Bob Dylan : things have changed : a sort of biography / Ron Rosenbaum.
"A spellbinding, passionate, and unprecedented deep dive into the ever-changing but ever-radical life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter, from his rural Minnesota upbringing through his sofa-surfing days in Greenwich Village through his many tumultuous conversions -- to electric guitars and country music and Christianity and on ... Renowned culture critic Ron Rosenbaum discovered not only the world-changing music of early Bob Dylan, but the man himself, in the 1960s, when Rosenbaum was a young journalist living in Greenwich Village just around the corner from Dylan, and working for the legendary alt-weekly, The Village Voice. Rosenbaum, in fact, became the Voice's de facto Dylan reporter. It was the time, and the place, where an essential idea of Dylan's character was formed -- that of the whip-smart, angry, too-cool-for-school icon, a kind of James Dean in denim. The raspy voice, not to mention the brilliantly cutting lyricism, only somehow added to his cultural dangerousness. The Dylan, in other words, recently portrayed in the hit movie A Complete Unknown. But Dylan has had many changes of character since then. There was the smoother-voiced country crooner of Nashville Skyline; the white-faced ringmaster of the Rolling Thunder Review; the enraged proselytizer who saw Jesus in a Tucson motel room and converted to Christianity ... and more. And throughout, the famously recalcitrant Dylan would tell people, "I'm not that person anymore," whatever previous character he was asked about. In a probing and personal literary appreciation, Rosenbaum examines what Dylan nonetheless revealed about himself in his lyrics and writings, and his infrequent interviews. Rosenbaum, in fact, was one of the few to interview Dylan in those years, and may own the record for longest interview, sitting down for ten days with Dylan for a Playboy interview in 1978"-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781685892258 (hardcover)
- Physical Description: xv, 287 pages ; 24 cm
- Publisher: Brooklyn, NY : Melville House, 2025.
Content descriptions
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Dylan, Bob, 1941- Composers > United States > Biography. Lyricists > United States > Biography. Rock musicians > United States > Biography. Singers > United States > Biography. |
| Genre: | Biographies. Personal narratives. |
Available copies
- 0 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.
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- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cookstown Branch | 782.42164092 Dylan-R | 31681010440717 | NONFIC | Checked out | 12/30/2025 |
- Baker & Taylor
This literary exploration traces Bob Dylanâs ever-shifting identity, spiritual struggles and elusive artistic vision?â?from folk rebel to Christian convert to enigmatic elder?â?while investigating the continuity behind his contradictions and the mysterious sound he long pursued. - Random House, Inc.
In the wake of the recent hit biopic A Complete Unknown, this probing appreciation asks: Do the lyrics of Bob Dylan tell the true story of the ever-changing, ever-radical life and career of the Nobel Prize-winning songwriter?
In a dingy windowless bungalow on the Warner Brothers back lot in Hollywood in 1977, in the midst of what may have been the longest interview he ever gave (it stretched over ten days), a chain-smoking Bob Dylan confessed to journalist Ron Rosenbaum that he was troubled by something missing from his music. Dylan â who was editing a dramatic movie based on his life, even as his life seemed to be falling apart â told Rosenbaum there was a sound he was after that heâd only come close to on one record so far. The sound, he told Rosenbaum, was of âthin, wild mercury.â
This is a book that captures the elusive mercurial artist and his work in a way no other has â a vivid, compelling pursuit of Dylan, successively a hipster folkie, a Greenwich Village sparkplug of a cultural revolution, who plugged into an amplifier to drive away folkie solemnity, then became a countrified crooner, the man who, just months after Rosenbaumâs interview, became a fire-breathing, proselytizing Christian . . . before returning to being a non-religious Jew.
What was behind it all, Rosenbaum asks, and how can we understand him through his lyrics? Tracing it from Dylanâs childhood â when his father hired a Brooklyn rabbi to come to remote Minnesota to prepare his son for his bar mitzvah â through the still touring singerâs late, often inscrutable lyrics, Rosenbaum probes Dylanâs âargument with God,â his differentiation between authenticity and sincerity, and his relentless heretical stances.Â
Of course, complicating matters for anyone trying to trace the development of Dylan and his lifeâs work is Dylanâs recurrent denial of the continuity of self. (Whenever asked why he doesnât sing the old songs the same way as on the record, Dylan typically responds with an irritated, âThatâs not me.â)
Ron Rosenbaum has covered Dylan for almost the entirety of his â and Dylanâs â career, starting as a Village Voice culture reporter in 1969. In this deeply personal and literary appreciation, and as Dylan continues to tour and compose new songs, still refusing to play old songs the old way, Rosenbaum offers a moving and involving portrait of an icon who may have been more constant than it appeared after all.