Bob Dylan was a folk singer of protest songs in the early sixties, but after beginning his friendship with Allen Ginsberg in 1964, Dylan began fusing blues, country, folk, and rock sensibilities, and releasing albums that were lyrically rich with mystical, apocalyptic imagery. At the time of Tarantula's conception, Bob Dylan was at the height of his artistic powers, releasing three of his best albums, Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, (a double album), in the space of sixteen months. He was by then the most influential, critically acclaimed artist of his generation and much of the philosophical and artistic outpouring of the sixties can be traced to his influence. Still, without the music to shape the words, Tarantula was neither an artistic nor commercial success, and though written in 1965, Dylan put off its publication for several years.