Experimental feature: Order The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.

               

Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.42164092
EAN: 9780826469335
ISBN: 0826469337
Label: Continuum International Publishing Group
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 736
Publication Date: 2006-06-15
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group
Studio: Continuum International Publishing Group

Bob Dylan’s outreach is too wide, too deep and too long for any book about him to cover it all. He’ll be 65 years old when this book is published. His career spans 45 years of American history, and that history has intersected with his prolific songwriting, recording, touring, acting, filmmaking, TV appearances and interviews. He has published a novel and a book of drawings, composed for movie soundtracks and written a best-selling autobiography. He has found a place in the world of literature and academic study as well as in popular music. He is important to the history of the times, having given voice to a generation at a time of huge social change and political struggle; his songs are enmeshed in the story of the civil rights movement as well as the folk revival movement. His busy life has embraced everything from Bohemian excess to being Born Again.

His work has revolutionised song, reaching into every area of popular music from folk to blues to rock to gospel. He has met and worked with untold hundreds of musicians, politicians, celebrities, singers, poets, writers, painters, filmmakers, actors and activists. He has released several dozen albums, written many hundreds of songs, in many cases adapting them from older folk and blues material, and recorded songs by many other composers. He has been the subject of an enormous number of books, academic conference papers, showbiz stories, essays and concert reviews. He has attracted more fanzine enthusiasm, and inspired more websites, than almost anyone in the world. In order to resist the forces of infinity pushing this book beyond all bounds, it was decided to exclude some categories of entrant. There are, inevitably, exceptions, but in principle the following have been omitted: background business people like concert promoters, accountants, lawyers, managers, music publishers, booking agents, film producers and so on; the majority of photographers, album-cover designers and magazine editors; and people whose only connection with Dylan is that they have made cover-versions of his songs.

The many different kinds of entry that are in the book include: Biographies of singers, musicians, songwriters and composers who have influenced Dylan and/or worked with him; Critical assessments and factual details (including place and date of recording, date of release and original catalogue numbers) for all Dylan’s albums and for a large number of individual songs from all through Dylan’s decades of work; Dylan’s key career and biographical moments; Biographies of writers, poets and other key cultural figures who have impacted on Dylan’s work and/or who are mentioned within it, from William Blake to William Carlos Williams and from Lenny Bruce to Franz Kafka, in each case delineating the often surprising ways in which they connect to Dylan’s work; Short biographies of music critics and authors of books and major websites on Dylan; Critical assessments & facts on Dylan’s own books and films; Discursive subjects, from Dylan Interpreters to Cowboy Heroes, and from The Use of Hollywood Dialogue in Dylan's lyrics, to ‘frying an egg on stage’.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Disappointing
Review: After all the hype and expectations, this tome was an utter disappointment. The entries are leftovers from Michael Gray's research for other Dylan books, namely "Song And Dance Man" (which I also own but have never waded through), and he doesn't seem to have edited it or put forth any additional effort. Many of the passages have incorrect information or mere guesses. I was in a book store in Berkeley returning from a recent Dylan tour, and they were selling it for $15. They had stacks of them. This was really a disappointment since I paid full price when it was first released. Anybody who gushes over this book in a review here simply does not know his/her Dylan history.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Must-Have for True Dylan Fans
Review: If you stumble upon any negative reviews of this book... ignore them. This book is amazing; it is obvious that Michael Gray has devoted a large part of his life to the passion which is Dylan. This book is great to skim through, deeply examine, and is a great reference while reading any other books on Dylan. If you have a library of your own... this should be on the shelf.

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: His most definitive work
Review: So many books have been written about Bob Dylan that one would wonder at the need for another - but this isn't a reference book alone; it provides a fun ,readable text which packs in over eight hundred entries, over twenty pages of illustration, and everything there is to known about Dylan, including a searchable cd-rom to boot. Critic Michael Gray has written about Dylan before, but this is his most definitive work and represents the culminating achievement of a world authority on the topic: if there's only one Dylan reference your public library holding can afford, it should be this definitive guide.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Simply a book of the author's questionable opinions!!
Review: This can hardly be called an "encyclopedia"...it's just an unorganzied compilation of the author's opinions, which, many times, are so far off from reality that it invalidates the entire book! Pass on this one...there are decent Dylan books worth buying...or just watch the PBS documentary for facts!

---

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Opinionated and great fun
Review: A little surprised to be given this for my birthday a few weeks ago (I'm not the world's most devoted Dylan fan, although I do find him fascinating), it took me several days before I even opened the book. Fully expecting it to be a dry compendium of facts and short biographies. It turns out this is, instead, a great mix of opinion, information, and critical judgment - not all of it polite, but always nicely written. The author, Michael Gray, takes on all-comers, and is often amusingly "politically incorrect" in his views on figures like Bono, Pete Seeger, Eric Clapton, and Dave Stewart. Gray is also generous in his praise for many, many others including Elvis, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, and dozens of old blues singers - so the book ends up painting a vivid picture of decades of American music and culture in general. My only complaint (so far) would be that the entries on Dylan songs and albums are uneven - but if you can cope with that, and with an author who has strong opinions, you'll find a great deal to love (and probably something to hate!) in this genuinely unusual and thoughtful book.

---

---