Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited - Hardcover

Heylin, Clinton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688165931 ISBN 13: 9780688165932

Publisher: William Morrow, 2001

Synopsis

In May 2001 Bob Dylan will be sixty years old. Ten years ago, Clinton Heylin published his groundbreaking biography of the man. Behind the Shades, which The New Yorker recently singled out as "the most readable and reliable" of all Dylan biographies.

This new, updated version has been completely rewritten from the bottom up, is significantly enlarged, and takes into account not only the last tumultuous decade of Dylan's life, but an additional decade of research by the author. The result is the definitive biography of the man many argue is the singular figure in twentieth-century popular culture.

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited follows Dylan along one of the most extraordinary and daring paths ever taken by a performing artist:

his awkward childhood in Minnesota

his arrival in New York and rise as the unwitting leader of a political folk revolution

his controversial move toward electric rock

the spooky and uniquely American Basement Tapes

his forays into country-western music the lost albums of the eighties his paranoia, addiction, and seclusion

his reemergence after a near-fatal 1997 heart infection with the triple Grammy Award-winning Time Out of Mind

the endless touring life

the hundreds of timeless songs that have become a part of American and worldwide consciousness

Most biographies of Bob Dylan are mired in the sixties, but Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited is the only one that gives equal weight to all the extraordinary phases of Dylan's forty-year career.

As ever, Dylan remains an endlessly fascinating, mysterious, and obsessively private man. For years he has managed to keep much of his personal life a secret, and Clinton Heylin, Dylan's most prolific chronicler, remains the first biographer to give the world a true sense of what drives, inspires, influences, and shapes the man behind the music, the man behind the shades.

About this title

About the Author

Clinton Heylin is recognized as the world's leading Bob Dylan scholar, as well as an authority on folk music and popular music in general. He is also known for his acclaimed studies of American punk (From the Velvets to the Voidoids); rock bootlegging (Bootleg!)--Record Collector's book of the year in 1994; and Dylan's studio recordings (Dylan: The Recording Sessions), nominated for the Ralph J. Gleason Award in 1996. He edited The Penguin Book of Rock and Roll Writing and is the general editor of Schirmer's Classic Rock Albums series. A native of Manchester, he now makes his home in Somerset, England.

From Kirkus Reviews

From longtime Dylan scholar Heylin, a meticulously detailed and engrossing account of the musician's work and life from 1961 to the present. Bob Dylan is the singer-songwriter nonpareil of the last 30 years, but little has been written about his life after the notorious 1966 motorcycle accident. During this period, he has recorded 20 albums (and at least an equal amount of unreleased material), embarked on tours up to three years long, and worked on several movies. Here, Heylin fills in the record with a close- up narrative refreshingly free of either uncritical worship or parochial judgments. Heylin keeps his focus on the songs but examines closely the events in Dylan's life that shaped them: the motorcycle accident; his divorce from Sara and messy custody battle for their five children; his alleged hotel-room visitation from heaven, and his born-again evangelism. In numerous quotes, Dylan speaks for himself, while interviews with the important people in Dylan's life give his story considerable depth and complexity. Comments by Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Robbie Robertson, Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, and studio musicians who have recorded and toured with Dylan provide a unique and fascinating view of the nuts and bolts of Dylan's working methods. Exhaustively researched and eminently readable: an indispensable book for those interested in Dylan, popular music, or the fate of American icons. (Twenty-four pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0688165931
• ISBN 13: 9780688165932
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 720