BOOK REVIEW: BOB DYLAN: INTIMATE INSIGHTS FROM FRIENDS AND FELLOW MUSICIANS

For decades, Bob Dylan was an enigma; he bared his soul on numerous albums released over the course of a multi-decade career. He toured with numerous artists. He was everywhere. At the same time, he was a recluse. When Dylan was not on tour, when he was not promoting an album, you heard little from or about him. He wasn’t hanging out at Studio 54. He wasn’t in the front row at Los Angeles Lakers games. He valued his private life as much as he cherished the opportunity to express himself through song.

And even when he opened up, as he did in Chronicles, he still kept many of his secrets to himself. Therefore, it is understandable that one interested in learning more about the singer would attempt to corral the memories of his colleagues, contemporaries, and friends in order to paint a more thorough picture of this mysterious, brilliant man who often seemed too shy or modest to speak about himself.

While one hopes that this was the reason that Kathleen Mackay decided to embark upon the journey that became Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians, it appears more likely that the author was more interested in finding a way to make a quick buck with little effort by assembling an anthology of interviews, most of which provide little information about Dylan than was already known.

Mackay fills the book with a combination of previously-published interviews and conversations captured specifically for this project. Unfortunately, the previously-published interviews will be familiar to most of Dylan’s fans, and the new interviews focus more on what Mackay ate and what the weather was like than they do the story of Bob Dylan. The new interviews are bloated with tangential information about the respective subjects. It often feels like even Dylan’s closet friends were unable to provide a great deal of new information. This lends to the idea that the book is filled with information that was only included because the writer had to meet a page minimum. At the same time, the book crawls. You won’t believe that it’s only a 256-page book because it moves at a glacial pace. This is attributed largely to the author’s writing style, which, in this book, often suffers from questionable grammar and weak sentence structure.

Adding to the feeling that this book’s sole purpose is to add another notch in the author’s bibliography is the overall sloppiness of the research. When you open your book with the Mies van der Rohe quote “God is in the details,” you better make sure that the details you include are factually correct. Mackay’s “research” is sloppy to the point that you wonder if her vast knowledge of rock music caused her to feel like she could get away with writing whatever she wanted under the assumption that the reader would accept her “facts” at face value.

There are several notable errors in the book. On page 150, the author writes about Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run: “Born To Run was an instant hit. The album made it to Number One.” Wrong. The album never peaked above the No. 3 position and the single never broke into the top 10 (so one cannot say that she meant to refer to the chart position of the single.) It might seem like a minor error, but music fans who are seeking a deeper understanding of Bob Dylan are not likely to be casual fans. God is in the details.

Another factual error brought to my attention occurs in the first chapter. Mackay describes the drive from Boston, Massachusetts to the Mount Hermon Prep School, where she is to meet Noel “Paul” Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary. On page four, she writes, “Erving’s small commercial area features the predictable Wendy’s, McDonald’s [sic], and the occasional gas station…” This is incorrect. A simple Internet search will show you that there is neither a McDonalds nor a Wendy’s in Erving. Those facts are backed up by visits to the respective restaurants’ corporate Web sites, where a search by store location comes up empty when one tries to find an outlet in Erving.

There are other errors, but my point is not to illustrate each one. Still, these blatant mistakes lead this reader to question what other mistakes are present. Mackay’s credibility suffers with each error that went uncorrected in the editing process.

Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians suffers because the insights never feel very intimate and most of the interviewees have less to say about Dylan than one suspects Mackay thought they would.

Dylan fanatics will be turned off by this book and those who wish to learn more about the artist are better served by purchasing Chronicles or looking back at old interviews from Rolling Stone. It’s not entirely clear who would benefit from reading this book, and it’s even less clear whether any music fans would enjoy reading it.
Technorati Tags: Books, Music
Technorati Tags: Books, Music