A few posts ago I printed some remarks from a reader, Fred, with regard to the “The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia,” by Michael Gray. I hadn’t yet acquired the book, but since then I have. I’ve been leafing through it. More interesting to me, though, than my own opinions, are those of the great Al Kooper. His opportunistic organ playing on Like A Rolling Stone might be his best shot at immortality, but of-course he worked with Dylan plenty more and is an enormously accomplished musician and producer in his own right.

In the August 28th, 2006 update on his website he says:

I borrowed the new Dylan “Encyclopedia” from a friend who must have money to burn, and was quite disappointed in the inaccuracies and lack of proper encyclopedic journalism in author Michael Gray’s tough to please stance.
I always thought an encyclopedia was a haven for true facts reported in an unopinionated manner. Neither is so in this Dylan rip-off. Ironically, the Encyclopedia Britannica hired me in 2000 to write the Bob Dylan entry, and I must honestly say, that it is reported in a factual, concise, unopinionated manner. Having spent much more time with the subject matter in-person than Mr. Gray (if only he wrote that way) I am always sensitive to factual errors. And Mr. Gray, as far as I can recall (of course) never interviewed me for his masterwork.
Instead of dwelling on his critical slaps in the face, I will point out the errors I found in the first few paragraphs: He has me performing with the Blues Project at Monterey Pop which I did not as I had just quit the band. He has me moving to the West Coast to form BS&T, which any fan could tell you was eventually formed in New York. And when are these morons gonna learn that if you cover someone’s song, your main intention is not to compete with the original version ? If this was the case, than no one would ever sing a Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Al Green or for that matter, Bob Dylan song….except Michael Bolton!
He repeats other errors that have been made consistently
(claims Blond on Blonde was cut in TWO separate trips to Nashville, it was actually one ten day stay in the winter) And when you tell these alleged journalists the truth, they deny it and back it up with studio paperwork which they obviously have no idea how to translate. If I was there and he wasn’t, who would YOU think was telling the ACTUAL true story ??????
At any rate, as a piece of factual research, it sucks. 60% of the entries are gossipy padding and frankly, his microscope is boring and inaccurate. Other than that, I loved it. My dear friend writer Andy McLenon suggests Oliver Trager’s Dylan Encyclopedia published by Billboard, who took BACKSTAGE PASSES & BACKSTABBING BASTARDS out of print. So hurry if you want Trager’s less expensive, allegedly more accurate tome.

So, he said it, not me.

Probably something in it will annoy me sufficiently to generate a post or two in the future. Of-course, the book, at 730 pages, contains plenty of interesting information, and you can’t but respect the work Gray put into it. Its usefulness for a Dylan obsessive might be hard to argue (though there is that price to consider). Nevertheless, as Al points out, an encyclopedia ought to make a serious attempt at objectivity. These entries are filled with opinions, both studied and off-hand, that color all the information being purveyed. It simply shouldn’t be called an encyclopedia. Maybe it ought to be called “Song and Dance Man: The Addenda” (after Gray’s other monumentally heavy tome about Dylan).

In a world where so many “Dylan analysts” with axes to grind write books without declaring their agendas upfront, maybe it’s just taking it to the appropriate absurd extreme for one of them to package his subjective views in a big black book and call it an encyclopedia.

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