ISBN: 9780955318351
Paperback
130 pages
Publication: 24 Nov 2008
Price: £12.99

BUY Series of Dreams

Series of Dreams: the vision songs of Bob Dylan
John Burns

'there is something about Dylan's music, particularly in performance, that demands a response of a kind unncecesary with lesser artists'

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan is the most influential songwriter of our time. For nearly fifty years his songs have inspired us to challenge received social, political and spiritual ideas about the world we live in.

In Series of Dreams John Burns looks at all of Dylan's major albums from the 'sixties to the present and shows how Dylan transmutes philosophical and musical ideas into a visionary art that can change the way we feel and think about how we live.

Series of Dreams makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the work of one of the greatest visionary artists of our era.


I first saw Bob Dylan live in Glasgow on 3 February 1991. He was wearing a red tartan jacket and a funny little hat and he looked as if had seen better days. He appeared bemused to find himself on stage which, for a man who had been a professional performer for at least thirty years, was very puzzling.
   The new band was ramshackle. They seemed to be still learning the songs. Dylan's voice was loud and rough and ragged. Then, when the whole thing looked as if it would degenerate into utter chaos, he pulled it all together and delivered a rugged performance that delighted the raucous Glasgow audience.
   There was no attempt to reproduce the sound of the great recorded performances, no attempt to strike a rock star pose. Just Bob Dylan with his guitar and harmonica being himself. The immediacy and openness of his performance were deeply moving and inspiring. It was the real thing.

John Burns has written about Bob Dylan for two of the UK’s leading Dylan fanzines, The Telegraph and The Bridge. He is the author of Celebration of the Light: Zen Buddhism in the novels of Neil Gunn.