The Ballad of Bob Dylan, Daniel Mark Epstein
The Ballad of Bob Dylan, Daniel Mark Epstein
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The Ballad of Bob Dylan
A Portrait

Author: Daniel Mark Epstein

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 15 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/01/2011

Synopsis

The Ballad of Bob Dylan is a vivid, full-bodied portrait of one of the most influential artists of the 20th century—a man widely regarded as the most important lyricist America has ever produced. Acclaimed poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein frames Dylan against the backdrop of four seminal concerts—all of which he attended: Lisner Auditorium, Washington, D.C., 1963; Madison Square Garden, New York City, 1974; Tanglewood, Massachusetts, 1997; Aberdeen, Maryland, 2009. Recreating each performance song by song, Epstein places them within the larger context of Dylan's life, from his meteoric rise as a young folk singer through his reemergence in the 1990s and his role as the ├®minence grise of rock-and-roll today. He explores the star's private side, including marriage and fatherhood, and his struggle to overcome substance abuse. Epstein also traces the influences that shaped Dylan's career and offers a thoughtful analysis of his work and fresh interpretations of his lyrics. Here, too, are anecdotes and insights from those closest to the man, including D. A. Pennebaker, Allen Ginsberg, Nora Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Dylan's sidemen throughout the years.

About Daniel Mark Epstein

Daniel Mark Epstein has written more than fifteen books of poetry, biography, and history, including Lincoln and Whitman, which received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, named one of the top ten books of 2008 by the Wall Street Journal and Chicago Sun-Times.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve on December 12, 2011

So far I have only read the first 70 or so pages. Not impressed yet. More a book about the author than about Dylan. We learn that Epstein quickly learned to play on guitar all the songs on Dylan's first album, that Epstein's uncle viewed Dylan's early album favorably (or was that unfavorably--person......more

Goodreads review by Richard on April 08, 2011

No one who thinks about Bob Dylan thinks about him as if he were a normal human being, much less a regular guy. I can't think of one person who's written about Dylan who has cast him as anything approaching normal. If Dylan is a genius - and he is - he must be a tortured genius, otherwise there's no......more

Goodreads review by Aaron on September 13, 2023

This is my third book about Bob Dylan in approximately 3 months and easily my favorite. Although Robert Shelton’s seminal No Direction Home had a lot of great information and is an important document, Mark Daniel Epstein’s The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait showed me its shortcomings. Epstein’s boo......more

Goodreads review by Dave on February 20, 2011

This is one of the better Bob Dylan books I have read. There is some very interesting information on how David Kemper helped reshape the band in the mid-90's, Larry Campbell's addition to the ensemble, and some other anecdotes that are new to the Bob-lore (information on the recording of Love and Th......more

Quotes

“If you like Keith Richards’ Life, then read The Ballad of Bob Dylan. Just in time for the musician’s 70th birthday, Daniel Mark Epstein’s biography offers a vivid portrait of the visionary artist.” US Weekly

“What sets Epstein’s book apart is its accessibility…Epstein is refreshingly direct and approachable, and while the author, also a folk musician, makes much of his extensive quotes from Dylan’s lyrics, it is his own clear, emotional enthusiasm that carries the tale.” Sunday Times (London)

“Historian and poet Epstein structures his loose-jointed chronicle around exegeses of iconic Dylan concerts he attended, analyzing the songs and the shifting persona of the singer: in 1963, the visionary twenty-two-year-old folkie; in 1974, the bristling thirty-something rocker; in 2009, the hoarse old man growling at Fate…Epstein’s wallow in the master’s words and moods will entrance hardcore Dylanophiles.” Publishers Weekly

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