Andrew Motion

Bob Dylan — from respected young songwriter to Voice of a Generation

After the release of his first LP in March 1962, Dylan’s life changed overnight — until four years later it all got too much for him, says Clinton Heylin

The dark glasses had become habitual: Bob Dylan in London in 1966. Credit: Getty Images 
issue 10 April 2021

Clinton Heylin is the eminence grise of Bob Dylan scholars: co-founder of Wanted Man (the magazine dedicated to studying Dylan’s life and work), long-time editor of its quarterly magazine the Telegraph, compiler of Stolen Moments: The Ultimate Dylan Reference Book and also the author of Behind the Shades, which, when first published in 1991, was rightly praised as the most reliable account of Dylan’s life and career up to that point.

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