Product Description
Reissue of definitive biography that covers Dylan's rise from James Dean-obsessed teenager to Woody Guthrie acolyte, through the Greenwich folk days to the rock super-stardom of "Like A Rolling Stone" and onwards. The author draws exclusively on first hand interviews with Dylan himself-unlike all subsequent biographies-as well as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and other friends and insiders. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Classic starting point
Though it is cleansed and somewhat sanctioned, it is one of the first bios of Dylan. It's age has made it seem quaint, but if you are interested in Dylan it is a must read.

Tony's Bob
This is a real gem of a book, no one can call themselves a Dylan fan without a copy of this on their shelves.This book contains countless interviews with friends,peers and lovers but most importantly it also contains many interviews with Bob Dylan himself- these interviews were conducted by Scaduto.While reading the book you may find extra little bits added to stories that Dylan told Scaduto about.Dylan talks at length about his childhood, his influences, the 60s, and even a little bit about his family!I loved this book and so did Bob Dylan 'I rather enjoyed it, it was very straight and some of it was exactly the way it was'. The only short coming of this book as that it does not reach the present day, the book was published at the dawn of the 70s in the Dylan era.

mostest with the firstest
With all due respect to the Village Voice's Toby Thompson, Tony Scaduto got there firstest with the mostest in the Dylan bio sweepstakes.Shelton, Spitz and Heylin built on this foundation.Ms. Ponsonby's claim regarding Dylan's disagreements is belied by his having cooperated at the time.Certainly Scaduto's interpretations are problematic, as are those of his sources; but his information remains undisturbed by his successors in interest.Not to cast it as a substitute for the wilder vintage interviews, no other Dylan book conveys the authentic flavor of the period with anything like Scaduto's journalistic integrity.Still indispensable.

VALUABLE RESOURCE
Although there are some dubious sources for this work, overall it gives a fascinating insight into the development of the Bob Dylan persona. I wish that someone would write such book following up to the present day. Thereader needs to bear in mind that Dylan thought a lot of this book untrue!

when we were kings
this book tells all about the golden era of dylan,before he ever made a bad,indifferent or,worst of all,meaningless record.out of print for years and cherished by fans,it's nice to see this title in print again ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (8)

strictkly for Bob Dylan fans.
Bob Dylan's song `Man Gave Names to All the Animals' from his album `Long Train Running' is the text in this illustrated book for children. The drawings by Jim Arnosky are colorful and eye catching sure to interest very young non-readers. Unfortunately Arnosky's presentations have creatures from different biomes appearing in the same pictures. Granted this is not a biology book but children w/b presented with a variety of misleading information in their young lives, why not at minimum present something factual? Also, the lyrics to the song are written phonetically. When Dylan pronounces `I' as `Ah', the printed text reflects the pronunciation. Again, why have misleading information in a children's book? Also, at the end of the book there is a listing by name of the animals that appear in the book but no cross-reference to help readers put names w/pictures. (There was one animal drawing I could not identify). One positive aspect of this volume is that the book does contain a cd of Dylan singing the original song so new readers can follow the text while listening to the words. Nice method for word recognition.
Dylan fans will likely pick this item up, read it once, then consign it to their `Dylan shelf'. Strictly for Bob Dylan fans.
*This review refers to the 2010 edition.*

New Edition with Illustrator Jim Arnosky is amazing!
This book is beautifully illustrated, but the story/song is also fantastic.It's the Bob Dylan song (that many are familiar with!) and it comes with the CD with the song on it.It's actually a children's CD that I don't go crazy listening to after the 500th time! And trust me, we have probably really listened to it 500 times!My kids love it!I put it in and the first time they just dance around.Then the second time they sit and look at the gorgeous pictures in the book.And then, they usually play it about 10 more times before taking a break.They read the book alone as well.Well, they just look at the pictures since they can't read, but soon they will have it all memorized and can at least pretend to read it!
I can say that as a parent this book is perfect.I can read/sing it to them pretty quickly and the illustrations are beautiful and you find new animals every time. Like I said, the CD isn't annoying (who doesn't like Bob Dylan?!) and I don't go crazy listening to it over and over.The book can keep the kids entertained by itself if the CD were to break.
This has been THE BOOK for the past week since it arrived on our front porch.We got other books too but this is the one they are so focused on they haven't even paid attention to the others!
I have the new edition illustrated by Jim Arnosky.I didn't even know about a previous edition but looking through reviews it becomes apparent that there was one!

Bold and masterful
A bold, masterful and colorful representation of of the song.Kiddos will love guessing each animal as it is revealed and will find them just as appealing as will their parents. Jim Arnosky provides a plethora of wildlife and plants in all varieties coexisting from around the world crafting a striking visual of God's abundant creation.See if you can find all the animals listed! -Biblio Reads Children's Book Review

Beautiful, brilliantly illustrated book, an ideal gift!
On August 20, 1979, Bob Dylan dropped "Slow Train Coming" on which there was a song, "Man Gave Names to All the Animals." The song was not an allegory; it had no deep, hidden meaning. It simply told of man walking along, observing animals, and naming them. It's not the only simple song that Dylan ever wrote, but with its island-like beat, it is infectious. This is a Bob Dylan song that can be shared with very young children, requiring little explanation. And it's a great one to get up and jump around to, or -- if you prefer -- dance.

Award-winning children's illustrator Jim Arnosky has taken Dylan's lyrics and paired them with a beautifully vibrant storybook, "Man Gave Names to All the Animals," that captures the happy, funky sound of the original song.

Packaged with the book is a CD with the song performed by Bob Dylan. It warms my baby-boomer heart to imagine three-year-olds rocking to classic Dylan. Can "Maggie's Farm" be far behind?

Arnsoky has populated his book with an astounding variety of animals (yes, even a flamingo) from all parts of the world.There are fish, birds, insects, and mammals that would never see each other in life (except on Animal Planet) gathered together on the pages of "Man Gave Names to All the Animals," and the effect is enchanting.

While most of the animals are familiar, there are sure to be a few that stump readers. There are more than 170 animals illustrated, and they are listed at the end of the book, alphabetically. Those who need clues so that they, too, can name the animals can go to [...].

"Man Gave Names to All the Animals" is a fun book for adults and children to share, made even better by the inclusion of the CD, making it perfect for a sing-along -- or a silly-along if you prefer. Keep this lovely hardcover book in mind for holiday gift-giving...and don't forget the kazoos!


Bottom Line: Would I buy "Man Gave Names to All the Animals"? You better believe it! (Hitting the street September 7, it is now available for pre-order.)

Originally appeared on [...].

Great addition to a collection
This is a great book, but unfortunately out of print.I had been searching prices, and amazon had a vendor that was excellent.This is a great addition for a Bob Dylan collector. ... Read more

Product Description

In 1991 Clinton Heylin published what was considered the most definitive biography of Bob Dylan available. In 2001 he completely revised and reworked this hugely acclaimed book, adding new sections, substantially reworking text, and bringing the story up-to-date with Dylan's explosive career in 2000.

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited follows the story of Dylan from his humble beginnings in Minnesota to his arrival in New York in 1961, his subsequent rise in the folk pantheon of Greenwich Village in the early '60s, and his cataclysmic folk-rock metamorphosis at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In the succeeding eighteen months, Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and embarked on the legendary 1966 World Tour that culminated with an unforgettable concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Heylin details it all, along with the true story of Dylan's motorcycle accident, his remarkable reemergence in the mid-'70s, the only exacting account of his controversial conversion to born-again Christianity, the Neverending Tour, and yet another incredible Dylan resurgence with his 1997 Grammy Album of the Year Award-winning Time Out of Mind.

Deemed by The New Yorker as "the most readable and reliable" of all Dylan biographies, this book will give fans what they have always wanted -- a chance to get to know the man behind the shades.

Customer Reviews (33)

Very Well Written, but.....

This book is probably rightfully touted as the definitive Dylan biography.It's exceptionally well researched, and the author is clearly very intelligent.The book is very well written, and a pleasure to read for anyone interested in learning more about the enigma within the enigma that is Dylan.

All that said, Heylin dismisses "Time out of Mind" early on in the book as "built on sand" and says it doesn't stand up to some of Dylan's all time classics.He also says nothing Dylan has released since "Oh Mercy" is any good, and predicts he'll never release any more masterpieces (although, to his credit, he hopes he's wrong).

I think he is wrong."Time out of mind" and its successor, "Love and theft" both stand with any of Dylan's classics from previous decades (arguably more so as far as "Time out of mind" is concerned), and I suspect Mr. Dylan has more than one more classic in him before his final biography can be written.

The definitive bio
A must have for any Bob Dylan aficionado.Very detailed and fair record of Dylan.

Bob Dylan
My eldest grandson is really into music and songwriting. He also has recently discovered Bob Dylan. He loves to read as well so I figured it would go over well. His expression showed that he approved when he opened his package.

Detailed but boring account of the great one's life and music
Bob Dylan would be one of the most difficult subjects for a biography you could think of. His enigmatic statements and constant reinvention make him hard to pin down - not to mention the way he protects his privacy, giving few revealing interviews. Heylin attempts to make up for this by describing lots of often irrelevant details but never succeeds in giving you a sense of the man or his music. Heylin declines to make his own analysis of Dylan's music, perhaps feeling too scared he would make a fool of himself if he did. After a while it just becomes boring. Oh and what a terrible title.

A MUST HAVE
I got this book a while ago.This book is a terrific outline of Bob's life and there is LOTS of reading.The author is an "expert" and this book is just great.No one fully knows Bob as no one fully knows anyone, but this is a must buy book if you want to learn more.

Some great pictures of Bob--ESPECIALLY one in which he appears to be in his early 40's which reveals the intelligence and intensity in his eyes.Then there is a really nice picture of Bob as "Alias" from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

That's it folks!! ... Read more

Product Description
All 3 greatest hits albums in one volume! Includes 45 classic Dylan tunes including: Blowin' in the Wind, All Along the Watchtower, I Want You, Knockin' On Heaven's Door, She Belongs To Me, Silvio, Hurricane, Dignity, Series of Dreams, I'll Be Your Baby Tonight, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, and more. ... Read more

Product 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. In the bestselling tradition of "Lennon Legend" and "Elvis Treasures", "The Bob Dylan Scrapbook" is an altogether handsome slipcased hardback with over 100 photographs and illustrations,and is guaranteed to delight every Dylan fan.Amazon.com Review
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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (36)

Essential
Released in tandem with the No Direction Home documentary/album, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook is a must for fans. Like those projects, it covers the era from 1956, when Dylan was a small town, Little Richard-worshipping high school student, to 1966, when his famous motorcycle crash brought the height of his brilliant career to a proverbial screeching halt. Like typical scrapbooks, it begins with family background but soon jumps into Dylan's incredible career. To see him go from unknown to superstar is truly astonishing, and this in many ways illustrates it better than the many biographies. There is text - by Robert Santelli, curator of Seattle's Experience Music Project, which hosted a companion Dylan exhibit -, but though useful, it has very little or nothing that fans do not already know. The real treat is the scrapbook material:many excellent photos of Dylan and related people, memorabilia, advertisements, newspaper articles, sales charts, and much more. These give a very interesting look into the Dylan phenomenon that would be hard to convey in words. Reproductions of complete handwritten lyrics for several songs are probably the biggest attraction, and others include an article with The Beatles praising Dylan at their own expense, a sales chart showing the peak of "Like a Rolling Stone" alongside a bevy of covers and imitators, and even a stand-up Dylan. Though only a little over 60 pages, the book has a wealth of material and is also very high quality - coffee table size with a slipcase. In addition, we get a CD with several Dylan interviews, including his first radio one. No serious fan can be without this, and casuals intrigued by No Direction or Dylan's own Chronicles will also like it.

A True Treasure Chest
Reading this book is like going into the Bob Dylan attic and discovering a treasure chest. Each page contains some new and unexpected delight. Robert Santelli's prose is precise and clear and useful.

The other reviewers have listed the sections and the materials. The reproductions are excellent, and you get a real sense of handling original material.

The stuff here almost creates a new dimension to appreciating Dylan, and so this is a must-have for Dylan fans.

--Lawrence J. Epstein, author of Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan

False advertisement
When it says "International delivery available" , you wonder why you receieve a message after you have paid that reads: "We cannot ship to your destination"! However, I did get my money back, hence the one-star rating.

So Cool!
I got this for a friend who is a huge Bob Dylan junkie.It was perfect, and about as close to stalking him as she'll get.

The book I forgot
I forgot this book and then I saw it on a clearance aisle. Seriously, who would put this book in the clearance aisle? I snatched the book up like a thief. This book is just like Sinatra Treasures and very fun to look at. I highly recommend this to any Dylan fan. ... Read more

Product Description
This study explores the poetry of Dylan’s songs from his first album, Bob Dylan (1962), through Nashville Skyline (1969). It covers all the officially released albums of new material from that period. Some attention is given to almost every original song on those albums, and to some songs--singles, outtakes, demos, and other stray songs--not included on the albums.

The first chapter treats only a single song, "Like a Rolling Stone," and the second covers Dylan’s first two albums, both of which are miscellanies. After that, each chapter treats a single album (though the discussion of Blonde on Blonde takes up two chapters), and in these chapters, some attention is given both to the individual songs and to their place in the context of the album. Decisions about what to emphasize and what to gloss over are based partly on Hinchey’s judgments about the relative worth of each song or album and partly on his instinct for what is interesting or undiscovered about them.

Given Dylan’s history of perpetual self-transformation as an artist, the critical approach is necessarily flexible, varying from album to album and even song to song. But there is a recurrent theme. The most distinctive feature of Dylan’s poetry, Hinchey argues, is the way it is implicitly shaped by the changes (as Dylan imagines them) that are induced in his listener in response to the song as it unfolds. As the lyric unfolds, "you," the listener, are changed by what "you" hear, and anticipating these changes in the "you" he is addressing, Dylan’s perception of and attitude toward "you" changes correspondingly. Moreover, these changes in his perception of "you" provoke in turn adjustments in his perception of and attitude toward himself. Dylan’s characteristic song is seen as a duet for solo voice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This Hard Read is gonna fall
Hinchey doesn't make it easy to read this book. He reaches too far to make his analysis of Dylan's meanings and thought processes make sense. In so doing, he often makes less sense.

I feel like Hinchey is a Master Thief who has just robbed me of $20.

Tells You How It Feels
A fine addition to your Dylan library.One of the few books to deal with Dylan's output with the respect and insight it deserves. Thankfully the book is on the songs rather than the life of Bob Dylan.

With the insight of an academic yet using fully accessible, virtually jargon free, prose Mr. Hinchey's takes us on a journey through Bob Dylan's 1960's work answering the question "How Does It Feel".

A convincing thesis is laid out in the introduction and expounded in the following chapters.You don't have to agree with all the interpretations tostill get a lot out of them.Having said which I have rarely agreed with as many.

Superbly illuminating!
It's great to finally read a serious, subtle reading of Dylan's evocative but often mysterious lyrics. Hinchey regards Dylan as a major poet, and his book provides powerful support forthat view. Classics heard many times like "It's AlrightMa (I'm Only Bleeding)" take on richer, brighter colors after reading "Like a Complete Unknown." ... Read more

Product Description
Greil Marcus's popular appreciation of his, and Bob Dylan's, favorite song--a book that Rolling Stone called "essential insight into the living history of rock & roll."

Greil Marcus has written the definitive biography of the greatest pop single ever made. Recorded in Columbia's Studio A in New York on 16 June 1965, "Like A Rolling Stone" was instantly of its time-and so strong it has escaped time altogether. The musicians gathered in the studio never managed a second successful recording: they caught it once and only once. Then it was gone, arguably never to be bettered in Bob Dylan's countless live performances of the song.

Dylan's career as a folk singer--and the career imposed upon him, his unwanted role as "voice of a generation"--had hit a wall. Marcus recreates the brilliantly competitive pop world of 1965, and the energy, the anger, the thrill and the horror that Bob Dylan turned into a revolutionary six-minute single. Forty years later it remains the signal accomplishment of modern music. It drew to itself disparate traditions of American music and speech; it redrew the map of the country itself; it left behind a world that was not the same. The whole adventure is here. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Under Par Holy Greil
Now I am one of Mr Marcus's fans, his obstruse and poetic whimsy often stimulating further thought. In this instance, while not utterly dismissive, I'm in agreement with most of the negativity posted here. At his best, Marcus's reading of songs, a fascinating seduction into their texture, tone and lyric power, virtually note by note can be exhilerating to the extent that I envy his creative insights. Excess rules with this effort. You just have to shrug at some of the contextural minutia and strained social relevances that he tries to connect to various songs. Up front, the album was pivotal in my development. It was my first LP. Hitherto I was a Pitney ballad devotee. But yes, I was transfixed that Saturday morning when I spun that disc. It wasn't the title track(I'd never heard of it or Dylan other than by reading a commendation in that morning's national rag of ,'Another Side Of'...not available at the local shop, and being deflected to this other,newer disc by the same artist)that hooked me. It was the entire sound, particulary the haunting and mesmerising, Desolation Row, It Takes a lot to Laugh, the outrageous title track, and Ballad of a Thin Man. Goodbye Gene! Marcus's take on these songs is much appreciated. So too his feel for the majestic Sam Cooke's, Change is Gonna Come, my all time favourite song. In all, this is a book I feel no need to return to or recommend...the first time I've admitted that about any of the author's commentary.

Greil Marcus flips through his index cards
Greil Marcus has made his name as rock critic by insisting that the tide of History is directly mirrored by the pop music of the period. This can make for exhilarating reading, because Marcus is, if nothing else, an elegant stylist given to lyric evocation. But it is the same elegance that disguises the fact that he comes across a middling Hegelian; the author, amid the declarations about Dylan, The Stones, The Band and their importance to the spontaneous mass revolts of the Sixties, never solidifies his points. He has argued , with occasional lucidity, that the intuitive metaphors of the artist/poet/musician diagnose the ills of the culture better than any bus full of sociologists or philosophers, and has intimated further that history is a progression toward a greater day. Marcus suggests through out his more ponderous tomes--"Lipstick Traces", "Invisible Republic", "The Dustbin of History"
--that the arts in general, and rock and roll in particular, can direct in ways of getting to the brighter day, the next stage of our collective being. The problem , though, is that Marcus is only a compelling writer when the object of study remains a vague cluster of political and aesthetic notions enshrouding specific historical events--he is quite good, at times, in describing creative process and the build of energy as musicians collaborate on a song they're writing and recording, but he drifts into a swamp of inchoate mysticism that will infuriate the reader. Unlike Walter Benjamin, who had mystic proclivities, or even Norman Mailer, likewise of an odd spiritual cast, Marcus does not leave us with a trail of insights, nor is he especially quotable if you had to draw out a sentence or paragraph that embodied a book's thesis. Morris Dickstein could do that, evinced by his classic study of sixites culture "The Gates of Eden". Marcus does not stick around to answer the harder question: what are you driving at?

Marcus, though, isn't the one to draw us the map.But what has been aggravating with Marcus since he left the employ of Rolling Stone and began writing full length books and essays for cultural journals is that he chokes when there's a point to be made--he defers, he sidesteps, he distracts, he rather gracelessly changes the subject. Again, this can be enthralling, especially in a book like his massive "Lipstick Traces The Secret History of the 20th Century" where he assumes some of Guy DeBord's assertions in Society of the Spectacle and situates rock and roll musicians in a counter-tradition of groups that spontaneously develop in resistance to a society's centralized ossification and mounts an attack, through art, on the perceptual filters that blind the masses to their latent genius.

He never quite comes to the part where he satisfyingly resolves all the mounting, swelling, grandly played generalizations that link Elvis, The Sex Pistols and Cabaret Voltaire as sources of insight geared to undermine an oppressive regime, but the reader has fun along the way. Marcus wants to be a combination of Marcuse and Harold Bloom, and he rarely accomplishes anything the singular criticism either of them produced in their respective disciplines, political philosophy and literary criticism, but he does hit the mark often enough to make him a thinker worth coming back to.

One would wonder about the value of coming back to this man's store front, though, if his book Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Marcus is one who has written so much about Dylan, or has absorbed so much material about him, that he can produce a reed-thin on one song and pretends that it is much, much more than what it really is. The problem is a lack of thesis, a conceit Marcus at least pretend to have with his prior volumes; depending entirely on third-hand anecdotes, half-recollected memories and a flurry of details gleaned from any one of the several hundred books about Dylan published in the last 30 years, this amounts to little more than what you'd have if you transcribed a recording of the singer's more intense fans speaking wildly, broadly, intensely amongst themselves, by passing coherence for Sturm and Drang. For the rest of us with a saner appreciation of Dylan's importance , Like A Rolling Stone is messily assembled jumble of notes, press clips and over-told stories; Marcus , obvious enough, attempts an impressionist take on the song, but the smell of rehash doesn't recede, ever

In the Immortal Words of Elvis Costello . . .
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. This was the book that cured me of my belief that you have to finish reading any book you start. You leap at the first chance to escape the drunken bore at a party, right? Putting this book back on the shelf? Same thing.

Candidate for the worst rock book (on the best song)
Hard to imagine how this could be worse.Pompous and Flatulent at the same time.BEWARE

Marcus on Dylan
This probably a 4 1/2 star book. Marcus is an eminent Dylanologist. He was part of a symposium on Dylan at theSkirbal, near LA.
Marcus not only dissects the Highway 61 Sessions, but goes deeply into a discussion of Blues and R& B Music. He discusses Clyde McPhatter and the various groups that Clyde was part of, which pleased me greatly. (You can Still find the Drifters "White Christmas" on Juke Boxes today.)
Though I didn't understand the section on takes. It seems that none of the 15 takes were satisfactory, so what take was released? 16Th? ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

A 'must' for any Dylan fan
SHELTER FROM THE STORM: BOB DYLAN'S ROLLING THUNDER YEARS offers a survey of a specific time in Dylan's life, when his Rolling Thunder Revue, a gypsy caravan troupe, re-invented the traveling troubadour tradition and delivered amazing live performances to audiences across the country. During this time his personal life became shambles even as his career was expanding to enter the acting realm. Musician and author Sid Griffin covers all aspects of these years in a survey that's a 'must' for any Dylan fan and collection covering his life and times.

Another great read from Sid Griffin
Sid Griffin writes with the assuredness of the quintessential insider and yet with a smart and folksy angle that illuminates where the spotlights don't shine. He spares no-one - praiseworthy or otherwise - while maintaining an audacious objectivity. Neither party-liner nor mudslinger I can only surmise to say that if Mark Twain was alive today and writing about Bob Dylan (which I'm sure he would be) this would be that book. Great read and a wonderful companion to Million Dollar Bash.

Shelter From The Storm...a terrific read!
Once again, noted author (and fine musician in his own right), Sid Griffin, has delivered another gripping take on the curious but celebrated Rolling Thunder Revue, Bob Dylan's brief but historic journey with his traveling music troupe back in 1975/1976. Sid has a knack for telling the tale as if he and the reader were right there on the bus and on the various stages in the Northeast US, Florida and Colorado with such luminaries as Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Roger McGuinn, Mick Ronson and the rest of Dylan's rag-tag gypsy gang. It is factual and well-researched and is another jewel in the Jawbone Press collection, as was Sid's previous novel Million Dollar Bash about Dylan, The Band and The Basement Tapes. I HIGHLY recommend this book as a fascinating artifact of the times and yet another critical glimpse into the life of one of the most gifted, yet enigmatic poets and musicians of our generation. Included are revelatory takes on Dylan's strange and spooky Renaldo & Clara movie and the two (different) US and Japanese Hard Rain televison specials during that brief period. You will not be disappointed and Shelter From The Storm would make a wonderful gift for the Bob-ophile in your life! ... Read more

Product Description
Includes: All Along The Watchtower, Blowin' In The Wind, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Tangled Up In Blue, Just Like A Woman, Visions Of Johanna, The Times They Are A-Changin', To Make You Feel My Love, and many more in singable, playable song tab arrangements with complete lyrics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A real piece of garbage
The tab is aweful! You can't really even call it tab because it bears no relation to the notation. It is simply a generic pattern to strum the chords. Ridiculous. Don't be fooled.

Wrong.
Some of these songs seem different than the studio versions that I am used to from Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde.For example, on "Visions of Johanna" this book has it in the key of G.As far as I can tell it's in the key of A.You don't even use the G chord to play the song.The fact that they never tell you when to use a capo is also suspicious.I know it's hard to find tab for some of Dylan's classics but this book is no more helpful than some tab you might find on the internet.It just costs more.

Horrible.1 star for the picture on the cover..
This book left me so frustrated.I tried for a week to play some of the songs while listening to the cd's of his, but after some time I just gave up.The tabs are just wrong (supposedly they are right somewhere, but they don't come close the cd versions)

Now then.You have no options but to search the internet and try to find something that sounds close, and then try very hard to listen to the cd and add in little details that you won't find in the internet tab.This is probably a better route anyway because you are growing musically.

So.. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME, MONEY, AND HAPPINESS ON THIS BOOK.

Terrible and Proud of It
Being not only an avid guitarist but also HUGE fan of the extensive works of Mr. Dylan's I was thrilled to receive this book. Unfortunately my excitement quickly turned to dismay as I began to play through some of the tablature. I immediately discovered from pre-existing knowledge that many of the songs were in the wrong key to start with. On top of that the complete lack of use of a capo or alternate tunings set off a huge red flag, being well aware that Dylan constantly used both. If all of this wasn't bad enough many of the songs aren't even playable. Many of the songs at best slightly (and that is an overstatement) resemble their original counterparts. As a matter of fact I was so angered by the poor quality of this book that I wrote a letter to the publishing company. In this letter I covered many of the things I have said in this review, and also mentioned that the transcriptions would be more at home in a book that is labeled "for easy guitar". This is the ambiguous response I received from Music Sales Editor; Heather Rammage:

When presenting the works of great songwriters it is often the song, not the performance, which is considered most important. In the case of Bob Dylan, whose prolific career spans several decades and whose songs have been recorded by him and countless others many times, it is difficult, if not impossible, to decide upon a definitive version. Throughout his career, Bob Dylan has played the same song in many different keys, with or without a capo, in standard or altered tuning, and with completely different arrangements or entirely new melodies. Dylan¹s ³free² folk style also contributes to the difficulty in transcribing his performances.
These arrangements are meant to be accessible to everyone, in the case of piano/vocal/guitar arrangements, or in other cases to present the most playable versions of classic tunes, with obvious mistakes or questionable anomalies edited out to stay true to the intent, rather than the execution, of each song.

: Apparently this is the best way they could excuse themselves for their rancid piece of literature. Will somebody please explain to me 1. how other people's performances of Dylan's songs would have anything to do with a Bob Dylan tablature book? 2. Although Dylan does perform his songs in different ways, isn't it considered pretty standard to transcribe the version on studio album? 3. If the book states in the title it is arranged for guitar, why does the access of piano and voice matter at all? Heather Rammage, one of the head editors at the book's publishing company, clearly couldn't explain. Do yourself a favor and get a different Bob Dylan guitar book and avoid this set of loose interpretations.

Mediocre and unfaithful.
I was very excited about this book when I first saw it -- as a relatively new guitarist and Dylan buff, it looked like it was a good anthology to learn how to play most of Dylan's songs.It does have strumming patterns, chord diagrams, and picking patterns.

However, they dumbed it down even more than that.They ignored the actual way that the song is played, and opted instead for a standard tuning, uncapo'd 'this kind of sounds like the song' approach.(I think they only mention capo'ing one song in the whole book, and I've never seen any manner of alternate tunings in it at all.)It's possible that these are all faithful to some live performance Dylan did some time, as he does have a tendency to play things differently quite often, but many of the tabs seem especially dubious.

The bottom line, if you want to buy a book to play the songs the way Dylan did in the studio recordings, or even in the more prevalent live recordings, pass on this book.Or buy a different book. Or buy the book to get help on rhythm, but consult a webpage (Eyolf Østrem has an excellent such page) for actual tunings, capo's, chords, and, well, everything else.Just don't buy the book expecting it to tell you how to faithfully play the songs, because you'll be sorely disappointed. ... Read more

Product Description
This study explores the poetry of Dylan’s songs from his first album, Bob Dylan (1962), through Nashville Skyline (1969). It covers all the officially released albums of new material from that period. Some attention is given to almost every original song on those albums, and to some songs--singles, outtakes, demos, and other stray songs--not included on the albums.

The first chapter treats only a single song, "Like a Rolling Stone," and the second covers Dylan’s first two albums, both of which are miscellanies. After that, each chapter treats a single album (though the discussion of Blonde on Blonde takes up two chapters), and in these chapters, some attention is given both to the individual songs and to their place in the context of the album. Decisions about what to emphasize and what to gloss over are based partly on Hinchey’s judgments about the relative worth of each song or album and partly on his instinct for what is interesting or undiscovered about them.

Given Dylan’s history of perpetual self-transformation as an artist, the critical approach is necessarily flexible, varying from album to album and even song to song. But there is a recurrent theme. The most distinctive feature of Dylan’s poetry, Hinchey argues, is the way it is implicitly shaped by the changes (as Dylan imagines them) that are induced in his listener in response to the song as it unfolds. As the lyric unfolds, "you," the listener, are changed by what "you" hear, and anticipating these changes in the "you" he is addressing, Dylan’s perception of and attitude toward "you" changes correspondingly. Moreover, these changes in his perception of "you" provoke in turn adjustments in his perception of and attitude toward himself. Dylan’s characteristic song is seen as a duet for solo voice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This Hard Read is gonna fall
Hinchey doesn't make it easy to read this book. He reaches too far to make his analysis of Dylan's meanings and thought processes make sense. In so doing, he often makes less sense.

I feel like Hinchey is a Master Thief who has just robbed me of $20.

Tells You How It Feels
A fine addition to your Dylan library.One of the few books to deal with Dylan's output with the respect and insight it deserves. Thankfully the book is on the songs rather than the life of Bob Dylan.

With the insight of an academic yet using fully accessible, virtually jargon free, prose Mr. Hinchey's takes us on a journey through Bob Dylan's 1960's work answering the question "How Does It Feel".

A convincing thesis is laid out in the introduction and expounded in the following chapters.You don't have to agree with all the interpretations tostill get a lot out of them.Having said which I have rarely agreed with as many.

Superbly illuminating!
It's great to finally read a serious, subtle reading of Dylan's evocative but often mysterious lyrics. Hinchey regards Dylan as a major poet, and his book provides powerful support forthat view. Classics heard many times like "It's AlrightMa (I'm Only Bleeding)" take on richer, brighter colors after reading "Like a Complete Unknown." ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

Dylan for the lovers, not the pedants.
This book has been "...legitimately trashed by every other reviewer" ?! as W.P Thomas put it.

Selective memory in action there given many of you clearly feel the same way I do about 'Revolution In The Air'. I'd consider myself a 'big' Dylan fan - Seen him live 5 times, read various books/biographies/lyrics etc, own numerous documentaries, have 20+ albums of his (some doubled on vinyl reissues), many of my favourite of his songs are relatively lesser-known (Mama You Been On My Mind, Moonshiner etc), avidly enjoy his excellent radio show...

...You get the picture, maybe not a 'huge' Dylan fan by his fanbase's standards (He does after all attract the most intense scrutiny of his career & personality of any cultural figure, the hungriest & nerdiest of the info-hungry & nerdy), but certainly a 'big' Dylan fan, and I really value this book.

Heylin is unarguably opinionated, but more often than not I found this quite refreshing, light relief amongst the fascinating but inevitably dry recitals of who played what on which track when etc. As for the occassional factual slips & errors that some have used to negate the book's worth, truly almost-all are of concern or note only to those at the more pedantic or academic end of the Dylan fan spectrum. In other words certainly not enough to undermine such a fascinating, illuminating & wonderfully readable & accessible odyssey through the man's life & work as one.

"Everybody's Talkin'" About Clint's Sloppy Research
In addition to the other factual errors noted, Mr. H. states that Fred Neil "covered" the Harry Nilsson tune "Everybody's Talkin'" for the film MIDNIGHT COWBOY. In our universe Harry covered Fred's song.
Shame on you Clint for missing an easy lay-up (American basketball jargon).
Also, please show some respect for the late, great John Bauldie. I know you two had your differences, but let it go!
You are a noted author, while John was tragically killed in a helicopter crash in 1996.
I am enjoying your book though.

Revolting work in the air


Clinton Heylin, author of "Behind the Shades," is without a doubt

a kick-ass Dylan biographer; unyielding, tenacious and honest in the research

of his subject. That being said, "Revolution in the Air" reads like a never-ending

tome of album liner notes. I bought this book based on a music publication review

indicating it had scads of relevatory information; i.e., "Forever Young'' was a dig

at Neil Young for taking on Dylan's style on "Heart of Gold."

Besides that such inside-knowledge nuggets seem apocryphal in Heylin's

"Revolution," they seem far and few between. If you keep this book on your nightstand,

you'll be sure not to stay up all night _ it's just not that compelling. Then there is the

irritating aspect of subjecting yourself to Heylin's biases: he loathes the Grateful Dead;

obviously Dylan admired them and Garcia was a true friend. Furthermore, he

categorizes gems such as "You Angel You" offPlanet Waves as "slog" intended to

fill out the album. Again, Heylin did a superb warts-and-all biography of Dylan, but

his assessments of Dylan's work are oft-dubious at best.

Then there is the matter of the time frame of "Revolution." Heylin chronicles

1957-1973. By now, that's like "ancient footprints on the Spanish Stairs." The period

has been hashed and re-hashed so often, "Revolution" leaves you longing for current

information. If you're a true Dylanphile, acquire this book to skim it; otherwise

don't bother.

Pretentious and boring
I agree with the others here who have pointed out that this book is a disappointment.

The author's massive ego gets in the way. In addition, he manages to take an interesting topic and make it very boring.

Save your money.

Academic and dull
Dylan certainly wrote some of the most fascinating music of our time.But Heylin's treatise is so soaked in detail about the first performances and other technicalities that there appears to be little passion for the music itself.Other reviewers take Heylin to task for being factually incorrect; I do not know enough to judge that.I take him to task for making what should be a fascinating subject very dull and academic. After reading the book, I wondered, did Heylin actually like any of these 300 songs? If he did, I sure could not tell from this book. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant
A big part of Dylan's unprecedented allure, beyond his own extraordinary songwriting ability and mesmerizing concert performances, is his gift for uniquely covering hundreds of songs by other talented singers and songwriters, both known and unknown. Until now our knowledge of those songs, their creators, their antecedents and what Dylan did with them was a hodgepodge of missing information, misinformation, mangled information and guesswork. Derek Barker, in this wonderfully written, extraordinarily entertaining and thoroughly informative book, has righted all those wrongs. Thank heavens! The book is structured well, is fun and easy to read, plus, it answers all the questions even the most devote Dylan fan needs answered. I use it as a reference guide for my Dylan class as well as on my Dylan radio show when anyone wants to know whether Bob's covered a song or not, when he covered it, how often and, more importantly, what did he or did not add to it. Complete your Dylan library, buy and love this book, just as I do.

Amazing Book On An Overlooked Aspect of Bob Dylan's Work
I've overdosed on Bob Dylan books (have read over 50 of them) to the point where I haven't read one in a couple years. Most discuss interpretations of Dylan's songs from the author's viewpoint (no better than yours when it comes to Dylan), others rehash biographical information that's been around for years. So I almost passed on this excellent book by Derek Barker; I sure am glad I didn't. What pushed me into buying it that I have a great interest in Bob's live performances of traditional and folk covers that he did in the late 80's and early 90's, like the songs from "Good As I Been To You" and "World Gone Wrong", but not limited to just those on the albums. In what is arguably the nadir of Dylan's live shows (where he often butchered his own songs) he would throw in these amazing chestnuts like "Lakes Of Pontchartrain", "Trail Of The Buffalo", "Eileen Aroon", "Barbara Allen" and many others. Many of these covers were only performed once or a few times. If you listen to the live recordings from this half decade you can find this gold amid much other dross. What this book did for me is illuminate the history of all these songs, and every other cover song Dylan recorded or played live. It tells who wrote the original song, where Bob probably heard them and when he played the song live (or at least the first and most recent time). For the hardcore fan this is completely fascinating. It had me pulling out my spindles of live cd's hoping that I had some of these recordings. Quite a lot of us like Dylan for his voice, not in spite of it. Bob Dylan is a great singer and, amazingly enough, these non-Dylan songs are a big part of Bob's legacy. The work in this book is meticulous and obviously a labor of love. It covers almost 50 years! Only someone who has lived and breathed Bob Dylan for decades would care or dare to take on this project and Derek Barker does it admirably. ... Read more

Product Description
Direct from the mouth of America’s most celebrated street poet comes a rare and diverse collection of intimate interviews

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 interviews -- anthologized here for the first time -- by Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder, and Mikal Gilmore, as well as Nat Hentoff’s legendary 1966 Playboy interview. Surprises include Studs Terkel’s 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Reading).........
People. As you all know I've been a good friend of Bob's since the early days in the folk clubs of NYC. He even took a song of mine at that time. I was known as Metamorpho Von Ronk in my prime. But I didn't mind because today Bob has returned the favor. How else would I afford 5 star hotels while I lecture across the land? I ask you.

In any event, It took me about 2 years to read this. And it's not that it's difficult reading. It's not. It flows evenly. My problem is I start 5 books at the same time and have only so much time to devote to reading. But I did finish this one, and now I feel I must read it again to be sure I didn't miss anything. Dylan is such a complex creature that you have to allow for other levels of thought to guide you through this. And, even at that, you will feel you don't really have an insight into his persona. I do. But I am one of the chosen few and I can't divulge anything for fear of no more free hotel rooms. "Sigh".

Anyway, the book starts off with a radio interview in 1962 (when his star was starting to rise) until 2004. You will find a vast array of formats and publications that were interested in him. He never thought much of all this acclaim, he just did what he was good at - writing songs. But you'll get interviews from radio stations as well as notable publications like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and even Playboy (!). Bob Dylan as a sex god - go figure.

The interesting thing I noted about Bob in this book was his way to be a virtual Houdini when it came to interviewers who tried to nail him down, or try to back him into specific meanings or explanations he has conveyed. It's a laugh how he turns it around so the interviewer is made to be specific. I look at Bob as being pure conciousness in the here and now. I think he must be the most aware person on earth. And, if you read this book, you will see how pure Seer thought has been learned by him.

One of the central motifs of his work is finding truth. We learn that he likes that very much. But, like anyone before him who has tried to teach enlightenment, he is mostly misunderstood by the masses. I think people miss his messages sometimes because they don't like the way he sings. That is very hollow, but Dylan just keeps doing what he does best, and that is write songs that beg you to think. He also knows that as an artist he doesn't need to explain anything to you.

If the mind of Dylan interests you at all, this is an excellent book to read. Will you come away with a clearer picture of who he is? Probably not. But, he wants it that way.

Happy Holidays and Buy this book for the myoptic visioned one in your life!

love, Metamorpho ;)

Essential
This book is absolutely essential for Dylan fans and everyone who intend to understand Dylan.

bob
It's good stuff. It's life experiences. It's a wealth of info that they would not teach you of in college...

Watching Dylan Grow
Provides a fascinating portrait of a man attempting to deal cleverly with the exigencies of fame, while retaining his soul.

Particularly interesting for the early interviews, as we see Dylan developing the playful, Dadaesque indirection that he would use with interviewers, and for the interviews with those that accompanied him in his early years--folksters with whom he would drop the guise, and speak clearly and directly about his craft.

Great reading.

" A hero is a man who can talk to his drummer"
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.
... Read more

Product Description
This classic work is the definitive study of Bob Dylan's 40-year body of songs and recordings. This latest edition offers copious fresh material, including major studies of Dylan's remarkable use of the blues, nursery rhyme, films and the Bible. Unique in its scope and its integration of literature and music, criticism and biography, this highly entertaining and authoritative book has earned exceptional reviews. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

times change Dylan stays the same
How could anyone if they are honest say anything nagetive about a book about Dylan. Christ he just got a pulitizer dosen't that say it all. Even if I was not a fan, Even if I had never heard of Dylan,{ if that was possible}I would have to say that the book is well worth the time and money spent.

Where was the editor?
It seems like a page of my life has turned: I finished Michael Gray "Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan". At 900 pages including references it is a major tome on Dylan, the blues and folk music. I like the book and found it irritating all at once.

Gray is a musicologist and Dylanologist who gives a detailed look at the art of Dylan's songwriting. He details, often excruciatingly, the sources for songs to the oldest version to the post-WWI versions, to the post WWII versions. It is enlightening to read that material but some editing would have helped the book move along.

Gray discusses Dylan's infatuation with Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music" which myth has it Dylan stole early in his career from a friend in Minneapolis since he was so enchanted with it a source. I am giving in and will study Smith's 4 volumes to gleen what I can.

I learned quite a bit about song-writing and sourcing from this book. Since I started read this book my own songs have come faster and are better. For that I thank Gray.

The paper cover book weighs too much to hold in you hands for long. Try to find the hardcover so you can lay it on a table or desk. Seriously.

However, he needs editing. Every once in awhile Gray goes on a rant - personal, vituperative criticism of Dylan. Since all that is his taste who cares if he likes Unplugged or not? Unprofessional.

When he is discussing "As Good as I've Been to You" and "World Gone Wrong" Gray analyzes each song to some length; however you can be reading another paragraph before you realize he had finished with one song and is now discussing another. Either write more clearly or use sub-headings.

The book is like that. It feels like the editor was asleep.

Still, now I have to go back and study some parts over.

More than passes the test of any book of musical criticism
The only valid test of any book of musical criticism is whether it sends you back to the music with new ears to hear what you missed before.This book passes the test admirably.No matter how much you think you know about Dylan's work, you will learn something new here.You will not only gain added enjoyment from Dylan's acknowledged masterpieces, but may find something of value in songs - indeed, whole albums - that were regarded as inferior by many Dylan fans when they were released.

Vade mecum, goes all the way from blues to visionary stars..
If asked at the pearly gates, who was the best poet you ever encountered in your days on earth, I would not hesitate to say with great gladness, Bob Dylan, him of the sacred heart. And if Saint Peter pressed me for the best book of cultural criticism I had encountered in relation to poetry and religious vision, I would say Michael Gray's Song & Dance Man 3: the Art of Bob Dylan, and just sit there in mute prayer and lyric praise.This book gives back to the Dylan visionary blues project much of the joy and politics that went into its lifelong creation, see the chapter on Willy Mctell as "Willy Mctell," santa cleopatra there is nothing more to say on these ghostly trails of poesy, love, and theft.I will just give praise and 10 stars if I could.

Absolutely incredible
As an avid fan of rock scholarship (oxymoronical as some still consider the term), I've read many a bio and interpretive book through the years, and I have to say that this one, hands down, is the absolute most amazing one I've ever come across. Only Dylan - with his 40+ albums, 4-decade career, half a thousand songs, countless gigs, and sheer depth of material - could be subject to such a gargantuan examination as this, and Gray milks it for all it's worth. At over 900 pages, this book examines every aspect of Dylan's recorded work. The level of scholarship is almost insane. The footnotes alone are massive (some taking up the majority of a page); one chapter alone contains over 220 of them. This is not a book that attempts to "explain" the songs (Gray knows better than that.) What it does, instead, is give detailed background information on them: shedding light, at long last, on their genesis - showing us what songs, poems, books, movies or what have you may have influenced them. One gets a sense in reading this of Dylan's own vast knowledge of music. We learn here how deeply and thorougly he has mined such treasure troves of art as pre-war blues, folk songs, the Bible (though Gray borders on overkill on this particular subject), poetry of all sorts, and, surprisingly, nursery rhyme, fairy tales, and Hollywood movie dialogue. Some might claim that knowing such things takes the fun or novelty out of simply listening to a song, or of self-interpretation, but surely, it gives an extra layer or two of depth to Dylan's work, allowing you to appreciate them that much more. Some passages are surely revelatory. While some of the chapters are admittedly not as interesting as others, many are enlightening and downright ground-breaking. The chapter on his use of pre-war blues lyrics poetry is a cornucopia of exhaustive reasearch (the footnotes alone in this chapter could almost comprise a book.) Undoubtedly revelatory to many are the chapters on Dylan's use of nursery rhyme and movie dialogue in his lyrics (the use of the latter shines an entirely new light on the Empire Burlesque album.) Another element of the book worth noting is that it doesn't skimp over his too-often-unnecessarily-derided 80's and 90's work (a period where it actually became cool to despise Dylan.) Gray offers excellent analyses of such 80's masterpieces as Blind Willie McTell, Caribbean Wind (three versions!), Foot of Pride, Jokerman, Brownsville Girl, and the entire Oh Mercy album. All of these songs (and more) are thoroughly examined, and lend needed credence to truly excellent Dylan compositions that often do not get the credit they deserve. His 90's albums - Under The Red Sky, Good As I Been To You, World Gone Wrong, and Time Out of Mind - all have thorough chapters dedicated to them as well. The latter chapter I particularly enjoyed. I should also take time out to ackwnoledge not only Gray's parlaying of information, but his sheer excellence of writing. His prose is very, very good and he can be devastatingly funny at times, as well as scholastically serious. He also manages to avoid the two main traps of writing a book like this: hero worship, and promoting your own work through the medium you are trying to interpret. He's not overly idoltary towards Dylan: certainly he gives him much praise (all deserved, of course), but he also issues forth monumental drubbings at times - perhaps even too much at times. For example, Gray is extremely, extremely critical of such things as the Empire Burlesque and Unplugged albums, which is bound to upset some fans. But surely such critical honesty of opinion is preferable to the "Dylan is God and never makes a mistake; bow down and worship his incomparable art" vibe that is prevalent in so many other books of this type. Also, as I said, he manages to avoid the horrible pitfall of pushing his own works through the guise of interpreting Dylan; he wisely barely mentions himself here. Now, all this is not to say that the book is perfect. There are certain drawbacks; personally, I think Gray rides the Bible-influence hobby horse a bit too much, and I disagree with some of his opinions (only natural, and he doesn't overburden us with them), and certain parts of the book do seem a bit long-winded. Also, if you are looking for an in-depth study of what Dylan's lyrics "mean", or for a study of his live performances, then this is not specifically the book for you. However, any, and I mean ANY Dylanophile will want it regardless, as it casts such a deep, illuminating light on so many aspects of his career. There are a lot of books on Bob Dylan available, but this is one of the few truly indispensable ones. Comes absolutely reccommended. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Scholarly Addition to the Dylan Literature
Excellent reading for the devotee, this set of essays is in the same league as,'You've Been with The Professors', which I'd also commend. The erudition and literary quality is such, that, like the aforementioned, the pertinence to their primary source may occasionally seem stretched. Whatever, these are well meditated pieces that offer a varied slant on the master manouverer, his sources, his influence and his expression. The pace is set by Greil Marcus's exploration of the significance of Hibbing High on the adolescent Bob, with especial attribution to his English teacher, Boniface Rolfzen. I was particularly attracted to Mick Cochrane's essay on Theme time radio, Alex Lubert's musings on,'Disabling', C P Lee's on the infamous '66 UK tour, the Thomas Crow investigation of the Andy Warhol connexions, and David Yaffe's tracing of the mature Bob which whets my appetite for his forthcoming tome, The Many Roads of Bob Dylan. ... Read more

Product Description
Robert Shelton met Bob Dylan when the young singer first arrived in New York. He became Dylan's friend, champion, and critic. This book, first published in 1986, was hailed as the definitive unauthorized biography of this moody, passionate genius and his world. Dylan gave Shelton access to his parents, Abe and Beatty Zimmerman - whom no other journalist has ever interviewed in depth; to his brother, David; to childhood friends from Hibbing; to fellow students and friends from Minneapolis; and to Suze Rotolo, the muse immortalized on the cover of Freewheelin', among others. No Direction Home took 20 years to complete and received widespread critical acclaim. Two decades on, Dylan's standing is higher than at any time since the 1960s and Shelton's book is now seen as a classic of the genre.Today, everything Bob Dylan does guarantees saturation media coverage, and a new edition of No Direction Home is long overdue. This new edition, published to coincide with Dylan's 70th birthday on May 24, 2011, restores significant parts of Shelton's original manuscript and also includes key images of Dylan throughout his incredible, enduring career, alongside updated footnotes and bibliography, and a new selective discography, making it a must for all Dylan aficionados.Amazon.com Review
Robert Shelton, a critic for the New York Times in1961, caught an early Bob Dylan gig at Folk City in Greenwich Villageand wrote an effusive review for the newspaper. The coverage in theTimes was a huge boost to the career of the then-strugglingfolksinger, and Shelton and Dylan became friends, seeing each otherfrequently around the Village folk scene.When Shelton, in the 1980s,finally got around to finishing his full-length biography of Dylan, hecould draw upon a wealth of insider stories from the early days. Thebook is naturally strongest when describing Dylan's early career, fromhis coffeehouse gigs as a Woody Guthriedisciple to the insanely high artistic peaks of the mid-'60s. Aparticularly engaging passage concerns a freeform interview Sheltonconducted with Dylan as they flew high above the Midwest in early1966; Shelton's memories of Dylan are essential reading forfans. Shelton saw much less of the notoriously private Dylan as theyears passed, and the book loses momentum as he becomes less of aneyewitness and more of a distant observer, though Dylan's story iscredibly told up through the mid-1980s. --Robert McNamara ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

The Most Sympathetic Critic
Written by the critic widely-credited with launching Dylan's career, Shelton had unusual access to Dylan, his family, and his friends. The result is that interview material is abundant, and the book is exceptionally helpful in understanding Dylan's career. Shelton never quite flies over the material to get a complete view, but he was there, on the ground, going through the Village at the time. It is disorganized but fascinating, filled with wonderful anecdotes but not always discerning in the choice of material. He seems to believe all that people tell him. That makes for a wonderful friend and a great guy but a biographer who remains mostly uncritical.

This is an authentic and valuable portrait for what it is, and what it is is a great book.

--Lawrence J. Epstein, author of Political Folk Music in America from Its Origins to Bob Dylan

Who is Bob Dylan?
Who is Bob Dylan? None of the biographies I've read - Sounes, Heylin, Scaduto, and a short book by Toby Thompson (1971) - are by people that really knew him. Shelton is the New York Times reviewer who heard Dylan play in a Greenwich Village coffee house not too long after he came to NY and wrote a very promising review about him, which helped him on his way... Shelton also got to know him, spent time with him, and was able to piece many things together and interview people that were not mentioned in the other books. The interviews and stories are interesting and informative, fill in gaps left by the other books, and we get more of a feeling of Dylan, especially before he came to NY and as he was developing. This is a very well written book. Fans will like it a lot.

"No Direction Home: The Live and Music of Bob Dylan"
It was, to me, the best biography of Bob Dylan. Very good writing, never boring or exhaustive with details or ponderings.

All sides and aspects of a cherished and popular figure
Expertly written by Robert Shelton (the New York Times music and popular culture reviewer generally credited for "discovering" Dylan in 1961), No Direction Home: The Life And Music Of Bob Dylan is a faithful and definitive biography of the talented artist and his unforgettable music. An extensively detailed chronicle which explores all sides and aspects of a cherished and popular figure in American music, No Direction Home is a welcome addition to 20th Century Music History Studies collections and "must" reading for all Bob Dylan fans.

Not the Place to Start . . .
. . .start (of course) with the albums, of course, especially "Freewheelin'," "Highway 61 Revisited," "Blonde on Blonde," and "John Wesley Harding," "Basement Tapes," "Blood on the Tracks," "Bootleg Series Vol 4," and maybe "World Gone Wrong." Then check out "Don't Look Back" on DVD. Shelton's book has a lot of great information about Dylan, but it's not the best organized or most concise biography you'll ever come across (maybe it's the editor who worked on the book's fault [?]). It's also now a bit dated, published in 1986. Clinton Heylin's "Man Behind the Shades" (1991) and Howard Sounes' "Down the Highway" (2001) are both more up-to-date and easier reads. Greil Marcus' "Invisible Republic" (1997)does a better job of placing Dylan's music in a historical context. "No Direction Home" is a sprawling collection of interview excepts, biography, oral history, the author's personal recollections of Dylan, musicology, and literary criticism that never really connects the dots, but there is a lot of great information for the experienced or semi-experienced Dylan enthusiast to wade through ... Read more

Product Description
Fifty first-person accounts of fans who have had a closeencounter (usually face-to-face) with Bob Dylan, one our mostenigmatic and reclusive public figures and the 20th Century's mostinfluential songwriter.

The contributors come from around the world, and some even haverecognizable names, such as mandolinist David Grisman, journalist NatHentoff, the late Hall-of-Fame pitcher Jim "Catfish" Hunter, rapperKurtis Blow, and noted groupie/author Pamela Des Barres. Collectively,their stories provide compelling, sometimes amusing, insight intoDylan and his long and complicated relationship with his legion ofdevoted admirers.

The book also includes 24 photographs, many of them previouslyunpublished images of Dylan. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Interesting and fun, could have been better.
Bob Dylan fans will enjoy this book. It holds several surprises with some of its well-known contributors. If you have ever met Bob Dylan you will recognize yourself in some of these reminiscences. Others are a little eccentric, and a few illustrate the obsession with which some fans will carry out their desire to meet, touch, encounter Bob Dylan. For the most part, the recollections are limited by the insights, or lack of them, presented by the writers. The editing is very hands off, with both benefits and disadvantages to the reader. This is a book that in the hands of a more resourceful and perceptive editor could have been a lot better than it is. Yet, it's worthwhile.

fan's recollections, fan's delights
Tracy Johnson has done a very good job of finding a variety of diverse people in her compilation of Dylan fans and the stories they tell of meeting, seeing and being inspired by Bob Dylan. Certainly a must read for any Dylan fan.

Interesting if you're a fan
As the greatest - not to mention most important, in every sense of the word - songwriter of the 20th century, Bob Dylan has, unsurprisingly, inspired a legion of devoted fans. Although every major artist has their share of obsessives and fanatics, the ones who follow Dylan have far surpassed mere "groupie" or "hard-core" status: they reside in a legendary status - even mythological. Some of these, branded "Dylanologists", have achieved a level of notoriety compared in a small way with the artist himself. Many fans know of the famous (or infamous) "Garbologist", A. J. Weberman, who even went so far as searching through the dumpsters outside Bob's house for his baby's soiled diapers - allegedly looking for clues to obscure lyrics, and even conjuring up a paranoid fantasy conspiracy that the government was out to get Dylan for raising sentiment against the Vietnam War, and that Dylan knew it, and alluded to it, through subtle messages in his songs. Bob Dylan's history is filled with many other such characters and ancedotes. Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that Dylan is a very mysterious character, and known for his ambivalence towards fans. Securing a personal meeting with Dylan is a difficult thing to do, and those fans who do manage it are held in a kind of revered awe by the faithful. This book is a record of such encounters. There are many books available on Dylan (certainly more serious and scholarly works than on any other rock musician), but this is just about the only one where the air of pretentious intellectual refinement is removed, and you hear it straight from the mouth of the ones who really matter: the fans. These are the fans personal reminisces of meeting Dylan, or otherwise coming close in some way. These are the normal, everyday fans - people like you and me (although there are certainly a few obsessives - such as the man who keeps a "Dylan shrine" in his house), although there are a handful of semi-famous names in here as well. The accounts range from revelatory (people being personally invited backstage by Dylan, a record store employee purporting not to know who he is, a man who retrieves Dylan's stolen cap); to hilarous (a fan who meets Dylan in a cafe and asks him a strange question, a meeting between Dylan and a fan in an alley before a concert), to just plain boring and inane. You are hearing these recollections as told straight from the fans - granted, then, the prose is often crude, and some stories are better than others. This, then, is a book you'll want if you're looking for personal, often funny, sometimes touching stories from the fans themselves - rather than pseudo-intellectual exposition from so-called "rock scholars." I would not rate this as an essential Dylan book: rather I reccommend it if you are a fan and want a slightly more personal and unique book about Dylan than you normally find.

Song and Dance Man
Ms. Johnson has done a wonderful job in illustrating the fanatic nature of Dylan's fans combined with the reclusive nature of their hero.As the lights have burned ever brightly on Dylan in the latter stages of his career, Bob has increasingly receded into the shadows, content to let his son Jabob bask in the spotlight for the family.This book, though, shows the connection that Dylan's fans still feel towards him, whether they have met him or just been touched by him in some small way.I especially enjoyed the story of the young man who had Dylan autograph his tattoo of Bob's likeness.

Whether you are a Dylan fanatic or just a reader who enjoys touching anecdotes, this book is for you.It is refreshing to see that not every entertainment star has forgotten that it is the fans that make or break your career.Buy the book.You'll love it.

Another Side of Bob Dylan
Let's face it:Bob can be a jerk to his fans.But then again, it's got to be hell being accosted by obsessive fans everywhere you go.If you've read some of the Dylan biographies out there you have an idea of Dylan's life and work.This book gives you a glimpse into what it's like to be a Dylan fan.Some of the accounts are more engaging than others and some don't even involve meeting Dylan at all.I wish they'd left those out...Anyway, this is interesting but very brief.You can read the whole thing in a day and I think there are just as many stories out there (for free) on the internet at the many Dylan sites. ... Read more

Product Description
Previously published as Invisible Republic and already considered a classic of modern American cultural criticism, The Old, Weird America is Greil Marcus's widely acclaimed book on the secret music (the so-called "Basement Tapes") made by Bob Dylan and the Band while in seclusion in Woodstock, New York, in 1967--a folksy yet funky, furious yet hilarious music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it was more than thirty years ago.

As Mark Sinker observed in The Wire: "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." But the country mapped out in this book, as Bruce Shapiro wrote in The Nation, "is not Woody Guthrie's land for made for you and me . . . It's what Marcus calls 'the old, weird America.'" This odd terrain, this strange yet familiar backdrop to our common cultural history--which Luc Sante (in New York magazine) termed the "playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes"--is the territory that Marcus has discovered in Dyaln's most mysterious music. And his analysis of that territory "reads like a thriller" (Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly) and exhibits "a mad, sparkling brilliance" (David Remnick, The New Yorker) throughout. This new edition of The Old, Weird America includes an updated discography.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

The Old, Weird America
This is what seems to be a word-for-word reissue of Marcus's Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, confusingly given a completely different title. In the Author's Note, Marcus says this is the title he originally wanted to give it. I have to say, they still got it wrong. The new subtitle, The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, is an improvement, but still doesn't completely address the main fault with every title and subtitle given so far - the book isn't really about Dylan, and only tangentially about the Basement Tapes. It's just as much about Harry Smith and his Anthology of American Folk Music, and in fact gives probably as much space to the relatively unknown Dock Boggs as it does Dylan or The Band, and it's just as much an attempt to mythologizes history as it is a work of musical criticism.

This isn't necessarily a complaint - one could argue that folk music's primary function is to mythologize history, and Marcus is simply attempting the same thing as the musicians he writes about. Boggs, for example, would make a logical choice for a book with this intention, as there's not that much written about him (especially compared to Bob Freakin' Dylan) and Harry Smith gives in the liner notes and Boggs gives in his own recorded conversations cloak him in both mystery and danger, two of Marcus's defining elements of the "old, weird America."

And this is what's best about the book, and its intentions - Marcus frequently does succeed at his central aim of showing the ominous mythic undercurrents of not just the music of Dylan, The Band, Dock Boggs, or any of the musicians singing of this old, weird America, but also the irony of, for example, civil rights protesters' sense of betrayal when Dylan essentially denounced his leadership of them and took away their mythic prototype, or the eerie forlornness of the Cumberland Gap or North Carolina tar fields that produced the Carter Family, Frank Hutchison, and of course the eminent Boggs.

But the book has its flaws, most of them stemming from the fact that most music critics (besides Marcus, Nick Tosches and Samuel Charters come to mind) the subject and delivery just aren't up to the task of a book-length work. Marcus's impeccable Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock `n' Roll Music is a thematically cohesive collection of meditations on the relationship between fact and fiction, myth and antecedent which works nearly perfectly, mostly because none of the individual pieces runs over 10 pages. The Old, Weird America feels like one of Marcus's less fastidious editors told him to take a related 10-page article and somehow make a book of it, and Marcus decided to fill in the blanks with tired half-metaphorical imagined Americana like "Smithville" (named after Harry Smith - get it?) and "Kill Devil Hills" that he beats into the ground over the last half of the book. (Unlike Tosches, though, at least Marcus spares his audience the boring and pretentious details of his own personal and professional life to make his word count.)

NOTE: In a strange case of inverted logic, the most solid critical research is provided in the 40-page discography at the back of the book, with some revealing background research on both Dylan and the folk songs mentioned in the body of the book. Dylan and American folk music aficionados looking for something they don't know already will probably want to pick up this volume just for those last pages.

The Good News: You'll Fall Asleep Before Page Two
This book starts as bombastic, bloated, unintelligible drivel--and goes downhill from there. The best thing about it is the cover. The second best thing is that it is biodegradable, so it won't hurt the environment when you toss it into the trash, where it belongs.

Pseudo-Intellectual Myth-Symbol Twaddle
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
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
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Previously published as Invisible Republic and already considered a classic of modern American cultural criticism, The Old, Weird America is Greil Marcus's widely acclaimed book on the secret music (the so-called "Basement Tapes") made by Bob Dylan and the Band while in seclusion in Woodstock, New York, in 1967--a folksy yet funky, furious yet hilarious music that remains as seductive and baffling today as it was more than thirty years ago.

As Mark Sinker observed in The Wire: "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." But the country mapped out in this book, as Bruce Shapiro wrote in The Nation, "is not Woody Guthrie's land for made for you and me . . . It's what Marcus calls 'the old, weird America.'" This odd terrain, this strange yet familiar backdrop to our common cultural history--which Luc Sante (in New York magazine) termed the "playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes"--is the territory that Marcus has discovered in Dyaln's most mysterious music. And his analysis of that territory "reads like a thriller" (Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly) and exhibits "a mad, sparkling brilliance" (David Remnick, The New Yorker) throughout. This new edition of The Old, Weird America includes an updated discography.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

The Old, Weird America
This is what seems to be a word-for-word reissue of Marcus's Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, confusingly given a completely different title. In the Author's Note, Marcus says this is the title he originally wanted to give it. I have to say, they still got it wrong. The new subtitle, The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, is an improvement, but still doesn't completely address the main fault with every title and subtitle given so far - the book isn't really about Dylan, and only tangentially about the Basement Tapes. It's just as much about Harry Smith and his Anthology of American Folk Music, and in fact gives probably as much space to the relatively unknown Dock Boggs as it does Dylan or The Band, and it's just as much an attempt to mythologizes history as it is a work of musical criticism.

This isn't necessarily a complaint - one could argue that folk music's primary function is to mythologize history, and Marcus is simply attempting the same thing as the musicians he writes about. Boggs, for example, would make a logical choice for a book with this intention, as there's not that much written about him (especially compared to Bob Freakin' Dylan) and Harry Smith gives in the liner notes and Boggs gives in his own recorded conversations cloak him in both mystery and danger, two of Marcus's defining elements of the "old, weird America."

And this is what's best about the book, and its intentions - Marcus frequently does succeed at his central aim of showing the ominous mythic undercurrents of not just the music of Dylan, The Band, Dock Boggs, or any of the musicians singing of this old, weird America, but also the irony of, for example, civil rights protesters' sense of betrayal when Dylan essentially denounced his leadership of them and took away their mythic prototype, or the eerie forlornness of the Cumberland Gap or North Carolina tar fields that produced the Carter Family, Frank Hutchison, and of course the eminent Boggs.

But the book has its flaws, most of them stemming from the fact that most music critics (besides Marcus, Nick Tosches and Samuel Charters come to mind) the subject and delivery just aren't up to the task of a book-length work. Marcus's impeccable Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock `n' Roll Music is a thematically cohesive collection of meditations on the relationship between fact and fiction, myth and antecedent which works nearly perfectly, mostly because none of the individual pieces runs over 10 pages. The Old, Weird America feels like one of Marcus's less fastidious editors told him to take a related 10-page article and somehow make a book of it, and Marcus decided to fill in the blanks with tired half-metaphorical imagined Americana like "Smithville" (named after Harry Smith - get it?) and "Kill Devil Hills" that he beats into the ground over the last half of the book. (Unlike Tosches, though, at least Marcus spares his audience the boring and pretentious details of his own personal and professional life to make his word count.)

NOTE: In a strange case of inverted logic, the most solid critical research is provided in the 40-page discography at the back of the book, with some revealing background research on both Dylan and the folk songs mentioned in the body of the book. Dylan and American folk music aficionados looking for something they don't know already will probably want to pick up this volume just for those last pages.

The Good News: You'll Fall Asleep Before Page Two
This book starts as bombastic, bloated, unintelligible drivel--and goes downhill from there. The best thing about it is the cover. The second best thing is that it is biodegradable, so it won't hurt the environment when you toss it into the trash, where it belongs.

Pseudo-Intellectual Myth-Symbol Twaddle
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
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
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. ... Read more