A is for Absolutely Fabulous. A cover of Bob’s song This Wheel’s On Fire made for a memorable TV theme tune, sweetie darling.
B is for Blowin’ In The Wind. The answer, my friend, is still “blowin’ in the wind” 47 years after it was written. Bob recently sanctioned the use of one of his most famous songs by the Co-op for a TV ad campaign and sang it as a final encore on his recent UK tour.
C is for Cash and Cate. He made country music album Nashville Skyline in 1969, featuring a duet with Johnny Cash (Girl From The North Country) and Lay Lady Lay. Cate Blanchett was one of six actors to portray complex Bob in the 2007 film I’m Not There.
D is for his stage name Dylan. The singer once said: “You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents.” In his autobiography, Chronicles, he left a clue to where he got his name from – reporting his familiarity with the works of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
E is for Electric. When Bob “plugged in” at 1965’s Newport Folk Festival there were as many boos as cheers. Singer Pete Seeger wanted to take an axe to Bob’s guitar cable.
Poor sound quality was the reason Pete Seeger (backstage) gave for disliking the performance: he says he told the audio technicians, “Get that distortion out of his voice … It’s terrible. If I had an axe, I’d chop the microphone cable right now.”Seeger has also said, however, that he only wanted to cut the cables because he wanted the audience to hear Dylan’s lyrics properly because he thought they were important.Rumors that Seeger actually had an axe, or that a festival board member pulled or wanted to pull out the entire electrical wiring system are apocryphal. In the film No Direction Home, John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, who is Pete Seeger’s brother-in-law, states that Seeger wanted to lower the volume of the band because the noise was upsetting his elderly father Charlie, who wore a hearing aid. In the same film, Dylan claimed that Seeger’s unenthusiastic response to his set was like a “dagger in his heart” and made him “want to go out and get drunk”
F is for Forever Young. Dylan the dad sings a heartfelt blessing to his young child. The song was later covered by Rod Stewart and made into a children’s book.
G is for Greenwich Village and God. Bob headed for New York in January 1961 and scraped a living in Greenwich Village coffee shops and clubs. He shocked fans in the late Seventies by becoming a born-again Christian, singing only his Gospel songs.
H is for Hibbing. The son of Jewish shopkeepers, Bob grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota. “The land that I come from is called the Mid-West,” he sang on protest anthem With God On Our Side.
I is for iTunes. Bob found a new generation of fans when Someday Baby from 2006 album Modern Times was used by Apple for a trendy iTunes ad.
J is for Joan, Judas and Jakob. The undisputed king and queen of the Sixties folk movement, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez also became lovers. When he played loud rock music at Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966, a fan of folk-icon Bob cried “Judas!” Bob’s son Jakob achieved huge success in the States as singer in The Wallflowers and has just released a solo album on Columbia, the same label as dad.
K is for Knopfler. Dire Straits guitarist Mark co-produced and played on Dylan’s 1983 album Infidels.
L is for Like A Rolling Stone. It began as “this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long” and became Bob’s greatest song (released on Highway 61 Revisited). “How does it feeeel?,” he cried, “to be on your own, a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”
M is for Mr Tambourine Man. The song that created folk-rock, giving The Byrds a global No1 in 1965 with Bob’s “jingle-jangle morning” and their jingle-jangle guitars.
N is for New Morning and Never Ending Tour. The last time he had a No1 album in the UK, it was with 1970’s New Morning, featuring If Not For You, later covered by George Harrison and Olivia Newton-John. Since June 7, 1988, Bob has toured incessantly… passing the 2,000-show mark in 2007.
O is for Orbison. Bob sang in late Eighties supergroup Traveling Wilburys with “Big O” Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne.
P is for Pericarditis. A heart infection nearly killed him in the spring of 1997, just after writing a song that went “it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there”.
Q is for Queen Jane Approximately. Aside from this 1965 song, the wordplay whizz also wrote Absolutely Sweet Marie and Positively 4th Street.
R is for rock ’n’ roll. People think Bob started out as a folkie but he played rock ’n’ roll in school bands. In his 1959 yearbook, his ambition was “to join Little Richard”.
S is for Sara. The mother of four of his children, Sara Lownds divorced Bob in 1977. Their marriage split was documented on the searing Blood On The Tracks and the song Sara from follow-up Desire.
T is for Theme Time Radio Hour on Radio 2. Bob’s hour-long shows, with themes including weather, neighbours, baseball, dogs and eyes, are a wise and wonderful musical education.
U is for Under The Red Sky. His 1990 album is dedicated to Gabby Goo Goo, the daughter from a short-lived marriage to backing singer Carolyn Dennis.
V is for Visions Of Johanna. “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet,” goes this masterpiece from 1966’s Blonde On Blonde. No wonder he’s studied in schools and universities.
W is for Woody Guthrie. The hobo singer was a massive influence on Bob and shaped his early image. Song To Woody on the self-titled debut album was one of Bob’s first compositions.
X is for X-rated. Imagine a Dylan song, in this case Love Sick, being used to sell sexy Victoria’s Secret underwear? He was, of course, accused of selling out.
Y is for Yesterday. He once sang an impromptu cover of The Beatles’ Yesterday at a recording session in New York. It appears on one of the thousands of illegal recordings of the world’s most bootlegged artist.
Z is for Zimmerman. Bob was born Robert Allen Zimmerman to Abe and Beatty on May 24, 1941.
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