(Jawbone Press)
By Eleni P. Austin
I’ve never considered myself a Dylanologist, I’m more of a Dylan Enthusiast. By the age of 21, I knew all the hits and signature songs. Then at a solo show, sans The Attractions, Elvis Costello (my spiritual boyfriend), covered “I Threw It All Away,” hearing this unfamiliar deep cut from the Nashville Skyline, I knew I was hooked.
That song was enough to motivate me to start exploring the Dylan canon in chronological order. I worked my way through each record, absorbing all of Bob’s paradigm shifts. In fact, I own every studio album from his 1962 debut to 2020’s Rough And Rowdy Ways, along with Biograph, most of the Bootleg series, live sets, collaborations with the Grateful Dead, the Traveling Wilburys and assorted compilations.
I thought I was pretty well-versed. The I began reading Sean Egan’s new book, Decade Of Dissent: How 1960s Bob Dylan Changed The World, and I realized there was quite a bit I didn’t know. Egan has contributed to magazines like Billboard, Uncut, Classic Rock and Rolling Stone. He’s written books on everything from the Rolling Stones and the British TV series Coronation Street, to screenwriter William Goldman and the Small Faces.
He starts at the very beginning, sketching out a portrait of the artist as an ambitious young man. Born in 1941, Robert Zimmerman rechristened himself Bob Dylan at the start of his musical career. He indulged in quite a bit of self-mythology when he left his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, bound for Greenwich Village. But the author dispenses with apocrypha, and sticks with the cold, hard facts.
The book truly takes flight when he provides a meticulous break down of each album recorded between 1962 and 1969. He starts with Bob’s self-titled 1962 debut, moving through early touchstones like The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are a-Changin’ and Another Side Of Bob Dylan, to the electrifying triptych of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde and the stripped-down simplicity of John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline.
This isn’t a fawning hagiography, Egan pulls no punches. Each track is bookended by historical context. He describes the incidents that were the motivations behind songs like “Talkin’ World War III Blues” and “The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll.” He’s also unafraid to offer opinions that might invite disdain from hardcore fans. For instance, he insists “the instrumentation on ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ while competent, doesn’t quite live up to the sparkling lyrics.”
In addition to scrutinizing each album track-by-track, he also documents myriad recording sessions, cataloguing and chronicling unreleased songs and multiple takes. He even fills in the blanks following Dylan’s infamous motorcycle accident.
It’s a dense and intricate read that tackles a cyclonic moment in history with depth and acumen. By viewing the turbulent ‘60s through the prism of Bob Dylan’s music, he has written a compelling book that will intrigue Bob neophytes and Dylan obsessives alike.
