Bob Dylan, American Poet and Singer: An Annotated Bibliography and Study Guideof Sources and Background Materials, 1961-1991.

Russell, Craig H.

Dylan enthusiasts and music historians can rejoice at the recent spate of publications that address in some substantive way the life and creative output of Bob Dylan. Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades is no shallow retread of the other gargantuan biographies that have hit the shelves in recent years; rather, it is one of the most insightful, rigorous, articulate, and engaging studies in the field of American popular culture. The volume has several virtues that make it an indispensable book for popular music fans. First, it deals with all of Dylan's career through 1990, not just the "golden '60s." Many Dylan books are woefully ill informed or patently unconcerned with Dylan's music after the mid-1970s. Second, Heylin gives us a more rounded view. He does so by dividing the book into three large sections of roughly the same length. Part 1 concerns Dylan's formative years; part 2 begins with crises both personal and artistic in the aftermath of Dylan's motorcycle wreck in 1966; and part 3 begins with the other critical turning point in Dylan's life--his conversion to Christianity in 1980. At last we have a critical writer who is concerned with the larger picture; Heylin shows how Dylan went through metamorphoses and mercurial changes, and he also shows the reader the threads that tie the various periods and styles together.

From a scholarly point of view, Heylin has done his homework. He draws heavily upon years of personal interviews that he conducted while writing for the British Dylan journal The Telegraph. He moves fluidly between quotations (which are numerous and well chosen), analysis, and connecting commentary. He brings new primary resources to his study and sheds new light on virtually every area of Dylan's life. Particularly enlightening are his observations concerning the Margolis & Moss manuscript and its bearing on nascent images that were to reappear in Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" and "When the Ship Comes in" (pp. 93--100). Heylin also brings forward four newly discovered letters that Dylan wrote to Tammi Dean in 1964 that exhibit the artist's archetypal symbols and metaphors (pp. 126--28). Heylin's intimate familiarity with the huge corpus of unreleased sound recordings is impressive. In the early pages of the book he provides the clearest portrait to date of Dylan's early style and sound; here he relies on the obscure yet important "St. Paul Tape" (p. 38); "First Minneapolis Tape" (p. 44); and "Third Minneapolis Tape" (p. 54). His later analyses of Dylan's concert tours in the 1970s and 1980s are equally significant and lucid--it is clear that Heylin has scrutinized the tapes for each concert on the various tours as well as the warm-up or soundcheck that preceded each scheduled appearance. He does much more than merely document changes in the tour's format or minute additions or deletions in the lyrics: he ruminates as to the possible significance of those alterations. For example, he draws a comparison between Dylan's marital infidelities during the 1976 Rolling Thunder Review tour--the sexual indiscretions portending the imminent estrangement from his wife Sara--and the callous substitution of the song "Sara" with "Idiot Wind" during the same tour (p. 279). In yet another example, Heylin's attentive ear caught a new stanza that alludes to the Gospel of Matthew that Dylan had tacked on to a performance of "Tangled Up in Blue" in Fort Worth, just six days after his sudden conversion to Christianity in Tucson (p. 317).

Heylin maintains a healthy skepticism of nearly everyone's reminiscences and personal accounts of events. Although he clearly admires Dylan, he does not take the enigmatic artist at his word, and as a result gives a much more focused and accurate impression of Dylan than would have resulted if he had swallowed his statements whole (see, for instance, pp. 23 and 99).

Heylin consistently provides differing or even contradictory accounts of important events as recounted by various participants and observers: he then questions each assumption and possible motive, reexamines the body of evidence, and tries to sort out fact from fiction. In so doing, heylin has succeeded in scrapping or revising nearly every "fact" that has become part of canonic law in Dylan studies. The following sections are of particular importance in expunging the apocryphal from the verifiable: Dylan's early days as a pianist (pp. 25--37); the origin of his alias (pp. 27--33); his youthful trip to Denver (pp. 41--42); his singing on contract to CBS (pp. 61--62); the Ed Sullivan debacle (p. 80); the critical importance of the now-forgotten 1964 Newport folk Festival (p. 108); the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (pp. 137--45); the motorcycle wreck (pp. 176, 188--92--essential reading); Dylan's conversion to Christianity and his suppositional return to Judaism; and Heylin's concluding thoughts.

And there are other laudable features that merit attention. After each quotation, Heylin places the relevant year of the quote in brackets. By using this date and the name of the speaker, the reader can refer to the pages of endnotes and subsequently track down a full bibliographic citation. This practice has several advantages over normal footnotes. General readers will not be distracted by perpetual detours, while at the same time serious scholars will have access to full references. The back of the volume also contains a list of "Dramatis Personae" (pp. 454--63) for the identification of principal figures in the artist's biography. Of enormous value is "The Bob Dylan Sessionography 1961--90" (pp. 467--78) that is full of valuable information regarding Dylan's official studio sessions. The concluding index is quite good.

In spite of its many virtues, a few minor flaws surface in Behind the Shades. Sometimes Heylin's language becoems excessively heated, and on one or two occasions he checks his critical faculties at the door. Chapter 23, on the film Renaldo and Clara, is uncharacteristically muddled and does not have the same reasoned objectivity as the rest of the book. The arguments here prove more defensive than persuasive; the author overreacts in rebutting the negative press and criticism that surrounded this film. It should be noted, however, that Heylin is at a sizable disadvantage in presenting his case in that almost no one--including me--has ever seen the original unedited version of the film that he regards so highly. On a handful of occasions Heylin falls into the overly exuberant language of rock-and-roll tabloids. Several phrases strike me as simply silly: "the music made his body move from the groin out" (p. 25); or the description of a group of musicians as "shit-hot" (p. 371). Hyperbolic exaggerations on page 247 degenerate into blatant cheerleading, and we are expected to believe that Dylan could "hold his breath three times as long as Caruso" (p. 369). Dylan is "audacious" and "astounding" so often that the adjectives lose their import (see, e.g., pp. 400, 403). And unfortunately, a good deal of the musical analysis is confined solely to the current status of Dylan's vocal cords.

Then there are the gratuitous barbs from Heylin's pen. He takes passing potshots at Tom Johnston, Michael Gray, Pauline Kael, Greil Marcus, and a host of performers. Carlos Santana is "wearisome" (p. 369); the Grateful Dead play with "crude insensitivity" (p. 369); Paul Simon's album Graceland is "shallow" (p. 407); Peter Gabriel is "ultracontemporary but inappropriate" (p. 407); the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album is "a cornucopia of studio gimmicks obscuring a plethora of lightweight tunes" (p. 183); and so on. The derisive statements do little to further Heylin's main theses.

These objections, however, should be taken in the context of the book's multitudinous virtues and overall quality. All in all, Bob Dylan Behind the Shades is a triumph in which scholarship and literary skill are artfully combined.

In a different vein, Richard Williams's Dylan: A Man Called Alias is a large coffeetable book featuring 154 photographs (116 black-and-white and 38 color). It is elegantly bound, and the quality of the reproductions is extremely high, making it worth the $40 price. The photographs are large, often occupying both sides of facing pages. Some of the more interesting images include reproductions from Dylan's highschool years and Dylan's concert appearances with such fellow rockers as Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler, Van Morrison, and the Grateful Dead. Twenty-two of the photographs can also be found in Jonathan Cott's equally beautiful Dylan (Garden City: Rolling Stone Press, 1984). Most of them were taken by Fred McDarrah, Daniel Kramer, Jim Marshall, or David Garr. A few are credited to the Michael Ochs Archive, Morgan Renaud/Sygma, or Photoreporters. In addition, there are five additional photos that are extremely similar to exemplars in Cott's book--in these specific cases the sibling snapshots were taken by the same photographer at the same photo session.

Williams's accompanying text--which is set in large, easily read, boldface type--is fluid and engaging. His prose is colorful and delightful to read, and he accurately summarizes the widely accepted "facts" of the life and career. But the new perspective found in Heylin's Behind the Shades is not reflected in Williams's text (even though he credits Heylin as one of his sources). The fanciful description of a youthful Dylan "plugging in" (pp. 13, 19) does not reconcile with Heylin's more accurate chronology and portrayal of Dylan's early years as a pianist; Williams claims, for example, that Dylan's first band was the Golden chords (p. 16) whereas Heylin tells us it was the Shadow Blasters. Dylan's description of his romantic quest to meet the "common man" in January of 1964 is accepted and repeated by Williams without critical scrutiny whereas Heylin demonstrates this view is a patent misrepresentation of actual events.

Also, Williams adopts some commonly held misconceptions without reexamining the primary evidence. For example, he gives the distinct impression that Dylan is an Apollonian figure with a slew of minor imitators following blindly behind, copying the "master" like musical lemmings. At one point he runs through a litany of copycat artists who follow in Dylan's footsteps in the aftermath of Bringin' It All Back Home of 1965, one of them being "Buffy Sainte-Marie with The Universal Soldier" (p. 76). But the United States Copyright Office records show she copyrighted the song on 27 September 1963 (registration EU791732), two years before Dylan's release of Bringin' It All Back Home. Dylan was not the only artist with original ideas; in fact, one might argue here that it was Sainte-Marie who had a modest influence on Dylan. Similarly Williams's musical expertise occasionally fails him. His bungled references to Baroque inventions (p. 41) and the "modal English minuet" (p. 34) do not inspire confidence. He asserts that Dylan is unable to bend notes on his harmonica because of the neck harness; in truth, the main factor that accounts for Dylan's peculiar style is his practice of exhaling most of the time rather than inhaling as is customary with blues harmonica players.

For the serious scholar, the new publication edited by Richard Wissolik, Bob Dylan, American Poet and Singer, is a godsend. For years, researchers have had to piece together scraps of bibliographic citations in a piecemeal fashion in order to access important literature that lay submerged in foreign, uncatalogued, or "underground" publications. Since the "standard" music bibliographies don't cut muster when it comes to Dylan research, this superb bibliography is of enormous value. Approximately 250 periodicals have been indexed, and they include nearly every imaginable type of publication. For instance, the Underground Press Syndicate from the late 1960s and early 1970s finds its way into the bibliography by way of the Berkeley Barb. On the other hand, one finds citations from such respected publications as Downbeat, the Quarterly Journal of Speech, and the Wall Street Journal. Of particular value are the citations for the folk magazines from the era such as Sing Out! and Broadside. The bibliography also includes an impressive number of foreign publications such as Dansk Musiktidsskrift, Nourvelle Observateur, the Jerusalem Post Magazine, and Die neue Musikzeitung.

The "Introuctory Notes" contain much more than mere editorial conventions. Wissolik supplies the reader with an excellent list of reference aids concerning Dylan's poetry (pp. 3--4). He charts the most important resource tools for navigating through the following areas: discographies, individual songs, bootlegs, and "Sources of Information on Dylan" (pp. 4--6). His lists are annotated with valuable tips and pointers. Furthermore, he supplies names and addresses for further contacts in a variety of fields. In short, Wissolik's six-page introduction is obligatory reading for anyone who has a scholarly interest in the field.

Citations indicate if the item is an album review, concert review, film review, book review, or record review. If the resource has a feature of particular importance--such as a discography, bibliography, information concerning social background, interpretation, and the like--that feature appears in boldface type. citations often have helpful cross-references to other related works in the bibliography. The bibliography itself occupies pages 7--72 and is followed by an additional eleven pages of "Selected Background Studies to the Folk Revival of the Sixties."

Readers should be warned, however, that the subheadings in the index are not alphabetized by key words but by arbitrary word order. In other words, a reference could be filed under "a" for and or "h" for his--regardless of the actual concept that is being cross-indexed. For example, if one wants to investigate Dylan's views on the clergy, one would first look under the main heading "Dylan." So far so good. One would think that the next step would be to look in the subheadings under "c" for "clergy." Not so. One finds the desired reference alphabetized under "a" for "[Dylan] and clergymen." In an equally incovenient and poorly conceived practice, individuals are indexed by first initial or first name, rather than last name. To find the interview with Jonathan Cott, look first in the index under "i" for "interview" and then under "j" for "Jonathan" in the subheadings.

Other mechanical flaws surface in the five preliminary essays, which were neither carefully proofread nor cogently edited. Nearly every sentence has a typographical error, botched punctuation, or ungramatical construction. Some of the opening essays (but not those of Tim Dunn and Mick McCuistion) degenerate into shameless "rock-write." It is hard to take seriously such statements as: "Perhaps Dylan himself does not grasp rationally the poetic power that is his--it just is," or "The Salieri in all of us should weep in the presence of his gifts," or "Dylan has changed images to continue telling the same truth: I define noting [sic]; I live; I do; I learn" (pp. viii, ix, xv). Fortunately, the sloppiness and silliness of the preliminaries does not continue into the body of the volume itself, which was carefully edited. In truth, the minor flaws at the outset do not negate the substantial value of the introduction and bibliography that follow.

Another scholarly tool of recent vintage is Michael Krogsgaard's Positively Bob Dylan. Krogsgaard released an earlier edition of this book in 1981 in Europe under the title Twenty Years of Recording: The Bob Dylan Reference Book (Stockholm: Scandinavian Institute for Rock Research). He produced a second edition (for the same publisher) in 1988 under the title Master of the Tracks. At last this important book, in a third, revised edition, has been issued in the American marketplace as part of Tom Schulteiss's Rock & Roll Reference Series.

Krogsgaard limits his discography to three categories: (1) official commercial releases; (2) unreleased sound recordings that are circulated among collectors; and (3) unreleased but generally uncirculated material that he has listened to. Krogsgaard has set himself a daunting task in pulling together and cataloguing such an enormous amount of information. He succeeds in gathering together 1,229 different recording sessions, interviews, albums, concert performances, and radio or television interviews. He arranges them in chronological order and assigns each a separate identifying number. Each entry gives the location and date of the event and lists the songs that were performed or recorded.

For recording sessions, he details which backup musicians play on which cuts, whether the session is recorded in stereo or mono, and whethe the remixes of the stereo and mono versions differ. He also gives the necessary information concerning the recording's release as a single or as part of a vinyl album, compact disc, or bootleg. He lists both the recording date and the release date of each song on a session. This is extremely useful information, given that Dylan will often be exploring new musical ground at the very moment that an album he recorded months before is being released to the public. With Dylan, official albums are instantly dated and inevitably out-of-step with his present state of mind. That is precisely why Krogsgaard's contribution is so laudable and constructive--it supplies us with detailed, accurate, and extremely specific information as to the repertory that Dylan was performing at any given moment.

For concert performances, he supplies the playlist of which songs were performed on which night, and also gives citations for warm-up sessions or rehearsals before the concert itself. The information is fascinating and sheds light on Dylan's artistic processes. From Krogsgaard's lists, one readily sees that Dylan performed radically different programs on each night of any given tour, and--interestingly--he often rehearses one set of songs in the afternoon and then ends up playing an entirely different set a few hours later at the concert itself. Krogsgaard also provides single page summaries for each tour, providing the date and location of each concert.

For radio or television broadcasts, Krogsgaard tells us if a show was taped, and provides bibliographic citations for interviews that later appeared in print. His book is particularly strong concerning foreign interviews, broadcasts, and recordings.

One has to look long and hard to find recordings or performances that escape Krogsgaard's attention. He does not list the recording of "The Two Sisters" mentioned by Heylin as Dylan's oldest recording, nor does he include the "St. Paul Tape N?? 1" and "First Minneapolis Tape" that Heylin treats in some detail in Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades. They may be omitted simply because Krogsgaard has not had a chance to audition them himself (he clearly states in the introduction that he has cited only the recordings that he has personally had the chance to hear). The only other omission noted was that of Dylan's humorous and charming rendition of "This Old Man" for the 1991 Walt Disney fundraiser For the Children: To Benefit the Pediatric AIDS Foundation (Walt Disney Records 60616--2).

Many superb photographs are tucked into the volume. Krogsgaard reproduces pictures of concert tickets, record turnouts, advertisements and concert announcements. All of the infomation in the book is instantly and easily accessible through more than a dozen indexes at the back of the volume. All Dylan scholars and enthusiasts would do well to acquire Positively Bob Dylan. Krogsgaard's thorough and definitive discography will surely become the Kochel-Verzeichnis of Dylan studies.