Bob Dylan

by Anthony Scaduto

Book by Scaduto, Anthony

Genres: Music

Mass Market Paperback

First published March 6, 1973

Reviews

[Nathan Phillips]

This dog-eared paperback came in the donations one day and piqued my curiosity, mostly because it was published in 1971 which by our standards now is near the dawn of Bob Dylan’s career — it predates the Band tour and the Rolling Thunder Revue, even — but portrayed him at the time as a grizzled veteran. Scaduto was an investigative reporter who attempted to trace Dylan’s early relationships and friendships to establish how he cultivated and crafted his own persona. It’s a persuasive, immersive narrative and I greatly enjoyed it; the only thing I really objected to is that some of Scaduto’s lyrical analysis verges on the absurd, and doesn’t seem to really get at any of what makes Dylan’s work so transcendent. That said, the chapters on the post-motorcycle accident / Basement Tapes / John Wesley Harding / Nashville Skyline period are particularly beautiful, given that some fans are as dismissive of his crooning country-rock period as certain folkies (as documented in the book) were of his rock material. But to be honest, I think one reason I got such a huge kick out of the book was its tactile presence in my hand — the sense that I could tell it had done a lot of traveling since its publication. I liked to imagine some Dylan fan parading across the country on a bus somewhere reading it. It sounds silly but it was a wonderfully tangible piece of a connection I share with the completely unseen and unknown past. Apart from Dylan’s own memoir, this is the best book about the man I’ve read so far. (Next year or later in this one I’ll be tackling many more.) If you haven’t gathered from tidbits I’ve let slip here and there, he has gone from someone I was apprehensive about to (about a decade ago) a favorite artist to (just in the last two years) a subject of outright fascination for me.

[Greg Robinson]

one of the best biographies of Bob Dylan; obviously somewhat dated now but a sound insight into the young Dylan; finishes 1971