Customer Reviews

Bob Dylan Encyclopedia

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Michael Gray's Dylan encyclopedia is enormously impressive as a piece of research, but this is not simply an academic tome by any means. Gray's amusingly opinionated observations about songs, concerts, band members, etc. permeate each of the entries, making for an interesting read. One of the best parts of the book is that persons who have their own entries are listed in CAPS, so you can read one entry at random, find a reference to another Dylan-related figure or event that catches your eye, and skip right to the corresponding entry. Gray also includes entries for other Dylan biographers/scholars, including relatively obscure folks who've done interesting work and the legendary super-fan/scholar Olof of internet fame.

What really makes the book is that despite Gray's obviously obsessive interest in Dylan, he doesn't treat Dylan as a god or waste time defending in the indefensible among Dylan's enormous output as an artist. If anything, his judgments (such as his putdown of the 1983 album Infidels) strike me as excessively harsh, although he also takes pleasure in calling attention to his appreciation of records that he likes more than most, like Under the Red Sky.

In any case, this is a highly entertaining Dylan book. It'll be of much greater value of course to those who've read at least one of the standard biographies and are familiar with Dylan's career in some detail. But I would rank this book, and also the Cott book of Dylan interviews just out, in the VERY top shelf of Dylan-related books (and God knows there are a lot of those....)

There are very few people who could (or should) create something of this scope on Bob Dylan. Michael Gray has an obsessive knowledge of Dylan. Not only is the information here well researched, but you can tell that Gray has lived and breathed this stuff for the last 30 odd years. Gray ably walks the line between other Dylan fanatics like Paul Williams (who gushes about everything) and Clinton Heylin (an amazing writer who may complain too much). Michael Gray obviously has a love for Dylan's work but it doesn't stop him from criticizing when necessary. He has a writing style that is often humorous. What's great about this book is that it is user friendly. You can read a quick couple paragraphs on a particular Dylan album or musician who worked with Bob, or, if you're looking for something a little deeper, a 4 page essay perhaps on Dylan's use of nursery rhymes or the Blues. There's so much in here you'll be reading for months at least.

A little surprised to be given this for my birthday a few weeks ago (I'm not the world's most devoted Dylan fan, although I do find him fascinating), it took me several days before I even opened the book. Fully expecting it to be a dry compendium of facts and short biographies. It turns out this is, instead, a great mix of opinion, information, and critical judgment - not all of it polite, but always nicely written. The author, Michael Gray, takes on all-comers, and is often amusingly "politically incorrect" in his views on figures like Bono, Pete Seeger, Eric Clapton, and Dave Stewart. Gray is also generous in his praise for many, many others including Elvis, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, and dozens of old blues singers - so the book ends up painting a vivid picture of decades of American music and culture in general. My only complaint (so far) would be that the entries on Dylan songs and albums are uneven - but if you can cope with that, and with an author who has strong opinions, you'll find a great deal to love (and probably something to hate!) in this genuinely unusual and thoughtful book.

I'm a collector. So when I'm a fan of someone, in this instance Bob Dylan, I like to have a comprehensive collection of their work and works about them. But there have been a LOT of books written about the Bob, an insane number, really, so I suppose it makes sense that most of them aren't worth the cost of the ugly paper they were printed on. Take for instance the other Bob Dylan "Encyclopedia", Keys to the Rain or whatever it's called: awful. A truly unforgivably poorly put together piece of work. I pre-ordered it, just like I did with Mr. Gray's Encyclopedia, and returned it two days later in disgust.

Not so with Mr. Gray's masterpiece, which by far exceeds any of the (rather high) expectations I had given the quality of his previous work on Dylan, Song & Dance Man. This Encyclopedia is crazy! But in the best way. It's so much fun to read that I've actually laughed out loud a few times. Mr. Gray has a lot of opinions about a lot of people and as complimentary as he can be if it's a favorable one, it's really even better when it's a bad one, because that's when his dry, irreverent sense of humor really shines.

I haven't read the whole thing yet (it's gigantic), but I can already tell this is a contender for my favorite Dylan book of all time. It's that good. It's also really beautifully packaged, which doesn't hurt!

The previous review is obviously just a deliberate spoiler: it's just plain untrue that Michael Gray's marvellously wide-ranging book doesn't give "Dylan's connections/interactions with artists that influenced him, or background on the scores of former members of Dylan's band." That's EXACTLY what it does - with every single member of all Dylan's bands, whether they were with him in 1965 or on the Never-Ending Tour. Not just that, but there are entries detailing the Dylan connections with dozens and dozens of people who've played on his records or even just turned up and played at a concert encore one night. Everyone from bass player Kenny Aaronson thru to Warren Zevon. And there's tons more kinds of entries here too - Robert Browning to Robert Johnson, the record producers of the key Dylan albums, Bob's films . . . it's a huge book, and not just informative but funny, witty, quirky, surprising - a delight.

Hefty. Perhaps it would be better to give the weight and volume of Michael Gray's latest than the number of pages. It is a hefty thing alright. Paired with his Song & Dance Man it would make for the start of a fine defensive wall or a counterweight in a large lifting mechanism. If it was just a mass of paper and words then I'd certainly be recommending it to the building trade.

But it's much more than that. Gray has written a wide-ranging, funny, scabrous, irreverent, reverent, detailed and hugely entertaining book. The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia is an ideal companion piece to Gray's earlier work and is really a must have for any serious Dylan fan (and you know who you are, and indeed you might even appear in the pages of this book!).

Gray presumes a certain level of reader knowledge of Dylan (this isn't All About Bob 101) with knowing winks and nudges about certain entries (poor old Clinton Heylin won't be putting this on his Christmas wish list, and neither will Robbie Robertson), but given the hefty - again - price tag this isn't going to be something casual fans will want.

As Bob readies Modern Times for release, and kicks off the next leg of the Neverending Tour, the book is already out of date, so I presume we can expect a second edition in a couple of years. Given Gray's track record on new editions it might be wise to start clearing a corner of a room, certainly checking the bearing capacity of any shelving will be crucial, for the 2nd edition of this excellent book.

This book has it all. It is just what it says it is -- an encyclopedia. It is a must for Dylanologists. If you have been a fan of Bob Dylan like I have since 1962, it is an absolute must! I am continuely amazed at how much I find new everytime I pick it. This book is definitely a pick up and open and read and then let it take you to where it will with its links, references and connections to ideas, songs, symbolism, and the famous (and not so famous). It is in NO small words a BIG book about a man who has cut a large swarth through Americana.

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.

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.

Somewhat fun to browse...but fails as an authoritative "Encyclopedia" given the strongly opinionated content, the numerous inaccuracies, and the often baffling level of relative attention given to its subjects (the entry for Gene Simmons - yes, that Gene Simmons - is longer than that for "Blonde on Blonde").