Review: Chronicles Volume One by Bob Dylan

I was 14 years old when I first heard of Bob Dylan. I was buying My first record album. I had bought 45 rpm singles before. That was all I was allowed to buy with my allowance but now that I had turned 14 my parents granted me greater freedom. They were in the record store in the Country Music section but I had brought a friend with me. His name was Terry and he preferred Rock & Roll, so I followed him around listening to his suggestions.

My parents said no to the Beetles and the Rolling Stones. Then I came across Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 2. The double album contained 21 great songs I had never heard of and neither had my parents. They allowed the purchase and I was on my way to becoming a life-long Dylan fan.

I soon began looking for more Dylan music. Some record store employees and patrons were helpful. I heard many fascinating legends that made Dylan seem like a prophet. Now, some claimed, he was a recluse who had no use for anybody.

One story that came up was the legendary motorcycle wreck that almost killed Dylan. ‘He changed after that wreck,’ they said. ‘He got religion and his music changed.’ Over the years I’ve heard many stories, tall tales, myths about Dylan. For this reason I was especially pleased when Dylan released the first volume of his autobiography.

Chronicles - Volume One is the title of Bob Dylan’s autobiography. It is divided into five sections that are not connected like regular chapters in your typical biography, but why would anyone expect Bob Dylan to do anything in an ordinary fashion. The sections overlap going back and forth to his childhood or to his early playing days and then moving forward to his family life. He writes about myriad influences from classic poets and philosophers to beat poets, contemporary folk artists, and the people in his life, to his childhood home and upbringing, and the historical figures of the twentieth century.

“Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt — towering figures that the world would never see the likes of again, men who relied on their own resolve, for better or worse, every one of them prepared to act alone, indifferent to approval–indifferent to wealth or love, all presiding over the destiny of mankind and reducing the world to rubble.” — Section two, The Lost Land

One of the most striking passages is in the third section, New Morning. Here Dylan describes in detail the down side of fame; to the point that if his account were widely read, sensible people would never want to be famous.

“I found myself stuck in Woodstock, vulnerable and with a family to protect. If you looked in the press, though, you saw me being portrayed as anything but that. It was surprising how thick the smoke had become. It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat–someone to lead the charge against the Roman empire. But America wasn’t the Roman empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer. I really was never any more than what I was–a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me. I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad.”

Chronicles is full of rich passages of reminiscences and ruminations about Dylan’s experiences and contemporary events of the time and great and/or popular musical artists he knew and played with. Some of his writing is so full and rich a single paragraph could have become an entire chapter or even an entire book — but Bob Dylan had much on his mind and much to say.

I highly recommend Chronicles - Volume One by Bob Dylan.

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Enjoy!

-Thomas