Chronicles, Volume 1
by Bob Dylan
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Book Reviews of Chronicles, Volume 1
Book Review: Autobiography of Charismatic 60's Icon
Summary: 5 Stars
After recording the electric blues albums "Bringing It All Back Home" "Highway 61 Revisited" and the double album "Blonde On Blonde" I found it hard to accept that Dylan could beg off from his title of generational spokesman & prophet, but that is precisely what he did by following these albums with at least 4 consecutive country albums, eschewing politics. He claimed he only wanted to be a family man and heaped scorn on the leftists. But he "went electric" at the Newport Folk Festival to the dismay of some and the delight of others. In his prime Dylan certainly had the attributes of a 60's rebel: a loud, brash iconoclast beginning with "Subterranean Homesick Blues". I have almost always viewed Dylan as the most charismatic figure from rock music from the 1960's, and as James Dean's alter-ego; his latest album, "Love and Theft" though largely retrospective and filled with regret and pain, confirms this judgement. It also reminds me of the Stones' similar recent "Bridges To Babylon" in which the Stones' outrageous assault on music continues unabated and undiminished by the passage of time. (And it also begs the question: do blues singers really get better with age?)
After reading "Chronicles" I realize Dylan was quite a folk purist when he was around U. Minn. and when he first arrived in New York City. This is a not precisely chronological account which details his rise to the top of the music world using only his love of American folk music as a guide. His myriad musical influences are mentioned by name along reasons why he liked their music. Also Jack Kerouac, the Beat Poets and Bertolt Brecht. The book is somewhat anecdotal--I enjoyed the passage about the union organizer Joe Hill and Dylan's principal guru, Woody Guthrie. Being from Hibbing, Minnesota, he didn't know much about American Bandstand. He is particularly passionate about the art of songwriting and again and again states how he identified more fully with the past than the present and planned, once he had absorbed these influences, to use these influences to write his own songs. He is rather scornful of those he considered modern crooners like Rick Nelson or other Tin Pan Alley types.
Though he was in rock bands as a teenager, the first thing he did when he arrived at U. Minnesota was to "trade in my electric guitar for a Martin acoustic." His book is particularly good about his Minnesotan family roots and politics, his time spent around the U. Minnesota Dinkytown with his mentor there Mr. Pankake, and his days at the Gaslight in Greenwich Village,hanging out with all the right people in NYC, and his relationships with his producers;it also contains full chapters about the making of the "New Morning" and "Oh Mercy" albums. Also on his method of conserving energy so he can still perform on a nightly basis. Dylan writes in an engaging style and has an eye for detail and acknowledges dozens of people whom he met along the way, and he sometimes shows flashes of high intelligence particularly in the realm of his historical research at the NY Public Library or while browsing among the books at the apartment he first rented in New York.
Book Review: A Genius At Work
Summary: 5 Stars
The first thing you should bring to reading this book, Bob Dylan's "memoirs", is the knowledge that you're not getting a straightforward "life story" from the most mysterious and celebrated figure in modern American music. That's just not going to happen, and thank God for that.
The second thing that you should bring to this is the willingness to join Dylan on his rambling, rollicking treks through his own past to form what can best be described as snapshots from the life he lived and the moments that (to him at least) seem worthy of examination. The most striking thing about "Chronicles: Volume One" is how the tone is set in the first section. Dylan seems to get around the typical "and then I did this" style of self-important autobiographies and instead talk about his life naturally, as if in conversation with the reader.
Bob Dylan is one of those figures that has been able to maintain a distinctly hidden persona from the world at large. What's so interesting in the book is not the illumination cast upon his life, but (due to the choices he makes in what he highlights) the darkness that still surrounds it even after you get to "know" the man. His own words do not betray his life, they merely serve to show what he wants you to see. He holds himself back, back far enough to maintain your interest without holding out a carrot of further details that prove disappointing. With Dylan, the merest crumbs of detail are enough.
Dylan starts with his arrival in New York in 1961, fast-forwards to the "isolation" of the late Sixties and early Seventies, then skips ahead to 1987 and his album "Oh Mercy!", and finally takes us back to his signing to Columbia Records and the beginnings of a career that would change America. Throughout it all, Dylan remains sprightly with his prose, able to convey in a few words what other memoirists take chapters to get to. Dylan's aura serves him well here, as he gives you just enough to feel that you have a grasp on him. But not a chokehold. He holds back because others before him probably went too far. And Dylan's a private man.
I picked this up after seeing "No Direction Home" and, while always interesting in Dylan, I was reluctant to pick the book up when it first came out. To me, the mystery of Dylan was more or less a fact of life, impregnable to all attempts to pierce it, and I liked it that way. But the film put me in a mood to see what made the man who he is. I don't think a lot of people will be satisfied with the book (or Volume 2 whenever it is released), but it seperates the people that Dylan wouldn't want reading his life story from those who he would.
"Chronicles: Volume One" is the most revealing, frustrating, heartbreaking work of staggering genius, from a man who rejects all the labels attributed to him even as he uses them to make him even more mysterious. Bob Dylan's life story as told by the man himself is well worth the wait, and the book is a must. Through Dylan's evolution and artistic growth, readers may be more inspired by his story than by any other. That's something to be proud of.
Book Review: From the Founder of the All-Music Guide
Summary: 5 Stars
I came up through the same folk scene as Dylan, and at the same time. We are both the same age. Back in 1961, Bob Dylan, an incredible guitar instrumentalist named Perry Lederman, and myself hitchhiked together for a spell. This was around the time that Dylan was squaring of with Danny Kalb at Gerde's Folk City in New York. Later, I helped to organize Dylan's first concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan, my home town. So that is my background.
I have not seen Dylan since that time, but like many of us, I have often wondered after the spiritual welfare of our bard. Is he still intact? And, as an experienced editor, I was more than a little interested to see what he had written, afraid of what I might find. I had no idea.
The short answer is yes, he is alive and doing well. Some of this book is a running account of the times and Dylan's personal history, complete with descriptive prose, at times bordering on the poetical. Nothing earthshaking here, and were this the only thing the book offered, I would have left disappointed. But there is more, and most important, there is what I had hoped to find, signs that Dylan's incredible laser-like mind is still active.
You can't see much of this in the historical recount. Where it shines out is in the Chapter "Oh Mercy," where Dylan details how he re-took hold of himself during what looked like a massive downhill slide of self-confidence, and with a few injections of eternity, turned his performing career around. Better yet, is the INCREDIBLE account of his New Orleans recording session, going into blazing detail on how almost every song was recorded. This is sheer poetry to my ears, not because I could follow everything he was laying down, but because his clarity and love of music comes across like a lightning. This is the Dylan I knew and the one all these years I hoped was still in there. I wish ALL the book was like this.
After years of wondering whether Dylan had more or less passed on, but while still was living, I am gratified to see that he is alive, well, and still walking point. I am reminded of something I wrote about Dylan some years ago in an article called "Grant Green: The Groove Master," which this book has just helped to confirm:
"To get your attention and make clear that I am saying something here, consider the singing voice of Bob Dylan. A lot of people used to say the guy can't sing. But that's not it. He is singing. The problem is that he is singing so far in the future that we can't yet hear the music. I can assure you he is there. I have heard it. Given enough time... enough years... that gravel voice will sound as sweet to our ears as any velvet-toned singer. Dylan's voice is all about microtones and inflection. For now Dylan's voice is hidden in time so tight that there is no room (no time) to hear it. Some folks can hear it now. Someday everyone will have to hear it, because the mind will unfold itself until even Dylan's voice is exposed for just what it is -- a pure music. But by then our idea of music will also have changed. Rap is changing it even now."
Book Review: Chronicles I by Bob Dylan
Summary: 5 Stars
This gentle and poetically lyrical mystic comes forth in a candid and charming storytelling style that anyone can appreciate. For those who have followed his career since the beginning it's a real treat, a long awaited boon to add to the long list of memories, lines and memorabilia. There's also the distinct sense of hearing his voice as you read and turn the pages. There is no sense of verbosity, no rankling fussiness or bitterness, and no arrogance or crowing in this tender telling of a profound life story. Within these pages you will find only vibrant verbal threads which anchor the weaving of a lifetime's story; this is the beginning to a story of one man, a man who has lived a truly sincere, humble and matchless life. This is the best told story, to date, of this delicate, quicksilver, steely-filigreed man and his intense devotion and dedication to his muse as revelation, offered up for the past forty years to our eyes and ears and hearts through his prolific and uncompromisingly honest artistic expression. Perhaps, thus so, even to the angels.
His prose is as rich and varied as any poem or song he has written, which is not so startling as it comes off the same tip of the tongue and pen that has inspired so many. There's a palpable sweetness here, along with what I glimpse as a sly bit of impishness that informs the reader in a quiet easy way of a common song and dance man called upon by unseen forces to write and sing songs, to strive, and to bring his personal dedication and tremendous artistic vision and creativity directly to the forefront for the act of creation, in itself, despite and regardless of intense public scrutiny and evaluation from the masses for good or ill.
This is his story and he's telling it the way he must, his way, through the rhythms of his own memories. This story does not go the way the reader might suggest; it's not his to tell. Instead, the telling is told from a masterful maker of images through words, painted lyrically with a keen awareness for each brushstroke as he informs the reader of intimacies and details, discreetly revealing his majestic humiity through a succulently sophisticated and tantalizing tale, literary and delightful in its telling.
As with all true artists, his turn of the phrase is unique, elegantly and eloquently his alone, which cannot be missed. His telling of his story is a cool drink of water and goes down very easily. It transcends. In its wake is left an almost delicious anxiety in the anticipated thirsting for more of this graciously engaging story. He would possibly label it as Desire. He leaves everybody wanting for more.
It's a joyous and brave blessing brought to bear that he has chosen to share this intimacy with us in this beautiful and unhinged world to which he has given and shared so much. We can honor his endeavors by reading this wonderful book, and by listening closely and allowing ourselves to be touched by his words as he lets us into the matchlessly poetic and lyrical thoughts revealing Bob Dylan's life's adventures of a common song and dance man.
Book Review: "A Satisfied Mind"
Summary: 5 Stars
Bob Dylan: words to satisfy my mind. How little we knew of him. We read the PR, the newspapers, CD jackets, lyrics he wrote and sang, but how little we knew of him. At long last, Bob Dylan satisfies our mind and his by scribing his true self.
Bob Dylan is from Hibbing, Minnesota. We all knew that, but not of his life as a child and teenager learning to sing and that of his family. He opens his Chronicle with his arrival in New York City in 1964. He tells us of his journey to NYC, and the people he meets and greets. The people who helped him get started, the people he lives with, loves with and sings with. His trials and tribulations as a young singer in the throes of "folk" songs. He tells us how he came to his writing style, who helped to direct him, and who he admired and trusted. He describes how he came to be able to write such lyrics. He used to go to the library as a child and read classics, and he continued that in NYC in a friend's large library. His vocabulary and intellect grew as a result. He hung around the right and wrong people, he learned as he observed. He got his first chance to sing in small club, and met the person who would help him with his first record deal.
Bob Dylan had quite a reputation as a man on the edge, helping to fight the battles for justice and the American Way. That was all wrong, all hype, all PR.
He believed in justice and the American Way, but he was not on the fore front fighting for it. He wanted the reverse; to be left alone, to live his life and to write and sing. All the publicity drew strange and unattractive people to him- they broke into his home, found him wherever he was and bothered him and his family. He felt unsafe as Bob Dylan. He hated that life.
He learned to rent a house under an assumed name and to become undistinguished. He was able to travel and to be himself, somewhat. He married, had 5 children that he dearly loved. He helped to raise them, changed their diapers, loved them, gave them toys, brought them to the beach, picnics; ordinary. everyday stuff. Bob Dylan would have us believe that he is an ordinary man; well, ok, he is in some way. But he is also a troubadour, singing the words and tunes that we all love. He has been everywhere. He tells of us his time in New Orleans; the city he loves the most. Trying to get a record together and what he learned about himself and the songs he wrote. He tells of us his dinner with Bono, of U2, and how they drank a case of Irish ale, and what they learned from each other. He tells us how he admires Ice-T and Frank Sinatra, Jr. But most of all we learn a little about how Bob Dylan is as a man. Much to be admired and respected, but then, only a man. Highly recommended. prisrob