Throughout his more than 60 years as a recording artist, Bob Dylan has written more than 600 songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin.’” His engaging and powerful lyrics even earned the songwriter a Nobel Prize in Literature when, in 2016, he became the first musician to win the honor.
Richard F. Thomas, a Classics teacher at Harvard University who created a seminar on Bob Dylan, believes his genius comes from “not caring about expectations, always looking to the future,” and not being afraid to experiment.
Dylan initially emerged through the Greenwich Village folk scene in New York City in the early 1960s, striking a chord with his acoustic, political songs. A few years later, he caused a stir when he transitioned to electric guitar. Since then he’s written country, christian, gospel, rock, jazz and blues songs.
“I think Dylan just hears music. He doesn’t hear genres,” says Anne Margaret Daniel, a professor who teaches a class on Bob Dylan at The New School in New York City. “Basically everything he touches, hears, or reads, whether it’s poetry, fiction, classical music or jazz, he turns it into his own music.”
Here are five ways that Bob Dylan changed music.
1. Dylan Elevated Folk Rock
Dylan’s interest in folk music exploded during his one-year stint at the University of Minnesota. Rather than studying, he spent most of his time attending acoustic gigs at the coffee houses in Dinkytown, Minneapolis. “He soaked up the music like a sponge,” says Daniel. “He listened to Lead Belly and that’s where he first encountered Woody Guthrie. That’s where he really schooled himself on folk music and folk delivery.”
By the start of 1961, Dylan had dropped out of university and moved to New York, where he became a permanent fixture in the Greenwich Village folk music circuit. By 1965, the albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Times They Are a-Changin’ had established Dylan as one of the biggest names in the genre. But even though he was yet to turn 24, Dylan had his sights on moving beyond folk. “He realized that musically, folk music had to become something more dynamic and more alive,” says Thomas.
On one side of his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan was backed by a rock band. On the other he just played the acoustic guitar. When Dylan played these tracks at the Newport Folk Festival in July, 1965, and then on tour in England a few months later, his rock songs were roundly booed. But while there was an instant backlash to Dylan’s move from acoustic to electric guitar, his poetic lyrics mixed with the louder sound from the band helped to create and popularize the folk-rock genre.
“Dylan is the one who adds the folk energy to rock and roll and actually makes it a lot cooler,” says Daniel. “Like a Rolling Stone” took this sound even further. Released on July 20, 1965, it became a worldwide hit.
Dylan’s emergence as a rock star inspired people to listen to his earlier, acoustic work, and subsequently older folk performers like Guthrie and Pete Seeger. But it also paved the way for further rock subgenres. “Dylan lays the paths for something like psychedelic rock,” says Daniel.
Dylan’s refusal to be pigeon-holed and jump from genre to genre also inspired other artists, like David Bowie and Madonna, to follow suit. “He liberated all musical artists not to be trapped into one persona or to freeze in time,” says Daniel.
2. He Popularized the Protest Song
There were protest songs before Bob Dylan. Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” described lynchings of Black Americans in the South. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” addressed inequality in the United States. While “We Shall Overcome” and “Which Side Are You On?” had been performed by various singers in tribute to the civil rights and labor movements.
But, in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan wrote so many protest songs in such a short space of time that, for many, he became the quintessential protest singer. “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Only a Pawn In Their Game” were inspired by the civil rights movement. “Masters of War” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” warn of the threat of nuclear war. “Blowin’ in the Wind” is a call for peace.
For many of these songs, Daniel notes that Dylan “borrowed tunes” and was heavily inspired by earlier ballads and riffs that he learned from musicians in New York. But Dylan added to them, made them his own, and then put them in a modern context.
“Dylan made the songs mainstream,” says Daniel. “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” were covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary and The Byrds, respectively.
These songs continue to be used during protests today. “His songs are available for people who want to protest what they want to protest," says Daniel. "They’re not tied down to a particular time or point in history.”
3. He Showed Longer Songs Can Be Hits, Too
“Like a Rolling Stone’s” success vindicated Dylan’s decision to embrace a more rowdy rock sound. At 6 minutes and 13 seconds long, it also proved that longer tracks could have mainstream appeal. Before “Like a Rolling Stone,” music executives believed that singles should be restricted to three minutes.
“Dylan didn’t care about the three-minute rule,” says Thomas. “I don’t think he even really cared about the radio.” Daniel notes that Dylan was never going to be told by the music industry to make a three minute song that people could dance to. “If he has something to say, he’s going to say it, whether it’s five, seven, 15 or 20 minutes long.”
When Dylan gave “Like a Rolling Stone” to Columbia Records they initially decided not to release it. Shaun Considine, a release coordinator for the label, took it to a New York club, where the crowd repeatedly requested the DJ for it. “Like a Rolling Stone” became a word-of-mouth hit across the city, was played endlessly on radio stations, and went on to become the most commercially successful single of Dylan’s career. It remained on the U.S. charts for 12 weeks, and was only kept off the top spot by The Beatles’ “Help!”
When Paul McCartney first heard “Like a Rolling Stone” at the house of his bandmate John Lennon, he remembered thinking, “It seemed to go on and on forever. It was just beautiful … He showed all of us that it was possible to go a little further." McCartney later admitted that “Hey Jude” was partly inspired by “Like a Rolling Stone.”
4. He Made One of the Earliest Music Videos
Released on March 8, 1965, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” quickly established itself as one of Bob Dylan’s catchiest songs. One of his first recordings with an electric guitar, the song mixes a Chuck Berry style riff with stream of consciousness lyrics that were clearly inspired by the likes of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” is also regarded as one of the first songs to be prominently presented in a music video. While shooting a documentary on Dylan’s tour of England, director D.A. Pennebaker filmed Dylan holding up cue cards with selected words from the song. The video was then used to promote Pennebaker’s documentary, Don’t Look Back. Decades later, when MTV and VH1 were launched, Pennebaker’s video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” aired alongside the more extravagant productions for the likes of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”
“It’s a marvelous project that really makes you focus on the words of the song,” says Daniel. ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ had a really powerful influence on the music video and MTV culture.”
5. He Introduced The Beatles to Marijuana
On August 28, 1964, Bob Dylan paid a visit to The Beatles at the Delmonico Hotel in New York. After the musical powerhouses exchanged introductions, Dylan suggested that they smoke marijuana. McCartney later wrote in his memoir, The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, that the four hadn’t smoked marijuana before, but decided to try it with Dylan. Over the next few hours, McCartney recalled, Dylan and The Beatles got incredibly stoned.
McCartney, Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr went on to regularly smoke marijuana and experiment with other drugs, including LSD. Their music, in turn, became more experimental, as can be heard in the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
For Daniel, the story of Dylan introducing The Beatles to marijuana offers a metaphor for his broader influence on culture.
“Bob Dylan opened the minds of many other musicians and geniuses,” she says. “He showed them new ideas for how to string words together and made them think as much about the lyrics as the music.”
