The Original Publishing and Royalty Agreement for Nobel Prize Winner Bob Dylan’s First Book, On Poetry, Tarantula, Signed and Initialed Four Times by Him

An unimpeachably authentic signature of Dylan is a great rarity, as he always avoided signing unless it was a necessity

Reference for research, publication, and institutions: Raab D13.145

Bob Dylan is the bard of the current age, and maintains an almost mythic status. His writing is known for its verbal dexterity, wit, and social commentary, and has made him very influential in the music and literary fields. He arrived in New York in 1961, performed in Greenwich Village folk clubs, and was noticed by Joan Baez, who helped further his career. Late in 1961 Columbia signed him to a contract and the following year released his first album. Next year “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” appeared, with all original songs including the 1960s anthem “Blowin’ in the Wind.” After several more important acoustic/folk albums, he launched into a new electric/acoustic format, famously and controversially at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, then with “Bringing It All Back Home” which, with The Byrds cover of his “Mr Tambourine Man,” launched folk-rock. “Like a Rolling Stone”, which came out in the summer of 1965, greatly increased his fame.

Perhaps his most significant influence was on the politics of the 1960s, and on other musicians of his own generation. Among the musicians he influenced to start writing deeper, more introspective material were Peter, Paul & Mary, who covered many of his early works, and The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and Paul Simon, among many others. His lyrics have had a profound influence on writers as well as musicians. Poet Allen Ginsberg, on first hearing Dylan’s music, wrote “I heard ‘Hard Rain’—and wept. Because it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation, from earlier bohemian, and Beat illumination.” Joyce Carol Oates dedicated her short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” to Dylan.

Dylan was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1982 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. His albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, as well as the individual songs “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” are in the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2008 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical composition of extraordinary poetic power.” In 2012 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2016 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, conferred “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Some of his songs have appeared in poetry and literary anthologies; for instance, his song “Mr. Tambourine Man” was included in The Norton Introduction to Literature in 2005.

Tarantula was Dylan’s first book. It is a collection of poems and prose that evokes the turbulence of the times in which it was written, and gives a unique insight into Dylan’s creative evolution. It showcases the imagination of a folk poet laureate who was able to combine the humanity and compassion of his musical roots with the playful surrealism of modern art. This collection reflects the concerns found in Dylan’s most seminal music: a sense of protest, a verbal playfulness and spontaneity, and a belief in the artistic legitimacy of chronicling everyday life and eccentricity. Dylan wrote the poems and prose of Tarantula during his mid-1960s heyday in Greenwich Village, before finally publishing the work in 1971. To put the significance of that timing in its proper historical context, Dylan was working on Tarantula while electrifying the Newport Folk Festival and penning what many consider the greatest rock song of all time—”Like a Rolling Stone.”

Dylan, in 2016, was awarded the Nobel Prize “for having created new poetic expressions”.

Document signed, on the MacMillan Company publisher’s stationery, four pages, October 7, 1965, in Dylan’s heyday, just a few months after the release of Highway 61 Revisited, being the original publishing and royalty agreement for Tarantula. Dylan received $5000 plus a 15% royalty on sales for the agreement. It is between “The MacMillan Company” and “Mr. Bob Dylan of 161 West Fourth Street, New York, N.Y.”, and provides for a book of 128 pages “provisionally entitled Tarantula”, to be “published in hardcover and/or paperback edition.” Signing for MacMillan was its senior vice president, Gerald J. Gross, who joined the firm in 1962, and was in charge of the company’s general book division, responsible for publication of 450 books per year. His stable of authors included Robert Penn Warren, Barbara W. Tuchman, E.E. Cummings, and many others. The parties made some changes, and initialed these revisions four times. Then Gross and Dylan signed in full at the end of the publishing and royalty agreement.

Dylan has always disliked signing. This contract, on MacMillan’s stationery, and evidencing the desires of both parties to come to an agreement, is our first document of Dylan.