Memoarer

Think ‘Woodstock’ and the mind turns to the seminal 1969 festival that crowned a seismic decade of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. But Woodstock itself was over 60 miles from the site to which the fabled half a million flocked. So why the misnomer? Quite simply, Woodstock was already a key location in the […]

Greil Marcus saw Bob Dylan for the first time in a New Jersey field in 1963. He didn’t know the name of the scruffy singer who had a bit part in….

‘I consider myself a poet first and a musician second’ ‘It ain’t the melodies that’re important man, it’s the words’ There is no shortage of books about Bob Dylan. This one, however, is unique in its approach and the virtuosity of its execution. Ricks examines Dylan’s songs through the biblical concepts of the seven deadly […]

The book begins in Berkeley in 1968, and ends with a piece on Dylan’s show at the University of Minnesota on election night 2008. In between are moments of euphoric discovery: from Marcus’…..