Ron Rosenbaum is a man of galactic learning. Theology, neuroscience, American history, psychology, Shakespeare, cosmology, ‘all of Dickens’, nuclear weapons, quantum theory, iron ore – nothing escapes his hungry eye. Except, perhaps, Bob Dylan. Which is unfortunate, given that he’s written a book about him.

What is it about Dylan that sends writers mad? Christopher Ricks’s usual mellifluousness succumbs to a pun-overdose; Clinton Heylin’s blindingly completist biographies are as impenetrable as their subject; Sean Wilentz lurches from the unlikely to the banal. With Things Have Changed, Ron Rosenbaum, the de facto ‘Dylan correspondent’ for the Village Voice in the early 1970s, proves that even ‘being there’ confers no immunity. As the conductor of the longest interview Dylan has ever granted (1977) – and witness to many seminal Dylan moments, including the debut of ‘Desolation Row’ – Rosenbaum has the chops to deliver a good book. Instead, he writes what feels like one long voice-note after the pub, full of bluster, conspiracy and giddy conjecture.

It is hard to say with any confidence what this book is about. Even Rosenbaum seems unsure. It is a ‘sort-of biography’, a cultural history, a history of culture, a ‘kind of follow-up’ to the recent Dylan biopic, a pitch to revive Dylan’s four-hour film flop........

© The Spectator