Books for/about - Bob Dylan

Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group
Authors: Michael Gray

ISBN: 0826469337
List Price: $40.00
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Summary: A beautifully written book with mega info and heart & soul too
The previous review is obviously just a deliberate spoiler: it's just plain untrue that Michael Gray's marvellously wide-ranging book doesn't give "Dylan's connections/interactions with artists that influenced him, or background on the scores of former members of Dylan's band." That's EXACTLY what it does - with every single member of all Dylan's bands, whether they were with him in 1965 or on the Never-Ending Tour. Not just that, but there are entries detailing the Dylan connections with dozens and dozens of people who've played on his records or even just turned up and played at a concert encore one night. Everyone from bass player Kenny Aaronson thru to Warren Zevon. And there's tons more kinds of entries here too - Robert Browning to Robert Johnson, the record producers of the key Dylan albums, Bob's films . . . it's a huge book, and not just informative but funny, witty, quirky, surprising - a delight.

Summary: Dylan encyclopedia: heavy on the commentary, light on the facts
Michael Gray should be commended for taking on such a daunting task as cross referencing all things of interest related to Bob Dylan. However, where good detective work and thorough research is required for factual articles, Gray reverts to general knowledge and his own interpretations. I was looking less for essays on Dylan's songs, which weight down this compendium, and more on, say, Dylan's connections/interactions with artists that influenced him, or background on the scores of former members of Dylan's band. Unfortunately, Gray's approach does not follow this vein. This book seems to be a rehashing of his previously released essays and articles on Dylan. I was also surprised and disappointed that Gray felt it necessary to put down most of the artists who have been influenced by Dylan (Springsteen, Bono, even Santana). Rather than explore the connections Dylan has with other artists, Gray either approves of them as worthy matches for Dylan (usually the older blues muscicians) or ridicules them as rock demi-gods who could never measure up to Bobby D. I won't be getting rid of my copy anytime soon, but I found that the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia offered nothing new and plenty that I didn't want.

Summary: One Of The Very Best Bob Dylan Books
There are very few people who could (or should) create something of this scope on Bob Dylan. Michael Gray has an obsessive knowledge of Dylan. Not only is the information here well researched, but you can tell that Gray has lived and breathed this stuff for the last 30 odd years. Gray ably walks the line between other Dylan fanatics like Paul Williams (who gushes about everything) and Clinton Heylin (an amazing writer who may complain too much). Michael Gray obviously has a love for Dylan's work but it doesn't stop him from criticizing when necessary. He has a writing style that is often humorous. What's great about this book is that it is user friendly. You can read a quick couple paragraphs on a particular Dylan album or musician who worked with Bob, or, if you're looking for something a little deeper, a 4 page essay perhaps on Dylan's use of nursery rhymes or the Blues. There's so much in here you'll be reading for months at least.

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Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews

Publisher: Wenner Books
Authors: Jonathan Cott

ISBN: 1932958096
List Price: $23.95
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Summary: Never dull.
Bob Dylan may be one of the most loquacious enigmas of all time. As lovingly presented here by Jonathon Cott, Dylan goes on and on and on to all sorts of interviewers, sometime comedian, sometime huckster, sometime philosoher, sometime preacher, but always fascinating.

Summary: Dylan remains the enigma, even after this book
Let me just say that I am a big Dylan fan, and intruiged by his personality. I loved Dylan's "Chronicles Volume 1" autobiography, even if it did brought about more questions than answers. But then, isn't that the Dylan way?

"Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews" (447 pages) compiles 2 radio interview transcripts (from 1962 and 1963) and 29 interviews (from 1964 to 2004) and the book is a delight to read. Yes, some of the interviews become repetitive, but the overlying themes are two-fold: (1) Dylan never wanted the mantle of "consciousness of an era" thrown on him, and he has worked non-stop to throw off the public at large ever since the late 60s because of it, and (2) despite all he says and does, nobody really, truly can know or understand the man. He plays with the press as he sees fit. Hence, Dylan remains the enigma.

But us Dylan fans have a lot to look forward to: in a few months Dylan will release his first album of new music since 2001's outstanding "Love and Theft", and then of course there is the prospect of the next volume of "Chronicles" (no release date said yet). Meanwhile, Dylan hosts a monthly show on XM sattelite radio, which I've caught a few times, and that also is a delight.

Summary: uneven but well worth the read
This is a must read for serious Dylan fans, even though the interviews reproduced here are uneven. The better ones, from the early and later stages of Dylan's long career, are revealing and philosophical. Many mundane pieces from the long middle period are a bit tendentious -- even tedious at times. Dylan is enigmatic, contradictory, but often quite poetic in explaining his ambivalence about fame and icon status. All in all, well worth the purchase price.

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	The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Authors: Bob Dylan
ISBN: 0743228286 List Price: $45.00 Amazon Price: $28.35 Usually ships in 24 hours Buy this book from amazon.com or from amazon.co.uk	Avg Cusomer Rating: 5 Reviews: Summary: A must for a Dylan fan If you're not a dyed in the wool Dylan fan, move along quickly, as you will feel cheated out of your money. If A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall is on your iPod, get this. (It's far cheaper on Amazon than any brick and mortar store, so get it here.) It is filled with little things that make you say Oooooooo and wow. I looked through it for over an hour before I even read a single page. I even ordered a copy for my EX-husband because he's such a huge fan! Please don't listen to those that say its a waste of money. If you're a fan, its a must. Summary: Wow! Having been a Bob Dylan fan/enthusiast for over 40 years, this scrapbook was a wonderful surprise! I was expecting a fairly simple book... it is anything but. I love the way it is put together. It's an actual "scrapbook", filled with many items of fun and informative memorabilia... very creatively done. For the most part I have been only a collector of the songs of Bob Dylan... the music and the lyrics. All I needed to know about the man was, and still is, in his songs. However, since the realease of 'Chronicles Vol I' and the Martin Scorsese Documentary, 'No Direction Home' I have been searching for more. This scrapbook... what a treat! Summary: Must have for Fans of Dylan or the 60s The book shows a truly unique view of Dylans past and his rise to fame. It is done in a very intimate way and is full of surprizes. The book is very good at making the past come alive with Ticket stubs, autographed album covers, passes to MLK speeches and many other items. Truly a unique book. Summary:

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Chronicles: Volume One (Chronicles)

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Authors: Bob Dylan

ISBN: 0743244583
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Summary: lone pilgrim
Beautifully and maddeningly crafted. This man ain't gonna tell ya what he's all about...how long will it take 'til ya figure that out...
God bless him.

Summary: I was pleasantly surprised!
The thing that really impressed me about Dylan in this book was how non-pretentious he seems to be. In the first few pages, most of the artists & music he mentions isn't very hip or cool (He admits to playing Judy Garland on the jukebox? I had no idea.) Dylan mentions Kerouac through out the entire memoir, and I find it interesting that they both end up becoming icons for generations that they don't really have much in common with.

Dylan does drop a lot of names in the book - artists from the 50's and 60's that I vaguely know, but most of the names went over my head. I checked Wikipedia hoping that someone had outlined all the people he talked about and gave me links to figure out who they were, but no one has done that yet. If someone has the time and energy - it would be great if you'd do that for me - thanks. This is the kind of book you want to read with a pen and paper next to you so that you can write down all the books and artists Dylan says influenced him so that you can be influenced, too. I even tried listening to the Folk Village station on my XM radio a time or two, to see if I could catch any of the groups Dylan talked about - maybe I could appreciate them differently.

When I got half way through and I got to the part where Dylan describes recording the album in great detail, at first I was slightly annoyed because I wanted to know more about Minneapolis and the first years in New York. But as I got through it, I really appreciated the inside view of what it's like to record an album and what happens in the recording studio. Then, happily, Dylan goes back to the beginning. It's also great to know that Dylan wasn't a songwriter right off, but it took him awhile emulating his heroes and borrowing from others until he really found his style. That's very inspirational to other artists of any kind.

I don't consider myself a Bob Dylan fan. I can recognize his influence on music and I quite enjoy the music I do know of his. Reading a memoir and then buying the albums is kind of a backward way of becoming a fan, but I think I'll add a couple of albums to my wish list and see what happens!

Summary: "All I'd ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities."
So Bob Dylan has finally sat down and written his memoirs and Simon & Schuster has published the first volume of same and we all picked it up and read it hungrily and we end up learning... uh... not much that we didn't know already.

Not that we should really be all that suprised. Dylan is usually presented as obfuscating the truth, which is certainly something he has done, does, and will probably continue to do, but the REAL truth of the matter concerning his songwriting, singing, and other musical endeavors (i.e., the things that I would think/hope most people are interested in learning about him) is that he doesn't have a clue. In Bill Flanagan's excellent WRITTEN IN MY SOUL (sadly out of print, but probably available at your local public library), Dylan is quoted as saying, "I can't expound to much on what I'm doing because I really don't have any idea what I'm doing." As I said, Bob has been responsible for his share of BS over the years but I, personally, take this statement at face value. Anyone who writes songs (or novels, or stories, or screenplays, or who paints pictures, or whatever) can tell you that when the REALLY GOOD STUFF comes... it just comes. You have no idea where it came from, what it means, or any of that stuff. You're just glad it came.

I'm aware that I've said very little about CHRONICLES itself. It's great. If you enjoy Dylan's songwriting, odds are you'll like his prose as well. His voice is unique regardless of what medium he's working in - who else could come up with a line like, "If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen." ? I don't think you even have to be a big Dylan fan to get something out of this. It reads fast, as well - I'm kind of a slow reader and I read it cover to cover in about four days. If you've read this far, you're probably interested enough in the book to find it enjoyable.

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Keys To The Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia

Publisher: Billboard Books
Authors: Oliver Trager

ISBN: 0823079740
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Summary: Entertaining, informative, but not definitive yet
Oliver Trager's "Keys To The Rain" is far from the "definitive" Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. As another reader notes, there are errors including some he didn't mention that I'll add here: The original September 1974 New York recording of "If You See Her, Say Hello," re-recorded in Minneapolis for its release on "Blood On The Tracks," was not included on "Biograph" (Trager may be confusing it with "You're A Big Girl Now"), but on "The Bootleg Series, Volume 1-3." Trager also claims Dylan's 1984 "Real Live" failed to make the charts. Not so. It failed to make the top 100, but it did have a brief, albeit dim, blaze of glory in the Billboard Top 200. There are other errors, most of them fairly minor, but their cumulative effect makes one question Trager's reliability too often.

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

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

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

Brian W. Fairbanks

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

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

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

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	Dylan: Visions, Portraits, & Back Pages Publisher: DK ADULT Authors: Mark Blake
ISBN: 0756617189 List Price: $30.00 Amazon Price: $18.90 Usually ships in 24 hours Buy this book from amazon.com or from amazon.co.uk	Avg Cusomer Rating: 4 Reviews: Summary: Great book, thoroughly enjoyed Been a Dylan fan for a long time and this book came pretty close to answering the questions that have popped up over the years, you know questions you just can help asking...like what was Sara like and what happened to the marriage. None of my business but I can't help wondering. I thought the pictures were excellent and think if you're a Dylan fan, you'll like it too! Summary: Dylan: Visions, Portraits, & Back Pages This is a superb book. For those, like me, eager for more information on the ever-enigmatic Dylan, this is the book to read. It is a montage of recollections from musicians/photographers/friends, etc. over the years, which is about as close as one is likely to get to a true picture of Dylan's life to date. It is a bit confusing because the essays often cover similar periods of time, but from different eyes, but this also increases the veritas. The chronology also becomes a bit jumbled, but that is inevitable in this sort of format. I highly recommend the book if you are a Dylan fan. To my knowledge, there is nothing else like it "out there." Summary: The vintage photos and stories are outstanding presentations, packed with color and life Bob Dylan's music reflected an entire generation's hopes and dreams and he's received extensive treatment in coverages which continue to this day, but Mojo's survey in Dylan: Visions, Portraits, And Back Pages is something different: a collection of powerful writings from the world's best rock journalists from Mojo magazine who work together to provide a comprehensive set of insights on his life. Stories behind songs and albums pair with previously unseen photos to shed new light on his personality and music. The vintage photos and stories are outstanding presentations, packed with color and life. Summary:

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Forever Young: Photographs of Bob Dylan

Publisher: Da Capo Press
Authors: Douglas R. Gilbert Dave Marsh

ISBN: 0306814811
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Summary: A young Dylan captured from 1954
Rock fans will relish Douglas R. Gilbert and Dave Marsh's FOREVER YOUNG: PHOTOGRAPHS OF BOB DYLAN (0306814811, $29.95): over seventy candid photos of a very young-looking Bob Dylan are the focus, taken by an also-young photographer Dan Gilbert back in 1964 on assignment for Look magazine. Gilbert photographed a surprisingly open young Dylan relaxed among fellow musicians at his home, following him from Greenwich Village to the Newport Folk Festival and catching him before he underwent a striking set of changes and made himself inaccessible to media. A unique portrait makes this a real, rare winner and a treat for Dylan fans used to very studied photos.

Summary: AMAZING
I LOVE BOB DYLAN====TO ME HE IS THE ICON HE WANTS TO BE TO HIS AUDIENCES===NOT THE ONE I WANT HIM TO BE----DID I SAY HE IS THE BEST.

Summary: Pass on this one...
I've seen much better photos/articles on Dylan and would not suggest this particular work. I will be selling my copy in the used section.

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Lyrics: 1962-2001

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Authors: Bob Dylan

ISBN: 0743228278
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Summary: Poet Laureate of the a generation
A wonderfully organized book documenting the lyrics of Bob Dylan over the first 40 years of his career. I can't wait for the sequal. A priceless collection.

Summary: Everyone who is a fan of Dylan should have one
This book on the complete lyrics of Bob Dylan is far worth every penny you will pay for it. It is so beautifully bound, and so easy to read these fantastic lyrics that Dylan has written through his life. However, all of Bob Dylan's songs with the Traveling Wilburys are not included here, but just take a look at what is here, and you will probably forget what is missing.

Summary: All the evidence anyone could need...
to conclude that Dylan is deserving of all of the accolades he recieves.
A note regarding a previous reviewer:
IF this is the real A.J. Weberman, the same fool that harrassed Dylan's family in a craven attempt to achieve fame by invading and insinuating himself into Dylan's life, I suggest you move on with your own pathetic life and give it up already. Nobody cares what you think.

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