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Bob Dylan has at various times revolutionized folk, rock, country and gospel music. However, any Dylan fan who says he was not surprised that Bob has released an album of traditional Christmas songs is pulling your leg. Christmas In The Heart is another surprising move by an artist famous for surprises. Yet when you hear Dylan’s direct and obviously sincere readings of “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Little Town Of Bethlehem,” and “The First Noel,” this unlikely exercise seems of a piece with the rest of Dylan’s work. From the very first, this was an artist who made us look...

Bob Dylan Must Be Santa (c) (c) 2009 Sony Music Entertainment Category: Music Tags: Bob Dylan Must Be Santa Holiday Music Video

Bob Dylan still had a few tricks up his sleeve for his Halloween show at the Aragon Entertainment Center in Chicago last night (October 31). Not only did Dylan perform “It’s All Good” (from “Together Through Life”) for the first time ever, but the band covered a verse of the Tom Waits song, “Jesus Gonna Be Here” (actually guitarist Stu Kimball sang, introduced as Waits). Tour debut for “To Ramona”. Here's the set list, courtesy Bob Links. 1. Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking (Bob on keyboard) 2. Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob on guitar) 3. Beyond Here Lies Nothin' (Bob...

Well, this was about the dozenth time for me seeing Bob Dylan live in concert. Starting with his tour in support of Slow Train Coming in 1980 at the Paramount Theater, I've generally made the effort to see the Bard from Hibbing as he passed through the NW. Best show: a triple bill with Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell in 1998 at the Columbia River Gorge Ampitheater. The worst: Dylan touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backup band in sometime in the 1980s. Unbearable, frankly. Fortunately, Dylan has since decided to tour with his own crack bands,...

Bob Dylan began a live concert tour in Seattle last night and the first song he Played was "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking" Gonna change my way of thinking, Make myself a different set of rules. Gonna change my way of thinking, Make myself a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward, And stop being influenced by fools. So much oppression, Can't keep track of it no more. So much oppression, Can't keep track of it no more. Sons becoming husbands to their mothers, And old men turning young daughters into whores. Stripes on your shoulders,...

MORE THAN 4 MILLION MEALS TO BE PROVIDED DURING HOLIDAYS Bob Dylan will release a brand new album of holiday songs, Christmas In The Heart, on Tuesday, October 13, it was announced today by Columbia Records. All of the artist’s U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America, guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year’s holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity. snip Christmas...

Bob Dylan has shape-shifted more times in his career than any other pop musician. His music has always reflected that need to seek out new forms of self-expression. What's less known is that his paintings function in the same way -- providing virtual chapter markings and sign posts in a lifetime filled with twists and turns. In a museum show that's scheduled to open in Europe in 2010, Dylan will exhibit nearly 100 of his works, including the world premiere of 30 large-format paintings from the artist's upcoming "Brazil" series. The show will also feature original paintings from Dylan's "The...

With the entire Beatles back catalogue now available in digitally remastered form, not to mention their appearance in the latest version of Rock Band, Tom Townshend takes an in-depth look at a crucial moment in their musical development - the day they met Bob Dylan… When future generations look back on the music of the twentieth century, two names will loom larger than all others. In the British corner, The Beatles will represent musical innovation, melodic sophistication and the phenomena of global pop fame. In the American corner, Bob Dylan will stand for lyrical mastery, stylistic reinvention and unprecedented artistic...

When Bob Dylan resumes his never-ending tour October 5th in Seattle an old friend will be back in the band. Arc Angels guitarist Charlie Sexton, who played with Dylan from 1999 to 2002, has rejoined his group. Earlier this month Sexton sat in with Dylan in Round Rock Texas, causing rumors that a reunion was imminent. “I love and respect Bob and am very happy to be reunited with my friend onstage,” Sexton tells Rolling Stone. “I’m starting up with him for the fall tour and will carry on with him from there.” He’s unwilling to say any more about...

Rock icon Bob Dylan will sing the old yuletide standards "Winter Wonderland" and "Little Drummer Boy" on his first ever Christmas album, with royalties going to charity, his record label said on Wednesday. Dylan's "Christmas in the Heart" album is due out on October 13, nearly six months after the release of his last studio album, "Together Through Life," which topped the charts. Speculation about the Christmas album began surfacing a few months ago, but were initially met with disbelief by some Dylan aficionados, as the singer was not known to record Christmas songs, and his latest albums have featured...

Dylan's career has taken some strange directions. Perhaps that's why he's been asked to voice two satnav systems The question of precisely how many roads a man must walk down before you can call him a man has baffled music fans for decades.... Bob Dylan, the man who posed the question in Blowin' in the Wind in 1963, has clearly grown tired of pondering this dilemma, and is now after the answers to more precise travelling questions such as, "How many roads, and in which directions, must a man drive down to get as directly as possible from Stoke Newington...

Previous Next Latest Bob Dylan’s Holiday LP “Christmas in the Heart” Due October 13th 8/25/09, 4:55 pm EST Photo: Miller/FilmMagic Bob Dylan has made his latest unpredictable career move: Rolling Stone has learned that Bob Dylan will release a Christmas album October 13th. Entitled Christmas in the Heart, the collection will feature holiday standards including “Must Be Santa,” “Little Drummer Boy,” “Winter Wonderland” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.” All U.S. royalties from the collection will benefit the charity Feeding America, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity. Other proceeds from the disc will benefit hunger relief organizations around the world. Although...

On a rainy day last week in Long Branch, NJ, Bob Dylan, wearing a hood, was peering into a for-sale home when a neighbor called the police fearing he might be a burglar. Two young officers arrived on the scene and neither of them knew who Bob Dylan was. They asked for I.D. - he had none but explained he was a musician on tour with John Mellencamp and they were set to play at a nearby stadium in Lakewood. Without fuss or anger, Mr. Dylan was escorted back to his tour bus where he produced I.D.

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show. The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour...

"In Jersey everything's legal, as long as you don't get caught," Bob Dylan sang in one of his Traveling Wilburys tunes. In an ironic switcheroo, Dylan was apprehended in New Jersey last month even though he was not breaking the law. The rock icon was only guilty of not being recognized by the young cops who answered a complaint that there was a weirdo lurking around the Long Branch, N.J., neighborhood who was "wearing black sweatpants tucked into black rain boots, and two raincoats with the hood pulled down over his head." According to reports, the soggy songwriter told the...

Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood. Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood. A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday. "I don't think she was familiar with his...

Exactly one week after the highly-publicized arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates stirred a national discussion on race relations, legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was detained by police officers in a "low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood" in Long Branch, New Jersey. Makes one wonder why it took so long for this to get reported, and if news outlets that were convinced Gates's arrest was racially motivated will see the delicious irony in a white rock star being questioned by police just because he was "wandering around the neighborhood." The Associated Press sure didn't (h/t Clarence Page): Rock legend Bob Dylan was...

Back in 1965 Bob Dylan sang: 'How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown?' Now, 44 years later, the world-famous musician got his answer when he was stopped by a police officer who didn't know who he was. The 22-year-old officer asked the 'eccentric-looking old man' for identification papers after stopping him in the U.S. seaside town of Long Branch, New Jersey. Bob Dylan Not recognising his name, the officer ordered him into the back of her police car, driving him back to his hotel to check his story.

I just think it's a powerful and beautiful song. Can't BELIEVE this video was from 33 years ago................

Great Interview. This McCotter keeps getting more interesting with every read. His thoughtful and inciteful responses show that he truly understands Dylan's American-grown maverick life. Worth a read.

BOB Dylan made his dramatic conversion from Judaism to Christianity after wallowing in drugs and bed-hopping with female fans -- a switcheroo that apparently jolted one of his biggest fans, Jimmy Carter, a new book about the former president claims.

It was 44 years ago today (June 15th, 1965) that Bob Dylan recorded "Like A Rolling Stone." The song not only revolutionized the way lyrics were written and sung, but ultimately pushed the boundaries of how long a hit single could actually be. "Like A Rolling Stone," which clocked in at 6:06, would end up being printed as 5:59 on the 45's label in an effort to fool Top 40 disc jockeys into playing the single. The session for the song began at 1:20 p.m. at Columbia Records studios in New York City, with Dylan performing the song on the...

Just weeks after Bob Dylan announced he wanted to collaborate with fellow legend Sir Paul McCartney, moves are afoot to bring the two superstars together. Industry insiders say Macca is set to team up with Dylan in California over the summer, where the pair are expected to work on new songs as a duo. The news comes after Dylan declared this month that he found the idea of working with the former Beatle “exciting”. McCartney’s spokesman then declared their man would be “very interested” in a collaboration. “Paul has a home in California not too far from Bob’s so the...

A poem supposedly written by Bob Dylan as a teenager is an old country song, it emerged yesterday. The bombshell came just 24 hours after the original handwritten version of Little Buddy was put up for auction by Christie's. It had been touted as an example of Dylan's "brilliance even as a 16-yearold". But, as a country fan pointed out, most of the words were from a song by Canadian Hank Snow. It was recorded in 1948 - 11 years before Dylan submitted his poem to a Jewish summer camp newspaper in Wisconsin. Christie's is pressing on with the auction...

Today is the birthday of Minnesota native son Bob Dylan; he turns 68. He is a remarkable artist, self-invented, deep in the American grain. Tribute must be paid. A few years back I visited Dylan's old house at 2425 7th Avenue East in Hibbing. The house is a small two-story residence with a one-car attached garage on the side. The house is exactly two blocks from Hibbing High School, Dylan's alma mater. A Dylan fan must own the house. The garage door has the cover of Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" album painted on it. Howard Sounes's Dylan biography Down...

A "poem" purportedly written by a teenage Bob Dylan and up for auction at Christie's is actually a song written by the late Canadian country singer Hank Snow, the auction house said on Wednesday. Christie's announced on Tuesday the sale of the hand-written poem believed to have been written in 1957 when Dylan was 16 and away at Jewish camp. But Christie's failed to detect that the words, with a few minor variations, matched those of a song previously recorded by Snow, who died in 1999 at age 85.

There has been some growling about Bob Dylan because he speaketh not during concerts! The man finished his European tour in Dublin last week with two concerts in the O2, one of which was the 43rd anniversary of his debut in Dublin in 1966! His new album, ‘Together Through Life,’ entered the British and American charts at No 1, and in Austria and Denmark, with Top 5 entries in Ireland, Germany, Australia, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and New Zealand, and Top 10 rankings in Italy, France and Belgium. That’s not bad for an elderman kissing the circumference of 68 years...

The new disc also becomes Dylan`s first album to spend more than a week at the peak since 1969`s `Nashville Skyline.` Bob Dylan started a second week atop the U.K. album chart with "Together Through Life," his first No. 1 release since his 1970 outing "New Morning." The new disc also becomes Dylan's first album to spend more than a week at the peak since 1969's "Nashville Skyline." Additionally, it is the current chart champ in the U.S. Ciara debuted at No. 9 with "Fantasy Ride," while the former Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam, arrived at No. 10 with "Roadsinger." Depeche...

The new Bob Dylan CD Together Through Life comes in a bright, plastic jewel case, but it may as well be cuneiform scratched on a baked clay tablet. Sure enough, though the shrink-wrap crackles and snaps at the unwrapping, the dust of a century and half of American music blows up into your face: “Beyond Here Lies Nothing” shambles to life like a dusty corpse shuffling to a slow and sloppy rumba. Dylan oversees the proceedings: part funeral director, part carnival barker, commanding ancient instruments and sentiments with a wink and a throaty growl. On the opposite end of the...

Thanks to Micah for sending the link to an interview with photographer Ken Regan, conducted by John Balfe on Entertainment.ie. Ken Regan has been taking photos of and for Dylan since the days of Desire. He has an exhibition of his work in Dublin, Ireland at the moment, focused on pictures from Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour. That’s where the interview took place. Regan has plenty of interesting stuff to say, including on how he originally got involved with Bob and gained his respect. The anecdote we can’t possibly ignore here at RWB, however, is the one about how Bob Dylan...

Bob Dylan's "Together Through Life" debuted #1 on the latest Billboard charts with 125,000 copies sold. The album is Dylan's fifth to reach #1. The soundtrack for Hannah Montana The Movie held on to the #2 spot with 86,000 copies sold. Rascal Flatts' "Unstoppable" moved up a spot to #3 with 53,000 copies sold. Rick Ross' "Deeper Than Rap" fell out of the #1 spot in its second week, slipping to #4 with 51,000 copies sold. Lady GaGa's "The Fame" moved up to #5 with 40,000 copies sold. The soundtrack for Twilight held steady at #6 with 35,000 copies sold....

Darkness at the break of noon Shadows even the silver spoon The handmade blade, the child’s balloon Eclipses both the sun and moon To understand you know too soon There is no sense in trying. If Bob Dylan had only written one song, and that song was “It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding), he would still be considered rock’s greatest poet. Uncontestedly, nobody else has created a lyrical masterwork that could come close to matching this song’s unnerving and radiating power, except for Bob Dylan. It’s Alright Ma, at seven-and-a-half minutes, encapsulates rebellion, clarity, insight, youthful passion and moralism. It’s...

He's a notorious recluse who can’t stay off the stage and a renowned womaniser who appears to thrive on family life. He is also one of the most influential songwriters who ever lived – yet he says he’s “not exactly obsessed with writing songs”. Now, at 67, this bundle of willful contradictions is also the oldest musician to have a No 1 album in the UK. Together Through Life, released last week, is Bob Dylan’s first album to top the chart since New Morning in November 1970. With almost half a century of recording behind him, the enigmatic Dylan still...

“They’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown. The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town.” “Desolation Row” is a true listening “experience.” By the time the song’s 11-plus minutes end, you feel like you’ve just seen a movie. Melodically, it’s a fairly simple song, yet it’s overstuffed with panoramic, awe-inspiring imagery. Dylan’s cast of characters are crammed together, but get along fine. The Phantom of the Opera communes with Casanova, Einstein disguises himself as Robin Hood, and Cinderella, who flirts with Romeo, resembles Bette Davis. Even the harmonica blast at the end...

Bob Dylan rewrote the record books yesterday to become the oldest musician to have a No 1 album, nearly 40 years after he last topped the charts. The veteran singer-songwriter claimed his seventh British No 1 with Together Through Life, narrowly edging out the claim of his fellow sexagenarian Neil Diamond to be the oldest artist to scale to the summit of the chart. Dylan, 67, last reached the top of the charts in 1970, when he had two No 1 albums, Self Portrait and New Morning. His last two attempts, Love and Theft and Modern Times, reached No 3...

Our President may not think we are something special but Bob Dylan does. From Douglas Brinkley's interview in France with Dylan, this was written: In Dylan's America, Brinkley writes in his Rolling Stone article, there would be "a Sousa band playing on every Main Street." "Bob is righteous," Brinkley said, adding that Dylan's morality, the result of fierce patriotism, has intensified with age. "He misses the 'can-do-ism' of America...he's got surprising nationalism."

Bob Dylan may have starred in a television commercial for iTunes, but don’t look for him to become an iPod pitchman anytime soon. r1078coverIn a Rolling Stone magazine cover story, the 67-year-old troubadour rails against modern technology like cell phones, iPods and video games. The man who wrote “The Times They Are A-Changin’” almost 46 years ago evidently thinks the times have changed a little too much. “It’s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cell phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games,” Dylan...

The new Rolling Stone interview with Bob Dylan conducted by author Douglas Brinkley — which consists of varying content in the print magazine versus the online “outtakes” — has a whole bunch of funny and delightful and interesting bits. So much so, that it calls for a mega-post to deal with it, which I’m not up to doing at this moment. But from where we sit at RWB HQ, we would be remiss if we did not immediately highlight the passage in the print interview where the name of former president George W. Bush comes up. Dylan talks a lot...

Do you recall where you were at when Obama was elected? Did you feel part of that energy with the campaign? Do you feel like he's a good person? Well I mean, how do you know? The people that are in history that I study up on are people like Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Scipio, maybe George Washington, Lincoln, those kind of guys. And I don't know much about any of these other guys that run for office. snip I want to just follow-up on that globalization talk you had with Sarkozy. Yeah, I ask him, I...

The legend's 33rd studio album finds him working with musicians from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers and Los Lobos, while co-writing with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Play Full CD

#1 Together Through Life (Deluxe Edition) ~ Bob Dylan 4 customer discussions Release Date: April 28, 2009 Available for Pre-order

“I didn’t come here to deal with a doggone thing/I just came here to hear the drummer’s cymbal ring,” Bob Dylan snarls on “My Wife’s Home Town,” one of several blues stomps on his strikingly simple—and strikingly excellent—new album. (Turns out the little lady hails from hell.) He rasps about hard times (“State’s gone broke, the county’s dry”) and the woman who drives him mad with lust—but mostly, he revels in how banged-up and gruff his voice is with a lifetime of road dust corroding his lungs. The old song-and-dance man sings like he’s been gargling with bleach and chasing...

PART FIVE BF: Going back to that song you wrote for the movie that you mentioned earlier, LIFE IS HARD has the formality of an old Rudy Vallee or Nelson Eddy ballad right down to the middle eight (“Ever since the day. . .”). Do you figure that if you start a song in that style, you stick with the rules right down the line? BD: Sure, I try to stick to the rules. Sometimes I might shift paradigms within the same song, but then that structure also has its own rules. And I combine them both, see what works...

Bob Dylan, the poet laureate of rock music, has written some of the greatest songs of all time. Whether in the form of a send-off to a former friend, a protest song, or a feel-good ballad immortalizing a good relationship, Dylan consistently delivers interesting, often timeless music. The following is a list of some of Dylan's best from early in his career. 10) Lay Lady Lay, on the country music album Nashville Skyline, features a softer-voiced Bob Dylan (he had temporarily quit smoking during his recuperation from a near-fatal motorcycle accident). It is a very interesting and very, well, strange...

The UK Times Online has this response to the excerpts from Bob Dylan's interview with Bill Flanagan that were published yesterday: After the summer of love, Bob Dylan backtracks on Barack Obama. Up until now it had been a mutual love affair. As the campaign for the American presidency gathered pace last June, Bob Dylan lent his support to Barack Obama, telling The Times that his candidacy was “redefining the nature of politics�. In return Mr Obama described the singer as an icon, and boasted of having “probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod�, including “the entire Blood on the...

PART TWO A lot of violence in these tunes - you advise anyone going to Houston to keep their gun belts tight, someone's packing a Saturday Night Special in JOLENE, there's a cold blooded killer stalking the town in IT'S ALL GOOD and the woman in MY WIFE'S HOME TOWN is going to make the singer kill someone. Does putting violence in a song up the ante? Dylan: How do you mean that? Does it make the song riskier? Dylan: Well no. The main point is to acknowledge things without going off the deep end. I think whatever's there is...

(BF) A lot of this album feels like a Chess record from the fifties. Did you have that sound in your head going in or did it come up as you played? Dylan: Well some of the things do have that feel. It’s mostly in the way the instruments were played. You like that sound? Oh yeah, very much so. . . the old Chess records, the Sun records. . . I think that’s my favorite sound for a record. What do you like about that sound? I like the mood of those records - the intensity. The sound is...

"RUSH: Here's a story out of Malibu, California, where Bob Dylan has a compound, and some of his neighbors are charging in "an increasingly odoriferous dispute" that he's got a portable toilet outside the house, and the odors coming from this estate, which is Point Dume, are getting to the point that they're intolerable." "Residents contend that the nighttime sea breeze sends a noxious odor from a portable toilet on Dylan's property wafting into their homes. The stench has made members of one family ill and forced them to abandon their bedrooms on warm nights, they say. For more than...

And the title of his new album is ???

Bob Dylan says Barack Obama is 'changin' America His 1964 track 'The Times They are a-Changin' became the anthem for his generation, symbolising the era-defining social struggle against the establishment. Now Bob Dylan - who could justifiably claim to be the architect of Barack Obama's 'change' catchphrase - has backed the Illinois senator to do for modern America what the generation before did in the 1960s. In an exclusive interview with The Times, published in T2 today, Dylan gives a ringing endorsement to Mr Obama, the first ever black presidential candidate, claiming he is "redefining the nature of politics from...