Examinging over thirty years of Dylan's recordings, films, and live concerts to deliver fresh, and sometimes heretical, judgements of his work, Tim Riley persuasively demonstrates that Bob Dylan is the most important American rock 'n' roller since Elvis. He charts the mercurial shifts of the Dylan persona, from acoustic to electric, and assesses the singer's debt to earlier muscians aw well as his influence on such performers as the Byrds, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello.
Includes a new epilogue that examines Dylan's 30th anniversary celebration and his 1998 Grammy Award comeback.
"Finally, in Tim Riley, Dylan has a critic who can at once place him in the Woody Guthrie toubadour tradition and probe the music knowingly." --BookPage
"Riley succeeds in making familiar materical seem fresh . . . . He offers many new, thought-provoking interpretations of songs, and his powers of description are potent." --Philadelphia Inquirer