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Real Moments By Barry Feinstein (Omnibus Press / Vision On 2008)

Review by Derek Barker

With two new photo books arriving at almost the same time, it is inevitable that comparisons will be made. Whilst the “Rex Collections” book (reviewed in ISIS 138) contained little that was new, some uninspired photo choices and rather poor quality reproductions, Barry Feinstein’s “Real Moments” features many previously unseen pictures, inspired choices and excellent print reproduction. After a foreword written by Bob Neuwirth and a short introduction by Barry Feinstein, “Real Moments” begins with the “Times” album cover photo from 1963 and Dylan with autoharp and backstage with Mimi Farina in 1964. The book then quickly moves on to its central theme, Dylan’s 1966 tour and photos from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Paris. The majority of the book (125 of the 156 pages) is devoted to 1966 but this is classic cool Dylan and I for one can’t get enough of it. Whether it’s shopping in Carnaby Street, posing with kitchen staff in Scotland, on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, or sitting reading the British music press, the man simply captivates me. Many of Feinstein’s pictures are well known. His Aust Ferry shot was used on the cover of the “No Direction Home” DVD and “The Bootleg Series Vol. 7” soundtrack CD and his pictures of the children from Liverpool were made famous when 40 years later the BBC tracked down the kids to recreate the picture taken in the doorway of an old warehouse. I recently had the pleasure of meeting the young girl seen at the top centre of the steps on this shot (page 53) who said that the streets were empty that day only because many people, including her father, were away in London for the Wembley FA Cup Final between Everton and Sheffield Wednesday. She also said that after the photo session had finished the children were given ten shillings (50p) each. “Real Moments” closes with a dozen pictures taken by Feinstein as he accompanied Dylan on “Tour 74”. Here we see Dylan playing chess on “Starship One” (the 40-seat Boeing 720 which took Dylan and The Band from concert to concert); visiting the Philips Collection in a Washington museum; spending time with Jimmy Carter at the governor’s mansion; and in LA, both in his hotel room and on stage at the Forum. This lovely, large format 10” x 12” (26cm x 33cm) black and white hardback has a retail price of £24.99 and is now in stock at My Back Pages.

A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir Of Greenwich Village In The Sixties By Suze Rotolo (Broadway Books 2008)

Review by Derek Barker

Although Rotolo’s “A Freewheelin’ Time” was published by Random House imprint Broadway Books in the States during May 2008 the UK publication will not happen until autumn this year. I had intended to provide readers with a panel review of the Rotolo book but unfortunately this didn’t come to fruition. Two of our regular reviewers did read the book but for differing reasons were unable to write reviews. Due to work commitments our first reviewer simply didn’t have enough time to write a review but said the book was “indispensable; intelligent; discrete but illuminating and deceptively easy-to-read, while leaving room to read between the lines”. Our second intended reviewer felt unable to write about the book because he couldn’t find anything positive to say about it. “Weak, disjointed” and “filled with clichés” were just some of the observations. Finally he commented “what it does offer is beyond limited and what it does share, like her carrot allergy, is useless”. These polar differences are of course exactly the reason that ISIS tries to provide panel reviews. As for me, well, I’m going to sit firmly on the fence. I felt the book contained some interesting anecdotes, though these were all related to either Bob Dylan or Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. In common with several other reviewers I felt that Rotolo spends far too much time writing about her childhood. Mark Carter makes a valid comment in his “Twenty Pounds of Headlines” column when he says “surely, as an auto-biography, that’s her prerogative?” And, whilst I totally agree with these sentiments, the problem still remains I’m not particularly interested in reading about Rotolo’s childhood. The simple fact is that almost everyone who buys this book will be doing so because of Rotolo’s connection to Bob Dylan. The plain truth is that without this link the book would not have been published. And whilst I’m sure no one wanted a kiss ‘n’ tell exposé, most people will be buying the book in the hope of gaining some new insights into Bob Dylan. Did I learn anything from the book? Well, I now know that if I ever have the pleasure of meeting Suze Rotolo I shouldn’t offer her a carrot. Marks out of five: Our first anonymous non-reviewer gave Rotolo’s “A Freewheelin’ Time” a maximum 5-out-of-5 whilst the other reviewer gave the book a big zero. Me, well, as I said at the beginning of this review, I’m sitting on the fence with a 2½-out-of-5.

Before we leave “A Freewheelin’ Time”, I should mention that there are a number of differences between the early US “reading copy” and the published book. Paula Radice has said that she will compare the two versions for the next issue of ISIS and it will be interesting to see if these changes are general editorial alterations or possible “censorship”. Due to the late UK publication date My Back Pages has imported copies of “A Freewheelin’ Time” into Britain for sale ahead of the UK release.

Bob Dylan: Icons of Popular Music By Keith Negus (Equinox Publishing 2008)

Review by Derek Barker

The first thing you notice about this small format 172-page paperback is the cover. Words fail me. This is without question one the most unattractive book covers I’ve ever seen. A ghostly white-face Dylan is set against a revolting pale purple background which in turn is framed at the top by white and at the bottom by bright blue! I’m sure some trendy designer somewhere believes this is modern art but if it is, I’m sorry, I don’t get it. I quickly flicked through the book and noticed that it contained some photographs. The first photo (page 20) is the familiar picture taken by Brian Shuel at the Singers’ Club (December 22, 1962). In this printing however Dylan appears to have grown a good six inches! Sure enough, the next picture (page 32) again depicts a circa 6’1” Dylan. This dreadful manipulation of images continues throughout the book and is especially noticeable on pages 52 and 59 which both portray a Dylan seemingly suffering from Gigantism. Whoever is responsible for the layout of this book (S.J.I. Services, New Delhi?) has simply streeeeeeetched the images to fill spaces. In one bizarre twist however (page 119, Blackbushe 1978), the photo has been squashed to produce a 4’ 10” Bob Dylan. This is particularly evident when you notice Bob’s top hat is half the height it should be. All this is a pity because while Negus’ writing cannot be described as pioneering, his approach to Dylan’s work is different enough to make this book appealing. Author Keith Negus, of Goldsmiths College at the University of London, offers an interesting and authoritative examination of Dylan’s music and his exploration of Dylan’s use of voice, guitar playing, piano and harp, and his perhaps contentious thinking on Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” / “Nashville Skyline” / “Self Portrait” post motorcycle accident period are all worthwhile additions to the plethora of available Dylan literature. Negus is not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom (which is fine) and many of his arguments are quite convincing. There are times however that he seems to quote from other sources simply so he can rubbish them. This seems to be an academic trait, a sort of I’m more intelligent than you are game. I have no real problem with authors correcting “facts” that others have got wrong but I’m far less tolerant when they are criticizing other writers’ ideas and opinions. At times, especially near the end of the book, Negus seems to devote all his energies to discussing other authors and reproducing sections of their work. Take this short extract of a much longer section of Negus’ book “Muir is one of the more insightful of the critical fans who write for the Dylan magazines ... As a fan he is more concerned with the sincerity of Dylan’s songs than their formal qualities. In contrast to the imaginative poetics that fascinate Ricks or the incorrect grammar that vexes Gray, or the philosophical conundrums that entice Day. Muir is attuned to the words as performance and picks up on the way words are sung as crucial to the meaning of the song”. While I might agree with these sentiments (congratulations Andrew), this is supposed to be an analysis of Bob Dylan’s work not the work of those who have previously written about him. Why do academics spend so much time writing about other academics? Perhaps it’s some form of insecurity. On the plus side, and unlike most other music and poetry academics, Negus’ writing is easy to read and to understand. Marks out of five: General feel, look, cover and photographs 0-out-of-5. Text 3½-out-of-5. “Bob Dylan” by Keith Negus is now in stock at My Back Pages.

I’m Gone Bob Dylan’s 2007 Concerts By Mike Wyvill & John Wraith (Private Publication)

Review by Derek Barker

This publication arrived on the morning of our deadline so time was tight to do a full review and in any case those of you who have been collecting this longstanding series of booklets will already know exactly what to expect. For those of you who haven’t yet seen the Wyvill & Wraith booklets (shame on you) they are an ongoing collection of A5 glossy booklets that collect together all of the details from one year of touring. This issue, entitled “I’m Gone”, is a 56-page issue covering Bob’s touring exploits during 2007. This booklet, like the others in the series, contains an overview of the 2007 tours; a list of all the relevant concerts; the songs played at each of those concerts (which forms the bulk of the booklet), and a page of assorted facts such as when a song was first played, the ten most performed songs (‘Thunder On The Mountain’ just pips ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ for that accolade) and a list of guest musicians, of which there are just two– Jack White and Elvis (that’s Costello) not Presley. All of these booklets are well illustrated throughout with photos and items of memorabilia in both black & white and colour. I have to say that some of the past issues have contained some poor looking digitized photos but barring a couple of reproductions this issue is very good on that score.

LEGENDARY SESSIONS: BOB DYLAN. HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED by Colin Irwin

A Review by Paula Radice

It has seemed to me for quite a while now that the way forward for books about Bob Dylan has been the eschewing of huge monographs trying to encompass and explain the whole of Dylan (a monster being that has outgrown the confines of single volumes) in favour of the “slice of the action” treatments; the snapshots of individual albums, recording sessions, even single songs: think Greil Marcus’ “Like a Rolling Stone” (Public Affairs, 2005) or “Invisible Republic” (Picador, 1997), or more recently, Sid Griffin’s entertaining “Million Dollar Bash” (Jawbone Books, 2007). There is plenty to say about individual chapters of the Dylan “story”, and such books give themselves the space and time to explore.

Colin Irwin’s book on “Highway 61 Revisited” is another such book, and a highly entertaining read. It reminded me most of another study of how Dylan’s best work emerges from the apparent chaos of recording sessions, Gill and Odegard’s examination of the realisation of “Blood On The Tracks”, “A Simple Twist of Fate” (Da Capo Press, 2004). It shares with it an easy readability, underlain with a convincing understanding of both the context and detail of the work in question.

Tellingly, because of the increasing distance between the then and the now, the first chapter is a swift-moving yet necessary outlining of the social and political context of “Highway 61 Revisited”. A great many of those reading the book may well be old enough, if they have travelled alongside Dylan, to be conversant with the events and the world described, but 1965 was forty-three years ago, nearly half a century, and time moves quickly. If University departments define “History” as ending the year in which their youngest undergraduates were born, then “Highway 61 Revisited” is now firmly old, however weird that may seem to those of us who hear its newness every time we listen to it. I don’t count myself young at all, and I was only six months old when “Highway 61 Revisited” was recorded…

Irwin steers a clever course through the minefield of the audience for Dylan books, neither overestimating nor underestimating the level of knowledge readers will bring to the book and managing to supply clear descriptive detail without any giving of the impression that he is generalising or sweeping the surface. This is a tricky task, and one that not many manage. He has a very impressive grasp of the details (for example, of the biographies and personalities of those involved in the making of the album) but never veers into the impenetrable or the overly-academic. His writing style is lively and, above all, clear, and he is not afraid to cut himself short when Dylan’s lyrics threaten to divert examination into the arcane or theoretical (saying of the song ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ itself, for example “…while intriguing, the clues are too thin to offer a logical interpretation, though plenty have tried”). When he does – just once – stray too far down the interpretative trail (giving a page and half’s biography of Lady Jane Grey, in search of “Queen Jane”), it points up beautifully how concise and how clear the rest of the book has been, and we can forgive him for a single mis-step.

A more egotistical writer could not have resisted the temptation to have laid his own layers of interpretation over the album, and this is, I think, Irwin’s greatest accomplishment with this book: it tells its tale well, and then stands back. Analysis is secondary; clarity and research is primary. He understands that we don’t need him to tell us what we think of the album. There is more than enough new material about the characters, events and context of the album’s making (and its reception) here to justify many times over its reading. I’ll have to leave it to others to say if the history is accurate – Irwin certainly sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about: I just know that I enjoyed reading it.

BOB DYLAN – THE NEVER ENDING STAR by Lee Marshal (Polity 2007)

A review by Paula Radice

Lee Marshall, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol, has taken as the basis for this book the argument that Dylan’s long career can be most clearly examined through that which he calls “star-meaning”, in other words the social conditions in which Dylan’s stardom was defined and the changes that have subsequently affected the relationship between the artist and his audience. I must admit that, initially, I was very resistant: it is difficult for someone who (I suspect like many ISIS subscribers) likes to consider Dylan as something completely separate from the rest of “stardom” or “celebrity” because of the uniqueness of his talents to admit the recognition that Dylan, like lesser talents, has a determining context rather than a pre-determined pre-eminence (I sometimes feel that “Dylan”, by which I mean the idea of “Dylan”, is better characterised as a force of nature than as the life’s work of one mere mortal, but I suppose that’s my problem and one best left for the therapists to sort out).

But, of course, Marshall is right that in this day of mass media and instant communication (and, crucially for a musician, recording technology), the definition of an artist has critical dimensions that lie beyond the artists’ (or their managers’, or record company’s) control, and that the stories that lie behind “stardom” are never really unique. There was nothing about Dylan’s career that was ever truly written in stone. Many talented people go undiscovered; many talented newcomers falter; many older “stars” find themselves unable to adapt to new circumstances, and any of these fates was possible for “Bob Dylan”, as difficult as that may be for us now to picture.

And Marshall has all of the credentials to explore both the sociological patterns underlying the development of Dylan’s star status and the personal decisions made by Dylan at crucial points (what he calls Dylan’s “negotiations” with his star-image). He has an excellent grasp of what rock music has meant within popular culture and how it has changed over time, and gives in this book the clearest explanation I have ever come across of rock’s (and therefore Dylan’s) place within post-modernism. Moreover, he really knows his Dylan, and has a Paul Williams-like instinctive grasp of Dylan’s intentions in lyrics and performance; in other words, he is not bogged down in the “readings of the texts” (as he quite rightly accuses Michael Gray of being) but has a fully-rounded perspective of culture, context and meaning. Like Williams, he strikes many chords of recognition in the reader, especially when he is speaking of performance and what it means to Dylan (as John Bauldie once wrote of Williams, the reader is in danger of developing cricks in the neck from nodding in agreement too much while reading).

The last two chapters in the book are the very strongest, and are, to my mind, the best account yet of the changes that have happened in Dylan’s song-writing, performances and stature since 1997. They make an awful lot of sense. It is a shame, in a way though, that this book has come out just too early to include any consideration of “I’m Not There”, with which it shares many characteristics, both seeking as they do to deconstruct the idea of “Dylan”, or rather to examine the separate facets and reveal the complexity of the whole. If I were to make a recommendation to the reader, it would be to watch “I’m Not There” before reading the final chapter of Marshall’s book: the two work brilliantly together. Why did Todd Haynes not provide a contemporary “Dylan” in his film? As Marshall describes, the 21st century “Bob Dylan” has a powerful, almost immortal, timeless, legendary status – the sort of status artists are usually only accorded after death. This “Dylan” towers over, subsumes, all the previous incarnations. As Marshall puts it: “He has, in a sense, stepped outside of his own career and become something else, a living monument to the strength of the tradition”. The linear (or in Haynes’ case, the determinedly non-linear) narrative of Dylan’s career has come to an end; Dylan no longer makes history but encompasses it: “…his contemporary stardom is able to hold all of his earlier images in balance. His current persona stands not only as an equal to them all, but as embodying a greater whole”. As Marshall sums it up, Dylan is now a man at the peak of his understanding of his idiom:

Dylan knows the game being played and he knows he’s good at it. Perhaps for the first time in thirty-five years, Dylan today speaks as someone in control of his own myth.

Which is why, of course, it’s such great fun being a Dylan fan at the moment: we can celebrate with Dylan the joy he’s found in shrugging off other people’s expectations that he must be anything other than what he wants to be, just a guy who loves, lives and breathes music. Who would have guessed, ten years ago, that Dylan would make such a comfortable and congenial DJ? The man has finally got room to move around within and without the myth. A highly recommended book (but get the paperback rather than the very expensive hardback): (5/5)

MILLION DOLLAR BASH

Bob Dylan, The Band, And The Basement Tapes by Sid Griffin (Jaw Bone 2007)

A review by Robert Levinson

'Shedding Light in the Basement’

Almost all of us have a special place in our hearts for the music that Bob and The Band made in the basement of ‘Big Pink’. Yes, we all know that ‘The Band’ was still known as ‘The Hawks’ when all this happened and that not all of the music that we refer to as ‘The Basement Tapes’ was recorded at 2188 Stoll Road, West Saugerties, N.Y., but none of that really matters. What really matters is knowing as much as we can about how all that great music DID happen, and, happily, we now have a delightful book by Sid Griffin called “Million Dollar Bash” that helps us find out.

Griffin is being modestly unfair to himself when he calls himself “a mere rock & roll detective”, he’s much more than that; he’s an excellent investigator, a fine interviewer, an insightful interpreter of music and a superlative writer. Marcus has written the O.E.D. version of ‘The Basement Tapes’, (“Invisible Republic/Old Weird America”), and, while extraordinary as that work is, we need what Griffin has given us just as much.

“Million Dollar Bash” starts by tracing the history of Woodstock-founded in 1787 and named after Woodstock, England–then moves on to its origin as an artist colony, then to the pivotal moment when Peter, Paul & Mary, and finally Bob, arrives in 1963. The first key insight in the book is when Griffin details how and why most of the key players gathered up there in the first place, and how it had almost nothing to do with music! It was all about movies. Yup, movies. Bob and Howard Alk, and the Hawks, and many other important names, gathered in Woodstock to work on “Eat The Document”. Start with a movie, end with a movement.

Never one to waste time or linger, Griffin and “Million Dollar Bash” ploughs sturdily forward to tell us how the first set of songs was recorded in Bob’s house in Brydcliffe (Hi Lo Ha) before the whole gang had to move on to Big Pink because, most likely, the music was bugging Sara as well as her efforts to raise all those young children. Griffin explains the physical set-up in Big Pink’s basement (it’s not really a basement at all, its really just a space off to the side of the garage,–ask Derek, he was there) as well as the intricacies of the tape machine Garth used to get all the music recorded for posterity.

The most important part of the book, and the part the makes the book an essential read for Dylan/Band fans, is huge amount of space and effort Griffin gives to his wonderfully detailed and intelligent analysis and evaluation of each and every known Basement Tape song (I’m sure there’s a treasure trove of music as yet undiscovered).

He writes about songs like ‘Sign On The Cross’ (“One of Dylan’s best songs, one of his best vocals”),’ ‘I’m Not There (1956)’ (“A classic. Yes”), ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ (“On this Big Pink take, less is more”), ‘You Ain’t Goin’ No Where’ (“This track swings”) and ‘Tears Of Rage’ (“A song representative of community, ageless truths, and the unbreakable bonds of family as anything in the Band’s canon-or, for that matter, in anyone else’s canon. Gorgeous, simply gorgeous”). You can’t beat the line up, you can’t beat the insight, you can’t beat this book. (4/5)