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List Price: $39.95 | | Publisher: Continuum
Salesrank: 352110
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| Our Price: $19.95 |
| Used Price: $9.93 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
Bob Dylan’s outreach is too wide, too deep and too long for any book about him to cover it all. He’ll be 65 years old when this book is published. His career spans 45 years of American history, and that history has intersected with his prolific songwriting, recording, touring, acting, filmmaking, TV appearances and interviews. He has published a novel and a book of drawings, composed for movie soundtracks and written a best-selling autobiography. He has found a place in the world of literature and academic study as well as in popular music. He is important to the history of the times, having given voice to a generation at a time of huge social change and political struggle; his songs are enmeshed in the story of the civil rights movement as well as the folk revival movement. His busy life has embraced everything from Bohemian excess to being Born Again.
His work has revolutionised song, reaching into every area of popular music from folk to blues to rock to gospel. He has met and worked with untold hundreds of musicians, politicians, celebrities, singers, poets, writers, painters, filmmakers, actors and activists. He has released several dozen albums, written many hundreds of songs, in many cases adapting them from older folk and blues material, and recorded songs by many other composers. He has been the subject of an enormous number of books, academic conference papers, showbiz stories, essays and concert reviews. He has attracted more fanzine enthusiasm, and inspired more websites, than almost anyone in the world. In order to resist the forces of infinity pushing this book beyond all bounds, it was decided to exclude some categories of entrant. There are, inevitably, exceptions, but in principle the following have been omitted: background business people like concert promoters, accountants, lawyers, managers, music publishers, booking agents, film producers and so on; the majority of photographers, album-cover designers and magazine editors; and people whose only connection with Dylan is that they have made cover-versions of his songs.
The many different kinds of entry that are in the book include: Biographies of singers, musicians, songwriters and composers who have influenced Dylan and/or worked with him; Critical assessments and factual details (including place and date of recording, date of release and original catalogue numbers) for all Dylan’s albums and for a large number of individual songs from all through Dylan’s decades of work; Dylan’s key career and biographical moments; Biographies of writers, poets and other key cultural figures who have impacted on Dylan’s work and/or who are mentioned within it, from William Blake to William Carlos Williams and from Lenny Bruce to Franz Kafka, in each case delineating the often surprising ways in which they connect to Dylan’s work; Short biographies of music critics and authors of books and major websites on Dylan; Critical assessments & facts on Dylan’s own books and films; Discursive subjects, from Dylan Interpreters to Cowboy Heroes, and from The Use of Hollywood Dialogue in Dylan's lyrics, to ‘frying an egg on stage’.
The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia Reviews:
how we think 
2008-10-28 - In a way, I am too much like this book to offer anyone else an opinion about what can be found in hundreds of pages. If anyone imagines intellectuals walking around like a book that never ends, try thinking of me as being like this book. I believe in intoxication in words the way other people have been seduced by sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I already know many of the songs by Bob Dylan, and Michael Gray has information that goes way beyond what I learn by trying to sing them when I want to know how I really feel.
Just a bit on the movie "Annie Hall" can surpass my ability to say anything. I think like Woody Allen when I confront a monstrosity like the culture that I belong to in more ways than one. I believe in flawless recitation, and the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia description of the setting of a comment about the song "Just Like a Woman" whereby "a vacuous hippie character played by the wonderful Shelley Duvall recites the lines quoted as if they're far-out and profound, . . ." makes me want, even more, to be that far-out and profound, in addition to gaining more information about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Thinking is not at all what it used to be for people who spend a lifetime waiting for television to tell them something. What is in this book is a form of culture that rarely appears on the screen that people are checking for news every day. It rocks even as it remains words on a page.
Don't believe Amazon 
2008-10-19 - Amazon lists this book as "In Stock" and available for next day delivery...don't believe it. I ordered this book over two weeks ago (intended as a birthday gift) and after many emails and phone conversations with "customer service" (who continues, 16 days later, to claim that this book is "in stock" and will be delivered tomorrow!)
I finally cancelled my order out of complete frustration. I'll buy a copy of the book from a different vendor; after all this aggravation I'm hoping my son enjoys the book.
Disappointing
2007-08-20 - After all the hype and expectations, this tome was an utter disappointment. The entries are leftovers from Michael Gray's research for other Dylan books, namely "Song And Dance Man" (which I also own but have never waded through), and he doesn't seem to have edited it or put forth any additional effort. Many of the passages have incorrect information or mere guesses. I was in a book store in Berkeley returning from a recent Dylan tour, and they were selling it for $15. They had stacks of them. This was really a disappointment since I paid full price when it was first released. Anybody who gushes over this book in a review here simply does not know his/her Dylan history.
A Must-Have for True Dylan Fans 
2007-03-30 - If you stumble upon any negative reviews of this book... ignore them. This book is amazing; it is obvious that Michael Gray has devoted a large part of his life to the passion which is Dylan. This book is great to skim through, deeply examine, and is a great reference while reading any other books on Dylan. If you have a library of your own... this should be on the shelf.
His most definitive work
2006-10-15 - So many books have been written about Bob Dylan that one would wonder at the need for another - but this isn't a reference book alone; it provides a fun ,readable text which packs in over eight hundred entries, over twenty pages of illustration, and everything there is to known about Dylan, including a searchable cd-rom to boot. Critic Michael Gray has written about Dylan before, but this is his most definitive work and represents the culminating achievement of a world authority on the topic: if there's only one Dylan reference your public library holding can afford, it should be this definitive guide.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
