Dylan

Book excerpt: In Dylan, Bob Spitz provides a dramatic yet clear-eyed view of the enigmatic guru of modern music. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Dylan's family, friends, lovers and fellow musicians. Spitz presents the true Bob Dylan in a vast array of guises: the early years in small-town Minnesota, when Bobby Zimmerman - loner, gadabout and local weirdo - reinvented himself as Bob Dylan and set out to be a star; his struggle to conquer the night world of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s; the cataclysm that rocked the music world when he went electric; the mad years, when drugs and paranoia corrupted his gospel of peace and love; his flirtations with political causes, born-again Christianity, Orthodox Judaism and the glitter of superstardom.