( 5 reviews )
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( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Aug 12 2006
Tim Riley's book on Dylan starts fresh. He provides one of the best appreciations of Dylan's voice I have read. OK so the guy has a fresh point of view. Then he weighs into Dylan's early work with gusto. Riley appreciates Dylan's socio political protest in the image of Woodie Gutherie and also gets into what he imagines is drug fueled creativity up to 1966. He finds a drug behind every bush though which is possible but misses the multiple layering of Dylan's work. Then like the folkies who dis Dylan at Newport he starts to turn sour on Dylan during the post-66 period and gets nastier as the book moves on. Until finally in the Epilogue Riley becomes the master of mean invective against Dylan and everyone, except Wilco? Oh yeah, they are singing Woodie Gutherie songs to new tunes - right. There's the connection. My advice - borrow the book, read until Blood on the Tracks and quit. The rest will spoil your day.
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( 2 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jun 20 2005
I am glad to see other reviewers found this book as dissatisfying as I did.Dylan is an enigmatic figure whose appeal lies in lyrical ambiguity, lack of polish, unorthodox phrasing of his vocals, and his constant reinventions of himself. His output has been prodigious. Riley captures this well, at least for the first half of the book.I have two major problems with this book:1) Riley makes statements about authorial intent which simply can't be justified. When I listen to Blood on the Tracks, I don't contemplate it as a commentary on the end of the sixties. Riley makes these obtuse statements about what Dylan is 'really saying' with such fervour that you'd think he knew Dylan personally (and if he did, so what?). That other review about Visions of Johanna is right on on this point.2) With only a few exceptions, Riley hates anything Dylan has done since Desire. Now this is not an uncommon opinion. Dylan's voice does go through a serious decline. Many of his albums since Desire have been uneven and lyrically weak. Riley, however, kicks poor Bob when he's down and is downright huffy about some of Dylan's better efforts. He pans Oh Mercy in favour of Under the Red Sky and the Traveling Wilburies recordings (has he actually listened to Red Sky? It's flimsy at best, especially in comparison to Oh Mercy). In his updated chapter, he chides Dylan for playing for John Paul II, for not being Sinead O'Connor, and for being 'grumpy' on Time Out of Mind (which despite Riley's objections, is a solid album full of humour and great vocal phrasing). Riley's sermonizing gets progressively weak and unrestrained... I just get the impression that Mr. Riley loved the sixties so much he lives in paranoid denial that they're over. The Republicans may be in office, and Dylan may not be the trend-setting anti-hero that he once was, but please don't blame Dylan for the loss of your adolescent dreams, Mr. Riley.
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( 3 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 3 2001
Tim Riley's commentary on Dylan focuses on the music rather than the man. This focus starts fairly well, aside from Riley trying to impress us with his vocabulary. Dylan's early work (from his debut until about Highway 61 Revisited) receives a fairly thorough treatment as Riley tries to "get inside" the mind of Dylan (which is probably not a very wise thing to do in the first place). Even if you don't agree with Riley, his ideas are interesting...at least for awhile. After reading the book, it seems that Riley believes that Dylan hasn't written anything worth listening to since "Blood on the Tracks." Unfortunately the author all but ignores some of Dylan's most significant contributions past 1975. (Riley spends nearly 250 pages on the period from Dylan's debut until 1975. From 1975 on only gets 50 pages.) This book was a super disappointment by an author who seems to have an axe to grind. The work is saved by giving a good bibliography and an even better discography.
