The Bob Dylan Album

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and editor of the CAML
Review.

I was puzzled when this book first arrived for review. Why, I wondered,
would a lawyer from Kamloops be writing about Bob Dylan? And what were
his credentials for embarking on such a project? Anthony Varesi does not
shed light on this mystery.

Similarly, there was no discussion of The Essential Bob
Dylan—Dylan’s latest compilation which was released in 2000 and
includes “Things Have Changed” (from the Wonder Boys
soundtrack)—although it is listed in the concluding discography. Thus
I was left wondering how it compares with Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits,
Volume 2, released in 1971, which Varesi tells us “remains the best
introduction to Dylan’s work.” It was surprising that the
“selected bibliography” did not mention Howard Sounes’s widely
praised biography, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, published in
2001. Finally, the absence of an index made it time-consuming to flip
through the book to find individual songs.

These caveats aside, The Bob Dylan Albums is an intelligent and
musically literate guide to Dylan’s prolific compositional oeuvre.
Varesi traces the various musical traditions that underpin Dylan’s
art, and maps the peaks and valleys of his long and varied career. The
dissection of Dylan’s lyrics and themes is insightful, as is the
discussion of performers, producers, and production values, including
the quality of compact-disc reissues. The assessment of the Dylan
catalogue is judicious and candid, and Varesi also makes good use of the
critical literature as well as providing some biographical detail.
Probably the book’s chief value lies in the attention it draws to
Dylan’s lesser-known albums, which often have one or two outstanding
numbers in them.

Reading this book whetted my appetite to return to Dylan’s
recordings. Alas, I was reminded that the quality of his voice remains
for me the make-or-break issue. I find it is frequently harsh and reedy.
Perhaps this is an issue Varesi could have explored in more detail in
terms of the reception of Dylan’s work.