Wicked Messenger: Bob Dylan And the 1960s - Softcover

Marqusee, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583226869 ISBN 13: 9781583226865

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2005

Synopsis

Bob Dylan’s abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. In Wicked Messenger, acclaimed cultural-political commentator Mike Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic.
Wicked Messenger is also a riveting political history of the United States in the 1960s. Tracing the development of the decade’s political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic—anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk— of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well as in his recent artistic ventures in Chronicles, Vol. I and Masked and Anonymous.
Dylan’s anguished, self-obsessed, prickly artistic evolution, Marqusee asserts, was a deeply creative response to a deeply disturbing situation. "He can no longer tell the story straight," Marqusee concludes, "because any story told straight is a false one."

About this title

About the Author:

MIKE MARQUSEE is the author of a number of groundbreaking books on politics and popular culture, including Anyone But England, War Minus the Shooting, and Redemption Song. Born and raised in the United States, he has lived in London since the 1970s.

About this edition

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1583226869
• ISBN 13: 9781583226865
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376