local musicians resulting in him rarely going to a lesson.

THE FOLKSINGER

Minneapolis was so he thought the first big city he'd lived in, quickly he found himself aquatinted with the local rural- folk. He discovered from his travels that most towns had similar types of set ups, always meeting people from the last place as no-one had any particular to live. This resulted in his image as a hobo styled image being created. His decision on the society as it was had already been decided, not wanting to be a part of what he considered to be to be pretty phoney. It was said that he just got up one snowy and morning with only guitar and his suitcase and left bringing to an end his six-month stay at university.
He returned to Hibbing for a short while, leaving there for New York with two goals on his mind to meet Woody Guthrie and to become a part of the folk-music scene at Greenwich Village. He succeeded both!
Here the blues was born to Bob, he watched a blues performer simultaneously play the guitar and harmonica, intrigued by this it wasn’t long before he had soon taught himself how to do the same. The impact he made on the folk scene was huge, fascinated by him many listened, as he would weave his own web of tales and myths about whom he was and where he was from. It was here he started using the stage name Bob Dylan, he changed it legally in August 1962. Other musicians were left in awe with his uncanny ability to learn a song after hearing them just once and producing his songs at an unbelievable pace, one of which was a tribute to his hero titled Song to Woody. Woody's hospital bedside was where he first performed his own songs, Woody 'his childhood hero was his only audience.
His first professional appearance came in 1961, The venue Gerde's Folk City'. Experiencing Bobs performance first hand a critic from the New-York times, gave Bob the most important review of his life. He said Bob Dylan without a doubt was "bursting at the seams with talent." Next the signing of his first recording contract with Columbia records. His unique rough talking voice was unmistakably unique, he sounded more like ageing black man, singing the blues rather than the young Jewish folksinger that he was. His first album 'Bob Dylan' seemed promising containing only two pieces of his original work. His second was a masterpiece, 'The Freewheeling' Bob Dylan. It contained some of the best-remembered sixties folk songs and was released in 1963.

INJUSTICES AND PROTESTS

With encouragement from his long-time girlfriend Suez Rotolo he became interested in and an active part of the Civil Rights movement. His song Blowin' in the Wind, has to be the most famous of his protest songs, It became a civil-rights anthem, but he wrote and recorded other Protest songs like Masters of War and A Hard Rains A-Gonna fall. 'The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll', was wrote in a notebook when he read of her murder in a local newspaper. Hattie a black maid from Baltimore murdered by a drunken socialite, who escaped with a six-month sentence, This was just one song of brutal injustices that he sang.

HIS LOVES AND HIS LOVERS

Bob Dylan is a man who has risked public humiliation by his lack of discretion about making no secret of his passions. He was often referred to as a fool, a romantic and a hysteric. He was considered somewhat strange; maybe his strangeness was his strength. A tribute to his inspiration Woody Guthrie Song to Woody is said to be one that was to set him on his way set him on his way. Don't Think Twice, it's All Right' was one of early love he wrote this during a separation from Suze then when they finally split he released his song Ballad in Plain D said to be the most revealing song he did. It gave a harsh one-sided, blow by blow, revealing picture of there break-up. More than twenty years later, he said that this was the song that he wished he had never released. He became involved with one of the most famous folk divas, Joan Baez not after he split with Suze. The relationship was beneficial for them both. Joan used his unreleased material for her albums and she introduced him to thousands of fans at her concerts. Early in 1965 his relationship with Joan crumbled. He then met Sara Lownde and by the end of that year they were married.

THOUGHT’S IT WAS OVER

July 1966,feared dead When he was thrown from his motorbike near his home in Woodstock, the nation's radio stations interrupted their programs announce the news as a bulletin. Reports were brief and incomplete. In London a memorial poster was printed, leaving blank space to give the time and place of his funeral. Rumors began to pile up. They said he was dead. That he was disfigured, lost was his voice, his hair, his mind, (none were true). His blessing in disguise enabled him to re-evaluate his life, career and priorities in solitude of his home with Sara and their newborn son Jesse. Together Bob and Sara had four children and Bob adopted a child from her former marriage.
Seven years after the motorbike accident he and the Band started rehearsing the Dylan songbook for his come back tour in 1974. They say his concerts were the stuff of legend, and that there were requests for more than twelve million tickets, though only 658,000 seats were available for the forty live performances, While the tour seemed to bring back his creative spirit, his personal life was in a mess. He and Sara separated and soon they were divorced.

CONFUSIONS CREATIONS AND CREATOR RETURNS

With great passion came the songs he wrote, through his confusion, pain, and anger over his divorce. Resulting his second no.1 album. The most mature, moving explanation of love and loss ever committed to record. His next move came as an even bigger shock, his conversion to Christianity. His new-found faith highlighted in much of his work, his hit single Gotta Serve Somebody was what gave him his first Grammy award, for Best Male rock vocal performer. He started performing only his new, Christian material, which upset many long-term fans. He returned to his religion Judaism with a pilgrimage to Israel where he encountered his spiritual rebirth. In 1997 he almost did knock on heaven's door, The night before the start of his European tour, he was hospitalised with histoplasmosis, a potentially fatal infection that creates swelling in the sac surrounding the heart. But thankfully he made a speedy recovery and was soon back on tour.

A CHILD AND AN OSCAR

Ii has recently been made public that he has another child who is now fifteen. Her mother Gospel-rock vocalist Carol Dennis recently made a statement about her relationship with Bob. They both decided to keep their marriage and their daughter away from the public eye for the child's benefit. They made a choice to keep our marriage a private matter for a simple reason to give their daughter a normal childhood. Also for the same reason she was not given her fathers name they both agreed their daughter could make her own decision to take her father's last name when she became mature enough to do so. She did so two years ago, and she is now called Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan
He won his first Oscar for Best Song in March this year, for his song Things have changed from the film The Wonder Boys. On accepting the award, he said, "Oh good God, this is amazing...I'd like to thank the members of the Academy who were bold enough to give me this award for this song. It's a song that doesn't pussyfoot around or turn a blind eye to human nature.'' But I ask have they ever?