Behind the Shades: The Autobiography

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Don't Fall Apart on Me Tonight License to Kill Man of Peace Sweetheart Like You Foot of Pride Julius and Ethel Lord Protect my Child Death is not the End Driftin' too far from Shore Brownsville Girl New Danville Girl Something's Burning Baby Seeing the Real You at Last I'll Remember You When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky Never Gonna be the Same Again Under your Spell Band of the Hand You Wanna Ramble Got My Mind Made Up Had a Dream About you baby Night after Night What Good am I?

Tweeter and the Monkey Man Born in Time Disease of Conceit What Was it you Wanted? Everything is Broken Ring them Bells Series of Dreams Most of the Time TV Talkin' Song Where Teardrops Fall Man in a Long Black Coat Cat's in the Well Under the Red Sky Two by Two She's my Baby Where were you Last Night?

If You belonged to Me The Devil's Been Busy Dirt Road Blues Marching to the City Not Dark Yet Red River Shore Standing in the Doorway Cold Irons Bound Tryin' to Get to Heaven Make you Feel my Love Till I Fell in Love with You Love Sick Things have Changed Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum Honest with me Lonesome Day Blues Bye and Bye High Water for Charlie Patton Cry a While Thunder on the Mountain Spirit on the Water When the Deal Goes Down Beyond the Horizon Life is hard This Dream of You Beyond Here Lies Nothing If you Ever Go to Houston Shake Shake Mama Soon after Midnight Long and Wasted Years Pay in Blood Early Roman Kings View all 63 comments.

This is my original review of the first edition of Behind the Shades, which is the best Dylan bio by far. Clinton Heylin updated it in and has now done so again, in Please get the new edition!! Clinton thought that all Dylan scholars were amateurs and idiots. There was no pleasing him at all, since anyone who did publish articles agreeing with him on this or that aspect of Dylan's life and work was immediately accused of plagiarism.

He was so trigger-happy from the 70s onwards I'm sure he used to write to editors all over the place before realising that the article he was moaning about was one he'd written. He may still be like this, I wouldn't know, I don't read Dylan fanzines any more.

Still think he's a God bestriding the world of popular music, of course, that's just a natural fact. Given the above, I award 4 stars to this bio, and its updated version. Four stars in the teeth of my dislike for the author, who, as well as his less than disarming personality, can't write. He has no style, he has verbal tics which repeat and grate painfully e. Four stars because finally Dylan gets a bio which acknowledges that there was life after the s and not only life, significant, brilliant work too interspersed with disastrous mistakes like Renaldo and Clara, Empire Burlesque, the released version of Infidels, the drunk appearance on Live Aid, and so on.

So Heylin rolls over each decade and actually gives the same attention to the 80s as the 60s - wonder of wonders. Every other damn Dylan bio, of which there are at least 4, thinks Dylan rewrote the rules from 63 to 66, fell off his motorbike, then in the immortal words of Bob Spitz, "what can you say for the rest of his career? He toured and put out bad records. The book comes on like a very careful scissors and paste effort, but a very good one.

There are so many quotes from people it's almost like an oral history. If you want the complete picture of Dylan's career, the other bios are more fancy, more writerly, but they cover the same intensely scrutinised set of polaroids. This bio gives you the horizon to horizon panorama, and with Dylan that's worth having.

See a Problem?

Random favourite verse from Floater Romeo, he said to Juliet, "You got a poor complexion. It doesn't give your appearance a very youthful touch! View all 4 comments. Dylan's method of recruiting female singers at times reflected his new proximity to Hollywood and its mores--preferring the casting couch to the microphone. They eat cookie dough while burning in sulfur in a famed poem.

What about the greedy biographer? This is all too much, set lists stacked like cases of tinned peaches, page-long screeds against the effrontery of other biographers: There is much to gained and then-- there is simply too much. Most popular forays into Dylan have it about rightfeel free to end the study after the Basement Tapes. You can pull up the stakes there and worry about undue omission. All of Dylan's work is remarkable, even the shit.

MORE BY CLINTON HEYLIN

I don't care about his cavorting or his Jesus Time. I just don't care. Bob Dylan at 70 years old has spawned a whole series of textual tributes, including new editions of old books. This is the best of the lot. It is the third edition of Heylin's book first published twenty years ago, hence the twentieth anniversary edition subtitle.

There are 60, additional words in this edition compared to the second edition making this version a massive tome. The last ten years have been interesting if frustrating as usual times for Dylan fans with "Love and Theft", Modern Bob Dylan at 70 years old has spawned a whole series of textual tributes, including new editions of old books. The last ten years have been interesting if frustrating as usual times for Dylan fans with "Love and Theft", Modern Times and Together Through Life eclipsing the s dross once and for all and 's Tell Tale Signs Bootleg Series Vol 8 triple edition especially feeling like a completely new Dylan album altogether.

Heylin refreshes our view of Dylan in these last ten years really well. Here's to the next ten years!! Nov 20, Tom rated it liked it Shelves: After this tome I'm up to here with Bob Dylan. I can hear his music twenty four hours a day on Dylanradio. It's all the same: Heylin has found it necessary to give us practically every playlist from every show Bob's ever done, or so it seems, and every lineup change in every stage and rehearsal band he ever made. Good enough, if you don't have a life to live, but these are things the editor of a good biog After this tome I'm up to here with Bob Dylan.

Good enough, if you don't have a life to live, but these are things the editor of a good biography would have looked askance at.

This is Heylin's page rock-critic review of Dylan's work, rather than the insightful life history of an artist I wanted it to be. That story is in here somewhere, but it's hard to find. I also wanted to see Dylan as a man off the stage and found that perspective missing, however small it might be in his make-up. It must be hard to research into such a quirky ego, I am sure, but song lists and recording studio stories are not enough to complete the portrait. By the way, where are Dylan's unknown children? What happened in ? Perhaps the next revision, published in covers all that, but now I am not sure I want to undertake its purported 60, new words.

Jan 21, Rob rated it really liked it Shelves: I think the best word for it, when all is said and done, is "pugnacious". Clinton Heylin, a thorough and well-versed Dylanologist, capable of bringing Bob to book while praising the high points and some more surprising unsung moments too is a pugnacious and rather mean-spirited biographer, more intent on attacking his peers than enthralling his readership.

Which is a shame, because this magnum opus, getting more and more magnum with each edition 3 since and counting , is one of the best I think the best word for it, when all is said and done, is "pugnacious". Which is a shame, because this magnum opus, getting more and more magnum with each edition 3 since and counting , is one of the best life-and-works approaches to Dylan's rather unpredictable career.

However, when you are in the middle of the chapter where Heylin goes after the likes of Howard Sounes and Bob Shelton with green-eyed bilious gusto, that is not what you're thinking about. Instead you want to get out of here and quick. It's the kind of pettiness that makes one feel cheap and nasty. And as Heylin drivels on and on about Daniel Lanois' supposedly noxious ways, he essentially ignores the fact that Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind gave Dylan back his direction and his career and not just because of the reviews, as Modern Times would prove , and that there is a palpable depth to the sound that Dylan has not often managed perhaps never?

Heylin's bete noire is his green eye, then, if you will. He finds credit hard to give to others, and rather easier to award to himself. Where he is strong is on the way Dylan's back alleys have sometimes contained the kernel that the next comeback would hold. He gives quite a generous amount of space to the very many musicians who have participated in the Neverending Tour, and also has the insight to show that Dylan's lyrical gifts have been sadly truncated like an elite sportsman's stride or reach. Dylan settles earlier these days for dubious rhymes and paraphrases and no longer stumbles across the ghost of electricity howling around the bones of anyone's face.

Now there's some cheaper chicken on the grill that really needs that hot sauce to come out right.

When I read the first edition of Behind The Shades it was a shock for me to realise that Dylan had been making those s albums with a straight face, believing that they were good work. He hadn't quite found his place in the changing landscape. Heylin rightly claims that Dylan always knows what he's after in a micro-management sense, but his vision of himself in the continuum was by no means clear. And Dylan's attempts to rationalise the shoddy close-enough-for-jazz attitude that sometimes seeps in are less than edifying. Of course it's difficult to choose a set list when you've got Dylan's repertoire.

But not to even try is a true pity.

Tangled up in booze

This edition ends with Dylan having just unleashed his Christmas album in , a rather postmodern turn that got everyone chuckling and going off to give it a single spin. Since then we've had the rather humdrum Tempest , the surprising - astonishing, even - Bootleg Series revival of Self Portrait and also the stretching to breaking point completism of The Basement Tapes , then the again rather-bizarre standard-crooning album Shadows in the Night, wherein Bob channels Ol' Blue Eyes. Dylan, still rolling on the gasoline fumes from the new take on Self Portrait which miraculously neutralises one of the more unsightly pimples on the face of his career and the general goodwill his new albums seem to get for the gravitas of his deepening voice and his tasteful arrangements, is again coasting and unsure where he can take his new stuff.

Heylin in another 4 or 5 years may have something interesting to say about what exactly is going on in Bob's universe as the man heads for 75 years of age. But please, can Heylin just leave alone whichever of his peers he has yet to take his screeching potshots at? View all 3 comments. Nov 19, Rodney rated it liked it.

If you are looking for the heart of Bob Dylan, this book is not going to help you get there. This book is not a typical bio, nor is it a rundown of the stories and meanings behind the Man's songs. What it is is a thoroughly researched chronological record, in narrative form, of Dylan's studio sessions and professional relationships with others. Even though there are many splices of interviews with Dylan and his friends, acquaintances and others, little is there about his personal life though the If you are looking for the heart of Bob Dylan, this book is not going to help you get there.

Even though there are many splices of interviews with Dylan and his friends, acquaintances and others, little is there about his personal life though there are times Heylin delves a bit deeper into this area. This thing wasn't what I look for in a bio about someone whose work has been so important to me. There were hundreds of pages I skimmed over because the minutia level of detail was exhausting and downright boring a lot of the time.

Looking at the thickness of it, I really don't know how all of those pages are filled and am damn sure about of them are totally unnecessary, unless you are as obsessed with Dylan as Heylin is, yet don't seem to get the personal side of Dylan's work - again, much as Heylin doesn't seem to.

Jan 22, Steven rated it it was amazing. The one Bob Dylan bio to read if you're only reading one. Alone among the other authors who have chronicled the life of this seminal musician, Heylin takes advantage of the huge mass of bootleg recordings surrounding Dylan's officially sanctioned album catalog. This gives him an advantage in charting the rise and fall of Dylan's artistry over the years -- something at least as important as chats with his many girlfriends.

Heylin is also admirably tough-minded in dealing with his subject's lapses The one Bob Dylan bio to read if you're only reading one. Heylin is also admirably tough-minded in dealing with his subject's lapses and bungling of his colossal gifts, and doesn't hesitate to give the back of his hand to overly worshipful fanboy critics. Yet for all his saltiness and elbows-out attitude, Clinton Heylin never loses sight of Dylan's greatness.

May 09, Devin rated it really liked it Shelves: Great book that gives an outsider's look in on Dylan's life. I will probably read Dylan's Chronicles to get the 1st person account too. It's important to get many perspectives on such a beguiling, transformative genius. The book gives a thorough account of the studio process for each album and acts as a great guide to some of the man's lesser-known or forgotten works. Parts detailing the tours could drag sometimes but this book gives a good summary of Dylan's born-again years and the portion a Great book that gives an outsider's look in on Dylan's life.

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited - Clinton Heylin - Paperback

Parts detailing the tours could drag sometimes but this book gives a good summary of Dylan's born-again years and the portion about his formative years on the folk scene is exhilarating. Dec 30, Paul Frandano rated it really liked it Shelves: Neil Barrington rated it liked it Jun 20, Adam Pressdee rated it really liked it Jan 21, David rated it liked it Jan 07, David Nichols rated it liked it Feb 23, Haydon Spenceley rated it really liked it Sep 03, Swark rated it really liked it Nov 05, Anku rated it it was amazing Jul 27, Rahul Aurora rated it really liked it May 30, Ben Timmo rated it really liked it Mar 03, Terry Rudge rated it liked it Jun 04, Ben Pitts rated it liked it Apr 08, Mark Hamilton rated it liked it Aug 20, Oliver rated it really liked it Apr 05, Paul Taylor rated it really liked it Mar 03, Reading Lights added it Mar 20, Dave Brace added it Dec 31, Adele added it Jun 29, Robert Harutyunyan marked it as to-read Feb 11, Chapter One marked it as to-read Feb 11, Neil Lakeland added it Nov 01, Gareth Owen marked it as to-read Mar 30, Keith Jones marked it as to-read Jun 18, Andy marked it as to-read Sep 15, Apart from disclosing Dylan's decline into alcoholism on the so-called 'never ending tour', and the extent of Dylan's drug dependency in the mid-Sixties and early Seventies, many of Heylin's most unsavoury revelations concern Dylan's compulsive womanising.

A major factor in the break-up of his marriage, Dylan's duplicitous love life remained undisturbed even by his embrace of Bible school Christianity, and has often necessitated a frantic shuffling of assorted girlfriends on and off tours. In one ludicrous scenario, having failed to prevent his first wife encountering one of his paramours, the voice of a generation is discovered by his bodyguard hiding in a tree outside his hotel. Small wonder that when Joan Baez and Sara Dylan met, when their competition for Bobby's affections was long over, they found much to discuss. Give or take the occasional tabloid headline, Dylan has kept his tangled love life remarkably well concealed.

In the s, several ex-lovers threatened to publish books about their relationship with the great rock poet. Even Dylan's marital status remains as blurred as his cover portraits, leaving the diligent Heylin uncertain whether his hero has been married once or twice since his divorce from Sara, or whether, when Dylan brags that 'many women in the world have my children', he is talking about more than the five he fathered by Sara and the two that are known to have come along since. Yet while prepared to be candid about the failings of Dylan the man, Heylin is often indulgent of Dylan the artist, talking up minor albums, rambling on about specific concerts and recording techniques Bob likes to master his albums on car speakers , and saluting Renaldo and Clara, Bob's barely watchable four-hour symbolist movie.

Critic Pauline Kael accused Dylan in that film of being 'a surly, mystic tease' concerned principally with confronting his audience with 'the mystery of his elusiveness'.

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