Bob Dylan, The Avid Chess Player, Has Also Made Nobel Prize-Winning Music

Bob Dylan, born on this date (May 24) in 1941, is well known for his impact on pop culture. His music and lyrics have had profound political, social, philosophical, and literary influences during a career that has spanned more than 60 years. Often overlooked is what an avid chess player he has been.

• Has Bob Dylan Played Chess?
• Where Was Bob Dylan Known For Playing Chess?
• Only A Pawn in Their Game
• How Else Has Chess Influenced Dylan’s Songwriting?
• Like Other Artists, Dylan Has Been Inspired By Chess

Has Bob Dylan Played Chess?

Dylan has been a very avid chess player. In fact, he used to play chess for hours in Greenwich Village in New York City.

The long-defunct Chessworld Magazine edited by Frank Brady (an international arbiter and former president of the Marshall Chess Club), reported in its March-April 1964 issue that the chess played in Greenwich Village, the city's artistic and literary quarter, was “intensive” and that the most popular gathering places were coffeehouses such as Le Figaro Cafe where Dylan played often.

Where Was Bob Dylan Known For Playing Chess?

Dylan was just one of several celebrities who frequented Figaro and enjoyed playing chess there. The famous cafe, originally open for five decades, closed for good in 2008 (although a modern version was reborn in 2021 at the original location). During its heyday, it was where Dylan and his contemporaries lingered over coffee cups for hours as they played chess.

As folk musician Dave Van Ronk writes in his memoir about the winter of 1960-61, “Sitting at a window table at the Figaro, playing chess, gossiping with friends, or just watching the snow, one felt an almost rural sense of peace.”

Figaro first opened 1957 and quickly became a place to be. In its online history, the “new” Figaro comments on its legacy: “Beat generation pioneers Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce, musicians Bob Dylan and Lou Reed, and actors Al Pacino and Sam Shepard were just some of the celebrities who frequented it.”

Only A Pawn In Their Game

Dylan uses a chess motif in one of his classic songs written during the American Civil Rights Movement. Released on his The Times They Are a-Changin' album in 1964, the song is “Only a Pawn in Their Game."

Dylan performed the song on August 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The song is about the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers just a few weeks earlier on June 12, 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi.

In the song, Dylan laments about the murderer, “He’s only a pawn.” A recording of the performance maintained by The Bob Dylan Center is the video below. (For the complete lyrics of the song, click here.)

How Else Has Chess Influenced Dylan's Songwriting?

Similarly, in his song “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” chess is used to create an image. “Even the pawn must hold a grudge” is an important line in this song written for Dylan’s fifth studio album Bringing It All Back Home that was released in 1965.

In “Crash On The Levee (Down In The Flood),” a song originally recorded in 1967, the lyrics “It's king for king, queen for queen” convey a clear meaning for any chess player. In addition, Dylan returns to the lowly pawn as an image in ”Caribbean Wind,” performed first live in November 1980 as he asks, “Could I been used and played as a pawn?” In many lyrics, interviews, and recordings, Dylan uses the game of chess to tell his story or to make his point.

Like Other Artists, Dylan Has Been Inspired By Chess

Marcel Duchamp, awarded the title of master by the French Chess Federation in 1925, is famously known for saying, “I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” Dylan certainly encompasses the best artistic value of chess players and the inspired chess-playing of artists. He himself once remarked: "Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire." His work still inspires us.

The highest purpose of art is to inspire.
—Bob Dylan

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," Dylan is one of the greatest songwriters in history. Chess players also know that his love of chess matches our own.

Have you been aware of the significance of chess in Dylan’s music? Are any lyrics by Dylan or another songwriter that refer to the game of chess particularly meaningful for you?