My Favourite Bob Dylan Books
I’ve been intending to do a list of my favourite Bob Dylan books for a while now. If I’m not listening to Dylan, or watching Dylan, listening to podcasts, I enjoy reading reading about him. I should say this isn’t all the time - just when I’m going through what I call a Bob Phase, which usually happen a couple of times a year. Though they can last for weeks at a time.
My descent into all things Dylan happened around 2002. I had a few of the albums and ‘appreciated’ him for some time. I had seen him live - the Fleadh mór in Tramore in 93 and Belfast’s Botanic garden back in ‘98. I liked some of his work, but I was a passive observer. It was good to say I’d seen him.
I was on holidays in Barcelona around then, and a busker played a song I didn’t get to ask him the name of - I had a few of the lines in my head. Some research revealed it was a song called ‘Po’boy’ from the ‘Love and theft’ album (released on September 11, 2001) and that was it. Bought it, was entranced, never looked back.
I’m not an über fan in that I’ve only seen him about 25 times over the years. I haven't read every book, or downloaded every bootleg. But what I do have is a deep appreciation for the man’s work, and extreme gratitude that I’m lucky enough to be alive at the same time as this remarkable artist. His music, his lyrics, have become such an important part of my life.
I’m not even sure if these are are the best bob Dylan books, but they’re the ones I’ve read and enjoyed.
If you’re a Dylan fan, you’ll understand the obsession. If you’re just getting into him, I wish you well. Drink deeply, for you will never be able to fully slake your thirst. And may his song always be sung.
Bob Dylan Books
The following list of books is not exhaustive, and just indicates my favourites and the reasons why. If you have your own book I’ve missed out, please let me know in the comments below. I know I’ve given some away that I’ve forgotten about. So without further ado….
Bob Dylan by Anthony Scudato
This was my first Dylan book, which I picked up in a secondhand bookshop. It's no longer in my possession, like I said previously, Bob books come and go in my life. Knowing little of Dylan back then it was a revelation to me. It wasn't written by an Italian poet from the 13th century, but by Anthony Scudato, a former crime reporter and mafioso expert, who certainly had a nose for sniffing out the important details in Dylan's life.
It's funny the lines you remember. There's one where Scudato talks about Dylan being 'the antenna of the race' (a quote from Ezra Pound, not fighting with TS Eliot in the captain's tower) and it always rang true to me over the years. Dylan's ability to tap into the universal and express that in his songs might seem obvious, but to me, it's one of his greatest gifts.
This book was published in 1972, so it's amazing to think there are another fifty years of Bob to come (yet). But this is an exceptional account of his life and work up to then, written in the lingo of the times. And because it only covers his life up until just after 'New Morning', there's plenty of focus on his roots and influences, and the years in Greenwich Village are particularly evocative. He also talks to absolutely everyone, including Joan Baez.
What separates this book from others on the list is that Dylan spoke to Scudato, saying "I read it. Some of it is pretty straight, some of it exactly the way it happened… I rather enjoyed it." I think part of the reason he did so was to set a few rumours straight and to encourage people to see him as just a 'song-and-dance man'. What I found particularly interesting was that Dylan offered comments on Scudato's interpretation of his lyrics, something I don't think he's done elsewhere.
I'm glad I started with Anthony Scudato's Dylan , which I think has held its own over all these years. Hard to get a copy these days, but second-hand paperbacks do surface. And if you've got mine, drop it back to me, no questions asked.
All Across the Telegraph - A Bob Dylan Handbook
When you’re first getting into the great man, you’ll hopefully meet other bobcats who share your passion. One of my fellow travellers was a top bloke by the name of Johnny Carragher, who gifted me this book on one of those nights we were waxing lyrical about Bob and surrounded by vinyl until the wee hours.
John was a bit further down the road than me, as his obsession had been building since the 90’s. This book is a bit battered because I can tell from the inside page that John had it with him when he lived in Middlesex. There are also orange stickers from Downeys on it, I think to cover up some scratches on the cover. Downeys is a supermarket on the old cabra road in Dublin, and I think John may have lived up there at one stage or was visiting another friend.
I digress. John gifted me this book because he understood my hunger; I couldn’t get enough Dylan into me. He also recognised that I’d enjoy reading this chap called Michael Gray. We’ll meet Michael a couple of times on this list.
This was one of my first Bob Books and it holds a special place for me because it was my first introduction to the world of writing devoted to him. It’s a selection of articles culled from a quarterly publication called ‘The telegraph’.
It introduced me to writers such as Christopher Ricks and Clinton Heylin. There were chapters on Dylan coming off his motorbike, on where is positively 4th street, an interview with Allen Ginsberg, amongst dozens of others. A broad collection of articles on his work, and the man himself, the art and artists that inspired him.
Behind the Shades by Clinton Heylin
This was another early book I enjoyed about Dylan - again, I’ve given my copy to someone. It happens a lot with my Dylan books over the years - after a drunken evening playing vinyl, I send someone home with a book. Never to be seen again, but that’s ok.
I think if you’re starting with Dylan and are looking for something definitive, this is the one for you. It’s incredibly well-researched, and the author shows a deep appreciation for Dylan's work. I think it’s also one of the better books in terms of narrative, and it reads well. I think Heylin is quite well-balanced in his criticism of some of Dylan's work and he speaks to absolutely everyone, and I liked how he drills down into the albums.
This book has been updated a few times, so make sure you get the most recent version. I think the last one was around 2011, so maybe there’s another update due. I think I’ll be buying one to replace my lost copy.
The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia by Michael Gray
Back in 2007, the small village of Moville in County Donegal held a Bob Dylan weekend, billed as ‘Bobfest’. Lots of local musicians as well as many from further afield came together to play the music of the bard of Minnesota.
As we say in Ireland, the craic was mighty. Every pub, cafe, and available outdoor space was used as a stage, and all the local accommodation was booked out. The tunes and the drink were in full flow.
Somehow, the organisers had managed to get Michael Gray, the renowned Dylan scholar, to give a talk in the lounge of one of the pubs. My memory is hazy, but I think it was on the lesser-known bob songs. Anyway, I remember there was a healthy crowd there to hear him speak.
This book had been recently published, so I got Michael to sign it for me. Afterward, he joined me for a couple of drinks and we ended up in the town centre, where some of my friends, including the oft mentioned John, were in a Dylan tribute band called ’The phantom engineers’ and were headlining from the back of a lorry on the Main Street. Great memories that linger, sad but sweet.
This is a great reference book and one of the best books about Bob Dylan, and I enjoy pulling it from the shelf and having a flick through it. If you think you know anything about Bob, a quick peruse of this book will soon put you right. Gray is an entertaining and informed writer, not afraid to share his opinions, and is one of the foremost Dylan critics.
Don’t expect it to be definitive - it’s alphabetical, but it’s not a comprehensive reference book. Gray has an appreciation for a wide range of music, and I like the randomness of the book - I pulled it off the shelf when I was writing this post and have spent the last half hour reading:
Five pages about nursery rhymes in ‘Under the red sky’;
A paragraph on ‘kelp’ from the song Sara, linked to George Eliot and Middlemarch;
A couple of pages on Leonard Cohen
I love the randomness and the sheer detail of it and I never tire of having a skim through it, as well as using it to check up on some details about Bob I want clarified. One of my favourite Bob Dylan books on my shelf.
Paul Williams - Performing Artist
This is a collection of three books by Paul Williams - 1960-63, 74-86, and 86 and beyond (takes you up as far as ‘Love and Theft). To make it easier, I'm grouping these three books together.
Back in 2008, myself and a couple of other bobcats took it upon ourselves to read the three books in this series, and track down every live performance that was mentioned. The idea was that as you read the books, you could listen to the tracks at the same time. It took a few months, but we did finish it.
We posted the completed project to expectingrain, still the mecca for all things bob related. For a number of years I was a frequent user of the site, and I occasionally still drop in - it's such a great resource for all things Bob. I haven’t been on ER recently so I'm not sure if it's still available - my guess would be that a lot of the links have long expired.
When you disappear down the bob rabbit hole, you will invariably spend a lot of time in the warren of bootlegs. It's an underground city to be explored, to get lost in, and you'll want to occasionally surface for air. You'll buy gigabytes to store all of these treasures, and you'll think about upgrading your broadband so that you can mainline these bootlegs even quicker to your ears.
It was around this time that I was getting into Dylan live. After I'd seen him in Dublin in 05, where he played 33 songs over two nights and repeated just one (watchtower), I was hooked. It wasn't long before I was travelling around Spain, Germany and Italy catching him as many times as I could. The variety of the set-lists, even the tempo of the songs, changed each evening and I wanted to get to as many shows as possible. Yeah, you could say I was addicted.
And these books and bootlegs helped with that addiction. William's passion, his extensive research, and his skills as a writer all make these books a must have for the Dylan convert. He had extensive knowledge of the unreleased recordings, introducing me to them for the first time. You can tell how much Dylan meant to him personally, and it makes you more engaged with him.
One of the great things now is that many of the recordings have been released through the bootleg series, so you can hear them in all their (official) glory. Sadly, Paul Williams passed away a few years ago, and when I read these books I often wonder what he would make of bobs recent performances and output. A great writer, and a great chronicler of Bobs official releases, hard to find tracks and bootlegs.
Looking back at these books, I can trace my own burgeoning passion for Dylan, and realise just how deep I’d got. Worthy additions to my favourite bob Dylan books list.
Early Years 1960 - 1973 Amazon UK Amazon US
Middle Years 1974 -1986 Amazon UK Amazon US
1986-90 and Beyond Amazon UK Amazon US
Song and Dance Man by Michael Gray
I’ve already mentioned Michael Gray, and this is another entry on my list. It would be remiss to compile any list of my favourite Bob Dylan books and leave this one out. I have to thank my friends John (Again) and Sinead for this book.
In 1965, at a press conference in San Francisco, Dylan was asked whether he seen himself as a singer or poet?
"Oh I think of myself more as a song and dance man, y’know.”
First published in 1972, this has been updated a number of times. It's a deep dive into Dylans influences and use of language. I’ve already mentioned the short section on nursery rhymes in the enclyopedia above - it’s also here, as well as Dylans use of biblical allusions, his use of blues and folk forms and poetry and literary references.
It’s fascinating to see how gray traces Dylans knowledge of traditional forms of music; he really is a scholar of the form. Gray is able to place his lyrics often in the context of the source material - ‘A tree with roots’ indeed.
I can lift this book off the shelf and have a little scan of the pages - before I know it, I’ve spent an hour reading it. Dylan’s music is usually going in the background just to check a few things mentioned, and I’ve probably opened a bottle of something. This book isn’t for the casual fan, and when I began to enjoy this I realised I have fully immersed myself in Dylanology. No turning back now.
My own favourite chapter is probably the one on Blind Willie McTell (Gray went on to write an excellent book on the same man) but I find something interesting every time I lift it. He also has a more recent book called ‘Outtakes on bob Dylan’ which I will read and most likely add to this list at a later stage.
Oddly, the pages on ‘Jokerman’ are missing from my copy so if anyone knows what that song is about and could let me know in the comments, I’d be ever so grateful.
I’ve just this very day read that a 50th anniversary three book series has been released and can be found here - Amazon UK Amazon US
There’s also a podcast recently released via the excellent Dylan FM which features Michael Gray talking about the book - that can be found here.
Chronicles by Bob Dylan
I can’t have a list of my favourite Bob Dylan books without this entry.
A lot of this feels like smoke and mirrors. Just when you think you’re able to pin Dylan down, get a good glimpse of him, he disappears back into the shadows again.
It’s certainly not a chronological book - that’s best left to some of biographies above. Instead, we get snippets in time such as New York in 1961, New Orleans in 1989. Talking about Minnesota and growing up, you begin to get a sense of the influences that shaped him.
The nature of memory is unreliable and I think what Dylan is doing here is relaying impressions, scenes, encounters, and places. It’s about the music he was listening to at that time, the occasional aside to people in his life. One of my favourite parts is when he talks about rifling through his friends library, taking the titles that interested him most - he’s always been a bit of a magpie.
Writing about ‘Oh mercy’ allows him to give us his thoughts on New Orleans, as well as the artistic process behind the album. It’s the lengthiest part of the book, and although I appreciate people might want to hear about ‘blonde on blonde’ or ‘blood on the tracks’ I enjoyed this insight into New Orleans, his creative process. I have to include this and you can’t read it and not hear his voice from his superb ’Theme time radio series’. It’s that folksy, familiar patter that feels reassuring:
New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there's a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There's something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.
There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There's a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.
Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn't move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon's generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you'll get smart - to feed pigeons looking for handouts.
What comes across for me is an artist steeped in the traditional forms of music, who is fascinated by the craft of songwriting, and who is an intensely private man who dislikes fame. This is one of the best bob Dylan books, and is obviously a must for any bobcat.
Chronices volume one appeared back in 2004, but as of 2023, no other books in the series have appeared. It would be nice to think that because he had an enforced touring break during the pandemic, that he put pen to paper again.
One can hope.
Dylan on Dylan
If you’ve finished chronicles, and want to hear more from Bob, this is the book for you. It’s a collection of interviews which start in 1961, all the way up to 2004, about 20 in all.
As you can imagine, there are times when he is prickly and the shutters come down. Quite often he doesn’t know the answer, or rather says he doesn’t know, or responds to a different question. A lot of his replies are evasive and vague, jokey or deflective - this seems to be the case especially in the 60’s when he was seen as ’the spokesperson for a generation’ and it wasn’t a mantle he wanted.
Interesting, in a 1965 press conference in San Fran, he is asked ‘If you were going to sell out to a commercial interest, which one would you choose?’ His response? Ladies garments. Fast forward to nearly 40 years later, and Dylan and his work features in an ad for Victorias secrets. I knew it was all a big joke, whatever it was about.
Then there time, more so in the 80’s. when is a bit less guarded and seems to trust the interviewer a bit more. He still doesn’t give much away, but his answers are a bit more revealing. I liked the interview he did with Sam Shepard, which appears here. I think that Dylan is at his most open when he is talking about his influences, whether that’s in music or cinema. Another favourite interview is one he gives to Paul Zollo about songwriting, and he really opens up about the craft.
For a man seen as so elusive, he’s given much more interviews over the years than you’d think.
So there you have it - those are my favourite Bob Dylan books. A quick look at Goodreads found this list of 148. I actually thought it was 136 or 142, but there you go.
I like reading about Bob's influences, his art, his life as a musician. I couldn't really care less about where he lives, who with etc but I am interested in what man thinks about the world. Isn't that the same for most influential artists?
I would say that as for me Dylans lyrics are better understood in the context of his music - the cadence, the phrasing. And I intuitively understand a lot of his meaning, but it's difficult to put it into words - in fact, I probably lose something when I explain it. But I get an enormous pleasure from reading about other peoples interpretations, and it usually always adds to my understanding and appreciation of a song. Sure it’s geeky, but we all have our wee ‘things’.
I will add to this list when I get time, as there are books I’ve left out or haven’t read yet.
I listen to a lot of Dylan podcasts these days - informed, engaging and fun, these are my current favourites:
Is it Rolling Bob (apple link) and the excellent Definitely Dylan, hosted by Laura Tenschert. And I mentioned Dylan fm above.
Any more podcast/book suggestions, please leave them below and thanks for reading!