Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography - Part I

Following is the first of two lengthy excerpts from Anthony Scaduto's authoritative biography of Bob Dylan, to be published by Grosset & Dunlap on February 29th. Together, the two Rolling Stone segments add up to a total of approximately 35,000 words, which is substantially less than a third of the book's length. Thus, the book in its entirety is recommended to serious followers of the Dylan legend — and who among us these days isn't that?

Anthony Scaduto is a former police and court reporter accustomed to ferreting out hard facts and making them stick. This he has done in tracing Dylan's development as both man and artist. The end product is a richly-detailed and penetrating portrait of Dylan — and what Dylan mirrors of our times. — Grover Lewis

"Dylan used to tell us that he came out doing it — out of the womb, singing and playing and writing," folk-singer S. David Cohen, formerly known as Dave Blue, likes to recall. That's an exaggeration, certainly, but possibly not by that much; at least, Bob Dylan said it so often, with so many variations, that he must have come half way to believing it. A man who is cloaking himself in myth must believe in his own magic to make it all work. "After a while," a close friend from the early days recalls, "he didn't seem to know any more what was truth and what was his own creation."