Writer Bob Spitz, author of Barefoot in Babylon, the story of the 1969 Woodstock festival, spent years researching Bob Dylan's life, interviewing people who had known him ranging back to his earliest days in Hibbing, Minnesota. Spitz did get people to talk on the record, and while his book collects myriad quotes from Dylan associates, the overall tone of Dylan: A Biography tends to veer toward being unaccountably mean-spirited. The book does document the recollections of some people important in Dylan's life, but it's an uneven read thanks to the persistently negative tone and Spitz's penchant for writing scenes in a hipster style that usually tends to work against the subject (who is, after all, more than hip enough on his own). --Robert McNamara


From Publishers Weekly
This overlong biography of Dylan (ne Robert Zimmerman) leads up to a thin, 25-page section on his life following his conversion to Christianity in 1979. Preceding are some 526 cliche-ridden pages on his youth in Minnesota, early stardom as a folksinger, 1965 metamorphosis with Highway 61 Revisited and the Newport Folk Festival, relationships, marriages, children, drink and drugs, ill-conceived tours and lazy recording-studio habits, bitter friendships and unabashed opportunism. There's lots of gossip, some sophomoric analysis and a whole mess of preposterous descriptions ("the guys in the Band were frisky little devils"). Spitz ( Barefoot in Babylon ) covers no new ground here, and writes in a mean-spirited manner, as elements of racism ("those big black mothers"; "the ill-tempered greaseball") and sexism ("the object of Dylan's affections was as devoted to him as a cocker spaniel in heat") mingle freely with potshots at critics, the folk-music community, record buyers, John Lennon, David Bowie, Joan Baez, etc., along with Dylan himself. Photos not seen by PW . Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
"No matter what people think, they don't know anything about Bob Dylan," says Bob Dylan. But Spitz succeeds in letting us know something about this pop musician's life in the frank, engaging dialogue he provides here. Spitz seems bent on disproving much of Dylan's version of his own life through eyewitness accounts derived from interviews with hundreds of family members, friends, and associates of Dylan documented in 40 pages of notes. To a certain extent, this is an authorized biography. Even though Spitz did not want to "embroider or become part of the legend," Dylan was allowed to examine and amend the manuscript in its late stages. A fine, fair assessment suitable for libraries with substantial popular music collections. Donald W. Maxwell, Noblesville-Southeastern P.L., Ind.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.