Product Description

Michael Gray's 'Song and Dance Man III', on Bob Dylan's life and work, offers studies of Dylan's' entire oeuvre, and the ever-popular album-by-album guide has also been extensively updated and extended.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127432 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 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

Like a Rolling Tome
What, no review yet of this superb book?
If you're a fan of Bob Dylan, then there are no half measures, you can't just be a 'fan', you're also obsessed, besotted, infuriated, intrigued and alarmed by every move the man makes. Well this book is by a man besotted with Dylan, but not blindly so, and a man who has an incredible range of reference, cultural and literary and musical and plenty more, to bring to bear in his analysis of Bob's work. It's not a biography, not concerned with what Mr D has for breakfast, but a passionate and critical study of the man's huge body of work. Incorporating the text of the earlier editions, this huge updated third edition adds many substantial chapters to cover Dylan's output since the previous edition was published in 1982. (I hope this date is right because I'm doing this from memory and don't have the book to hand at this precise moment). The early chapters are devoted to Bob and the folk tradition, Bob and rock and roll, Bob and the literary tradition and so on. The new chapters include a major evaluation of the Blues and its relation to Dylan's work (as inspiration, as influence, as lyrical and musical wellspring), a fascinating exploration of Every Grain of Sand, a hilarious survey of books about Bob, a portrait of the growing relationship between the author and the album Time Out Of Mind (unfortunately Love and Theft is not covered in the book, though I'm mightily curious about Michael Gray's feelings about it) plus in depth analysis of Blind Willie McTell and the two solo acoustic 'covers' albums. And that ain't the whole of it. This book is intelligent, dense, bitchy, insightful, vigorous and rigorous, and completely and utterly compelling. As Gray says in his introduction, the book is a labyrinth, but it's a pleasure to get lost in it. As for the precisely annotated discographical information, for a devoted music obsessive such as myself it's enough to make your wallet ache and your bank manager despair with the prospect of all those brand new musical avenues it impels you to explore. (If Mr Gray is looking for a home for his music collection I'll willingly offer it a climate controlled home.)

The best book on Dylan ever
The best book on Dylan ever - not just my opinion but also that of the poet laureate. This book is thoughtful, funny, provoking, well-researched and simply the standard by which all popular music criticism should be judged. You'll not only find out about Dylan's work but also about the wide range of his influences, sources and history. Not to be missed by anyone with an interest in popular culture...

Too Much
This is a vast and extremely detailed survey of Dylan's long career, concentrating chiefly on the lyrics, in a lit crit manner. The in-depth studies of blues lyrics and nursey rhymes/fairy tales are very well done, and opened a whole new world for me. Gray obviously has a bible almost as well-thumbed as Dylan's own, but there's surprisingly little about the folk tradition.

Gray writes well, but many of his studies drag on just a little too long, especially the chapters devoted to individual songs like Jokerman and Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar, as well as the long section on Brownsville Girl. Even Dylan's best songs don't need Gray's line-by-line analysis.

The earlier part of the book is best because Gray approaches Dylan's output up to the mid 70s as a single body of work. After the 'born again' period he tackles each album chronologically and it becomes a more predictable plod. I just kept thinking: 'you've made your point - move on!' and I was skimming a lot by then.

One thing lacking is virtually any mention of the other people involved in making Bob Dylan's music. Hardly any musician gets a name check and the only producer given credit is Daniel Lanois. Even co-writers like Jacques Levy and Sam Shephard are brushed aside.

Gray is no Dylan insider and gives no real biographical detail. He gives quotes from interviews and books about Dylan but Gray doesn't seem to have done any face-to-face research. He's listened to a lot of bootlegs and read a lot of books. At the end of this book I didn't feel I knew much more about Dylan the man. Of course, it's a critical work not a biography, but for a book 900 pages long this is pretty one-dimensional stuff, close-to-the-text analysis all the way.

I enjoyed a great deal of Song & Dance Man and I'll keep it around to look up information on a wide range of subjects. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Dylan's influences, but I found it strangely non-illuminating when it came to Dylan himself.