Bob Dylan Books S/D

This guy followed the paper trail & got interviews; dunno how good it is, but here's hype for latest edition:
Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan Paperback – May 4, 2021
by Howard Sounes
...Sounes’s prodigious research has resulted in new insights on every aspect of Dylan’s life. He has obtained exclusive information to provide the clearest picture yet of Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident and subsequent “lost years” in Woodstock, New York, and he uncovered the star’s unknown second marriage. He gives inside accounts of the tours, the creation of every album and the most celebrated songs, Dylan’s labyrinthine love life, his life-threatening heart illness in 1997, and more―directly from interviews with girlfriends, family, friends, producers, concert promoters, and fellow musicians.

As Dylan approaches his eightieth year, Howard Sounes once again brings Down the Highway up to date...

it is a little astonishing to realize how little we know about dylan's personal life after a certain point. presumably it's because he's still with us (thankfully!), but i can't even think of any tell-all books or anything that have come out about post-60s dylan. (compare to john lennon, where it sometimes seems as if anyone who bumped into him in a bar has written a book.)

I kind of liked that Sounes book, although that guy is kind of grumpy and tends to be a little mean towards his subjects.

I think the only book on Dylan I’ve read (apart from Chronicles) is Heylin’s book on the Christian years, which is maybe the only era where I find his life more compelling than the music. I started out enjoying it and by the end Heylin’s style was driving me up the wall. For some reason I’m rarely driven to read much about him, I think I have the assumption that any book about him would be more reflective of the author than it would be of Dylan. I suppose you could say that about Chronicles too - you find out more about where Dylan was as a writer at the time than you do about his life.

Chronicles is excellent. Personally, when it comes to memoirs, I'm more interested in the writing than prying into an artist's life, so I typically don't dive into them unless I hear good word-of-mouth. Of the handful I've read, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Chuck Berry and Richard Hell's are the best. Keith Richards was a decent read but it didn't live up to the hype for me. I need to revisit Patti Smith's as I was too skeptical of the romanticizing. I was wary of Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello's but I eventually caved and liked them a lot, probably more than most - not perfect, Springsteen feels a bit too much in spots (in some ways, I prefer the Broadway show as a concentrated version of it) and Costello's life/work does get less interesting after the McCartney collaborations, but they both have a lot to recommend. Some people don't like Costello's non-chronological approach but I actually enjoyed his choice to do that rather than the standard approach most biographies take.

Forgot Richard Thompson's was good too. That may be it in terms of what I read front to back. I've skimmed or sampled a lot of others, but it probably amounts to 15 minutes to an hour of reading of each at best. The Prince memoir was like that - it's a BEAUTIFUL book, but it's better to look at than read, if that makes sense. Also I thought Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson's would make fun reading going back and forth between the two, but there's a lot about both that I didn't like so I wound up skimming them.

Mostly what I remember about Anthony Scaduto's Bob Dylan, which I read when it first came out in early 70s (?) drugstore paperback, is hilarious tales told by Baez, also then known for BD parodies and zings in her concerts. She's followed suit in her own books and elsewhere, really should do a collection of her Dylan stories (like she has of his songs), with prev. unpublished still plentiful, no doubt. Maybe she will yet!

Also infotaining:
David Hajdu's Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña

Cool, tell Big Joan I said hi!.

WTF w the Paul Williams hate at the beginning of this thread. His three books on Dylan are incredible.

Man, I gotta read Louie Kemp's book:
By Stephen Silver, JTA
Jewish summer camp is such a crucial part of the American Jewish experience that many Jewish adults, even in their older age, likely remember the names of many of the kids in their cabins from when they were 11 years old.

One of those cabins — more than 60 years ago — contained a couple of interesting young Jewish boys.

Louie Kemp would go on to head his family’s seafood company and played a key role in introducing imitation king crab to the United States. Robert “Bobby” Zimmerman went on to become Bob Dylan.

Kemp has written a memoir called Dylan & Me: 50 Years of Adventures (WestRose Press), detailing his friendship with the iconic singer.

The author lived with Dylan for a time in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, during the period when Dylan briefly became a Christian. Kemp, who then was becoming a more observant Jew, which he remains to this day, claims credit, along with some rabbis, for bringing Dylan back into the Jewish fold a couple of years later.

Kemp’s book is full of delightful, specifically Jewish details, such as Dylan’s years of participation in Chabad telethons, the time he opened the ark on Yom Kippur while being mistaken for a homeless man and the story of how Kemp arranged for Kaddish to be said for Allen Ginsburg each year on his yahrtzeit. All that, and many, many visits to Canter’s Deli.
He writes specifically about how he believes Dylan’s Jewish background informed his later success.

“[Jews] have a passion to seek out meaning and give it new expression, morally and artistically,” Kemp wrote. “That drive — along with another Jewish trait known as chutzpah — have always been strong in Bobby, and his gifts have made his expression worthy of the ages,” Kemp told JTA.

Herzl Camp, where it all began, has taken notice of Kemp’s book.
https://thejewishnews.com/2019/10/18/louie-kemp-explores-his-friendship-with-bob-dylan/

Good pix too!

this could be interesting

https://mcnidderandgrace.com/k-g-miles-bobdylanminnesota