Clinton Heylin – In Person

Magic City Books and the Bob Dylan Center are thrilled to welcome Clinton Heylin for an in-person author program in celebration of his book, The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966 on Monday, May 9 at 7:00 pm.

Clinton Heylin has been described by Rolling Stone as “perhaps the world’s authority on all things Dylan.” When the boxes that would comprise the Bob Dylan Archive started to arrive in Tulsa Heylin was asked to assess the material 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, especially of his creative process, that he became convinced that a whole new biography was needed. It turns out that much of what previous biographers – Dylan himself included – have said is wrong.

About The Double Life of Bob Dylan

In 2016 Bob Dylan sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As the boxes started to arrive, the Foundation asked Clinton Heylin – author of the acclaimed Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades and ‘perhaps the world’s authority on all things Dylan’ ( Rolling Stone) – to assess the material 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, especially of his creative process, that he became convinced that a whole new biography was needed. It turns out that much of what previous biographers – Dylan himself included – have said is wrong.

With fresh and revealing information on every page A Restless, Hungry Feeling tells the story of Dylan’s meteoric rise to fame: his arrival in early 1961 in New York, where he is embraced by the folk scene; his elevation to spokesman of a generation whose protest songs provide 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 electric masterpieces: Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. At the peak of his fame in July 1966 he reportedly crashes 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.

Clinton Heylin’s meticulously researched, all-encompassing and consistently revelatory account of these fascinating early years is the closest we will ever get to a definitive life of an artist who has been the lodestar of popular culture for six decades.

Aside from his definitive biography, Dylan Behind The Shades, which remains in print more than twenty years after publication having twice been revised, Clinton Heylin also has published two bulky volumes detailing the histories of all 610 original Dylan songs, Revolution In The Air and Still On The Road. His previous works on Dylan include Stolen Moments: Dylan Day By Day and The Recording Sessions 1960-1994.