Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist. He is often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. The album features "Blowin' in the Wind" and the thematically complex "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".
He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power". In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".
Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, the U.S.A. When he was born in St. Mary's Hospital, Bob's parents registered his birth name as Robert Allen Zimmerman in the hospital's birth record book under the star sign of Gemini. He holds an American nationality and belongs to Jews, an ethnoreligious group and a nation originating from the Israelites ethnicity. He was raised to adopt Judaism, the religion being followed by his parents and forefathers. However, In the late 1970s, Dylan converted to Christianity.
Bob was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, on the Mesabi Range west of Lake Superior. Dylan's paternal grandparents, Anna Kirghiz and Zigman Zimmerman emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) to the United States following the pogroms of 1905. His maternal grandparents, Florence and Ben Stone, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in the United States in 1902.
Dylan's father Abram Zimmerman and his mother Beatrice "Beatty" Stone was part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six when his father contracted polio and the family returned to his mother's hometown, Hibbing, where they lived for the rest of Dylan's childhood.
Dylan studied at Hibbing High School located nearby his home in Hibbing. After his high school graduation, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota in 1959. After dropping out of University at the end of his freshman year, Dylan traveled to New York City in 1961 to perform at musical events.
Bob Dylan has married two times in his life. Dylan's first marriage was with American former actress and model, Sara Lownds Dylan on November 22, 1965. On January 6, 1966, the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Jesse Byron Dylan.
Together, they are the parents of their three more children: Anna Lea (born July 11, 1967), Samuel Isaac Abram (born July 30, 1968), and Jakob Luke (born December 9, 1969). Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from her previous marriage, Maria Lownds who was born on October 21, 1961. After 12 years of their married life, Bob and Sara Dylan got divorced on June 29, 1977.
After nine years of divorce with his first wife, Bob Dylan was married a second time with his backup singer Carolyn Dennis on June 4, 1986. Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, their daughter, was born on January 31, 1986. However, the couple divorced in October 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes's biography Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, in 2001.
Bob Dylan is a well-established singer and painter who has made a fortune throughout his years as a successful singer. As of 2021, his net worth stands at $350 Million (Approximately).
Much of his most acclaimed work was during the '60s, though his works have spanned five decades. Since the late 1980s, he has toured consistently on what has been called the Never Ending Tour.
He is considered one of the best and most prolific songwriters of all time. His songs have been covered by over 6,000 popular artists. The cover version frequently became more popular than the Dylan version. Every time one of his songs was covered, sold, streamed, broadcast, he would get paid. In recent years he was earning an estimated $15 million per year in income from his song catalog royalty stream.
In December 2020 it was reported that Bob sold 100% of his song catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group for $300 million. Two months later the actual sale price was revealed to be $400 million.
In total, he has released over 35 studio albums, including "Nashville Skyline" (1969), "Oh Mercy" (1989), "Time Out of Mind" (1997), "Love and Theft" (2001), and "Rough and Rowdy Ways" (2020). Since June 7, 1988, Dylan has been on what is dubbed the Never Ending Tour. In the 1990s and 2000s, he played around 100 shows a year. The 3000th show of the tour occurred on April 19, 2019, in Innsbruck, Austria. He has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time.
At the time, high-profile catalogs such as Dylans had been selling at a 20X annual income multiple. If true, that implies Dylan had been earning around $20 million per year in royalties from his songbook.
Dylan likes to spend his fortune on real estate and cars. He is a true legend in the music industry, and his career has spanned more than six decades. Dylan’s love for cars is huge, and in his collection, we can see cars such as a Mustang Convertible, a Triumph Tiger 100, a Cadillac Escalade, a Chrysler 200, and a Jaguar e-type.
Bob Dylan owns a mansion in Malibu which he purchased in 1979 for $105,000 ad since then he has been extensively renovating his sprawling Malibu compound as it is his principal residence. He also owns property around the world.
Bob Dylan is 5 ft 7 inches tall and weighs 63 Kg. He has a lean build body. His body measures 40-38-14 inches (Chest-Waist-Biceps). He wears 8 (US) size shoes.
The legendary singer has a pair of black eyes. He looks like a gentleman in his short black hair. As a country singer, he usually seems to be wearing a cowboy hat which signifies it is a sign or code to the audience that he is rural, not urban, in origin plus it is also an old tradition followed by many popular country singers.