THIS IS PART 3 OF A 3 PARTS SERIES – TRIBUTE TO BOB DYLAN
Music – 2021 – Recorded On Bob Dylan Rough and Ready Album – “Crossing The Rubicon”
In December 2020, it was announced that Dylan had sold his entire song catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group. Dylan’s deal includes 100 percent of his rights for all the songs of his catalog….which includes both the income he receives as a songwriter….and his control of each song’s copyright. In exchange for its payment to Dylan, Universal, a division of the French media conglomerate Vivendi, will collect all future income from the songs. The New York Times stated Universal had purchased the copyright to over 600 songs…..and the price was “estimated at more than $300 million”…. albeit other reports suggested the figure was closer to $400 million.
Music & News – 2004 – CBS Special – Bob Dylan Entire 60 Minutes Interview With Ed Bradley
On February 26, 2021, Columbia Records released 1970, a three-CD set of recordings from the Self Portrait and New Morning sessions….which included the entire session Dylan recorded with George Harrison on May 1, 1970. Dylan’s 80th birthday in May 2021 was commemorated by a virtual conference Dylan@80…..which was organized by the TU Institute for Bob Dylan Studies…..as the program featured 17 sessions spread across 3 days delivered by over 50 scholars, journalists and musicians….who contributed from around the world through internet connections. Several new biographies and studies of Dylan were published as journalists and critics assessed the scale of Dylan’s achievements in a career spanning 60 years.
Music – 1970 – Bob Dylan & George Harrison In The Studio Album – “Ghost Riders In The Sky” + “Cupid” + “All I Have To Do Is Dream” + “Gates Of Eden” + “Matchbox” + “True Love” + “Telephone Line” + “Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance” + “New York” + “Song To Woody” + “Doo Da Ron Ron” et al
On July 18, 2021, livestream platform Veeps presented a 50 minute performance by Dylan, Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan …..which was filmed in black and white with a film noir look….as Dylan performed 13 songs in a club setting with an audience. The performance was favorably reviewed….with one critic suggesting the backing band resembled the style of the musical Girl from the North Country.
Music – 2021 – Bob Dylan Livestreem On Veeps – “Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan”
On September 17, Dylan released Springtime In New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985)…..which was issued in 2 LP, 2 CD and 5 CD formats….as the set comprised rehearsals, live recordings, out-takes and alternative takes from the albums Shot of Love, Infidels and Empire Burlesque. In The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick commented, “These bootleg sessions remind us that Dylan’s worst period is still more interesting than most artists’ purple patches”…..when Springtime in New York received an aggregate score of 85 on critical website Metactitic, indicating “universal acclaim”.
Music – 2021 – Recorded On Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 16 Springtime In New York Album – “Angelina (Shot of Love)”
Music – 2021 – Recorded On Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 16 Springtime In New York Album- “Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight”
Music – 2021 – Recorded On Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Volume 16 Springtime In New York Album- “Too Late”
Dylan’s visual art was 1st seen by the public via a painting he contributed for the cover of The Band‘s Music from Big Pink album in 1968…..while the cover of Dylan’s own 1970 album Self Portrait features the painting of a human face by Dylan…..as more of his artwork was revealed with the 1973 publication of his book Writings and Drawings…..along with the cover of Dylan’s 1974 album Planet Waves again featured one of his paintings. In 1994 Random House published Drawn Blank….which was a book of Dylan’s drawings…..then in 2007, the 1st public exhibition of Dylan’s paintings, The Drawn Blank Series, opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany ….which showcased more than 200 watercolors and gouaches made from the original drawings…..as the exhibition coincided with the publication of Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series…..which includes 170 reproductions from the series. From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, The Brazil Series. In July 2011, a leading contemporary art gallery, Gagosian Gallery, announced their representation of Dylan’s paintings. An exhibition of his art, The Asia Series, opened at the Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery on September 20th….while displaying Dylan’s paintings of scenes in China and the Far East…..when the New York Times reported that “some fans and Dylanologists have raised questions about whether some of these paintings are based on the singer’s own experiences and observations, or on photos that are widely available and were not taken by Mr. Dylan”…..as The Times pointed to close resemblances between Dylan’s paintings and historic photos of Japan and China….and photos taken by Dmitri Kessel and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Art critic Blake Gopnik has defended Dylan’s artistic practice while arguing, “Ever since the birth of photography, painters have used it as the basis for their works: Edgar Degas and Édouard Vuillard and other favorite artists—even Edvard Munch—all took or used photos as sources for their art, sometimes barely altering them”. The Magnum photo agency confirmed that Dylan had licensed the reproduction rights of these photographs. Dylan’s 2nd show at the Gagosian Gallery, Revisionist Art, opened in November 2012….when the show consisted of thirty paintings, transforming and satirizing popular magazines, including Playboy and Babytalk. In February 2013, Dylan exhibited the New Orleans Series of paintings at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In August 2013, Britain’s National Portrait Gallery in London hosted Dylan’s 1st major UK exhibition, Face Value.…which featured 12 pastel portraits. In November 2013, the Halcyon Gallery in London mounted Mood Swings, an exhibition in which Dylan displayed 7 wrought iron gates he had made…..when in a statement released by the gallery, Dylan said, “I’ve been around iron all my life ever since I was a kid. I was born and raised in iron ore country, where you could breathe it and smell it every day. Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference”. In November 2016, the Halcyon Gallery featured a collection of drawings, watercolors and acrylic works by Dylan…..as the exhibition, The Beaten Path, depicted American landscapes and urban scenes….which was inspired by Dylan’s travels across the USA…..when the show was reviewed by Vanity Fair and Asia Times Online. In October 2018, the Halcyon Gallery mounted an exhibition of Dylan’s drawings, Mondo Scripto…..with works that consisted of Dylan hand-written lyrics of his songs….with each song illustrated by a drawing. Retrospectrum, the largest retrospective of Dylan’s visual art to date, consisting of over 250 works in a variety of media, debuted at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai in 2019. Building on the exhibition in China, a version of Retrospectrum…..which includes a new series of paintings, “Deep Focus”, drawn from film imagery, opened at the Frost Art Museum in Miami on November 30, 2021. Since 1994, Dylan has published eight books of paintings and drawings.
Music & Art – 1962 To 2021 – Special – Bob Dylan: Retrospectrum at the Frost Art Museum
Music & Art – 1962 To 2021 – Special – The Paintings of Bob Dylan
Music & Art – 2017 – Vic Stefanu’s Amazing World Videos Presents From London – Art by Famous Artist, Singer, Songwriter and Nobel Prize Winner BOB DYLAN
Dylan has won many awards throughout his career including the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, ten Grammy Awards, one Academy Award and one Golden Globe Award. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. In May 2000, Dylan received the Polar Music Prize from Sweden’s King Carl XVI. In June 2007, Dylan received the Prince of Asturias Award in the Arts category. Dylan received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in May 2012. In February 2015, Dylan accepted the MusiCares Person of the Year award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, in recognition of his philanthropic and artistic contributions to society. In November 2013, Dylan received the accolade of Légion d’Honneur from the French education minister Aurélie Filippetti.
Music – 1988 – Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony – Bob Dylan Accepts His Award
Music & Awards – 1997 – The Kennedy Center Honors Bob Dylan – With Induction Perspective by Gregory Peck
Music – 2000 – Special – Bob Dylan Receiving the Polar Music Prize From Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf
Music – 2001 – 73rd Academy Awards – As Bob Dylan Accepts Oscar For Best Song – “Things Have Changed”
Music & Awards – 2015 – Special – Bob Dylan: 2015 MusiCares Person Of The Year – Ceremony and Acceptance Speech
The Nobel Prize committee announced on October 13, 2016, that it would be awarding Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”…..while the New York Times reported, “Mr. Dylan, 75, is the 1st musician to win the award, and his selection on Thursday is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901.”…..when Dylan remained silent for two weeks after receiving the award…..and then told journalist Edna Gundersen that getting the award was “amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?”…..then the Swedish Academy announced in November that Dylan would not travel to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize Ceremony due to “pre-existing commitments”…..when at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm on December 10, 2016, Dylan’s speech was given by Azita Raji, U.S. Ambassador to Sweden….as Patti Smith accepted Dylan’s Nobel….and performed his song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” to orchestral accompaniment. On April 2, 2017, Academy secretary Sara Danius reported, “Earlier today the Swedish Academy met with Bob Dylan for a private ceremony [with no media present] in Stockholm, during which Dylan received his gold medal and diploma. Twelve members of the Academy were present. Spirits were high. Champagne was had. Quite a bit of time was spent looking closely at the gold medal, in particular the beautifully crafted back, an image of a young man sitting under a laurel tree who listens to the Muse. Taken from Virgil‘s Aeneid, the inscription reads: Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes, loosely translated as ‘And they who bettered life on earth by their newly found mastery'”. Dylan’s Nobel Lecture was posted on the Nobel Prize website on June 5, 2017. The New York Times pointed out that, in order to collect the prize’s eight million Swedish kronor (US$900,000), the Swedish Academy’s rules stipulate the laureate “must deliver a lecture within six months of the official ceremony, which would have made Mr. Dylan’s deadline June 10”. Academy secretary Danius commented, “The speech is extraordinary and, as one might expect, eloquent. Now that the lecture has been delivered, the Dylan adventure is coming to a close”. In his essay, Dylan writes about the impact that three important books made on him….including Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick…..Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front…. and Homer’s Odyssey…..as he concludes with “Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They’re meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story'”.
Music & Awards – 2016 – PBS News Hour Special – Nobel Honors Bob Dylan, Bard For A Changing World With The Nobel Prize For Literature
Music & Awards – 2016 – Nobel Prize for Literature Presentation – Bob Dylan Speech at the 2016 Nobel Banquet – Delivered by U.S. Ambassador To Sweden Azita Raji
Music & Awards – 2016 – Nobel Prize for Literature Presentation To Bob Dylan Ceremony – Patti Smith Performs Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”
Music & Awards – 2017 – Special – Bob Dylan’s 2016 Nobel Lecture In Literature
Music & Awards – 2016 – Wall Street Journal Special – Bob Dylan’s ‘Poetic Expressions’ Win 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature
Music & Awards – Nerdwriter 1 Special – Why Bob Dylan Won The Nobel Prize for Literature
Dylan’s lyrics began to receive detailed scrutiny from academics and poets as early as 1998…..when Stanford University sponsored the 1st international academic conference on Bob Dylan to be held in the United States. In 2004, Richard F. Thomas, Classics professor at Harvard University, created a freshman seminar titled “Dylan”…..which aimed “to put the artist in context of not just popular culture of the last half-century, but the tradition of classical poets like Virgil and Homer“. Literary critic Christopher Ricks published Dylan’s Visions of Sin…. which was a 500-page analysis of Dylan’s work…..and has said, “I’d not have written a book about Dylan, to stand alongside my books on Milton and Keats, Tennyson and T.S. Eliot, if I didn’t think Dylan a genius of and with language”…..as we at ImaSportsphile so aptly say it….”a musical word merchant of the highest order as a melodic poet laureate”…..as evidenced by former British poet laureate Andrew Motion suggesting his lyrics should be studied in schools….for the critical consensus that Dylan’s song writing was his outstanding creative talent and achievement was articulated by Encyclopædia Britannica…..where his entry stated: “Hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, Dylan … set the standard for lyric writing.”
Music – 1982 – Special – The Beatles Talk About Bob Dylan
Music – 2002 – Special Interview – Mick Jagger Talks About Bob Dylan’s Voice
Music – 1993 – Special Interview In Seattle – Carlos Santana & Bob Dylan & Annoying Interviewer – On The Music of Today, Being Boo’d On Stage, Guns and More
Dylan’s voice also received critical attention…..when Robert Shelton described his early vocal style as “a rusty voice suggesting Guthrie’s old performances, etched in gravel like Dave Van Ronk’s”…..and David Bowie, in his tribute, “Song for Bob Dylan“, described Dylan’s singing as “a voice like sand and glue”…..as his voice continued to develop as he began to work with rock’n’roll backing bands…..when critic Michael Gray described the sound of Dylan’s vocal work on “Like a Rolling Stone” as “at once young and jeeringly cynical”. As Dylan’s voice aged during the 1980’s, for some critics, it became more expressive. Christophe Lebold writes in the journal Oral Tradition, “Dylan’s more recent broken voice enables him to present a world view at the sonic surface of the songs—this voice carries us across the landscape of a broken, fallen world.” The anatomy of a broken world in ‘Everything is Broken’ on the album Oh Mercy, is but an example of how the thematic concern with all things broken is grounded in a concrete sonic reality”.
Music – 1971 – Recorded On David Bowie’s Hunky Dory Album – “Song For Bob Dylan”
If Dylan’s work in the 1960’s was seen as bringing intellectual ambition to popular music, critics in the 21st century described him as a figure who had greatly expanded the folk culture from which he initially emerged…..when following the release of Todd Haynes’ Dylan biopic I’m Not There….that is when J. Hoberman wrote in his 2007 Village Voice review, “Elvis might never have been born, but someone else would surely have brought the world rock ‘n’ roll. No such logic accounts for Bob Dylan. No iron law of history demanded that a would-be Elvis from Hibbing, Minnesota, would swerve through the Greenwich Village folk revival to become the world’s 1st and greatest rock ‘n’ roll beatnik bard and then—having achieved fame and adoration beyond reckoning—vanish into a folk tradition of his own making.”
Music – 1962 To 2022 – Special Documentary – “The Revealing Truth About Bob Dylan”
After having been one of the original Dylanists at the University of Texas at Austin in 1965….it has been a real honor to post this video story and life of a musical word merchant of the highest order….for how do you conclude a post depicting the life of the melodic poet laureate of our Sex, Drugs and Rock N Roll generation. What a gift for song writing….wherein, as a singer, I personally think Bob Dylan was the type of artist who didn’t like to perform a song the same way twice…..for what he gave was real and raw….and not some robot trying to sound exactly like the studio recording each night. What a great way to showcase the long life and musical journey of Dylan in this video collection contained in this post herewith. He is a man of music….a poet…..a teller of tales….whose 1st place was Minnesota, the land of small towns and no where to go…..while his teachers were the poets he read and the music he listened to on the radio. He left his hometown of Hibbing one night during a snow storm….and headed to New York’s Greenwich Village…. where protest and decent were strung on a guitar….and though he was just a kid, he was a keen observer….as he looked out on America and told us what he felt. His cadence is trodded and provoked….while his words cut to the quick….as his songs became the rallying cry for my generation, the anthems of our time. He turned his songs inward and with a rush of poetic images, he took us deep inside. Then he expanded his canvas….and he plugged into Rock N Roll…..as he exploded the form….while he shot it full of ideas that made us think…..when it became a restless reinvention, album after album…. and in time, the children of the children would take up his songs as their own. Who is this fellow Bob Dylan? He is the crisis and disguises….as he is a searcher with his songs….cuz in him we hear the echo of all American voices….as Bob Dylan’s voice reaches just as high…..and it will linger just as long. His lyrics and melody are so meaningful and suitable…..such as saying one can feel younger while getting older…..”I was so much older then and I’m younger than that now”…..what a good feeling!!…..and certainly a great one to end this post with….for only Dylan has the chops to make a song sear your soul. The book of Dylan has an infinite number of pages and they are worth reading…..while the back pages are constantly being rewritten, even today in 2022 at age 81. Nobody can sing quite like Dylan…..for he is one of a kind…. with a voice that is rough, nasally, boyish, mature and beautiful at the same time….. plus, he has never gotten enough praise for his phrasing, pauses and pronunciations…..as he sets a mood in his songs that is just incredible. No one will match the power of Dylan’s incredible catalog of masterpieces…..for Dylan = Infinity…..as the fact remains that no matter how hard other singers try or how many they become, they can never be even close to Dylan. Thank you God for letting us have this treasure and all the gifts he has given to us …..and still gives us today….for it never ceases to amazes me how much influence one man can have upon the world. It is my opinion that in 100 years, they’ll still be unearthing gems in the Dylan diamond mine. Despite his longevity and acclaim, I still feel his talent is underestimated…..for I don’t think the world will ever fully know the depth of Bob’s consciousness…..but I am forever grateful that I was able to be the one to post this video history of the life and times of America’s musical word merchant and melodic poet laureate.
END OF PART 3
