Dylan to bare all in his back pages
The poet of popular music, Bob Dylan, will finally publish his memoirs this fall.
August 24, 2004: 5:21 PM EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The famously private Bob Dylan, whose background and music are the stuff of legend, will shed light on his life and four-decade career as a singer-songwriter in a memoir to be published this autumn, his publisher said on Tuesday.
Dylan's "Chronicles: Volume One" (Simon & Schuster), the first of a planned three-book series, is a first-person narrative from the 63-year-old music icon, who rose to fame in the early 1960s and whose musical style ranged from folk and blues to rock, country and gospel.
The first volume of his memoirs focuses on significant periods in Dylan's life and is described by publisher David Rosenthal as "extraordinary, revealing and surprising. It is a beautifully written, singular achievement."
The 304-page book is due out on Oct. 12 and will be followed about a week later by an updated edition of "Lyrics: 1962-2001," a compendium of lyrics to nearly every Dylan song.
Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan left the University of Minnesota for New York's Greenwich Village folk music scene at the start of the 1960s. He soon won fame for his such protest anthems as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times are A-changing."
The scrawny mid-Westerner who wrote lyrics like poetry and sang with a distinctive howl, shifted to more introspective material and later added electric instrumentation as he helped create the folk-rock sound and scored a big singles hit with "Like a Rolling Stone."
While Dylan sold millions of records on his own, some of his songs are best known through recordings by others like Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, The Byrds, and The Band.
Dylan, who still tours the world with his rock band, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammies in 1991 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen in 1988.
He previously published "Tarantula," a 1971 volume of poems. Simon & Schuster Inc. is the publishing arm of Viacom .
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― shookout (shookout), Thursday, 26 August 2004 01:45 (twenty-one years ago)
yeah i saw something about this, i'll probably/maybe pick it up though i'm thinking it might end up like brando's autobio. does he have another live album coming out soon too?
also here's the sentence - While Dylan sold millions of records on his own, some of his songs are best known through recordings by others like Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, The Byrds, and The Band. - where you can tell just how fucking old the person who wrote this was.
― cinniblount (James Blount), Thursday, 26 August 2004 01:52 (twenty-one years ago)
I'm surprised to hear it's going to be 304 pages--when I first heard that he'd signed a three-book deal, I figured it'd be three short books....the story is that Dylan was writing liner notes for the SACD reissues of his albums, and just kind of kept on going, writing over a couple hundred pages. He showed it to friends and one associates who said this is too good for liner notes, why not take it out and get a book deal. And he did, for a few million, reportedly.
― shookout (shookout), Thursday, 26 August 2004 02:08 (twenty-one years ago)
Wow, finally something to read during Victoria's Secret commercials. Sheesh.
...and I like Dylan, don't get me wrong...
...but why the FUCK don't we de-bullshit-ifiy the word "memoir" to "book i wrote to make some extra dough off either A) my nascent, fleeting fame while I have the chance, or, B) my lifetime spent relatively in the spotlight, before I retire or die"...?
― John 2, Thursday, 26 August 2004 03:34 (twenty-one years ago)
one month passes...