Folk rock is a popular music genre that emerged in the mid-1960s, primarily in the U.S. and UK, by blending the acoustic, lyrical, and melodic elements of folk music with the electric instrumentation, rhythm, and energy of rock & roll. It often features close vocal harmonies, poignant songwriting, and jangly guitars. 

One of the greatest figures of the 20th century, Bob Dylan helped shape the sound and form of popular music in the rock & roll era. Dylan emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s, earning a reputation as a perceptive, powerful songwriter, equally capable of penning a protest anthem or a romantic love song. His flair for impressionistic, ‘stream-of-consciousness’ lyrics marked a shift within folk music, an evolution Dylan also introduced to rock & roll when he picked up an electric guitar in 1965.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941. Dylan’s father Abram Zimmerman and his mother Beatrice “Beatty” Stone were part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six, when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother’s hometown of Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan’s childhood, and his father and paternal uncles ran a furniture and appliance store. As a teenager, Dylan heard rock and roll on radio stations broadcasting from Shreveport and Little Rock. Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. A 17-year-old Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform at the Duluth Armory, four days before Holly’s fatal plane crash. Dylan was electrified, and in his Nobel Prize lecture, he explained: “He was the archetype. Everything I wasn’t and wanted to be.” In September 1959, Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota. Living at the Jewish-centric fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu house, Dylan began to perform at the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse near campus, and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music. Dylan dropped out of college in May 1960 at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he travelled to New York City to perform and to visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie. From February 1961, Dylan played at clubs around Greenwich Village, befriending and picking up material from folk singers. During this period, he began to introduce himself as Bob Dylan and his eponymous first album was released in March 1962 to mixed reviews. His singing voice—a cowboy lament laced with Midwestern patois, with an obvious nod to Guthrie—confounded many critics. It was a sound that took some getting used to. By comparison, Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (released in May 1963), sounded a clarion call. Young ears everywhere quickly assimilated his quirky voice, which divided parents and children “a rebel with a cause.” Moreover, his first major composition, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” served notice that this was an authentic creative identity.

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter. Described as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 69-year career. With an estimated 125 million records sold worldwide, he is one of the best-selling musicians. Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it “with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry”. His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture.

Dylan toured incessantly in 1965 and 1966, always playing to sold-out, agitated audiences. In February 1966, at the suggestion of his new producer, Bob Johnston, Dylan recorded at Columbia’s Nashville, Tennessee, studios, along with Kooper, Robertson, and the cream of Nashville’s play-for-pay musicians. A week’s worth of marathon 20-hour sessions produced a double album that was more polished than the raw, almost punklike Highway 61 Revisited. Containing some of Dylan’s finest work, Blonde on Blonde peaked at number nine in Billboard, was critically acclaimed, and pushed Dylan to the zenith of his popularity. He toured Europe with the Hawks (soon to reemerge as the Band) until the summer of 1966, when a motorcycle accident in Woodstock brought his amazing seven-year momentum to an abrupt halt. Citing a serious neck injury, he retreated to his home in Woodstock and virtually disappeared for two years. In 1967 the Band moved to Woodstock to be closer to Dylan. Occasionally they coaxed him into the basement studio of their communal home to play music together, and recordings from these sessions ultimately became the double album The Basement Tapes (1975). In early 1968 Columbia released a stripped-down album of new Dylan songs titled John Wesley Harding. In January 1968 Dylan made his first postaccident appearance at a memorial concert for Woody Guthrie in New York City. His image had changed; with shorter hair, spectacles, and a neglected beard, he resembled a rabbinical student. Dylan returned to Tennessee to record Nashville Skyline (1969), which helped launch an entirely new genre, country rock. It charted at number three, but, owing to the comparative simplicity of its lyrics, people questioned whether Dylan remained a cutting-edge artist. Over the next quarter century Dylan continued to record, toured sporadically, and was widely honoured, though his impact was never as great or as immediate as it had been in the 1960s. His first book, Tarantula, a collection of unconnected writings, met with critical indifference when it was unceremoniously published in 1971, five years after its completion. In 1973 he appeared in director Sam Peckinpah’s film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and contributed to the sound track, including “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Writings and Drawings, an anthology of his lyrics and poetry, was published the next year. In 1974 he toured for the first time in eight years, reconvening with the Band (by this time popular artists in their own right). Before the Flood, the album documenting that tour, reached number three. Released in 1975, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks was considered a return to lyrical form for the artist. The album, which redefined the power of personal songwriting, topped the Billboard chart, as did Desire, released one year later. In 1975 and 1976 Dylan barnstormed North America with a gypsy-like touring company, announcing shows in radio interviews only hours before appearing. Dylan divorced Sara Lownds, his wife of 12 years in 1977. They had four children, including son Jakob, whose band the Wallflowers experienced pop success in the 1990s. In 1978 Dylan mounted a yearlong world tour and released a studio album, Street-Legal, and a live album, Bob Dylan at Budokan. In a dramatic turnabout, he converted to Christianity in 1979 and for three years recorded and performed only religious material, preaching between songs at live shows. Critics and listeners were, once again, confounded. In 1982, when Dylan was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, his open zeal for Christianity was waning. Dylan toured again in 1986–87, backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and in 1987 he co-starred in the film Hearts of Fire. A year later he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1989 Dylan once again returned to form with Oh Mercy, produced by Daniel Lanois. As the 1990s drew to a close, Dylan, who was called the greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century by Allen Ginsberg, performed for the pope at the Vatican, was Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. received a Kennedy Center Honor, and was made Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters (the highest cultural award presented by the French government). In 1998, in a comeback of sorts, he won three Grammy Awards—including album of the year—for Time Out of Mind (1997). In 2006 Dylan released Modern Times, which won a Grammy Award for best contemporary folk album. In 2008 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded him a special citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture.” In 2009 Dylan released Together Through Life, which debuted at the top of the British and American album charts. He was still actively performing as he entered his 70s, and his 35th studio album, the rootsy Tempest (2012), found him as vigorous as ever. Dylan then turned his attention to the so-called Great American Songbook—Shadows in the Night (2015), Fallen Angels (2016), and the three-disc Triplicate (2017)—earned Dylan praise for his deeply felt interpretations. He returned to spectacular lyrical form yet again with Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020).