Positively Bob Dylan » Books

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on Bob Dylan bootlegs

Mike Hobo — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:08:15 +0000

In his new Steve Jobs biography Walter Isaacson describes how apart from building electronic devices, it was their passion for music that brought them together. It was around 1970, at an “incredible time for music”, as then 15 years-old Jobs recalled in an interview with Isaacson. “Woz” seems to have directed Jobs’ musical interest towards Dylan. He describes how they had tracked down one particular Dylan enthusiast who not only had put out a newsletter, but also owned an extensive archive of bootleg tapes of Dylan concerts.
Just to put this into perspective: The first ever Rock bootleg record, “The Great White Wonder” had just been released about a year prior to that. The two Steves, who later changed the world of personal computers and entertainment technology by founding Apple Computers, started off as Bob Dylan bootleg collectors! Jobs proudly remarked that he owned “more than 100 hours, including every concert of the ’65 and ’66 tour.”

While Jobs gained creative thoughts through Dylan’s song lyrics, Woz used his tape deck at low speed to record more concerts on one tape. They both stayed up late listening to and interpreting the magic words coming out of their self-assembled speakers.

Three decades later Jobs’ fascination with Dylan was still obvious: He quoted him on a shareholder meeting, used his visual for a promotional campaign, prominently promoted Dylan’s complete catalog for sale in the iTunes music store (becoming the first online record store to offer that), and got his all-time musical idol himself to appear in an iPod+iTunes commercial promoting his “Modern Times” album on the iTunes store, performing “Someday Baby”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rH1ziCo6oA

Dylan at Play

Mike Hobo — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:37:04 +0000

I’d like to take the opportunity to recommend a very special and unique new Bob Dylan book, that has just been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The collection of writings has been edited by Nick Smart and Nina Goss, and is centered around the question of how writers from various backgrounds have responded to Dylan’s art in their own specific professional context. I was lucky enough to have been asked to contribute an essay to this project, “May your hands always be busy”.
“We have no interest in competing with the almost numberless and ever-increasing quantity of critical and encyclopedic writing on Dylan. Our goal with this collection has been play and not categorizing or defining”, the editors say. In this respect I think the book provides an excellent and fresh new perspective on Dylan, written from an academic point of view, yet still appealing to a wider audience of Bob Dylan fans and people who grew and grow up listening to his music.

More on the book, including a free PDF sample, can be found on the CSP homepage.

When Bob Met Woody

Mike Hobo — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:56:14 +0000

The first-ever picture book on Bob Dylan will be published in May, just in time for Dylan’s 70th birthday. NY Times-bestselling author Gary Golio’s second book for kids (ages 8-12), “When Bob Met Woody: The Story of the Young Bob Dylan” follows him from his beginnings in the cold North Country of Minnesota in the 1950s to the streets of New York City, where he arrives at 19, hoping to find and meet his hero Woody Guthrie. The inspiring story about a young man’s passion for music and the importance of personal heroes has been illustrated by award-winning artist Marc Burckhardt. Golio’s poetic text and Burckhardt’s iconographic paintings capture the power and tenderness of their meeting in words and images that conjure an era when the times they were a-changin’.

Visit garygolio.com and marcart.net for more.

When Bob Met Woody: The Story of the Young Bob Dylan
Written by Gary Golio
Illustrated by Marc Burckhardt
Published by Little, Brown
40 pages
$17.99 hardcover
ISBN 13: 978-0-316-11299-4

Heylin presents “Revolution in the Air”

Mike Hobo — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:36:14 +0000

On Monday, March 30, Clinton Heylin – author of the biography “Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades” and “Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions” – will speak about his new book “Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1963″. The most comprehensive book on Dylan’s song lyrics ever written, including songs that no one has ever heard, is the first of two volumes that tracks the creation of Dylan’s first 300 songs. It will possibly change how Dylan’s lyrics are interpreted and understood. Arranged in a surprising chronology of when each song was actually written rather than when it appeared on albums, it uncovers surprising facts spanning Dylan’s career up prior to Blood on the Tracks. Newly discovered manuscripts, anecdotal evidence, and a seemingly limitless knowledge of every Bob Dylan live performance contribute to this definitive resource.
Heylin’s event will take place on Monday, March 30 at 7pm at Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers (218 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211). It is free and open to the public. A book signing and Q&A will follow.

Zainab McCoy on Chronicles translation

Mike Hobo — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:35:06 +0000

Check out this interview with Zainab in addition to the posting below, Exclusive offer: Dylan’s original 1st Chronicles manuscript. When I asked for the permission to put it on YouTube, Zainab added that it was actually at the end of August when she and Hans Marius Stormoen received the second Chronicles manuscript from Simon and Schuster, and not in September as said in the video interview.

Exclusive offer: Dylan’s original 1st Chronicles manuscript!

Mike Hobo — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:23:50 +0000

When Zainab McCoy, visual and performing artist from Philadelphia who is currently living in Oslo contacted me, I was immediately astonished by the unique item she had to offer: Her late husband Hans Marius Stormoen translated Dylan’s “Chronicles, Volume 1″ into Norwegian. After his work was finished, Zainab asked him what to do with the original manuscript. His simple reply was “Put it in the trash. Or just do whatever you want to do with it”, she tells me. But of course this is not what you would do with a true collector’s item.
To everyone’s surprise, just before Bob Dylan’s book was going to be released worldwide and Stormoen was nearly halfway finished translating it, the phone rang. It was the Chief Editor of the Norwegian publishing house, telling him to immediately stop his translation, “Dylan has sent us a new manuscript”! On the same day the new version of the manuscript arrived from New York, the one that would later end up as the official book release. Zainab’s job was to read both versions and mark the changes that Dylan had made so that her husband could easily find them and not have to completely run through what he had already translated. A complicated task, as she confirms.
Back to the first, completely unedited manuscript: As Zainab told me, in the first manuscript you can hear Dylan’s voice, his casual unedited way of speaking and writing. It even includes Bob’s personal note to the editor “type written on the PC”. None of the manuscripts contain any handwriting by Dylan. Still since there were so many changes made from the first to the second manuscript, the original unpublished version remains an important item for every serious rarities collector and Bob Dylan fan.

Please note that the authenticity of the original Chronicles manuscript copies can be verified by Morten Malmø, Chief Editor at DAMM/EGMONT in Oslo, Norway, who personally hand delivered the first manuscript to Hans Marius Stormoen, who also translated several other works such as Bob Dylan’s “Scrape Book”. He died on June 1, 2006, whilst in the middle of translating Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography “Extreme”.

Supported by positively-bobdylan.com Zainab McCoy now exclusively offers to sell the original first manuscript to the highest bidder – THIS IS A CALL TO SERIOUS COLLECTORS ONLY! McCoy will request a face-to-face meeting with the eventual buyer to see and purchase the complete manuscript. It will NOT be sent via e-mail! In case you are seriously interested, you may contact her at hmstormo@hotmail.com.

A Freewheelin’ Time Again

Mike Hobo — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:09:04 +0000

65 years old Suze Rotolo is going to release her book “A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties” in May. The official release date is May 13, 2008 but it can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
Rotolo is perhaps best known from the 1963 cover photography of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, where she is walking through Greenwich Village with Bob. Both she and her sister Carla were close friends of Bob in the early 1960s. Her political and artist background is often regarded as having influenced Dylan’s early songwriting and his interest in art, especially painting.

A few years after having lost her connection to Dylan she got married to an Italian film editor. Their son now works as a musician in New York. Her latest public interviews on Dylan were for PBS news in 2004 and for Martin Scorsese’s documentary “No Direction Home” in 2005. The release of her new book comes along with the 45th anniversary of the “Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album.

The essential John Hammond biography

Mike Hobo — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:41:33 +0000

“The Producer: John Hammond and the Soul of American Music” is the ultimate guide to one of America’s key figures in popular music, John Hammond.- The man who recognized and supported the talents of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen among many others at the earliest stage of their careers.

Author Dunstan Prial, a freelance journalist, builds his well written and carefully researched biography upon interviews with family members, friends and musicians. Dylan fans will particularly be interested in his account of signing Bob Dylan to Columbia Records, but there’s much more of essential value in the book for anyone interested in music history. Hammond’s journey was a constant search for distinct talent and personality, and it was his extraordinary love for music that made him find it in Dylan, Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Leonard Cohen, and many others.
Prial’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in popular culture and music, especially for Bob Dylan fans.

“The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, produced by John Hammond (1963)

40 years and 6-and-half minutes of musical revolution

Mike Hobo — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 12:36:37 +0000

On June 15, 1965 Bob Dylan, Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, bass player Russ Savakus, drummer Bobby Gregg and producer Tom Wilson recorded only one complete take of “Like A Rolling Stone” (after four false starts). On the following afternoon they recorded another three complete takes (11 attempts in all). And it should be take 4 that would change rock music forever.

40 years later “Rolling Stone” magazine ranks it “the greatest song of all time”. Now Bob, tell us how does that feeeel? Not bad for a 6-and-half-minutes track at a time where the usual single was about 2-and-half-minutes long. But it wasn’t the only thing that was unusual and new with this song. A lot has been written and said about it during the past four decades, now Greil Marcus tops it all with his new book “Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads“, where he dedicates nearly 300 pages to this one song: from its origins and context to the 2003 Italian rap version from “Masked & Anonymous”.

In case you’ve ever wondered if the origins of the legendary magazine’s name lead to Dylan’s classic tune, the answer my friend is no. Bob Dylan, “Rolling Stone” magazine and “The Rolling Stones” all most likely referred to Muddy Waters’ blues song “Rollin’ Stone” from 1950.

“My mother told my father just before I was born,
I got a boy child comin’, he’s gonna be a rollin’ stone (…)
Well, I feel, yes I feel, feel that a low down time ain’t long” (Muddy Waters)

“How does it feel, how does it feel,
to be without a home, like a complete unknown,
like a rolling stone” (Bob Dylan)

The Bobiography: Just Like a Dylan Song

Mike Hobo — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:15:23 +0000

Bob Dylan surprises his audience once again. What seemed so unlikely, finally happened: During the past three years Dylan has written his (first) autobiography, entitled “Chronicles, Volume One”. It was released on October 5, and is also available as an audio book (CD and cassette) read by actor Sean Penn.

There’s two important facts that you need to know if you haven’t already read it: First, the book is written much like a Dylan song, mysterious and dark, it leaves a lot of space for interpretation, it’s neither complete nor chronological. And secondly, Dylan leaves out everything that might diminish his status as the unknown superstar. There’s not a single hint regarding personal or private anecdotes such as his relationships or his family life.
As the official press release on bobdylan.com states, “Chronicles” focuses on “significant periods in Dylan’s life and career”, but what’s behind Dylan’s closed doors remains unknown.

The chapter titles are:

Markin’ Up the Score
The Lost Land
New Morning
Oh Mercy
River of Ice

Read it and enjoy it, it’s a great piece of art and also another piece of the puzzle of Dylan’s diverse biography. But in case you are looking for a complete biography, you might probably be more satisfied with Clinton Heylin’s great “Behind The Shades Revisited”.