Chronicles: Volume One

Picked this book up at a rummage sale and finally finished it. That's how it goes with books you own. They get pushed back in favor of the books that have a due date.

You wouldn't expect a typical memoir from Bob Dylan, and you don't get one. Not one in chronological order. Not one with clear dates or even names (what was his wife's name, I wonder?). Although there is plenty of name-dropping. The beginning seemed to me to be a slog-fest of "then I played here, and I talked to these people, and I went there," etc. That's probably the real reason it took so long to finish.

Once I picked it back up, I got interested in the middle where Dylan actually talks about how some of his songs came into existence. As you might think, no song comes about in the same way. Sometimes the songs you don't think much about are the ones that touch a chord with your audience.

One thing that I particularly admire about Dylan are his lyrics. I seem to be able to write prose, maybe a little poetry, but I feel completely stymied when it comes to lyrics. However, my favorite thing that I ever composed had lyrics which I had to borrow from poets. All of Dylan's songs seem to come from lyrics first, which makes great sense to me.