IF BOB Dylan, who turns 70 today, had decided to become a permanent rather than a temporary recluse after his 1966 motorcycle accident, his legacy as one of the most iconic artists in the cultural history of the 20th century would have been assured.
When Newsweek called him “ the most influential cultural figure now alive ” in 2004 he was in the throes of one of the most remarkable comebacks in a career that seemed to reach its zenith almost 40 years earlier when he became a touchstone for the various movements for social change flourishing at the time.
There was a kind of serendipity about Dylan’s arrival on the scene as an era of great flux and turbulence was getting started in America. In “striking the chords of American history” – as former president Bill Clinton once described it – he gave the civil rights and anti-war protest causes their clarion signature tunes. He not only renewed and replenished the folk tradition, but also transformed rock music with the trilogy of albums that culminated with his masterpiece, Blonde on Blonde.
While the 1960s may, retrospectively, appear to have been his “heyday”, subsequent decades produced albums of equal depth and quality: Blood on The Tracks in the 1970s and Time Out of Mind at the end of the 1990s. From originally writing in a style derived from the folk tradition and in homage to his hero, Woody Guthrie, Dylan evolved into one of the most potent voices of the Sixties counter-culture. The argument as to whether he is a poet or songwriter has its supporters and its detractors but there can be little doubt that his compendious songbook is one that will be passed on to generations. The image he presented, that of the anti-pop star, and those unconventional vocal chords, have alway been part of the old troubadour’s appeal.
The hostility he provoked when he abandoned a pure folk style — having taken command of it — for the electrified sound of the mid-1960s trilogy of albums was the beginning of a life of shape-shifting that involved constant reinventions of both his songs and persona, numerous resurrections as a creative artist, and a series of religious conversions that baffled and often alienated his audiences.
Dylan’s life and role in the cultural history of the past 50 years is one of the most documented. Yet today he remains an enigmatic, elusive and complex figure who has managed to connect with new audiences right up to the present — and looks set to continue his “dance beneath the diamond skies” into his 70s.