Product Description

Long awaited by Dylan fans and scholars alike, Michael Gray's Song and Dance Man III is the definitive book on Bob Dylan's life and work. This established classic is full of fresh material and analysis that offers major new studies of Dylans' entire oeuvre, and the ever-popular album-by-album guide has also been extensively updated and extended.

Gray's writing is unique in its scope and integration of biographical, literary, critical contexts and supplies a wealth of information for both detailed and casual browsing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #311305 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 944 pages

The Sunday Times
"The best Dylan study yet-with massive quotation from his lyrics and a careful balance held in assessment of his work"

Rolling Stone Magazine
"This book can give you a lot of kicks. It is stimulating and provocative."

Book Choice USA
"Many books on Bob Dylan have appeared... this book is truly the best."

Customer Reviews

The Dylan textbook
I don't necessarily agree with everything Michael Gray says about Dylan's songs, but this must be the finest single-volume study of Bob's work. I originally bought it in its first edition, when I was a student some 30 years ago, and it really brought me closer to Dylan's songs; I'm deeply indebted to its author. The present edition is a substantial text and leaves no stone unturned! Unique. (Note: this book is about Dylan's work, his songs, and in particular his lyrics. It's not a biography. Also, it's for the serious student of Dylan rather than the general reader.)

Too Much of Nothing
This book is about 650 pages too long and desperately needed an edit. Gray's passion for his subject is remarkable but what starts as engaging ends up too much like rantings off the point. The first edition was lean, hip and got to the heart of matters. This has gone badly off the rails and even some of the very interesting remarkably diligent criticism and source finding, misfires when surrounded by tetchy, off-subject ramblings which are prevalent in the later stages in particular.
The book has become something of a personal monologue. Only for very tolerant hard core Dylan book readers.

A vast city-state of a book
I was very much impressed by the 2nd edition of this book even though I felt Mr Gray was a little bombastic in some of his views. But I find this edition disappointing. Certainly no one can accuse Mr Gray of half measures. I also do not wish to argue with some obviously intensively researched analysis. It's just the sheer diffuseness that galls.

Mr Gray suggests early on that the reader could take this book as if it was a kind of literary city-state with a network of roads leading off a central highway. The little roads could be examined on their own or the main highway could be followed. All very well. But the little roads have a tendency of expanding exponentially as well as multiplying so that the main highway is in constant danger of being hopelessly obscured.

Some examples:

Mr Gray takes up God knows how many tedious pages tracing just about every film script reference in Empire Burlesque and this is after admitting that it is one of Dylan's poorest efforts.

The vast central chapter concerning the blues influence on Dylan is practically a book in itself and yet, on closer inspection, it seems to amount to little more than a determined attempt to list every blues singer who ever lived along with their biographies.

The footnotes seem to form yet another "road network". Some of them take up entire pages. But, like the blues chapter, they consist largely of lists - this time of recording details. (Couldn't Mr Gray have put all this stuff into an appendix at the end? Are such details necessary at all in the age of the Internet?)

However, there is a certain poignancy in this book if the reader contrasts this edition with the 2nd one - which is easy to do since the 2nd is incorporated more or less completely into this one (it takes up the first quarter). The overall tone of the earlier work was full of a vigorous (if sometimes over the top) appraisal of Dylan - which was relatively easy to make when the 2nd edition appeared about quarter of a century ago. Dylan was, as they say, "riding high" back then.

But after the disastrous Eighties it was clear that Gray had to tone down his praise a little. For example - one extravagant claim that Dylan was the greatest rock star in the world ever had to be given a footnote that says, in effect, Oh well - this is the way it looked at the time! This is a sad reflection on how unforeseen events can conspire to make all comments - whether positive or negative - seem ridiculous in the long run. Especially when the comments are as intemperate as some of Mr Gray's. It is also intriguing to note that Dylan himself has expressed approval of some of the singers dismissed by Gray as weary spineless fraudsters - Sinatra and even Bing Crosby. Dylan's recent book Chronicles shows that he was far less of an elitist than Gray and that he didn't rigidly conform to the view that "real" music started with rock and roll.

On the plus side there is a vast wealth of information and observation that may prove worthy on future visits to this city-state. But so much surely should have been cut out.