An Annotated Bibliography
of Dylan Sources
Prepared by Skylar Hamilton Burris
This annotated bibliography contains brief descriptions and/or reviews of various Bob Dylan sources in print and online. The bibliography also contains links to additional information on other sites. The resources are divided in sections as follows:
Lyrics & Sheet Music
Books & Interviews by Dylan
Books about Dylan
Printed Articles about Dylan
Websites about Dylan
Website Contents | Literary Resources | Bob Dylan
Dylan, Bob. Lyrics
1962-2001. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.
A collection of Dylan's lyrics and drawings until 2001. Very useful. Sometimes
the lyrics written in the book, however, are not exactly what Dylan sings on the album.
But then, he has many versions of the same songs.
The Complete Guitar Player: Bob Dylan
Songbook
This music book contains over 20 Bob Dylan songs, mixing in some newer ones
with the old standards. A good variety of genres (folk, rock, etc.). They had the
good sense to leave out "Like a Rolling Stone" but took up a lot of unnecessary
space with "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands." The chord charts are clear and easy
to understand. There are no songs from Dylan's Christian period. (Review by David
Hamilton)
Books By Dylan
Dylan, Bob. Chronicles.
Volume One. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
If you are looking for an organized, coherent account of the events of Bob Dylan's life
from his own perspective, then this isn't it. Chronicles touches on Dylan's life
events only randomly, and skips over many major events altogether, such as his marriage,
divorce, and conversion to Christianity (though perhaps these will be subjects for Volume
Two). He has scattered comments to make about his songs--some quite enlightening,
others mundane. There are, it seems, hundreds of names scattered throughout the
text, which can seem at times overbearing. Dylan writes like an adult trying to
sound hip for the kids--intentionally dumbing down his language and employing poor
grammar. I've always admired the poetry of Dylan's song lyrics, and I consider him
to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. But a great essayist and prose
writer he is not. Some of the passages in this book were admittedly fascinating; I
especially liked to read his comments on the literature he consumed, and I laughed out
loud on more than one occasion as he described public perceptions of himself and his
attempts to remake his image to provide breathing room for his family. At times,
however, I felt that I could skim page after page without missing anything of note.
While Chronicles is likely a must for any fan of Dylan, you would spend you time
more wisely reading In
His Own Words or Song
and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan.
Dylan, Bob. Compiled by Miles. In
His Own Words. Ed. Pearce Marchbank. New York: Omnibus Press, 1978.
This book contains a compilation of Dylan's own words, transcribed from interviews, press
conferences, radio, and TV shows. Complete with scores of pictures, this book is a
must for any Dylan fan. Dylan dons persona after persona, and the results are quite
entertaining.
Dylan, Bob. Tarantula:
Poems. St. Martin's Press. 1993.
Dylan is a poet alright, but the poetry is in his song lyrics (and occasionally in his
linear notes), not in this book. Typical of the bad beat poetry of the age, Tarantula
is largely meaningless rant. But if you are a Bob fan who just has to have it,
you can buy it by clicking on the title above.
Books About Dylan
Gray, Michael. Song
and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan. Continum: London and New
York, 2000.
What makes this book appealing is that it is not another tired
biography about the man; rather, it is a careful analysis of his work and the influences
upon it, both literary and musical. So far it has been an interesting read.
When I complete the 900 page tome I will return with a more thorough review.
Heylin, Clinton. A
Life In Stolen Moments: Day by Day 1941-1995. New York: Schrmer
Books, 1966.
A detailed, but not overwhelming, chronology of Bob Dylan's life
and career from birth until 1995. (Actually, it begins before his birth, with his
grandparents.) The author occasionally interjects his opinions on various matters,
but the book is primarily factual and biographical. I recommended this book as a reference
guide for any Dylan fan but not for entertainment.
Pickering, Stephen. Bob
Dylan Approximately: A Portrait of the Jewish Poet in Search of God (A Midrash).
New York: David McKay Company, 1975.
This book was a real disappointment for me. I expected some
spiritual insight into Dylan's songs--an analysis of the individual songs in the context
of Judaism. Instead, I found a blow by blow commentary of Dylan's 1974 tour
interspersed with seemingly random quotes from the Zohar, Kabbalah, Elie Wiesel, various
rabbis, Dylan himself, and, of all people, Walt Whitman. If you want to know all the
places Dylan went on that tour, what songs he sung and how he sung them, then this book is
great for you. Or, if you're looking for a book that explains the importance of the role
of music and song in mystical Judaism, the book will also be useful. But if you are
looking for an organized analysis of Dylan's actual songs, look elsewhere. The book has a
great many excellent photos, which are interspersed with multiple diagrams of Ein Sof and
the ten emanations of God.
William,
Paul. Dylan
- What Happened? How and Why Did Dylan Become a Born-Again Christian?
Entwhistel Books, 1979.
Paul Williams doesn't attempt to understand Christianity, but he
does attempt to explain Dylan's conversion to it. The book consists of the
semi-random speculations of a Dylan fan, and it is filled with tentative conclusions drawn
largely from Dylan's song lyrics and public-record information about his life. It
offers no new startling insights. Williams, like many Dylan fans, was none too
thrilled about Dylan's conversion or the condemnatory arrogance that accompanied his new
music. (The condemnation was nothing new, only the object had changed.) However,
Williams does at least appreciate the quality of the music Dylan produced during this
period. He appropriately attacks the critics who refuse to acknowledge Dylan's post-60's
genius. "It seems," writes Williams, "there are a whole lot of people
out there who are so hopelessly mired in their own long-gone adolescence that they have no
interest in living art at all: they want their performers to be time machines for
them."
Williams views Dylan's great music as an outgrowth of his pain;
the 70's albums were born of his tumultuous relationship with Sara, and the great gospel
albums arose from a need to find solace at a time of rock-bottom desperation.
"It's a nasty paradox," says the author, "that suffering makes for good
art. I don't like to admit it, don't want it to be true, but the evidence is against
me."
Much of the book seems to be only slightly relevant to the topic.
As far as the title question is concerned, the author basically argues that because Dylan
could not find salvation in women, he sought it in Christ. The musician's conversion
does not concern Williams so much as the possibility that Dylan might try to force
Christianity "on the rest of us." Dylan's conversion was horrifying to
many of his fans. This is perhaps because these fans had related so closely with
Dylan's words for so long, that when the musician accepted Christ, they were forced to
ask, as does Williams, "where have we diverged? Is he wrong, or . . . does this
mean one day I'm going to wake up in love with Jesus too?" A scary thought to a
lot of people.
Of course Williams bemoans Dylan's racism on Slow Train
Coming, objecting to the "sheiks walking around like kings" line as would
any good, right-minded liberal. He's afraid Dylan's been influenced by these
Christians who are "ultraconservative simply because they've never been exposed to
anything else." ("Simply," of course, because born-again Christians
couldn't possibly come to their opinions by thinking, and they apparently never watch
television shows, or see the news, or read books, or go to movies, or set foot in a
school, or do anything else that might expose them to the liberal thinking that dominates
virtually every aspect of pop culture and the academy. Dylan's willingness to adopt
the attitudes of these people surprises Williams because he figures Dylan is as smart as
he is. Generous concession.) This is not the only line to appall
Williams. He's mystified by Dylan's zealous mention of "pornography in the
schools," and asks what the songwriter could possibly be talking about. (I
guess Williams hadn't been to a public college in awhile, because I was certainly exposed
to theoretical analysis of pornography during my University education, and I never even
sought out such a curriculum; it just found its way surreptitiously into one of my English
classes.) He is equally offended by Dylan's finger pointing when he sings
about "adulterers in the churches." Is Dylan, Williams asks indignantly,
going to "have them shot by the Ayatollah Khomeini?" He seems entirely
oblivious to the main (and very obvious) point Dylan is making about religious hypocrisy.
Williams did surprise me with one very insightful remark,
however. He pointed out that Dylan has got the golden rule wrong on his song
"Do Right to Me, Baby." The golden rule is not conditional, it does not
say, as does Dylan, "IF you do right unto me, baby, I'll do right to you too."
And, despite the author's vaguely self-righteous criticism of evangelicals, he does
seem to have a somewhat open mind about Christianity, at least, he has no beef with
Dylan's personal choice, just with his musical evangelism. Consequently, he prefers
the quieter, humbler, more personal songs such as "What Can I Do For You?" to
the bible-thumping, non-believer-ruffling ones like "When You Gonna Wake Up?"
On the whole, there is not much substance to be gleaned from this
book with reference to the title subject, but if you like reading opinions of Dylan's
music, it should prove an interesting book. The question that remains (besides what
really happened, which the author never answers very well), is: What does Dylan believe
now? Is he still a Christian? Williams words of 1979 might have been prophetic:
"I can't say he'll be any more faithful to the Lord than he was to Sara. . . But the
evidence is already in that this is one heck of a passionate
relationship."
Earl, James W. "Beyond Desire:
The Conversion of Bob Dylan." University of Hartford Studies In Literature.
20.2 (1988): 46-63.
This article is about Dylan's conversion and the music of that
period. It is fairly interesting, but much of the concentration is on "the other
Sara," what the author sees to be the spirtualization and symbolic encapsulation of
Dylan's wife. He makes some good points about Dylan's Christianity in the context
of his Judaism. I have to doubt his analysis, however, when he cites Lot shaking
the dust of Sodom off his feet as having something to do with Dylan's line "shake the
dust off your feet, don't look back" from "Pressing On." The line is
clearly a reference to the New Testament: "And whosoever shall not receive you,
nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your
feet." The point being--so what if they call you "embarrassing" or
even "inartistic" for your conversion--move on, press on, and don't look back.
Jacobson, Mark. "Hero with 1,000
(Gnarly) Faces." Esquire. 123 (1995): 147.
A short account of how the author regained his faith in Dylan (after
that terribly embarrassing Christian phase) when the musician sang "Masters of
War" at the Grammys during the Gulf War. The author seems to be one of those people
who can't accept that Dylan ever moved on after his early albums, that he could ever
develop and have new experiences or new (and deeper) reflections. Jacobson obviously
doesn't appreciate the power of Dylan's Christian albums, which are some of the musician's
best both musically and lyrically. Jacobson writes: "I just couldn't take it--the
specter of Bob Dylan, my hero, so uncool, standing on the street with spittle at the
corners of his mouth, pens leaking in his pocket, handing out Jews for Jesus literature .
. . It's one thing to be mad at a hero, another to be embarrassed by him."
Mellers, Wilfrid. "God, modality and
meaning in some recent songs of Bob Dylan."
Interestingly, this article focuses on the actual music of Dylan
rather than his lyrics. It covers his albums Street Legal, Slow Train Coming, and
Saved. It is a scholarly article, certainly obtuse if not actually pretentious. But
if you can wade through the constant use of words and phrases such as
"modality," "monophony," "pentatonic formulae,"
"semitonic," "diatonic," "polyphonic,"
"existential" (you can use that word any way you like in scholarly literature),
"substratum of tonic, dominant, and subdominant harmony," and
"eupeptically," you might find something of value in the article.
Tyrell, R. Emmett, Jr. "A Mumbly
Creep." The American Spectator. 31 (1998): 16.
Okay, so Dylan was a bit of an embarrassment at the Kennedy
Center honors. That's no justification for this article. I have nothing to say about an
author who presumes to write on Dylan but is so ignorant of the musician's work as to
conclude: "All he has ever written are jingles freighted with ominous
blah." Okay, I do have something to say. Mr. Tyrell, go listen to
"Every Grain of Sand." Go listen to "When He Returns." Then tell
me these are jingles.
Dean, Paul. "Commentary on 'Sweetheart
Like You.'" http://www.geocities.com/Paris/3035/sweetheart.html.
On this page, the author convincingly argues that in this song,
the "sweetheart" is the Christian Coalition and the "dump" is
politics.
Dean, Paul. "Commentary on Jokerman." http://www.geocities.com/Paris/3035/jokerman.html.
This is not a very thorough commentary--just a few ideas
interspersed among the lyrics. It is interesting because it argues that the
"Jokerman" is ANTI-Christ. I think he is more likely to represent Christ.
FunTrivia
This site contains a category on Bob Dylan with numerous self-scoring
trivia quizzes. I have authored and contributed several quizzes to the site.
Name That Tune
This fun, weekly contest allows visitors to name a Bob Dylan
tune after listening to a two second clip. Winners are listed the following
week. The site also contains song lyrics and other information.
Gotta Serve Somebody
Not yet reviewed.
Scales, Jane. 20 Pounds of Headlines.
.
Contains trivia quizzes, puzzles, articles, and links. A
fun website for Dylan fans.
Have a Bob Dylan website you
would like me to review and add here?
E-mail me at SSBurris@msn.com
