by Bob Dylan
A memoir of Dylan's early days, from the hungry Greenwich village years
to the recording of Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois in New Orleans and back
again to the ‘60s and meeting John Hammond and signing to Columbia. It's
an illuminating, rambling, interesting, contradictory, and frustrating
book. While he uncovers a vast treasure trove of his varied influences,
from Johnny Rivers to Dave von Ronk to Brecht’s "Pirate Jenny" to
Genet's "The Balcony," he pays no mind to chronology; he deliberately
leaves many dots unconnected. More maddening is his prose itself —
sometimes poetic and crystal, sometimes rambling to the point of
dementia, as if he's narrated the book into a tape recorder.
He
makes grammatical mistakes, misusing "whom" and "myself," which is
disheartening for a fan like me. But more often, the book taunts and
teases with passages that seem inane: "Moe Asch was chatting with Mike.
They were just standing around like people who knew what they were
talking about." Is that expressive? Or worse: "I used to play the
phenomenal 'Ebb Tide' by Frank Sinatra a lot and it had never failed to
fill me with awe. The lyrics were so mystifying and stupendous. I could
hear everything in his voice — death, God and the universe, everything. I
had other things to do, though, and I couldn’t be listening to that
stuff much." Wait, what? And Dylan has endless passages of what appears
to be meaningless psychobabble: "With a new incantation code to infuse
my vocals with manifest presence I could ride high… Thematic triplets
making everything hypnotic." He goes on and on about changing, about a
new vocal line and new way of performing, but then a few pages later
remarks, "Here’s the thing — I wasn’t looking to express myself in any
kind of new way." And yet, it is a fascinating book as well; Dylan's at
his best talking about people and their psychologies, as when he
discussing folk snobbery, or gushing over one of the musical greats like
Robert Johnson. I doubt there'll ever be a volume two, but for all my
carps about this one, I'd read the next if it ever came out.
four stars
