All Categories > Books

Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary

Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary

Star FullStar HalfStar EmptyStar EmptyStar Empty

(Paperback)-Ranging over 30 years of albums and outtakes, bootleg recordings, films, and live concerts, Riley delivers fresh analyses of Bob Dylan's songs, charts the mercurial shifts in the Dylan persona, assesses the singer's debt to earlier musicians, and reveals the shadow he casts on the work of Springsteen and others.
Read More
Email me when this price drops
SellerSeller RatingAdditional InfoList Price Tax & Shipping Total Price
Amazon

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

In Stock

$17.95

Enter your Zip code to get the total price with tax and shipping:

You may also be interested in these products Store Price
hard rain

Hard Rain (Music)

Hard Rain is a snapshot of Bob Dylan's fabled Rolling Thunder Revue, a traveling circus that was more notable for its ... Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$5.69
Save 10%
cafepress long sleeve t-shirt

A Hard Rain/Bob Dylan Long Sleeve T-Shirt

It's like wearing Bob Dylan! Or at least his lyric. Fans of classic rock, folk and great American poetry should dig this ... Read More

CafePress

$28.00
hard rain fall

Hard Rain Fall

Release Date: Jun 21 2005, Audio CD, Golly Gee Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$12.69
Save 38%
bob definitive dylan encyclopedia

Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia

The textbook, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, by Oliver Trager, available in Paperback ... Read More

Textbooks.com

$16.50
high land hard rain

High Land, Hard Rain (Music)

Some performers never make a bigger splash than with their first record, a situation which the Ramones and De La Soul ... Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$14.99
carrie hassler hard rain

Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain 2 (Music)

Hassler's eponymous debut with her Hard Rain band stayed at the top of the bluegrass charts for almost a year and was ... Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$13.79
carrie hassler hard rain

Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain (Music)

As bluegrass bands have continued to proliferate in the post-millennium, a number of women performers have joined the ... Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$13.99
Save 13%
fell sds failed

Hard Rain Fell: Sds and Why It Failed

The textbook, Hard Rain Fell: Sds and Why It Failed, by David Barber, available in Hardback. Published by: University ... Read More

Textbooks.com

$30.00
hard rain don last

Hard Rain Don't Last

Darryl Worley's debut races through the holes Brad Paisley has recently punched through country radio. Like Paisley ... Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$8.59
Save 42%
zone hard rain

Drop Zone & Hard Rain (Video)

DVD Read More

Barnes and Noble

Star FullStar FullStar FullStar HalfStar Empty

$12.99

User Reviews for Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary

Overall Rating: Star FullStar HalfStar EmptyStar EmptyStar Empty ( 5 reviews )
  1. Star FullStar FullStar EmptyStar EmptyStar Empty ( 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.

  2. Star FullStar FullStar EmptyStar EmptyStar Empty ( 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.

  3. Star FullStar FullStar EmptyStar EmptyStar Empty ( 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.

See all reviews...

See item at: Amazon: $17.95

Product Specs for Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary

Author: Tim Riley
Number Of Pages: 376
Category: Paperback
Brand: Da Capo
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.42164092
Label: Da Capo
Manufacturer: Da Capo
Product Group: Book
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
Edition: Updated
See item at: Amazon: $17.95

sponsored links

    Store reviews by Epinions Home

    Shop for

    search suggestions:

          Pocket Change

          Sign In | Create Account | My Pages

          Shopping Blog | About Become | Send Feedback | Share Your Success Story | Online Degrees | Exava | Black Friday Deals

          Our International Sites: Japan | United Kingdom | Germany | Italy

          Copyright © 2009 Become, Inc.Terms of Use

          if yer hewmen, dawnt qlique dis linc