A couple of weeks back I posted about the arrival of a new book The Double Life of Bob Dylan Vol.1 1941-1966 - A Restless, Hungry Feeling by Clinton Heylin, apparently reputed to be the world's leading Dylanologist (yes, that's a word).
The world doesn't need another book about Bob Dylan we all know; however, Heylin was granted first access to Dylan's archives which he sold off a few years back for $22M (that's USD by the way). Expect a flurry of books this year on Dylan as he turns 80, including Vol.2 to this series. I expect quite a few of them will be rubbish as it's become an industry to write rock books by simply trawling the internet as research. Here at least Heylin has the exclusive on a lot of new written and recorded material.
Any book on a figure like Dylan needs an angle otherwise it will be a dull affair. Heylin's angle is essentially that Dylan has been a supreme bullshit artist from the get go, so much so that he himself doesn't know where the truth and myth begin and end. Heylin also argues that many of the accounts from people who were there, but recounted decades later are often not to be relied upon - Robbie Robertson for one (I actually read Robertson's book and really enjoyed it, but I have no way of knowing how truthful it is).
This is a cracking read and I ploughed through it at a rapid pace. I'm no Dylan obsessive, but the period through to 1966 was his most productive and influential and has always interested me the most. He undoubtedly changed popular music forever at this time. Until Dylan came along 'pop' music was not taken seriously and something only for teenagers. He ensured that would never be the case again.
Not that this book is any hagiography. Heylin, while recognising the genius, does not hold back in his criticism of Dylan the man and the composer. He doesn't particularly rate The Times Are a Changing or Another Side of Bob Dylan for example (nobody rates the first album apparently except Rod Stewart it seems). Freewheelin' and the first three electric albums are another matter though.
Mercifully we don't a spend too much time in Dylan's childhood and the action really takes off with Dylan hearing Elvis and tuning into southern radio stations which played what was then known as 'race music'. Dylan starts off on the piano and pounds out tunes like a teenage Jerry Lee Lewis before switching to guitar. His heart always was in rock and roll.
The switch to folk was a gradual thing through exposure to folk blues and of course Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson. Robert Zimmerman eventually lands in Greenwich Village in 1960 and sees this as the moment to create Bob Dylan the myth as he starts to play in the pass the hat folk clubs. There's nothing new in this, but some of the anecdotes from contemporary accounts and stuff captured on tape at the time are always interesting. So what are the few things I learned:
- Bob Dylan was a determined to make it and used every opportunity to learn (take) from others.
- He was absolutely confident that he was in another league compared with his fellow musicians, including the Beatles.
- Joan Baez, who had a national profile when Dylan was just starting out, plotted and schemed to partner up with Dylan, particularly once his star outshone her own - Dylan was in love with her sister.
- He was not a particularly nice boyfriend to Suze Rotolo and had lots of other liaisons at the time.
- When he went electric he really had no idea to play in a band and refused to rehearse or teach the band the songs - they were expected to jump in and pick the song up immediately. This drove the musicians crazy.
- On the world tour in 1966 his drug use was so wild that many of the people around him thought he may not not see his 26th birthday.
- People were invited into his inner circle, but often found themselves ejected very quickly.
- He signed some dumb contracts and his manager Albert Grossman completely stuffed up the contract with Columbia.
- And so on.
