Media Reviews
The best Dylan study yet-with massive quotation from his lyrics and a careful balance held in assessment of his work.
Impressive. --Christianity Today
Illuminating, wry and exhaustive. - --Newsday A Closer Look
Extraordinarily useful I have always admired Gray s reach, tone, and acuity but the research here is just amazing. - Greil Marcus
The third (and allegedly final) edition of Michael Gray s pioneering tome runs to a colossal 900 pages and confirms once again Gray s position as the doyen of Dylan scholars... even in its initial modest form, [it] was profoundly significant... His book invented a new school of rock criticism which made most of the writing that had gone before seem superficial, irrelevant and trivial... The third edition of Gray s lifetime study displays an almost insane degree of scholarship... quite dazzlingly brilliant... an intellectual tour de force... an essential companion. * * * * * - UNCUT, London--Uncut
The definitive critical work. - EVENING STANDARD, London, 2003--Evening Standard
In examining the influences that shaped Dylan into one of the most influential postwar artists, Gray draws on everyone from Elvis to Eliot, Robert Johnson to Rimbaud This huge work is overwhelming... It s all been written in the book, sang Bob Dylan. Now it really has. - The Times, London
Immense and immensely illuminating... It is wonderfully comic and serious and sharp. I am enjoying it hugely and learning from every page. - Christopher Ricks
One of the three best books of the year. --Andrew Motion, British Poet Laureate, The Observer, London
A mammoth work of scholarship, often enthralling and never less than illuminating. His chapter on Dylan s sources in the blues is almost worth the price of admission alone This is trenchant and thought-provoking stuff, and pretty much characterises Gray s style and his approach to a subject who has suffered more than most at the hands of lesser, and less well-informed, critics. THE OBSERVER, London, 2003--THE OBSERVER, London, 2003
[T]he real story of Blood on the Tracks lies within the lines of the album s 10 songs, in the sound that Dylan pursued and finally captured, in the landscape of regret, memory and hope that opens up when ever the album is played. To delve into these songs is to study some of the finest works in American song. The job requires someone with the boldness and breadth of knowledge shown by Michael Grey whose hefty study Song and Dance Man puts the bulk of rock-crit writing about Dylan to shame. Salon.com, 4/27/04
Fascinating, scholarly and very readable The longest and most relevant chapter for Blueprint readers [ Even Post-Structuralists Oughta Have The Pre-War Blues ], is packed solid with informative and enthralling reading. I cannot congratulate Gray enough for this outstanding chapter [a] very important study. A thoroughly enjoyable and informative book by an author who writes knowledgeably, with style and with great insight - very highly recommended to all. - BLUEPRINT, British blues magazine--BLUEPRINT, British blues magazine:
It is the most penetrating and clear-headed work a monumental achievement. - DAVID HAJDU, author of Positively 4th Street
This book is an event... delivering prodigious analyses of Dylan s artistry and his polymath sources in pre-war blues, nursery rhymes, fairy tales and Hollywood movie dialogue... Gray maintains a ruthless integrity regarding Dylan himself. * * * * * - Q, London
Serious Dylan criticism... intricate analyses... monumental. - BRYAN APPLEYARD, Sunday Times, London:
Impressive. --Christianity Today--,
The definitive critical work. --Evening Standard (London), 2/24/03--,
Impressive. Christianity Today--,
Monumental, endlessly illuminating - Rolling Stone--Sanford Lakoff
Impressive. Christianity Today--Sanford Lakoff
Notably, there is a fat, new edition of Michael Gray's huge and wonderful critical work, Song and Dance Man (a lifetime's labor). Cranky, eloquent, opinionated, exhaustive, Gray's book proves that scholarship can be fun to read .The secret engine driving Dylan's art is lost to us, deep inside a black box. Michael Gray's intellectual efforts in Song and Dance Man probably come as close as analysis can to unlocking possible sources, chasing arcane references, connecting the dots. The News & Observer--Sanford Lakoff
The definitive critical work. Evening Standard (London), 2/24/03--Sanford Lakoff
Indispensable... His research is formidable, and his knowledge encyclopedic... great cogency, confidence and authority... a quite splendid critic... Gray can explain how the text [of a song] works poetically. It s a rare gift: ... [his] expositions of Every Grain Of Sand, Angelina, Jokerman and Under the Red Sky are utterly definitive... at the heart of this book is some of the finest critical writing ever done about Bob Dylan. - STEPHEN SCOBIE, University of Victoria, Canada & author of Alias Bob Dylan: --Sanford Lakoff
A startling piece of scholarship. By scrutinizing Dylan s canon, Gray achieves a fresh read of his life... Song & Dance Man III overshadows others accounts of secret marriages and mythic motorcycle crashes, and it entirely outdoes other analyses... frank, insightful, unassailably excellent. --Sanford Lakoff
The original Song & Dance Man was a pioneering piece of rock scholarship Written with great intelligence and passion the result was the first important book about a rock artist s output, not just their life But these 250 pages are merely a fragment of the 900-page monster which Gray has [now] unleashed magnificent soaked in insight. - Record Collector, London--Sanford Lakoff
[an] in-depth scholarly analys[is] of Dylan as a poet, comparing him with showing influences of such writers as Keats, John Donne and Eliot .recommended. -SDTtoday, October 12, 2004--Sanford Lakoff St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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