No Direction Home
By Robert Shelton
Beech Tree/Morrow, 711 pages, $17.95
Nearly 20 years in the making, Robert Shelton`s ”No Direction Home”
isn`t the definitive Bob Dylan biography that the singer`s fans had hoped for. It does, however, offer new insight into the formative years and family history of one of pop music`s most influential figures.
Even before he burst upon the scene in 1962, Dylan was working hard to obscure his past. To fans and friends alike, he cast himself as an orphaned vagabond from Oklahoma. He said he`d grown up on the road and claimed to have met and and played with Woody Guthrie, Big Joe Turner, and many of his other idols.
In truth, he was the introverted only child of a middle-class Jewish couple in tiny Hibbing, Minn.
That much has long been known. But Shelton goes on to depict a pampered child obsessed with James Dean movies and TV westerns. The boy enjoyed singing and often wrote poems, but he essentially drifted from amusement to amusement until he discovered the guitar and rock and roll.
Abruptly, he began re-shaping his appearance and personality to mimic what he heard on the radio. ”All I did was write and sing, paint little pictures, dissolve myself into situations where I was invisible,” Dylan would later tell Shelton.
Shelton`s detailed account of those times goes a long way toward cutting through the confounding haze of the adult Dylan`s mysterious persona. Sadly, though, there isn`t much else to recommend ”No Direction Home.”
If anyone besides John Hammond of Columbia Records can justly claim to have discovered Dylan, it`s Robert Shelton. Popular music critic at the New York Times from 1958 until 1968, Shelton wrote the early reviews that first got Dylan noticed.
Over the years, Shelton enjoyed Dylan`s trust in a way no other writer could hope for.
But despite such unparalleled access, Shelton misreads his subject by grossly overemphasizing Dylan`s relationship to the folk music community. Dylan is no more a folk artist than Elvis Presley was a blues man. Each took bits of existing styles to create something entirely new.
Worst of all, though, is what is omitted. Out of 711 pages, only 47 are devoted to the last decade. Shelton left his post at the Times in 1968, and there`s scant evidence that he has done much first-hand research since then. Throughout ”No Direction Home,” the phrases ” . . . told me in 1966” and
”in 1968, I spoke to . . . ” pop up again and again.
To be sure, Dylan`s work over the last 10 years hardly rivals his `60s output. But certainly Dylan`s failures and spiritual wanderings (in 1979, he announced he`d become a born-again Christian, later he flirted with Orthodox Judaism) are every bit as telling as his triumphs.
Take, for instance, Dylan`s most visible gaffe ever. With darn near the whole planet watching, he took the stage at Live Aid and performed an absolutely miserable set. Whether or not faulty equipment contributed to the disaster is immaterial. Dylan looked and sounded out of touch and out of control.
He rebounded by agreeing to appear at Farm Aid (an event at least partly inspired by a comment he made on the Live Aid stage). Backed by Tom Petty`s Heartbreakers, he turned in a blistering set and then embarked on his most successful tour in years.
Shelton, though, apparently didn`t see this as noteworthy. ”No Direction Home” concludes with two paragraphs about Live Aid. Farm Aid and the ”True Confessions Tour” aren`t mentioned at all (Admittedly, biographies of the living have to be cut off somewhere, but Shelton`s abrupt ending seems especially odd from a business standpoint: Dylan`s new visibility can`t help but add to the book`s marketability).
All of which begs the question: What has Shelton been doing all these years?
One thing`s for sure, he wasn`t polishing his prose. Shockingly bad writing abounds in ”No Direction Home.” Describing a Christmas party, Shelton notes ”the guests sang rock `n` roll and had a cool Yule.”
Later he begins an account of Dylan`s 1977 divorce, but stops. ”Must I record it here for posterity?” he writes. ”Do you really want to know the personal details of an argument they had here or there, or of some hysterics on Sara`s part, or who slapped whom? Anyone who has endured the breakup of a long relationship will know that it is hardly serene.”
Hard-core Dylanologists will no doubt discover other things of interest in ”No Direction Home.” The rest of us will be better served by choosing between Anthony Scaduto`s timeworn ”Bob Dylan,” or D.A. Pennebaker`s Dylan documentary, ”Don`t Look Back” (which is now available on videocassette), or even last year`s five-record retrospective, ”Biograph.” For now, the definitive Dylan biography remains unwritten.
