Alias Bob Dylan

Dave D.C. Norman is a freelance contemporary-music journalist.

Any successful performer realizes that the key to anonymity is the
ability to use several different masks. Bob Dylan is such a person, and
Scobie exposes his various personas in great detail. The person revealed
in Alias is a very complex one: a withdrawn public icon, a master of
imagery, and a reporter of all relationships.

The scope of this book ranges from Dylan’s childhood in Hibbing,
Minnesota, to his “continuous collage” of cinematic imagery in
“Renaldo and Clara.” As a researcher, Scobie has expended incredible
effort in examining the minutest details of Dylan’s lyrics and
personal life. However, Scobie overemphasizes syntax—his explanations,
at times, rival the confusion of some of Dylan’s lyrics themselves.
His psychological diagnosis of each facet of Dylan the artist is
impressive, but the complexities he tries to reveal often soar above
normal perception.

Dylan wears many masks, and Scobie’s study deciphers each identity he
assumes. At the heart of this analysis is Dylan’s perception of the
“self” and the lyrical context of that self in song or verse. To
this end, he uses names to chronicle the stages of his life and career.
Scobie attempts through Alias to explain Dylan’s mystique—his
reclusiveness as well as his outward personal revelations through song.
The duality of images is particularly interesting, as Scobie exposes the
many mirror/reflection references in Dylan’s work. The root, it seems,
of Scobie’s investigation, is to prove that Dylan is a private enigma
who chooses to communicate to his fans (and the world) through deeply
personal lyrical references. This could be said about all songwriters,
but this book proves that Dylan’s listeners must dig deeper than the
immediate surface.

Just as Dylan combines factual and fictitious references in his lyrics,
so, too, does Scobie mix personal conjecture with documented proof in
Alias. The result is an incredibly detailed character analysis of Bob
Dylan: the father, the actor, the born-again Christian, and the musical
chameleon. The “psychology” of Dylan’s life overtakes Scobie’s
book, but he carefully distributes full attention among all the
mentioned areas. This study is tailored to the “Dylan fan” who
always hoped to pry into the mind of this lyrical genius. It is not a
biographical account or collection of little-known facts, but rather a
deeply critical analysis of Dylan’s psyche. The reader is forced into
Scobie’s realm of intense dissection, but subsequently learns many new
perceptions along the book’s interpretative way.