The long read
Bob Dylan: the boy from a mining town who kept changing his song
Bob Dylan started out as a kid called Robert in a small cold town and ended up with a Nobel Prize. This is his story from the start, with his birth chart beside it: what Western and Chinese astrologers would say about him, and what the sky was doing on his biggest days.
By Mira Hale · 10 min read · Updated
A crowd, a loud guitar and a rain of harmonicas
It is a summer evening in 1965, at a folk music festival by the sea in Newport, Rhode Island. Folk music is mostly gentle. People sing old songs with a plain guitar. The crowd loves a young singer called Bob Dylan. He is famous for songs like that.
Then he walks on with a band. The guitars are plugged in. The drums kick. It is loud. Some people cheer. Some people boo. After about fifteen minutes and three songs, he walks off.
He is asked to come back. He returns alone with an acoustic guitar, but he has the wrong harmonica. He asks the crowd for one in the key of E. And people start throwing harmonicas onto the stage. He plays two quiet songs, and the crowd claps hard.
That night is one of the most talked-about moments in music. To see why, we need to go back to the beginning.
Robert from Hibbing
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on 24 May 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. When he was six, his father became ill with polio. The family moved to Hibbing, his mother's home town, a mining town in the cold north.
At night, Robert listened to the radio. Far-off stations played rock and roll and blues. In high school he started a band called the Golden Chords. They played songs by Little Richard and Elvis. In his school yearbook, he wrote that he wanted to join Little Richard.
On 31 January 1959 he saw Buddy Holly play live in Duluth. Holly died in a plane crash four days later. Dylan later called Holly the model for everything he wanted to be.
He went to university in Minneapolis but left in 1960. He was already calling himself Bob Dylan. In January 1961 he moved to New York with almost nothing. He wanted to meet his hero, the folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was very ill in hospital. He went to visit him. He called himself Guthrie's greatest disciple, which means his greatest follower.
Three planets in the sign of talk
A birth chart is a map of the sky at the moment a person was born. It shows where the Sun, the Moon and the planets were. Astrologers read it like a set of clues.
We know Bob's birth time well. He was born at 9:05 in the evening, and that time comes from a birth record. Astrologers give that kind of record the top grade, AA. So we can trust the whole map.
Your Sun sign is the sign the Sun was passing through on your birthday. Bob's Sun was in Gemini, the sign of the twins. Western astrologers say Gemini is curious, quick and full of words. It loves to talk, to ask questions and to try on new ideas, the way you might try on hats.
Bob did not have just the Sun in Gemini. Mercury, the planet of words and thinking, was there too. So was Venus, the planet of love and beauty. Three planets in the chatty sign of the twins! Astrologers would say that is a person made for words. Bob went on to write hundreds of songs.
Gemini is the twins, so astrologers also say it likes to be two people at once. Bob changed his name. He changed his sound again and again. He played folk, rock, gospel and blues. Just when fans thought they knew him, he became someone new.
Songs that marched
Bob's first album came out in 1962. It did not sell much, only about 5,000 copies in its first year. In the same year he changed his name in law, from Robert Zimmerman to Robert Dylan.
His second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, came out in 1963. One song on it, Blowin' in the Wind, became huge. Another group had a hit with it. People sang it at marches for fair treatment of Black Americans and against war.
On 28 August 1963 he sang at the March on Washington with the singer Joan Baez. A 22-year-old from a mining town was singing to a vast crowd about right and wrong.
In 1963 he was also booked on a big TV show. The show told him to drop a funny song that poked fun at a political group. He would not. He walked out instead. He was young, but he was not easy to push around.
The rising sign: a traveller and a seeker
Your rising sign is the sign that was coming up over the eastern edge of the sky at the moment you were born. It is like the front door of your house. It is the part of you that people meet first.
Bob has Sagittarius rising. Sagittarius is the archer, half person and half horse, always aiming an arrow at something far away. Western astrologers say Sagittarius rising looks like a traveller and a seeker. It wants to go further, learn more and ask the big questions about what life means.
You can see that archer all through his life. He has spent years on the road. In the late 1970s he became a Christian and even took five months off to go to Bible school. His songs ask big questions about right and wrong, about God and about how to live.
Two links between his planets also stand out. His Sun is at a sharp angle to Mars, the planet of action and fights. Astrologers call this a square, and they say it gives a person a lot of push and a habit of bumping into others. Think of the booing crowds. His Mercury is also square Neptune, the planet of dreams and mist. Astrologers say that makes words dreamy and hard to pin down. Ask ten fans what one of his songs means and you may get ten answers.
A crash, and a long quiet
After Newport, things got wild. Bob's electric albums split his fans in two. On one tour in 1966, a man in the crowd in Manchester, England, shouted Judas at him. That is the name of a traitor in the Bible. Bob later said he was worn out in those years.
On 29 July 1966 he crashed his motorcycle near Woodstock, New York. He said he broke bones in his neck. He also said he wanted to get out of the rat race.
So he stopped touring. He stayed away from big concerts for almost eight years. He made music at home with his friends in a group called the Band. Those home recordings became the Basement Tapes, and other singers turned some of the songs into hits.
Here is where his Moon comes in. In a birth chart, the Moon stands for your feelings and what you need to feel safe. Bob's Moon is in Taurus, the sign of the bull. Western astrologers say Taurus likes calm, home, good food and slow, steady days. After all that noise, a quiet life in the country sounds very Taurus.
The bull that keeps working
Bob's Moon is not alone in Taurus. Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus are there too. His Moon and Saturn sit almost on top of each other. Astrologers call that a conjunction, which means two planets in nearly the same spot.
Saturn is the planet of hard work, rules and time. Astrologers say a Moon next to Saturn takes feelings seriously and keeps them guarded. It also gives a person who can keep going for a very long time. All four of those Taurus planets sit in the part of his chart that stands for daily work.
That fits what came next. In 1975 he put out Blood on the Tracks, an album full of sad, grown-up love songs. Many critics now call it a masterpiece. In 1975 he also went on a tour with a big gang of musicians. He spotted a violin player walking down the street and asked her to join.
Then, on 7 June 1988, he started a tour that people call the Never Ending Tour. He has been playing shows almost nonstop ever since. A bull does not run fast. But it does not stop.
The Snake, the river and the number eight
Chinese astrologers use a different map. In their system, each year has an animal and an element. Bob was born in the year of the Metal Snake. They say the Snake is clever, private and hard to read. It sheds its skin and comes out looking new. That is a fair picture of a man who kept changing his sound.
Chinese astrologers also look at the day you were born. They call it your Day Master, and it is a bit like your inner self. Bob's Day Master is yang Water. Think of a big river. Yang Water, they say, keeps moving, finds a way around rocks and never sits still for long.
There is one more number game. Your Life Path number comes from adding all the digits of your birthday until you get one digit. Bob's adds up to 8. Number lovers say an 8 is about power, hard work and building something that lasts a long time.
A prize for songs
On 13 October 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. That is the top prize in the world for writing. It usually goes to people who write books and poems. This time it went to a man who writes songs.
At first he said nothing at all. For days, nobody heard from him. Then he said it was amazing. He was 75. He had also won an Oscar for a film song in 2001 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. He paints, too, and has put out books of his drawings and paintings.
I think the Nobel Prize was the right call, because his songs changed what people believed a song could say. // opinion
So here is the thing to take away. Bob Dylan never stayed the same for long, and that was his strength. You are allowed to change too. Try the loud guitar. Try the quiet one. Some people may boo. Others may throw you a harmonica.
The sky at Bob’s turning points
Worked out for each date from the same ephemeris as the chart above. Only the slow planets are shown, and a contact counts when it is within 3°.
· age 22
Sings at the March on Washington
Jupiter in Aries, Saturn in Aquarius, Uranus in Virgo, Neptune in Scorpio, Pluto in Virgo · Saturn square to Bob’s Saturn (1.4°); Uranus square to Bob’s Sun (2.1°); Saturn square to Bob’s Moon (2.4°); Uranus square to Bob’s Ascendant (2.6°)
Saturn in Aquarius was at a sharp angle to his own Saturn and to his Moon. Astrologers call this a Saturn square, and they say it is a time of growing up fast and taking on weight. Uranus in Virgo was also at a sharp angle to his Sun and his rising sign. Astrologers say Uranus brings sudden change. He was 22 and singing in front of the nation.
· age 24
Goes electric at Newport
Jupiter in Gemini, Saturn in Pisces, Uranus in Virgo, Neptune in Scorpio, Pluto in Virgo · Neptune opposite Bob’s Saturn (2.8°)
The sky was fairly quiet for him. The one close link was Neptune, the planet of dreams and fog, standing opposite his Saturn. Astrologers say that can blur the old rules. That fits a night when the rules of folk music got very blurry.
· age 25
Motorcycle crash near Woodstock
Jupiter in Cancer, Saturn in Pisces, Uranus in Virgo, Neptune in Scorpio, Pluto in Virgo · Saturn sextile to Bob’s Jupiter (0.2°); Neptune opposite Bob’s Saturn (0.7°); Jupiter sextile to Bob’s Saturn (1.6°); Neptune opposite Bob’s Moon (1.6°); Saturn opposite Bob’s Midheaven (2.1°); Jupiter sextile to Bob’s Moon (2.6°); Uranus trine to Bob’s Saturn (2.7°)
Neptune in Scorpio stood almost exactly opposite his Saturn and close to opposite his Moon. Saturn in Pisces was opposite the top of his chart, the point astrologers watch for career and fame. Astrologers say this is a time when a public life goes misty and a person pulls back. He stepped away from touring for almost eight years.
· age 47
The Never Ending Tour begins
Jupiter in Taurus, Saturn in Capricorn, Uranus in Sagittarius, Neptune in Capricorn, Pluto in Scorpio · Jupiter on Bob’s Moon (0°); Jupiter on Bob’s Saturn (0.9°); Saturn square to Bob’s Midheaven (1.3°); Uranus square to Bob’s Midheaven (2°)
Jupiter in Taurus sat exactly on his Moon and close to his Saturn. Jupiter is the planet of growth and good luck. Astrologers would say it lit up his steady, hard-working Taurus side. It was a good day to start something that would last for decades.
· age 75
Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature
Jupiter in Libra, Saturn in Sagittarius, Uranus in Aries, Neptune in Pisces, Pluto in Capricorn · Jupiter sextile to Bob’s Ascendant (0.8°); Neptune square to Bob’s Ascendant (1.5°)
Jupiter in Libra was in a friendly angle to his rising sign, the front door of his chart. Astrologers call that a lucky link for how the world sees you. Neptune in Pisces was at a sharp angle to the same point, and he went quiet for days afterwards.
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