A Bob Dylan Primer

He threw himself into live performances. In the '90s, he played hundreds of shows with a succession of small, tight bands. For seven years Dylan released no new songs. In 1997 he returned to songwriting with renewed authority on the album Time Out of Mind, which won three Grammys, including for Album of the Year. While his peers were trying to remain youthful and up to date, Dylan wrote about aging, facing death, the dying light. The centerpiece of the album was a song with the refrain, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there." When pressed in an interview about the focus on mortality in his new work, Dylan shot back, "I was singing songs about death when I was 12 years old."

In the first decade of the 21st century, Dylan's creativity went into overdrive. He won an Academy Award for "Things Have Changed." He released a series of critically acclaimed albums. He wrote a memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, that was extravagantly praised. Dylan's paintings and drawings sold at prestigious galleries. He set up a sculpting studio near his home in California, where he welds elaborate metal gates. It became a private mark of prestige for wealthy households to own Dylan gates.

As a recording artist, Dylan now has two careers. He regularly releases new albums — 2012's Tempest contained some of his darkest lyrics since the days of "Desolation Row" in the mid-'60s — while on a parallel track his record label puts out volume after volume of previously unreleased material. The value in Dylan's abandoned work was proved by the success of "Wagon Wheel," a song he left half finished in 1973 that was completed decades later by the group Old Crow Medicine Show. Nashville star Darius Rucker covered "Wagon Wheel," which became a No. 1 country single in 2013 and won the Grammy for Best Solo Country Performance in 2014.

Dylan has been awarded 11 Grammys, France's Legion of Honor, a Kennedy Center Honor, an Oscar, a Pulitzer, and honorary doctorates from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and from Princeton. He is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

President Obama presents Bob Dylan the Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony in 2012.

Charles Dharapak/AP

In May 2012 President Obama gave Dylan the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, at a White House ceremony. His fellow honorees included John Glenn, Madeleine Albright, Toni Morrison and former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. It was strange company for a rock singer, but everyone in the East Room was excited to meet Dylan. John Glenn's family said they had been singing one another their favorite Dylan songs since the prizes were announced. William Foege, an epidemiologist honored for helping eradicate smallpox, talked about what Dylan meant to him. He said that when his children were young, every evening he would get his guitar and they would all sing Bob Dylan songs. In a room filled with accomplishment, all eyes were on the songwriter. Dylan asked for a photo with Hillary Clinton and joked with Obama, who asked Bob to put on his cowboy hat for a picture of them together. The rest of the honorees stayed at the White House and mingled, but Dylan quickly made for the door. He was back on the road, heading for another joint.