Before he became famous as Bob Dylan, there was a Minnesota teenager named Robert Zimmerman. (Hibbing High School Yearbook)

Howard Sounes explains why he wrote Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan

A Love of the Songs

Like many people, I enjoy different types of music, from jazz to classical, but since I was a teenager I have had a particular penchant for the songs of Bob Dylan.

It is the man as well as his music and lyrics that fascinates. In common with my previous subject Charles Bukowski, Dylan is a philosopher, whose every utterance seems to contain wisdom. He is also an intriguingly enigmatic personality, about whom one wants to know more.

As I say, my passion for Dylan started as a boy. An older sister had a copy of Blood on the Tracks, and I found the long song-stories on the LP totally involving. A friend at school was also a Dylan fan and, when we were sixteen, my friend and I went to see Dylan in concert at Earls Court in London, when he was promoting Shot of Love. In subsequent years I saw Dylan many times, and bought each new record as it came out. As any Dylan aficionado knows, the 1980s and early 1990s were not a purple period for the artist, but also, as any fan knows, there are glimmers of brilliance in everything he does.

Dylan at Sixty

In 1998, following the publication of my biography of Charles Bukowski, I realised that Dylan would turn sixty in 2001, and discovered that many people considered this to be a very significant milestone. It never seemed that way to me, but Dylan turning sixty would evidently be a media event, and therefore an opportune time to publish a new book about the man.

There had already been a large number of books about Dylan, of course, even more since. Prior to 2001, there had, however, only been four major biographies: Bob Dylan (Grosset & Dunlap, 1971) by Anthony Scaduto; No Direction Home (New English Library, 1986) by Robert Shelton; Dylan: A Biography (McGraw-Hill, 1989) by Bob Spitz; and Dylan: Behind the Shades (Viking, 1991) by Clinton Heylin. I had read them all, and felt I could do better.

My intention was to write a comprehensive biography that told Dylan's story from birth to the current day, with equal emphasis on his life and the music, and indeed equal attention to all aspects of his career, rather than writing primarily about the 1960s, say. I also wanted to write in a clear style, with a restrained narrative voice, rather than as a fan (short for fanatic, as Dylan reminds us).

The plan was to create a biography that was accessible to the ordinary general reader, that is somebody who may only have a couple of Dylan albums. At the same time, I wanted to surprise even the most ardent and knowledgeable of Dylan’s listeners with new information.

With my journalistic background, I knew I had a good chance of pinning down facts that would clarify some of the legends surrounding Dylan and set the book on a more solid foundation than previous biographies, while additionally making it a genuinely revelatory read.

Finally, without gushing about it, I wanted to celebrate the career of a great man.

Life on the Road

With an advance from Grove Press in New York, I set out to interview everybody I could find who was connected with Bob Dylan in a significant way. I travelled the USA extensively in 1999-2000, and by the end of my research had interviewed about 250 people. I never got to Dylan himself, but had a rare degree of assistance from members of his immediate family, his closest associates, girlfriends, and musicians. Many people who hadn't contributed to previous books spoke to me for Down the Highway. Some of the most significant asked not to be identified.

The biggest revelation in the book, I suppose, was that Dylan married his backing singer Carolyn Dennis in 1986 and had a daughter with her, something the world at large new nothing of. This story does not reflect badly on Bob Dylan, or Carolyn Dennis, and is not presented in a negative way in the book. It is simply part of Dylan's life, and of course it is a fundamental part of who he is. I felt no qualms about reporting the basic facts, and note that when Dylan finally allowed the first volume of his memoirs to be published in 2004, the wonderfully-poetic Chronicles, he wrote at length about being married to Carolyn. By this time, the couple were divorced.

The marriage revelation made headlines around the world when Down the Highway was published in the spring of 2001, though in fact the secret marriage is a tiny part of a substantial (624 pages) book, in which new light is shed on almost every aspect of the man's life and career, particularly his years in Woodstock, his recording sessions, and business affairs.

The book received considerable press interest. It was widely and positively reviewed, for the most part, shortlisted for an award, and serialised in many publications, including the Mail on Sunday in Britain, Reader's Digest in the USA and the National Post in Canada. I found myself talking about the book on CNN in New York, and BBC Breakfast TV in England, where the book became a Sunday Times bestseller in hardback. It remains in print in paperback in the UK and USA and has been translated into many languages.

The book title is, incidentally, both a Dylan song ('Down the Highway' appears on the 1962 LP The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan) and a line from his powerful 1974 song 'Idiot Wind'. As a book title, it is meant to convey the fact that Bob Dylan has become, in his ceaseless touring, and in the spirit of his hero Woody Guthrie, a true wandering troubadour. His is a life on the road.

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