Bob Dylan was influenced by three major movements in American history - the American folk music revival, the civil rights movement, and the Beat generation. These movements provided inspiration for Dylan's music and allowed him to experiment with different styles. As a folk artist, Dylan built upon traditional songs and incorporated elements from writers like Woody Guthrie, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. Over time, Dylan shifted away from protest songs and toward more poetic, surrealist lyrics that reflected the influence of the Beat generation. The movements Dylan engaged with helped establish his diverse career and reputation as an icon of American culture.

1. Nate Bridges
History of the Music City
Bob Dylan
“I was born very far from where I’m s’posed to be, and I’m on my way home”,
said Dylan during an interview for Martin Scorscese's 2004 documentary on Dylan’s
life, No Direction Home. Where exactly that is, no one but Bob Dylan himself would
know. Dylan is one of the few modern artists who seems less defined by a region of
America, but rather is defined by American culture as a whole. Today, Dylan stands
as an arbiter, and an authority on folk music, and song writing. To me he is a master
shape shifter; a bluesman, a folk troubadour, a civil rights activist, a rock n’ roll pop
star, a poet, a country crooner, an evangelist gospel singer, a gypsy, a beatnik, and an
American icon. Bob Dylan is entrenched in three major movements in American
history that not only provided the influence that allowed him to literally be whoever
he wanted, whenever he wanted, but also provided a solid foundation for him to rely
on and also rebel against. The American Folk Music Revival, The Civil Rights
Movement and The Beatnik Generation all had profound influences on Bob Dylan’s
success as an artist.
The start of Robert Allen Zimmerman’s journey began in Duluth, Minnesota
on May 24th
, 1941. He was raised in the coal-mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota not
far from his place of birth. The story of his now infamous name change from Robert
Zimmerman (Dylan is Jewish) to Bob Dylan has its origins rooted in both the anti-
Semitism of Minnesota during the first half of the 20th
century and also Dylan’s love
of the beat poet Dylan Thomas. As with most stories about Dylan, his name change
is a great example of a seemingly monumental change in his life with which he will
provide little to no details about. He dropped out of the University of Minnesota
after his freshman year to move to New York’s Greenwich Village in 1961 where he
promptly told many there that he had lived in “North Dakota, New Mexico, Arizona,
Texas, and Kansas “ and had also been in a travelling carnival since he was 14.
All of these stories had very little basis in fact but helped establish Dylan’s
seemingly mystical origins like his folk heroes of years past. Dylan no doubt would
lie about his origins, not because he was dishonest but more because he wanted to
create a mysterious background for himself like his idols. The legend of “The
Crossroads” which is most famously attributed to Robert Johnson claims that Robert
Johnson was a mediocre guitarist at best, and struggled to make a living compared
to his more accomplished contemporaries. So one night we went to the crossroads
where he met and made a deal with Satan so he could become a better musician.
Dylan most definitely weaved odd tales like this into his own life, specifically
his motorcycle crash of 1966. In 1966 after several years of heavy touring and
recording he had returned to his humble estate in Woodstock, New York. Dylan
claims he went out for a ride on a motorcycle and crashed breaking his neck. He was
not heard from for several months and many wondered what exactly happened.
There is no record of Bob Dylan ever going to a hospital for his injuries and he has

2. never spoken about it at great length. I believe the story is a fabrication, made up by
Dylan in order to allow himself the time to kick his drug habit and to take time off of
touring.
Stories like that are ever present when observing the life of Bob Dylan, and
the reason for that is because of the influence of his favorite bluesman and the very
limited amount of knowledge people have on them. Dylan became popular in an age
where well-known artists did not have the choice of being obscure because the
media was ever present. Dylan had to fabricate stories in order to keep his private
life private, and to become more like his hero’s Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson.
Dylan summed up his major influences on “Song to Woody” from his
first album in 1962.
“Here's to Cisco and Sonny and Lead belly too
And to all the good people that travelled with you
Here's to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind.”
The song was about Dylan’s greatest musical influence, Woody Guthrie, and is
also somewhat of a farewell goodbye to his hero. During the fourth stanza Dylan
also references Cisco Houston, Sonny Boy Williamson and Huddie Leadbetter (also
known as Lead belly). All four of the artists referenced in the song save for Guthrie
had long since passed on by the time Dylan had recorded the song and had been
apart of the Dust Bowl era of singers and songwriters. These singers, particularly
Guthrie, had a great deal of influence on singers like Odetta, Joan Baez, and Pete
Seeger who once even claimed “We are all Woody’s children”.
Woody Guthrie was a socialist and wrote many topical songs during the 30s
and 40s about the plight of the workingman. After World War II Guthrie’s musical
output slowed greatly and by 1952 stopped altogether due to the onset of Huntington’s
disease. Dylan initially moved to New York in 1961 to seek out Guthrie and eventually
found him at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital where Dylan would occasionally sit by
Guthrie’s bed and sing songs requested by him. Dave Von Ronk a Greenwich Village
folkie, and an early supporter of Dylan’s once quipped “The folk music revival was
postponed for nearly ten years by the witch hunts…… When the US Army publishes
pamphlets on how to spot a communist and it had lines in it like ‘He will sometimes play
the guitar’, that kind of thing had a very repressive and suppressive effect”.
Pete Seeger and many others in the folk movement were “blacklisted” by the
House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Many
reputations in the folk music scene were tainted by the seemingly “un-American”
undertones in their music as a result of their communist associations, and it was only in
the 1960s when their music became more popular and ideology more acceptable were
they able to move about society as they had before. Many were not allowed in schools,
and were seen as a threat to the American way of life.
The political nature of the songs being sung during the 50s by these musicians
lent themselves well to the emergence of the Civil Rights movement that was beginning
to unfold at the time. Most songs being sung at the time were not originals but instead
were traditional gospel songs, slave songs, or folk songs that had been handed down

3. throughout the years. Songs like Dylan’s “Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” was itself adapted
from the traditional English song “Lord Randall” with which it shares many lyrics and
the same melody. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times Joni Mitchell made a
remark about Dylan’s track record of “borrowing” certain elements from other peoples
songs. “Bob is not authentic at all. He's a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake.
Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.” What Joni
Mitchell doesn’t seem to understand is that as a folk artist one must by definition
steal these songs in order to pass them along or else they will be lost to time. That
has been and always will be deeply entrenched in the tradition of folk music.
Dylan recorded the song “The Times They Are-A Changin” in late 1963, and
less than a month after he put it to tape he was performing the song live for the first
time after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
"I thought, 'Wow, how can I open with that song? I'll get rocks thrown at me.' But I
had to sing it; my whole concert takes off from there. I know I had no understanding of
anything. Something had just gone haywire in the country and they were applauding
the song. And I couldn't understand why they were clapping, or why I wrote the song. I
couldn't understand anything. For me, it was just insane."
The song established Dylan as not only a traditional folk artist, but now as a “protest
singer”. Mike Marqusee later had this to say about the very prolific year and a half of
political songwriting of Dylan’s between 1962 and 1963. "The protest songs that
made Dylan famous and with which he continues to be associated were written in a
brief period of some 20 months – from January 1962 to November 1963. Influenced
by American radical traditions (the Wobblies, the Popular Front of the thirties and
forties, the Beat anarchists of the fifties) and above all by the political ferment
touched off among young people by the civil rights and ban the bomb movements,
he engaged in his songs with the terror of the nuclear arms race, with poverty,
racism and prison, jingoism and war." Bob Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival
for the first time in 1963 and it is considered his premier major performance. He
sang many of his topical songs like “With God On Our Side”, and “Only a Pawn in
Their Game” and was one of the only artists at the festival singing original songs.
Dylan at this time was considered to be the natural successor to Pete Seeger,
whom himself had been as the successor to Woody Guthrie. Allen Ginsberg also
noted in the film No Direction Home that the first time he heard the song “The Times
They Are-A Changin” he wept because he realized that “the torch had been passed to
the next generation”. The entire song is somewhat of an exemplification of what
Ginsberg was trying to convey, but I have always felt that the fourth verse always
seems to speak that sentiment the clearest.
“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'”

4. His lyrics in this song and many others during this period have strong
observations on society which according to Dylan lean neither left nor right on the
political spectrum, but instead are morally driven between right and wrong. “Just
because you are on the side of people who are struggling does not make you
political” he told Scorsese in 2004.
Dylan was present during the March on Washington in 1963 and performed a
set of several songs that directly preceded Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a
Dream” speech in front of 250,000 people outside of the Lincoln Memorial. High
profile events like this and Dylan’s several other Newport Festival appearances
raised his profile significantly within the counter culture.
Some would argue that Dylan brought about the beginning of the counter
culture movement but I see it differently. Dylan may or may not have believed in
Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, but if he did I believe he deliberately
set out to tap into it and to comment on it with his protest songs from that time. He
also deliberately set out to tear down his reputation as a “protest singer”. The
Emergency Civil Liberties Union gave Bob Dylan the Tom Paine award in late 1963
for his contribution to “topical songwriting”. Dylan was said by some to have been
drunk, and stammered out an “acceptance” speech about how he felt that he and Lee
Harvey Oswald had “a lot in common….” and “old people, when their hair falls out,
they should go out (go to war)….. I’m trying to go up without thinking about trivial
things like politics”. Dylan flatly refused to become the puppet of the left wing
political arm of the country, or the right for that matter. It was the first time in
Dylan’s career that he would take charge of what he was doing artistically,
regardless of the consequences. Dylan had tapped into the heart of the counter
culture and had them eating out of his hands from the day he came onto the national
scene, but either out of carelessness, self destruction or just his desire to maintain a
fresh outlook for his art he rejected the movement he had once been firmly
embraced by.
Dylan’s lyrics became highly poetic around the end of 1964 with songs such
as “Mr. Tambourine Man”, and the song “My Back Pages” which is basically a
condemnation of his former self as a topical songwriter.
“A self-ordained professor’s tongue too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty is just equality in school
‘Equality,’ I spoke the word as if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now”
The lyrics from around this time are deeply steeped in the writings and
poetry of the Beatnik authors Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack
Kerouac. These authors were highly influential in the 50s counterculture, and
authored many works like Kerouac’s On The Road which established the archetypal,
roaming poet based on Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady, a look and attitude which was
later championed by the likes of Jim Morrison and later Dylan himself during 1966.
The book often entails Kerouac’s various journeys across post WWII America with
his various friends and associates. The book was highly controversial when it was

5. written in 1949 and was actually prevented from being released for nearly ten years
for its portrayal of sexual promiscuity and drug use. Allen Ginsberg’s book of poems,
Howl actually faced an obscenity trail in the early 60s for its violent themes and for
containing references to homosexuality. The trail in the end wound up greatly
liberalizing what exactly could be published in the United States, and helped
diminish the act of banning books.
The “Beatniks”, as they came to be called, were influenced by poets and
authors like Ezra Pound, Arthur Rimbaud, and Henry David Thoreau. Their writings
often incorporated prose, surrealism and stream of consciousness. Jack Kerouac
claims to have written his book On The Road in a single three-week coffee binge on a
120-foot scroll of tracing paper. The scroll is available to be viewed in a museum,
but many would point at the copious amounts of drugs being used by the characters
in the book to point out that Kerouac was most likely on some kind of drugs while
he was writing it. The book’s depiction of a gang of friends roaming around the US,
taking drugs and getting into adventures was highly influential on Ken Keasy and his
“Merry Pranksters”, which in turn influenced the Beatles making of their Magical
Mystery Tour album and film. Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg actually travelled
together to the town of Lowell, Massachusetts to visit the grave of Kerouac in 1975
while on Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
Dylan was said to have written the song “Chimes of Freedom” in the back of a
station wagon while on a road trip around the country with fellow musician Paul
Clayton, much like the characters in On The Road. The lyrics in the song seem to
suggest Dylan’s immersion into the beat writings of the 50’s as well as the surrealist
poetry of Arthur Rimbaud.
“Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail
The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder
That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze
Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder
Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind
Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind
An' the poet an the painter far behind his rightful time
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”
“Chimes of Freedom” is about two friends hiding under a doorway during a
thunderstorm. They perceive the pounding thunder as God’s way of supporting all
the downtrodden people who were struggling in the world at the time. The reason
this is so significant is because this song is not only Dylan’s first foray into
surrealism and beat influenced writings, but it is also Dylan’s last political song he
would write for many years.
Dylan was seen by many to exemplify the “beatnik” stereotype, but I happen
to think this was only the media trying to label him after he flatly refused to be
associated with folk music and then with protest music. Dylan’s bohemian lifestyle
and attitude echoed the beat writers of the past at a time when their influence was
at the height of its power and he was accepted into an entirely new scene of people
outside the folk or political scenes.

6. Bob Dylan is a highly influential artist and he will be for a very long time, but
if it wasn’t for these three movements coalescing, converging and supporting his
rise, as well as providing him a wealth of knowledge and influence, we may not have
ever even heard of Bob Dylan.
The American Folk Music revival gave him a template to base his music off of,
which he continues to do today. One of his most recent albums Modern Times
contains multiple uses of lyrics, and songs that go completely unaccredited. Some,
like Joni Mitchell, would call that plagiarism, but they don’t understand that Dylan is
merely passing along gems of knowledge he has picked up, as a folk traditionalist
would do. Dylan learned an extraordinary amount about songs and songwriting by
encasing himself in the music of America’s musical past and has since become the
living authority on folk music today.
The Civil Rights Movement provided a large and welcoming fan base that
chose Dylan as their spokesman. Even after abandoning an active role in the
movement, Dylan’s songs were still acknowledged and appreciated as “the best
protest songs in our (the movement’s) arsenal” claimed Joan Baez. Even Dylan’s
rejection of his own audience helped solidify his popularity within that very same
audience.
Finally, the Beat Generation and their writings provided Dylan with his true
artistic viewpoint. Dylan once said, “I’ll live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet” and he
certainly has and most certainly will continue to. But without him discovering the
works of such literary greats like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, one finds it
difficult to imagine Dylan with such creative and beautiful lyrical power. The reason
Dylan is considered above many of his contemporaries at the time was because he
was the first popular artist to take songwriting seriously. He weaved poetry in with
his music and has recently been recognized with a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation
"for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical
compositions of extraordinary poetic power."
Bob Dylan is a special kind of artist that only comes around once in most
people’s lives, but he wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the three movements
that helped define his incredible career.

7. Works Cited
1. No Direction Home, a documentary film by Martin Scorsese
2. The Other Side of the Mirror; Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival
1963-1965. A concert/documentary film
3. Don’t Look Back, a documentary of Dylan’s 1966 tour by D.A. Pennebaker
4. Dylan Speaks: The Legendary 1965 Press Conference in San Francisco
directed by Robert N. Zagone
5. I’m Not There a film directed by Todd Haynes
6. Chronicles Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan
7. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
8. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
9. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes by Greil Marcus
10. The Jews In Minnesota: The First Seventy-Five Years by W. Gunther Plaut.
11. Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein
12. Bob Dylan by Anthony Scaduto (pg. 160)
13. Theme Time Radio Hour (various episodes) a radio show that was hosted by
Bob Dylan on XM Satellite Radio
14. Linear notes for the following Bob Dylan albums: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin
Bob Dylan, The Times They Are-A Changin, Another Side of Bob Dylan, John
Wesley Harding, Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966
15. http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2008-Special-Awards-and-Citations
16. http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-11-13/film/like-a-complete-unknown-i-
m-not-there-and-the-changing-face-of-bob-dylan-on-film/
17. http://www.globegazette.com/entertainment/people/celebrity-
news/article_b15193e5-71e9-5889-bb75-76d7749981bd.html
18. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-jonimitchell-
20100422,0,5684541.story?page=1
19. http://www.redpepper.org.uk/The-Politics-of-Bob-Dylan
20. http://www.enotes.com/1950-arts-american-decades/howl-obscenity-trial
21. http://dylanchords.info/45_modern/index.htm
22. http://www.ontheroad.org/
23. http://classicrock.about.com/od/bandsandartists/p/bob_dylan.htm