Bob Dylan stands as one of music's most fascinating chameleons - a folk prophet turned rock revolutionary who has spent six decades defying expectations and reinventing himself.
Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 Minnesota, Dylan arrived in New York's Greenwich Village as a 20-year-old folk singer, armed with an acoustic guitar and dreams of following in Woody Guthrie's footsteps. Within a few years, his protest anthems like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" became the soundtrack of the 1960s civil rights movement.
But Dylan refused to be boxed in as the "voice of a generation." In 1965, he shocked the folk establishment by going electric at Newport Folk Festival. The acoustic troubadour transformed into a wild-haired rock star, crafting surrealist epics like "Like a Rolling Stone" that redefined what popular music could achieve.
The transformations continued: country crooner, born-again Christian, bluesman, Frank Sinatra-style standards singer. "I do something because I feel like doing it," Dylan once said. "If people can relate to it, that's great; if they can't, that's fine too."
Throughout his shape-shifting career, Dylan has remained gloriously enigmatic. He's notorious for giving cryptic interviews, fabricating details about his past, and keeping the media at arm's length. As he wrote in a 1964 poem: "When asked t' give your real name... never give it."
In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for creating new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." True to form, he skipped the ceremony, sending only a written acceptance speech.
Now in his 80s, Dylan continues touring relentlessly on what's known as the "Never Ending Tour," playing his songs in constantly evolving arrangements. The shape-shifter keeps shifting, following his muse wherever it leads.
"I don't think I'm gonna be really understood until maybe 100 years from now," Dylan once mused. "Because what I've done and what I'm doing, nobody else does or has done."
For an artist who has spent his career eluding definition, perhaps that's the perfect epitaph.