nsign's Full Review: Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan
At the turn of the millennium, following a near-fatal health scare, his 1998 Grammy triumph, and the milestone of his sixtieth birthday, the former Robert Allen Zimmerman found himself at the centre of much media ballyhoo. A raft of articles examining his impact on popular culture appeared in just about every magazine and newspaper in existence, his early albums were re-released and re-promoted, and several books also found their way onto shelves around the world.
These ranged from the photographic ( Elliott Landy's excellent if expensive collection of 1968 Woodstock pictures ), to the analysis-of-Dylan-as-literature ( Michael Gray's scholarly "Song and Dance Man, 3rd Edition" ), to the biographical. Clinton Heylin's superb "Behind The Shades - Take 2" was the first of these biographies to appear, and was hailed as an incomparable examination of Dylan's life and work, but the more casual Bobcat is likely to find it hard going. Heylin dwells much more on the Bobster's work than he does on the actual man himself, and it is the man that remains one of the most enigmatic and intriguing characters in rock history. He is rarely interviewed, hardly speaks a word onstage, and is unwilling to explain or unravel the enduring mysteries surrounding his influence and lyrical genius.
Howard Sounes, in "Down the Highway", presents a multi-faceted and captivating portrait of Dylan, the man, from his boyhood years in Hibbing, Minnesota, to his continuing Never-Ending tour of today. It opens with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the 1992 30th anniversary concert, with Dylan going out drinking afterwards with George Harrison, The Clancy Brothers, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, and various other artists paying homage to the shaman. Dylan is revealed as a lonely, isolated man, unable to trust or open up to anybody, burdened by the immense load that simply being Bob Dylan has become. It's a depiction that rings true throughout the book - Following his deification as spokesman for a generation, Dylan was forced to hold the world at arms length, and deal with it on his own terms. Band members, former lovers, friends and colleagues all relate stories of a non-communicative, secretive and intensely private man, who would turn up to gigs wearing a hood obscuring his face and who once fired a drummer by letting him walk into a studio to find the replacement sitting on his stool.
Somehow, almost all of the interviewees have nothing but affection for Dylan, and also tell of his chronic shyness, his devotion to his mother and children, and his touching lifelong friendship with paraplegic Larry Kegan, whom he has known since his teens and who he has frequently invited on stage to play saxophone. Even former lovers dumped mercilessly by Dylan, such as Joan Baez and A&R executive Carole Childs, speak of him in glowing terms. The accounts of Dylan's early success as a Woody Guthrie wannabe in Greenwich Village and his incendiary electric concerts with the Band in 1966 following the revolutionary "Blonde on Blonde" and "Highway 61 Revisited" albums are well researched and rich with anecdote, giving substance to the myths. The travelling "Rolling Thunder" gypsy carnival of the mid-seventies is revealed as a madhouse of booze and artistic indulgence.
The shock conversion to Christianity in the early eighties, and it's disastrous effect on his record sales, makes for compelling reading - How did the man famed for expressing the liberal, freewheeling philosophies of the sixties, become a born again fire-and-brimstone preacher, warning of damnation and armageddon? Sounes provides much evidence to suggest Dylan was, at the point of his conversion, on the verge of a nervous breakdown caused by the failure of his marriage, and was caught at the right moment by those offering salvation.
Sounes' major scoop when researching this book was discovering that Dylan had, in the mid eighties, secretly married one of his backing singers, Carolyn Dennis. The marriage subsequently collapsed in the early nineties, and Sounes suggests that Dylan's extensive non-stop touring was necessary to pay for divorce settlements and child maintenance ( He has seven children, at the last count ). It's highly debatable whether this is the case, and Carolyn Dennis has refuted it strongly, and it is more likely that Dylan's hunger for performing was greater than ever - After two failed marriages and numerous failed relationships, the one thing providing direction and meaning to Dylan's life is performing. There are few other artists who tour with his frequency, and fewer still who constantly reinvent their back pages with the same audacity and skill as he does.
Sounes does not shy from giving accounts of Dylan's various descents into drug abuse and alcoholism, and despite his obvious reverence for his subject, the character that emerges is not always a pleasant one. His Bobness has treated several friends and peers with callous disdain, notably Joan Baez, whom he used to elevate his own profile in the sixties, and dumped as soon as he began to outshine her. The fame, adulation and expectation that has followed Dylan all his life is revealed here to be more of a curse than a blessing, and in the words of Liam Clancy, "He's a very lonely man. So very few people left in the world, I suppose, that he can talk to."
The book concludes with Dylan's artistic resurgence on 1997's Grammy-winning bleak masterpiece, "Time Out Of Mind", and his continuing and constant presence on the world's stages. His success in re-establishing himself as a writer and performer of unparalleled skill has clearly laid many of his demons to rest ( a view confirmed by the wit and humour of 2001's vibrant "Love and Theft" ).
If there is a flaw with "Down the Highway", it is that Sounes is clearly no music critic. He skips briefly over the recording and writing of many of Dylan's best works, often affording them a mere page or two, and offers little critique or musical knowledge, preferring to concentrate on the personal dramas in his life. Although the book is intended as an examination of the man rather than the work, just a little more in-depth analysis would have been beneficial in showing Sounes' awareness of Dylan's importance, rather than digging for dirt, which is the occasional impression.
"Down The Highway" is nevertheless a thoroughly enjoyable, fast-paced read and offers a rare psychological insight into the man behind the myth, with plenty of facts and Bobular anecdotes to satisfy both casual and committed Dylan watchers. In addition, there are two sections of great photographs, ranging from the sixties to the present day, many of which are previously unpublished. A cut above your average rock biography.
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