Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan - Hardcover

Bell, Ian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1780575777 ISBN 13: 9781780575773

Publisher: Mainstream Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

By the middle of the 1970s, Bob Dylan’s position as the pre-eminent artist of his generation was assured. The 1975 album Blood on the Tracks seemed to prove, finally, that an uncertain age had found its poet.Perverse or driven, Dylan refused the role. By the decade’s end, the counter-culture’s poster child had embraced conservative, evangelical Christianity. Fans and critics alike were confused; many were aghast. Still the hits kept coming.Then Dylan faltered. His instincts, formerly unerring, deserted him. In the 1980s, what had once appeared unthinkable came to the ‘voice of a generation’ began to sound irrelevant, a tale told to grandchildren.Yet in the autumn of 1997 something remarkable happened. Having failed to release a single new song in seven long years, Dylan put out the equivalent of two albums in a single package. He called it Time Out of Mind . So began the renaissance, artistic and personal, that culminated in 2012’s acclaimed Tempest .In the concluding volume of his groundbreaking study, Ian Bell explores the unparalleled second act in a quintessentially American career. It is a tale of redemption, of an act of creative will against the odds, and of a writer who refused to fade away.Time Out of Mind is the story of the latest, perhaps the last, of the many Bob Dylans. This one might yet turn out to have been the most important of them all.

About this title

About the Author

Ian Bell is a past holder of the George Orwell Prize for Political Journalism and the award-winning author of Dreams of Exile, a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson. He is a columnist with the Herald and the Sunday Herald in Edinburgh.

Review

“A compelling, focused examination of the latter half of the elusive singer-songwriter's life and career. For Dylan's many obsessive fans, who have been offered a wealth of analyses of this singular artist over the years, Bell delivers the goods. Chapters are heavy with engrossing and sometimes surprising details of Dylan's most potent works and cringe-worthy missteps during this time, all told in the Scottish journalist's sharp-sighted, biting style. Doggedly researched, full of insight and descriptions that wonderfully reveal aspects of this luminary of American music.”
- Associated Press

“Unmissable.”
- Mail On Sunday

“Forget F Scott Fitzgerald’s dictum about there being no second acts in American lives. Time Out Of Mind, part two of Ian Bell’s magisterial biography of Bob Dylan, gives us a third and a fourth and sundry other acts in an ongoing drama. This is the best biography that rock has had.”
- The Financial Times

“By eschewing scurrilous gossip for a more scholarly consideration of Dylan's place in American culture, Bell has produced an essential addition to the huge body of critical analysis that already exists around this unique individual.”
- The Guardian

“I had been gripped by Bell’s first volume, Once Upon a Time, covering the years up to and including “Blood on the Tracks,” the second volume, [and] Time Out of Mind, has the special ‘this is where I came in’ attraction of history one has actually experienced. Bell walks an exemplary line between apostles who insist the young folkie was ablaze with genius from the moment he got to New York and the more skeptical likes for whom he was just another talented hustler on the make.”
- Geoff Dyer, The New York Times Book Review

“Ambitious. Bell handles Dylan brilliantly.”
- The Spectator

“As both devotee and skeptic, Bell takes nothing about Dylan's life at face value. A thorough account of every step Dylan made toward his eventual comeback. Any Dylan fan looking for something with a bit more bite than the typical breathless celebrity hagiographies will appreciate Time Out of Mind.”
- Biographile

“Award-winning Bell continues his thoughtful, insightful biography of the enigmatic Mr. Dylan. There is much here to savor. A must for Dylan fans.”
- Booklist (starred review)

“A fluid biography of a man and musician whose ongoing personal narrative is as intricate and unique as his epic songs.”
- Publishers Weekly

Edition details

• Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1780575777
• ISBN 13: 9781780575773
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 576