Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades : A Biography epub

by Clinton Heylin

ISBN: 0671738941

ISBN13: 978-0671738945

Author: Clinton Heylin

Category: Photo

Subcategory: Music

Language: English

Publisher: Summit Books (April 1, 1991)

Pages: 498 pages

ePUB book: 1507 kb

FB2 book: 1331 kb

Rating: 4.2

Votes: 648

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Clinton Heylin (born 8 April 1960) is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan. Heylin attended Manchester Grammar School.

Clinton Heylin (born 8 April 1960) is an English author who has written extensively about popular music and the work of Bob Dylan. He read history at Bedford College, University of London, followed by an MA in history at the University of Sussex.

Let me finish with a quick word on the Dylan biography, Behind the Shades by Clinton Heylin

Let me finish with a quick word on the Dylan biography, Behind the Shades by Clinton Heylin. Note that there is a reissue from about 2006 with 250 (!!!) more pages covering the albums from Oh Mercy to just before Tempest.

Clinton Heylin's empirical approach to examining Bob Dylan's career is refreshing in the world of libelous, trash rock .

Clinton Heylin's empirical approach to examining Bob Dylan's career is refreshing in the world of libelous, trash rock biography. Rather than throwing out lofty, outrageous statements-like Bob Spitz in his 1989 "Dylan" biography-Heylin lets his sources do the talking. The Best Dylan Biography to Date. com User, December 21, 2000. This is a well-written and thoroughly.

Clinton Heylin probably knows more about Bob Dylan than Bob Dylan knows about Bob Dylan. Reading 'Behind the Shades', there's a strong sense that Helyin could very happily expand any of the book's 45 chapters into a (readable, interesting) book-length volume in its own right.

In 2001 he completely revised and reworked this hugely acclaimed book, adding new sections, substantially reworking text, and bringing the story up-to-date with Dylan's explosive career in 2000

Home Heylin, Clinton Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades; A Biography. We are an Internet based business that has been selling books Internationally for going on 25 years.

Home Heylin, Clinton Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades; A Biography. Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades; A Biography. ISBN 10: 0671738941, ISBN 13: 9780671738945. Published by Summit Books, New York, New York, . Condition: N-Fine Hardcover. Our inventory consists of 15,000+ titles(prox)of which 95% are Used and/or Rare with a few new items. We try to stock items that appeal to all readers from signed limiteds to comics and everything in between.

Bob Dylan - icon, legend, poet, singer and songwriter - is now fifty years old. This book is a full-scale biography that covers the life and the music in full, and will also serve as a reference work for anyone interested in the whole o. . This book is a full-scale biography that covers the life and the music in full, and will also serve as a reference work for anyone interested in the whole of Dylan's carreer to date. Read full description. See details and exclusions. Dylan: Behind the Shades by Clinton Heylin (Paperback, 1991). Pre-owned: lowest price.

In 2001 he completely revised and reworked this hugely acclaimed book, adding new sections, substantially reworking text, and bringing the story up-to-date with Dylan's explosive career in 2000

However, it's the most useful and balanced general overview of his career, drawing information and perspectives from many sources, and covering his post- mid-'70s activities with as much attention as the singer's more celebrated earlier life.

Chronicles the life and thirty-year music career of Bob Dylan, from his early protest songs through his near-fatal motorcycle accident, his divorce, and his religious conversion, to his recent rock comeback

4-1/2 stars, actually. If session details bore you, you might consider skipping the book, fully half of which consists of session details (players, circumstances, controversies, production conundrums, on-the-fly composition, variations of Bob's unusual "live" studio preferences, etc. etc. etc.) and deliberations over, controversies involving, criticism of setlists for the numerous tours (up to the first decade of the Never-Ending Tour) and hundreds upon hundreds of performances. (I happily put myself on the side of "More Session Details!" I still buy jazz CDs in the expectation that the "liner notes" - and here I date myself - will have all the desire session content as well as, with the case of historic performances - all the context and controversies, etc. one might wonder about.)

For me, this is an absolutely essential contribution to the Dylan literature, collecting so many unusual, sometimes revealing, observations from so many significant Dylan comrades, colleagues, lovers, haters, running buddies, etc. that one is hard pressed to speak authoritatively on any significant Dylan topic without reference to it. But so many of Heylin's hundreds...no, thousands...of opinions and judgments, based on his sources, to be sure, but also simply the personal sense he makes of an incomplete mosaic, raise so many questions about their sources that I - I'd categorize myself as an indefatigable, almost anal, researcher - needed the sourcing. And, more than a decade after the book's release, here's the key issue: Heylin has no website, and I could not locate the page-by-page sourcing he promises in the bibliographic note...not in the Internet Archive Way back Machine or anywhere else. His bibliographic note is helpful but incomplete - Heylin has heard performances he could not have attended but provides no suggestion as to how or where he heard or saw tape or whose views he might have informally adopted to categorize any bit of an evening's gig as, in his judgment, "the greatest live performance of (fill in the blank)." I presume that information might be obtained in the detailed full-source documentation. But it's not there. If anyone out there in Cyberland has any idea how I might obtain a pdf file of Heylin's sourcing, or an email address via which I might make a request, I'd be most grateful.

The index is useful but far from exhaustive. Names that come up in the text are often missing, particularly if they walk on and walk off a few times and aren't part of the quoted dramatis personae whose long passages Heylin builds his narrative around (he provides an appendix of useful thumbnail sketches to help you keep track of names you might not have encountered before). Other appendices - the songlist, for example, is most useful. The list of albums, however, didn't get an update for the 2nd edition (at least in the copy I own) and ends c.1990.

All that said, Behind the Shades-Revisited is a deeply researched and copiously reported bio, vastly informative and illuminating across many dimensions, brimming with Heylin's considered opinions, factual details and fact-based speculation on Dylan's family life, insatiable sexual and substance/stimulant/depressant appetites, links between life and art, and so much more, and thus remains an indispensable document...even if it fails to get to the heart of the enigma of Bob Dylan.

I'm looking forward to reading the 60,000 words Heylin has added to the 20th anniversary edition.

Well written. Includes many facts I did not know. Paints a picture of a poet/songwriter/musician who followed his destiny and reached higher peaks than he may have imagined.

This book is probably rightfully touted as the definitive Dylan biography. It's exceptionally well researched, and the author is clearly very intelligent. The book is very well written, and a pleasure to read for anyone interested in learning more about the enigma within the enigma that is Dylan.

All that said, Heylin dismisses "Time out of Mind" early on in the book as "built on sand" and says it doesn't stand up to some of Dylan's all time classics. He also says nothing Dylan has released since "Oh Mercy" is any good, and predicts he'll never release any more masterpieces (although, to his credit, he hopes he's wrong).

I think he is wrong. "Time out of mind" and its successor, "Love and theft" both stand with any of Dylan's classics from previous decades (arguably more so as far as "Time out of mind" is concerned), and I suspect Mr. Dylan has more than one more classic in him before his final biography can be written.

Good read and good bio.

A.S. Byatt has commented on the near-impossible task of maintaining objectivity in any biography: at some points, the facts are vague, holes appear, and the biographer must resort to subjective speculation in order to continue the story. There is a lot of truth to Byatt's observation, but there is still a difference between a biographer's subjectivity and his or her overt bias. Is Clinton Heylin's updating of BOB DYLAN: BEHIND THE SHADES a good Dylan biography? Yes, in as much as any biography of Dylan can be called definitive. The book is an interesting, engaging account of the artist, and, at times, Heylin's respect for, even adoration of his subject is quite evident. If you want a "warts-and-all" rendering of Dylan's life and art, BEHIND THE SHADES is as good a place to start as any (after the music, of course). The principal weakness of BEHIND THE SHADES is Heylin's own irritating, grating biographical voice, full of personal bias. He condemns outright certain stages of Dylan's art (he is obviously a fan of the "electric Dylan" more than the "folk singer Dylan) and tries to portray him as an artist while showing little, if any, sympathy for the time when the Muse was absent. Heylin might as well criticize Matisse for cutting up paper. A biographer is entitled to his or her interpretation of the life of the subject, but Heylin preaches his own musical tastes to the point of distraction. A prime example of his bias is the way in which he completely dismisses the Grateful Dead, denying the band its place in musical history and in Dylan's life. He "suggests" that Dylan did a series of shows with the Dead in 1987 only as revenge for the Dead playing several of his songs in their own concerts over the years. In commenting on Jerry Garcia's death, Heylin describes Garcia as a man "with a previously sharp mind that had shown as little self-discipline in [his] personal habits as in [his] music making." Heylin then proceeds to note the effect Garcia's death had on Dylan and to quote Dylan's "heart-rending statement" he gave to the press about Garcia. Well, in a biography of Bob Dylan, whose reaction to Garcia's death is more relevant, Heylin's or Dylan's? Yet Heylin is constantly injecting his own biased, half-baked musings into the mix, sounding much like the "brat" he accuses Dylan of being in the 80s and 90s, jumping up and down like a three year-old crying to be noticed. His comments are like massive pot-holes in an otherwise smooth surface. Clinton Heylin, I don't care what you think. Stick to your subject. Heylin often alludes, with glowing praise, to Paul Williams' PERFORMING ARTIST books on Dylan, and he seems to want to imitate Williams' style. He just doesn't make it. If you can stomach Heylin's interruptions, give this book a shot. Me, I'm off to see how the other Dylan biography does.

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