Chronicles: Volume One (Chronicles)

Amazon.com

One would not anticipate a conventional memoir from Bob Dylan--indeed, one would not have foreseen an autobiography at all from the pen of the notoriously private legend. What Chronicles: Volume 1 delivers is an odd but ultimately illuminating memoir that is as impulsive, eccentric, and inspired as Dylan's greatest music.

Eschewing chronology and skipping over most of the "highlights" that his many biographers have assigned him, Dylan drifts and rambles through his tale, amplifying a series of major and minor epiphanies. If you're interested in a behind-the-scenes look at his encounters with the Beatles, look elsewhere. Dylan describes the sensation of hearing the group's "Do You Want to Know a Secret" on the radio, but devotes far more ink to a Louisiana shopkeeper named Sun Pie, who tells him, "I think all the good in the world might already been done" and sells him a World's Greatest Grandpa bumper sticker. Dylan certainly sticks to his own agenda--a newspaper article about journeymen heavyweights Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis and soul singer Joe Tex's appearance on The Tonight Show inspire heartfelt musings, and yet the 1963 assassination of John Kennedy prompts nary a word from the era's greatest protest singer.

For all the small revelations (it turns out he's been a big fan of Barry Goldwater, Mickey Rourke, and Ice-T), there are eye-opening disclosures, including his confession that a large portion of his recorded output was designed to alienate his audience and free him from the burden of being a "the voice of a generation."

Off the beaten path as it is, Chronicles is nevertheless an astonishing achievement. As revelatory in its own way as Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61 Revisited, it provides ephemeral insights into the mind one of the most significant artistic voices of the 20th century while creating a completely new set of mysteries. --Steven Stolder

Book Description

"I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else."

So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.

By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

Download Description

" ""I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else."" So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times. By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art. "

Customer Reviews:

An Alternative Take on Autobiography that Works.......2007-10-11

Let me start off by saying is that I'm not a Dylan music fan; it's not that I dislike Dylan, but I've just never really listened to him. I think I own just two of his songs (Rainy Day Women and All Along the Watchtower, thanks BSG finale). So I'm not what you'd call a fan.

As a result I was kinda surprised by what this book is. It's not a biography per se, it's more of a summation of the inspirations and their effects on his life. There's enough other names thrown around in this book that one could probably write a concordance, but it's obvious Dylan does this for two reasons: one, it acts as basically an ongoing acknowledgements page throughout the book, and two, it shows that Dylan is more interested in people than anything else.

Dylan has deliberately stripped out the big events from his life that have been recounted endlessly: meeting the Beatles, plugging in at Newport (although he does obliquely reference it), even the Traveling Wilburys get little mention when I'm sure there's a wealth of anecdotes he could've provided. What this leaves you with are the people and music that shaped his musical life, not the events. It's a fascinating way to approach his story, and he pulls it off well.

Stylistically it comes off as an oral history, and I believe if I read it again I'll listen to the audiobook instead

Bob Dylan Chronicles -- No Direction Home -- Never Ending Tour.......2007-10-02

I'm making way again reading Chronicles, it's my second time through. It takes the entire book to understand what makes an artist an artist, and when Columbia Records signed Bob, it had the power to make him become as the one whom we all know him as today. He follows along the tradition of folk music, and yet, within that tradition he learned so well the ways of the past that he would be accepted as an artist even before he has written the music.

Knowing the book is Dylan's autobiography, I expected to read from the perspective of, or, having a given notion that a story would be told about how the songs were written, by the manner they could be inspired. The latter meaning that finding the inspiration is the deeper more profound nature of the story as Bob does write constructively in the similar form as are his lyrics and music. The catch phrase there being the musical form and with this he tells a lingering story of meeting up with Bono who leads him on to record another record in New Orleans with Danny Lanois.

It is fair to say that even to this day most of the songs are still sung with an affliction of a dialect that captures our time as the measured space from that time the song was first inspired. The passages written throughout the storyline of the book put together a grandeur more complex understanding of just how omni-present ones life becomes to have achieved what Bob has accomplished, beginning within the moments he knew he could play guitar, so handedly playing the music he enjoyed whilst underlying his own talent allowing him to simply play along... In the course of such sanctity he reads one great book after another, as it is the same way he listens to records, and then seeks for artists following relentlessly his own spirit until finally meeting his immortal icon Woody Guthrie, bed ridden. Woody listens to Bob play and Bob stays with Woody until they each can find no end to the meaning of the words their music could have lived for himself.

On the surface the story writes about the times he grew up as a child amongst friends and family living in the iron ore range that is still the driving force of America's industrial revolution. Virtually every car made in Detroit would have been fabricated with the ore that was for a time Dylan's boyhood home and upbringing.

It is in New York though, that if you were from the area yourself or in the same way knew of any other place brought into the discussion, then pieces fit together about the goings on of the emerging cultural lives in such backgrounds as Greenwich Village. It's the most intricate detail to understand how Bob goes about learning an insightful dictation of knowledge that elapses his own will and eventual transformation of self to the impresario that lives the life his words give rise to within the lyric of their own musings.

Ones immediate impression is within the forces of living about New York City, as an artist, Dylan travels in this virtuous manner of that as a performer to such brevity and light, guided by this talent that the magnitude he reveals himself as, is that merely as a person who lived through folk music learning to sing while playing guitar. Generally speaking it's more than just a good time.

It's Alright Ma From deluxe edition Don't Look Back outtakes
- 1965

Almost Inside Dylan.......2007-09-15

This is a surpisingly readable book, told as if you were sitting chatting over a cup of coffee (or a few drinks) with the author. Dylan is amazingly down to earth and candid, and in some cases downright self-deprecating. Sometimes insecure over his position, accomplishments, and legacy, Dylan never wavers in his devotion to, and ability to achieve, his purpose: to make good music. BD comes across as human and frail in some areas, and extremely tough in many other and different ways.

Hearing how impressed this icon is and was about those who guided, formed, and helped him in his salad days is heart-warming. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that this is BOB DYLAN writing, not some second-tier also-ran.

If you expect to find the answers to all the accumulated questions about him, or revelations about his deeply private or personal matters, you will be disappointed. He refers to relationships, but does not go into any great detail. I cannot recollect if he even mentions Sara by name, but often refers to his 'wife'. His recall of important moments often include common pedestrian activities like going to the beach with the wife and kids. His chagrin at his failure to accomplish a truly private place for him and his family is charmingly naive in its hopefulness, while distressingly disturbing in its reality.

So, you're not going to get the smoking guns, or smoking guitars for that matter, but you will come away with new consideration for this American enigma that is well worth the time to read it appreciably, and finish anxious for a possible Volume Two.

One of the best books on creativity ever.......2007-07-20

And, you get a look inside the mind of a creative genius, both his philosophy and a detailed look at the steps taken to reach his goals.

"...it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns...that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn't have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale...that things had become too familiar and I might have to disorientate myself."

This book is worth reading and keeping.

I am not he, Babe?.......2007-06-16

What a delightful read! This book is a terrific insight into how an artistic mind finds a way to express itself. I've always liked BD. I like him more now.

Some may object to flawed grammar in this memoir. Bob chooses his language carefully and deliberately and the result is a sort of stream-of-consciousness that speaks to the reader like his songs speak to the listener. BD reveals the incredible impact that lyrics and words had upon him.

I would have loved to hear more of his commentary on the music of the 60's and beyond and more experiences with other artists, but to see how he was impacted by Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson was fascinating.

Average customer rating:

GRRRREAT!!!
if u've seen "no direction home' then buy this book
A feast for the senses!
Bob Dylan Scrapbook
The best gift I've received in 49 years!

The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966
Bob Dylan
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0743228286
Release Date: 2005-09-13

Amazon.com

Created as a companion piece to Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966 is a visual and educational treat for old and new Dylanphiles alike. Written by Robert Santelli, the director of Seattle's Experience Music Project and curator of the museum's Bob Dylan's American Journey exhibit, the book is very well researched and presented in a scrapbook format filled with removable reproductions, including handwritten lyrics of "Gates of Eden," "Blowin' in the Wind," and "Chimes of Freedom," programs of Dylan's historical performances, various bits of memorabilia, and endless amount of photographs. The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966 will provide the new Dylan fan with loads of background information and anecdotes that were left out of Scorsese's film. Lifelong Dylanphiles will likely know Dylan's late 1950s to mid 1960s history already, and will be enchanted by the endless reproductions that are strategically placed throughout the book. If that wasn't enough, the book also includes a 45 minute CD of 18 interviews, ten of which appeared in the No Direction Home documentary. If you ever want to open someone up to the world of Bob Dylan there is no better place to point them to this incredible trifeca: No Direction Home: Bob Dylan on DVD, No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (The Bootleg Series Vol. 7) on CD, and this wonderful book. --Rob Bracco

Book Description

The Bob Dylan Scrapbook is the highly collectable illustrated biography of Dylan's life during the 1950s and 60s. Created in association with Bob Dylan, the scrapbook is crammed with features including rare photographs, facsimiles of handwritten lyrics and rare memorabilia. The text includes interviews with Dylan and his friends and fellow musicians to form a uniquely personal view of the greatest singer songwriter of his generation. A special bonus audio CD contains sixty minutes of early interviews and a rare performance. The Bob Dylan Scrapbook is an altogether handsome slipcased hardback with over 100 photographs and illustrations, and is guaranteed to delight every Dylan fan.

Customer Reviews:

GRRRREAT!!!.......2007-09-24

Really GREAT pictures of his earlier times--check out two of Bob's stunning pictures--one on page 23 and another on page 38--Wow!! Both of these pictures are very clear and sharp!! We like them that way, right folks? You also get replications of handwritten lyrics and replications of all sorts of interesting memorabilia, plus interesting reading also. This is a must have scrap book for fans. I'm happy I got it. I found it interesting to notice that in a very stunning picture of Joan Baez where she is next to Bob Dylan in a mini booklet inserted on page 28 that she had gorgeous lips just as Bob Dylan had gorgeous lips noticeable in many pictures and during the press conference at San Francisco--on the DVD, Dylan Speaks (during the close-ups). They made a beautiful couple indeed. Both had artistic style noses, beautiful long fingers and gorgeous lips. There are all sorts of things to discover and look at. What do you see or discover in this scrapbook?

if u've seen "no direction home' then buy this book.......2007-09-05

there are so many keepsakes and rare photos and its just an amazing book. Dont listen to me just buy this BUY it BUY IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A feast for the senses!.......2007-07-21

The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966 is a a great addition to any Dylan fan's collection. Not only is it visually pleasing, it is a delight to peruse the pictures, photos, song lyrics etc. The scrapbook also comes with an audio CD, comprising 45 minutes of 18 Dylan interviews.

The book is divided into several parts, namely, The Early Years, 1956-1960, that traces Dylan's early beginnings as a high school musician in Hibbing High School in Minnesota, to his move to Minneapolis, where he discovers Dinkytown, a bohemian refuge, and where Dylan's passion for folk music deepens. Some of the scraps here include Dylan's yearbook picture and entry.
The second part is Talking New York, 1961... some highlights are Dylan's meeting with his mentor, Woody Guthrie. There is also a reproduction of Dylan's handwritten lyrics to Talking New York.
Part 3: The Times They are a Changin' - reproduction of handwritten lyrics to Blowin in the Wind, pictures of Dylan and Suze Rotolo, one of which winds up as the cover picture for his album Freewheelin', touches a bit on his relationship with Rotolo, and also his further delving into songwriting.Also touches on some of Dylan's social activism,his collaboration with Joan Baez, and a full-color poster for the Newport Folk Festival, 1963.
The other parts in brief are 4: Another Side of Bob Dylan, 1964, 5: Bringing it all Back Home, 1965, 6: Blonde on Blonde, 1965-1966.
There are lots more to savor in this scrapbook, just too lengthy for me to list...but, there are lots of treasures here for Dylanphiles to unearth, discover & enjoy!

Bob Dylan Scrapbook.......2007-05-31

This is just plain fun, fun, fun. As in been there done that by a genius of song. Better than the everyready battery bunny for lasting and multiplying and reproducing and keeping us hopping to the tunes of our lives. Can you believe this mortal man's career on planet earth and just imagine what heaven has in store? Go BOB go. This book is a little tiny corner of great big house. I gave one away as a present to a Dylan nut like myself and kept one for me. What can one say about greatness...can I just breath the same air as you...seen his shows three times. Enufff already.

The best gift I've received in 49 years!.......2007-03-17

My son gave me this for Christmas and I have been totally captivated with it since. The intresting odesey of innocent enthusiasm and self preservating isolation through the early life and mind of such a genuis is such a facinating privilage to experience. Please, please Bob, write 1967 through 2007. I will buy every version as it comes out. The scrapbook layout and radio interviews take you back to experience it. His insight and compliments of other artist show him to be most gracious and real. I will treasure this as it answered so many questions I've had over these years. Thanks Bob for sharing so many personal details of yours.

Average customer rating:

Dylan of the post-Beat beatitude quest mecurially speaks in here...
" A hero is a man who can talk to his drummer"
This is no light overview as many Dylan titles offer
Master of Words
Great Interviews

BOB DYLAN: THE ESSENTIAL INTERVIEWS
Jonathan Cott
Manufacturer: Wenner
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1932958096
Release Date: 2006-05-17

Book Description

Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews features 31 of the most significant and revealing conversations with the singer, gathered in one definitive collection. Among the highlights are the seminal Rolling Stone interviewsanthologized here for the first timeby Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder, and Mikal Gilmore, as well as Nat Hentoffs legendary 1966 Playboy interview. Surprises include Studs Terkels radio interview in 1963 on WFMT in Chicago, the interview Dylan gave to screenwriter Jay Cocks when he was a student at Kenyon College in 1964, a 1965 interview with director Nora Ephron, and an interview Sam Shepard turned into a one-act play for Esquire in 1987. Dylan expert Jonathan Cott writes an introduction to this must-have collection of the artist in his own words.

Customer Reviews:

Dylan of the post-Beat beatitude quest mecurially speaks in here..........2007-07-10

"You know," Bob Dylan said, "these are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness.
It's not happiness or unhappiness, it's either blessed or unblessed.
As the Bible says, 'Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.'"
[Rolling Stone interview, 1991)

"As I was walking around today I noticed many tall steeples and big churches and stained glass windows. Let me tell you once again: God's not necessarily found in there. You can't get converted in no steeple or stained glass window. Well, Jesus is mighty to save, if He's in your heart, He'll convert you."
Bob Dylan, Buffalo New York concert, 1983

" A hero is a man who can talk to his drummer" .......2007-02-26

Thirty interviews over a forty year span are included in this volume. Dylan fans will thus have a lot of fun here. Dylan can be very funny and he also can be just plain kookie. One of his best gigs is his responses to questions that would make him a kind of Savior , political or otherwise of mankind. Here he is usually self- effacing and ironic.
One of the touching bits for me was his telling how as a nineteen year old youngster he took a Greyhound bus each day from Midtown Manhattan to visit Woody Guthrie who was dying of 'Huntington's Chorea'. Guthrie could barely speak . All he could do was give a name of his own song. Dylan says he knew them all and whatever Woody asked he played him.
Dylan really knows and loves popular music and talks in an interview with Sam Shepherd as well as in others of tens of groups I myself and I suspect most people never heard of. In another interesting piece someone asks him about contemporary songwriters and surprisingly he names Shel Silverstein as a real favorite. Also Randy Newman. And he mentions a couple of Paul Simon songs like 'A Bridge over Troubled Water' but then says that Simon has written a lot of flack. But who hasn't?"
I in general believe the Interviews are very interesting when Dylan talks about what he really loves , the Music, and how he makes it and plays it. In one interview he says that he has to play a certain time each day, but that he cannot do twelve- hour practice sessions like a Segovia 'There is a bit about the born- again Dylan which I found a bit distrubing , but I did not find him talking about his alleged reconversion to Judaism. Supposedly one topic he has pretty much avoided is his parents and parental home in Hibbing.
Dylan talks about his songwriting, about how he often throws out the most inspiring lines. It is interesting that the person who along with the Beatles has written the 'lyrics ' most song- listeners of the latter part of the twentieth century 'know' , begins his songs also with the music, the melody. The words come later.
I have no doubt that fans of Dylan will love this collection of interviews and learn much from it.

This is no light overview as many Dylan titles offer.......2007-02-06

Jonathan Cott has written sixteen books including others on Dylan and both rock and classical musicians: his depth and experience is perfect for BOB DYLAN: THE ESSENTIAL INTERVIEWS, a compilation of interviews following Dylan from the early sixties to today. There are over thirty such interviews gathered here which when taken as a unit provide a smooth historical and psychological progression you won't find in the many Dylan biographies on the market. Also included are all six major interviews Rolling Stone Magazine conducted with Dylan, including Cott's own interview. This is no light overview as many Dylan titles offer, but an in-depth account of his life, perspective and art which is a recommended 'must' for any authoritative Dylan collection - even those already stuffed with books.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Master of Words.......2007-02-01

Great selection of interviews allowing the reader to determine personal insights about Bob Dylan rather than reading someone else's interpretations of Dylan and his work. The interviews definitely raise as many questions as answers which is part of Dylan's timeless mystery and a source of fascination for fans. Given our involvement in Iraq, I wonder why Dylan's "Masters of War", written in 1963, isn't getting radio air time. The October 24, 1964 interview in this book quotes Dylan as saying he is abandoning "finger-pointing" songs...thankfully those songs are still around to be heard and felt by new generations. "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"...sums this book up perfectly.

Great Interviews.......2007-01-08

This book is one of the best Dylan books that I've read. It begins with interviews in the early 60's when Dylan had just started to get noticed in the music world/folk scene, and they continue chronologically until 2004. The interviews give the reader a look at the emotions and thoughts of Bob Dylan through the eyes of many different reporters. However, most of the interviews are verbatim dialogue between Bob and the reporter. Bob starts out as an enthusiastic young man in the recording studio talking about his music and his tours. You begin to notice a shift in his thoughts in the mid to late 70's. He describes the making of his movie "Renaldo and Clara" and his thoughts seem unclear. However, it may simply be a look inside the mind of a genius. In addition, there are several interviews that discuss his conversion to Christianity. He seems obsessed with his new found religion. This phase quickly passes and the reader will begin to notice a shift to a more rational, thoughtful Bob Dylan. He begins to talk about his music and family (son, Jakob). Bob seems more sure of himself,his music, and his career in the late 90's and beyond. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!!!

Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia

Average customer rating:

Entertaining, informative, but not definitive yet
Less Than Definitive
If you appreciate (or are interested in) Mr. Dylan's art...
A more 'definitive' encyclopedic guide
Great Reference Material

Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia
Oliver Trager
Manufacturer: Billboard Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0823079740

Book Description

The most encyclopedic sourcebook on one of the 20th century's most important artists, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia completely chronicles this music icon's recorded work. Discussions of all of his officially released albums and collaborative efforts, including year of release, record company, serial number information for all formats (LP, CD, and cassette), track list, musicians, and descriptive analysis of its place in Dylan's career are provided. In addition, it offers critical and historically detailed entries on each of the songs that Dylan has recorded or performed in more than four decades of touring, including composer information, and the album on which the song appeared. Completing this reference are detailed biographical sketches of more than 100 musicians, songwriters, and other individuals associated with Dylan, and a selected list of films in which he has been involved.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining, informative, but not definitive yet.......2005-08-31

Oliver Trager's "Keys To The Rain" is far from the "definitive" Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. As another reader notes, there are errors including some he didn't mention that I'll add here: The original September 1974 New York recording of "If You See Her, Say Hello," re-recorded in Minneapolis for its release on "Blood On The Tracks," was not included on "Biograph" (Trager may be confusing it with "You're A Big Girl Now"), but on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 1-3." Trager also claims Dylan's 1984 "Real Live" failed to make the charts. Not so. It failed to make the top 100, but it did have a brief, albeit dim, blaze of glory in the Billboard Top 200. There are other errors, most of them fairly minor, but their cumulative effect makes one question Trager's reliability too often.

Despite the faults, this is still an entertaining and informative read with lots of background on the recordings and, more significantly, the songs, including those that Dylan only performed in concert. Yes, it is reasonable to argue that it wasn't necessary to provide two pages on the careers of Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini simply because Dylan covered their legendary "Moon River" at a handful of concerts (and if other sources are correct, Dylan only performed it once upon hearing of the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan). But I find these facts to be the main appeal of Trager's book. There are similar biographical details provided for everyone from Mel Tillis (whose "Detroit City" is another hit and run cover from the Never Ending Tour) and Charles Gates Dawes, vice president to Calvin Coolidge and co-author of "It's All In The Game," another chestnut Dylan dug out two decades ago in concert. And, of course, there are pages on less surprising figures, including Woody Guthrie, Blind Willie McTell, Johnny Cash, and Leonard Cohen. The result is that this book is almost a mini-history of popular music as much as it is about Dylan, but I find it contributes to a greater appreciation for Dylan's impressive range of musical styles and influences. On the other hand, a ridiculous amount of space is given to a biography of Catfish Hunter, the baseball player who was the subject of the most inconsequential outtake from the 1976 "Desire" album.

Trager's unpretentious style is refreshing, though, especially in contrast to those who write about Dylan and his songs as though the man was already dead and buried instead of alive, kicking, and as brilliant as ever.

Hopefully, Trager or someone at the publisher's office will pay attention to the complaints provided by the readers, and eliminate the errors in future editions. With a little work, Trager's book may one day live up to its title. It's still worthwhile overall, but Clinton Heylin would have gotten more of the facts straight.

Brian W. Fairbanks

Less Than Definitive.......2005-04-01

Keys to the Rain is undoubtedly a valuable guide to Bob Dylan's recorded output. The book is well-researched and written in a straightforward, accessible style.
Unfortuntately, the book has numerous flaws that make it an often frustrating read. The factual errors include the following: the author states that The Basement Tapes' version of "Million Dollar Bash" is "notable for Dylan's use of the harmonica" when there is no harmonica on the track; the version of "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue" that appeared as the B-side single of "Watching the River Flow" is not the same version that was released on the Dylan lp; "Step It Up and Go" is from the album Good As I Been to You, not World Gone Wrong; and "Down Along the Cove" is erroneously listed as being included on The Band's re-release of Rock of Ages.
Numerous errors in dates dot the book. There is a wonderful photo of Dylan and two youngsters (page 602) that is dated 1966 but comes from much earlier (either 1962 or 1963).
There is one particularly egregious misquotation of Dylan's words, as the phrase "Truth is shadowy" in the World Gone Wrong liner notes becomes "Truth is a shadow" in the book, which changes the phrase's meaning.
Trager writes in the introduction that "unreleased outtakes" and "unreleased material from The Basement Tapes are not included." Yet he includes songs never released by Dylan but recorded and released by other artists (which the author should have explained in the too-brief introduction). There really is no reason for Trager not to have included these songs, since he includes all songs Dylan has played in concert (both original songs and cover versions), and he includes unnecessarily long biographies of the authors of said covers. So the reader gets pages and pages on songwriters such as Sammy Cahn, Merle Travis, Lefty Frizzell and Donnie Fritts (to name a few), but nothing on such great unreleased Dylan songs as "I'm Not There," All-American Boy," "Goodbye Holly" and "Yonder Comes Sin." The author says that "these omissions were made for reasons of space," but surely he could have cut back on his discussion of other artists in a Bob Dylan encyclopedia and made room for all of Dylan's original songs, officially released or not. Nor is there anything on great covers recorded by Dylan in the studio but not released (such as "Freedom for the Stallion"). Including these songs would then have truly earned the book the title of definitive.

If you appreciate (or are interested in) Mr. Dylan's art..........2005-01-06

I've got Trager's 1997 book--The American Book of the Dead: The Definitive Grateful Dead Encyclopedia--and have plucked it off my shelf numerous times. I'll be doing the same with his latest effort, this Dylan encyclopedia. It is interesting that with all the Dylan books out there, it took until 2004 for something like this to appear. For the hardcore aficionado, this will be similar to Krogsgaard's Positively Bob Dylan and Heylin's Stolen Moments (as far as its usefulness), but to the casual observer it's a chance to get to know the songs Dylan has chosen to record and perform--not to mention biographical info. Photos throughout, and enough details in its 700-plus pages to keep one busy throughout 2005 (and 2006 and 2007, etc.) It's not dry either, I'd say Trager has a fondness and apprecation for the music.

Scott Marshall
author of Restless Pilgrim: The Spiritual Journey of Bob Dylan (with Marcia Ford, Relevant Books, 2002)

A more 'definitive' encyclopedic guide .......2005-01-04

Another Bob Dylan book? Yes, and what makes Keys To The Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia a more 'definitive' encyclopedic guide than others is its descriptions of all 44 of his officially released albums including collaborative efforts, entries on over 700 songs he's recorded or performed over the length of his career, and biographical sketches of all musicians, songwriters and others associated with any of his projects, including film. And if that isn't enough... entries include track lists, musician lists, critical analysis, serial number info for all formats including cassette, and background history. It doesn't get any better - or more 'definitive' - than this.

Great Reference Material.......2004-10-15

Absolute must for all those who consider rock and roll "art", and Dylan the ultimate "artist" of the genre. A quick glance will provide such useful info that "Blonde on Blonde" was recorded in Nashville, using primarily studio musicians. Consider that the next time you listen to "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", and its haunting refrain. Only problem is that in a few years it will be out of date. Sadly, a compilation of Dylan's work will only be complete when Dylan retires which, gratefully, he shows no signs of doing anytime soon.

Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan And the 1960s

Average customer rating:

Where have all the 60's gone?
More 1960's Left Wing Politics than Dylan Biography
Draws some important connections between Dylan's musical approach, its message, and how and why it affected his times
Interesting book

Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan And the 1960s
Mike Marqusee
Manufacturer: Seven Stories Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1583226869

Book Description

"In this remarkable reflection on the culture of the sixties, Mike Marqusee restores the forgotten moral and political contexts of Dylan's supernova years. In doing so, he rescues one of the most urgent poetic voices in American history from the condescension of his own later cynicism."-Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

Bob Dylan's abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee describes the rise of Dylan's artistic ambition at the expense of his activism. Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic.

Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Beginning with the march on Washington in the summer of 1964, Marqusee traces the formation of the Southern voter registration movement and the rise of the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen. The twists and turns of political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee says, were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic-anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk-of Dylan's mid-1960s albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.

Dylan's anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was not what everyone thinks it was: a movement away from politics. It was a movement away from protest and from activism, it was a movement away from the front lines, it was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

Mike Marqusee is the author of a number of groundbreaking books on politics and popular culture, including Anyone But England, War Minus the Shooting, and Redemption Song. Born and raised in the United States, he has lived in London since the 1970s.

Customer Reviews:

Where have all the 60's gone?.......2007-01-15

Have you ever wondered where Bob Dylan got some of his inspiration?

Have you ever wondered what went on behind the scenes when the politically active youth culture was born in the 60's?

Starting with stories about Bob's relationships with the "Dust Bowl Balladeers" and wandering along with the concert tours and digging deep into the history of SNCC (Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and SDS ( Students for a Democratic Society), and everywhere else that was relevant this book masterfully chronicles the connection between the songs and times of the 60's and beyond.

The reader is treated to a deep view of what was going on as many of Bob's most beloved songs were written. You are given a clear picture of why Bob was such an honest and faithful reflection of our times and has become America's favorite balladeer.

I have to say that I think the title is unfortunate, there is nothing "Wicked" about this messenger. The things he protests are outrageous things and he finds exactly the right words and the courage to sing them out with songs that can not be ignored. He also has made some of the most touching and romantic love songs that I have ever heard. I'm very glad to have been able to see some of the background behind his inspiration.

Finally, I understand why Bob was not at Woodstock, why he "went electric", what went on during the London tours, who was the "girl on that album cover", and many other things.

This is clearly a fascinating book that has helped me to better understand the times that I lived through even better.

More 1960's Left Wing Politics than Dylan Biography.......2006-07-22

I purchased this book without knowing that the author's focus was at least as much on politics as Bob Dylan. I thought I was buying a Dylan biography but was greatly disappointed. In case others may be misled by the packaging please know that the author is so devoted to adulation of socialist/communist/left wing politics that Bob Dylan the person, songwriter, musician and performer is definitely secondary. Although the book was reasonably well-written and appears to have been researched the author's unwavering obsession with politics and his overt political bias is quite annoying. If you are a political partisan you might like the book. If you think you are buying a biography of Bob Dylan you may be disappointed.

Draws some important connections between Dylan's musical approach, its message, and how and why it affected his times.......2006-03-05

Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan And The 1960s represents a revised, expanded edition of the 2003 hardcover Chimes Of Freedom, and is a recommended pick for Dylan fans and especially newcomers who missed Chimes and here will enjoy the benefit of a new chapter on his 2004 memoir and his 2003 film. Wicked Messenger shows that Dylan didn't turn away from his famous political music but instead changed the style of his message to address changing politics. In providing a concurrent social survey of the atmosphere of the U.S. during the 1960s, Wicked Messenger draws some important connections between Dylan's musical approach, its message, and how and why it affected his times.

Interesting book.......2006-02-28

This book is very interesting!!!! It provides a wonderful background of the period of time that influenced Bob Dylan's life and music. The book describes the history behind his songs and the history of what was going on in America during that era. It was more than I expected and I could hardly put the book down.

Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians

Average customer rating:

Aahhh......so disappointing
Exploitation with little substance
THIS BOOK IS A FUN READ ABOUT A CURIOUS FELLOW
Not worth the money
BEST DYLAN BOOK OF THEM ALL

Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians
Kathleen Mackay
Manufacturer: Omnibus Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0825673305
Release Date: 2007-03-01

Product Description

Dylan s friends from Pete Seeger to Bruce Springsteen to Rosanne Cash to Bono to Tom Petty offer insight into the singer-songwriter s artistic genius and personality. This is an oral history of a major musician who played a significant role in America s cultural history. His story is told by the musicians who were at his side during the 60s rollicking changes and artistic breakthroughs. Bob Dylan: Musicians on the Man provides a keen portrait of the friendships that helped shape important musicians whose voices influenced our society as a whole. Herein are insights not only into Dylan s elusive personality but into the lives of the major musicians of our times.

Customer Reviews:

Aahhh......so disappointing .......2007-08-13

I am a long time Dylan fan, and have most every book written.....I hoped
this would be interviews with those who know him sharing their thoughts
and insights. But it is just a rehash of previous interviews, statements,
published thoughts, etc. Not an original interview to be found. I have
read all that was in this book elsewhere. I think it is more than a bit
misleading. I do not recommend it.

Exploitation with little substance.......2007-07-18

Whip out a book about Dylan with a cool photo on the cover and a couple of enticing quotes, and you have a good shot at reeling in enough Dylan fans to make a buck. This is a shallow effort that made me feel foolish about falling for another exploitation project. There aren't many intimate details here. In fact, this is largely a clip job woven with a collection of puff-piece essays on not particularly forthcoming sources from journalist who should have known just how low down in the profession she was going to release this. More marketing than meat. Don't fall for it.

THIS BOOK IS A FUN READ ABOUT A CURIOUS FELLOW.......2007-06-23

TO ALL OF YOU WHO GAVE THIS BOOK LESS THAN 4-5 STARS...YOUR WRONG!!!!
THIS BOOK "IS WHAT IT IS", KATHLEEN MACKAY DID NOT TITLE IT "WAR AND PEACE"....SHE NEVER SAID IT WAS THE BEST BOOK ON ZIMMY EVER TO REACH HIS PUBLIC.......DYLAN IS AN ICON AT THE VERY LEAST, AND IN A WORLD FULL OF PEOPLE THAT THE PUBLIC ADORES AND ARN'T WORTH GIVING A SECOND THOUGHT TO, THAT MAKES HIM REAL REAL IMPORTANT!!! YA DIG?? ZIMMY WILL BE RANKED AMONG THE LIKES OF COLE PORTER, CHOPIN, DUKE ELLINGTON, AND HANK WILLIAMS, FOR HIS CONTRIBUTION TO MUSIC.
WHAT MS. MACKAY DID IN THE BOOK I THOUGHT WAS A GOOD IDEA. SHE SPOKE TO FRIENDS, AND OTHERS WHO HAVE KNOWN HIM OVER THE YEARS AND SIMPLE TOLD US HOW THEY FELT AND WHAT THE KNEW ABOUT THIS GIANT IN MUSIC...WHO IS A BIT SHY WHEN IS COMES TO "BRAGGIN ON HIMSELF".
READ THIS BOOK!!! WHAT YOU WILL LEARN WILL NOT ALWAYS ASTOUND YOU, BUT AS WAS THE CASE WITH BONO INTERVIEW...BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE AND MAKE YOU KNOW THAT YOUR TIME WAS NOT WASTED ...LISTENING FOR MANY, MANY,MANY HRS. TO A TRUE AMERICAN TREASURE. THANKS KATHLEEN.
PAUL ZAMMARELLI

Not worth the money.......2007-05-22

Sure, there's some "intimate insights" about Bob Dylan in this book, but not much that we haven't read before in other books. However, my primary issue with this book is that there is WAY WAY WAY too much written about the people who are the ones giving the information about Dylan. I mean if you're really interested in the history of "Peter, Paul, and Mary" and if you really want to know how the "Band" got it's start and if knowing trivia about Liam Clancy, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson and others, then this is the book for you. If you want insights about Dylan there are a lot of books out there with MUCH more information. Again, if you're wanting to know more about Bono, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, then I'd suggest buying this book.

BEST DYLAN BOOK OF THEM ALL.......2007-05-03

OMG i love this book - i am a huge music lover (other faves include jazz) and a HUGE dylan lover...my girlfriend melisa and i love to listen to dylan together! she gave me this book and i literally could not put it down. literally. it was insane. 4 readings and 67 bags of corn chips later, i LOVE THIS BOOK and it gave me so much insight into bob dylan, my hero, from the perspectives of others in his life. he is a musical genius, and kathleen mackay is a literary genius!!! so well written, so many insights...thanx melisa for introducing me to it, i love u baby! EVERYONE BUY THIS BOOK IMMEDIATELY!!!

Average customer rating:

GREAT PICTURES AND REVIEWS
Buy This!
Pretty good book with great pictures and original people.
Not Needed If You Have Most Everything Dylan
Must Have for any Bob Dylan Fan

Dylan: Visions, Portraits, & Back Pages

Manufacturer: DK ADULT
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0756617189
Release Date: 2005-10-11

Book Description

See one of the greatest songwriter's like you've never seen him before! This incredible celebration takes an in-depth look at the illustrious career of Dylan from 1965 to the present.

Customer Reviews:

GREAT PICTURES AND REVIEWS.......2007-09-04

I WISH the publishers of this book would start thinking of doing another book like this one!!!! This was a GOOD ONE!!!

I really think this book is worth more than what you spend on it. Great pictures and information on music and so much more. All Bob's best pictures are not in this book, but it has many many VERY GOOD pictures. I only wish that a couple of pictures at the beginning of the book would not have been half on one page and half on another because they would be fit for framing, but I especially enjoyed the picture of Bob with the Beatles in the Fab Five photo--Really!!!! he is better looking than John and Paul!!!!--really!!! I never realized this back then because his face was covered with all that hair back in 1966. I was in my early and mid teens when I heard all his commercial songs along with all the others that were playing non-stop on the radio--in the car, at the pool-in-the-park I spent many summer days with friends, and I really liked his music very much and we all knew who he was certainly, but the first 45 I bought was Lay Lady Lay (lots of cool songs back then and lots of competition--but did you ever notice how short the songs were back then and how nice and long Bob Dylan's songs are!!!??). Unfortunately it was only recently that I discovered that most of his best work was hidden in albums I had not purchased at the time--forgive me "since 1964 fans"--I was young back then with too much going on all around me--the 60's were superpacked years. Now I have discovered much of his best music and have discovered that beneath all that 1966 hair was some gorgeous kiddo. This book has lots of gorgeous photos and some photos with his best-known girlfriends--one famous one less famous and one picture that really tugs at the heart--the one in which his girl fans in Ireland are right up close to their idol, Bob Dylan asking some questions.

Joan Baez looked so absolutely gorgeous back then and Suzy looked great and very much in love. Despite the heartaches that came in each of these lives, these were priceless years and these priceless moments are all caught on camera preserved for us to see.

There is much valuable information on the albums, songs and so much more.

How can you possibly go wrong with purchasing this book if you are in any way interested in Bob Dylan? You CANNOT possibly go wrong.

Buy This!.......2007-05-18

It's been no secret to my friends,family and children that I have been a fan of Bob Dylan since 1966.I love just about everything Dylan has written and sung and respect the man as a genius.When I purchased Dylan Visions,Portraits,And Back Pages I flipped.The series of articles spanning his career from Hibbing to the present moment are filled with some new information and compiled in chronological order,but what blew me away are the photos.Many of which we have seen before but many others that are spectacular.For instance Dylan looking intently upon a portrait of St. Peter in Washington,DC.Super photos from the Rolling Thunder Review.I am going to buy another copy of this book so that I can frame some of the pictures.Enjoy this book!

Pretty good book with great pictures and original people........2007-04-14

I love the fact that you can learn so much from this book. I am dissapointed though, in the fact it seems to be pieced together uncarefully. Great book. Worth the low Amazon price!

Not Needed If You Have Most Everything Dylan.......2007-01-09

Good for intro to Dylan or for the most basic Dylan fan - not for the hardcore. Beautiful pictures and some interesting articles but if you are a die-hard and have read/seen most everything published, nothing new here.

Must Have for any Bob Dylan Fan.......2006-08-20

Besides Chronicles and the Bob Dylan Scrapbook, this is by far one of the best books about Bob Dylan I have seen. It has a whole bunch of information that I haven't seen anywhere else and the pictures are amazing. I absolutley love this book and bought it just because of the reviews that I read on Amazon so I thought that I would praise this book as well because it truly is great.

Average customer rating:

Ho, Hum ...
A Dozen Dark Highways
Very Interesting!
Dangerously Interesting
Stolen

Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan
Howard Sounes
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0802116868

Book Description

Featuring a wealth of new information, Down the Highway is likely to be hailed as the definitive biography of Bob Dylan. Acclaimed biographer Howard Sounes has spent three years researching the book and has interviewed more than 250 people important in Dylan's life -- many of whom have never before given interviews -- and sifted through documentary evidence unavailable to previous biographers. With this unprecedented access, Sounes dispels many myths, reveals major discoveries, and uncovers the secret life of the mysterious singer, while giving a full appreciation of Dylan's artistic achievements and significance to American culture. Sounes's prodigious research has led to many significant revelations about every aspect of Dylan's life. For years there has been speculation about Dylan's marital life and children, and Sounes has uncovered the complete, fascinating story of his family life, which will completely change the public's perception of the singer. Sounes has interviewed a key witness to Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident, a turning point in his career. The witness has never before spoken publicly, and Sounes provides the clearest picture yet of the accident and the subsequent "lost years" in Woodstock, New York. He also gives inside accounts of the important recording sessions and concert tours, the creation of every album and the most celebrated songs, Dylan's labyrinthine love life, his heart illness in 1997, and much more. These inside accounts come directly from Sounes's extensive interviews of girlfriends, family members, former personal assistants, fellow music stars and friends, members of touring and session bands, producers, club owners and concert promoters, and many others. Candid and refreshing, Down the Highway is also a sincere appreciation of Dylan's seminal place in postwar American cultural history and an essential book for the millions of people who have enjoyed Dylan's music over the years.

Customer Reviews:

Ho, Hum ..........2006-11-18

I didn't find many revelations here that I haven't otherwise heard and there's other stuff (like scuttlebutt) that I have no interest in whatsoever.

HOWEVER, there's one chapter in this book that, when combined with Toby Thompson's ancient classic, provides the most coherent picture of Zimmerman/Dylan's Minneapolis "college" (ha ha) days, a very short but EXTREMELY (double emphasis) transient period in the development of what would eventually become the Bob Dylan we "know."

Put another way, the "Bob Dylan" that ultimately emerged got his start in Minneapolis, one way or another.

Interesting ....

A Dozen Dark Highways.......2006-01-23

Don't read this book if you want to think Dylan's perfect.

It's a great book, engrossing and thorough, but if you want to read about the perfect mythical Bob, it's not the one you want, babe, it's not the one you need. Check out Martin Scorsese's "No Direction Home" documentary. Or buy any one of the other books by people who were too star-struck or lazy to look behind Dylan's enigmatic masks.

There's certainly enough in Dylan's career, particularly his early years, to justify mindlessly glowing accolades. Musicians usually reach their peak younger than most people, but Dylan's rise was so rapid that even the word "meteoric" doesn't quite do it justice. Like some harmonica-playing Alexander the Great, he had conquered the known world by the age of 25, redefining what was possible, expanding the horizons of all who traveled with him. To his great credit, though, it wasn't all downhill from there; rather, his career richocheted off in a variety of unpredictable directions.

Dylan had a unique talent for zigging when everyone else zagged, and Sounes deftly follows his path through all those twists and turns. When music was ruled by bubble-gum pop, Dylan dared to write about social justice and nuclear holocaust. Folkies then rode his coattails to super-stardom, but by the time they got there, Dylan had moved on again, to introspective and personal songwriting. In the late 60s, when hippies flocked to his neck of the Woodstock for three days of peace and free love, he was a rifle-toting property-owner. In the late 70s, when the music industry found itself awash in cocaine, easy money, and easier women, Dylan became a born-again Christian.

Perhaps the book's greatest strength is that it makes these various perplexing metamorphoses sound not capricious but almost inevitable. Rather than sticking to the relatively straightforward upward trajectory he followed in the early-to-mid Sixties, Sounes takes an honest look at Dylan's dozen (or so) dark highways--the late-Sixties withdrawal from the public eye, the messy relationships, the messy divorces, the conversion to Christianity, the mellowing of that Christianity over time, the long struggle with alcoholism.

Unfortunately, Bob Dylan didn't co-operate with Sounes. I say unfortunately not because I wonder what information might be missing--I say it because the book sometimes takes a breathless, tabloid-ish, you-are-reading-this-for-the-first-time-right-here, me-against-Bob tone. Sounes is evidently proud of his investigative skills, but he's sometimes so busy patting himself on the back that he gets in the way of his own narrative. Dylan's epic battle with manager Albert Grossman, for instance, could have been a compelling, interesting, and surprising turn of events, but like Reuben Carter on a bad day, Sounes telegraphs his punches, vastly diminishing their impact by letting the reader know what's coming.

Still, the book is worth reading, and if you don't mind finding out Bob Dylan has a dark side, you'll be intrigued by Sounes' chronicle of it here. There are better tell-all biographies of Sixties rock icons--James McDonough's Neil Young book "Shakey" was, for my money, more illuminating--but I don't know if there's a better one about Dylan.

Very Interesting!.......2005-12-12

I have read this book 3 times. It seems that each time I read it, I find out something new. I am a huge Bob Dylan fan and I love learning things about him. Howard Sounes really did his research for this book and it shows. I recommend this book to any Dylan fan.

Dangerously Interesting.......2005-10-12

This book was a book it took me a while to open up. I thought about the things I may find out about Dylan which I don't want to know about. Then I thought, this man, who has wanted his life and personality to be shrouded in mystery, should remain that way for me. Sounces treats Dylan with a certain respect, the respect of a biographer. I don't believe this book is done in the AJ Weberman style of exposing Dylan for what a horrible person he is. He isn't. He's a person like any other, and this book gives us a glimpse of it. He was married, he got divorced- that separation affected him profoundly. Through the review of Dylan's life by this author, a negative side certainly manifests, but it is not without context of course. The joys Dylan experienced (his own private joys) cannot be described and should not be. There are details here to help us understand the context of Dylan's life. Truly this is no "No Direction Home" by Robert Shelton (widely referenced by Sounes), but it is something else entirely. If you are a Dylan fan who is interested in more than the music, this may be of interest, but not a definitive work of Dylan's life- that can nev er and will never exist. His life is his alone and I'm glad that he has been able to share as much as he has about his inspirations and his striving in Chronicles. Hope to see more of Dylan on Dylan soon.

Stolen.......2005-10-05

It really is to bad that a book like this would ever be allowed to be published. Howard Sounes is just another name on a list of men that invaded the life of this man. What kind of man would take information from every source he could find about a person that he never knew and write a book about it. Howard is the prime example of a man that Bob most desperately tried to avoid throughout his entire career. It truly is a shame that everybody keeps giving the character Bob Dyaln reasons to regret talking to people on paper in the first place.

The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes

Average customer rating:

Pseudo-Intellectual Myth-Symbol Twaddle
Greil Marcus Should Marry Bob Dylan
Strange Paths
Fascinating and essential for any Dylan and American folk fan
Reach excedes grasp

The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes
Greil Marcus
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312420439

Book Description

Previously published as Invisible Republic, The Old, Weird America is Greil Marcus's acclaimed book on the secret music made by Bob Dylan and the Band in 1967-music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it was more than thirty years ago. "Marcus's contention is that there can be found in American folk a community as deep, as electric, as perverse and as conflicted as all America, and that the songs Dylan recorded out of the public eye, in a basement in Woodstock, are where that community as a whole gets to speak," wrote Mark Singer in The Wire. But the country mapped in this book, as Bruce Shapiro wrote in The Nation, "is not Woody Guthrie's land made for you and me...... It's what Marcus calls 'the old, weird America'"-the "playground for God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence me, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all strips," as Luc Sante put it in New York magazine. It's no wonder The Old, Weird America "reads like a thriller" (Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly); as Mary Gaitskill said in Artforum, Marcus's writing works much like music: It flies by in a comet tail."AUTHORBIO: Greil Marcus is the author of Double Trouble; Dead Elvis; Lipstick Traces; and Mystery Train. His pieces have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Artforum; Interview; The New Yorker; The New York Times; and Esquire. He lives in Berkeley, California. REVIEW: "This book is terminal, goes deeply into the subconscious and plows through that period of time like a rake. Greil Marcus has done it again."(Bob Dyl

Customer Reviews:

Pseudo-Intellectual Myth-Symbol Twaddle.......2007-08-10

Greil Marcus has somehow parlayed his college degree in the obsolete "myth-symbol" school of American Studies into a career as a philosopher of American music. In the process, he has conjured up some of the worst books ever published on rock and roll. Marcus confuses "myth" with the LSD-fuelled '60s fan dreams of musicians as shamans, elves and hobbits. Imagine Jim Morrison, Marc Bolan & Robert Plant attempting to be critics while still on the Kool Aid that produced "Prophets Seers and Sages, The Angels of the Ages", "Stairway to Heaven" and Morrison's ideas about rock concerts as Dionysian rites. Marcus fashioned "Mystery Train", his first sycophantic journey into over-stimulated ego-crazed fan-boy fantasy. Then, after spending too many nights rolling joints on the sleeves of John Wesley Harding and trying to figure out which one was Quinn The Eskimo, Marcus encountered Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and completely lost his mind. In this horrible re-issue of "Invisible Republic" Marcus treats early American folk artists like Dock Boggs and Robert Johnson as if they were mythical beings rather than men. He then tries to turn Dylan's Basement Tapes into a natural successor to the "mystery school" of these artists. Mere words cannot express the mediocrity of Marcus's meditations. Please, if you have any soul, avoid this book. But dont let Marcus's mind-rot put you off Dock Boggs and Harry Smith's Anthology and Dylan's Basement Tapes -- Marcus does have good taste in music, he just doesn't have anything worth saying to say about it.

Greil Marcus Should Marry Bob Dylan.......2007-02-13

Greil Marcus Should Marry Bob Dylan...he's already written a long love-letter. True there are a lot of interesting musical relationships brought out in the author's discussion, but the details of the Basement Tapes are just not there. Marcus' approach is that of an ethno-musicologist, and one who is too close to his subject. Personally, the bias from the start of the book and the torturous prose were very hard to stomach. I can not recommend this book to anyone, and it will keep me away from anything else by Greil Marcus again. I only wish I could have been warned before I bought it.

Strange Paths.......2006-11-04

Taking Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes as a starting point this book wanders through the foundations of American music investigating some shadowy folk byways.

While the metaphor (actual towns populated by the characters in the songs) is a little overwrought the overall effect of the book is powerful.

I found it particularly exciting to see links to other musicians I like such as Nick Cave and Kirstin Hersh.

Fascinating and essential for any Dylan and American folk fan.......2006-08-13

(this is the updated verion of Marcus' "Invisible Republic")

In 1965, Bob Dylan played Newport with an electric band. Playing songs from the groundbreaking "Highway 61 Revisited", Dylan-- in one of the finest performances of his career-- was roundly booed by the audience and condemned by critics.

Why?

Greil Marcus' fascinating book starts with this question: why were audiences so hostile to Dylan's new material and style? Marcus' thesis is that Dylan on Highway 61 rediscovered the folk music that America had forgotten, a folk music which had been co-opted by the '30s (and subsequent) Left, a music which was much older and much, much weirder than the work of Woody Guthrie and other late '50s exemplars of the folk tradition. Audiences were in for a shock when Dylan's surreal imagery and often apolitical but weirdly resonant lyrics replaced his plainer earlier folk tunes and protest songs.

The book's former title is an allusion to Ralph Ellison's novel "The Invisible Man," whose protagonist is invisible to his fellow Americans because they choose not to see him. In the same way, the very, very weird music of Dock Boggs, Mississippi John Hurt and many others, documented with loving care by Harry Smith, the compiler of the seminal "The Anthology of American Folk Music," was invisible to mainstream audiences during the 1950s and '60s, just as the history they documented was invisible to the majority of its time. It is a countercultural history in song of the U.S., including everything from slave narratives, love ballads, ancient blues, mythical re-tellings of political events, etc. This music is much richer and more complex than the mid-twentieth century folk music familiar to Dylan fans.

Marcus illuminates the connections between Dylan's mid-60s work and the "The Anthology of American Folk Music" and shows how Dylan's leap forward-- into surrealism, wild juxtaposition, historical allusion, electric instrumentation and only elliptical allusions to politics-- was also a leap backward into the Anthology's traditions.

This is one of those books whose ideas make the head spin. Marcus writes clearly but manages to keep the imagination running on overdrive. Like Pynchon, Levi-Strauss, Murakami and Dylan himself, the work is as much a set of ideas as an invitation to connect the many dots. As well as a fascianting tour through the work of Dylan, the Band and the Anthology, this is partly an alternative history of the U.S. and a pretty incisive reminder that folk music, as Dylan once said "is pure mystery."

Reach excedes grasp.......2006-08-12

I like Greil's approach, which worked so much better in the recent "Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan At The Crossroads", of honing in on small detail to produce something profound. Maybe this book can be considered practice for the latter, because it simply didn't work here. I welcome experimental writing, but in this case the wash of minute detail combined with nonlinearity produced confusion rather than clarity. I'm afraid for me the insights are Greil's alone rather than universal. To his credit though, in the same way I'd rather see an ambitious indie movie that fails than a Hollywood blockbuster, reading this is worth a shot. I may try again some time.

Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina

Average customer rating:

Must Read
Bob and Joan and Mimi and Richard
Sure to become a classic
A disappontment
Hero worshipers, stay away

Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
David Hajdu
Manufacturer: North Point Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 086547642X

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

David Hajdu (pronounced HAY-doo), the prizewinning author of the magisterial jazz biography Lush Life, now steam-cleans the legend of the lost folk generation in Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. What a ripping read! It's like an invitation to the wildest party Greenwich Village ever saw. You feel swept up in the coffeehouse culture that transformed ordinary suburban kids into ragged, radiant avatars of a traditional yet bewilderingly new music. Hajdu's sociomusical analysis is as scholarly as (though less arty than) Greil Marcus's work; he deftly sketches the sources and evolving styles of his ambitious, rather calculating subjects, proving in the process that genius is not individual--it's rooted in a time and place. Hajdu says Dylan heisted many early tunes (e.g., "Maggie's Farm" from Pete Seeger's "Down on Penny's Farm"): "Dylan [told] a radio interviewer that he felt as if his music had always existed and he just wrote it down ... [in fact], much of his early work had existed as other writers' melodies, chord structures, or thematic ideas." But Dylan and company made it all their own, and Hajdu vividly evokes the scenes they made.

Positively 4th Street is very much a group portrait. When something amazing happens, Hajdu puts you right there. The unknown Baez barefoot in the rain, bedazzling the Newport Jazz Festival and becoming immortal overnight. The irresistibly irresponsible Fariña talking his folk-star wife out of shooting him dead with his own pistol. The "little spastic gnome" Dylan transmogrified into greatness onstage, bashing Joan with the searing lyrics of "She Belongs to Me." A stoned Fariña advising Dylan to cynically hitch his wagon to Joan's rising star and "start a whole new genre. Poetry set to music, but not chamber music or beatnik jazz, man... poetry you can dance to."

The book is as delectably gossipy as Vanity Fair (one of Hajdu's employers). Richard married the exceedingly young beauty Mimi and helmed their career, but he might have dumped her for big sister Joan, whose madcap humor and verbal wit harmonized with his--except that he ineptly killed himself on a motorcycle first. Bob mumblingly courted both sisters, but when he cruelly taunted the insecure Joan, Mimi yanked his hair back until he cried. The account of Bob and Joan's musical-erotic passion is first-rate music history and uproarious soap opera. Hajdu's research is prodigious--even Fariña's close chum Thomas Pynchon granted interviews--and his anecdotes are often off-the-cuff funny: "[Rock manager Albert Grossman] was easy to deal with.... It wasn't till maybe two days after you would see Albert that you'd realize your underwear had been stolen." Full disclosure: Hajdu was one of my long-ago bosses at Entertainment Weekly, but that's certainly not why I heartily endorse this book. It's scholarship with a human face, akin to "poetry you can dance to." --Tim Appelo

Book Description

When twenty-five-year-old Bob Dylan wrecked his motorcycle near Woodstock in 1966 and dropped out of the public eye, he was already recognized as a genius, a youth idol with an acid wit and a barbwire throat; and Greenwich Village, where he first made his mark, was unquestionably the center of youth culture.

In Positively 4th Street, David Hajdu recounts the emergence of folk music from cult practice to popular and enduring art form as the story of a colorful foursome: not only Dylan but also his part-time lover Joan Baez -- the first voice of the new generation; her sister Mimi -- beautiful, haunted, and an artist in her own right; and Mimi's husband, Richard Fariña, a comic novelist (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me) who invented the worldly-wise bohemian persona that Dylan adopted -- some say stole -- and made his own.

A national bestseller in hardcover, acclaimed as "one of the best books about music in America" (Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post), Positively 4th Street is that rare book with a new story to tell about the 1960s -- about how the decade and all that it is now associated with were created in a fit of collective inspiration, with an energy and creativity that David Hajdu has captured on the page as if for the first time.

Customer Reviews:

Must Read.......2007-04-11

I was reading this book while filming a movie on Bob Dylan this summer-I lost the copy before I was finished but had to buy it again to see how it ends-really a fascinating insight on the whole West Village Folk music scene of the 1960's.

Bob and Joan and Mimi and Richard.......2007-03-26

My Hadju has very little sympathy for any of the characters in this narrative. In his view, Bob is a self-centered jerk, Joan is priggish, Mimi is callow and Richard is a self-promoting charlatan who probably needed medical intervention. Mr. Hadju's only sympathies lie with Mimi who is little and beautiful and sorely used. Oh please. What I found missing was any sense of forgiveness for just how young they were. Only Richard can be held accountable for his caddish behavior because he was older and should have known better. The others were all painfully young and their behavior, reprehensible, naive, touching and all should be interpreted through the highly charged haze of youth. I doubt that anyone's life could withstand this level of strutiny at the age of 22.

I am not a fan of Mr Hadju's writing style, but the book is packed with information.

Sure to become a classic.......2007-03-01

American folk in its both in its development and maturation held the same drama and pathos as any other American music that fused with social movement. The figures that Hajdu chose to focus on in his excellent book became very influential artists of the time, Dylan even attaining a cult-like status.

Like any biography of young people it is filled with betrayal, misunderstandings and bruised egos. As they are portrayed, Dylan and Farina were by far the larger and more fragile of the egos and they hint of the "me" generation's self-importance. The Baez sisters remained "truer" to folk, being less inclined to wed it to rock and other styles. The tragic death of Richard Farina is one of the many turning points in this book that treads lightly on nostalgia. The genius and fallibility of the four figures is portrayed distinctly and without foreshadowing what will become of them outside of this exciting time when music moved people to change the nation.

A disappontment.......2006-12-29

Positively 4th Street had received adulatory reviews. I looked forward to reading it, but was enormously disappointed. The book tells of the tangled relationships among four young people. Nobody comes out looking especially well. My experience has been that people in their twenties often do not behave commendably in their romantic lives. By focusing on these relationships, the book has the distasteful smell of dirty laundry.

Secondly, by presenting four interlocking biographies, the book implicitly equates the four lives covered. Unfortunately, there was an enormous difference in stature among Bob Dylan and Richard Farina and Joan and Mimi Baez. In order to make a go of his book the author must exaggerate the flaws of the mighty and minimize those of the lowly. This authorial imperative makes for an unfair book.

Finally, Mr. Hajdu has a fine magisterial voice - even when he does not know a thing about the subject at hand, like harmonica playing, for example. If he gets every fact wrong on that, how can he be trusted on other matters?

Hero worshipers, stay away.......2006-11-21

Though he is almost, but not quite, forgotten today, Richard Farina was once a hot property. He wrote a novel, "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me," that swept the college campuses; and he and his wife, Mimi Baez, recorded two albums, "Celebrations for a Grey Day" and "Reflections in a Crystal Wind" that were both artistic and commercial successes.
Farina was ambitious for much more. He wanted to be bigger than Bob Dylan. He wanted Dylan's fame, Dylan's sales, Dylan's girlfriend, Dylan's respect and a motorcycle like Dylan's.
David Hajdu's meticulously detailed "Positively 4th Street" tells a tale that might just as well have been called "Grabbing for the Brass Ring."
Nobody ever came closer more times without getting it than Farina.
It all started with Carolyn Hester. When the "folk revival" began in Boston in the 1950s, the beautiful Hester was an early coffee house star. If anyone was going to break out to national fame, Hester would have seemed the favorite.
But bursting out of the pack of unknowns to surpass her came Joan Baez, with a bell-like voice and, in Hajdu's interpretation, lots of luck.
Farina, a charming schemer, was on another track but he latched onto Hester, moving from first meeting to marriage in 18 days.
From then on, "Positively 4th Street" is an appalling and almost Byzantine account of the ambitious and the unscrupulous climbing over each other's backs for the brass ring.
Baez caught it first. She helped Dylan, who treacherously overtopped her. Farina made his bid, dumping Hester and pursuing Baez.
But he and Dylan were both also angling for Joan's beautiful young sister Mimi. The sisters are supposed to be the models for the story in the Lovin' Spoonful song "DId You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" but Hajdu debunks that and some other rock and roll myths, notably the one about Dylan being booed off the stage at the Newport Folk Festival for playing a Stratocaster.
A witty writer, Hajdu never seems to be caught off balance in all this confusion. A typical example of his waspish reporting is this line about Farina and his friend Alfredo Dopico: "Richard and Alfredo were largely redundant: of Cuban ancestry, about the same age and size, strong-featured, impetuous, and volatile, they were both treacherously fond of beautiful women, marijuana, and Richard Farina."
In this crowd, Hajdu sees more clay feet than a shoeshine boy at the Congressional barber shop, but he never confuses that with the impact of the music on the rest of us.
It doesn't hurt, for dramatic purposes, that Farina wrote more than once about death on a motorcycle and with almost perfect timing got killed on one the day of the booksigning party for "Been Down So Long." (Meticulously, Hajdu clears up the misconception that it was on the book's release day; that was two days earlier.)
Only Mimi Farina comes out of this book as an appealing human being.
Hero worshipers should stay away. Music lovers will be fascinated.

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