Focus: Dylan - The man unmasked

Martin Scorsese's film about the music legend's early years is one of the most eagerly awaited TV events of the year, the centrepiece of an unofficial Dylan season. But, asks Simon O'Hagan, what really is the truth about the singer?

Next week, however, there is an opportunity to see and hear Dylan as never before, courtesy of another giant of American creativity, the film director Martin Scorsese. Scorsese's three-and-a-half hour documentary about Dylan's formative years - No Direction Home - goes out on BBC2 tomorrow night and on Tuesday, and for many people will be the TV event of the year. Dylan-themed programmes are popping up in support. There are Dylan books, a new CD, an exhibition of photographs, and in November the man himself arrives on a UK tour.

At the end of it all, however, the suspicion is that we may still not really know about him. We know about McCartney; we know about Jagger, and we now know probably more than we'll ever want to know about Michael Jackson. But Dylan, a man who has never tired of putting himself forward if he's got a guitar in his hands and an audience ready to listen, simply disappears once the show is over. A lifetime as the object of frequently obsessive fascination has demanded that he hang on to every last vestige of his privacy. Although that's only part of the explanation.

The degree to which any artist's life informs the product of their imagination is always fiercely debated. For some critics, no song or book or painting can possibly be explained without reference to the day-to-day events that lay behind it. For others, great art just is, handed down by some higher being perhaps - and that is certainly the way that Dylan would have it. He has always resisted those who have demanded to know what his songs were about ("They're about three minutes," he once replied) or who have sought to interpret them in terms of his relationships or other aspects of his personal circumstances.

Such inquiries, he maintains, miss the point, but to accept that you also have to accept the notion that Dylan has spent the past nearly 50 years being two people. There's Dylan the artist who goes into the studio and up on stage and reveals himself through the most compelling combination of words and music to come out of the second half of the 20th century; and there's Dylan the private individual who has been through marriage, divorce, fatherhood and money worries, and who almost never gives interviews.

This explains why there is quite such excitement surrounding the Scorsese film. In it Dylan talks pithily about his upbringing in the remote Midwest, his arrival on the New York folk scene in the early 1960s, his rapid rise to fame, his absorption into the protest movement and then his rejection of it, culminating in the seismic "going electric" moment in 1965. It's all marvellous stuff, but there's something missing. Where, apart from a couple of drily witty asides, are the women? And where are the drugs?

The background to the interview helps explain these omissions. It was conducted not by Scorsese but by Dylan's manager, Jeff Rosen. The two men wanted something on record that might one day be released. Then came the idea for the Scorsese film, and the heart of it was already in place. But one has to bear in mind the highly controlled environment from which it emerged.

So, what is the truth about Bob Dylan? That's some question, but from the moment the young, not-yet-successful musician changed his name from Robert Zimmerman, it was clear that he wanted to put some distance between who he really was and who he wanted to be. Arriving in New York, he made up stories about his background, saying that after leaving Minnesota he'd travelled and worked in New Mexico when he had done nothing of the kind. It was self-mythologising, and the start of a process of leaving false trails that has continued ever since.

Dylan may have been determined to keep his private life private, but when, in the early 1960s, he fell for the beautiful Suze Rotolo, a member of the New York folk scene and "the most erotic thing I'd ever seen", he couldn't resist including her on the cover of an album. With the folk goddess Joan Baez - "the sight of her made me high" - he formed a partnership both romantic and artistic that turned them a kind of boho JFK and Jackie.

The cooling of that relationship - at least on Dylan's part - was a central theme in his movement away from an essentially conservative folk scene that he was finding increasingly oppressive, and from the "spokesman-of-a-generation" label that was driving him mad. Dylan was always hungry for experience, and it was all out there, much of it narcotically induced.

By 1965, he had gone electric, and the clamour from his audience - in large part a shriek of dismay - was getting to him. No wonder he kept his wedding that year - to Sara Lownds, a former bunny girl - as low-key as possible. She was previously married and had a daughter, Maria. He and Sara had four children of their own, of whom Jakob has grown up to be a fully fledged musician in his own right.

The period of bringing up young children coincided - not inconveniently - with the years in retreat that followed Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident (which is the point at which the Scorsese film ends). By then Dylan was probably ready for some downtime anyway, and he spent it in upstate New York, experimenting with the new sounds that were soon bootlegged as The Basement Tapes, and producing a series of official albums with a reflective, country flavour.

Then his marriage to Sara foundered, and the pain of it was poured into his 1975 masterpiece Blood on the Tracks. You only had to listen to the songs to know what complexities of the heart Dylan had experienced, which is another way of saying that there have always been women in his life. Around this time the urge to communicate directly with an audience reasserted itself and he began touring again, taking up for a number of years with one of his band members, Clydie King.

There were other serious relationships - with Carol Childs, an A&R executive at Geffen Records, and with an actress, Sally Kirkland. Then, in his 2001 biography Down the Highway, Howard Sounes revealed that in the 1980s Dylan had a had a second marriage, to a backing singer called Carolyn Dennis, with whom he had a daughter. That marriage also ended in divorce, in 1992. To the outside world's knowledge, there have been no marriages since.

Dylan is now a grandfather (all the children from his first marriage have had children) who has survived a serious heart scare and probably ought to be living quietly in one of the several properties he owns across the US.

New albums keep coming - those of 1997 (Time Out of Mind) and 2001 (Love and Theft) are among his most acclaimed. Last year he produced Chronicles, a volume of memoirs (now out in paperback) that showed his mastery of prose and became a surprise bestseller, although reading it you would hardly know that he'd had wives and children.

And he just just keeps touring. He played all over the United States in the spring and summer. Next month he arrives in Europe, with six weeks and 31 dates ahead of him, including 11 in the UK and Ireland. If you want to know what Dylan is really like, that may well be your best opportunity.

'He's such a conjuror of words and ideas'

KT Tunstall, Mercury Prize nominee

"He is an integral part of folk music's soul. The quintessential troubadour and poet; his albums are a constant reminder of why music is important to me."

David Gray, platinum-selling singer and songwriter

"I remember hearing 'Blowin' in the Wind' in the car when I was 12. He's such a conjurer of words and ideas and very humorous. He has this mysterious quality, like the man in the long black coat from his song. When he starts to sing it's as if he has just staggered out of the desert. I could go on about 'His Bobness' for ages."

Polly Paulusma, supported Bob Dylan on tour

"When I was asked to play with him on his tour last summer, obviously I was over the moon. He has been a hero of mine since I was a child. Blood on the Tracks, my favourite, is one of those albums that just shapes you. It's the words, ah, the words. That's why he can get away with anything."

Andy Burrows, of Live8 stars Razorlight

"He really stood alone. I played in a covers band when I was 12 or 13, with my dad and the local drama teacher, and we did 'Like a Rolling Stone'. It just kept going and getting better; it absolutely blew me away. He's been such an inspiration to so many artists for the past four decades. I really want to get into him more."

Arena: 'No Direction Home - Bob Dylan' is on BBC 2 at 9pm tomorrow and on Tuesday