Who Is That Man?: In Search of the Real Bob Dylan

by David Dalton

Now in paperback and with a new foreword, a kaleidoscopic look at the many faces of Bob Dylan, legendary folk singer-songwriter and winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.For almost half a century, Bob Dylan has been a primary catalyst in rock's shifting sensibilities. Few American artists are as important, beloved, and endlessly examined, yet he remains something of an enigma. Who, we ask, is the "real" Bob Dylan? Is he Bobby Zimmerman, yearning to escape Hibbing, Minnesota, or the Woody Guthrie wannabe playing Greenwich Village haunts? Folk Messiah, Born-Again Bob, Late-Elvis Dylan, Jack Fate, or Living National Treasure? In Who Is That Man? David Dalton--cultural historian, journalist, screenwriter, and novelist--paints a revealing portrait of the rock icon, ingeniously exposing the three-card monte games he plays with his persona.Guided by Dalton's cutting-edge insights and myth-debunking point of view, Who Is That Man? follows Dylan's imaginative life, integrating actual events with Dylan's words and those of the people who know him most intimately. Drawing upon Dylan's friends and fellow eyewitnesses--including Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Stampfel , Larry "Ratso" Sloman, Eric Andersen, Nat Hentoff, Andrew Oldham, Nat Finkelstein, and others--this book will provide a new perspective on the man, the myth, and the musical era that forged them both.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction, Journalism

372 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know, Dalton is a great rock critic. I did learn a few things from it, but I did not like his writing style. Just listen to the music.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Dalton follows a familiar pattern in weighting his book toward the Dylan of the '60s into the mid-'70s, which undercuts the author's desire to riff on each of Dylan's albums and explore its impact on his audience and American music, while probing Dylan's life for clues to "the Real Bob Dylan." Dalton makes clear that the search his subtitle invokes is futile: what we call "Dylan" is "a multiphrenic, polymorphous, composite entity" generated by a human being who remains fundamentally mysterious. The man and his genius are beyond analysis. This reading produces an unfortunately corollary: "To judge whether a specific song, album, or performance by Dylan is critically good or bad is beside the point," saith Dalton. By placing Dylan beyond the reach of time and space, by seeing him as a mythological figure like Homer or Shakespeare, Dalton frees himself to praise and blame songs, albums, and performance on the basis of little more than personal taste. And in the end he gets us no closer to understanding either the biographical Dylan or the mythological Dylan.

What Dalton does very well is to show how Dylan's music and persona stimulated a range of social/psychological tendencies that were either latent or weakly expressed in American culture. Chief among these were the disaffection and rage against the failure of the country to live up to its historical promise. Where was life? Where was liberty? Where was happiness (though all the Founders promised was the right to pursue it)? Where was the "more perfect union" envisioned by Lincoln? After two World Wars, a Great Depression, a brutal waste of blood and treasure in Korea, and an ongoing slaughter of ideals in Vietnam, America was both the most powerful nation on earth and a spiritually exhausted, creatively defiled place. Dylan saw all this and expressed it for my particular generation. It's a story Dalton tells with an insider's savvy and an aging-hipster style that makes the book a lot of fun to read—even if he's too often in love with his own cleverness and too often moved to drop names like a bad cook over-spicing the broth.

There's only one way in which Dalton's book actually fails. It fails to deal seriously with the quality of Dylan's work since 1997's Time Out of Mind, including songs that didn't make it onto a formal album, such as "Blind Willie McTell". (Sean Wilentz brings passion and insight into his discussion of this particular song in Bob Dylan in America Bob Dylan in America.) I'm waiting for someone to come along who can wrestle with the superb later phase of Dylan's music, from "Love & Theft" through Tempest. It will probably take someone with two generations or more personal distance from the 1960s to do the subject justice, but it ought to be done. Dylan has done us the favor of marginalizing himself as a cultural force, and that shift—I think of it as his divorce from the capital "M" Media and the more venal trends in the music business—has freed him to create ever stranger, more more revelatory songs. Let's talk about that now, ok? Now that David Dalton has given us the last word on Dylan the icon.

[Carol Storm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant book, but more a critical study than a conventional autobiography. Don't commit to it unless you're a lifelong fan with six months to spend deciphering all the allusions and absorbing all the insights.

[Jaime (Twisting the Lens) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of Dylan’s early work gave rise to the sub genre of folk that came to be known as “protest music,” and Dylan was the crown prince of protest, even as he rejected the title. But soon, Dylan turned up the color dial and the monochrome slid away. He began to write songs filled with imagery, tunes, dream sequences, and word play, and vocal inflection that changed the world, not just of music, but the world itself.

It is into that world that David Dalton takes the reader. From the middle-class Bobby Zimmerman to the twenty year old folk-singing hobo named Bob Dylan, to the enigmatic pied piper who mystified and enthralled those who would hear his words and see his vision. Dalton takes us from those traditional sounding folk songs that rolled off Dylan’s tongue with such ease and poignancy, to the marriage of surreal imagery and wrenching emotion with lyrics that can truly be called poetry.
____________________________________

For the much longer full review, please visit: http://twistingthelens.wordpress.com

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

By becoming the consumate performance artist of the past 50 years, Bob Dylan more than any artist of his generation has invited the question that is the title of this book. He's a fascination beyond his artistic output. Ultimately, though, at least for me, the persona is much less interesting than the work. Depending on the biographer Dylan is tragically screwed up, a pretty nice guy with normal faults, a young schmuck, a generous friend . He's a paranoid speed-freak, a religious fanatic, a civil rights crusader, a little boy lost, a womanizing cad. Contains multitudes - amen.

David Dalton adds an interesting volume to the creaking Dylan shelf, comes up with lots of new gossip entertainingly written, interesting recording studio tidbits, and generally avoids over analyzing lyrics in order to prove a phantasmagoric point - the downfall of many Dylan biographers. The book is a breeze, and it's fun.

Dylan sums it up himself (as usual,) "Sometimes the "you" in my songs is me talking to me. Other times I can be talking to somebody else....It's up to you to figure out who's who. A lot of times it's "you" talking to "you." The "I" like in "I and I" also changes. It could be I or it could be the "I" who created me. And also it could be another person who's saying "I." When I say "I" right now, I don't know who I'm talking about." Rumsfeld must have studied with this guy.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding. My first Dylan book, I've long struggled with Dylan because so much of the brilliance is mixed in with mediocre grating songs. This book - which is peppered with superb insightful lines most of which I've unfortunately forgotten - is by a cultural contemporary who lived the sixties and knew the players, he even met Dylan in that era although he was more of the Warhol crowd. Dalton cuts to the essence of Dylan, it's like a reduced sauce of all that id most intersting about the man as well as most of the biographical facts that you'd expect from a biography. But it's the essence I like, it makes me realise how much I enjoy good rock writing where the clear enthuiasm and knowledge of the writer shines through. The presence of industrial quantities of speed explain much of Dylans jangled up early and mid-sixties output. The perspective of a Warholian like Dalton was interesting and how Dylan was more like the abstract expressionists, macho artist as lone-genius superman vs the whacky Warhol post modern vision where nothing is as it seems. The story of Dylan and Warhol facing off in the Factory is superbly well realised. Was fascinated to learn that Desire is his best selling album and was co-written with theatre guy Jacques Levy - who even wrote most of the lyrics! So interesting that an album so wildly succesful was co written, Dylan's impatient recording technique with session musicians served him well in the early-mid sixties but his you can't help wish he'd slowed down a bit over the later albums and upped the quality a bit. I'm still irritated by seeing him in concert in the 1990s and hearing him warbling what sounded like bad karaoke versions of his songs. Okay you wrote All Along the Watchtower but how dare you murder it like that?! Amphetamines are described as a "Goblins Gift" which I thought was brilliant.

Warhol on Dylan:

'Warhol's attitude toward Dylan was dismissive (as it was to most people). "Dylan," said Warhol, "was never really real-he was just mimicking real people and the amphetamine made it come out magic. With amphetamine he could copy the right words and make it sound right. But that boy never felt a thing [laughs]. I just never bought it."'

[Thor Gardarsson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the Swedish translation. Terribly difficult to find the energy to read this book. I picked it up in the fall of 2016 to learn more about Bob Dylan ahead of the novel prize ceremony, but feel like the only way to enjoy it would have been if I was an expert on his music and life already. The writing was also very scattered and repetitive, not at all enjoyable for me

[Mattc · Rating 3 out of 5]

the author states in chapter one that dylan talks about buddy holly during his 1991 lifetime achievement grammy acceptance speech, but that is incorrect; dylan talked about holly during the 1998 grammy acceptance speech for time out of mind. it is surprising to me that an error like this is not caught during the proofreading process.

later in the book the author references the 'hard rain' concert in texas. only, this concert was in colorado.

a couple of easily-identifiable (to dylan fans) factual errors made it through the proofreaders i guess.

the book tries to address the question 'who is bob dylan?' and does a decent job of doing so. still, no groundbreaking assertions are presented and nothing is revealed.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fun, hip read that focuses on Dylan's hipness and amazing artistry, rather than on tawdry details about his relationships, sex life, and the like. I especially liked the chapters on "inside bob's brain" (about his mostly unviewed films "Eat the Document" and "Renaldo and Clara") and about him performing for and meeting Pope John Paul II. I loved the hip and sometimes irreverent drawings. A real breeze of a book, I read it in a day or two. Great fun.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my god this was torture. The concept of the book intrigued me but the writing style and the assumptions of Dylan's character were just too much. Every sentence was a convoluted mixture of words. You had no idea where they were going and often they didn't go anywhere relevant.

[AmmaLinda · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Barbaric yawp".
David, I give you a "D" and that's being generous.

[Meleya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I drug my way through this one. I learned a few things but I was hoping it read like a story but it read more like an encyclopedia.

[Steve Lane · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book reads like one continuous liner note.

[Sparrow .]

The title is marginally better than Dalton’s original intention, “Inside Bob Dylan’s Brain.” Apparently some friend of the author literally handed him a CAT scan of Bob’s cranium. That’s the problem with having a big-time publisher like Hachette; they make you change your title. (It’s never happened to me, though I’ve published 10 books.)

The title problem reflects a larger conundrum: how can one summarize Dylan? It’s like describing in one sentence every Frisbee ever produced.

Dalton follows the Joni Mitchell Thesis, that the enigmatic Bob Dylan we know is a fraudulent construction of Robert Allen Zimmerman (who no longer exists – Dylan legally changed his name). This is most true of the original Bob Dylan, who grew up in the Minnesota middle-class and arrived in New York City with tales of his itinerant life as a carnival roustabout, freight train-hopper, fruit picker, etc. But what about his conversion to Christianity? Was that a stunt? Or the Never Ending Tour (which seems to have ended)? Or “It Ain’t Me Babe”? Or “Sarah”? Does his work entirely lack sincerity?

Neither thesis – the Fraudulent Dylan or the Autobiographical Dylan – is entirely convincing. I give up (at least for the moment)! But here’s a sample of Dalton’s prose – chosen at random:

‘This is the iconic image of Dylan – the shades, the polka-dot fencing shirts, the curly Gorgon locks – that fused so mesmerizingly with the music. There he was out there on the street, in some hipster’s loft, at a gypsy’s wedding, out on the D train or riding the double-E. And one of the uncanny things about Dylan is his ability to know how one is going to look in a photograph as it’s being taken, and control the pose.

‘“Very often (too often in my view) I was aware of being photographed. So, from the moment I feel I am in the camera’s eye, everything changes: I begin to pose. I immediately create a different body. I change even before the image,” Roland Barthes wrote.’

[Who knew that those polka-dot shirts were for fencing? And doesn’t Dalton mean “how HE is going to look”? This book is not terribly well edited.]

[Hal · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of an essay than a biography on Dylan, David Dalton a journalist type takes a look at the chameleon nature throughout his years primarily from a perspective of his music. No question of the iconic nature of this man but his aura of mystery and elusiveness is the focus here. Dalton looks at Dylan's seeming evolution but in reality his outright change, again and again. And that chord is what bogs the book down some, the non-stop repetition of trying to define both the man and that changeability.

Biographies often bring out what their subject is going through in their personal life, their triumphs and challenges. This is limited in the book as we don't much on his personal relationships and such things. They are there but Dalton does not explore them in depth. On the other hand the writing flows well and is on balance an entertaining read. We are left with some ideas as to Dylan's motives and peccadilloes, but this troubadour of his generation remains the enigma he seems to want to project.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

America is too big--it has grown to Gargantuan size. However, it is too young, and it never developed an ethic nor a culture to match its size. With no anchoring myth, it suffers from prodigality, longing for a past that (perhaps) never existed. It is, perchance, this longing for a ghost that *is* the very essence of America...the synthetic nature of blues, jazz, and folk music. A longing for a time that we will never get back; forsooth, that maybe never existed.

[Allan Heron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing but ultimately not entirely satisfying book.

The theme is not a new one and is covered in other books alongside other thoughts about Dylan, leaving this tome seem a bit under-developed.

A number of factual errors as well. Inevitable in these kind of books but some of them seemed blindingly obvious.

[Corey Herlevsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read so many entries from the bookcase of Bob that I didn't expect too much from this read. I'm happy to have been proven wrong. "The minute you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was>" There was much fresh stuff and familiar stuff told from fresh angles. I'm glad I read it.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting inside look at the career of Bob Dylan

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75 stars

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tracking the many faces of Bob Dylan.

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a highly readable, comprehensive portrait of Mr. Zimmerman. As a bonus, it's also a fascinating view of the folk/rock music culture in the U.S. from the late 50's on. Dalton is a smart researcher and does an amazing job of writing an honest biography of this elusive legend.

This is definitely a book for Dylan fans and for the rest of you, here's a test. What do you think of this quote from the book? "...Dylan has been one of the great fabulators, both in his life and art. He forms his persona and creates the characters in his songs around the outsider hero, intuitively conflating Robin Hood and Jesse James. To Dylan, all these types - hillbilly, outlaw, rebel, cowboy, outsider - were all really the same character..." If the quote makes you curious and ready to read more, you will love the author (a founding editor of Rolling Stone) and his writing style.

The advance reader copy didn't have all the photos in place so I'll be seeking out the final published version of the book to find out what photos they've included. It appears that there are full-page B&W photos to introduce each chapter which is a great touch.

[Bill Michalek · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know those people that refer to themselves as ‘wacky’ and, when you find yourself talking to them, you can’t help feeling cornered? David Dalton seems like one of those people.

He has a wonderful vocabulary and has a lot to say about Bob, but, after 337 pages. Dalton reveals nothing insightful or new (as far as I can tell, he conducted no interviews). It’s all just his own, meandering thoughts - which he often tries his darnedest to make sound like Dylan lyrics or some stream-of-consciousness answer Bob would’ve given to a reporter’s question.

Much of the commentary on Dylan’s works, the ups and downs of his life and career, his impact on culture and society, and his attitude regarding that impact mimics what other authors have done before (and done better).

In the end, Dalton’s whole thesis amounts to ‘Bob is so awesome; he can do no wrong, and, if you don’t like something Bob does then it just means you don’t get it, man’. This is not hyperbole - actual quote from the book: “…there is no bad Bob.”

Steer clear of this one, and read No Direction Home by Robert Shelton instead.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hook behind this book is the way Bob Dylan has altered his persona through the years. All Dylan biographies have to tread this ground at least a bit -- as Dylan really has been a protean personality. As with the Dylan biography itself, it's probably most interesting when it deals with the 60s, and the coverage of the Jesus years is a bit muddy, as is the discussion of the 90s, and the author doesn't really have a handle on what Bob is doing with himself these days; I felt he didn't really want to take a good look at the modern Dylan, who has settled on some, not greatest hits, but wandering crowd-pleasing performer lately. I very much enjoyed the coverage of the Nashville Skyline/Self Portrait/New Morning years, as this Dylan is particularly opaque to me.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow was I excited to win this book. I must stay that I was a bit dissapointed in though. I found that the stories of Dylan were sort of hints for me to make my own decision as to what happened. I get that Dylan was a hard man to pin down because of his dislike of interviews and his aloofness. I was amazed at how he was so I hate to use the word but stuck on himself but that is how I felt when reading that he did not even speak to people. I found Dylan to really odd however I think that makes him so creative. It took me a while to read this as it did not catch me and I love music and biographies. I am giving this three a three star book rating for that reason.

[Bill Keithler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me awhile before I appreciated that this was not a run of the mill rehash of Dylan's history. It is, in fact, a thoughtful analysis, albeit a speculative one, as most treatises on Dylan must be. The author's descriptions of various of Dylan's personas as he moves through the years of Dylan's career paints a fairly bleak picture of his subject as a victim of both his attempts to hide from the onslaught of fame (which he sought) as well as his own dishonesty. Ad in the end Dylan is portrayed as lonely, living on a bus as he tours endlessly and who finally, despite his artistry, has lost sight of who he really is.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was interested in this book as a long-time casual fan of Bob Dylan's music. I was worried that the book would be too technical or academic and was pleasantly surprised at what a joy it was to read. David Dalton has written a very accessible book about the music, the culture, and the man himself, in all of his various incarnations. He explores the mystique that is Dylan and how Dylan has perpetuated that mystique. The book brought back many memories and led me back to many songs that I had forgotten. I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Dylan or his music.
[I received this book as an advance reader's edition.]

[Deezer42 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty shocking;we all knew of course that Bob was not quite who he never said he was, but to discover the voice of my generation was a chameleon charlatan mountebank who had nothing for contempt for his fans, stole huge chunks of his songs from other writers, was a mean bitter drunk and a womanizateur whose wondrous love songs in no way mirrored his own ambivalence and distrust of
and towards women came as something of a surprise. Give us the rocker who just sleeps with every girl he sees, for fun,any day!Oh, feet of clay, Bob! Feet....Of....Clay... I saw you on ITV in London in 1963 and you were so real to me then, but I was hornswoggledd, like all the rest of us.
James

[Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really weird guy! Never knew he was that weird. However, the talent makes up for it. Did not like to give interviews and no one liked to do the interviews! Could walk into a room and everyone was awestruck. He wouldn't say a word. While performing for the pope he hinted that his favorite song was Blowing In The Wind......ole Bob wouldn't even sing it. He loved Johnny Cash and country music and considered himself a country singer. He once said he was born between the grooves of a 78 (speed) record and he's still there! A legend for sure and one of the best.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book with limited knowledge of Dylan and, while I learned a lot and the book was well written, I wish I had chosen a different biography. After the Blonde on Blonde era, this book became a bit of a eulogy mourning the supposed sharp decline of Dylan’s career. The way the decline was presented seemed to be as much a part of the author’s personal opinion of Dylan’s career as it was of actual fact. But, like I said, I’m new to Dylan. Also, a trivial opinion, but the word “hipster” was used way too much.