windolfjim

If you enjoy music hagiographies, this belongs on your shelf. I had never considered the timeline of rock music since I first became aware of it, in 1964, when I was twelve. It harkened me back to the first album I bought with my own money, A Hard Day's Night, and my father heartily disapproved (but apologized later). I didn't buy a Dylan until John Wesley Harding. The author does such a fine job of setting up the parallels between these two monster trains that we were lucky enough to become show more passengers on. I did not realize that they acted as pace cars for each other, always challenging, sometimes resenting, introducing each other to drugs and to guitar brands and to other musicians. Most public encounters, at each other's concerts, are recounted here, but it's the private relationships that are the most revealing. Every Beatle had their own friendship with Dylan, and each was in awe of his songwriting talent, but only John burned with the rivalry. George and Dylan were the closest, and each encouraged the other to keep performing after their influence had been tamped down, a la the Traveling Wilburys. Another revelation was Dylan's motorcycle accident, which kept him out of the public eye for three years, and here is portrayed as basically his bed-in of ennui, since the author claims he was not injured enough to require hospitalization and recovered away from his home and was administered to by his friends rather than his wife Sara. All in all, a fabulous you-were-there (I was!) look into friendships and rivalries. show less

I was very drawn to this book because it deals with The Beatles who I love to read about and Bob Dylan, who I know much less about but who draws me for several reasons. I also like the way journalists write books. Like scholars, they make a through search then collate and write. Unlike scholars, of course, they make it interesting. I knew a lot of the stuff in this book, I guess, but by no means all of it and some of it I had forgottenn, including John Lennon's born again phase. I had also show more not appreciated how conservative Dylan was from the beginning, despite his way of presenting himself. The book is full of fornication and drug taking, inevitably, and also an unsual amount of throwing up, ususally missing from such books. Anyway, the book gives a fairly complete history of two incredible phenomena of the sixties and beyond and where their paths crossed. Fascinating. show less

I'm kind of a superfan and avid reader, so little in this book was new to me.
I did learn this: the "y" in Dylan's name influenced the spelling of "The Byrds" which in turn inspired the Turtles to at first call themselves "The Tyrtles", and another band which achieved no lasting fame to call themselves "The Myddle Class."