Book 8 showcases Bob Dylan’s expansive artistic vision in the twenty-first century, including his albums, memoir, radio show, and films.
Dylan followed up his award-winning Time Out of Mind with “Love and Theft,” a further exploration of America’s musical roots, from Tin Pan Alley and Western swing to stomping blues and rockabilly. According to Dylan, the album explored “business, politics and war, and maybe love interest on the side.” Lyrically, he drew upon work as varied as the classical Roman poet Virgil, Japanese Yakuza gangster stories, and the Delta bluesman Charley Patton.
In 2003, Dylan returned to the silver screen in the role of mysterious musician Jack Fate in Masked and Anonymous, a film he also co-wrote with writer, director, and producer Larry Charles, of Seinfeld and Borat fame.
Dylan’s first long-form literary work since the 1971 publication of Tarantula was his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One. Over the course of five chapters and more than three hundred pages, Dylan focuses on three major episodes: his earliest years in New York City leading up to the recording of his debut album; his aborted collaboration with Archibald MacLeish and the development of New Morning; and the circumstances around the writing and recording of Oh Mercy. Released on October 5, 2004, Chronicles: Volume One spent nineteen weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the category of Biography/Autobiography.
Martin Scorsese’s landmark documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan was the first authorized documentary about the life and early career of a musician who had been famously reluctant to delve into the past. The film centers mainly on the story of Dylan’s meteoric rise to fame between his 1961 arrival in New York City and his motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966; it also evocatively captures Dylan’s early years in Minnesota.
Bob Dylan’s music has been appreciated by several presidents of the United States. In addition to performing at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in January 1993, Dylan enjoyed a warm relationship with Jimmy Carter, whom he first met when Carter was governor of Georgia in 1974. Dylan’s only performance at the White House occurred during President Barack Obama’s time in office at the February 9, 2010, concert, “In Performance at the White House: Songs of the Civil Rights Movement.” For his part of the program, Dylan offered a stately acoustic version of “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” accompanied by his longtime bassist Tony Garnier and pianist Patrick Warren. On May 29, 2012, President Obama awarded Bob Dylan the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the East Room of the White House.
