Product Description

Bob Dylan's contribution to popular music is immeasurable. Venerated as rock's one true genius, Dylan is considered responsible for introducing a new range of topics and new lyrical complexity into popular music. Without Bob Dylan, rock critic Dave Marsh once claimed, there would be no popular music as we understand it today.

As such an exalted figure, Dylan has been the subject of countless books and intricate scholarship considering various dimensions of both the man and his music. This book places new emphasis on Dylan as a rock star. Whatever else Dylan is, he is a star - iconic, charismatic, legendary, enigmatic. No one else in popular music has maintained such star status for so long a period of time.

Showing how theories of stardom can help us understand both Bob Dylan and the history of rock music, Lee Marshall provides new insight into how Dylan's songs acquire meaning and affects his relationship with his fans, his critics and the recording industry. Marshall discusses Dylan's emergence as a star in the folk revival (the "spokesman for a generation") and the formative role that Dylan plays in creating a new type of music - rock - and a new type of star. Bringing the book right up to date, he also sheds new light on how Dylan's later career has been shaped by his earlier star image and how Dylan repeatedly tried to throw off the limitations and responsibilities of his stardom.

The book concludes by considering the revival of Dylan over the past ten years and how Dylan's stardom has developed in a way that contains, but is not overshadowed by, his achievements in the 1960s.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #507831 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780745636429
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"One of the most enlightening of the 115 titles currently weighing down my groaning Zim bookshelf ... Readers are lucky that an expert fellow fan has applied his specialist insight to create an original, compelling explanation of the 'Bob Dylan' phenomenon. And that he’s done so with such an accessible and stylishly written book."

Dylan Daily

"A rich, highly readable cultural history of popular music from the early 1960s to the present, read through and around Dylan's remarkable public career."

Times Higher Education Supplement

"Marshall has an excellent grasp of what rock music has meant within popular culture and how it has changed over time, and gives in this book the clearest explanation I have ever come across of rock’s (and therefore Dylan’s) place within post-modernism. Moreover, he really knows his Dylan."

Isis

"A landmark new study of the star's career."

Bristol Evening Post

"As Lee Marshall shows us, plenty is left to say about Dylan and his many personas ... An inventive and captivating study of Dylan that not only looks at his folk years but also examines his current face."

Electric Review

"Finally, a Bob Dylan book that is refreshingly bereft of 1960s nostalgia: Lee Marshall challenges much received wisdom by arguing that Dylan’s touring and performances since the late 1980s are central to his music. This is an important book. It represents a major contribution to studies of stardom and a provocative intervention into debates about the art and identity of Bob Dylan."

Keith Negus, Goldsmiths, University of London

"This is a remarkable book, one of the few truly original ways of looking at Bob Dylan that I've seen in recent years. What Marshall gives you is not so much fresh interpretations of individual Dylan songs, but rather a completely rethought context for understanding the whole of Dylan's career, analysing the social and cultural structures which both constrained and enabled Dylan's creativity. By concentrating on the phenomenon of Dylan as a "star," Marshall opens up many fascinating approaches, not least (in the strongest passages of the book) in his brilliant discussion of the Never Ending Tour. This book will be a critical benchmark for Dylan scholars, as well as a provocative delight for fans of rock's definitive star."

Stephen Scobie, author of Alias Bob Dylan Revisited

From the Back Cover
Bob Dylan’s contribution to popular music is immeasurable. Venerated as rock’s one true genius, Dylan is considered responsible for introducing a new range of topics and new lyrical complexity into popular music. Without Bob Dylan, rock critic Dave Marsh once claimed, there would be no popular music as we understand it today.

As such an exalted figure, Dylan has been the subject of countless books and intricate scholarship considering various dimensions of both the man and his music. This book places new emphasis on Dylan as a rock star. Whatever else Dylan is, he is a star – iconic, charismatic, legendary, enigmatic. No one else in popular music has maintained such star status for so long a period of time.

Showing how theories of stardom can help us understand both Bob Dylan and the history of rock music, Lee Marshall provides new insight into how Dylan’s songs acquire meaning and affects his relationship with his fans, his critics and the recording industry. Marshall discusses Dylan’s emergence as a star in the folk revival (the “spokesman for a generation”) and the formative role that Dylan plays in creating a new type of music – rock – and a new type of star. Bringing the book right up to date, he also sheds new light on how Dylan’s later career has been shaped by his earlier star image and how Dylan repeatedly tried to throw off the limitations and responsibilities of his stardom.

The book concludes by considering the revival of Dylan over the past ten years and how Dylan’s stardom has developed in a way that contains, but is not overshadowed by, his achievements in the 1960s.

About the Author
Lee Marshall is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol.

Customer Reviews

Powerful Analysis of Bob's Stardom
I've read more than 30 Bob books, and this is among the best.

Intellectual yet accessible, this sociological analysis of what made and continues to make Bob a star is an insightful look into how Dylan's stardom changed over the course of his career and how the social context and his audience facilitated and inhibited his stardom. One thing I truly appreciate about this book is that it does not stop in 1966!

Lee Marshall divides the book into seven major chapters separated by bulleted snapshots of the major events in Dylan's life:

(1) Introduction - Here he looks at stardom as a social system with distinctive functions and characteristics, and identifies those things that make a rock star unique. In other words, he lays out the conceptual framework he will use to analyze Dylan's career.
(2) Stardom, Authorship and the Meaning of Songs - In this chapter he argues that attempts to understand the meaning of Bob's songs through textual analysis or biographical inference are limiting. He argues that how the reader, listener, or audience generates meaning is what really matters. This meaning changes as the social context changes and as the individual's experience with the music deepens. This is especially true for Dylan, whose expression of the music continues to evolve. It's not just the words; it's also the voice, the personality, the music...everything that shapes our feelings and the meanings we construct.
(3) Folk Stardom - Dylan became a star during the second folk revival in this country, at a time when youth were deeply concerned about the possibility of nuclear holocaust, the Vietnam war, and civil rights. Dylan found a way to powerfully express the collective consciousness of the time and developed an image as a political leader (whether he wanted to or not). He broke from the union collectivist notions of the traditional folk movement to "empathetic individualism" - a "belief that only by developing one's individual self-awareness could one change society." He told tales to create an image of an everyman figure, reinforcing the sense that an ordinary person with talent (specialness) can become a star with some luck and hard work. He was ordinary and special.
(4) Rock Stardom - When Dylan went electric, he outraged folk purists who viewed him as "selling out" or going commercial. Marshall asserts that "rock did not exist before Dylan's shift to electric music" - pretty audacious of him! He's referring to the ideology of rock, not the musical structure. He argues that Dylan changed the way songs were written, rock was criticized, and what fans were seeking. He was cool, confident, and authentic. He was "an individual who rejects politics in favour of inner-consciousness yet still manages to be political; an artist who follows his own unique vision regardless of the consequences yet found new audiences and commercial success; a self-conscious artist speaking for no one except his own self yet upheld as the leader of a youth movement." He was a perfect ideological fit for the times.
(5) Beyond Stardom - Dylan's work was canonized after the 1966 World Tour and motorcycle accident in much the same way Marilyn Monroe and James Dean were canonized after their deaths. Fortunately for us, Dylan didn't have to die. As Marshall points out, the idealization of Dylan that occurred in his silence, also contributed to a post-sixties image of a star who never quite lives up to expectations.
(6) Declining Stardom - When Dylan returned to the public in the 1970s, his work was overshadowed by the mythological past and by social changes. His meaning was as a "living legend" and interpreted in nostalgic terms. In the early 1980s, with the release of the gospel albums, his image became increasingly unclear. Meanwhile, the music industry began seeing declining record sales, and looked for major sellers like Michael Jackson's Thriller, which sold 47 million copies worldwide. MTV emerged to help construct star-images. Bob's albums were rarely big sellers, and pop videos never were his medium. Neither of these trends served him well. Dylan seemed out of sync with this new world. As Dylan sang, "But it's like I'm stuck inside a painting / That's hanging in the Louvre. / My throat starts to tickle and my nose itches / But I know that I can't move." Marshall suggests that Dylan developed a deliberate strategy to get out of being a legend - The Never Ending Tour (NET).
(7) Redefining Stardom - The NET (from June 1988 to now) was intended to "transform his relationship with his audience." The audience who came to see the legend wanted to hear familiar songs, and wanted them to sound the way they remembered them. He wanted an audience that was there to engage with the music now. In his first 22 years, Dylan performed 525 concerts, an average of 34.5 per year. In the first 18 years of the NET, he played 1909 shows, averaging 100 per year. While some still show up to see the legend, more keep coming back to engage with the music. His fans are now multi-generational and often attend multiple shows, due to their variety. Less than 50% of the songs are from 1961-66. He finally has the audience he deserves.
(8) Never Ending Stardom - Time Out of Mind and Dylan's hospitalization in 1997 changed things once again. The themes of Time Out of Mind - constant movement, having nothing to say, and aging and mortality - were in sync with his transformed star-image. Many international and national awards followed, including an Oscar for Things Have Changed. His next two albums - Love & Theft and Modern Times - were critically acclaimed and commercially successful. These three albums integrate the rich traditions of American roots music in a way that makes them timeless. Chronicles, No Direction Home, and Theme Time Radio all show a "wise man offering an omiscient view of history." He has managed to find endlessly creative ways of renewing the past.

This is an insightful look at an amazing star. Can't wait for the next concert...
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home - The SoundtrackChronicles: Volume One (Chronicles)Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank SeriesTime Out of Mind"Love and Theft"Modern Times (Special Limited Edition)

The most interesting book in years
Lee Marshall's is the most interesting book i read about Dylan in years.
Anyway, regiarding to the comments above, I don't think jg wanted to say that Dylan should be an example as lifestyle... he just said that the christian period is underestimated. I agree with this, in terms of art quality, but even in the book terms of stardom construction/de-construction.
In some way Dylan conversion was partly a research for the immortality of his work and strictly connected with the GOSPEL tradition. TIMHO.
Many others important aspects in this book are absent, but nobody can be omnicomprehensive in such a vast matter. BD is really bigger than life.

Bruno
Rome IT

A comment on the commentator
My reaction to the "Christian" reviewer is that a few Dylan freaks or phobes or supporters or whatever they decided to be called project their particular feelings onto Dylan. They don't know Dylan, they just want to believe they do and everything they write is colored by these suppositions. If we all agree that Dylan's music and poetry is superb we can then agree to disagree about him as a person. His lifestyle is not something I would point to as an example of a happy, fulfilled life. To me he appears chronically dissatisfied and that may be my projection. However to confuse the Dylan character and personality with his work is to do just that. They are not the same but Dylan has hidden his true self or displayed it in various guises. Do we know him, hardly. Do we want to, that is a different question.