Bob Dylan: The Voice of a Generation Timeline

Bob Dylan: The Voice of a Generation 23

1941 Bob Dylan born in Duluth, Minnesota Born Robert Allen Zimmerman Born in Duluth and raised in the iron-mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota.
1959 Bob Dylan enrolls at the University of Minnesota Dinkytown folk scene Starts calling himself Bob Dylan and plays the coffeehouses of Minneapolis' Dinkytown.
1961 Bob Dylan arrives in New York Greenwich Village Moves to New York, visits his hero Woody Guthrie in hospital and plays the Village folk clubs.
1961 Bob Dylan signs with Columbia Records Signed by John Hammond Producer John Hammond signs the 20-year-old to Columbia.
1962 Bob Dylan releases his debut album Bob Dylan A debut of mostly traditional folk and blues songs, with only two originals.
1963 Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan Blowin' in the Wind The album that made his name, with Blowin' in the Wind, A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall and Masters of War.
1963 Bob Dylan sings at the March on Washington Civil rights Performs on the day of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech.
1965 Bob Dylan releases Bringing It All Back Home Half electric One side acoustic, one side electric — the first step away from folk.
1965 Bob Dylan releases Like a Rolling Stone A six-minute single A six-minute single that broke the rules of pop radio, often voted the greatest song ever recorded.
1965 Bob Dylan performs electric set at Newport Folk Festival Folk icon's shift to rock divides audience On 25 July 1965 Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival backed by an electric rock band, breaking with his acoustic folk image and drawing a famously mixed reaction from the crowd. The performance is remembered as a pivotal, controversial moment in the evolution of popular music. It signaled Dylan's turn toward the electric sound of albums like Highway 61 Revisited.
1965 Bob Dylan releases Highway 61 Revisited Fully electric His first fully electric album, with Like a Rolling Stone and Desolation Row.
1966 Bob Dylan releases Blonde on Blonde Double album Recorded in Nashville, one of rock's first double albums.
1966 Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident Retreat to Woodstock A crash near Woodstock ends his touring and starts years of seclusion.
1971 Bob Dylan plays the Concert for Bangladesh With George Harrison A rare live appearance at Madison Square Garden at George Harrison's benefit.
1975 Bob Dylan releases Blood on the Tracks The breakup album Widely seen as his finest work of the 1970s.
1975 – 1976 Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue Travelling caravan tour A loose touring troupe with Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Allen Ginsberg.
1979 Bob Dylan releases Slow Train Coming Gospel period His conversion to Christianity produces a gospel trilogy, starting here.
1988 Bob Dylan starts the Never Ending Tour Around 100 shows a year Starts touring almost continuously, a pace he keeps up for decades.
1997 Bob Dylan releases Time Out of Mind Grammy Album of the Year A late comeback that wins the Grammy for Album of the Year.
2012 Bob Dylan receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom From Barack Obama Awarded the highest US civilian honour.
2016 Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize First musician to win Nobel for Literature Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 13, 2016, "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition" — the first musician to win the prize.
2020 Bob Dylan releases Rough and Rowdy Ways First new songs in eight years Includes the 17-minute Murder Most Foul, his first number-one Billboard song.
2020 Bob Dylan sells his songwriting catalogue To Universal Music Sells the rights to his entire song catalogue to Universal Music Publishing.