World Famous Comics: Legendary Sessions: Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Legendary Sessions)
Legendary Sessions: Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Legendary Sessions)
By: Colin Irwin Publisher: Billboard Books Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Billboard Books Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 256 Publication Date: January 08, 2008 Release Date: January 08, 2008
This breakthrough series looks at great music from a unique vantage point. By considering the recording session itself, rather than the final album, Legendary Sessions showcases the creative process and all the elements that go into making music that reflected its time, commented on our society, and influenced our culture.
How did these epoch-making sessions come about? What influenced the artists? What was it like to be there as the recording was made? Written by top entertainment journalists, Legendary Sessions answers those questions with an involving you-are-there style. What impact did the recording have? Who listened to it? Who imitated it? Who was inspired by it? Legendary Sessions looks at those questions, too, with groundbreaking interviews, eyewitness accounts, and contemporary commentary.
Innovative and intriguing, Legendary Sessions is sure to change the way music fans listen to the great recordings of our time.
In the midst of the backlash following his electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan was in the studio with a shifting group of session musicians and producer Bob Johnston. The result of these sessions would be Dylan’s sixth album, Highway 61 Revisited, the classic that featured "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Desolation Row." Author Colin Irwin examines the events leading up to the sessions and how they influenced Dylan’s music; the details of the sessions and the musicians involved, the development of the songs, and the controversy surrounding Dylan’s new sound. Today it’s part of rock history. Relive those world-changing times in Legendary Sessions: Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited.
Material is better than the writing This book covers the making of Dylan's greatest album, and sheds an interesting light on the highly unorthodox way it was made. Comments from band members are included. Unfortunately, the writing doesn't measure up the content, and some of it is a slog to get through. Still interesting for the Dylan fan.
British Myopia This book has some interesting information that was new to me, but mostly details. The author pushes a kind of British left-leaning political line, and like most British Rock critics is gushing in his praise of the subject matter. As usual, trips to England become career-shaking. The US gets pretty rough treatment. Etc. Not worth the price to me.
WHAT A PAGE TURNER! This book is a must buy for dedicated Dylan fans written by a veteran writer and editor. It is an account of the sessions that produced "Highway 61 Revisted" plus a VERY good weave of related happenings, people and other vital information that all fits in very very well. This book was a page turner, and I couldn't set it down. The book is very well written and will not disappoint even the intellectuals out there. There are very good choice descriptive words and good vocabulary all in all. There are only a sprinkling of photos, among them a stunning Dan Kramer light & shade photo of Bob that highlights the top gentle curvature of his nose and high cheekbone. This photograph makes Bob look like a ancient Roman statue except for the comical part--the cigarette stuck on the side of the harmonica.
To make this book complete, I recommend the DVD "The Other Side of the Mirror" and the Bootleg Series #7 in which are some of versions of the songs described in this book, along with, of course, the CD "Highway 61 Revisited."
Just a couple of editing misses, but Great Writing and Very Well Done!!
A MUST READ THIS IS THE 1ST DYLAN BOOK I'VE PURCHASED IN SEVERAL YEARS. WHAT CAN ANYONE TELL ME I DON'T ALREADY KNOW. WELL, SOMEONE HAS. IRWINS' INSIGHTS INTO THE POSSIBLE SOURCE OF DYLANS' LYRICS ARE INCREDIBLE. A WELL WRITTEN INFORMATIVE PIECE OF WORK. I RECOMMEND TO ANYONE INTERESTED IN DYLAN, OR FOR THAT MATTER, THE HISTORY OF PROGRESSIVE ROCK TO READ THIS BOOK.
What you see is what you get This book is a straightforward story of the recording of Highway 61 Revisited in 1965. That is what it promises and that is what it delivers. The good: no pompous highbrow attempts to interpret the songs, no speculative forays. The bad: not much in here is new. But it compiles what is out there in one book, puts it in coherent choronological fashion, talks a little about the context in Dylan's life and other works and doesn't muddy that with anything else. It's like a chapter of Dylan's biography about the album, supersized. Reads quickly.
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