London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Bob Dylan at 80 – a little Minnesota town celebrates its famous son

Bob Dylan at 80 – a little Minnesota town celebrates its famous son

Hibbing, the musician’s hometown, is paying tribute with a year of special events

Bob Dylan’s debut 1962 single began: “I got mixed-up confusion; man, it’s a-killin’ me”. It hasn’t yet – he turns 80 on Monday, and the pre-eminent custodian of American roots music, with its storytelling and protest traditions, is set to be celebrated by a public avalanche of events, programmes and tributes.

The occasion will be marked in his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota – where, inspired by the sounds of country and blues music drifting up from the south on AM radio, he wrote in his high-school yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard. St Louis county, in which Hibbing sits, has issued a proclamation declaring a “Year of Dylan Celebration”.

Minnesota’s Star Tribune is listing 80 things about the local boy; Folk Radio UK is running a livestream called “Dignity”, with tributes from an international line-up of musicians.

Adding to what are by some estimates 100 university Dylan courses and 2,000 Dylan books, there are new series of podcasts, including Jokermen, and a BBC Radio Four series, It Ain’t Me You’re looking For: Bob Dylan at 80.

This weekend, the Tulsa University Institute for Bob Dylan Studies, where some of his archives are held, will host Dylan@80: Virtual Conference. Included among seminars is “Dylan as an Inspiration for a Sexologist”.

Dylan (centre), aged 17, with friends at summer camp in 1957.


The intensely private musician, however, may not acknowledge his milestone, just as he didn’t respond to the Swedish academy’s award of the Nobel prize in literature in 2016. A committee member griped that Dylan was “impolite and arrogant” as the musician continued tour stops in Tulsa, Phoenix and Albuquerque. As Jean-Paul Sartre noted at the time of his nomination, a writer must “refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution”. But that’s not stopped others from trying.

“He was by cosmic gift one step ahead, and kept himself one step apart,” says Danny Fields, the New York music figure, who formed his impressions though the lens of friends who loved Dylan – among them Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Gloria Stavers, who was Lenny Bruce’s lover, editor of 16 magazine and an early Dylan supporter who asked the president of Columbia Records to send “the kid” over to get him in the file in case he became something.

“His friends were mostly women, I don’t think he had many guy friends,” Fields recalls. “He wanted to identify with musicians. That’s a harder thing to break into than saying, ‘I am a poet.’ And his manager would say, ‘Well, you don’t want to be with the fags uptown [at Andy Warhol’s Factory], you want to be with the folkies and bluesies downtown’.”

Dylan performing at a music festival in France in 2012.


Stavers observed Dylan three years later reading William Blake – “We are led to Believe a Lie/ When we see with, not Through the Eye” – and William Burroughs. Spending time upstate in Woodstock, she wrote, “he visits neighbours’ children, climbs trees and goes for long walks”. In the discos of Greenwich Village, she said, he had “a slightly bemused smile on his face, watching silently from a corner”.

Still, there are decades of Dylan mythology to unpick, self-created or accumulated under the pressure of idolisation and interrogation. “I don’t think the interchange with interviewers was useful to him,” says Fields. “They didn’t open doors to his own consciousness, so he had nothing to gain.”

Late last year, Dylan relinquished control of 600 or so songs in exchange for an estimated $300m. His recent album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, was reviewed by NME as “arguably his grandest poetic statement yet”, suggesting that, far from slowing down, the decade could be much like the old – recording, touring, releasing archive recordings, compiling the Theme Time Radio Hour show, supporting interests – Dylan reportedly owns a boxing gym in Malibu – and following his wandering spirit.

In 2009, a woman reported a man, wet and wearing a hoodie, in an abandoned lot in Long Beach, New Jersey. It was Dylan taking air, curious, seeking inspiration, lost – or maybe all four. “It’s gonna take 100 years before they understand me!” Dylan once claimed. To which only “Happy Birthday, Bob” is appropriate.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
French Debt Downgrade Piles Pressure on Macron’s New Prime Minister
US and UK Near Tech, Nuclear and Whisky Deals Ahead of Trump Trip
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
Anesthesiologist Left Operation Mid-Surgery to Have Sex with Nurse
Tens of Thousands of Young Chinese Get Up Every Morning and Go to Work Where They Do Nothing
×