Clinton Heylin

Looks at the Punk and New Wave movements in rock music and shares the impressions of musicians who were a part of the movements

A Pre-punk History for a Post-punk World

From the Velvets to the Voidoids

A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941-1966

The Double Life of Bob Dylan

A Biography

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades 

Since the early days of rock 'n' roll—since Elvis Presley came out of Memphis to startle the world—a whole body of writing has grown up around it, from the album notes to obituaries, from on-the-road insider tales to dissections of the meaning behind the meaning. The Da Capo Book of Rock & Roll Writing presents the very best of this writing, on the best of the music: the Beatles, Elvis, Bruce Springsteen, the Sex Pistols, Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and countless others. Part history, part literature, part reference book—part hyperbole and part disillusionment—The Da Capo Book of Rock & Roll Writing is an extraordinary tribute to one of the great creative achievements of the century: rock & roll. And where else can you find ”The First Tycoon of Teen” by Tom Wolfe ”In Which Yet Another Pompous Blowhard Purports to Possess the True Meaning of Punk Rock” by Lester Bangs ”What the Sixties Had That the Eighties Don't Have” by Paul Williams ”You and the Boss” by Tama Janowitz

The Da Capo Book of Rock & Roll

By the end of 1968 The Beatles were far too busy squabbling with each other, while The Stones had simply stopped making music; English Rock was coming to an end. This book tells the story of six stars that travelled to edge of sanity: Pete Townsend, Ray Davies, Peter Green, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, and David Bowie.

Barrett, Bowie, Drake, Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Who & a journey to the dark side of English rock

All the madmen

'The definitive, scrupulously researched biography of a life steeped in mystery' Observer The definitive biography of one contemporary culture's most iconic and mysterious figures - musical revolutionary, Nobel Prize-winner, chart-topping recording artist In 2016 it was announced that Bob Dylan had sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reportedly for $22 million. As the boxes started to arrive, the Foundation asked Clinton Heylin - author of the acclaimed Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades and 'perhaps the world's authority on all things Dylan' (Rolling Stone) - to assess the material they had been given. What he found in Tulsa - as well as what he gleaned from other papers he had recently been given access to by Sony and the Dylan office - so changed his understanding of the artist, especially of his creative process, that he became convinced that a whole new biography was needed. It turns out that much of what previous biographers - Dylan himself included - have said is wrong; often as not, a case of, Print the Legend. With fresh and revealing information on every page A Restless, Hungry Feeling tells the story of Dylan's meteoric rise to fame: his arrival in early 1961 in New York, where he is embraced by the folk scene; his elevation to spokesman of a generation whose protest songs provide the soundtrack for the burgeoning Civil Rights movement; his alleged betrayal when he 'goes electric' at Newport in 1965; his subsequent controversial world tour with a rock 'n' roll band; and the recording of his three undisputed electric masterpieces: Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. At the peak of his fame in July 1966 he reportedly crashes his motorbike in Woodstock, upstate New York, and disappears from public view. When he re-emerges, he looks different, his voice sounds different, his songs are different. That other story will be told in Volume 2, to be published in autumn 2022. Clinton Heylin's meticulously researched, all-encompassing and consistently revelatory account of these fascinating early years is the closest we will ever get to a definitive life of an artist who has been the lodestar of popular culture for six decades.

A Restless Hungry Feeling: 1941-1966

The Double Life of Bob Dylan Vol. 1

In 1991 Clinton Heylin published what was considered the most definitive biography of Bob Dylan available. In 2001 he completely revised and reworked this hugely acclaimed book, adding new sections, substantially reworking text, and bringing the story up-to-date with Dylan's explosive career in 2000. Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited follows the story of Dylan from his humble beginnings in Minnesota to his arrival in New York in 1961, his subsequent rise in the folk pantheon of Greenwich Village in the early '60s, and his cataclysmic folk-rock metamorphosis at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In the succeeding eighteen months, Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, and embarked on the legendary 1966 World Tour that culminated with an unforgettable concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Heylin details it all, along with the true story of Dylan's motorcycle accident, his remarkable reemergence in the mid-'70s, the only exacting account of his controversial conversion to born-again Christianity, the Neverending Tour, and yet another incredible Dylan resurgence with his 1997 Grammy Album of the Year Award-winning Time Out of Mind. Deemed by The New Yorker as "the most readable and reliable" of all Dylan biographies, this book will give fans what they have always wanted -- a chance to get to know the man behind the shades.

Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited

In virtually all areas of Dylan's life - his immigrant antecedents, his business dealings, his various addictions and his romantic attachments - Heylin is able to provide a fascinating picture of a man who changed the whole course of popular music in the sixties and, over thirty years later, won three Grammys. Heylin has given full weight to Dylan's own words and those of his closest associates, with over 250 people quoted in the book, helping to provide a portrait of a complex figure. Including 60,000 words of brand new material - dealing with Dylan's four twenty-first century albums; his archival audio-visual projects; his third film; his series of paintings and exhibitions; his autobiography, Chronicles; and his ongoing romantic liaisons and 'missing' marriages - this fully updated story of Dylan provides a monumental overview of the Man and his Music.

The 20th Anniversary Edition

Behind the Shades

Clinton Heylin has devoted his career to Bob Dylan's work and presents here a comprehensive study of all of Dylan's recording sessions.

The Recording Sessions, 1960-1994

Bob Dylan

A History of Rock Bootlegs

The Great White Wonders

Bruce Springsteen is one of the most important and controversial rock stars of our times: this is the story of the man - a complex, poetic loner whose albums went on to sell 18 million copies - and the band that gave his inner vision a punch and a swagger. Clinton Heylin has written the most factually accurate, informative book on Springsteen to date. As in Heylin's definitive Bob Dylan title Revolution in the Air, E Street Shuffle will focus on Bruce Springsteen and his work: the songs he's written, the way they were recorded, how they sounded live. Heylin also has unparalleled access to the people around Springsteen: current and former members of the E Street Band; CBS A&R personnel; Springsteen's 'New Dylan' contemporaries, as well as fellow Asbury Park musicians and scenesters, and rock critics. This is the essential book for any fan of the Boss. Praise for Clinton Heylin: "Arguably the world's greatest rock biographer." - The Irish Independent. "The only Dylanologist worth reading." - The New York Times.

The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

E Street Shuffle

The second volume of Clinton Heylin's magisterial biography takes us from Dylan's 1966 motorcycle accident to the present day. We meet a man who is determined to confound expectations; yet whatever he does only seems to confirm his iconic status to fans and critics alike. There are peaks and troughs. Long periods of writer's block are followed by sudden bursts of creativity that produce some of the best work of his career, including perhaps his most celebrated album, 1975's Blood On The Tracks. There is the unpredictable recording process, with Dylan often including on his albums the worst takes and leaving off the best songs altogether. On the Neverending Tour he reinvents his songbook on a nightly basis, at times without recognition. Then there are the albums and songs that reveal the genius of an artist whose lyrics draw on centuries of American culture but who refuses to be shackled to his own past. Today his voice is almost unrecognisable from his 1960s peak, and the man whose songs had been devoted to dissecting his romantic relationships has become focused on mortality, solitude and getting old. Yet his albums continue to top the charts, 2020's Rough And Rowdy Ways being his fourth No. 1 album of the twenty-first century. There is no other living artist whose creative output has remained constantly intriguing, often baffling, sometimes infuriating but always fascinating for over sixty years. Clinton Heylin's definitive, scrupulously researched and revelatory life, based on unprecedented access to the official Tulsa archive and other new sources, paints the fullest and brightest portrait yet of an iconic figure that has defined contemporary culture.

‘Far away from Myself’

The Double Life of Bob Dylan Volume 2: 1966-2021

The first full accounting of the year Bob Dylan went electric and toured the world facing scorn and furious backlash. In 1966 Bob Dylan and The Hawks found themselves at the epicenter of a storm of controversy. Their response was to unleash a cavalcade of ferocity from Melbourne to Manchester. For the first time, the full story is told from eyewitness accounts and recorded documents. Clinton Heylin has contributed "historical notes" for the six-CD set Basement Tapes, released in 2014, and the thirty-six CD set The 1966 Live Recordings, released in 2016 by Sony Music.

Judas!

"We never did capture that sound on stage-the Blonde On Blonde sound; we never did capture the Highway 61 sound on stage. What we did on stage was something different that we never recorded." - Bob Dylan, November 1978 In JUDAS!, world-renowned Bob Dylan expert and musicologist Clinton Heylin combines fast-paced narrative with forensic detective work to lift the lid on the incredible music Dylan and his backing group, The Hawks (soon to become known as The Band), made on stage-and on record-during 1965-66. The book opens the day after Dylan's epochal performance at the Newport Folk Festival in July 1965-site of the electric guitar shot heard around the world-as he prepares for his show at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, and ends the following May at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, at the close of his whirlwind four-month World Tour 1966. In between times, Dylan finished one masterpiece-his first fully fledged 'rock' album, Highway 61 Revisited-and then moved straight on to the next, the landmark double-album Blonde On Blonde. Crucially, however, he and his Hawks also unveiled a parallel sound on stage, ushering forth a cavalcade of ferric ferocity that would bring about a seismic shift in the sound of both Dylan's music and that of rock music in general. At the time, only a single tantalizing burst was issued on record-a live recording of 'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues', released as a B-side mere weeks after it was captured on stage in Liverpool. Now, Heylin goes deep into the Dylan vaults to dissect every known recording from that period-and then some. 'Every night was like goin' for broke-like the end of the world,' Dylan said in 1987. Let JUDAS! be your guide.

From Forest Hills to the Free Trade Hall: A Historical View of Dylan's Big Boo

JUDAS!

By the end of 1968 The Beatles were far too busy squabbling with each other, while The Stones had simply stopped making music; English Rock was coming to an end. All the Mad Men tells the story of six stars that travelled to edge of sanity in the years following the summer of love: Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Peter Green, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, and David Bowie. The book charts how they made some of the most seminal rock music ever recorded: Pink Moon; Ziggy Stardust; Quadrophenia; Dark Side of the Moon; Muswell Hillbillies - and how some of them could not make it back from the brink. The extraordinary story of how English Rock went mad and found itself

Barrett, Bowie, Drake, the Floyd, The Kinks, The Who and the Journey to the Dark Side of English Rock

All the Madmen

Bob Dylan has always regarded himself as a songwriter: 'I am my words,' he wrote in 1964. Distilling a lifetime's passion and study, leading Dylan author, Clinton Heylin charts the development and first moments of genius of this unique artist whose songs changed the world. From his first attempts at writing, Song to Bridget, in 1957, (apparently for Brigitte Bardot) Bob Dylan always aspired to poetry, yet his role as a writer rather than a performer of his own songs is often overlooked. In over fifty years of creativity he had penned some of the most iconic, and perfect, songs in popular history. Arriving in New York in 1961, the city had an enormous impact on the young artist and, as he established himself amongst the folk clubs and artists, he would produce songs that spoke for a whole generation: Blowing in the Wind, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, The Times They Are a Changin', Like a Rolling Stone, and Forever Young. In Revolution in the Air Clinton Heylin recounts the story of each song as it is written, giving a full appreciation of the songs themselves as well as Dylan the emerging artist. Unlike any other book on Dylan, it charts his rise as a writer, where he gained his inspiration, the burst of energy which produced some of his most famous songs as well as the lesser known stories behind the more iconic verses. This is an essential book for anyone interested in Dylan and his place in literature. Informative, opinionated, packed with new insights and revelations, this is an instant classic. Praise for Clinton Heylin: "The only Dylanologist worth reading." - The New York Times. "Arguably the world's greatest rock biographer." - The Irish Independent.

Revolution in the Air: 1957-73

Destined to become a classic on the subject alongside Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me, Babylon's Burning is a comprehensive, groundbreaking, and definitive account of one of the most influential and lasting music movements in history, one that ironically was built on self-annihilation. In August 1977, just a few months before the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks was released to worldwide controlled chaos, Johnny Rotten commented on Elvis's death, saying, "In a way I don't really feel that [his death] has anything to do with me. . . . He became everything we're trying to react against. . . . I don't want to become a fat, rich, sick, reclusive rock star. . . . Elvis was dead before he died, and his gut was so big it cast a shadow over rock and roll." Thus was launched the first potent salvo in punk rock's vainglorious history. In his provocative and definitive history, Clinton Heylin asserts, among other things, that real punk rock bands don't make second records. He finds the origins of punk in a small circle of critics and social misfits who defined the aesthetic before the music even existed. Writers like Nick Kent, Ben Edmonds, and, most significantly, Lester Bangs reacted against rock as it had evolved by the mid-'70s, and argued for something altogether freer, younger, louder, and more anarchic. As the words, pictures, and fashions depicted in magazines spread, bands sprouted in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Brisbane, and San Francisco in addition to the commonly known movements in New York, London, and Manchester. From early progenitors like Suicide, the New York Dolls, and Patti Smith in New York to Rocket from the Tombs in Cleveland and the Saints in Australia, Heylin brings to life the strands of a global art form that birthed simultaneously. Punk eschewed conventional lyrics and promoted a gutteral musicality, yet contained a keen pop sensibility. Heylin tells the story of the Sex Pistols' meteoric rise and fall, and the bands who legitimately took up the mantle (with evolved underlying principles) in the eighties, nineties, and up to Kurt Cobain's untimely death, which heralded the end of an era.

From Punk to Grunge

Babylon's Burning

The story of the birth of Punk, with a capital P, in the only country where it was a mainstream movement: the UK, told entirely by eye-witnesses whose words, then and now, have been held up to the light of hindsight.

Clinton Heylin

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