The famously private Bob Dylan, whose background and music are the stuff of legend, will shed light on his life and four-decade career as a singer-songwriter in a memoir to be published this autumn, his publisher said Tuesday.
Dylan’s “Chronicles: Volume One” (Simon & Schuster), the first of a planned three-book series, is a first-person narrative from the 63-year-old music icon, who rose to fame in the early 1960s and whose musical style ranged from folk and blues to rock, country and gospel.
The first volume of his memoirs focuses on significant periods in Dylan’s life and is described by publisher David Rosenthal as “extraordinary, revealing and surprising. It is a beautifully written, singular achievement.”
The 304-page book is due out on Oct. 12 and will be followed about a week later by an updated edition of “Lyrics: 1962-2001,” a compendium of lyrics to nearly every Dylan song.
Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan left the University of Minnesota for New York’s Greenwich Village folk music scene at the start of the 1960s. He soon won fame for his such protest anthems as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They are A-changin.”’
The scrawny mid-Westerner who wrote lyrics like poetry and sang with a distinctive howl, shifted to more introspective material and later added electric instrumentation as he helped create the folk-rock sound and scored a hit single in 1965 with ”Like a Rolling Stone.”
While Dylan sold millions of records on his own, some of his songs are best known through recordings by others like Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, The Byrds, and The Band.
Dylan, who tours constantly, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in 1991 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen in 1988. He previously published “Tarantula,” a 1971 volume of poems.