Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Clinton Heylin's Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades: Revisited is an updated, revised and expanded edition of the long-out-of-print 1991 biography. Only the fourth comprehensive biography of the artist, Heylin's is the first ever to give equal weight to all phases of Dylan's sweeping 40-years-and-counting career.

Heylin's great area of strength is where many will feel it should be: the music. No Dylanist is more knowledgeable about the man's history in the recording studio, and Heylin appears to have seen about every Dylan concert since the '74 comeback. Of his many original sources, most are musical associates (Dylan's intimate friends have been famously protective of his privacy); the result is a definitive career study of Bob Dylan as working musician.

Thus we read in detail not only about Dylan's early life as a nonconforming teenager in Minnesota's Iron Range and about the first, meteoric stage of his career -- the extraordinary years from 1961 to 1967 -- but also of the many unpredictable turns his path has taken in the succeeding decades. Heylin gives equal attention to Dylan's post-motorcycle-accident retreat in Woodstock (where, working with The Band, he virtually invented "Americana" as a rock genre), the record-breaking 1974 comeback tour with The Band, the full resumption of his earlier powers with Blood on the Tracks, the troubled Rolling Thunder Revue and blows to his credibility with Renaldo and Clara, his wholly unanticipated turn to born-again Christianity and years spent spreading the gospel in concert; and finally his '90s re-emergence as a weathered, revered troubadour who, touring hundreds of nights a year, seems intent on bringing his music to every city and town in the United States.

There is, of course, a reason why that first phase of Dylan's career has always been given the lion's share of attention: It was a white-hot burst of unparalleled creativity that changed pop music for all time. In comparison, his work of the last three decades, while studded with many shining peaks, has often seemed haphazard and desultory to all except a diminished but loyal following. Heylin is by no means uncritical of the fruits of all those later incarnations; indeed, his judgements on some of Dylan's more dubiously canonical works can be harsh enough to strip paint. Yet he is so intent on making us see the career whole, with every chameleon twist related for better or worse to every other -- demonstrably the work of the same man, behind the shades -- that the final effect is not only revealing, but empathetic. (Edward Hutchinson)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Because he was denied access to Dylan for this unauthorized biography, Heylin (Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960--1994) was driven to dig particularly deep. In this update to his 1991 tome, based on unpublished manuscripts such as the diaries from Dylan's 1974 tour and the Blood on the Tracks recording sessions, which were unavailable 10 years ago, along with new, original interviews, Heylin documents "a constant, unresolvable conflict between man and artist." This makes for a morbid, albeit fascinating, 40-year epic with a 260-person chorus that boasts childhood friends, George Harrison, Robbie Robertson, Joan Baez and Dylan's various and sundry "unworthy muses." Everyone, it seems, is singing Dylan's praises and cursing him at the same time, but Heylin is able to make out his subject's voice: the former Robert Zimmerman is a prisoner to his 1960s persona, he says, and in the musician's attempts to protect his artistic and human right to change, he had to slowly withdraw from his overdemanding public. Although this biography should be touted for not fixating on Dylan's golden Blonde on Blonde era (it briefly covers the 1990s), between the lines, Heylin is nostalgic--not for the pre-motorcycle accident, amphetamine-wired Dylan, but for a younger, less tired one who writes almost as much as he tours. With a subtitle that says "revisited," only die-hard fans will be among the few willing to crack this tome. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

With 60 new pages covering Bob Dylan's activities in the 1990s and an additional 150-plus pages expanding on the existing text, Heylin's reworking of his 1991 biography of the same name (LJ 6/1/91) is more than a mere update. (In fact, the earlier book now looks like merely a warm-up.) Heylin's sweep of detail, abetted by a tenacity for uncovering the truth amidst conflicting sources, and his insightful critical commentary make this new version the most authoritative Dylan biography available. Knowing this, Heylin cockily criticizes other Dylan biographers and shows off to his readers with unexplained, obscure references to Shakespeare and others, assuming that his audience will understand the connection to Dylan's work. Heylin prides himself on devoting more attention to Dylan's post-1966 motorcycle accident life than other biographers and offers a refreshingly honest analysis of the artist's work on record, stage, and screen and in print. Highly recommended for music and popular culture collections.--Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., CA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.