Bob Dylan's Impact on Pop Culture

In the 1960s, Rock ‘n’ Roll was replaced in popularity by other branches of rock such as Acid Rock, Psychedelic Rock and Hard Rock as a hippie counter culture arose, mainly to protest against the Vietnam war. These new forms of rock provided social commentary on the wide range of assassinations and anti-civil rights actions that infested the country, and united those that wanted to end them. They too celebrated anti-authority actions, but now they were used to promote peace and drugs. Americans—mainly college students—were still rebelling against societal constraints, but instead of fighting against the conformity of white suburbia and their parents, they were uniting to fight against U.S. governmental authority. Rock in the 1960s still mainly appealed to the younger generations, but its influence was spreading. Folk Rock (Bob Dylan) was playing in protest, reminding the individuals there that they were fighting for peace, and Psychedelic Rock—which replicated or enhanced the mind altering experience of psychedelic drugs—created a soothing and new atmosphere in the U.S. Music festivals such as Woodstock in 1969 sprung up to promote peace, do drugs, listen to music, and enjoy being alive and young.6 However, this element of extreme partying and pleasure, eventually brought a few stars to early deaths, such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. In the

Folk rock in the sixties inherited the tradition of country and western. In the 1960s, the main representatives of folk rock were Joan Baez, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, and so on. However, the most important folk rock singer is Bob Dylan, who was the first and the most important folk rock music creator. Known as the “protest song singer”, for the entire 1960s, Bob Dylan 's music strongly affected young people that were in the wandering and confusion. It was like a banner, a totem, and a pioneer, helped the the youth from the 1960s generation of found the sustenance of their ideals.

The 1960’s was an era of revolution and social change in the United States. Painters, dancers, actors, musicians and many more artists all wanted to portray societies immoral issues through their art. Musicians played a very prominent role in providing society with an outlet on the importance of this change. Within these musicians was a folk rock singer and songwriter by the name of Robert Allen Zimmerman, or as America knows him, Bob Dylan. He is known and honored around the world for his influence on popular music and culture, however, he is much more than that (Wood 313). The beginning of Bob Dylan’s career as a singer and songwriter was marked by his repetitive emphasis on social change throughout his protest songs which include “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Masters of War,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”; with each song, Dylan exposes many issues that affected, not one, but many lives as he aimed to spread social and political consciousness to society.

At only 22, he was crowned the voice of a generation. His audiences became mesmerized with his expressive lyrics and soulful harmonica. He changed the way the world looks at songwriting and protest, and inspired countless future musicians from the moment he stepped up on the stage in his railroad hat, denim jacket, and harmonica brace. However, it is clear that there is so much more behind Bob Dylan than just a rough voice and a collection of poetic songs. As one man said about Dylan’s early days in Greenwich Village, “There’s a quality of determination and of will that some people have that when they’re doing something, they’re really doing it and you

“The rise of rock ‘n’ roll and the reception of it, in fact, can tell us a lot about the culture and values of the United States in the 1950s. According to historians James Gilbert, there was a struggle throughout the decade ‘over the uses of popular culture to determine who would speak to what audience, and for what purpose”. At the center of that struggle, rock ‘n’ roll unsettled a nation had been “living in an ‘age of anxiety’” since 1945” (p.15). Altschuler talks about how music and race interlock with one another. Rock had become a “highly visible and contested arena for struggles over racial identity and cultural and economic empowerment in the United States” (p.35). Other chapters within the book state the battles involving sexuality, generational conflicts, as well as other social issues. The author states ideas that are somewhat problematic. For example, he states that there is a myth that rock ‘n’ roll went into a “lull” following the payola hearings (the practice of record promoters paying DJs or radio programmers to play their labels ' songs) of 1959 and did not come about again until the arrival of the Beatles in 1964.

Arguably one of the most powerful of Dylan’s social issue charged song is The Death of Emmet Till, a young black man who was unrightfully killed by the Ku Klux Klan. By 1963, Dylan and his on and off lover Joan Baez were both very well known in the civil rights movement. Baez and Dylan would sing together at rallies including the famous March on Washington. Dylan was on stage with Martin Luther King Jr. when his gave his infamous I Have a Dream speech. Though Dylan sang of American injustices, he was never incredibly interested in politics and he was ultimately frustrated by people defining him solely as a protest singer. Dylan’s frustrations with the unsought political branding are expressed in It Ain’t Me Babe, which “appears to be a song about rejected love, [it] was actually his rejection of the role his reputation and fans had thrown on him” (Carlson).

The protest music played an important role in influencing the beliefs of the public. Many musicians wrote about the injustice of war, including American musician Bob Dylan, a widely known active protester against the Vietnam War. His album, “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan”, released in 1963 featured song such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Oxford Town” (1962) to express his views and recount war stories. Many musicians and bands performed anti-Vietnam War songs, including the Country Joe and the Fish. Many bands continued to do so even in later years, including the Australian folk rock group Redgum with the song “I was only nineteen”, released in 1983 by

Bob Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, launched one of the firs folk clubs and created this trio. Grossman wanted a visually attractive, across-the-board look to make protest music available to the crowds. Their first top 40 hit was “Lemon Tree,” and their first top ten hit was “If I A Hammer.” “Blowin in the Wind,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” were both written by Bod Dylan. Their interpretation helped bring Dylan national attention and approval. Phil Ochs won his guitar by betting that Kennedy would become the President. His first song, “The Ballad of the Cuban Invasion” (about the Bay of Pigs), he joined the radical group “The Sundowners,” dropped out of school to start a career in folk-protest. He participated in marches and protests going into the Deep South, in order to be involved with the civil rights workers or striking

On the eve of November 23rd 2015, I interviewed my grandfather, Benny Reno Emerson, on the influence of music in his life. During the interview we talked about how long music has been a part of his life and how it has shaped who he is today. We also touched on three songs that meant the most to him. The three songs that he claimed to be the most significant to him were “K.T.”, “Kill the Pain”, and “I’m a girl watcher”; all songs that he has performed live, at stages across the Midwest, including the well know Wisconsin summer musical festival Summer Fest.

Dylan and the Sympathetic Beat For an artist so dedicated to innovation and originality, Bob Dylan is particularly obsessed with his influences. Indeed, if T.S. Elliot’s observation that “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” (114) is true, it may very well be the source of his success as an innovator in the music industry. The most famous of such obsessions was with Woody Guthrie, and Dylan’s pilgrimage to visit the dying musician in Brooklyn State Hospital, which is documented in his poem Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie.

The 1960’s in America was often referred to as an age of protest because of not only the social protests that have taken place, but also for the upbringing of protest music, which became very popular during that era. The roots of protest music were largely from folk music of American musicians during 1950’. Folk musicians, such as Joe Hill, composed labor union protest songs and distributed song booklets, hoping to “fan the flames of discontent.” (Rodnitzky pg. 6) Symbolically, this meant that the songs, the fan, would reduce the uncontrollable social protests that the United States government caused with the misleading information that they did not keep their word on, or the flames of discontent. Other folk musicians, such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, traveled around the United States spreading their “message music” and becoming involved in political movements. Guthrie and Seeger were the pioneers of protest music, bringing their folk music to New York City and merging it with urban music. Woody’s songs were about the masses, often identifying problems and offering solutions. While Seeger was cautious about referring to his music as folk music, preferring the term “people’s music,” meaning that not everyone may had the same thoughts, but they all expressed it in their own unique musical sense. For both Woody and Seeger, folk music was a necessity in these protests, when the needs

On July 25, 1965 at the Newport Music festival Ronnie Gilbert announced bob Dylan to the audience “And here he is…take him, you know him, he’s yours.” Bob Dylan accompanied by guitarist Al Kooper and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, began to play “Maggie’s Farm” in an electrified form. The crowd also became electrified booing and yelling loud enough to drown the sound of the Bob Dylan and all the musicians. The fans did not know that six weeks earlier, Bob Dylan had recorded the classic hit “Like A Rolling Stone”. The fans were upset, they were expecting a Bob Dylan acoustic guitar performance, instead they were unknowing witnessing a rock and roll historical event.

First, let’s see how Bob Dylan impact our culture. A main reason Dylan’s music was so influential was because of the time that had his big break. The things that he was singing about in his lyrics were extremely relevant to the major events happening not only in America, but around the world at that time, and people were able to relate to his lyrics. Jim Crowe laws were being abolished during the civil rights movement, communism was coming to end in eastern Europe, and so many other things were happening around the world. But the thing that made Bob Dylan so influential on our culture was the fact that he was involved in these events, not only as a person through protests, but as a musician through his lyrics. He galvanized powerful movements for social justice and peace though the power of his music and fame. As Dylan’s career continued he expanded his music and made major contributions to the world of music. Many of his songs are folk songs, or renditions of folksy songs, in a bluesy tone with a raspy voice. He was unforgettable because of his new innovative sound, but he took it a step further than that when he performed on an electric guitar for the first time at a concert in 1965. People booed him off the stage during that concert, but the very next album that he released featured songs with his raspy voice mixed with the electric sound. He introduced a sound that was foreign to rock and roll music and continued to reinvent himself, and music, from that point

“The thing about rock'n'roll is that for me anyway it wasn't enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren't serious or didn't reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings” (Bob Dylan, 1985)

No longer did songwriters have to pen the same lyric over and over again in order to make their way up the pop charts. After Dylan, they could let loose whatever thoughts stuck in their