A spellbinding, passionate, and unprecedented deep dive into the ever-changing but ever-radical life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter, from his rural Minnesota upbringing through his sofa-surfing days in Greenwich Village through his many tumultuous conversions - to electric guitars and country music and Christianity and on . . .
"One of the most original journalists and writers of our time." -David Remnick
Renowned culture critic Ron Rosenbaum discovered not only the world-changing music of early Bob Dylan, but the man himself, in the 1960s, when Rosenbaum was a young journalist living in Greenwich Village just around the corner from Dylan, and working for the legendary alt-weekly, The Village Voice. Rosenbaum, in fact, became the Voice's de facto Dylan reporter.
It was the time, and the place, where an essential idea of Dylan's character was formed - that of the whip-smart, angry, too-cool-for-school icon, a kind of James Dean in denim. The raspy voice, not to mention the brilliantly cutting lyricism, only somehow added to his cultural dangerousness. The Dylan, in other words, recently portrayed in the hit movie A Complete Unknown.
But Dylan has had many changes of character since then. There was the smoother-voiced country crooner of Nashville Skyline; the white-faced ringmaster of the Rolling Thunder Review; the enraged proselytizer who saw Jesus in a Tucson motel room and converted to Christianity . . . and more. And throughout, the famously recalcitrant Dylan would tell people, "I'm not that person anymore," whatever previous character he was asked about.
In a probing and personal literary appreciation, Rosenbaum examines what Dylan nonetheless revealed about himself in his lyrics and writings, and his infrequent interviews. Rosenbaum, in fact, was one of the few to interview Dylan in those years, and may own the record for longest interview, sitting down for ten days with Dylan for a Playboy interview in 1978.
His history with Dylan prompts Rosenbaum to discuss a side of Dylan largely ignored for fear of controversy. What sparked his various conversions? What precisely did Dylan's Jewishness, his mysticism, and his visits with psychics have to do with it all? Rosenbaum also offers a key to reading Dylan's late career lyrics, which some have called unintelligible.
As Dylan continues to tour the world nonstop with his band and continues to compose new songs, while refusing to play old songs the same way, Rosenbaum offers a moving and involving portrait of an icon who may have been more constant than it appeared.
