Every year will forever be some kind of a Dylan year. So also 2025, obviously with so many anniversaries and still with so many wonderful live performances to come. This was the year of celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Bringing it all Back Home & Highway 61 Revisited, the 50th Anniversary of Blood On The Tracks & Basement Tapes, the 40th Anniversary of Empire Burlesque, the 30th Anniversary of MTV Unplugged (and yes – I love it! Even if we always could wish for some other songs), the 20th Anniversary for the movie “No Direction Home” and Bootleg Series, Vol 7: No Direction Home: The Soundtrack” & the release of Live at Gaslight 1962 & Live at Carnegie Hall 1963, the 10th Anniversary of the beautiful “Shadows In The Night”, and yes, the fabulous release of Bootleg Series Vol 12: The Cutting Edge (1965-1966), yes, and most of all the 18-disc, 379-track Collector’s Edition, even the download of all live material from 1965! My point – there is so much to celebrate when it comes to Dylan, year by year. And don’t start me talkin’ about endless fabulous live versions of songs from the same Anniversary years mentioned.
But this was of course just a part of the reason for calling 2025 a Dylan year.
The year was wonderfully starting off with the great and unforgettable movie, A Complete Unknown, released in US at the end of 2024, coming to Europe and to Norway early 2025. Fabulous performances from a great cast, and, in my opinion, a beautiful fairy tale about this young boy coming to New York City searching for Woody Guthrie, new songs and new stepping stones for his art, for his music. A great way for young people to dive into the story of this unique artist, for many of them just a first glimpse into a long journey of listening to his music and lyrics.
In December 2024 they released a soundtrack album with some of Timothy Chalamet’s and Monica Barbaro’s performances from the film. It was released in Norway in 2025.
Bob Dylan’s 84th Birthday, the 24th of May in 2025.
Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, Spring 2025.
While me and many more suspected 2024 would be the last RRW year, was proven wrong when the dates for 2025 started to emerge. This leg started in Tulsa, Oklahoma 25th of March, fittingly in the city of the Bob Dylan Center and the place of Dylan’s archives. Some changes in the setlist, some changes in arrangements, still carrying the torch of passion and the urge to perform. The leg lasted to the 22nd of April, ending in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
Another Outlaw Festival Tour.
In Phoenix, Arizona, this year’s Outlaw Festival Tour started, and it was concluded in East Troy, Wisconsin, the 19th of September, but then we got a bonus, the surprising Farm Aid performance in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the 20th of September, the city where Dylan started his ride to New York in January 1961.
Dylan’s debut of Ricky Nelson’s “Garden Party” was one of many highlights.
The Outlaw evolved through the next months, a fine combination of Dylan’s own songs and hand-picked cover versions, even including some guest appearances, most notably one happy Billy Strings in Spokane in May, “All Along The Watchtower” in a new guise. I was really happy being able to see the same Billy in Oslo this fall, one of this year’s greatest concerts for me.
The Very Thought of You – Barbra Streisand with Bob Dylan.
In June 2025, Barbra Streisand finally released her new duet album, now with the Dylan duet that has been spoken about for many years – and a really beautiful duet it was – a surprise for many, but not for all of us. Dylan delivers a great performance with Barbra. He told the press about the experience: “The interesting thing is that I saw it as an acting piece. It’s two different people, how they were feeling each other out: what kind of emotions are going on when two people have known of each other for such a long time but never met. It was wonderful to work with him, actually. I did my part earlier in the day, and it worked out perfectly with his. I’m ever the director. And he wanted direction, which was so lovely: “What do you think? What do you want?” He just was so open to trying this or trying that. It was really easy.”
The song was first released in 1934, by Ray Noble and his orchestra.
Farm Aid 2025.
Great stuff. Great list of songs, picked from the Outlaw Festival set.
Bob Dylan’s touching greetings to Martin Carthy in September 2025.
Dylan’s greetings was for the tribute concert to Carthy, The Life & Songs of Martin Carthy, the 29th of September. Here with Martin Carthy at stage with John Wilks & Graham Coxon. Sadly, Dylan couldn’t be there.
Bootleg Series, Vol 18: Through the Open Window – 1956-1963
The well of Bootleg Series is not dry, and in the end of October we got one more fabulous box set, a nice companion to the focus on early recordings helped by “A Complete Unknown”.
Rough And Rowdy Ways Tour, Europe, Fall 2025.
Another great leg of the tour, not named a “farewell tour”, but still reminds me of one…. a long one.
I was lucky to see five great shows this fall, even if i was thinking that my 200th, the last in Royal Albert Hall in 2024, would be my last.
Point Blank (Quick Studies)
18th of November another book of writings and drawings was released, Point Blank, presented like this:
“Point Blank (Quick Studies) is the first major publication of Bob Dylan’s artwork in over a decade, featuring nearly 100 never-before-seen drawings. Bob Dylan is a master at telling stories, creating moods and provoking feelings – not only in music and the written word but also in visual art, which he has been creating since the 1960s. This publication of his art features nearly 100 black-and-white drawings that were completed between 2021 and 2022 and served as the basis for his latest exhibition – also titled Point Blank – at London’s Halcyon Gallery in early 2025. The works vary between portraits, still lifes and landscapes: roller-skating lovers, a suit of armour, a suspension bridge, a karaoke singer, a roll of Scotch tape, a Parisian canal, a man with a crooked smile.
Accompanying the artwork are short prose vignettes written by Eddie Gorodetsky, Jackie Hamilton and Lucy Sante that further enhance the images’ evocativeness. Dylan’s ability to find beauty and mystery in the seemingly mundane is one of his great gifts – and the gift he’s continually given to the public over the years, including now with Point Blank.“
I really enjoyed the book, both the drawings and the “prose vignettes”, the writings obviously inspired by both Dylan and the drawings.
Other books…… too many to be mentioned…
Every Dylan year would be a new year with a string of new book releases, too many to be mentioned here. Still, the one that now is close to my heart is Steven Rings’ “What Did You Hear?” For those of us that is strongly and especially thrilled by the sound of Bob Dylan as much as the lyrics, exactly what we can hear, the vocals, the changes in them and the changes of arrangements, this is the book for you, for us, with so many interesting observations that can make us listen even more closely than before, and to discover new aspects and understanding of what we already knew fascinates us.
I am also looking forward to read Ron Rosenbaum’s new book “Things Have Changed”.
Bob Dylan Awarded Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music
In November we also got the news about Dylan being Awarded Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music. It has been reported that Dylan’s grateful response include the words: What a pleasant surprise! It has been one helluva ride since his first honorary doctorate from Princeton in 1970 (and the days of the locusts), and even being awarded one from St Andrews University in 2004 seems far away today. Heartfelt gratulations to Dylan for this one. Well deserved!
Record Store Day & Dylan
Some of us could happily buy the “Original” “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, the first version released with a different track list from the one we learned to love. We knew about it, but not many could afford the collector’s item. This time a new version was made available for a wider audience at RSD. Yippee!!
In the last minute Dylan decided to change “Rocks and Gravel”, “Let Me Die in my Footsteps”, “Rambling, Gambling Willie” and “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” with the tracks we know by heart: “Girl From The North Country”, “Masters of War”, “Bob Dylan’s Dream” and “Talkin’ World War III Blues”. With Rocks and Gravel we even got kind of an early electric Dylan! Now we got both versions.
At the same RSD a single version of Masters of War was for sale, with an early live version of the song, and a conversation with Dylan at the B-side. Some of could of course not resist this one.
The 50th Anniversary Copyright Extension 1975.
Another set of copyright extension tracks was released late December, as usual in just a few copies. All tracks was live performances from some of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder shows in 1975.
These about sixty great sounding tracks were available for a short time on Spotify and some other streaming services for a short time from, as I understand, the 20th of December. Long enough to keep the copyrights going, I guess.
What about 2026?
We of course already know about the announcing of a long string of shows in the US, from the 21st of March in Omaha, Nebraska, to the 1st of May in Abilene, Texas. It’s a fair guess, that there will be even more – let’s just hope he’ll be back in Europe this Summer or Fall. Regardless where he goes – Godspeed!
Will he meet up to receive the honorary doctorate in Berklee? Who knows?
2026 is of course the 50th Anniversary of “Desire”, of the live “Hard Rain” and the “Rolling Thunder Revue, Part II” – we can only wish for some Bootleg Series releases related to this, not only because “Desire” was the album that got me hooked, but because both the album and the touring of this year, “Hard Rain” both on vinyl and on film, is well worth a deep dive. When I was in Tulsa, I got to see some filmed outtakes from “Hard Rain”, just to get a release including those would be fabulous news.
60th Anniversary of “Blonde on Blonde”, the 40th of “Knocked Out Loaded” (and yes, where have all the outtakes gone???), the 30th of “Modern Times”, the 20th of “Fallen Angels”. It will be the 10th Anniversary of Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature, and so on. Much to remember, much to listen to and to pick up again. 2026 will also be a Dylan Year. Thanks again, Mr Dylan.
Happy New Year to both Bob Dylan and y’all.
Johnny Borgan
Thanks to Bennyboy, Nightmoth, Woolhall, OldHenryLee and many more for bringing the music all back home to each and one of us.
Johnny B. 