It’s been about ten weeks since this virus made everything go haywire, and we’ve all been trying to cope in any way we can. One of my coping mechanisms has been to read more books. And, in my case, reading more books generally means reading more music biographies, such as Robbie Robertson’s Testimony, which I wrote about for the WUMB community a while back.
Today, I am here to praise a book that is not only one of the best about one of the biggest musical artists of all time, it’s also seen as one of the first serious music biographies written about a rock star. The writer, Anthony Scaduto, worked for the New York Post when he decided to start researching Dylan (published in 1972), leaving behind his work as a police reporter who also covered organized crime. The ability to do investigative research turned out to be critical for a journalist trying to uncover the story of the inscrutable Bob Dylan. He talked to Joan Baez, Jack Elliott, and many others; read diaries and other source material, and ultimately uncovered loads of previously unknown aspects of the Dylan story, especially his early years, growing up in Minnesota and later arriving in Greenwich Village. Read More…