Subtitled ‘A Personal History on the Road and off the Tracks,’ and found by happenstance in a used-book store, this is a bit of marketing, in that it’s real subject is not Dylan at all, but Victor Maymudes, a longtime roadie and tour manager for Dylan, who spoke much of the text into a tape recorder in anticipation of a memoir he did not live to write.  Son Jacob (intriguing note: Dylan also has a son by that name) found the tapes after nearly every other possession or memento of his father had been destroyed in a fire, and put together this volume out of loyalty, respect and love.  Intertwining his own recollections, he added also quite a bit of explanation regarding the drifting apart that separated Maymudes from Dylan for years, how they came back together and how they fell-out again, more deeply and permanently, superficially due to business issues touching upon Jacob and his sister, but really thanks to Dylan’s own mercurial and dictatorial personality.  End result, the title is a deliberate misdirection but – as no doubt intended – induced me to pick up and read a book I’d likely not have been interested in if it had been titled more accurately.

Part rock/pop music hagiography, part social history of the sixties, part family paean, what resulted is an oddity but worth the reading.  Maymudes is interesting and unique, his journey intermittently exciting and at other times reflective.  The glimpses of Dylan depict savantic brilliance within the realm of music and songwriting coupled with a chilling inability to understand, consider or forgive those close to him.    As if, being so successful on his own terms at the one or two things he believes matter, he can barely spare a moment or a thought for anyone who is not equally blessed.  This seems confirmed by scenes of his collaboration with other musicians whom Dylan found satisfactory to his craft’s needs and so deigned to treat in a more-humane manner.

A dual portrait then, of two very different characters, their colorful journey and the tragic end of their always-unequal friendship over misunderstandings and slights that by rights should have been, given Dylan’s extraordinary wealth and independence, inconsequential.  Obscure and oddball, but definitely worth holding onto once you’ve come across it.

(Another note: Treehorn Books, Santa Rosa CA, is all a paper-hound could ask for.  Narrow aisles, shelves piled high, well-categorized and welcoming.  Stopped in for the first time to see if they had any G. B. Shaw for a birthday gift and found the perfect Collected Prose; inches thick, hard cover, great condition including library-style plastic over the dust-cover.   I will be back…)