A teenager in Hibbing, Minnesota pounded the piano so loudly at a school talent show that the principal unplugged his microphone. That teenager, Robert Zimmerman, became Bob Dylan, and this deep dive explores how his entire career became a masterclass in refusing to let anyone, including his most devoted fans, dictate who he was.

We trace his late-night radio education, seeing Buddy Holly days before the fatal crash, his shift to folk music, and the self-invention behind his new name. We follow his rapid rise in Greenwich Village, his rejection of the spokesman of a generation label, the electric turn at the 1965 folk festival, the hostile 1966 UK tour, his motorcycle crash and retreat, and decades of reinvention culminating in the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

• Why folk music’s narrative depth gave him tools early rock and roll lacked
• The television walkout and the disastrous 1963 award dinner speech
• Competing explanations for the booing when he plugged in, including a poor sound mix
• How a six-minute single broke AM radio’s three-minute rules
• The Judas heckle in Manchester, the never-ending tour, and his work as a painter and iron sculptor