Review by Booklist Review
To veteran author Marcus, Bob Dylan embodies the very notion of empathy. Marcus maintains that Dylan not only disappears into a song, he allows the song to carry him away. Folk Music is a continuation of the conversation about America and a conversation with himself that Marcus began in his now classic look at the Basement Tapes, Invisible Republic (1997; republished as The Old Weird America, 2001). Here Marcus has chosen seven songs to tell Dylan's story. Some are iconic ("Blowin' in the Wind," "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," "The Times They Are A-Changin'," "Desolation Row"), others are more obscure ("Ain't Talkin'," "Murder Most Foul"), and one is a traditional Australian ballad ("Jim Jones"). In a way this is as much an autobiography as a biography, since Marcus' life is so intertwined with Dylan's music. But this also presents a biography of each of the songs. As always with Marcus, his work is mesmerizing. He creates a rich cultural stew of associations, from the folk revival to Black Lives Matter, from an episode of Homicide to One Night in Miami, and so much else in between as he makes far-flung connections seem inevitable. Just as Dylan allows a song to carry him away, readers will be transported by the sheer poetry of Marcus' prose.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Critic Marcus (More Real Life Rock) digs into seven Bob Dylan tracks in this rollicking account. With interpretive whimsy, Marcus dedicates a chapter to each song: in "Blowin' in the Wind," Marcus covers the April 1962 show when the song was first sung and recalls first hearing it on "someone's boat" in 1963, while "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" is a look at the relationship between music and politics, as Dylan's 1964 tune "came out of the topical social-protest stream of the Greenwich Village folk milieu." Elsewhere, "Jim Jones" reflects on a song Dylan hasn't played live since 1993, while "Murder Most Foul" covers the song's recording in 2020, "when the shadow of disease was hanging over the world but before the country shut down." Marcus's close readings are full of discursive, meandering asides, and his prose is full of flourish: Dylan "wrote songs that as he put them out into the world wrapped their arms around history and then walked into it, songs that like gaudy cloaks of shadow and light wrapped themselves around the people who heard them and then brought them too into history, the history that was going on all around them." Dylan's fans will enjoy these lyrical reflections. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt and Hochman. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
"There are no straight lines in the language songs speak," music journalist Marcus (More Real Life Rock) declares--and demonstrates--in his latest work. The book is not a linear biography; rather, it's a series of ruminations. Marcus, a critic familiar to the Bob Dylan fan community, is known for drawing on a wide spectrum of references--not all of them musical--to get his points across. His zigzag writing is sensory, using disparate comparisons and analogies to turn facts into feelings and feelings into facts. Reading one of these essays is a little bit like listening to Dylan's own winding narrative lyricism. The author draws upon the same pop art approach as Dylan himself, merging imagery from popular and mass culture into fine art sensibilities. The result is as confounding to the uninitiated as it is rewarding to the converted. VERDICT An informative, if impressionistic, reflection on one of the 20th century's greatest artists, by one of his biggest advocates.--Gregory Stall
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Splendid biographical essays on that most elusive of subjects, the shape-shifter once known as Bobby Zimmerman. On Jan. 24, 1961, Bob Dylan, "now the archivist of what he once called 'historical-traditional music,' then a highwayman whispering about leaving bodies on the road," arrived as if by magic carpet in New York City and took the booming folk music scene by storm. "Blowing in the Wind," released 15 months later, became the best-known modern folk song of the day. Having conquered folk, Dylan refused to sit still, plugged in, dropped out for a while, and has taken to multiyear tours that transport him to every continent. He has also shaped himself as an enigma over the last seven decades, remarking, "I write songs, I play on stage, and I make records. That's it. The rest is not anybody's business." It's a fair statement, but Marcus looks at the rest even as he's limning the musical periods in the artist's life, from the heyday of the 1960s to the nadir of the '80s ("For Bob Dylan the entire decade would be a continuing series of bad hair-dos and bad albums") and on to his rebirth as an elder statesman of popular music who ushered in his profoundly productive late period, beginning 30 years ago, with a revisitation of folk standards from centuries past. Marcus is both shrewd and appreciative, and he delivers rousing apothegms, as when he writes of "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," written in the summer of 1963, "We heard the ambition to write a history that will last as long as Antigone." Casual Dylan fans will know at least a couple of the author's seven chosen songs (of course, he mentions many more), but his explorations of lesser-known tunes such as "Ain't Talkin' " and the extraordinary epic "Murder Most Foul," with all their allusions to the lost history of America, should inspire them to dive deeper into the discography. Marcus delivers yet another essential work of music journalism. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
