Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited

In May 2001 Bob Dylan will be sixty years old. Ten years ago, Clinton Heylin published his groundbreaking biography of the man. Behind the Shades, which The New Yorker recently singled out as "the most readable and reliable" of all Dylan biographies.

This new, updated version has been completely rewritten from the bottom up, is significantly enlarged, and takes into account not only the last tumultuous decade of Dylan's life, but an additional decade of research by the author. The result is the definitive biography of the man many argue is the singular figure in twentieth-century popular culture.

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited follows Dylan along one of the most extraordinary and daring paths ever taken by a performing artist:

his awkward childhood in Minnesota

his arrival in New York and rise as the unwitting leader of a political folk revolution

his controversial move toward electric rock

the spooky and uniquely American Basement Tapes

his forays into country-western music the lost albums of the eighties his paranoia, addiction, and seclusion

his reemergence after a near-fatal 1997 heart infection with the triple Grammy Award-winning Time Out of Mind

the endless touring life

the hundreds of timeless songs that have become a part of American and worldwide consciousness

Most biographies of Bob Dylan are mired in the sixties, but Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited is the only one that gives equal weight to all the extraordinary phases of Dylan's forty-year career.

As ever, Dylan remains an endlessly fascinating, mysterious, and obsessively private man. For years hehas managed to keep much of his personal life a secret, and Clinton Heylin,Dylan's most prolific chronicler, remains the first biographer to give the world a true sense of what drives, inspires, influences, and shapes the man behind the music, the man behind the shades.

This magisterial biography illuminates what drives, inspires, influences and shapes the man behind the music. Heylin details this influential artist's mercurial career, including the lost years of the 1980s, Dylan's struggles with addiction, and his reemergence as a triumphant and revered 1990's troubadour who spends most of his life on the road. Photos.

In 1991 Clinton Heylin published what was considered the most definitive biography of Bob Dylan available. In 2001 he completely revised and reworked this hugely acclaimed book, adding new sections, substantially reworking text, and bringing the story up-to-date with Dylan's explosive career in 2000.

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited follows the story of Dylan from his humble beginnings in Minnesota to his arrival in New York in 1961, his subsequent rise in the folk pantheon of Greenwich Village in the early '60s, and his cataclysmic folk-rock metamorphosis at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In the succeeding eighteen months, Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and embarked on the legendary 1966 World Tour that culminated with an unforgettable concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Heylin details it all, along with the true story of Dylan's motorcycle accident, his remarkable reemergence in the mid-'70s, the only exacting account of his controversial conversion to born-again Christianity, the Neverending Tour, and yet another incredible Dylan resurgence with his 1997 Grammy Album of the Year Award — winning Time Out of Mind.

Ten years ago, Heylin published his biography of Bob Dylan, which "The New Yorker" recently singled out as "the most readable and reliable" of all Dylan biographies. This version takes into account not only the last tumultuous decade of Dylan's life, but an additional decade of research by the author. Photos throughout. 8-page insert.

Clinton Heylin is recognized as the world's leading Bob Dylan scholar, as well as an authority on folk music and popular music in general. He is also known for his acclaimed studies of American punk (From the Velvets to the Voidoids); rock bootlegging (Bootleg!)--Record Collector's book of the year in 1994; and Dylan's studio recordings (Dylan: The Recording Sessions), nominated for the Ralph J. Gleason Award in 1996. He edited The Penguin Book of Rock and Roll Writing and is the general editor of Schirmer's Classic Rock Albums series. A native of Manchester, he now makes his home in Somerset, England.