In 2016 it was announced that Bob Dylan had sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reportedly for $22 million (and $64 million in tax relief). As the boxes started to arrive, the Foundation asked Clinton Heylin - author of the acclaimed Dylan behind the Shades (1991; rev. 2011) and 'perhaps the world's authority on all things Dylan' (Rolling Stone) - to assess the material that they had been given. What he found in Tulsa - as well as what he gleaned from other papers he had recently been given access to by Sony and the Dylan office - so changed his understanding of the artist, in particular of his creative process, that he became convinced that his biography needed to be completely rewritten. It turns out that most of what we thought we knew is wrong - and in particular, that Dylan is the notoriously unreliable narrator of his own story.With fresh and revealing information on every page, the first volume, A Restless Hungry Feeling, tells the story of Dylan's meteoric rise to fame- his arrival in New York in early 1961, where he is embraced by the folk scene; his elevation to spokesman of a generation whose protest songs deliver the soundtrack for the burgeoning Civil Rights movement; his alleged betrayal when he 'goes electric' at Newport in 1965; his subsequent controversial world tour with a rock 'n' roll band; and the recording of his three undisputed masterpieces- Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Dylan is at the peak of his fame when in July 1966 he reportedly crushes his motorbike in Woodstock, upstate New York, and disappears from public view. When he re-emerges, he looks different, his voice sounds different, his songs are different; he would not tour again until 1974.There is unlikely to be any more 'autobiography' after Chronicles, and Dylan is never going to authorise an official biography; Clinton's meticulously researched, all-encompassing and consistently revelatory account is the closest we will ever get to a definitive life.
