There’s a line early on in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 pseudo-documentary Rolling Thunder Revue where Bob Dylan says: “Life isn’t about finding yourself or finding anything. It’s about creating yourself and creating things”. You can argue the sentiment on a philosophical level if you want but there’s no doubting that few twentieth century figures have put that theory to the test more than the man born Robert Zimmerman. Many hats has he worn in his time. Many hats indeed. Literally as well as metaphorically.

The head within those hats celebrated his 80th birthday this week and with that there’s been a delightful explosion of Bob Dylan content on the internet. It’s amazing. Articles, playlists, podcasts, visual art, cover songs. It’s a measure of the man’s influence just how much subsequent creativity he’s inspired over the years. I’m still toying with an idea I had recently to see how many Dylan albums I can recreate with cover versions (or originals in a couple cases) of each track. A 50-song Blowin’ In The Wind compo would go pretty hard as well. Personal fave: Neil Young’s version on Weld.

Bobby’s been an elusive figure his whole life. Those many hats stem from a constant desire – almost a pathological need – to defy expectations and create his own myths. Biographers may find it frustrating but Dylan knows that a good story lingers longer than a true one (he’s been known to take an artistic licence with some of his ‘based on a true story’ tunes over the years) and that myth-making, that constant hat changing, has surely got a lot to do with how well his legend has carried through the generations.

The thing about the fella is for all the Judas stuff when he went electric, he was never a purist. All the different musical styles he’s embraced over the years are all sounds he absorbed growing up. The further he’s grown from that baby-faced Woody Guthrie acolyte the more that’s become clear – and his Theme Time Radio Hour made it abundantly clear. It’s yet another measure of the man that if you listen to a greatest hits compilation (or, like, a career-spanning Spotify playlist if you prefer) then it can actually be hard to believe the same man produced all these disparate tunes.

So that’s what this article is about. Splitting his many incarnations into separate identities and ranking them (the rankings are just a tool to get the ball rolling, it’s all fun and games). Sort of like the Todd Haynes film I’m Not There (2007) with all the different Dylans... a film which I haven’t actually ever seen but I promise I’ll get around to it soon. Right after I finally track down a copy of Eat The Document.

1) Beatnik Bob (1965-1966)

Albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde

This is Bobby at the transcendent peak of his powers. For all the Woody Guthrie-ness of his very plain and direct early tunes – which were also amazing – he slowly added in elements of surrealness as he went along to the point where in the mid-60s he was serving up these sprawling albums with Ginsberg-influenced imagery and references that remain thrilling to this day. Bringing It All Back Home was the crossover, one half acoustic and one half electric, but the content of the lyrics showed he’d already settled into his crocodile boots even on the acoustic side (see: Mr Tambourine Man). The more I think about it the more I wonder if Another Side was the real transition point with tunes like My Back Pages & I Don’t Believe You.

Anyway, all the while he was working with this red-hot blues band with dudes like Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper injecting an immediacy into his work. The explosion of the start of Like A Rolling Stone is still unmatched. Highway 61 Revisited remains my favourite BD album. Then Blonde On Blonde is the afterparty of this whole thing, a sprawling double album with a few slower, laconic numbers immersed... and if you know Beatnik Bob then you know that the afterparty was where it’s at. Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to cannabis at an afterparty. Ringo saw him sneak into a bedroom in the hotel room they were all hanging out in, got in on the act himself, went back out and told the rest of the band that it looked like the roof was moving... and the other three all sprinted in to have a toke themselves. Blonde On Blonde is sunglasses after dark, man. Cool as the other side of the pillow. Each of these three Dylan albums are 10/10 classics. Even the deep cuts are brilliant (always been a fan of Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream which is legitimately hilarious). Also, if you want a visual interpretation then check out D. A. Pennebaker’s doco Don’t Look Back.

2) Folkster Bob (1962-1964)

Albums: Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Another Side of Bob Dylan

And now for the origins of the legend, starting off as a cherubic youngster doing reworked traditional tunes before emerging as a genius songwriter in his own right with Freewheelin’. Like, for real, the quality of that album. It’s stacked with instant classics the likes of which new generations of guitar students still start out trying to get a handle on. This was Bob the social activist. It was Bob the Voice of a Generation. He’d do his best to shrug off such classifications in the following years as he moved into a more personal style of writing and generally just lashed out at people’s expectations – and for sure you can see the progression of his art across these four records – but this is where it all got started.

If you’re cosplaying Folkser Bob, you’re going to need an acoustic guitar. You’re going to need a harmonica rack around your neck so you can play ‘em both together. You’re not going to need a backing band at all, although feel free to duet with your own Joan Baez if you should be so lucky. Short-ish hair is the go. Plenty of denim. This was the first version of Bob that came to prominence so a lot of people made the mistake of thinking this was the baseline of the man as opposed to one of many personas he’d try on like his many hats. ‘Twas a bloody good one though.

3) Broken Bob (1975-1978)

Albums: Blood On The Tracks, Desire, Street-Legal

Tracks is Dylan’s divorce album and there’s nothing else like it. Emotionally vulnerable in a way that he very rarely ever is... although that doesn’t stop him from clouding his songs with lyrical red herrings (like the first verse of Idiot Wind). There was more of an acoustic feel to the tunes at this time with Desire following soon after and bringing a sort of gypsy wanderlust to the mix (largely thanks to the vocals of Emmylou Harris and the violin of Scarlett Rivera). Definitely one of Dylan’s most beguiling phases – check out the Scorsese semi-doco of the Rolling Thunder Revue to see how deep in the myth-making he was in this period.

Broken Bob – thus named because of the heartbreak at the core of Blood on the Tracks – was also one of his most inspired phases where the creativity rolled just out of him in the form of classic albums and legendary live shows where he’d barnstorm through the new songs and completely reinvents the old ones. Street-Legal too, it’s such an underrated record that gets lost in the mix. It’s not really Broken Bob but it’s clearly not Jesus Bob yet either. It’s Dylan does Springsteen or something, boisterous tunes with full-on backing vocals and brass accompaniment and none of it quite makes sense musically but the hooks come hard and fast while the ramshackle nature is charming as well as odd.

4) Country Bob (1967-1974)

Albums: John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait, New Morning, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Dylan, Planet Waves (Also: The Basement Tapes)

Dylan had a motorcycle crash in ‘67 that laid him low for a while and effectively ended his Beatnik Bob phase. He hung out in Woodstock to recuperate away from prying eyes, writing songs with The Band which would take him in a different musical direction... and thus Country Bob was born. From the folk hero tales of John Wesley Harding to the lovin’ embraces of Nashville Skyline (and that weird voice he used) to the americana sprawl of The Basement Tapes – which were the result of that Band collab and would be heavily bootlegged before eventually being released in 1975.

Then he got weird with Self Portrait, an album full of seemingly clumsy covers (and the self-titled sequel of SP outtakes released a few years later), before New Morning steadied the ship in a gently mature way. Pat Garrett was a film soundtrack so much of it instrumental which was a push for such a great lyricist – though nowhere near as confounding as Self Portrait. Then he reunited with The Band for Planet Waves.

This could have been two versions of Bob where we split off at Self Portrait and introduce, I dunno, Gentle Bob. In which case Country Bob would still be fourth but Gentle Bob would tumble down probably to 8-9... but it feels like there’s a continuation between Country/Gentle Bob so I’m keeping it as a singular entity. Whether he was trying to piss people off or not there was still that throughline. This Bob has a beard. This Bob wears wide-brimmed hats. This Bob spans between brilliant and bewildering in a way that only 80s Dylan can top.

5) Comeback Bob (1997-2012)

Albums: Time Out Of Mind, Love And Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life, Tempest

By this time the man was well embedded in his neverending tours. He was a little saggier in the cheeks, he’d become an aficionado of bolo ties, and he was back to writing wicked tunes. TOOM and L&T especially, the two albums which reminded everyone how special his vision could be. Writing in a method that drew heavily from pre-war American music but which also had that more contemporary rock aspect to it, people often bring up the awareness of mortality that seems to be present from this point onwards but that’s always felt reductive to me. It’s more like these are Bob’s Songs of Experience.

The winning streak carries on from there although it’s probably safe to say that these five albums decrease in measures of excellence in chronological order. So it goes. But they’re all profound in their own way. There’s a level of craft here. Like a master going to work, not necessarily at his most inspired but knowing the tricks of the trade so well. It can’t actually be effortless for him but it does kinda feels that way.

6) Rowdy Bob (2020-Present)

Albums: Rough And Rowdy Ways

Returning to original tunes and doing so with style. Rough And Rowdy Ways features a lot of piano, a lot of cheeky wordplay, a lot of gentle acceptance, a lot of wistful wisdom. It also had Murder Most Foul, the longest song he’s ever released, taking the JKF assassination and using that as a springboard to surmise the entirety of the second half of the twentieth century. He’d know: he lived it.

Not sure we’ve got enough evidence yet to fully categorise Rowdy Bob but he’s still got plenty to say, that’s for sure. He’s still got a killer sense of humour still, something that’s been there since day one even if he occasionally covers it up. Plus say what you will about Sinatra Bob but that phase really sharpened up his voice at a time when it seemed to have been descending into a cigarette-stained guttural mess.

7) 80s Bob (1982-1989)

Albums: Infidels, Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, Down In The Groove, Oh Mercy

80s Bob is one of the most maligned of his incarnations and I dunno if that’s all that fair. His entire generation spent that decade in rehab or in prison or having wild identity crises or selling out with trashy production values. Bob had a little bit of the latter, to be fair, but Infidels and Oh Mercy are superb albums start to finish while the three in the middle all have at least one absolute stunner of a track. Brownsville Girl on KOL. Dark Eyes on EB. Okay, Groove kinda sucks... but the point still stands.

The biggest problem is that he’s never had a great instinct for which tracks to keep and which to leave out and that might not have mattered in the 60s when he was dropping classics every few months but twenty years later there was a little more filler to get through and somehow songs like Blind Willie McTell, Series Of Dreams, and Foot Of Pride all fell through the cracks. 80s Bob was inconsistent. 80s Bob was still capable of brilliance. Really gotta stress how good Oh Mercy is once more.

8) Jesus Bob (1979-1981)

Albums: Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot Of Love

The man has always been a seeker but around the turn of the 80s he stopped seeking and got saved. Bobby found Christ and a trilogy of religious-tinged albums followed fast. This is a period which has been reassessed in recent years with a Bootleg Series offering that gathered up some of the intense live shows of the era... because one thing you cannot say about Jesus Bob is that he wasn’t inspired. At times the music came across as preachy, at other times it’s hard to tell if he’s being entirely serious about it all (though I suspect he probably was).

But you know what? Slow Train Coming is a fantastic album. Always loved the sound of that one and the tunes are great. The next two are a bit hit or miss although Bob has said a few times that Saved is one of his favourite albums. By the time of Shot Of Love he was easing off the evangelical stuff, not so much fire and brimstone, and it probably helps to listen to some of this stuff more as a parable for the whole ‘in times like these’ ideas... in which case perhaps our plague-ridden times are bringing Jesus Bob back into relevance. Definitely not a write-off period. Just one that comes with some caveats.

9) Revivalist Bob (1990-1993)

Albums: Under The Red Sky, Good As I Been To You, World Gone Wrong

With Under the Red Sky, Bobby brought in some friends. Don Was produced it. Folks like David Crosby, Elton John, George Harrison, Slash, and the Vaughan Brothers (Jimmy & Stevie Ray) all featured. He also had a young kid at the time from his second marriage and bafflingly a few of these tunes were heavily influenced by... well, nursery rhymes. It’s very odd. Do yourself a favour and don’t listen to Wiggle Wiggle unless you’re heavily medicated. Dylan then followed that up with a pair of albums built upon old folk and blues covers which are much better in comparison – Bob’s taste in selecting cover tunes is usually immaculate – and are considered a return to his roots as he was backed only by his own guitar and harmonica. World Gone Wrong in particular is really quite good. But there’s a reason the incarnation that followed is called Comeback Bob.

10) Sinatra Bob (2015-2017)

Albums: Shadows In The Night, Fallen Angels, Triplicate

Fifty-two songs released over a three-year span all from that Tin Pan Alley era of pop songwriting. The classics, the torch ballads. Probably gonna get a six-CD box set of outtakes in the Bootleg Series in a couple years too. Dylan’s flirtation with old-timey-ness is actually more like a marriage than a flirtation, what appeared like a move out of left field was in fact something that made perfect sense for a man who has always expressed a love for the timeless aspects of American culture.

Did we need a triple album to prove it? I dunno, I kinda think that Triplicate is the best of the trilogy. He spoke upon the release of Shadows about how he and his band weren’t so much covering these songs as they were uncovering them and aside from being a typically witty sentiment that’s also an apt one, perhaps the most iconic songwriter of his century paying homage to an older scene and reinvigorating it in his own way. And his band is absolutely stunning. The arrangements are fantastic. Despite the reputation, these are three very listenable albums... they’re just best listened to on shuffle and for shorter periods of time. Like, fair play to you Bobby but I still prefer Frank Sinatra as a crooner. And with zero originals to speak of this identity pretty much has to be at the bottom of the pile.

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