Review: Bob Dylan’s new book is revealing, misogynistic and a special kind of bonkers
It’s as if Dylan hasn’t left the past behind. His music, at its best, reveals the true nature of American life. It’s as if he simply can’t leave it behind. And when he does, it’s not a moment too soon.
Bob Dylan is a figure who still draws comparisons with the late Dylan, and the two men’s work will likely continue to be confused as long as the world uses them as a template. There is the man who wrote the most sublime lyrics in rock history. Then there was the man who could not let go entirely of his previous self even in death. That man is now Bob Dylan.
Dylan: Life And Work in Europe is an intimate and revealing look at the man behind the legend and the man who has now become what he once was. It is a man of great passion and of great pain. It is a man who has had his own issues with love and with pain and with drugs. Then again, who couldn’t be that?
But with Dylan, there is always more to the story. And to get more of it, you are going to have to get past his many, many, many, many self-doubts.
Dylan: Life And Work In Europe starts with him as someone who was a young man of the early 1960s who was caught in a generational change. He was also caught up in the wave of protest. He was caught, in other words, in the moment when the changes were becoming ever more apparent.
Through Dylan’s music, we find him reflecting on the state of the world and on the state of his life. The song “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” is the first of a series of songs about Dylan’s own “fall” from grace, from the heights of success to the depths of soul-crushing alcoholism. He sings about how his life will be different, how he can have a