Bob Dylan and a new generation of songwriters

Bob Dylan begins as a folk performer, widens what a traditional folk singer can do, and helps open the singer-songwriter model.

Welcome to Chapter 5 of the rock-history course—America’s reply to the British Invasion. Quick review: we covered 1955–1959, rock’s first wave—Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino—whose pull fades as the 1950s end. Buddy Holly’s plane crashes in February 1959; people call it the day the music died. Then late 1950s to the Beatles’ 1964 landing: is the stretch from Elvis to the Beatles pop’s golden age or dark age? In February 1964 the Beatles arrive; with the Invasion, the impression is that they remake rock, especially the U.S. market. From 1960–63 everyone hunts the next Elvis. Nothing they try in those years points to the real next Elvis—who turns out to be the Beatles, from England, the first British band to break the U.S. market on their own terms. In many ways the two giants of rock history so far are Elvis and the Beatles. The Invasion does not wreck the American scene as hard as many historians and writers claim, but it does change things. Many U.S. musicians feel British acts take part of the business. This chapter is the American industry’s reply from about 1963–64 through 1967–68.

We start with someone some call the most important American figure of the 1960s: Bob Dylan. He matters because he sets a new bar for writers in pop. Before him the model is Brill Building—pro songwriters, mostly craft method. Then the Beatles: how they turn the 1963–64 craft model toward art—1966’s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” early 1967’s “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane.” Craft really starts shifting toward artist; Dylan is in that wave. The Beatles and Dylan interact and influence each other in many ways.

In the early 1960s Dylan starts his career in New York’s Greenwich Village. As I said, as a singer he has no hit of his own until 1965. His first albums are known mainly to people deepest in the pure folk scene—even folk-revival listeners often miss them. Folk revival here means Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, the New Christy Minstrels—not Dylan, and not even Joan Baez in that commercial sense. Dylan is born in Duluth, Minnesota, grows up in Hibbing. Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, he renames himself Bob Dylan after poet Dylan Thomas. In 1959 he enters the University of Minnesota, first interested in rock. Kids of 1955–57 hear Chuck Berry, then Buddy Holly and Elvis, so Dylan is already playing guitar and piano in bands.

As folk revival rises, his interest in folk grows. Strongly shaped by Woody Guthrie, he builds himself as a folk singer and tours folk around Minnesota. Eventually he moves to Greenwich Village and starts in earnest. Early image is based on Guthrie. Guthrie is then hospitalized with Huntington’s disease; Dylan is said to visit often. Folk lore has Guthrie passing the mantle to Dylan; in some sense Dylan becomes a new star of that movement. In the Village he plays clubs, watches more experienced players, copies them. Interestingly—modern listeners may not expect this—early Dylan often works comedy into the set: dry humor, not dirty, with a gift for clowning. We like to picture Dylan as stern or lightly ironic, but here he is trying to connect; some of the songs from this stretch show it.

Anyway he makes a strong New York impression and signs with Columbia through John Hammond in fall 1961. No one yet knows what Dylan will become. March 1962: debut album Bob Dylan—sales are poor. Reports say about five thousand copies the first year. Signing Dylan is called “Hammond’s folly”; it looks like a mistake. In August 1962 Dylan signs with Albert Grossman, who knows how to run the career—not Colonel Tom Parker’s mid-1950s Elvis model, but reshaping Dylan’s self, language, image, and press. Friction with Hammond ends Hammond’s producer role. Tom Wilson takes over—a detail often skipped, but Wilson as producer matters for the whole story, not only early Dylan LPs. May 1963: Wilson produces The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Dylan is again respected in folk circles but not famous; he is better known as a writer. Summer 1963: “Blowin’ in the Wind” becomes a Peter, Paul and Mary hit. He records his own cut—today often better known—but then it is judged unfit for radio. Dylan’s voice sounds less trained; the harmonica is not polished to pro standards; the smoother PP&M version is the hit single. The Times They Are A-Changin’ arrives January 1964; Another Side of Bob Dylan that August. None are hit albums that make him a star; they read more like songbooks.

In our 1960–63 lectures we said folk singers, unlike teen idols and girl groups, lean toward serious subjects. As a folk performer Dylan follows that tradition—many traditional songs going back to the nineteenth century or earlier, about equality and justice. He also keeps moving as a songwriter, writing his own songs and voice; the older ideal is to write for the people, join tradition, add to it. The tension grows. Critics say Dylan is not only a songwriter: he widens the folk singer’s mindset, turning folk’s “we” into “I.” That opens a singer-songwriter model many later follow.

Early work: “Blowin’ in the Wind” is social and political. There are comic blues pieces—“Motorpsycho Nitemare” is a strong example—and romantic songs like “Girl from the North Country.” For a song that sets singer-songwriter standards, try “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”: craft on display, and a template for the form. Its subject is nothing like “Blowin’ in the Wind”—social change and fairness there; here a relationship going wrong. That shift from folk performer toward singer-songwriter is a major Dylan contribution. Next lecture: how folk rock is born, and Dylan’s change through summer 1965—more singer-songwriter, electric instruments added—as a key piece of America’s reply to the Invasion.