Bob Dylan is an artist of change and constant transformation. He has never allowed to restrict himself – since the beginnings of his career, he has resisted conventions and categorizations and so, with the innovations he has introduced into popular music he made it possible for rock 'n' roll to become a sophisticated music form, which enables you to express the deepest feelings and it is not just music for dance with cliché lyrics. Under his influence, Dylan's contemporaries have transformed the way of writing and the whole process of creation and understanding of popular music. That was a simple, but important innovation. Dylan's inspiration comes not only from music but also from the literature. For Dylan's biography, the Beat Generation's poets and writers are almost as essential as Elvis Presley and Little Richards. From the beginnings, Dylan was under the strong influence of literature and he created his own unique poetic expressions. Dylan did not just sophisticate popular music but also brought poetry to the wider audience. Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature »for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition«. In the sixties, different movements took Dylan as their representative. Soon Dylan resisted his public image as the voice of his generation and protest singer because it had limited his work. Dylan's transformation in a literary sense can already be noticed on the album Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964). He did not write direct social criticism and protest songs anymore, but he focused more on introspective declarations. He deepened this style of writing on the next few albums: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde On Blonde (1966), which are considered as one of the peaks of his career. Here he meets existentialism, symbolism, and surrealism and shows that music and poetry are inseparable. Dylan sealed music transformation with a boldly act – after four acoustic albums, he released Bringing It All Back Home in 1965, which was the first partly electric album. This is how he distanced himself from folk movement and widened music horizons and demolished limitations of music creation. In this transformation, a folk star changed his acoustic guitar for a new massive electric guitar. This act was strongly criticized by folk purists, who thought Dylan had sold himself for a commercial success and he no longer cared for social movements.

Bob Dylan je umetnik spremembe in stalne transformacije. Nikoli se ni pustil omejevati – od začetka svoje kariere se je upiral konvencijam in kategorijam, ter tako z novostmi, ki jih je vpeljal v popularno glasbo omogočil, da rock 'n' roll postane sofisticirana glasbena forma, s katero je mogoče izraziti najgloblja občutja in ni le glasba klišejskih besedil za ples. Pod njegovim vplivom so njegovi sodobniki spreminjali način pisanja besedil ter celotno ustvarjanje in razumevanje popularne glasbe. To je bila preprosta, vendar pomembna inovacija. Dylanova inspiracija ne sega zgolj na področje glasbe, ampak tudi v literarne sfere. Za Dylanovo biografijo so prav tako kot Elvis Presley in Little Richards esencialni tudi bitniški pesniki in pisci. Od samih začetkov je Dylan močno pod vplivom literature in je tako izoblikoval svoj unikaten pesniški izraz. Dylan ni zgolj dvignil nivo popularne glasbe, temveč je poezijo ponovno približal javnosti. Leta 2016 je prejel Nobelovo nagrado za književnost. V obrazložitvi nagrade švedske akademije je zapisano, da je Bob Dylan »ustvaril nov pesniški izraz znotraj ameriške pesniške tradicije«. V šestdesetih letih so različna družbena gibanja Dylana vzela za svojega. Kmalu je Dylan zavrgel svojo javno podobo glasnika generacije in protestnega pevca, saj ga je ta kategorizacija v umetniškem smislu omejevala. Transformacija je v literarnem smislu opazna že na albumu Another Side Of Bob Dylan (1964). Preneha s pisanjem direktno družbenokritičnih in protestnih pesmi ter se osredotoči na introspektivne izpovedi. Takšen način pisanja še poglobi na naslednjih albumih: Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965) ter Blonde On Blonde (1966), ki veljajo za enega od vrhuncev Dylanove kariere. Tu se Dylan spogleduje z eksistencializmom, simbolizmom in nadrealizmom ter pokaže, da sta glasba in poezija neločljivi sopotnici. Glasbeno pa je transformacijo zapečatil z drznim dejanjem – po štirih akustičnih albumih je leta 1965 objavil prvi, delno električni album Bringing It All Back Home, in se tako distanciral od folk gibanja in razširil glasbeni horizont ter podiral restrikcije glasbenega ustvarjanja. V tej transformaciji je folk zvezda zamenjala svojo akustično kitaro za novo masivno električno kitaro. Ta poteza je naletela na številne kritike folk puristov, ki so v Dylanu videli izdajalca, ki se je prodal v želji za komercialnim uspehom in mu je vseeno za družbena gibanja.