BKMT READING GUIDES
Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians
by Kathleen Mackay
Hardcover : 226 pages
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Introduction
Dylan's friends--from Pete Seeger to Bruce Springsteen to Rosanne Cash to Bono to Tom Petty--offer insight into the singer-songwriter's artistic genius and personality. This is an oral history of a major musician who played a significant role in America's cultural history. His story is told by the musicians who were at his side during the `60s rollicking changes and artistic breakthroughs. Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights provides a keen portrait of the friendships that helped shape important musicians whose voices influenced our society as a whole. Herein are insights not only into Dylan's elusive personality but into the lives of the major musicians of our times.
Musicians included...
Liam Clancy
Pete Seeger
Joan Baez
Bobby Vee
Maria Muldaur
Johnny Rivers
Kris Kristofferson
Ronnie Hawkins
Rosanne Cash
Tom Petty
Bruce Springsteen
Bono
The Beatles
Excerpt
Foreword:Many members of Generation X look back on the ‘60s with a slight twinge of envy: all that community, “make love not war,” what was that like? Speaking for one who was there, it was a euphoric time to be young in America, and the generations that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s had a feeling of belonging to something larger than themselves. Folk music gave birth to protest songs, which Pete Seeger traces in his book on the songs of the civil rights movement, Everybody Says Freedom (co-authored with Bob Reiser, Norton, 1989). The music had an incredibly moving, spiritual power. When Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington March in 1963, Dylan and Joan Baez sang together in front of a quarter of a million people, and Peter, Paul and Mary sang “Blowin’ in the Wind.” ...
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Discussion Questions
From the Author:1) Why has Bob Dylan always had the reputation for being such an elusive performer, so careful of his privacy?
2) Why is Bob Dylan considered the premier songwriter of the baby boomer generation?
3) Which musician's interview in this book did you enjoy the most? Pete Seeger? Kris Kristofferson? Rosanne Cash?
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
A Note from Kathleen: My book Bob Dylan: Intimate Insights from Friends and Fellow Musicians remembers the rollicking changes and artistic breakthroughs of the l960s. From that era emerged the voice and words of one of the most influential singer-songwriters of all time: Bob Dylan. I had great fun interviewing Dylan’s pantheon of musician friends. The interviews in the book include Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Rosanne Cash, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and the Beatles, among others. They offer insight into Dylan’s artistry and elusive personality. The book provides a keen portrait of the friendships and relationships that helped shape important musicians whose voices have influenced our society as a whole. While exploring a chronological timeline of Dylan’s growth as both a songwriter and performer, the book also traces significant moments in our cultural history. The idea that sparked this book was Dylan’s book Chronicles. It was not written in chronological fashion, was vague, and the grammar was atrocious. By writing it, Dylan was trying to ensure his own legacy, and I felt that his musician friends could probably describe him and their shared experiences better than Dylan could himself. I would love to talk to your book club, if you are within driving distance from Concord, Massachusetts, for example, in New England or New York. You can reach me at [email protected]. And may you stay forever young! Kathleen MackayBook Club Recommendations
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