Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited

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Summary: The Best Dylan Biography to Date
Review: This is a well-written and thoroughly researched book that is fascinating reading for any Dylan fan. Heylin is a fan from way back and concentrates the biography on Dylan's performance art and studio process. Unlike most other biographies, this one doesn't stop at 1966 or 1974. It is the best source around for Dylan info up to 1991. If I have a complaint about "Behind the Shades" it is that Mr. Heylin finds fault in just about every studio track that ever made it to an official album compared to every other version of the song that was left out. He seems to find every original lyric to be better than its reworked evolution and believes that most of Dylan's live versions over the years are better than the album cut as well. I've seen Dylan live and I'll just say it's hard for me to imagine Heylin is quite on target there. He might have some valid points but it began to grate on me as I read the book. Overall, compared to other Dylan biographies, this is the best by far.

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Summary: A great biography on Dylan, told by those who were there!
Review: This is an excellent read. Heylin's clear narration is coupled with many excerpts from interviews from Dylan, as well as from those who have been involved with Dylan's career. While it is really a shame that this is out-of-print, anyone interesed in Dylan should search for it. It is essential!

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Summary: goodbye Sounes
Review: This is on such a higher level of biography than the much-touted 'Down the Highway' it's almost a joke that tome has gotten more publicity....come on, publisher, put some muscle behind Behind the Shades Revisited! While it is true that Heylin's haughtiness can become grating, his knowledge of Dylan's art (remember: why we care about Dylan in the first place) is unmatched. This is the real bio.

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Summary: This is the one to get
Review: This is, page by page, the best Dylan biography out there. If you're looking for a shocking exposition of debauchery, i.e., "National Enquirer"-style, then you should look elsewhere. However, if you are more interested in the man's art, as any true Dylan fan would be, then this is the book for you. Although he throws in a couple of questionable interjections (a complete rejection of the Grateful Dead having any importance in Dylan's career, a lack of sensitivity for when Dylan's muse is not there, and a slightly more expose-styled chapter towards the end of the book), Heylin does a generally good job throughout of keeping his personal opinions out of the book and telling us what we want to know. All of the albums are gone into in detail (as in, what was going on in Dylan's life when they were being made, inside details on the recording sessions, how and when the songs came about, etc.), and the good thing is that Heylin talks about the entire sessions (stuff that didn't make it, material that was never released), giving them as much credence as the official canon, which is very important. This gives the book a much more well-rounded scope, and shows the full wealth of Dylan's art, not just what he has chosen to release. All the tours are given full coverage as well. This is not to say that his personal life is not covered - it is. We get a fascinating glimpse into Dylan's early childhood, his teenage years when he first started playing in bands, and his subsequent moves to college and New York. All this stuff is, of course, detailed very thoroughly. We also get a look into his relationships (without stooping to voyeurism.) It would be foolish to ignore such an important part of Dylan's life, and it also interesting to look at his various relationships in relation to his muse - it's interesting to see what women inspired what certain songs. Also, the other major strength that this book has over others is that it adequately (for the most part) covers his "lost" years of the 80's and 90's. The chapters on the 80's are useful to fans for giving reasons for (though not excusing) why Dylan so often in that decade left his best songs off his albums. The Never Ending Tour is also gone into in detail. We also get a look into Dylan's "born again" phase, which had always been a mystery to me. The only thing about this book that really disappointed me is that his excellent 1997 Album of the Year, Time Out of Mind, is not given extensive coverage (nor the subsequent events in his career.) Although this book was published in 2001, it stops chronologically at about the point of the Grammy Awards where Dylan won his three awards for Time Out of Mind (Things Have Changed is mentioned, barely, but not its accolades.) Still, this is far and away the best Dylan biography that is now available. It will give you a better understanding of Dylan the man (always seemingly such an enigma), while also giving you a greater appreciation of his art. This book does not destroy Dylan the Legend, but enriches your appreciation of him. That is what a good biography should do.

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Summary: Academic in style, but doesn't capture the essence
Review: Yeah, well, by and large I pretty much agree with the judgement of the reader from Belfast, Ireland. Personally I don't mind the use of direct quotes that break up the flow of the text as many of the anecdotes - especially Dylan's - are quite fascinating, and the author writes well so he has to be given credit for that. Otherwise, to concur with the reader from Ireland, I find Heylin to write with a rather patronising and almost condescending academic-style truculence which bears no spirit to Dylan's music or the times he lived through. There's a faintly professorial smug sense of self-satisfaction that runs through this text, as if the author is "above it all" and is in total self-belief in having the one-and-only arcane rite to being the "Dylan authority". On the whole, he's cold, patronising, especially to those around Dylan, and he makes some appalling statements about the Beatles. Heylin is too self-important to allow a bit of funtime folklore such as the shared spiff on first meeting of BD & the mop tops in NYC in '64 to be just what it is and has to pontificate on the event with a detached, gravely authoritarianism. The closing sentence to the chapter which heralds the making of Highway 61 is appaling, something like "...while the opposition were tuning their Rickenbackers and wondering where to hide their love away, Dylan was off inventing his wild mercury sound..." - this totally discredits the true merit of both Dylan & the Beatles. He's horribly dismissive about Sergeant Pepper....sure, to be objective it is not the Beatles strongest set of songs but it's a very fine album nonetheless. It's also bizarre, and flatly irrelevant I think, that the author spends much word space in his preface to compare Dylan the genius, to Orson Welles, the genius. Most of us music fans may not know or couldn't care less about Orson Welles, we know he's some film guy, so what? Wouldn't it be more relevant to compare BD to Stravinsky, the medium is closer - and then one comes to realise that comparisons are meaningless anyway.
To Heylin's credit, he portrays Dylan as a human being with a linear life and steers clear of iconoclasm, but somehow it doesn't fit. Heylin hasn't fully conveyed the essence of the man's extraordinary songwriting, instead focusing on an overly academic-style objectivity which fails to capture the spirit of the subject matter, instead rendering it at times, a frustrating and irritating read.