I am not very familiar with Dylan's works but I bought this book anyway because I thought the 6 chords used would be simple. This turned out to be true. The chords are simple and if you forget some, there is a chart of all chords used at the beginning of the song. Since I have never heard of some these songs, I had to improvise on how it is played. Compared to other guitar related books, this one is fairly simple. There are no tablatures or written notes, just the lyrics with the corresponding chords. If there was a CD as a reference, this book would be good for a beginning guitar player.

provides a literal transcription of the music; which is fine for an accomplished musician but for the amateur it is tough - i prefer a simplified approach even if it isn't "exact"; for example noting the fret cappoed and the simplifed chords bob probably used himself and an indication of chord changes for ALL the lyrics (i know that's asking much!) better bets are "the songs of bob dylan" (a truly wonderful book which has chord changes even over the "additional lyrics") or "bob dylan the 6 chord songbook".

"BOB DYLAN Made Easy for Guitar" is more title than description. Featuring 22 songs ranging from the well known (Tangled Up in Blue), to the obsure (Man Gave Names to All the Animals), Dylan Made Easy doesn't give any hints or suggestions to accomplish that promise. This is simply a songbok featuring Dylan's material in their orginal keys; however, the songs are notatated with chords and rythm slashes. The songs themselves are not necessarily easy. Most songs quite often contain barre chords or would be easy to play with barre chords or capo's. I was hoping that this book would explain simpler, easier, methods to obtain the melodies and rythms that pervade Bob Dylan songs. This book is good is a fairly good songbook if your looking for a variety of Dylan material.

Though invaluable and unsurpassalbe as far as it goes, this edition of Bob Dylan's lyrics and assorted other poetry has been replaced by (the now equally out of print) Lyrics, 1962-1985. A book like this is invaluable to the Bob Dylan fan: it can resolve arguments, end bets, and settle a worried mind kept up at night worrying over whether a certain lyric went this way or that. However, this collection has been rendered obselete by the publication of Lyrics; the two books are identical, down to the layout, font and text styles, except for the differing front and back covers. That, and this book covers Dylan's lyrics through New Morning, while Lyrics covers them through Empire Burlesque. So, if you're looking for a Dylan lyrics Bible, get that book instead of this one. Of course, if you're an obsessive Dylan collector *looks around innocently*, you'll want to get both, anyway.

Note: Being as even Lyrics is now well out of print, and itself misses 15 years of Dylan artistry (including such major albums as Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, and Love and Theft), it is time for a new edition of this book. This would also give them the opportunity to include some of the songs that were left out, for whatever reason, from both this and Lyrics (along with such items as the Planet Waves linear notes.) There are various seeming typos and changes (sometimes inexplicable) from the lyrics here (apparently the original ones that were copyrighted), and the ones that were actually recorded. This would be a chance to rectify these as well. And now is the perfect time to release it: Love and Theft was a success, huge with the critics, Dylan's touring his butt off to great raves, thousands are turning to his music for healing in the wake of September 11th, he's nominated for three Grammy awards (including Album of The Year), and there is much talk about him still because of his 60th birthday, previous Album of The Year, Things Have Changed, Nobel Prize nomination, etc. If ever there was a perfect time to release the book, it is now. Come on, publishers! ;-)

Not up to the standards set by other books in this series. Very skimpy on details of Dylan's career and even skimpier on recording details. Most other books covering Dylan's recordings are superior.

For the most part, the books in this series are pretty good. This, however, is a notch below the standards set by the others. The information given on what was happening to Dylan at each stage is cursory and there is no track by track analysis as in the other Complete Guides. Usually, the Complete Guides are so well written that you would want to go out and buy some of the particular artists' albums. This book is dry reading and glosses over a lot of details about one of the most enigmatic and most important artists of the 60s and 70s.

This book will suffice for those who only want to dabble in Dylan's work, but the hard-core follower would do better to read Paul Williams' extensive two-volume "Performing Artist" set or even Tim Riley's "Hard Rain" instead. Humphries gives a fair sketch of Dylan's career without the level of analysis his work really requires, although the coverage of such lesser albums as "Knocked Out Loaded" and "Good As I Been To You" is more extensive than usual. The main problem with this book is that Humphries disobeys one of Dylan's classic instructions: he criticizes what he doesn't understand. To compare "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" to "a Forrest Gump anecdote" or to accuse "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" of being padded out for length is to expose your own colors more than Dylan's. At times, Humphries also alarmingly misinterprets Dylan's songs; his reviews of "It Ain't Me, Babe" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie" sound like descriptions of different works altogether. The title of this book says it all--it's a guide, not an extensive thesis, and what you see is about what you get.

This book is a waste of paper. You will find dylanoligy at it worst, hidden behind a small amount of credibility. "Tell Me Why" is a fine book (Riley's effort about the Beatles). Riley's commentary here is trite, Vision's of Johanna is not about Heroin, it's about the time I got loaded at my friends house and was thinking about my ex-girlfriend while making out with somebody else. Of course I'm not as old as the song but you should get the point. Dylan just writes 'em. You can not possible dissect Dylan's songs and pick only songs you like calling every thing after "Blood" trash ( that's not his words that's paraphrasing the last half on the book). Some things can not be defended "Knocked and Loaded" but if anybody else put out "Oh Mercy", Riley would have been singing their praises like he sings punk rocks in the last fifty pages of his book about Dylan.

I've read at leat 15 Dylan biographies (out of print and in print). and this one stands out by far as a huge joke, stay clear of this garbage!

Tim Riley's commentary on Dylan focuses on the music rather than the man. This focus starts fairly well, aside from Riley trying to impress us with his vocabulary. Dylan's early work (from his debut until about Highway 61 Revisited) receives a fairly thorough treatment as Riley tries to "get inside" the mind of Dylan (which is probably not a very wise thing to do in the first place). Even if you don't agree with Riley, his ideas are interesting...at least for awhile. After reading the book, it seems that Riley believes that Dylan hasn't written anything worth listening to since "Blood on the Tracks." Unfortunately the author all but ignores some of Dylan's most significant contributions past 1975. (Riley spends nearly 250 pages on the period from Dylan's debut until 1975. From 1975 on only gets 50 pages.) This book was a super disappointment by an author who seems to have an axe to grind. The work is saved by giving a good bibliography and an even better discography.

This book can be described quite succinctly as a dissapointment. Speaking as someone who has spent hours searching the internet and various music stores for transcriptions of Bob Dylan's distinctly unique and reckless harmonica playing, I can say that this book fails to deliver what the title implies. The harmonica has always been an integral part of Dylan's musical talent and his less than precise playing style is something that any Dylan fan who plays the harp has always desired to emulate. The title of this book implies that the book contains transcriptions of the harmonica parts heard in many of Dylan's greatest songs. This title is indeed misleading, as is the indication that Bob Dylan is the author of this book. Although Dylan has copyrights to the songs presented in this book, the arrangements actually found in the book are attributed to Stephen Jennings, and are anything but the solos that can be heard on actual Bob Dylan albums.

While this book does deliver clear and easy to learn harmonica notation, it reduces Dylan songs to simple melodies, ignoring the harmonica solos that characterize many of Dylan's songs. In addition, the book ignores the fact that Dylan's songs were not all written in the key of C and fails to include lyrics. I recommend that any fan of Dylan's unduplicated harp playing who wishes to find transcriptions of his solos and fills bypass this book and look for other titles, such as The Harp Styles of Bob Dylan, by Amy Appleby, which contains complete transcriptions of twelve Dylan classics.

Even if one only wants to learn to play the melodies of Dylan's songs on the harmonica, I recommend that you by a book containing standard song notation of Dylan's music. You will have a larger collection of songs, and any beginning harmonica instruction book can tell you which notes correspond to which holes, making it easy to learn melodies quickly without the aid of harmonica notation. In short, anyone serious about learning to play the harmonica like Bob Dylan should skip this book and continue the search, and if you have any luck finding a complete collection of transcriptions of Bob Dylan's harp playing, contact me. I'm still searching.

This book contains a transcription of Dylan's melodys not his harmonica solos. Besides that the lyrics were not included making even playing the melodys a challange.

I love Leonard Cohen and try to read whatever is available about him. This book was so miserable, I couldn't even finish it. The person who wrote it is a whiney sycophant. This horrible drivel isn't worth the paper it's printed on. It really makes the reader hate the person who wrote it. Don't buy this, not even used for a nickel. 'Nuff said...

By far this is the worst book ever written about Leonard Cohen. To start with a good portion of the book is comprised of Leonard Cohen's poems and lyrics! The rest is badly written drivel about a man who made a fairly mediocre TV documentary about Leonard Cohen more than 20 years ago. Suffice to say that the book is nothing but a tool to vent off Mr. Rasky's anger at the world for not recognizing his 'talents' as a filmmaker. I did like the book cover but wait a minute that was taken from Leonard Cohen's last album cover as well.

I expected commentary on Dylan's lyrics from a Jewish perspective; there is certainly plenty to say on the issue. Unfortunately, this book offered only a blow by blow of a Dylan concert tour, interspersed with drawings of Ein Sof and random quotes from the Kabalah, Elie Wiesel, and Walt Whitman of all people. Great if you want to know every detail of a Dylan tour; otherwise not much use.

This is just a fake book, a line of melody and box-picture guitar chords. No harmony, no bass. All of that intricate guitar work on the CD isn't in here, just the basic melody line - most of which doesn't sound like the CD anyway. A truly terrible book, considering how amazing the CD was.