This may be difficult for anyone who came of age in the ’60s or ’70s to process, but there are many young people today who have either never heard of Bob Dylan or know next to nothing about him. It’s easy to laugh at this as a fan, but remember that Dylan’s last single to reach the Top 40 was “Gotta Serve Somebody” in 1979. The current high school senior was born in 2007, which means Dylan is little more than a photo in a history book or someone her grandparents listened to.

That will likely change later this month A complete unknown is coming to cinemas. It stars Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, Elle Fanning as a slightly fictionalized version of her friend Suze Rotolo, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. And measured by the effect of Bohemian Rhapsody Given Queen’s stature, the film will create a tidal wave of interest in Dylan among members of the TikTok generation.

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Before they go to the theater, we wanted to give them some context about Dylan’s life. If you’re familiar with the basics of his story, this probably isn’t the article for you. (We have about 900 other Bob Dylan articles in our archive that will interest you far more.) But for Dylan newbies and Chalamet superfans, go ahead and learn more about an earlier singer-songwriter who was with his music changed the world.

Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman.

The man the world knows as Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 to parents Abraham and Beatrice Zimmerman. Until late in his teenage years, he was known as Bobby Zimmerman. The Zimmerman family moved from Duluth, Minnesota, to the small town of Hibbing, Minnesota in 1948. As a child, Dylan was fascinated by rock music and briefly played in a band called the Shadow Blasters. His high school yearbook noted his desire to “join Little Richard.”

Dylan moved to New York in 1961.

After a very short time at the University of Minnesota, where he virtually never attended classes, Dylan moved to New York City in January 1961. Folk music had become his passion by this point and he wanted to make a name for himself in the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene. His early shows largely featured covers of folk icons like Woody Guthrie. He slowly began to write his own songs and thus attract a larger audience. In October 1961 he signed with Columbia Records.

Dylan’s songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” were famous before him.

Given his nasally singing voice and unconventional delivery, few industry insiders of the early ’60s believed that Dylan could score hits on his own. “Blowin’ in the Wind” was given to more conventional acts such as Peter, Paul and Mary, who made it a major hit in the summer of 1963. Sam Cooke cut his own version the following year. In 1965, the Byrds landed their version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” All of this paved the way for Dylan to finally land his own recordings in the Top 40 that year.

Dylan performed at the 1963 March on Washington.

Early in his career, Dylan wrote powerful protest songs related to the civil rights movement, including “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” “When the Ship Comes In,” and “The Times They Are-A Changin.” They earned him a performance at the March on Washington in 1963, where he performed four pieces, including a duet with Joan Baez, before Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Folk purists were furious when Dylan started playing electric music, even calling him “Judas.”

In 1965, Dylan switched from acoustic folk music to electric rock songs with the release of Subterranean Homesick Blues, which was followed later that year by Like a Rolling Stone. These were his two biggest hits to that point in his career and they enraged folk purists who felt he was selling out. When he played live with an electric band for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, many in the audience booed him. He followed this with an electrifying tour of America, Australia and Europe, where he was regularly harassed. At a show in Manchester, England, an angry fan called him “Judas” before the final song of the night. He just turned to the band and growled, “Play it damn loud.”

Dylan disappeared for years after a motorcycle accident.

In the summer of 1966, shortly after the end of a European tour, Dylan crashed his motorcycle in Woodstock, New York. The extent of his injuries caused much debate over the years, but it led him to cancel all remaining tour dates this year, largely retreating from the public eye and focusing on his growing family. He spent much of 1967 recording home demos with members of his touring group (later known as “The Band”) and did not tour again until 1974. Although he continued to release new records and make occasional public appearances, he remained unrecognized for many important cultural moments of the late 1960s, including the Woodstock Music and Art Fair.

Dylan experienced a difficult Jesus period in the late 1970s.

Dylan grew up in a Jewish family and was bar mitzvahed, but in late 1978 he studied with an evangelical organization called the Association of Vineyard Churches and became a born-again Christian. He began writing gospel songs at a rapid pace with titles like “Property of Jesus” and “I Believe in You.” He released a whole album of gospel songs Slow train is comingand embarked on a North American tour playing only his new songs. He also preached to the audience. “I told you, ‘Times change,’ and they did!” In 1979, he told a crowd in New Mexico, “I said the answer was ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ and it was true! “ And I tell you now: Jesus is coming back, and he is! There is no other path to salvation.” (He returned to secular music in the early 1980s.)

Dylan was a member of the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne.

Dylan reached a creative low point in the ’80s, releasing inferior albums like Knocked out loaded And Down in the groove. He had a hard time getting going until he formed a supergroup with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. They called themselves the Traveling Wilburys and released a best-selling album in 1988. They never really toured and Orbison died before they could record their second record, but it helped Dylan get out of the rut and paved the way for a much more productive period in the ’90s.

Dylan began a tour in 1988 that is still ongoing.

On June 7, 1988, Bob Dylan began a tour at the Concord Pavilion in Concord, California. 36 years have now passed and the tour is still going on. Fans and media refer to it as “The Never Ending Tour,” even though Dylan himself has rejected that title over the years. At his peak he played around 120 shows a year. In the last decade the number has dropped to a manageable 80, but it still takes up much of his time. “You’ve never heard of Oral Roberts and Billy Graham doing a Never Ending Preacher tour,” Dylan said Rolling Stone in 2009. “Has anyone ever called Henry Ford a never-ending carmaker? …What about Donald Trump? Does anyone say they have a never-ending task of building buildings?”

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