Bob Dylan

One of the most pivotal albums in the evolution of rock music, no other recording has had more impact than the 1965 classic Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home. In the mid-sixties, Rock Music was about to explode into psychedelia, prog and jazz fusion. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan had made an enormous impact on songwriting with his first four acoustic albums. He had created a different way of writing songs with themes such as civil rights, anti-war protests and social issues that lifted rock music from teenage love songs to serious poetic works of art full of symbolism. But with Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan shot his lyrics through with surreal hard-edged Beat poetry and charged the music from acoustic to blues-based loud electric rock. It alienated him from many of his peers in the folk community but contains classic cuts like 'Mr Tambourine Man' 'Maggie's Farm' and 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. Dylan had opened the door on experimentation. The Beatles, Stones, Who, Doors, Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Cream all listened and responded. Songwriting rose to new heights with few boundaries. AUTHOR: Opher Goodwin is the author of many books on rock music and ran the UKs first 'History of Rock Music' courses. Fortunate to spend the sixties in London, where the underground explosion of rock music and culture happened, Opher was in the right place at the right time. He was regularly out at the gigs of Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Cream, Doors, Captain Beefheart, Country Joe and the Fish and many other exciting bands. Among his favourite songwriters are Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Jackson C Frank, Leonard Cohen and Roy Harper. Opher now lives and writes at home in Yorkshire but can still be found at the front of gigs. Where else?