Mind Out Of Time: Die Musik von Bob Dylan 1986-2001

by Paul Williams

Rare Book

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published May 28, 2004

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author on goodreads by this name.

Reviews

[M. Sarki]

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/1090928...

The theme most often remarked upon and revisited throughout the entire book (and this series) is Bob Dylan’s (the artist) attempts through his creations, whether they be private, studio, or performance pieces, to “stop time”. In my own experience as a student of Gordon Lish I often witnessed first-hand the teacher’s vehement command for us all to “make time” through our fictions. I believe both Lish and Dylan mean basically the same thing. I know what it feels like to have spiritually entered into “made time”, and there is nothing more important and enduring for an artist to have experienced. (I erased the next paragraph I wrote as I was attempting to explain what it feels like but no analogy would suffice and therefore discovered I could not.)

Some readers of this book complain about the over-abundance of information and deconstruction of the many songs and performances Bob Dylan has provided us with over the course of several decades. The complaints center around the complainant’s desire to simply listen to and enjoy the work Dylan has given us, that that be enough, and to hell with all this other figuring things out and investigations over the whys and whatnots of every little thing the gifted man has done in his lifetime. But that is to miss the point of the entire exercise Paul Williams has accomplished here. And the only way to get there is for you to do the work of suffering through his details. It was worth every moment of my time.

[Jesse]

To read Paul Williams's writing on Dylan (and especially on Dylan's live performances) is to know his enthusiasm. And to read Paul Williams turn a typical mid-'80s mealy-mouthed lyric stumble by Dylan as high art is perhaps even higher art. Greil Marcus is swell, ditto Clinton Heylin, but Paul Williams's "Performing Artist" series holds the real keys to Dylan.

[Pete daPixie]

I lied. My son bought me this book few years back. Staggered to page 50 and passed out.

[Aartjan ter Haar]

The third volume dedicated to Dylan's performances. I was looking for performances from the 1990s and later, but Williams only included two essays on two of his better albums from the 1990s to 2001. It would have been fascinating to analyse a collection of lower-quality records and performances. Nonetheless, after the first two books, this volume is well worth reading. One personal note: In the detailed listing of setlist variations, I sometimes limited myself to only seeing the big picture. Here Williams was a little too much of a good thing for me.

[David Allen]

A deep dive into a somewhat fallow period, when Dylan decided to devote himself to the road and 100-150 concerts a year. Williams gets lost in the weeds analyzing tour swings and even individual concerts and setlists, and his enthusiasm can be embarrassing. His first Dylan book covered 13 years in fewer pages. But for fans, this has some value; the observations are frequently insightful and this is still a little-explored phase of Dylan's career.

[Karen]

This took me a while to finish, because I kept stopping to try to find the performances Williams cites; fortunately many of them are now on YouTube (which didn’t exist when he wrote the book). This wound up being my favorite of the three books in his trilogy - probably because I’m very fond of the works he’s discussing. I just regret that Williams didn’t live long enough to continue this scholarship.

[Tom]

Paul Williams deserves a place in the rock-criticism canon for two reasons: he founded Crawdaddy and, along with Marcus and Heylin, he's one of the finest writers on Bob Dylan.

That said, this third volume of his Performing Artist series is a bit of a disappointment. It covers 1986-1990 in excruciating detail, and since very few critics pay any attention to this period of Dylan's career, Williams does everyone a service here, if you're willing to go along for the ride. But 300 pages is a long time to spend dissecting concert bootlegs that presumably a lot of people have never heard. (He does the same thing in the earlier volumes, although those earlier bootlegs have circulated more widely among fanatical-but-not-CRAAAAAAAAAAZY Dylan buffs. Some have even enjoyed official release since Williams started publishing these books.)

It's not until somewhere around p. 275 that Williams mentions a fourth volume is in the works. So the stand-alone essays on Time Out Of Mind and Love and Theft that conclude the book seem even more tossed-in than they did at first glance. (Not to mention their style is considerably different from that of the rest of the book.) A fourth volume would be great, though, because it was frustrating to think that the rest of the '90s would be ignored. I'd love to read Williams on the acoustic albums Dylan made at the beginning of the decade.

Overall, I'd rate this series 4.5 stars. Williams can occasionally get a little off topic, and sometimes he tries doing laps in kiddie pools, but his focus on Dylan as a performing artist (rather than a songwriter, record-maker, etc.) is unique and commendable.

[George]

This book can be like wading through swamp water if you don’t have access to the concert recordings Williams continuously talks about. Without these, it’s akin to reading endless descriptions of paintings without a picture of the painting. You can imagine what’s going on, but it’s just not pleasant to read.

The book is great if you do have access to the tapes. Do yourself a favor, get an account over at expectingrain.com for digital downloads of the shows and pick up this book to get a better understanding of a misunderstood period in Dylan’s career.

[John]

Williams sometimes borders on fanatical, but his enthusiasm, attention to detail, and unique perspective of Dylan -- not primarily as a songwriter, but as a performing artist -- makes this book series a must for any serious Dylanphile.