Some years ago, when asked who he would like to interview, Bob Dylan replied, "I'd like to interview people who died leaving a great unsolved mess behind, who left people for nothing to do for ages but speculate". Which is how, we all presumed, Dylan himself would leave the tapestry of his life when he finally shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving nothing behind except the labyrinthine constructions contained in his incomparable songbook. He has, let's remember, performed quite a remarkable balancing act in our celebrity-obsessed age. His fame is immense, mythical, and yet he remains tantalisingly unknown. If Brad Pitt, Britney Spears or J-Lo dye their hair the whole world knows about it within 2 hours, splashed across the tabloids next to the latest celeb-endorsed twig and slurry detox diet.
Dylan has held the media firmly at arms length, and paradoxically, he is one of the world's more publicly accessible performers, playing an average of 100 plus gigs per year. His interviews are rare and unrevealing, he rarely says more than "Fangyooo" on stage, and has never co-operated with an official biographer. The very notion that Dylan might one day sit down and write his memoirs was generally held by most Bobfans to be pure nonsense.
But here we have the first in a projected three volumes, and a handsome read it is too. When the news that Dylan was to pen his memoirs broke, there were some understandable murmurs of apprehension, fanned by the delay of the release date. His previous published work, 1969's Tarantula, can be politely described as unique, and impolitely described as unreadably pretentious. Written in the stream of consciousness style more commonly found on the inside sleeves of his sixties albums like Highway 61 Revisited, it left the world scratching its collective head and dropping more acid in an attempt to find method in his madness. Sadly, it wasn't to be, as history has not looked favourably on Tarantula, and Dylan himself has dismissed it as a mistake.
Chronicles is an entirely different kettle of fish. It is a surprisingly open, warm and fantastically descriptive book, peppered with the kinds of turns of phrase that you read twice to appreciate the craftsmanship. It confounded and delighted those who had suspected Dylan would either turn in an incomprehensible mess, or a deathly dull privacy-guarding career rundown. It is also not strictly an autobiography, for although it takes us inside selected periods of Dylan's life, it does so non-chronologically and concentrates on just five seperate time periods, two of which detail the genesis of the albums New Morning and his 1989 masterpiece Oh Mercy.
The book is best viewed as a series of memories, vignettes of a particular period which Dylan has plucked out of the air and decided to share. So there is no "I was born in Duluth then I moved away then I started writing songs then I became famous" linear progression from one stage to the next, but you get the feeling that writing to formula for an autobiography would simply not be the best way for Dylan to paint his story. Which is not to say that this is in any way confusing - It's as lucid and perceptively cogent as the best of rock journalism - but it is a refreshingly different way of approaching a memoir, and proves to be a highly successful one.
The book has five chapters - Markin' Up The Score, The Lost Land, New Morning, Oh Mercy, River Of Ice - covering five different eras, jumping from the early sixties to the seventies and eighties. The opening chapter finds Dylan having just signed his publishing deal in a frozen New York of 1963, describing his youthful excitement at having his foot in the door with his headful of ideas and plunder of folk songs, soaking up his influences and crafting his persona. He wonderfully brings to life the spirit of the era and the characters inhabiting the local coffeehouses where he would play, people with names like Moondog ( a blind poet ) and Billy the Butcher.
This is Dylan at the early dawn of his career, devouring books and the beat poets, and he pleasingly never pretends to have stumbled into his career. In Dylan's mythically charged world "Destiny was about to manifest itself, I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else". His creative brain, fired up from his relentless intake of literature and song, began to change and stretch, exploring methods of songwriting never before heard, and rarely, if ever, matched.
The New Morning chapter takes place in the early 70's following Dylan's initial burst of superstardom, and although it details the origins and making of a pretty minor album in his back catalogue, it is notable for its lengthy dismissal of Dylan's "spokesman for a generation" status, which he resented and rejected vehemently: "I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation I was supposed to be the voice of". By now married with several children, this is Dylan hounded by obsessive fans, walking into restaurants where everyone stops to stare and whisper, and perhaps reveals the origins of his subsequent media shyness ("Privacy is something you can sell but you can't buy it back" ). Badly burned from his experiences, he set about attempting to deconstruct the myth by releasing the shoddy Self Portrait album and trying to confound the critics by releasing a lightweight country album of homespun platitudes, Nashville Skyline ( actually one of Dylan's most purely enjoyable albums ). Naturally, none of it worked.
The chapter describing the origins of the 1989 Oh Mercy album is the most fascinating and revealing regarding his personality and the writing process. Creatively regarded as a has-been by the music industry and the record buying public in the late eighties, Dylan describes how he found himself on the verge of quitting music altogether, having become a shadow of his former self, his concerts tired and unimaginative, unable to breathe new life into his career: "Wherever I am, I'm a 60's troubadour, a folk-rock relic, in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion". After wandering into a bar and being blown away by a jazz singer's technique, he finds himself back on speaking terms with his muse, hooks up with U2 producer Daniel Lanois and records the scorchingly brilliant Oh Mercy album in New Orleans, which marked the beginning of a creative resurgance culminating in 1997's Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind and 2001's acclaimed Love And Theft.
It is fascinating to hear Dylan's take on the process, from the first jottings of his new lyrics to the studio arguments with Lanois, and he relates a wonderful story, apropos of nothing, about taking a motorcycle ride midway through recording and stopping at a place straight out of a David Lynch film called King Tuts museum, filled with voodoo paraphenalia and run by a character called Sun Pie. There's no reason for it - It's just Bob telling a story.
His intention in this period was to totally re-invent his reputation as a live performer using his new singing and playing techniques: "I'd have to start at the bottom and I wasn't even at the bottom yet..I had a gut feeling that I had created a new style that didn't exist yet and would be entirely my own". Audiences would see the results of this process with the advent of the "Never-Ending tour", where Dylan treated his songbook as if it were brand new, turning melodies and form inside out, while writing in a style with "no alchemic shortcuts". On stage, despite the wearied voice, Dylan presided over a musical laboratory of ceaseless invention, which if you can catch him live these days, you'll find is still going strong, as I can attest having caught a sensational show in Glasgow last summer.
The book winds up shortly after where it began, in the early 60's, where we hear some fondly-remembered tales of his home town of Duluth, his mother and father's family history, and relating how Harry Trueman once came and gave a speech. It's a touching and affectionate portrait of life and attitudes in a small 1950's American town, while the young Bobby Zimmerman sat by his radio listening to Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison ("When he sang, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera" ). He tantalisingly finshes just prior to his big break, leaving us to anticipate volume two.
Chronicles works perfectly well as a stand-alone book, being rich with anecdotes and captivating turns of phrase, as well as a few typically gnomic utterances. There is no mention of the mid-70's "Rolling Thunder" period, or his shocking but short-lived conversion to a form of evangelical christianity in 1980, or any discussion of Blood On The Tracks, which may disappoint some, but will presumably be covered in the next two installments.
This also distiguishes itself from your average self-penned tome by steering clear of any personal muck-raking or "my drugs hell" style confessionals, which is either a refreshing change or a let-down, depending on your point of view. Although its unlikely that the old adage of "If you can remember the sixties, you weren't there" applies to Dylan, there has probably been more than enough written elsewhere about his spectacular drug intake during that period for him to want to contribute any more. Similarly, there are no revelations regarding his impressive resume of female conquests, or the collapse of either of his marriages. Indeed, although Dylan has been married twice and both of his wives are mentioned, they are both referred to fleetingly as "my wife" and never by name, even though their identities are common knowledge.
Dylan has always been one of the most literary of songwriters ( nominated for the nobel prize for literature on several occasions ) and the dynamic style of his prose has much in common with iconic works such as Kerouac's On The Road. Events are never just recounted - He tells us about the room they happened in, the details on the walls, the faces of the people. It is the work of a born storyteller, and it is fascinating and always engrossing to read his rich descriptions. Chronicles is a far better book than the most ardent of Dylan fans could have wished for, having obviously been crafted with great care. By turns illuminating, inspired and always entertaining, it's a welcome gift to Dylan's fans and the literary fraternity that has held him in such high esteem for so long.
Muze: Copyright 1995 - 2008 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2008 Shopping.com, Inc.