You Lose Yourself You Reappear

by Paul Morley

An insightful biography of one of the world’s greatest musicians, Bob Dylan, by bestselling author Paul Morley.

As one of the world’s greatest musicians, Bob Dylan has enriched the American song tradition for over 50 years. With a talent that has been proven in the worlds of music, radio, art and poetry, Dylan is a man of many personas. From defying pop music conventions with protest songs such as “The Times They Are a-Changin’” to releasing three of the most influential rock albums of the 60s, he has not only extended the parameters of music genres but has also showed us the fluidity his craft. To mark Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday and 60 illustrious years in the arts, this insightful biography by bestselling author Paul Morley will explore the many voices of the folk icon.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

400 pages, Paperback

Published June 2, 2021

About the author

Paul Morley is an English journalist who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications. He has also has been a band manager and promoter, as well as a television presenter.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt this book even though was detailed disjointed and indulgent

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kimley and I will have Paul Morley as our guest for our June 1, 2021 Book Musik Podcast. And you can hear it here: Book Musik podcast

[Kimley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tosh and I discuss this with author Paul Morley on our Book Musik podcast.

Morley explores Dylan’s development as an artist via his numerous “voices” both sonically and metaphorically from his early beginnings in the late 50s/early 60s to his astonishing release last year of Rough and Rowdy Ways. Dylan is notoriously known as someone who is loath to be pinned down and stay in the same place creatively. Those who are willing to go on the ride with him are more than happy, are in fact grateful, for every twist and turn, and every high and low.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

“You never know somebody might have a great book in them” - Bob Dylan (pg 146), unfortunately this is not one of them. ‘You lose yourself, you reappear’ is a frustrating read stemming both from the lack of actual content and lack-lustre writing. Run-on sentences in excess of 15 lines long detract from any actual substance. The book could benefit from being in chronological order moving through his albums or even taking decades at a time to discuss the change in Dylan’s style, his muse of the time or what life events were influential to change his style. Instead we are left with a jittery account of events that might have happened. Morley spends large sections of the book discussing how he would write an account of Bob Dylan and pointing out his self-awareness at the lack of content, however, just because he lets us know the piece is baseless and going nowhere isn’t an excuse for a low effort product. At best it’s a very disappointing book and a regrettable loss of €16. At worst this book does a disservice to the legacy of Dylan by insinuating that in a 366 page book only around 20 pages are worth taking the time to read.

[Chris Billing · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like many Dylan fans, I am always interested in receiving insights into the inner thoughts of the great man. There are many books that claim to offer such insights. There was something in the blurb on the Audible site that persuaded me that this book would deliver.
It was crushingly disappointing. I have seen, heard, and read Mr Morley before; he’s not daft, and he’s usually entertaining. I cannot imagine what possessed him to produce this book apart from, perhaps, a royalty cheque.
I started the book with great anticipation and was immediately deflated.
How can such a long book say precisely nothing? There’s nothing in it at all apart from self indulgent, pretentious clap-trap.
Dylan is the subject, and he gets mentioned often of course, but it’s not about him. It’s about using a lot of big words to say absolutely nothing. This is a dreadful book. Avoid.

[Doo Rag]

i like paul morley & i like books about bob dylan (must've read at least uh 2 of em) (his own one's real good btw) but this is hack work at its merest. strictly from hackensack. real $1 per word stuff, maybe he wrote it as a press release or liner notes for a box set or something & sorta forgot to stop.

[Mark Booth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this a really difficult book to read and I didn't complete it. For me the book rambled and seemed very disjointed. I have read books by this author before and enjoyed them so this was a disappointment.

[Simon Freeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very indulgent and quite frankly in parts ludicrous. The chapter on Hibbing its only saving grace.

[Vincent Coole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this with high hopes as I had heard some good things, and it seemed different from the average Dylan book, which it is. Morley is an intelligent, knowledgeable and thoughtful writer, who has certainly taken the time to think deeply about his subject. Perhaps at times too deeply. There are many insights, some intriguing, others completely opaque. Morley's style of writing is flowery to say the least, heavy on symbolism, and with long sentences often listing all the things Dylan is, as is if he isn't really human at all. I often had to re-read sentences and I still couldn't grasp what he was saying. The thread of his theme often hangs delicately amongst the lurching of one subject to another, and at times it works and is cleverly done. The only biographical elements are Dylan's pre- New York years, which goes into tremendous detail, maybe because no one else has, not even Heylin. The most enjoyable elements are actually when Morley talks about himself and the meta passages of writing the book with the backdrop of the pandemic. Ultimately its not clear who the book is for, perhaps a Dylan fan unconcerned about the biography and more about Dylan the legend. For me, it was the first Dylan book I'd found a slog to get through.

[Simon Petherick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite tremendous. I grew up with Morley, reading his columns in the NME. I never knew he was a Dylan fan and this book is dazzlingly good. He approaches Dylan like Captain Ahab chasing the whale, giving up exhausted but then setting his sails once more to encounter the beast. He doesn’t try to “understand” Dylan like all those weedy academics pumping out earnest volumes - instead, he tells us what Dylan has done to him, what cadences he’s picked up over the years, how Dylan has leaked in and out of his life over the last 40 years. It’s brilliant, brilliant stuff.

[Derek Middleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don’t bother – unless you’re a fanatical Dylan fan or really into intense and colourful writing. It’s not a biography of Dylan, nor a trail through or historical review or analysis of his work (and to be fair, that’s not what it said on the tin) – although dotted throughout the book there are some historical vignettes that I found interesting. So what is it about? Dylan’s ‘voices’, but frankly, you never really get to grips with what they are/were, despite a mountain of overblown prose extolling their virtues. I nearly gave up in the first chapter, which struck me as aimless waffle. However, ploughing on I did begin to somewhat drawn in by his writing style as different and sometimes engaging – and you have to give Morley credit for coming up with all those adjectives – but often, I’m afraid, rather wearying. Three stars for originality, though.

If I was to be unkind, I’d call it pretentious claptrap; if I’m being kind, which I am right now, I’d sum it up as ‘a stream-of-consciousness devotional text’. You takes your pick.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was surprised and interested to see that Morley, the most pretentious and incomprehensible of all the late '70s NME staff writers, cared enough about Dylan to write a book about him. Sadly, the book itself shows he hasn't changed much over the years. Maybe I'm being unfair; I had to speed-read and skim to get through this as quickly as possible. My favourite part was the list at the very end, "Bob Dylan and his Grammy history", which possibly makes some of the points he is aiming at, or waffling around, in the main text - showing the randomness, unreliable timing and triviality of public approval.
Credit to PM for doing it his own way, just like Bob, but that way doesn't work for me.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bob Dylan is the 'hypnotist collector' to Paul Morley's 'walking antique' in this admiring fan's account of Dylan's many voices. In trying to clear up some of the haze of Dylan's obscure past, Morley takes a bit too much poetic license for my liking. Too often he simply makes up events and runs with them, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at examining the inner workings of music's first literature laureate.

[Michael Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I intially found this book a bit tedious to begin with and it wasn't until around chapter four ' Taking hold of history ' that it started to get interesting for me, talking about when the pandemic crash-landed in 2020 those first words that really sparked my attention, and chapter five ' Love made visible' that whole chapter going back to Bob's childhood, when he was not Bob Dylan. Like a fine wine that improves with age. What more can I say....

[Adrian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave up after reading 300+ pages as I couldn’t take any more. It never really got going for me. I imagined it was a biography, and it was, in parts. However a lot of it was too philosophical for me, not dealing in facts but for the most part mostly Morley’s theories of Dylan’s many ‘voices’ which were posited (by Morley) as the framework of the book. Seemed to be mostly musings on Morley’s own life perhaps brought on by long COVID. Can’t recommend it.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book written in a Dylan style. It compares to his own Chronicles which comes to the start of his career on about page 100. It has some great insights and memorable sentences but it comes over as being somewhat self-serving and trying too hard to be a literary masterpiece. Ultimately I found it frustrating

[Liam Branaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable read about the many phases of Bob Dylan's career; some great lines and observations.

I did enjoy reading about the author's own experiences of knowing Bob Dylan's work, but the book does suffer from the trappings of a book written during the pandemic; the world had stopped and there is great uncertainty. Maybe in time it'll grow on me.

[Allan Heron]

Utter bilge from an author with a history in it. I should have known better.

Despite the description, this is NOT a biography. At best, it's an extended essay. A tediously boring extended essay.

Almost broke my adherence to the Magnusson edict.

[Winter Kuhaupt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved reading Morley yapping about Bob Dylan in excruciating detail… until he started talking about the pandemic and i realised I didn’t give a shit

[Teegs Aldn]

I did not finish this book, I struggled to get past the second chapter.
It wasn’t what I expected but probably a great book for big Dylan fans that already know a lot about him.

[Nigel Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Morley is not someone from whom I would have expected a Dylan book from. I associate him with all things Manchester: Piccadilly, the Arndale Centre, Morrisey, New Order, The Factory, Barm Cakes, The Buzzcocks, Tony Wilson, Punk, post-punk. (There are a lot of lists in this book by the way)

Clearly however he is a fan. The book seems to me more of an impression of Dylan rather than a biography, commissioned as Dylan approached 80 and written during lockdown. So anyone approaching it as an overarching look at Dylan’s career will be disappointed. For that, go to Clinton Heylin, and others.

What you get here is a sense of Dylan’s voices , or at any rate, Morley’s sense of them. As such its an interesting read, although I admit that I did struggle with the style of writing and did feel at points that it meandered off the point-a case of style over substance. It’s very good on the early Dylan and also some of the themes affecting his work and therefore his voices. It is not rich on detail although does have an index. From time to time the author breaks the fourth wall to take us into lockdown and his own writing process as he developed the book.

Not an obvious go-to when approaching Dylan, but almost a curiosity. If I wanted to be unfair I would say it was written to order, but anyone who puts words to paper/laptop is deserving of some respect. Try it, you may like it.

[Steve Chilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a sucker for reading about Bob Dylan, and this is certainly not one of the best books on his life and work, and not one of Morley's best efforts either. It is a quite long book, and can't quite decide whether it is a straight biographical approach, or an attempt to address the cultural references and the changes in Dylan's musical oevre. A miss.