Tag Archives: bob dylan

Mar22

HIWAY AMERICA -THE FAMED CHELSEA HOTEL N.Y.C.

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  • For more than half a century, New York City's historic Chelsea Hotel was a haven for writers, musicians and artists. Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Mark Rothko, Arthur C. Clarke and Bob Dylan are just a few of the scores of creative thinkers who spent time in the 12-story, West 23rd Street landmark.

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                      For more than half a century, New York City’s historic Chelsea Hotel was a haven for writers, musicians and artists. Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Mark Rothko, Arthur C. Clarke and Bob Dylan are just a few of the scores of creative thinkers who spent time in the 12-story, West 23rd Street landmark.

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          Bobbi Bowers/Flickr

  • The front entrance honors some of the hotel's many well-known residents, including Dylan Thomas, James Schuyler, Brendan Behan, Thomas Wolfe and Leonard Cohen. "I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel," Cohen wrote in his 1974 song "Chelsea Hotel No. 2."

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                      The front entrance honors some of the hotel’s many well-known residents, including Dylan Thomas, James Schuyler, Brendan Behan, Thomas Wolfe and Leonard Cohen. “I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,” Cohen wrote in his 1974 song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2.”

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

  • The building was sold in May for more than $80 million to real estate developer Joseph Chetrit. Now, only long-term residents remain.

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                      The building was sold in May for more than $80 million to real estate developer Joseph Chetrit. Now, only long-term residents remain.

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          Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

  • Front desk manager Jerry Weinstein is shown on duty in June 2007. Since then, most of the Chelsea staff have been let go. "It was like we didn't have family anymore," says long-term resident Nicola L.

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                      Front desk manager Jerry Weinstein is shown on duty in June 2007. Since then, most of the Chelsea staff have been let go. “It was like we didn’t have family anymore,” says long-term resident Nicola L.

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

  • The Chelsea's lobby, shown above in 2007, was once filled with the work of its residents.

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                      The Chelsea’s lobby, shown above in 2007, was once filled with the work of its residents.

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

  • Former manager Stanley Bard, shown in his office in 2007, fostered the Chelsea's artistic community for more than 50 years. "He was kind of like a huge leaf that kids could go under away from the storm," says photographer turned bellman Timur Cimkentli. Bard was forced out by the hotel's board of directors in 2007.

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                      Former manager Stanley Bard, shown in his office in 2007, fostered the Chelsea’s artistic community for more than 50 years. “He was kind of like a huge leaf that kids could go under away from the storm,” says photographer turned bellman Timur Cimkentli. Bard was forced out by the hotel’s board of directors in 2007.

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

  • Madonna lived in this room at the Chelsea after coming to New York in the early 1980s.

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                      Madonna lived in this room at the Chelsea after coming to New York in the early 1980s.

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

  • The view from Madonna's former room at the Chelsea Hotel.

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                      The view from Madonna’s former room at the Chelsea Hotel.

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  • Ed Hamilton has lived at the Chelsea for 16 years. "I came here to be a writer, 'cause it seemed like the place to go," he says.

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                      Ed Hamilton has lived at the Chelsea for 16 years. “I came here to be a writer, ’cause it seemed like the place to go,” he says.

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          Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

  • A decorated stairway is just one of many art-adorned spaces at the hotel.

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                      A decorated stairway is just one of many art-adorned spaces at the hotel.

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          Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

  • Former manager Stanley Bard, standing in room 614, points out a photograph of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, taken in that same room. Miller lived in 614 for several years during the 1960s.

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                      Former manager Stanley Bard, standing in room 614, points out a photograph of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, taken in that same room. Miller lived in 614 for several years during the 1960s.

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          Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

  • The living room of 614.

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                      The living room of 614.

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          Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

  • Renovations to the hotel will be subtle, says architect Gene Kaufman. Everyone working on the project realizes that the Chelsea is a rare and special thing, he says.

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                      Renovations to the hotel will be subtle, says architect Gene Kaufman. Everyone working on the project realizes that the Chelsea is a rare and special thing, he says.

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

  • Sherill Tippins has spent six years writing a book about the hotel. The Chelsea, she says, "has a spirit of its own. ... I don't think you can defeat this building."

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                      Sherill Tippins has spent six years writing a book about the hotel. The Chelsea, she says, “has a spirit of its own. … I don’t think you can defeat this building.”

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          Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

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The fabled Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan was home to Mark Twain, Virgil Thomson and Brendan Behan. Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, there. Jack Kerouac worked on On the Road. Bob Dylan wrote “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Artists Larry Rivers and Mark Rothko, and scores of painters and photographers also spent creative time there. But now the future of the hotel is up in the air.

   Multimedia and performance artist Nicola L. has been at the Chelsea some 30 years. She came, she returned to France, she rented another New York apartment, and then she returned. “You come back to Chelsea like you go to your mother when something is wrong,” she says.

But the building has been sold. Once filled with art by residents, the walls and stairwells are mostly bare now. Only the long-term residents remain. The staff — some of whom had been there for decades — have been let go. When the staff left, says Nicola L., “the bellman, the people at the desk — it was like we didn’t have family anymore and we were in an empty boat. ”

The Chelsea Hotel is unlike any other in New York. It’s split between rental apartments, and tiny hotel rooms where people could stay for a night. Ed Hamilton, author of Legends of the Chelsea Hotel, has lived there for 16 years. The first apartment he had cost him $500 a month.

hide captionA view from the room of 16-year resident and writer Ed Hamilton, who moved to the Chelsea in his mid-30s. “It seemed like the place to go,” he says.

       Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

A view from the room of 16-year resident and writer Ed Hamilton, who moved to the Chelsea in his mid-30s. "It seemed like the place to go," he says.

A view from the room of 16-year resident and writer Ed Hamilton, who moved to the Chelsea in his mid-30s. “It seemed like the place to go,” he says.

Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

“It must have been 100 square feet,” he says. Now he lives with his wife in a room that’s twice that size but seems minuscule: no kitchen, the bathroom is down the hall, clothes are hanging on the walls.

“I came here to be a writer because it seemed like the place to go,” he says. “I was in my mid-30s. We had always heard about this place because Thomas Wolfe had lived here, and the beat writers.”

The hotel is filled with ghosts. Not only those of Dylan Thomas, who drank himself to death at the Chelsea, or Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sid Vicious, who was stabbed to death in their room, but all kinds of ghosts. Sherill Tippins has spent six years writing a book on the Chelsea. She once brought a friend to the hotel who claimed she could see ghosts.

The friend was up all night, talking to the ghosts, Tippins reports. “She told me, ‘They’re everywhere — in the elevators and in the lobby, and they want attention so much.’ ” Larry Rivers, the “leading ghost,” told the friend: “It is not about the art, it is about the life. That is the important thing here.”

hide captionThe view from Madonna’s former room at the  Chelsea Hotel, where she lived after coming to New York in the early  1980s.

       Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

The view from Madonna's former room at the Chelsea Hotel, where she lived after coming to New York in the early 1980s.

The view from Madonna’s former room at the  Chelsea Hotel, where she lived after coming to New York in the early  1980s.

Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

And that’s what most residents will tell you. Scott Griffin, a theater producer, is head of the residents association. He has lived at the Chelsea for nearly 20 years. He says Arthur Miller and Robert Altman nurtured him at the Chelsea and made his career possible. “The core value of the Chelsea is not in steel or in bricks, but is in the life force that it has,” he adds.

Originally built in the 1880s by Philip Hubert, it was a socialist utopian innovation with communal dining rooms, artists’ studios, even a hospital clinic; Tippins says it was the first cooperative to have a mix on every floor: “Large rooms that people with more money can afford, and people who are more successful mixed in with smaller rooms of aspirers and regular working people. That was a deliberate design,” she explains, “and I think it is the reason the Chelsea has managed to remain the way it is.”

The Chelsea was also unique because of its management. Everybody talks about Stanley Bard, the building’s former manager. Timur Cimkentli was a photographer who lived at the Chelsea, but in 1987, when he couldn’t pay his rent, he became the building’s bellman. Cimkentli says Bard told him: “Maybe you’re not a very good photographer, but I have a job for you.”

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hide captionFormer Chelsea Hotel manager Stanley Bard shows off a picture of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller taken in room 614 — where Miller lived during the 1960s. The artist community flourished under Bard’s leadership for 50 years, before he was ousted by the hotel’s board of directors in 2007.

       Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

Former Chelsea Hotel manager Stanley Bard shows off a picture of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller taken in room 614 — where Miller lived during the 1960s. The artist community flourished under Bard's leadership for 50 years, before he was ousted by the hotel's board of directors in 2007.

Former Chelsea Hotel manager Stanley Bard shows off a picture of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller taken in room 614 — where Miller lived during the 1960s. The artist community flourished under Bard’s leadership for 50 years, before he was ousted by the hotel’s board of directors in 2007.

Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

Cimkentli says it was a sanctuary for the artists, for kids who really couldn’t pay their rent on time. “Any other hotel would have kicked them out,” he says. “Bard allowed that to flourish; he was kind of like a huge leaf that kids could go under away from the storm, and that was the rarity of this hotel, that he would keep you on, he would see you, and you would owe him two months’ rent and you would cry to him and he would say, ‘Don’t worry, keep painting, keep painting.’ ”

Bard was ousted four years ago after conflicts with the minority shareholders. Managers came and went. Then, in May, real estate developer Joseph Chetrit bought the building for some $80 million. Architect Gene Kaufman is in charge of the renovations, which he says will be subtle. Tenants are scared it will become a condominium, but Kaufman and others say it will remain a hotel. The first priority is to preserve, he says; the second, to make it safe and functional — issues like fire safety are huge; and then there is an obligation to the current residents.

Kaufman calls the Chelsea a rare and special thing, and says everyone working on the project realizes that. “We don’t have a lot of answers yet,” he says. “We are still thinking. So I do think it is going to take some time, and we don’t even have a schedule yet.”

Chetrit, the Chelsea’s new owner, was called by the New York Observer “the most mysterious big shot in New York real estate.” He almost never talks to the media, and calls to his office were not returned. Many people say they wonder whether Chetrit will fall in love with the Chelsea or run out of there screaming. Those are the exact words several people used, including Sherill Tippins. “People have run screaming from it, over and over, in the past five years or so,” she says, adding, “I, too, have been tussling with the building for years now; it takes you over and you struggle with it; it has a spirit of its own.”
But that makes her optimistic about the future of the Chelsea. “I don’t think you can defeat this building,” she says. After all, as Kaufman put it, “if this was just a nice building of the period, with no serious history, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

Mar12

FLOWER POWER AND THE COUNTERCULTURE

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FLOWER POWER AND THE COUNTERCULTURE

57h. Flower Power

Make love, not war. Don’t trust anyone over 30. Turn on, tune in, and drop out. I am a human being — please do not fold, bend spindle, or mutilate.

These and many more became slogans for emerging youth culture — a counterculture — in the 1960s. The baby boom was entering its teen years, and in sheer numbers they represented a larger force than any prior generation in the history of the United States. As more and more children of middle-class Americans entered college, many rejected the suburban conformity designed by their parents.

Grateful Dead concert poster The Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco gave rise to many of the popular rock groups of the era, including Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. This poster advertises a concert held at the Fillmore Auditorium, a popular San Francisco venue for psychedelic bands.

Never more than a minority movement, the so-called “hippie” lifestyle became synonymous with American youth of the 1960s. Displaying frank new attitudes about drugs and sex, communal lifestyles, and innovations in food, fashion, and music, the counterculture youth of America broke profoundly with almost all values their parents held dear.

The sexual revolution was in full swing on American college campuses. Birth control and a rejection of traditional views of sexuality led to a more casual attitude toward sex. Displays of public nudity became commonplace. Living together outside marriage shattered old norms.

In addition to changes in sexual attitudes, many youths experimented with drugs. Marijuana and LSD were used most commonly, but experimentation with mushrooms and pills was common as well. A Harvard professor named Timothy Leary made headlines by openly promoting the use of LSD. There was a price to be paid for these new attitudes. With the new freedom came an upsurge of venereal diseases, bad trips, and drug addictions.

Like the utopian societies of the 1840s, over 2000 rural communes formed during these turbulent times. Completely rejecting the capitalist system, many communes rotated duties, made their own laws, and elected their own leaders. Some were philosophically based, but others were influenced by new religions. Earth-centered religions, astrological beliefs, and Eastern faiths proliferated across American campuses. Some scholars labeled this trend as the Third Great Awakening.

Most communes, however, faced fates similar to their 19th century forebears. A charismatic leader would leave or the funds would become exhausted, and the commune would gradually dissolve.

One lasting change from the countercultural movement was in American diet. Health food stores sold wheat germ, yogurt, and granola, products completely foreign to the 1950s America. Vegetarianism became popular among many youths. Changes in fashion proved more fleeting. Long hair on young men was standard, as were Afros. Women often wore flowers in their hair. Ethnic or peasant clothing was celebrated.. Beads, bellbottom jeans, and tie-dyed shirts became the rage, as each person tried to celebrate his or her own sense of individuality.

The common bond among many youths of the time was music. Centered in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco, a new wave of psychedelic rock and roll became the music of choice. Bands like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and the Doors created new sounds with electrically enhanced guitars, subversive lyrics, and association with drugs.

Timothy Leary Dr. Timothy Leary — seen here in his later years — encouraged people of the 1960s to “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out” through the use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD.a

Folk music was fused with rock, embodied by the best-known solo artist of the decade, Bob Dylan. When the popular Beatles went psychedelic with their landmark album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, counterculture music became mainstream.

It is important to note that the counterculture was probably no more than ten percent of the American youth population. Contrary to common belief, most young Americans sought careers and lifestyles similar to their parents. Young educated people actually supported the war in Vietnam in greater numbers than older, uneducated Americans. The counterculture was simply so outrageous that the media made their numbers seem larger than in reality. Nevertheless, this lifestyle made an indelible cultural impact on America for decades to come.

What happened to the ideals of the counterculture? Why weren’t they able to sustain their utopian views? In part there views were subsumed by the greater culture. Moreover, it’s one thing to say you want a revolution, quite another to try to affect one.

Feb20

Bob Dylan to exhibit new artwork at National Portrait Gallery

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Bob Dylan to exhibit new artwork at National Portrait Gallery
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Bob Dylan will exhibit 12 new pastel portraits at the National Portrait   Gallery later this month.

Nina Felix, Bob Dylan Photo: Bob Dylan
A new collection of 12 pastel portraits by Bob   Dylan will be exhibited at the National   Portrait Gallery later this month, it has been announced.

The exhibition, called Bob Dylan: Face Value, represents the latest artwork by   the singer, who has been painting since the late Sixties but who only   started exhibiting his work six years ago. This is the first time Dylan’s   work will have been shown in a British museum.

Unusually for the National Portrait Gallery, the portraits are not of   characters from British public life, but are a combination of real and   fictitious characters, which have been constructed from Dylan’s imagination   and personal memories.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, said: “Bob   Dylan is one of the most influential cultural figures of our time. He has   always created a highly visual world either with his words or music, or in   paints and pastels.

“I am delighted that we can now share these 12 sketches which were made   for display at the National Portrait Gallery.”

Dylan, whose real name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, has previously had his work   exhibited at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany, the Halcyon Gallery in   London and the the Gagosian Gallery in New York.

Though Dylan is respected as an artist, the exhibition is also likely to   attract plenty of interest from music fans, keen to gain an insight into the   mind of a singer who has recorded 46 albums and sold 110 million records   worldwide. He is due to start a tour of the UK in November.

Art   historian John Elderfield described his art as “products of the same   extraordinary, inventive imagination, the same mind and eye, by the same   story-telling artist, for whom showing and telling – the temporal and the   spatial, the verbal and the visual – are not easily separated”.

Skip Sharpe, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan: Face Value will be in the Contemporary Collection displays,   Room 40, on the Ground Floor Lerner Galleries, National Portrait Gallery,   London, August 24 2013 – 5 January 2014

A new collection of 12 pastel portraits by Bob   Dylan will be exhibited at the National   Portrait Gallery later this month, it has been announced.

The exhibition, called Bob Dylan: Face Value, represents the latest artwork by   the singer, who has been painting since the late Sixties but who only   started exhibiting his work six years ago. This is the first time Dylan’s   work will have been shown in a British museum.

Unusually for the National Portrait Gallery, the portraits are not of   characters from British public life, but are a combination of real and   fictitious characters, which have been constructed from Dylan’s imagination   and personal memories.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, said: “Bob   Dylan is one of the most influential cultural figures of our time. He has   always created a highly visual world either with his words or music, or in   paints and pastels.

“I am delighted that we can now share these 12 sketches which were made   for display at the National Portrait Gallery.”

Dylan, whose real name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, has previously had his work   exhibited at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany, the Halcyon Gallery in   London and the the Gagosian Gallery in New York.

Though Dylan is respected as an artist, the exhibition is also likely to   attract plenty of interest from music fans, keen to gain an insight into the   mind of a singer who has recorded 46 albums and sold 110 million records   worldwide. He is due to start a tour of the UK in November.

Art   historian John Elderfield described his art as “products of the same   extraordinary, inventive imagination, the same mind and eye, by the same   story-telling artist, for whom showing and telling – the temporal and the   spatial, the verbal and the visual – are not easily separated”.

 

 

ImageImageImageImage

 Dylan Paintings Draw Scrutiny
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Bob Dylan in the late 1980s. He has proved elusive when questioned on his sources.Gagosian GalleryBob Dylan in the late 1980s. He has proved elusive when questioned on his sources.
"Trade" by Bob Dylan.Marcus Yam for The New York Times“Trade” by Bob Dylan.
A Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph from 1948.Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum PhotosA Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph from 1948.

The freewheeling artistic style of Bob Dylan, who has drawn on a variety of sources in creating his music and has previously raised questions of attribution in his work, is once again stirring debate — this time over an exhibition of his paintings at the Gagosian Gallery on the Upper East Side.

When the gallery announced the exhibition, called “The Asia Series,” this month, it said the collection of paintings and other artwork would provide “a visual journal” of Mr. Dylan’s travels “in Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea,” with “firsthand depictions of people, street scenes, architecture and landscape.”

But since the exhibition opened on Sept. 20, some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on Mr. Dylan’s own experiences and observations, or on photographs that are widely available and that he did not take.

A wide-ranging discussion at the Bob Dylan fan Web site Expecting Rain has pointed out similarities between several works in “The Asia Series” and existing or even well-known photographs — for example, between a painting by Mr. Dylan depicting two men and a Henri Cartier-Bresson photograph of two men, one a eunuch who served in the court of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi.

Bob Dylan's painting "Opium," on view at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan.Marcus Yam for The New York TimesBob Dylan’s painting “Opium,” on view at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan.
Léon Busy's photo "Woman Smoking Opium," similar to the painting, is part of a debate about Mr. Dylan's work.Musee d’Albert KahnLéon Busy’s photo “Woman Smoking Opium,” similar to the painting, is part of a debate about Mr. Dylan’s work.

Observers have pointed out that a painting by Mr. Dylan called “Opium,” which is used to illustrate a Web page for the “Asia Series” exhibition on the Gagosian site, appears to be closely modeled on a picture by Léon Busy, an early-20th-century photographer.

Separately, Michael Gray, in a post on his blog, Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, points out that a painting by Mr. Dylan depicting three young men playing a sidewalk board game is nearly identical to a photograph taken by Dmitri Kessel.

Mr. Gray, an author who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan’s work and its artistic influences, writes on his blog:

“The most striking thing is that Dylan has not merely used a photograph to inspire a painting: he has taken the photographer’s shot composition and copied it exactly. He hasn’t painted the group from any kind of different angle, or changed what he puts along the top edge, or either side edge, or the bottom edge of the picture. He’s replicated everything as closely as possible. That may be a (very self-enriching) game he’s playing with his followers, but it’s not a very imaginative approach to painting. It may not be plagiarism but it’s surely copying rather a lot.”

Others commenting at Expecting Rain were less concerned, like one using the screen name restless, who wrote: “ ‘quotation’ and ‘borrowing’ are as old as the hills in poetry, traditional songs, and visual art.”

“There’s no need to be an apologist for that,” the post continued. “It’s often a part of making art, that’s all. Good grief, y’all.”

On Monday a press representative for the Gagosian Gallery said in a statement: “While the composition of some of Bob Dylan’s paintings is based on a variety of sources, including archival, historic images, the paintings’ vibrancy and freshness come from the colors and textures found in everyday scenes he observed during his travels.”

The gallery also pointed to an interview with Mr. Dylan in its exhibition catalog, in which he is asked whether he paints from sketches or photographs. He responds:

“I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work. What I’m trying to bring out in complex scenes, landscapes, or personality clashes, I do it in a lot of different ways. I have the cause and effect in mind from the beginning to the end. But it has to start with something tangible.”

Mr. Dylan has previously proved elusive to critics and observers who have tried to pin him down on source material. In 2006 it was shown that lyrics on Mr. Dylan’s No. 1 album “Modern Times” bore a strong resemblance to the poems of Henry Timrod, who composed verses about the Civil War and died in 1867. Lyrics from a previous album, “Love and Theft,” were similar to passages from the gangster novel “Confessions of a Yakuza,” by the Japanese writer Junichi Saga.

In a 2008 essay for The New Haven Review, Scott Warmuth, a radio disc jockey and music director who has closely studied Mr. Dylan’s work, said that Mr. Dylan’s 2004 memoir, “Chronicles: Volume One,” had adapted many phrases and sentences from works by other writers, including the novelist Jack London, the poet Archibald MacLeish and the author Robert Greene.

Mr. Dylan did not comment on those similarities then, and a representative for him declined to comment on the Gagosian exhibition.

Jan2

my favorite female folk singer Joan Baez and her relationship with Dylan

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JoanBaezHowSweettheSound

“DIAMONDS AND RUST”

http://youtu.be/GGMHSbcd_qI

Quick Facts
NAME: Joan Baez
OCCUPATION: Children’s Activist, Civil Rights Activist, Environmental Activist, Women’s Rights Activist, Anti-War Activist, Guitarist, Singer
BIRTH DATE: January 09, 1941 (Age: 72)
EDUCATION: Boston University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Staten Island, New York City, New York
Full Name: Joan Chandos Baez
ZODIAC SIGN: Capricorn

thD05L3R6KJoan Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter and activist who is best known for her distinctive voice and for her role in popularizing the music of Bob Dylan.
Synopsis
Joan Baez was born in Staten Island, New York, on January 9, 1941. Baez first became known as a folk singer after performing at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. She is known for topical songs promoting social justice, civil rights and pacifism. Baez also played a critical role in popularizing Bob Dylan, with whom she performed regularly in the mid-1960s.

“FOREVER YOUNG”

Quotes
“I’ve never had a humble opinion in my life. If you’re going to have one, why bother to be humble about it?”

– Joan Baez

JoanBaezBaezSingsDyl

Early Life

Singer, songwriter and social activist Joan Baez was born on January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York. Baez, a singer in the folk tradition, was a crucial part of the genre’s rebirth in the 1960s. She got her first guitar in 1956. Two years after her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Baez delved into the city’s burgeoning folk scene. Soon she became a regular performer at a local club.

Commercial Success and Activism

The 1960s were a turbulent time in American history, and Baez often used her music to express her social and political views. Her self-titled first album was released in 1960 and not long after its release she met the then-unknown singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

In the early to mid-1960s, Joan Baez became an established folk artist as well as a voice for social change. She sang “We Shall Overcome” at the March on Washington in 1963 organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to supporting civil rights, Baez also participated in the antiwar movement, calling for an end to the conflict in Vietnam.

Beginning in 1964, she would refuse to pay part of her taxes to protest U.S. military spending for a decade. Baez was also arrested twice in 1967 in Oakland, California, for blocking an armed forces induction center. Near the decade’s end, her autobiography, Daybreak (1968), was released.

Baez continued to be active politically and musically in the 1970s. She helped establish the west coast branch of Amnesty International, a human rights organization, and released numerous albums, including the critically acclaimed Diamonds and Rust (1975). In addition to touring, she also performed at many benefits and fundraisers for social and political causes around the world.

Later Work

Her most recent studio album was 2003’s Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. She followed up with a collection of live tracks in 2005 on Bowery Songs, which featured songs by Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie as well as some traditional folk songs.

Personal Life

Once married to David Harris, Joan Baez has a son named Gabriel from that union. She lives in California and continues to speak out for causes that are important to her.

Folk Music

Bob Dylan and Joan Baez: The King and Queen of Folk

A story of the relationship between Joan Baez and Bob Dylan

untitled (18)

“BLOWING IN THE WIND” BOB DYLAN AND JOAN BAEZ

http://youtu.be/Ct7CGNiQuNM

By

Bob Dylan and Joan BaezBob Dylan and Joan Baez

© National Archives/Getty Images

For many, when you utter the words “folk music,” the first two people that come to mind are Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, the biggest stars of the 1960s folk craze. When 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village in January 1961, Joan Baez had long been crowned the “Queen of Folk,” but within two short years, Dylan would ascend the throne as King of this musical monarchy, with the two wowing audiences from coast to coast with their live duets.

Two Talents Collide

In his 2004 autobiography Chronicles: Volume One (compare prices), Dylan wrote that, back in Minnesota, the first time he saw Baez on TV, “I couldn’t stop looking at her, didn’t want to blink. . . . The sight of her made me sigh. All that and then there was the voice. A voice that drove out bad spirits . . . she sang in a voice straight to God. . . . Nothing she did didn’t work.”

Baez, on the other hand, was unfazed by what she heard when she first saw Dylan perform at Gerde’s Folk City in 1961. However, by the time they finally met at Boston’s Club 47 in April 1963, Dylan had evolved into the scene’s most promising singer-songwriter, and Baez was blown away. Several weeks later at the Monterey Folk Festival, she would join Dylan onstage for a duet of “With God on Our Side” (purchase/download), marking the beginning of one of popular music’s most legendary stage partnerships.

Bob Who?

In July 1963, a still-unknown Dylan debuted the Newport Folk Festival, performing two  duets with Baez, one in her set and one in his own. By now smitten, Baez then invited Dylan along on her August tour, where she would bring him out for duets and give him short solo spots to hawk his wares. As she later recalled, “I was getting audiences up to 10,000 at that point, and dragging my little vagabond out onto the stage was a grand experiment… The people who had not heard of Bob were often infuriated, and sometimes even booed him.”

As the Queen of Folk, Baez’s endorsement played a huge role in Dylan’s early rise to success. But once his second album The Freewheelin Bob Dylan caught on, Dylan’s career soared as he stole the fire from his stage mate and lover. Soon the tables would turn, with Baez needing Dylan’s endorsement, which he gave by way of his sleeve notes for her second live album, Joan Baez in Concert Part 2 (compare prices). In his typical verse/commentary, he wrote that the “iron bars an’ rattlin’ wheels’ are real, the nightingale sound of Joan Baez’s voice an alien, smooth opposite… The only beauty’s ugly, man / The crackin’ shakin’ breakin’ sounds’re / The only beauty I understand’’

Later, during his 1965 tour of Europe, with Baez’s career on the slide, Dylan invited her along, promising to reciprocate that early exposure with spots during his shows. After she flew over, though, Dylan never followed through, in the process breaking Baez’s heart and ending their two-year music-fueled romance.

The Rolling Thunder Reunion

Despite Dylan’s snub, in 1968 Baez went on to release the album, Any Day Now: Songs of Bob Dylan (compare prices). And in 1972 she would write a song for Dylan titled “To Bobby” (purchase/download), with lyrics beckoning her former stage mate to get back into the action and help solve the problems of humanity. Then in 1975, Baez called out to Dylan again with her romantic reminiscence, “Diamonds and Rust” (purchase/download), singing the lyrics:

Now you’re telling me You’re not nostalgic Well give me another word for it You who’re so good with words And at keeping things vague.

If it was nostalgia Baez was seeking, she would soon get it after joining his 1975-76 renaissance road show, the Rolling Thunder Revue. As part of the opening set, Baez would do a couple songs, and then Dylan would join her onstage for duets ranging from Merle Travis’s “Dark as a Dungeon” to the traditional song, “The Water is Wide.” On top of her role in the Revue, Baez was also cast as The Woman in White in what would become Dylan’s 1978 four-hour film, Renaldo and Clara, which was shot throughout the 30-show tour across New England and Canada.

The King and Queen’s Last Hurrah

On June 6, 1980, Dylan and Baez would reunite for the one-off “Peace Sunday” concert that took place in Pasadena, California, where they did duets of “With God on Our Side,” Jimmy Buffet’s “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” For hungry fans, a Dylan/Baez reunion tour had always been a sensational idea, and for some time, Baez had been urging Dylan to do just that. But Dylan wasn’t interested. That is, until 1984 when—most likely to amp up poor ticket sales—he invited her to join an already booked European Dylan/Santana package tour.

To get her on board, tour promoter Bill Graham promised Baez the world, but in the end delivered on nothing. To unsuspecting consumers, throwing Baez into the mix was to insinuate the much dreamed-of Dylan/Baez duet, but those who bought tickets on that basis would be as sadly disillusioned as Baez, who was promised not only top billing with Dylan, but a duet for each show.

With her name tacked onto concert posters as a mere “special guest,” Baez simply became the opening act for the headliners, Dylan and Santana. Livid and feeling used, Baez jumped ship halfway through the tour with Graham begging her to stay. But she’d had enough. “In the end I paid… a monetary forfeit, which I had expected to do,” wrote Baez in her 1988 autobiography, And a Voice to Sing With (compare prices). “But paying money was nothing compared to the battering my ego and spirit had taken for over a month.”

Dylan and Baez Today

Despite their ups and downs over the years, and the vitriol permeating Baez’s autobiography, when reminiscing today, both Dylan and Baez speak fondly of one another. Although very few of their duets have been released, Baez’s three-CD box set Rare, Live & Classic (compare prices) features “Troubled and I Don’t Know Why” from their August 1963 performance at Forest Hills. Previously unreleased duets of “It Ain’t Me Babe” and “With God on Our Side” can be heard on Baez’s 1997 disc, Live at Newport. For the visual experience, duets from all their Newport appearances can be seen in Murray Lerner’s The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival.

Nov16

ON THE ROAD – JACK KEROUAC

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On the Road – Jack Kerouac

By Shubhajit Lahiri on 17 November 2008

“What’s your road, man? — holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.”

That’s not the kind of question that an everyday Joe would ask; that’s not an inquiry that would lurk in the mind of a 9-to-5 desk clerk. Hell, that’s not the kind of thought that someone scrubbing for a mere existence in a drab world, living just another static life, in his routine environment, and doing stuff that is decided through rote and careful rationalization, would even dare let his perfectly chiselled mind waver to.

That’s precisely the kind of belief one would be enticed by who adheres to the maxim, “Road is where life is.” And On the Road, for those crazy venture-addicts, is the greatest bible that there ever was. It is a novel that would make the most cocooned of creatures to be hit by the road bug and actually start ‘living’ life.

Written in 1951, by Jack Kerouc – the original King of the Road, was a novel that eulogized the free-spirited life where boundaries, confines and borders cease to exist. And in the process it kick-started Beat Generation – one of the most fascinating American movements where life is equated with jazz (viz. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong et al), hallucinatory drugs, free sex, smoke-filled cars, and above all, life on the road. For them there’s just one answer to the rhetoric question, “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”, and that being Heaven.

Though On the Road is considered the greatest book of this movement and Kerouac its unofficial spokesperson – which has been duly acknowledged by the venerated TIME magazine by including the book in its list of Greatest Novels of the 20th Century – Kerouac essentially formed a part of a hallowed trio also comprising of Allen Ginsberg and William H. Burroughs, the co-pioneers of the Beat Movement. And this semi-autobiographical novel chronicles Kerouac’s experiences on the road. Hence they are all there in the novel, with their names altered. However, it is someone called Neal Cassidy, a common friend of the enlightened troika, who formed the basis for the book’s most celebrated character – Dean Moriarty.

Narrated by Salvatore ‘Sal’ Paradise, an Italian-American resident of New Jersey, a writer by profession, and Kerouac’s terrific literary alter-ego, On the Road is a mesmerizing and one-of-its-kind travel-diary of the narrator, and its apotheosis is his unforgettable friendship with Dean, one of the craziest and alive characters one can ever hope to come across. It tells the tales of his journeys back and forth across America. It is a tale of New York, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Mexico City. It is a free-flowing account of ‘nowness’ – a word that defined the willingness to reside in present without a worry for the future or attachment to the past. It is a madcap poetry to the Beat life, where all you need to survive is a car that does its 90 mph, beer cans, an uninterrupted supply of cigarettes, friends with whom you can talk all through the night and into the dawn, a few Benzedrine tablets to give you the kicks, and the singular beauty of hitch-hiking.

The novel is peppered with some of the most atypical characters – Carlo Marx, Chad King, Old Bull Lee, Ed Dunkel, Remi Boncoeur, with each representing the various constituents of the Beatific and the free spirits of the world. But the two protagonists – Sal and Dean, are the ones who really draw the readers out with their contrasting lives and yet their common passion. Where Sal is a home-grown, serious, sensitive, college educated intellectual with a steady income – an otherwise regular guy who one can relate to and be in sync with, Dean is an impulsive, irreverent, wildly unpredictable, rebellious, thoroughly alienated soul with an infectious method to his madness. As Sal so brilliantly states in one of his many explanations of who Dean really is, “He was simply a youth tremendously excited with life, and though he was a con-man, he was only conning because he wanted so much to live and to get involved with people who would otherwise pay no attention to him.”

On The Road wasn’t just anti-establishmentarian in its outlook, it was also non-conformist in its style and composition. Legend has it that Kerouac wrote it in an uninterrupted and truly inspired Benzedrine-fuelled three weeks’ session on a manual typewriter in his New York City loft, on a long scroll over 100 feet long. The book is devoid of crisp, literary sentences. It is instead based on improvised, absolutely free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness style of writing, where the words form a direct representation of the writer’s unedited and unadulterated thought processes. It was a memorable kick in the belly for the purists and conservatives. In fact Truman Capote once infamously remarked about the prose, “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” The book was a glorious tableau of a truly liberated form and style of narration.

The enormous impact of the book is as relevant today as it was groundbreaking then. Its tale of lost souls who dared to be free is timeless. Through its fascinating depictions of friendship, experiences on the road and the longing for ‘It’ – an expression that could signify anything from cigarettes and drugs to frenzy and exhilaration to salvation and bliss, the novel was way ahead of its time in its effortless and spontaneous jab at such bogus parameters like morality and preordained requisites for the so-called good and happy life sans adventure and enlightenment.

Some of the most iconoclastic stalwarts like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Jim Morrison have been enormously influenced by the novel. Dylan once remarked about the book, “It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s.” Lennon ushered a memorable tribute to the Beat legacy by including the word ‘Beat’ in the name of arguably the world’s greatest boy-band The Beatles, through a subtle change in its spelling. The book may also count such outstanding and legendary movies like Easy Rider, Paris Texas, Five Easy Pieces and Stranger than Paradise as part of its famous legacy. Indeed, the novel’s place in popular culture as well as among the pantheon of great literary works has been preserved for posterity.

“Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.” That sort of encapsulates the spirit and the essence of the book. I really feel a huge impulse to say to every bibliophile and lost souls and free people of this world regarding On the Road, “Dig it! Dig it!” And I’m sure, if Dean had been here with in my living room, he would have excitedly affirmed in his inimitable style, “Yass! Yass!”.

Aug29

HUNTER S. THOMPSON- AN AMERICAN OUTLAW

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HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Was born in Louisville Ky in 1937.He was an outlaw and literary figure. He loved guns and books. He was arrested at a young age for stealing a wallet with two other people.
He was part of a street gang of pranksters. He came from a poor family.

He was best know for writing “Fear and loathing in Las Vegas.” and creating Gonzo Journalism.” This is when a reporter gets so involved in the story he writes himself in the story. He was an alcoholic and drug user and always looking for a controversial story.
He became very interested in the counter culture of the 60’s.

He was married to Sandy Conklin in 1963 and they had one son, Juan. They were divorced in 1980.

His first book “Hells Angels A Strange And Terrible Saga” was published in 1967. He also wrote for “Rolling Stone” about the presidential campaign of 1972.

He was notorious for his outrageousness and being an anti authoritarian. He constantly terrorized his neighbors in Colorado.

Thompson was ill for several years and in 2005committed suicide by shooting himself. His ashes were shot from a cannon to “Mr. Tamborine Man” by Bob Dylan.

Aug27

THE INCONIC BOB DYLAN

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Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Bob Dylan‘s influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notion that a singer must have a conventionally good voice in order to perform, thereby redefining the vocalist’s role in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan‘s force was evident during his height of popularity in the ’60s — the Beatles‘ shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-’60s never would have happened without him — but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations, as many of his songs became popular standards and his best albums became undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan‘s influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the ’80s and ’90s, Dylan‘s presence rarely lagged, and his commercial revival in the 2000s proved his staying power.

For a figure of such substantial influence, Dylan came from humble beginnings. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, from the age of six. As a child he learned how to play guitar and harmonica, forming a rock & roll band called the Golden Chords when he was in high school. Following his graduation in 1959, he began studying art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he began performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at college, and the genre wove its way into his music. He spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the inspiration behind the songwriter’s signature harmonica rack and guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a professional musician.

Dylan made his way to New York City in January of 1961, immediately making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich Village. He began visiting his idolGuthrie in the hospital, where he was slowly dying from Huntington’s chorea. Dylan also began performing in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant following. In April, he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde’s Folk City. Five months later, Dylan performed another concert at the venue, which was reviewed positively by Robert Shelton in The New York Times. Columbia A&R man John Hammond sought out Dylan on the strength of the review, and signed the songwriter in the fall of 1961. Hammond produced Dylan‘s eponymous debut album (released in March 1962), a collection of folk and blues standards that boasted only two original songs. Over the course of 1962, Dylan began to write a large batch of original songs, many of which were political protest songs in the vein of his Greenwich contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Before its release, Freewheelin’ went through several incarnations. Dylan had recorded a rock & roll single, “Mixed Up Confusion,” at the end of 1962, but his manager, Albert Grossman, made sure the record was deleted because he wanted to presentDylan as an acoustic folkie. Similarly, several tracks with a full backing band that were recorded forFreewheelin’ were scrapped before the album’s release. Furthermore, several tracks recorded for the album — including “Talking John Birch Society Blues” — were eliminated from the album before its release.

Comprised entirely of original songs, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan made a huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were Peter, Paul and Mary, who made “Blowin’ in the Wind” into a huge pop hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a recognizable household name. On the strength of Peter, Paul and Mary‘s cover and his opening gigs for popular folkie Joan Baez, Freewheelin’ became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan was writing just as fast.

By the time The Times They Are A-Changin’ was released in early 1964, Dylan‘s songwriting had developed far beyond that of his New York peers. Heavily inspired by poets likeArthur Rimbaud and John Keats, his writing took on a more literate and evocative quality. Around the same time, he began to expand his musical boundaries, adding more blues and R&B influences to his songs. Released in the summer of 1964, Another Side of Bob Dylan made these changes evident. However, Dylan was moving faster than his records could indicate. By the end of 1964, he had ended his romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a former model named Sara Lowndes, whom he subsequently married. Simultaneously, he gave the Byrds “Mr. Tambourine Man” to record for their debut album. the Byrds gave the song a ringing, electric arrangement, but by the time the single became a hit, Dylan was already exploring his own brand of folk-rock.

Inspired by the British Invasion, particularly the Animals‘ version of “House of the Rising Sun,” Dylan recorded a set of original songs backed by a loud rock & roll band for his next album. While Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) still had a side of acoustic material, it made clear that Dylan had turned his back on folk music. For the folk audience, the true breaking point arrived a few months after the album’s release, when he played the Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The audience greeted him with vicious derision, but he had already been accepted by the growing rock & roll community. Dylan‘s spring tour of Britain was the basis for D.A. Pennebaker‘s documentary Don’t Look Back, a film that captures the songwriter’s edgy charisma and char

Dylan made his breakthrough to the pop audience in the summer of 1965, when “Like a Rolling Stone” became a number two hit. Driven by a circular organ riff and a steady beat, the six-minute single broke the barrier of the three-minute pop single. Dylan became the subject of innumerable articles, and his lyrics became the subject of literary analyses across the U.S. and U.K. Well over 100 artists covered his songs between 1964 and 1966; the Byrds and the Turtles, in particular, had big hits with his compositions. Highway 61 Revisited, his first full-fledged rock & roll album, became a Top Ten hit shortly after its summer 1965 release. “Positively 4th Street” and “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” became Top Ten hits in the fall of 1965 and spring of 1966, respectively. Following the May 1966 release of the double album Blonde on Blonde, he had sold over ten million records around the world.

During the fall of 1965, Dylan hired the Hawks, formerly Ronnie Hawkins‘ backing group, as his touring band. the Hawks, who changed their name to the Band in 1968, would become Dylan‘s most famous backing band, primarily because of their intuitive chemistry and “wild, thin mercury sound,” but also because of their British tour in the spring of 1966. The tour was the first time the British had heard the electric Dylan, and their reaction was disagreeable and violent. At the Manchester concert (long mistakenly identified as the show from London’s Royal Albert Hall), an audience member called Dylan“Judas,” inspiring a positively vicious version of “Like a Rolling Stone” from Dylan and the band. The performance was immortalized on countless bootleg albums (an official release finally surfaced in 1998), and it indicates the intensity of Dylan in the middle of 1966. He had assumed control of Pennebaker‘s second Dylan documentary, Eat the Document, and was under deadline to complete his bookTarantula, as well as record a new record. Following the British tour, he returned to America.

The Basement Tapes

On July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of his home in Woodstock, New York, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive — he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia — and some biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal turning point in his career. After the accident, Dylanbecame a recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in West Saugerties to record a number of demos. For several months, Dylan and the Band recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk, country, and blues songs to newly written originals. The songs indicated that Dylan‘s songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis, becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed, owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy country, blues, and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink recordings was intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions were circulated by Dylan‘s music publisher with the intent of generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the ’60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double album The Basement Tapes.

John Wesley Harding

While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. WhenDylan returned with John Wesley Harding in December of 1967, its quiet, country ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant hit, peaking at number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1969.

Nashville Skyline

Dylan followed his country inclinations on his next album, 1969’s Nashville Skyline, which was recorded in Nashville with several of the country industry’s top session men. While the album was a hit, spawning the Top Ten single “Lay Lady Lay,” it was criticized in some quarters for uneven material. The mixed reception was the beginning of a full-blown backlash that arrived with the double-album Self Portrait. Released early in June of 1970, the album was a hodgepodge of covers, live tracks, re-interpretations, and new songs greeted with negative reviews from all quarters of the press. Dylan followed the album quickly with New Morning, which was hailed as a comeback.

Dylan [1973]

Following the release of New Morning, Dylan began to wander restlessly. He moved back to Greenwich Village, he finally published Tarantula in November of 1970, and he performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. During 1972, he began his acting career by playing Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was released in 1973. He also wrote the soundtrack for the film, which featured “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” his biggest hit since “Lay Lady Lay.” The Pat Garrett soundtrack was the final record released under his Columbia contract before he moved to David Geffen‘s fledgling Asylum Records. As retaliation, Columbia assembled Dylan, a collection of Self Portrait outtakes, for release at the end of 1973. Dylan only recorded two albums — including 1974’s Planet Waves, coincidentally his first number one album — before he moved back to Columbia. the Band supported Dylan on Planet Wavesand its accompanying tour, which became the most successful tour in rock & roll history; it was captured on 1974’s double live album Before the Flood.

Dylan‘s 1974 tour was the beginning of a comeback culminating with 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. Largely inspired by the disintegration of his marriage, Blood on the Tracks was hailed as a return to form by critics and it became his second number one album. After jamming with folkies in Greenwich Village, Dylan decided to launch a gigantic tour, loosely based on traveling medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of supporting musicians — including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott,Arlo Guthrie, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poetAllen Ginsberg — Dylan dubbed the tour the Rolling Thunder Revue and set out on the road in the fall of 1975. For the next year, the Rolling Thunder Revue toured on and off, with Dylan filming many of the concerts for a future film. During the tour,Desire was released to considerable acclaim and success, spending five weeks on the top of the charts. Throughout the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan showcased “Hurricane,” a protest song he had written about boxer Rubin Carter, who had been unjustly imprisoned for murder. The live album Hard Rain was released at the end of the tour. Dylan released Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour film based on the Rolling Thunder tour, to poor reviews in early 1978.

Early in 1978, Dylan set out on another extensive tour, this time backed by a band that resembled a Las Vegas lounge act. The group was featured on the 1978 album Street Legaland the 1979 live album At Budokan. At the conclusion of the tour in late 1978, Dylan announced that he was a born-again Christian, and he launched a series of Christian albums that following summer with Slow Train Coming. Though the reviews were mixed, the album was a success, peaking at number three and going platinum. His supporting tour forSlow Train Coming featured only his new religious material, much to the bafflement of his long-term fans. Two other religious albums — Saved (1980) and Shot of Love (1981) — followed, both to poor reviews. In 1982,Dylan traveled to Israel, sparking rumors that his conversion to Christianity was short-lived. He returned to secular recording with 1983’s Infidels, which was greeted with favorable reviews.

Dylan returned to performing in 1984, releasing the live albumReal Live at the end of the year. Empire Burlesque followed in 1985, but its odd mix of dance tracks and rock & roll won few fans. However, the five-album/triple-disc retrospective box set Biograph appeared that same year to great acclaim. In 1986, Dylan hit the road with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers for a successful and acclaimed tour, but his album that year, Knocked Out Loaded, was received poorly. The following year, he toured with the Grateful Dead as his backing band; two years later, the souvenir album Dylan & the Dead appeared.

In 1988, Dylan embarked on what became known as “the Never-Ending Tour” — a constant stream of shows that ran on and off into the late ’90s. That same year, he appeared onThe Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 — by the supergroup also featuring George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, andJeff Lynne — and released his own Down in the Groove, an album largely comprised of covers. The Never-Ending Tour received far stronger reviews than Down in the Groove (theTraveling Wilburys album fared much better), but 1989’s Oh Mercy was his most acclaimed album since 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, due in part to Daniel Lanois‘ strong production. However, Dylan‘s 1990 follow-up, Under the Red Sky (issued the same year as the second album bythe Traveling Wilburys, now a quartet following the death of Roy Orbison shortly after the release ofthe Wilburys‘ first long-player in 1988), was received poorly, especially when compared to the enthusiastic reception for the 1991 box set The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased), a collection of previously unreleased outtakes and rarities.

Good as I Been to You

For the remainder of the ’90s, Dylan divided his time between live concerts, painting, and studio projects. He returned to recording in 1992 with Good as I Been to You, an acoustic collection of traditional folk songs. It was followed in 1993 by another folk record, World Gone Wrong, which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. After the release ofWorld Gone Wrong, Dylan released a greatest-hits album and a live record.

Time Out of Mind

Dylan releasedTime Out of Mind, his first album of original material in seven years, in the fall of 1997. Time Out of Mind received his strongest reviews in years and unexpectedly debuted in the Top Ten, eventually climbing to platinum certification. Such success sparked a revival of interest in Dylan, who appeared on the cover of Newsweek and began selling out concerts once again. Early in 1998,Time Out of Mind received three Grammy Awards — Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal.

Love and Theft

Another album of original material, Love and Theft, followed in 2001 and went gold. Soon after its release, Dylanannounced that he was making his own film, to star Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Val Kilmer, and many more. The accompanying soundtrack, Masked and Anonymous, was released in July 2003. Dylan opted to self-produce his new studio album, Modern Times, which topped the Billboard charts and went platinum in both America and the U.K. It was Dylan‘s third consecutive album to receive praise from critics and support from consumers, and it was followed three years later in 2009 by Together Through Life, another self-produced effort (as Jack Frost) that also featured contributions from David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. He capped off the year with an old-fashioned holiday effort, Christmas in the Heart. Proceeds from the album were donated to various charities around the world. Dylan released the self-produced (again as Jack Frost) Tempest on September 11, 2012.

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Aug6

BOB DYLAN TO EXHIBIT ARTWORK IN LONDON

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Bob Dylan to exhibit his new artwork in London gallery

ReutersReuters – Mon, Aug 5, 2013 12:25 PM EDT

  • Musician Bob Dylan (C) waits prior to receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 29, 2012. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

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    Reuters/Reuters – Musician Bob Dylan (C) waits prior to receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 29, 2012. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

LONDON (Reuters) – New pastel portraits by American singer Bob Dylan will go on show for the first time at London’s National Portrait Gallery next month, the gallery said on Monday.

The 12 new works in the “Bob Dylan Face Value” exhibition in September represent the latest portrait studies from the “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer who has sketched and drawn since childhood, but only began exhibiting six years ago.

“Bob Dylan is one of the most influential cultural figures of our time,” National Portrait Gallery Director Sandy Naime said in a statement.

“I am delighted that we can now share these 12 sketches which were made for display at the National Portrait Gallery.”

The portraits represent characters, with an amalgamation of features Dylan has collected from life, memory and his imagination and fashioned into people, some real and some fictitious.

Dylan, 72, has exhibited previous art collections of sketches, gouaches and watercolors in the past in other cities around the world.

The singer’s ballads like “Blowin’ in the Wind” became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movement in the United States, while the musical innovation and cynical lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone” established him as a counter-culture symbol.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato)