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LEGENDARY SESSIONS: BOB DYLAN. HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED

by Colin Irwin:                                                 (Flame Tree 2008)

A Review by Paula Radice

It has seemed to me for quite a while now that the way forward for books about Bob Dylan has been the eschewing of huge monographs trying to encompass and explain the whole of Dylan (a monster being that has outgrown the confines of single volumes) in favour of the “slice of the action” treatments; the snapshots of individual albums, recording sessions, even single songs: think Greil Marcus’ “Like a Rolling Stone” (Public Affairs, 2005) or “Invisible Republic” (Picador, 1997), or more recently, Sid Griffin’s entertaining “Million Dollar Bash” (Jawbone Books, 2007). There is plenty to say about individual chapters of the Dylan “story”, and such books give themselves the space and time to explore.

Colin Irwin’s book on “Highway 61 Revisited” is another such book, and a highly entertaining read. It reminded me most of another study of how Dylan’s best work emerges from the apparent chaos of recording sessions, Gill and Odegard’s examination of the realisation of “Blood On The Tracks”, “A Simple Twist of Fate” (Da Capo Press, 2004). It shares with it an easy readability, underlain with a convincing understanding of both the context and detail of the work in question.

Tellingly, because of the increasing distance between the then and the now, the first chapter is a swift-moving yet necessary outlining of the social and political context of “Highway 61 Revisited”. A great many of those reading the book may well be old enough, if they have travelled alongside Dylan, to be conversant with the events and the world described, but 1965 was forty-three years ago, nearly half a century, and time moves quickly. If University departments define “History” as ending the year in which their youngest undergraduates were born, then “Highway 61 Revisited” is now firmly old, however weird that may seem to those of us who hear its newness every time we listen to it. I don’t count myself young at all, and I was only six months old when “Highway 61 Revisited” was recorded…

Irwin steers a clever course through the minefield of the audience for Dylan books, neither overestimating nor underestimating the level of knowledge readers will bring to the book and managing to supply clear descriptive detail without any giving of the impression that he is generalising or sweeping the surface. This is a tricky task, and one that not many manage. He has a very impressive grasp of the details (for example, of the biographies and personalities of those involved in the making of the album) but never veers into the impenetrable or the overly-academic. His writing style is lively and, above all, clear, and he is not afraid to cut himself short when Dylan’s lyrics threaten to divert examination into the arcane or theoretical (saying of the song ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ itself, for example “…while intriguing, the clues are too thin to offer a logical interpretation, though plenty have tried”). When he does – just once – stray too far down the interpretative trail (giving a page and half’s biography of Lady Jane Grey, in search of “Queen Jane”), it points up beautifully how concise and how clear the rest of the book has been, and we can forgive him for a single mis-step.

A more egotistical writer could not have resisted the temptation to have laid his own layers of interpretation over the album, and this is, I think, Irwin’s greatest accomplishment with this book: it tells its tale well, and then stands back. Analysis is secondary; clarity and research is primary. He understands that we don’t need him to tell us what we think of the album. There is more than enough new material about the characters, events and context of the album’s making (and its reception) here to justify many times over its reading. I’ll have to leave it to others to say if the history is accurate – Irwin certainly sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about: I just know that I enjoyed reading it.

BOB DYLAN – THE NEVER ENDING STAR

by Lee Marshal (Polity 2007)

A review by Paula Radice

Lee Marshall, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol, has taken as the basis for this book the argument that Dylan’s long career can be most clearly examined through that which he calls “star-meaning”, in other words the social conditions in which Dylan’s stardom was defined and the changes that have subsequently affected the relationship between the artist and his audience. I must admit that, initially, I was very resistant: it is difficult for someone who (I suspect like many ISIS subscribers) likes to consider Dylan as something completely separate from the rest of “stardom” or “celebrity” because of the uniqueness of his talents to admit the recognition that Dylan, like lesser talents, has a determining context rather than a pre-determined pre-eminence (I sometimes feel that “Dylan”, by which I mean the idea of “Dylan”, is better characterised as a force of nature than as the life’s work of one mere mortal, but I suppose that’s my problem and one best left for the therapists to sort out).

But, of course, Marshall is right that in this day of mass media and instant communication (and, crucially for a musician, recording technology), the definition of an artist has critical dimensions that lie beyond the artists’ (or their managers’, or record company’s) control, and that the stories that lie behind “stardom” are never really unique. There was nothing about Dylan’s career that was ever truly written in stone. Many talented people go undiscovered; many talented newcomers falter; many older “stars” find themselves unable to adapt to new circumstances, and any of these fates was possible for “Bob Dylan”, as difficult as that may be for us now to picture.

And Marshall has all of the credentials to explore both the sociological patterns underlying the development of Dylan’s star status and the personal decisions made by Dylan at crucial points (what he calls Dylan’s “negotiations” with his star-image). He has an excellent grasp of what rock music has meant within popular culture and how it has changed over time, and gives in this book the clearest explanation I have ever come across of rock’s (and therefore Dylan’s) place within post-modernism. Moreover, he really knows his Dylan, and has a Paul Williams-like instinctive grasp of Dylan’s intentions in lyrics and performance; in other words, he is not bogged down in the “readings of the texts” (as he quite rightly accuses Michael Gray of being) but has a fully-rounded perspective of culture, context and meaning. Like Williams, he strikes many chords of recognition in the reader, especially when he is speaking of performance and what it means to Dylan (as John Bauldie once wrote of Williams, the reader is in danger of developing cricks in the neck from nodding in agreement too much while reading).

The last two chapters in the book are the very strongest, and are, to my mind, the best account yet of the changes that have happened in Dylan’s song-writing, performances and stature since 1997. They make an awful lot of sense. It is a shame, in a way though, that this book has come out just too early to include any consideration of “I’m Not There”, with which it shares many characteristics, both seeking as they do to deconstruct the idea of “Dylan”, or rather to examine the separate facets and reveal the complexity of the whole. If I were to make a recommendation to the reader, it would be to watch “I’m Not There” before reading the final chapter of Marshall’s book: the two work brilliantly together. Why did Todd Haynes not provide a contemporary “Dylan” in his film? As Marshall describes, the 21st century “Bob Dylan” has a powerful, almost immortal, timeless, legendary status – the sort of status artists are usually only accorded after death. This “Dylan” towers over, subsumes, all the previous incarnations. As Marshall puts it: “He has, in a sense, stepped outside of his own career and become something else, a living monument to the strength of the tradition”. The linear (or in Haynes’ case, the determinedly non-linear) narrative of Dylan’s career has come to an end; Dylan no longer makes history but encompasses it: “…his contemporary stardom is able to hold all of his earlier images in balance. His current persona stands not only as an equal to them all, but as embodying a greater whole”. As Marshall sums it up, Dylan is now a man at the peak of his understanding of his idiom:

Dylan knows the game being played and he knows he’s good at it. Perhaps for the first time in thirty-five years, Dylan today speaks as someone in control of his own myth.

Which is why, of course, it’s such great fun being a Dylan fan at the moment: we can celebrate with Dylan the joy he’s found in shrugging off other people’s expectations that he must be anything other than what he wants to be, just a guy who loves, lives and breathes music. Who would have guessed, ten years ago, that Dylan would make such a comfortable and congenial DJ? The man has finally got room to move around within and without the myth. A highly recommended book (but get the paperback rather than the very expensive hardback): (5/5)

MILLION DOLLAR BASH

Bob Dylan, The Band, And The Basement Tapes

by Sid Griffin (Jaw Bone 2007)

A review by Robert Levinson

‘Shedding Light in the Basement’

Almost all of us have a special place in our hearts for the music that Bob and The Band made in the basement of ‘Big Pink’. Yes, we all know that ‘The Band’ was still known as ‘The Hawks’ when all this happened and that not all of the music that we refer to as ‘The Basement Tapes’ was recorded at 2188 Stoll Road, West Saugerties, N.Y., but none of that really matters. What really matters is knowing as much as we can about how all that great music DID happen, and, happily, we now have a delightful book by Sid Griffin called “Million Dollar Bash” that helps us find out.

Griffin is being modestly unfair to himself when he calls himself “a mere rock & roll detective”, he’s much more than that; he’s an excellent investigator, a fine interviewer, an insightful interpreter of music and a superlative writer. Marcus has written the O.E.D. version of ‘The Basement Tapes’, (“Invisible Republic/Old Weird America”), and, while extraordinary as that work is, we need what Griffin has given us just as much.

“Million Dollar Bash” starts by tracing the history of Woodstock-founded in 1787 and named after Woodstock, England–then moves on to its origin as an artist colony, then to the pivotal moment when Peter, Paul & Mary, and finally Bob, arrives in 1963. The first key insight in the book is when Griffin details how and why most of the key players gathered up there in the first place, and how it had almost nothing to do with music! It was all about movies. Yup, movies. Bob and Howard Alk, and the Hawks, and many other important names, gathered in Woodstock to work on “Eat The Document”. Start with a movie, end with a movement.

Never one to waste time or linger, Griffin and “Million Dollar Bash” ploughs sturdily forward to tell us how the first set of songs was recorded in Bob’s house in Brydcliffe (Hi Lo Ha) before the whole gang had to move on to Big Pink because, most likely, the music was bugging Sara as well as her efforts to raise all those young children. Griffin explains the physical set-up in Big Pink’s basement (it’s not really a basement at all, its really just a space off to the side of the garage,–ask Derek, he was there) as well as the intricacies of the tape machine Garth used to get all the music recorded for posterity.

The most important part of the book, and the part the makes the book an essential read for Dylan/Band fans, is huge amount of space and effort Griffin gives to his wonderfully detailed and intelligent analysis and evaluation of each and every known Basement Tape song (I’m sure there’s a treasure trove of music as yet undiscovered).

He writes about songs like ‘Sign On The Cross’ (“One of Dylan’s best songs, one of his best vocals”),’ ‘I’m Not There (1956)’ (“A classic. Yes”), ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ (“On this Big Pink take, less is more”), ‘You Ain’t Goin’ No Where’ (“This track swings”) and ‘Tears Of Rage’ (“A song representative of community, ageless truths, and the unbreakable bonds of family as anything in the Band’s canon-or, for that matter, in anyone else’s canon. Gorgeous, simply gorgeous”). You can’t beat the line up, you can’t beat the insight, you can’t beat this book. (4/5)

BOB DYLAN REDEEMED:

Intimate Insights From Friends And Fellow Musicians

by Kathleen Mackay

(Omnibus Press)

Reviewed by Robert Levinson

SOLD OUT

Nothing Intimate

We’re BobFans, we know.

What do we know?

We know a lot about Bob.

Why is that so?

It’s so because we are insatiably hungry.

Hungry for insights about Bob, hungry for knowledge about Bob, hungry for information about Bob (just look at that sagging Bob Bookshelf of yours in that corner, look at how much time you’re spending on ‘Expecting Rain’) and, for that reason, we keep on looking, looking for previously undiscovered facts and opinions and, by ‘keep on looking,’ I mean we KEEP ON LOOKING, tirelessly. For THAT reason alone we should ALL consider ourselves professional Bob-archaeologists.

We dig, we sift, we examine, we brush away the dust, of rumours or not, and look for the nuggets, the real stuff, the good stuff, but, sadly, you won’t find many of either in Ms. Macay’s book.

The premise is cool, Ms. Mackay talks with friends and fellow musicians about Bob and gets fresh perspectives and insights into him, except that she didn’t actually talk with all of the people IN the book. What she did do was scour a lot of previously published material, much of which you’ve already read, and reprinted it. I didn’t need or want that and, besides, as I said, if it’s already been written somewhere you’ve probably already read it too.

This is not to say the book isn’t for the neophyte, it may be. Ms Mackay has a fine feel for the times she covers (1961-1965, 1966-1976 & 1980-2006), a wonderful admiration and affection for Bob as well as for those she either interviewed or included, its just that so much of what’s included in the book can now be classified as ‘common knowledge’. So common, in fact, that I don’t even know if even I believe any of it anymore. Are authors just repeating what they’ve read and subsequently accepted to be true or is any new research going on? I guess we’re going to have to wait a while, a long while I hope, until the revisionists start their work.

Sure, she talked with Paul Stookey, Liam Clancy, Marie Muldaur, Rosanne Cash and some others, but, as a whole, the conversations lacked depth. I wish I could say otherwise, but I can’t.

So, while it was nice to read that Paul thought that Bob was… “able to extricate essential truths from dense information” and that Liam thought that Bob had all three of the elements that make up great performers (1–Wants to be a celebrity 2–Wants to achieve excellence 3–Is the voice of his tribe and evaporates as a person when he sings), little else is new or has any heft.

If, on the other hand you don’t know what Springsteen, Petty or Bono has said about Bob, pick up the book and start reading it, it might serve as a fine primer but, if you’ve already read what those musicians said years and years ago just put “Modern Times” back into your CD player and let Bob speak for himself.

226-page hardback. Any photographs are of the interviewees. No Dylan photos are included.

DYLAN REDEEMED: From Highway 61 to Saved

by Stephen H. Webb

(Continuum)

Stephen H. Webb is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. He is the author of seven books, most of which are about religion.

Webb believes that Dylan is best understood in the light of a musical theologian and as the title suggests, “Dylan Redeemed” spotlights Bob Dylan’s “religious period” and attempts to demonstrate that this episode was much more than a short interlude in his life. Webb believes that this phase in Dylan’s life can only be understood from a re-reading of his entire career. He therefore re-evaluates Dylan’s early career in light of the Christian phase and in doing so attempts to illustrate that the Christian period was a slow and natural development in Dylan’s musical and spiritual journey.

The only problem that I have with the above assertion is that we already know this as fact. We know that Dylan read the Bible in his early life and that he used it in the structure of many of his sixties songs. We know that Dylan had the King James Version of the Bible open and displayed in his Woodstock home. We know that the “John Wesley Harding” album graphically portrays passages from the Book of Isaiah and we know, or at least we should do, that ‘I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine’ – from the aforementioned album – is one of Dylan’s finest theological works.

We are aware that Dylan was/is often quite specific in referring to the Bible: God, Lord, Jesus Christ, Adam and Eve, St John the Evangelist, David, Eli, Cain and Abel, the Good Shepherd, the Sermon on the Mount, the cross, the Book of Leviticus, Armageddon, the list is endless; what in my opinion is less clear, is whether during his pre-conversion years, Dylan was using the Bible to convey a religious message or whether as Allen Stuart Phy has observed, like the vast majority of people, [Dylan might] have looked to religion more for mystery, myth, symbol, and poetry than for actual “relevance”.

In chapter one, “Saved from the Seventies”, Webb looks at his personal backdrop to religion, the stance of seventies evangelical Christians and the conflicts that existed between religion and popular culture. He talks about the Christian songs that he grew up with “in the dull days of pre-CCM (Christian Contemporary music)”, and how “conservative churches had conservative music”. Webb informs the reader that “Evangelicals in the seventies were an embattled minority, fighting for survival in a hostile environment”. He tells of “spiritual soldiers in training, at war with the world”, and how in Sunday school they chanted jingoistic messages such as: “We are jet cadets for Jesus, we are pilots for the Lord, we have heard the call for battle and we’ll join with one accord”. The song, which thankfully I’ve never heard, apparently continues, “Come and join our happy crew as we soar into the sky. We are jet cadets for Jesus and we fly, fly, fly”. Blimey, with songs like that it is no wonder Christians were an “embattled minority, fighting for survival”!

In the following chapter, Webb looks at how Dylan’s late-seventies output was a quantum leap forward from the conservative music that had previously been associated with the Christian Church. You can say that again! However, although Dylan was clearly in a very different league as far as musical status was concerned, he wasn’t the only seventies “rock” musician now delivering a Christian message.

Larry Norman, very much an individualist who was raised as a Christian, but who also played in secular bands, and the wonderful Jewish-born Christian, Keith Green, were also rockin’ home the Christian message at about the same time.

Webb goes on to explain how it was starting to feel possible –when he was in his late teens – for Evangelicals and those interested in popular culture to see a way forward to being able to belong to both camps. Not everyone was of the same view however. Larry Norman had his records banned in some Christian stores and when Dylan’s “Christian period” albums arrived his music also suffered the same fate.

At times, Webb seems at pains to promote his theories by illustrating that those who have gone before him are wrong and a goodly chunk (seven pages) of chapter two is devoted to picking apart the work of Mike Marqusee. Webb appears to be at odds with Marqusee because he believes that Marqusee sees Dylan as a radical protest singer and a champion of liberal causes, while Webb considers that Dylan’s body of work is more reflective of Christian thought. On this, Webb may well be right, but in his notes to chapter two, Webb states “Marqusee cannot accept Dylan’s word”. Now, whilst I’m not taking sides here, I would suggest that Webb seems to accept Dylan’s words all too readily, especially those words published in “Chronicles”. Dylan’s memoir is a beautiful work, of that there is no doubt, but should we take what Dylan tells us as the gospel truth? I think not!

Amongst many other things, the following chapter, “Slow Train Long Time Coming”, deals with Dylan being born again, his shows at the Warfield, Paul Williams’ wonderful and insightful book “What Happened”, and the Vineyard Fellowship.

Much as Dylan has continually reinvented himself, he has also remained primarily the same artist. Webb, therefore, sees Dylan’s explicitly Christian songs not as a canon within a canon, but rather the key that unlocks the door to his music as a whole and this is a view that I’m mostly in agreement with.

As the title suggests, chapter four, “A ‘Voice You Could Scour a Skillet With’”, discusses Dylan’s singing voice. The chapter’s title is taken from a poke that John Updike made about Dylan’s voice in “Concerts at Castle Hill…” This chapter also looks at Dylan’s ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ in some depth.

Finally we have “A Tale of Two Popes”, which looks at Dylan’s recent output and discusses Dylan playing before Pope John Paul II (September 1997) on the occasion of the World Eucharist Congress knees-up in Bologna, Italy. The second of the two Popes referred to in the chapter-heading is Pope Benedict XVI, whom Webb believes is one of the most sophisticated theologians of our time and one of the most perceptive analysers of music in general, and rock and roll in particular.

In one of his own forays into the question of the nature of rock music and its relationship with religion, Webb states that in the present day we have access to so much music that it has been trivialised and its value therefore diminished. Webb also believes that we are deaf to its magic. I could answer this claim with “speak for yourself”, but I won’t. Then again, I just have. Whilst this assertion might be true in essence, if you are prepared to search for it, there is still a lot of very good music out there. It’s all just a matter of “seek and ye shall find”.

I noticed several instances where – in my opinion – wrong, or at least partly wrong conclusions were arrived at. One, which is worth mentioning, is Dylan’s use of the word gay. Webb: “The way [Dylan] playfully toys with political correctness by resurrecting the old-fashioned meaning of the word ‘gay’ in the line ‘I’m strummin’ my gay guitar’ (from ‘Standing In The Doorway’”). Now, whilst I agree wholeheartedly with Webb, it would, I think, have been useful for the reader to know that this line might well have a secondary significance.

Frank Gay, a little known artisan that worked out of Canada in the 1950s and ‘60s, built some of the most strikingly unorthodox custom-made acoustic guitars in recent music history. Gay guitars were played by a number of country stars like Webb Pierce and Johnny Horton, a fact that I’m sure Dylan would have been well aware of. So, was Dylan strummin’ his Gay guitar? Admittedly, if you check the line in “Bob Dylan Lyrics 1962–2001”, you’ll see that gay is spelt with a lower case ‘g’, but that does not preclude the line from having a double meaning. I hope I’m right, because for me it makes the line so much better.

The tone of this review might well give the impression that I’m not totally enamoured by “Dylan Redeemed”. However, to quote Dylan: “the truth is far from that”. Webb’s book is well researched, very well written and easy to read. My real problem is that I don’t think I learned anything new from the book.

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Highway 61 Revisited (33 1/3)

by Mark Polizzotti

Continuum Publishers 2006

Review by Paula Radice

One of the series of the “33 1/3” paperbacks, each of which takes one landmark LP as its focus, this is a small book (only 161 pages) that punches well above its weight. The author, Mark Polizzotti, knows his stuff, and has researched in detail: the bibliography and endnotes demonstrate the depth of his reading, and the text itself is densely packed with minutiae about the recording of the album. He is especially strong on the dissection of the musical layers in each of the album’s songs, examining what each musician brings to individual tracks, and I’m sure I won’t be alone in coming away from many of his descriptions of the songs’ evolutions in the studio with a new understanding of what actually went on between musicians, engineers and the songs’ author. (I will have to leave it to greater authorities to verify the details given here: if there are any mistakes in Polizzotti’s research, I didn’t spot them - and would not be likely to, anyway, having very little train-spottery aptitude, much as I admire it in others).

It is more than enough for me that Polizzotti writes calmly and insightfully, in an elegant and highly readable style that manages to be balanced, generous and enthusiastic all at the same time, no mean feat. He is clearly a fan of Dylan’s lyricism, but does not get swept away by it, saving his most emotional description for the final paragraph, about ‘Desolation Row’ (quite justifiably, of course):

“...hearing this simple, so elemental duet of a moaning harmonica and a guitar that carries with it a whole carpet bag full of human sorrows, I am gladly reduced to silence. The engine shuts off, the trip is over..”

I could have done with more of his examination of the lyrics of each song, but it could well be argued that we have plenty of that sort of thing in other books, and as a monograph this book works extremely well in its concision, being timely proof that books about Dylan do not need to be able to double as doorstops to be worthwhile. If you prefer your writers on Dylan not to be long-winded or pompous (or continually belittling others), then this will be a book you will appreciate. It’s a good read, first and foremost. It would also serve as an excellent introduction to “Highway 61” to any Dylan newcomer, who would be delighted, I’m sure, to find it in their Christmas stocking.

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THE BOB DYLAN SCRAPBOOK 1956–1966

Simon & Schuster

                                       Review by Derek Barker

The very nature of this book makes it almost impossible to write a comprehensive and descriptive review about it. In addition, there are many things about this book that tease out contradictory comments about it. The first thing I heard about “Scrapbook” was that it contained just 64 pages, and that it would have a £30 / $45 price tag! Now, that certainly didn’t sound like value for money! However, when you see the book in the flesh, so to speak, these preconceptions are turned on their heads. OK, the book is only 64 pages, but it looks and feels more, much more. The spine of the extremely substantial hardcover slipcase is almost 1½” thick and would, you might think, house a book of some 300 pages. Then, as you slide the book from the slipcase, the Fred W. McDarrah saluting photo, published in a recent ISIS and featured on the slipcase, is again revealed, but this time in stunning quality as a glossy photo inset to the centre of the book’s cover. The impact of the quality of reproduction here is indicative of what is to come when you open the book itself. As soon as the book is opened, the first of the many goodies on offer is revealed. The inside front cover houses a 14-track CD. Approximately half the 47 minute running time is made up from extracts of archival interviews: Oscar Brand (October 29, 1961); Cynthia Gooding (January 13, 1962); Allen Stone (October 24, 1965), and Martin Bronstein (February 20, 1966), while the second half – tracks 5-14 – is made up of interviews with Jeff Rosen and is taken from the Martin Scorsese film “No Direction Home”. If you now own a copy of the film – doesn’t everyone – then nothing here is new to collectors. Chapter One – page 8 – has simulated news cutting taped to it. The advert is for the Zimmerman Furniture and Electrical store, which offers for sale a Two-Piece Living Room Suite (“Big Roomy Sofa – Comfortable Chair – Priced as low as $169.95”). The following page houses the first of many removable items. This one is a glossy reproduction of the famed 1959 Hibbing High yearbook, which, next to the name Robert Zimmerman, says: “To join “Little Richard”.” Several pictures of the town of Hibbing follow and are accompanied by photographs of Beatty and Abe Zimmerman; the likeness between young Abe and young Bob is remarkable. Next up is an attached reproduction of the front cover to the Dolphin Book’s publication of Woody Guthrie’s autobiography “Bound For Glory”. The inside of the cover has the pencil inscription “April 21, 1961 Bob Dylan”, which is clearly in Bob’s own hand. The first of several sets of lyrics are found in a brown paper sleeve attached to page 15. Ten verses of ‘Talking New York’ in pencil, with one blue ink alteration, on blue-lined paper. The next turn of the page reveals two fold-out Gerdes Folk City posters. The goodies just keep a-comin’ and space won’t allow me to list everything individually. In total, there are more than 30 pull-out, fold-out and taped-in pieces of memorabilia. These include handwritten lyrics to the aforementioned ‘Talking New York’, plus ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’, ‘Chimes Of Freedom’, ‘Gates Of Eden’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, and a typewritten ‘She’s Your Lover Now’. Other items include posters, Newport ’63 (colour), “Dont Look Back”, etc; news clippings from Melody Maker and a Ralph Gleason piece; a Platform Pass for the March on Washington, an unused ticket for San Diego State College, December 4, 1964; Newport 1965 notes from a Robert Shelton notebook; a programme from Carnegie Hall, various Grossman Company promo items and let’s not forget the Columbia Records cardboard stand-up figure of Bob! The presentation of the book, especially the items mentioned above, is stunning. This really does imitate a genuine fan-compiled scrapbook of its day, even rusted staples are replicated. Many of the items are held in place by brown tape, which at first glance gives the impression that somebody has actually ripped pieces of sticky tape from a roll. On closer inspection however, it becomes clear that they are in fact machine cut. Were all these goodies inserted by hand? Surely this can’t be an automated process. If the book was made by hand, then the £30 price tag suddenly becomes a bargain! “The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966” is obviously compiled from some of the items that are on display at the Seattle Experience Music Project and in a way it makes a few of those items accessible to the multitudes of Dylan fans who are unable to travel to the exhibit itself. After all that praise, “Scrapbook” will surely score the maximum five ISIS stars. Ah well, we haven’t yet mentioned the text have we? I’m a little uncertain who this book is aimed at! Maybe it just so nicely presented that everybody will want it on his or her bookshelves. However, the deeper you delve into the book the more you discover that the content often doesn’t match the lustre of the book. The main problem is the text that accompanies all this eye-candy. Written by Robert Santelli, the main honcho at the Experience Music Project, the text is a basic retelling of the Dylan story up to and including 1966. Now, while I fully understand that “Scrapbook” is intended to accompany “No Direction Home”, the film, which I would imagine has been seen by almost everybody who would be inclined to buy “Scrapbook”, covers this story a thousand times more comprehensively than does “Scrapbook”. Also, I found Santelli’s prose to be a little pedestrian and lifeless. The text is a useful introduction for the novice Dylan fan, but those people may be a little underwhelmed by the rare treats that await them in the various nooks and crevices that exist on almost every page. Hardcore Dylan enthusiasts, on the other hand, will lap up such things as the handwritten lyrics and posters, but will have little or no interest in the text. All of which brings me back to the opening line of this paragraph, which in case you forgotten already, read something like, “I’m a little uncertain who this book is aimed at!” Well, as this review is for inclusion in ISIS magazine, I’ll take the view that I’m addressing ardent, hardcore, well-read Dylanologists. Will you lean anything from the text of this book? Answer, “No”. Will you enjoy discovering all the removable gems to be found inside? Answer, “Yes”. Is “The Bob Dylan Scrapbook” worth the £30 / $45 price tag? Answer, “Yes”. After you’ve flicked through the 64 pages, taken out all of the goodies, replaced them in their hidey-holes, how many more times will you take this item down from your bookshelves? The answer to that, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The final query has to be, should I buy a copy of “Scrapbook”? (you might think this is an empty question, because every Dylan fan has already brought his or her copy. Well, you’d be surprised just how many subscribers have mailed asking “Should I buy a copy of “The Bob Dylan Scrapbook”?) The answer to that, my friend, is a resounding, “Yes”.

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RAMBLIN’ MAN

The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie

by Ed Cray

W. W. Norton & Company

Review by Derek Barker

In reading and reviewing Ed Cray’s book about Woody Guthrie it is inevitable that comparisons will be made with Joe Klein's splendid biography, ''Woody Guthrie: A Life”.

Ed Cray, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, gives us as complete a picture of Woody as we are ever likely to get. Cray had the cooperation of all of the surviving members of the Guthrie family and is the first biographer to be given unrestricted access to the Woody Guthrie Archive; an archive that has grown significantly since Klein carried out his research a quarter century ago.

The backdrop against which Woody lived and worked is crucial to any Guthrie biography and Cray’s extensive knowledge of the Depression and the beginnings of the Cold War help to make Woody’s story come to life. It’s also important that this story is told warts and all and Cray pulls very few punches. His depiction of Woody’s long battle with Huntington's chorea is heartbreaking.

One of the few weaknesses that I found with this book was the way in which Cray seemed to be at great pains to prove that Woody wasn’t really a member of the US Communist Party! On page 150, Cray quotes Guthrie as saying: “The best thing I ever did was join the Communist Party”. He then tries to debunk Guthrie’s own statement with various arguments to the contrary. It would seem to me, however, that even if Cray’s arguments are correct and Woody wasn’t a fully paid up member, Guthrie’s sentiments and mindset were such that there is no doubting that he was a wholehearted supporter of the Communist Party USA. Has Cray forgotten all of those “Woody Sez” columns that he wrote for the Daily Worker?

Most ISIS readers will know the Woody Guthrie story. He was a patriot and a political radical, but he was also a Communist sympathiser and was therefore noted by the FBI as a subversive. He lived in constant fear of the fires that seemed to follow his family around, and of the mental illness that plagued his mother. He could be cantankerous, abusive – sometimes to women – and as the Huntington's chorea took a greater hold his mood swings and temper worsened.    

Although this new biography clearly reveals a great deal more than ever before, Cray’s “Rambling Man” and Klein's ''Woody Guthrie: A Life'' both present pretty much the same man behind the myth. Those who might hope to learn something new about Dylan from this book will be disappointed. There are only a few mentions of our man and most of those seem to come from Robert Shelton’s biography.

Overall, I found the text to be very easy going; the facts were well presented and the footnotes were extremely useful. At the moment “Rambling Man” is in hardback only and is not yet published outside of North America. However, it will be imported into the UK by My Back Pages and will be available during March. It contains 504 pages, which include 16 pages of photographs.