Search for Books on Amazon.com - Bob Dylan

• Chronicles: Volume One (Chronicles)
  Expect the unexpected! But then what else would you expect from Dylan?
  
  There are enough reviews here to tell you what this book is and what it isn't. But the unexpected result for me was that, after reading about how Dylan got into songwriting, how he learned and developed his craft, how he approached at least one recording session, I had my writer's block broken.
  
  There's just something refreshing, and liberating, about the way Dylan thinks. It's also nice to know that the grand-master of songwriting has had his own dry spells.
  
  I'm connected to a local songwriter's community that consists mainly of twenty-somethings. As the aging hippie in the crowd, I think I can safely say that Dylan has a lot to offer these promising writers and performers. They may not be as familiar with the context of Woody Guthrie, Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, and the early Sixties Greenwich Village scene, but what Dylan says about his craft transcends time and is just as applicable today as it was when I attempted my first songs way back then.
  
  In closing I'll add that reading this fascinating volume raises as many questions as it answers. To be honest, I never did understand the number system he tried to incorporate into his singing and guitar playing, but it was interesting to read just the same.
  
  Thanks, Bob, for inspiring me to write songs back when I was young, and thanks for helping me break through this longtime block.
  
  
• Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews
  The early interviews are best. Dylan was pretty outrageous when putting on the interviewer. There is quite a bit of repetitive information in the writer's introduction prior to the interviews.
  
  
• The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia
  I have only checked some of the entries in this book, but found that they are all seriously wanting.
  
  The Eric Clapton entry is abysmal, even getting the artist's birth date wrong at the outset. This is merely the first of many fundamental errors in the entry. Surely it is not too much to expect that a book which grandly titles itself an "encyclopaedia" could at least get the name of Clapton's greatest album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", correct. This is not nit-picking, for it goes to basic professional standards and the diligence and trustworthiness of the author. More substantively, the author misses the major connection between Clapton and Dylan entirely. As everyone who knows anything at all about Clapton knows, that connection is the Band. When Clapton heard the bootleg of the Basement Tapes, he decided to finish with Cream. While he was in the biggest band in the world, Clapton decided that the Band was the best band in the world, and he broke from his US Cream tour to take a trip to Woodstock specially to meet up with Bob and the boys. It's not as though this history is in any sense obscure. Clapton still raves about his experience on first hearing the sound of the Band whenever he is interviewed. The most cursory research could not fail to pick this up - even Clapton's latest (2006) album is dedicated to Rick Danko and Richard Manuel. I mean to say ...
  
  There is much else that is factually incorrect about the Clapton entry, and even more that is objectionable to a fair-minded reader. But, in case you think this is special pleading on behalf of Clapton, let's take the entry on Keith Richards, which is too silly for words. To stick to the factual material, "Nanker-Phelge" was not a credit used for Keith's songs, or Jagger-Richards songs, as Gray claims. The credit referred specifically to songs written by the whole band. If you still think I am being too hard, Gray says that Keith used the singular surname "Richard" at the request of Andrew Loog Oldham, "and he didn't assert himself and change it back until the early 1980s". The words "until the early 1980s" are italicised for emphasis. As it happens, my vinyl copy of the Rolling Stones' classic "Exile on Mainstreet", released and purchased in 1972, says the guitarist is "Richards". Getting the facts hopelessly wrong about the very name of the world famous guitarist in the greatest - or, at least, most well-known - rock 'n' roll band in a book that supposes itself to be an "encyclopaedia" is stupid enough; compounding the embarrassing error with emphasis to force a gratuitous point is an abomination. Again, as with Clapton and so much of this bad book, my objections to the copy are stronger than the concern over the cavalcade of rudimentary factual blunders. The script on Richards mainly comprises impressions based on the author's own discretionary responses to photos of the Stones, and they are weirdly improbable responses at that. The relationship between Richards and Dylan is as rich as it is complex ... and Gray misses it entirely.
  
  I could go on (and on, and on), but for ease of reading have limited myself to correcting only some of the book's most plainly elementary howlers about just two of the great artists it pretends to deal with. In sum, this book is definitely not something that could even be remotely called an "encyclopaedia". It would be more accurately titled, "My idiosyncratic but self-amusing impressions associated with Bob Dylan in aphabetical order, based on superficial observations and extremely sloppy research".
  
  
  
• Bob Dylan: Stolen Moments
  
  
• The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966
  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.
  
  
• Tarantula
  Dylan is by far the greatest songwriter of all-time and perfectly deserving of a noble prize in literature if ever one is bestowed upon him. However this stream of consciousness book is pure crap. It will be a highly collectible book if you have the first edition, first printing in good conditon in about 50 years. Till then read Lyrics 1961-2001 or Chronicles vol.1 instead.
  
  
• Lyrics: 1962-2001
  Wow, it's hard to believe that Weberman guy is still around, and still has nothing better to do than harrass Dylan (even when he's not looking). I imagine some old, burnt out hippie in a dark cellar shouting out obscenities and such like... burning Dylan records in the fireplace...
  
  Anyway, as to the book, I admire it for what it is, a collection of musical poetry. It's as good as it gets... I find that its nice at time to take a look at an artist for his art. This is a lot like the recent "Complete Calvin and Hobbes" or other similar compendiums... you get to take a look at the art, the way it was produced and released to the public in its final form. No frills, just the workmanship. Whatever's left, you've got to put in yourself.
  
  If one's looking for the life behind the art, Chronicles, Volume One is the most well-regarded, easy and interesting way to start (as it is the approved version of Bob Dylan's life, written by himself, in the way he wanted to tell it). Another interesting book is Dylan on Dylan, a set of essential Dylan interviews. This one's a little more difficult to stay with, but it has a good selection of Dylan interviews spanning the important periods of his career.
  
  
• Dylan: Visions, Portraits, & Back Pages
  Besides Chronicles and the Bob Dylan Scrapbook, this is by far one of the best books about Bob Dylan I have seen. It has a whole bunch of information that I haven't seen anywhere else and the pictures are amazing. I absolutley love this book and bought it just because of the reviews that I read on Amazon so I thought that I would praise this book as well because it truly is great.
  
  
• Keys To The Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia
  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
  
  
• Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
  Although this is not a new book, I just recently got around to reading it - not coincidentally, after getting a copy of Bob Dylan's "Lyrics" and going nearly nuts tring to find a Dave Van Ronk songbook - there isn't one! As I read through it (almost hypnotically over a three day period) I realized that it was filling in many gaps in information I had (or thought I had) about the four key people David Hajda focuses on in this amazingly estute, descriptive, personal and revealing bio-social-history. Joan Baez, her sister Mimi Farina, Mimi's husband, Richard (Remember: "Been Down So Long It's Beginning To Look Like Up To Me?") and Bob Dylan (nee Zimmerman)were more than 'folk singers.' Dylan's protestations to the contrary, they cut a path through and into the fibre of the American consciousness in the early 1960's. Though Richard died you and Mimi followed just a few years ago, I think they would all agree that this is one heck of a good read!
  
  That being said, it is important to remember that any history is the one that is seen and described by the historian - with his/her own eyes and through the lense of their own experience. Thus, the title of this review. Hajda has written what I believe to have been the case - with details so well developed that it is possible to get the feeling of being right there, in the coffee-house or in the cafe or in the room where the events and moments in the lives of these people are described. I wasn't there - so I don't know for sure to what degree the events have been elaborated or fictionalized - but they sure DO fit well with what I wouuld like to believe happened.
  
  The character of each person is not only described and discussed, but elaborated and painted by scenes, painted in much detail with words - they are painted by their actions. The book also includes a nice (but frustratingly limited) collection of black and white photos from the times involved including one particularly compelling portrait shot of the three Baez women (Joan, Mimi and their mom, "Big Joan") together with a young Bob Dylan.
  
  None of them are portrayed as saints or as ego-maniacs. They come across, rather, as talented people in a particular place at a particular time. Their paths intersect - as the title suggests, in the West Villiage around Washington Square Park in New York City - popularly known both then and now as, simply, Greenwich Villiage. The book helps us understand, in a more genuinely human and non-ad-driven way, who they were and what the impact was that they had - both on each other and on the rest of us.
  
  If the music of this era is a part of who you are, I suspect you will find this book to be as magically engaging as I did.