Underestimating Albert

This article represents an exploration of the contribution made by Albert Grossman to the career of Bob Dylan. Dylan is such a distinctive performer and songwriter that he can easily appear to be entirely self-made. Certainly, Dylan has a forceful character and appears to delight in confounding all who would ask questions of him. Further, the role of Grossman, his first manager, has all but entirely been written out of Dylan’s early history (not least by Dylan himself). The fact that Grossman died in 1986 has facilitated this process. The concern of ‘Underestimating Albert’ is to argue the reverse, that Grossman’s role in the creation of Dylan as a popular music success cannot be underestimated.