I hadn't mentioned any interest in it, but my dad bought me the DVD of Bob Dylan's Chronicles last Christmas, at around the same time my girlfriend bought me the book of the same. I like the unspoken symmetry of that. I like presents even more.

Unsurprisingly, it was my dad that introduced me to Dylan, requesting a new copy of Highway 61 Revisited for his birthday when I was about 10 or 11. I remember having to go WHSmith in Plymouth to order it and it taking weeks to arrive. I remember Bob Dylan looking out from the cover of that record, levelly meeting the eye of the viewer, not aggressive but not caring what you thought either. That image stayed with me, although I didn't listen to the LP til several years later. The LP seemed like something beamed in from outer space, something definitely beyond anything I knew about before.

When I did get into Dylan, my dad was genuinely perplexed that I was even listening to stuff from his generation. I had hijacked all his Dylan vinyl which he rarely listened to anymore anyway, including the copy of Highway 61 Revisited that I'd bought for him. He had a copy of Blonde On Blonde that he'd bought in America before it was even released in the UK, when he was serving with the navy and stationed on an aircraft carrier somewhere off the American coast. I seem to remember him telling me he had rushed back to the ship from shore leave clutching a copy and managing to persuade the duty officer to play a couple of tracks over the ship's tannoy... the idea of an aircraft carrier full of British Royal Marines armed to the teeth singing "Everyone must get stoned" as they strolled along the flight deck is one that appeals a lot, even if it never did happen.

Chronicles: Volume I has 7 straight pages of critical praise from every conceivable publication at its beginning, a sign of how deeply iconic and influential Dylan remains to the generation before mine who are largely still editing those publications. Most of his seminal albums were recorded over 40 years ago now, and perhaps the reason why Chronicles has been so lauded is because it is incredibly evocative of New York City in the 1950s.

While this is supposedly an autobiography, Dylan actually writes very little about himself - the entire book is about those around him who helped him or influenced him. The chronology hacks back and forth from the freezing NYC where he started out as a folk singer to his retreat from the outside world at the height of his fame to the recording of 1997 album Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois and back again to New York as he starts recording for Columbia Records. Throughout, Dylan is refreshingly oblique - while the chapter on Oh Mercy takes up 60 pages, he doesn't mention the record by title once. Dylan knows his readers will already be familiar with his chronology and his work - so instead of rerunning the usual tired narrative, he zones in on a few episodes that are of interest to him. Unsurprisingly, this approach doesn't defuse Dylan's enigma one bit - even as he tries to explain that there is no enigma and his genuine bafflement at the hordes of freaks who paid pilgrimage to his house and made his and his family's life a misery.

Dylan's writing style is also distinctly off-beam for an autobiography. It's got that staccato edge of his lyrics at times, and the sense of the whole paragraph making sense, rather than individual sentences. It makes for uneven reading - sometimes, especially in the Oh Mercy section, the focus and tone gets lost and repetitious. But for the most part, especially the first and last chapters, the picture of New York seen through the prism of the folk scene then is engrossing, and, best of all, Dylan's descriptions of how he was forever changed by listening to Roy Orbinson, Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson are simply heartstopping. They're worth reading the book for alone. Dylan captures not simply their impact on him but the power of music itself, and the way hearing something can irreversibly alter your perspective. Dylan's description of Robert Johnson comes right at the end of the book, and he seems to ascribe much of his success to his own songs being infused with Johnson's influence.

There are numerous other musicians that Dylan namechecks throughout Chronicles - sometimes to the point where it feels like a shopping list of influences - and it would make a great accompanying double CD to hear the musicians Dylan writes about. I had a quick hunt but can't find any such release online, sadly.

You can buy Bob Dylan: Chronicles, Volume 1 at Amazon.co.uk


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Posted by Chris to splinters: books, authors, literature, travel, politics at 9/04/2006 03:56:58 AM