Bob Dylan Dream: My Life With Bob

Your 60s took place away from London and you experienced the songs in the order they happened, and those times made sense at the speed they occurred. And one other thing - you fell into being a Bob Dylan fan. Bob Dylan, who came out of the folk blues of past America into your life, into the present, into the Beatles and Stones. Bob Dylan who sounded like no one else until everyone else sounded somewhat like him. Bob Dylan who meant so much because of the way he looked, and the way he looked changed and changed so quickly, until the cowboy Beat hobo disappeared and what looked back at us was a tiny rock marionette with Medusa hair. Bob Dylan who changed everything. Bob Dylan who looked at us and made us look at ourselves ever after. Yes, there are far too many books about Bob Dylan - but this one is long overdue. Roy Kelly, a British poet, has long been, quite simply, among the finest writers about Dylan’s canon, and the most thoughtful about being a long-term Dylan fan. Fandom doesn’t mar the quality of his meditation on how the past lives inside the present, nor lead him into hagiography. His writing doesn’t shout or swagger - but its modesty is part of what makes it essential Michael Gray, author of the ‘Song and Dance Man’ series and ‘The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia’.