Bob Dylan - by Ron Rosenbaum (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

In the wake of the recent hit biopic A Complete Unknown, this probing appreciation asks: Do the lyrics of Bob Dylan tell the true story of the ever-changing, ever-radical life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter?

In a dingy windowless bungalow on the Warner Brothers back lot in Hollywood in 1977, in the midst of what may have been the longest interview he ever gave (it stretched over ten days), a chain-smoking Bob Dylan confessed to journalist Ron Rosenbaum that he was troubled by something missing from his music. Dylan -- who was editing a dramatic movie based on his life, even as his life seemed to be falling apart -- told Rosenbaum there was a sound he was after that he'd only come close to on one record so far. The sound, he told Rosenbaum, was of "thin, wild mercury."

This is a book that captures the elusive mercurial artist and his work in a way no other has -- a vivid, compelling pursuit of Dylan, successively a hipster folkie, a Greenwich Village sparkplug of a cultural revolution, who plugged into an amplifier to drive away folkie solemnity, then became a countrified crooner, the man who, just months after Rosenbaum's interview, became a fire-breathing, proselytizing Christian . . . before returning to being a non-religious Jew.

What was behind it all, Rosenbaum asks, and how can we understand him through his lyrics? Tracing it from Dylan's childhood -- when his father hired a Brooklyn rabbi to come to remote Minnesota to prepare his son for his bar mitzvah -- through the still touring singer's late, often inscrutable lyrics, Rosenbaum probes Dylan's "argument with God," his differentiation between authenticity and sincerity, and his relentless heretical stances.

Of course, complicating matters for anyone trying to trace the development of Dylan and his life's work is Dylan's recurrent denial of the continuity of self. (Whenever asked why he doesn't sing the old songs the same way as on the record, Dylan typically responds with an irritated, "That's not me.")

Ron Rosenbaum has covered Dylan for almost the entirety of his -- and Dylan's -- career, starting as a Village Voice culture reporter in 1969. In this deeply personal and literary appreciation, and as Dylan continues to tour and compose new songs, still refusing to play old songs the old way, Rosenbaum offers a moving and involving portrait of an icon who may have been more constant than it appeared after all.

Review Quotes

"A powerful and unorthodox view of Bob Dylan and his songwriting--certainly one I've never encountered in any other writer's thoughts about Dylan, and I've read tons of them. It surprises and rewards the reader on every page." --Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone journalist and author, Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock and Roll


"An essential, contrarian volume that offers rare insights and rewarding perspectives... it's a pleasure to encounter a mind as brilliant and unpredictable as its subject." -- Kirkus Reviews

"In his obsessive effort to understand his subject, Rosenbaum vividly--if sometimes eccentrically--succeeds in capturing what it means to be a Dylan devotee, burdened with awe, ambivalence, and an overload of unanswered questions. It's a trip." -- Publishers Weekly

"One of the most original journalists and writers of our time." -- David Remnick

"An idiosyncratic discussion of Dylan's artistry and impact on mainstream culture." -- Booklist

"Beginning where Ron Rosenbaum's ten-day interview with Bob Dylan left off, Things Have Changed gives us a polymath's passionate listening and lights-on insights into a hundred hidden connections. If you think you know Dylan's work and its contexts, sit down with this book, preferably near your phonograph, and start out fresh." -- Charlie Haas, author of The Current Fantasy

Praise for Explaining Hitler . . .

"Brilliant...restlessly probing and deeply intelligent" -- Time

"Fascinating...A provocative work of cultural history that is as compelling as it is thoughtful, as readable as it is smart.... Mr. Rosenbaum has written an exciting, lucid book informed by old-fashioned moral rigor and common sense." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Cultural criticism served up as riveting narrative history...with words and ideas that surprise, amuse, and even elevate the reader." -- Marc Fisher, The Washington Post

"A work of importance and fascination" -- George Steiner, The Observer

Praise for The Shakespeare Wars . . .

"Rosenbaum reminds us that scholarship need not be an insular, impotent pursuit but, when the subject is grand enough, can be a freewheeling battle royal. By getting a word in edgewise with the know-it-alls, he convinces us that we could, too . . ." -- Walter Kirn, The New York Times

"A genuinely passionate, insight-filled survey . . . anyone who cares for Shakespeare, textual scholarship and the theater will learn an enormous amount . . ." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

About the Author

Ron Rosenbaum is a long-time journalist and columnist who has written for the Village Voice, New York Observer, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Slate. He is the author of The Shakespeare Wars as well as the New York Times bestseller Explaining Hitler, which was also a New York Times Notable book of the year.