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Nine of Bob Dylan’s finest songs and their compelling stories

Dylan has featured regularly in the FT’s Life of a Song column — in his own right, and in memorable cover versions

© Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The long, slow genesis of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone
Out-takes, rehearsal tapes and lyric sheets reveal the working process behind the singer’s 1965 classic
How The Byrds transformed Bob Dylan’s ‘Mr Tambourine Man’
The song threw open the possibilities for pop lyrics and kicked off the folk-rock boom
‘Make You Feel My Love’: from Bob Dylan to Adele
The Dylan song was a ‘blueprint for ageing rockers in quest of a credibility reboot’
Sweetheart Like You — how Bob Dylan honed and refined his 1983 track
Early iterations of the song, including one newly released, reveal the care and craft behind it
From Gaslight Café to Nobel Prize: Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Dylanologists have picked over the bones of the song’s genesis and lyrical symbolism
Quinn the Eskimo — Bob Dylan’s nonsense song struck a chord
The singer confessed he didn’t know what it was about — but that didn’t prevent it from being widely covered, and sung

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