u/DYLANBOOKS

I’m looking forward to receiving my copy of Uncut Greats Issue 6: Bob Dylan, which goes on sale today, 26 June.

According to the publishers: “The latest Uncut Greats celebrates Bob Dylan, who turns 85 this June… The full story. The greatest music, ranked. And great Bob stories from Sir Paul McCartney, Elton John, Dave Grohl, Van Morrison and many, many more… “.

(Dylan’s birthday in June? Here’s hoping the editorial is more accurate than the website promo text.)

I’ll be reviewing Uncut Greats on DYLAN BOOKS just as soon as it drops through my letterbox.

Which biography offers fans the best intro to Dylan’s life and work? It’s a subjective call, but here goes…

I discount my three “classics” - by Scaduto, Shelton and Thompson. They’re all invaluable, but they only cover Dylan’s early days.

For a full bio, it’s between three very different contenders - Bell, Heylin, Sounes.

If you’re looking for analysis of Dylan the great artist, you might choose Ian Bell.

If you’re seeking coverage of Dylan’s personal and creative life, Clinton Heylin has the most detail.

If you want a bio of Dylan the man, you might prefer Howard Sounes.

In my recent social media series, the Heylin posts attracted substantially more views and comments than the Bell and Sounes posts.

So, my preference?

I’m interested in Dylan’s work, not his private life - except when it feeds directly into his work. So my pick as the best Bob Dylan biography is Ian Bell’s two volume The Lives of Bob Dylan.

Both versions - Pegasus (USA - NYC) and Mainstream (UK - Edinburgh) - are out-of-print, but used copies are widely available, for peanuts.

Many thanks to readers who’ve commented on these Dylan bio posts and especially those who’ve suggested a few other contenders. I’ll be reviewing some of those here, soon.

Down The Highway by Howard Sounes (2001, updated 2011) is probably the top seller of my three contenders for best Dylan biography.

Sounes’ CV includes biographies of Paul McCartney and Charles Bukowski and a study of English serial killers Fred and Rose West.

His Dylan bio focuses on Dylan the man. He has more information than, say, Bell on the private life, less on the work. Tellingly, the book’s index entries on Dylan are split into four sections - Life, Personality, Relationships and Music Career.

As you’d expect from a diligent, talented journalist, Sounes’ bio is well researched - he interviewed or corresponded with hundreds of people with a Dylan link. And because it’s well written, Down The Highway is an easy read.

Some Dylan disciples might bridle at Sounes referring to his subject throughout as “Bob”; by describing him as a “singer-songwriter”; and by judging him to be “an artist of ALMOST unrivalled importance in modern, popular music” (my capitals).

These petty irritants aside, Down The Highway is an accomplished biography. If your focus is on Dylan the celeb rather than Dylan the artist, Sounes is your best bet.

The Double Life of Bob Dylan by Clinton Heylin (two volumes, 2021 and 2023, 1,356 pages), is the longest, most recent and probably the most discussed of my three contenders for best Dylan biography.

With a dozen Dylan books to his name, Heylin is easily the most published Boblit author and widely regarded as a key Dylan commentator. He was chosen to write Album by Album: A Chronology, the main article in the book of the Dylan box set, The Complete Album Collection Vol. One - official recognition of his status.

The Double Life of Bob Dylan is Heylin’s fourth Dylan bio. His first and best-known, Dylan Behind The Shades (1991), was updated twice, in 2000 and 2011. The Double Life updates and builds on these earlier works by incorporating new information and insights from Heylin’s digging in the Dylan archive in Tulsa and at Sony Records.

Heylin’s strengths are his deep knowledge of all things Dylan, his peerless research and his grasp of detail. His writing style is not universally popular.

The Double Life, covering Dylan the man and Dylan the artist in considerable depth, will appeal especially to the more demanding fan.

Ian Bell’s is probably the least-known of my three contenders for best Bob Dylan biography. His two volumes (2012 and 2013, 1,166 pages), chronicle Dylan’s life and work up to Tempest. They’re based on desk research - he appears to have conducted no interviews or primary research, preferring, instead, to draw on published sources for his narrative.

An experienced journalist, the high-minded Bell was an independent, nuanced thinker and an engaging, waspish writer. His book is packed with insights and perceptive judgments.

Unless it impinges on the work, he largely ignores Dylan’s private life - his USP is ruminating on Dylan’s work. Easy familiarity with the wider culture enables him to contextualise Dylan’s greatness - he’s equally comfortable discussing WB Yeats and TS Eliot, Arthur Rimbaud and Marcel Proust, Federico Fellini and Luis Buñuel, William Blake and Bertolt Brecht.

Bell isn’t afraid of slaying sacred cows (eg the claim that The Beatles influenced Dylan) or reappraising vilified work - Tarantula… Self Portrait… Renaldo and Clara… . : “Tarantula was not an unmitigated failure… It’s not half as good as Dylan must have hoped, and not half as bad as the book’s first reviewers, brutal or gleeful, maintained.”

I agree with many of Bell’s judgments (eg “Desire is not central to his body of work”) and disagree with many others (eg “Planet Waves… thin, underweight, oddly mannered and hesitant”). His assertion that Dylan’s post-1997 work matches any of his 1960s output will ruffle feathers, though it’ll be welcomed by many younger fans. If you enjoy stress-testing your opinions and prejudices, Bell’s your man.

And if you prefer biographies of creative artists to focus on the work rather than the private life, you’ll find Ian Bell’s Dylan bio richly rewarding.

(Ian Bell, The Lives of Bob Dylan, 2 vols, Mainstream, 2012/13, hbk.)

The three “classic” biographies, by Scaduto, Shelton and Thompson, covered here last week, are all first-class.

But they’re limited to the early years of Dylan’s creative journey. Fans wishing to review the totality of his life and work need an up-to-date bio.

Which to choose? In my opinion, there are three contenders - by Ian Bell, Clinton Heylin and Howard Sounes. All three are blockbusters, with Bell and Heylin running to two fat volumes. I’ll be reviewing them here in my next few posts.

There are half a dozen other Dylan bios which didn’t make the cut. I’ll be covering them, too, re-checking their credentials as contenders.

Which biography would YOU recommend to a new fan wanting to learn about Dylan’s life and work?

An inquisitive, probing young Dylan fan gets his break as a writer by trekking to remote small-town Hibbing, MN. He interviews Dylan’s family members, including his mother, Beatty Zimmerman, and brother David. As well as youthful friends and acquaintances, notably Echo Helstrom, widely regarded as Dylan’s early muse, celebrated in Girl from the North Country.

Thompson’s engaging despatches are published first as a series of articles in The Village Voice and then collected into this wonderful book. It’s an informative, enjoyable read by a stylish disciple of the New Journalism.

In a Rolling Stone interview, Dylan speaks well of the book but adds: “That boy… this fellow, Toby… has got some lessons to learn.”

(Toby Thompson, Positively Main Street: An Unorthodox View Of Bob Dylan,
New English Library, 1972, pbk, 158pp.)

It was republished 36 years later, with new, enriching Thompson material - a preface and a long, revelatory interview, including photos he took on his first Hibbing trip. A delightful book - adds value to the original. Positively Main Street: Bob Dylan in Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2008, pbk, 215pp.

Robert Shelton’s No Direction Home is outstanding, delivering unparalleled coverage of 1961-1977, the first quarter of Dylan’s creative life. Shelton was Dylan’s first media apostle and hung out with him frequently, interviewed him and his family, Rotolo, Baez and virtually everyone else. So his peerless book is almost officially authorised.

In two revised editions, Elizabeth Thomson has added previously unpublished material, edited out a few below par sections, and enriched the text by rich illustration.

(The reel shows: the original, Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, New English Library, 1986, hbk; Elizabeth Thomson and Patrick Humphries’ revised, updated edition of 2011; and Elizabeth Thomson’s copiously illustrated edition of 2021). They’re all different and all recommended.

Anthony Scaduto’s Bob Dylan is essential - authoritative, insightful and well-written. Scaduto interviewed Dylan and many contemporaries. Dylan critiqued Scaduto’s first draft and generally approved.

The landmark biography (1971) confirmed what many fans had been gradually figuring out - that Dylan was a generational talent, towering above his rockpop contemporaries.

Complementing the bio with transcripts of research interviews, The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talkin’ Early Bob Dylan, edited by Stephanie Trudeau, Scaduto’s partner, was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2022.

(Reel shows: Anthony Scaduto, Bob Dylan, Abacus, 1972, pbk, 280pp, and 1973 and 1996 reprints.)

Have you read Where The Music Had To Go by Jim Windolf? If so, what do you think of it?

Dylan and the Fab Four clearly influenced each other. I’m not a big Beatles fan, though I appreciate their importance and particularly like John Lennon. So I’ve delayed buying this, and before shelling out, I’d value your opinion.

Thanks, in anticipation.

(Video shows the US edition published by Simon & Schuster and the UK edition from White Rabbit.)

YES - essential:
>Lyrics
>Chronicles
>Philosophy

MAYBE - desirable:
>Tarantula

MAYBE LATER - thin:
>Nobel Lecture
>Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric

Colm Larkin’s new book, Dylan Revisited: Busy Being Born (1960-66), examines the singer’s explosive early creativity via a multiplicity of albums, singles, bootlegs (official and otherwise) and radio, film and TV recordings.

For each of the 35 performances documented, it summarises what’s known about their context and, more importantly, evaluates their content.

Dylan Revisited is highly recommended. It will be welcomed by recent and long-standing fans alike.

As listeners to his Dylan Revisited podcast and readers of his blog will already know, Larkin is a diligent, reliable Dylan commentator - an original thinker with sound judgment. The book confirms that he’s also an engaging, stylish writer.

And Dylan Revisited is a handsome artefact. The exquisite front cover image, by Malika Favre, was famously used for the 24 Oct 2016 issue of the The New Yorker, celebrating Dylan’s Nobel Prize. The book’s design, page layout and fonts are impressive.

Several previous books have analysed Dylan’s work in this magical period. My favourite authors are Andy Gill, John Hughes, Todd Harvey and Anthony Varesi. Larkin’s granular assessment of the totality of Dylan’s output complements them, with a different approach.

Dylan Revisited establishes Colm Larkin as a first-class Dylan author. Here’s hoping that he can follow this triumph with companion volumes covering the entirety of Dylan’s catalogue.

(Colm Larkin, Dylan Revisited: Busy Being Born (1960-66), Revisited Press, 2026, pbk, 268pp)

The Philosophy of Modern Song was initially underrated.

I, too, found it underwhelming. With similar content, Theme Time Radio Hour had been more impressive. And it had the bonus of Dylan’s distinctive narration.

But I’d approached the book from the wrong angle - merely as a listener’s guide. While it is, indeed, an expertly curated critique of 66 pop songs, it’s so much more - an engaging collection of thoughtful short essays, wrapped in a handsome, eclectic photo album.

As in Chronicles, Dylan flexes his literary muscles, writing freely, roaming widely, ruminating on all manner of things. Deeply cultured, he has plenty to say about music, film, literature, language, culture, society, human behaviour… . And, once again, he shows that his gift as a wordsmith isn’t limited to songwriting. His chiselled prose is original and relentlessly witty.

The Philosophy of Modern Song is a great read.

(Bob Dylan, The Philosophy Of Modern Song, Simon & Schuster, 2022, hbk, 339pp)

Dylan wrote Tarantula in the mid-1960s. His revolutionary songwriting, culminating in Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, had challenged an audience reared on “Moon in June” pop. Tarantula can be seen as a literary companion piece.

It’s not light reading: you have to work hard. Most readers, mystified, couldn’t stand the pace.

Tarantula’s mix of poetry, prose and letters can best be seen as a rough notebook, chronicling the response of a young, gifted thinker to life’s complexities. The writing is uneven, occasionally striking, occasionally witty.

Critical opinion has been predominantly negative. But the Nobel Prize might be encouraging closer scrutiny. Tarantula could be due a critical reappraisal.

Having failed to finish it several times, I’m about to try again, this time in short sessions. I expect to discover both stimulating and incomprehensible ideas.

Have you read Tarantula? What do you think of it?

(Bob Dylan, Tarantula, Scribner, 2004, pbk, 137pp.)

As a condition of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, Dylan was required to deliver a lecture. It was a chance for him to speak in depth about his enormous body of great work and maybe try explain where it comes from.

Bob Dylan: the Nobel Lecture (Simon & Schuster, 2017, hbk, 23pp) does that, to some extent. Alongside his acceptance speech at the awards ceremony*, the lecture has some delicious insights. But I’d hoped for more.

The bulk of the lecture has Dylan summarising the three books he credits as influences - Moby-Dick, All Quiet On The Western Front and The Odyssey.

I found that slightly disappointing.

To buy or not to buy? If you’re a collector, certainly - it’s a beautiful little artefact. Otherwise, you might prefer to access the complete lecture via the Nobel video on YouTube, with its substantial bonus of Dylan’s trademark narration.

* Bizarrely, it was delivered by the US Ambassador to Sweden. She handles her tough assignment with aplomb. Video on YouTube.