Friday Reads: Bob Dylan and Friends
“In the dime stores and bus stations,People talk of situations,Read books, repeat quotations,Draw conclusions on the wall.”
– Bob Dylan
(from “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”)
Have you seen the acclaimed movie A Complete Unknown? Nominated for eight Oscars, A Complete Unknown is about Bob Dylan’s early years in New York City as he was discovering what kind of musician he wanted to be. The film also portrays, in varying degrees, Joan Baez, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Johnny Cash. These iconic American musicians are continually being discovered, and rediscovered, by readers and listeners. Bob Dylan still walks and creates among us. In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and Patti Smith gave a sweet, memorable performance at the ceremony. Please enjoy the following books by and about these tremendous artists!
BOB DYLAN: NYC 1961-1964 by Ted Russell, Chris Murray, Donovan
For those who love or have collected early Bob Dylan bootleg albums, an archive of never before published photographs of the young Dylan, when he first moved to New York City in the early 1960s. It was in late 1961, photographer Ted Russell recalls, that he first heard about an “up-and-coming young fellow who was coming out with his first album.” A freelance photographer on the lookout for good subjects, Russell was intrigued by a rave review from The New York Times of the raw-voiced folk singer. Russell’s subject was a twenty-year-old Bob Dylan, a young folk singer whom nobody knew, and Russell photographed Dylan in 1961. Bob Dylan is a window into the singer/songwriter who would go on to become one of America’s greatest musical treasures: the book contains photos of Dylan in his tiny Greenwich Village apartment, writing and practicing; snuggling with girlfriend Suze Rotolo; and performing at celebrated folk club Gerde’s. Bob Dylan is an important chronicle of the days just prior to Bob Dylan’s celebrity and the perfect tribute both for Dylan and rock history fans.
A FREEWHEELIN’ TIME : A MEMOIR OF GREENWICH VILLAGE IN THE SIXTIES by Suze Rotolo
A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists, growing up at the dawn of the Cold War. It was the age of McCarthy and Suze was an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. She found solace in poetry, art, and music—and in Greenwich Village, where she encountered like-minded and politically active friends. One hot July day in 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, then a rising musician, at a concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were both vibrant, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation. A hopeful, intimate memoir of a vital movement at its most creative, A Freewheelin’ Time captures the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future in a time when everything seemed possible.
Sean Wilentz discovered Bob Dylan’s music as a teenager growing up in Greenwich Village. Now, almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Beginning with Dylan’s explosion onto the scene in 1961, Wilentz follows the emerging artist as he develops a body of work unique in America’s cultural history. Using his unprecedented access to studio tapes, recording notes, and rare photographs, he places Dylan’s music in the context of its time and offers a stunning critical appreciation of Dylan both as a songwriter and performer.
Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic.
Hailed as “the War and Peace of rock and roll” by Bob Dylan himself, this is the ultimate backstage pass to Dylan’s legendary 1975 tour across America—by a former Rolling Stone reporter prominently featured in Martin Scorsese’s Netflix documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.
Following a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. For Smith—inveterately curious, always exploring, always writing—this becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.
This is the story of Pete Seeger—singer, songwriter, social activist, environmentalist—who filled his toolbox with songs and set out to repair whatever in the world was broken. What was it like for a city boy like Pete to hope freight trains with Woody Guthrie, the free-spirited composter of “This Land Is Your Land”? “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a song beloved by people all over the world, might have been lost to history had it not been for Pete Seeger. The Hudson River is cleaner than it used to be; what did Pete do to help that happen? Through learning of his life of activism, readers will become links in the chain, inspired to reflect on their own power to make change.
Who is this rail-thin, eighty-eight-year-old with the five-string banjo, whose performances have touched millions of people for more than seven decades? Bob Dylan called him a saint. Joan Baez said, “We all owe our careers to him.” But Seeger’s considerable musical achievements were overshadowed by political controversy when he became perhaps the most blacklisted performer in American history. He was investigated for sedition, harassed by the FBI and the CIA, picketed, and literally stoned by conservative groups. Still, he sang.
Today, Seeger remains an icon of conscience and culture, and his classic antiwar songs, sung by Bruce Springsteen and millions of others, live again in the movement against foreign wars. His life holds lessons for surviving repressive times and for turning to music to change the world.
Woody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American “rambling’ man,” a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who fought for working-class interests and inspired Bob Dylan. Gustavus Stadler dismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught—the rough-and-ready rambling’ man—to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggle.
The first in-depth biography of the legendary singer and “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” who combatted racism and prejudice through her music. A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus.
Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.
Mythmaker, philosopher, sinner, and saint, Johnny Cash is perhaps the quintessential American icon. Though often rebellious and unruly, he rarely spoke without intention, sincerity, and a bit of poetry. Together with an introduction by music critic Peter Guralnick, the interviews here spotlight that inimitable rhetorical style, and the fascinating diversity of subjects that made him as relatable as he was mysterious. From a hopped up early interview with Pete Seeger, to a meditation on sobriety, to the last interview in which he stares calmly into the face of death, this collection brings together decades of insight as deeply profound as the unforgettable baritone of The Man in Black himself.
These never-before-published poems by Johnny Cash make the perfect gifts for music lovers and fans alike. Edited and introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon with a foreword by John Carter Cash, this poetry collection is illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash’s own handwritten pages. Now an album with music by Rosanne Cash, Brad Paisley, Willie Nelson, Kacey Musgraves, Elvis Costello, and more.
First published in 1943, this autobiography is also a superb portrait of America’s Depression years, by the folk singer, activist, and man who saw it all. Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma and traveled this whole country over—not by jet or motorcycle, but by boxcar, thumb, and foot. During the journey of discovery that was his life, he composed and sang words and music that have become a national heritage. His songs, however, are but part of his legacy. Behind him Woody Guthrie left a remarkable autobiography that vividly brings to life both his vibrant personality and a vision of America we cannot afford to let die.
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