We all love Timothée Chalamet, don’t we? The lovable scamp from Dune and that weird Willy Wonka prequel and that other Dune where he rides a big worm. Well, our dear Timothée has been in the news quite a bit lately for his new film A Complete Unknown (out this Friday, FYI – Ed), in which he plays musical icon and man-beloved-by-boring-people-at-parties Bob Dylan.
How could someone so beloved by the non-boring play someone that the world has told us is exclusively for dads and readers of ‘acoustic guitar player magazine’? And most importantly: how do you pretend to your friends that you’ve always loved Bob Dylan, actually? Well fear not, because we at Dork have put together the perfect Bob Dylan starter pack to get you up to speed and make sure you know your Robert Zimmermans from you Elston Gunns (that first one is his birth name and the second was his first alter ego, FYI). So pay attention and make sure you take notes, because there’s a test at the end.
Who The Hell is Bob Dylan?!
Only one of the most influential musicians of all time, and the first musician to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, dont’cha know. He’s also won a Pulitzer, ten Grammys, an Oscar and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He’s quite a big deal, is what we’re saying. He’s got a bit of a reputation for being primarily the concern of boring old men, partially because he is an old man himself, but also because his music is perfect for explaining at length to a disinterested acquaintance while their eyes glaze over. Ignore the reputation, though, because he’s made some very good music – good enough to get Timothée Chalamet so invested in Bob that he dressed up as him for the premiere of ‘A Complete Unknown’, complete with blonde highlights and a questionable scarf. If that’s intrigued you but you don’t want to sit down and listen to 40 studio albums, here’s a few to get you started.
The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Not Bob’s first album, but the first to really make an impact, ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ is maybe his most iconic work, even today. Released in 1963, it’s the canonical record to come out of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, and, unlike his self-titled debut, consists almost entirely of songs Bob wrote himself. It’s acoustic, it’s lyrical, it’s at least partially inspired by then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo (pictured with Bob on the cover) – and it’s the only album on this list that was released in the period ‘A Complete Unknown’ covers.
Listen to: ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, ‘Girl From the North Country’, ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’
Highway 61 Revisited
In a world where artists switch genres from song to song, it’s hard to believe that Bob was vilified for the cardinal sin of…using an electric guitar, but these were different times (see also: folk fanatics being largely insufferable a lot of the time). ‘Bringing it all Back Home’ was the first record Bob released with electric instrumentation, but ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ includes the song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, which has the lyric that ‘A Complete Unknown’ takes its name from, so we’ve picked it instead. Named after the highway which connected his hometown to cities in the Southern USA which were renowned for their musical heritage, it’s the album which really saw Bob shake off the remnants of his political folk-hero image. He’s also wearing a shirt on the front cover that’s so stylish, fans on the Bob Dylan Reddit have been (unsuccessfully) trying to find a similar one for years.
Listen to: ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’, ‘Highway 61 Revisited’
Blonde on Blonde
Skip forward a few months and you’ll reach ‘Blonde on Blonde’, considered by some to be Bob’s best album and also one of the first double albums in rock history. What this means is that it’s a) good, and b) quite long. When this works, it works. ‘Visions of Johanna’ is a novel in song-form, clocking in at 7-and-a-half minutes long, but it’s so well put together that you’ll more than likely hit play on it again as soon as it finishes. Admittedly some tracks haven’t aged quite as well – opener ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’, despite charting the highest of any singles from the album, is not very good, a truth we feel compelled to speak even if it gets us cancelled by angry Bob fans the world over. All in all though, no single (or double) album encapsulates the man quite like this one.
Listen to: ‘Visions of Johanna’, ‘I Want You’, ‘Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands’
Desire
Bob’s 17th studio album and the last to hit number one in America until 2006’s ‘Modern Times’, ‘Desire’ is a bit of a swansong for the classic Bob Dylan years, before a strange Christian turn and an eventual comeback as one of music’s great elder statesmen. Driven by the inspired inclusion of violin across several of the tracks, the album is best known for opener ‘Hurricane’, 8-and-a-half minutes of narrative about imprisoned boxer Rubin Carter, seen by some as a return to Bob’s political activist roots. At the album’s lighter end is ‘Mozambique’, a song supposedly concocted as part of a game to see how many words Bob could rhyme with the name of the African country. And if politics or rhyming games aren’t your thing, closing track ‘Sara’ was written for Bob’s then-estranged wife Sara, and was so beautiful it led to them reconciling (for a while, at least).
Listen to: ‘Hurricane’, ‘Joey’, ‘Sara’
The Bootleg Series Vol. 1–3: Rare & Unreleased 1961–1991
Ok so this one isn’t technically an album, but it still merits inclusion as an example of the extensive series of bootlegs, outtakes, and alternate versions that Bob has released over the years. This one covers the widest scope, taking in folk covers from the early sixties (‘Kingsport Town’), early compositions about picnic disasters (‘Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues’), and alternate compositions of classic tracks (‘If You See Her, Say Hello’). For a lot of artists, this would be for die-hard collectors only, but a lot of these recordings are just as strong as the tracks which ended up on Bob’s studio albums, and are well worth a listen.
Listen to: ‘Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues’, ‘Walkin’ Down The Line’, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’
A Complete Unknown will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 17th January 2024.
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