How Bob Dylan Changed the '60s--and Beyond with Sean Wilentz
Nearly half a century after he released his first album, Bob Dylan continues to release new albums (including, last year, a compilation of Christmas songs) and tour the country playing concerts. Sean Wilentz, an American history professor at Princeton University and"historian-in-residence" at BobDylan.com, traces Dylan's influence on American culture in his new book, Bob Dylan in America. Here, he discusses how Dylan shaped his generation—and whether there's a similar artist in today's music scene.
The book is called Bob Dylan in America. What's Dylan's place in our nation's cultural history history?
He's the most important songwriter of the last 50 years, in a culture in which songwriting has always been a major force, a major component.
Then there's the '60s. Dylan's work is indelibly linked to that time, in part because so much of his greatest work came out of '64, '65, '66. But the '60s became kind of a burden or a weight on the entire culture, certainly to people my age. It became transformed into something bigger than it was.
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The book is called Bob Dylan in America. What's Dylan's place in our nation's cultural history history?
He's the most important songwriter of the last 50 years, in a culture in which songwriting has always been a major force, a major component.
Then there's the '60s. Dylan's work is indelibly linked to that time, in part because so much of his greatest work came out of '64, '65, '66. But the '60s became kind of a burden or a weight on the entire culture, certainly to people my age. It became transformed into something bigger than it was.