Clear a space on your nightstand—the next instalment in Chris Gregory’s Dylan odyssey lands in October 2025. Minstrel Boy: The Metamorphoses of Bob Dylan (Picasso of Song, Volume Two) turns its gaze to 1967–1990, the long middle stretch when Dylan ducked the glare, re‑ignited the flame, and shapeshifted again. Taking Leonard Cohen’s “Picasso of Song” cue seriously, Gregory marries close reading with onstage reportage to show how the songs and the performances continually remade each other. We spoke with the author in a wide-ranging conversation about the book.
“Retreat, Return, Rebirth” is a bold framework. Which single performance or recording
from each phase best captures the shift you’re tracing, and why?
‘Retreat’ – ‘I Threw It All Away’ from ‘Nashville Skyline as it demonstrates how Dylan
could radically change his style to produce moving ‘song poetry’ with ultra simple lyrics.
‘Return’ – Isis (1976) in which Dylan assumes a character role in his own ‘movie’- showing how Dylan is broadening the scope of his approaches to songwriting. Rebirth – Every Grain of Sand (1981) highly emotional examination of religious belief indicating a shift from fundamentalism to Blakean visionary elements.
You weave William Blake, gospel traditions, and popular music forms into your
readings. Can you share a concrete example where a non-musical source reframed
your understanding of a specific Dylan song from this era?
There are many examples of this but one that comes to mind is the influence of Jack
Kerouac’s On the Road on Tangled Up in Blue – characters in the song and theior
attitudes resemble those in the book.
If “Picasso of Song” is the guiding metaphor, what’s Dylan’s cubist moment between
1967 and 1990—where form itself gets fractured and reassembled—and how do you
hear that on record or on stage?
‘Blood on the Tracks’ is the key moment, when he began to introduce multiple
perspectives, time shifts etc into the songs – especially in ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ and
‘Idiot wind’. Also these songs move through many different versions. The influence of
Picasso in particular means that meaning in the later songs is never fixed.
Volume Three will go back to the early years. After living with the middle period so
intensely, what question about Dylan’s beginnings now feels most urgent to answer?
How on earth did he write so much that was so inspired, at such a staggeringly young
age? Also how did he fuse so many lyrical and musical traditions together? How did
he redefine both rock and folk music as musical forms?