The title of this book alone gives away exactly what Mr. Dylan is trying to achieve in his autobiography-a straight forward retelling of just a few scattered events in the singer-songwriter’s long and fascinating life.Like most Dylan fanatics, I love and respect the shroud of mystery surrounding the elusive artist, but I’m glad that he stripped away his cloudy mystique for this memoir. Bob Dylan has had a long history of fans trying to decipher his lyrics and quotes, trying to find some kind of buried treasure beneath his words, but, as this book shows, Bob is really just a man doing what he loves to do-make music.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing highlights of this book is that Dylan chose not to illuminate his mid-6o’s period, when his fame was at its peak, and you can’t really blame him. With so many accounts of this period already in existence (D.A. Pennebaker’s “Dont Look Back” or the Scorcese documentary “No Direction Home,” for example), it’s a nice change that someone chose to cover the Dylan before and immediately after this time, that someone being Bob Dylan himself.
My personal favorite parts of this book were the first two sections, covering his arrival in New York and his beginnings as a coffee shop folk singer and as a young artist trying to make his way onto the scene. The real power of this book comes from Dylan’s intimacy with his memories and the incredibly detailed accounts of his youth, even before the rebellious generation of the 60’s caught their attention.
Dylan admits things that most performers would never dream of admitting, such as denying praises and labels placed on him, or in one lengthy section, discussing how he was failing as a musician later in his career, and he knew about it.
Bob Dylan is truly a master of words. If his song writing and fiction material wasn’t enough evidence, his first foray into non-fiction proves it. I highly recommend this book to Dylan fans, struggling musicians, and anyone who loves reading biographies or nonfiction, because this personal account goes beyond the realm of Dylan fanatics.