According to that modern Fount of All Knowledge, ChatGPT, there are currently around 1500 books on Bob Dylan. So does the world really need another one? And, more to the point for this writer, does the world really need another review of a book about Bob Dylan? After reading this excellent book, the answer to that first question is a resounding ‘Yes’ and I will let readers decide for themselves on the second one.
Let’s start with the basics. Rings’ book consists of twelve chapters, spread across three parts: (i) Voicing, (ii) Playing, and (iii) Sounding ‘Hard Rain’. Rings begins by making it clear that ‘hearing the sounds matters a great deal’ (p. xi), and a vital part of the book is that it is interactive, with the accompanying website www.soundingbobdylan.com/ where audio examples with commentaries and further details of the music can be found. This is important as the book is focused on Dylans’ music – that is, on the sounds he (and the others he plays with) make and have made over sixty odd years. Rings notes the relative lack of discussion of the actual music in previous accounts of Dylan, marking a rare critique in a book that is generally generous towards its predecessors.
Of course, the extraordinary longevity of Dylan’s career means that there are ridiculous amounts of sounds to choose from – and Rings is astute enough to know that one must not rely on the recorded versions of songs alone. Indeed, large sections of the book are devoted to detailed accounts of live performances, including via the bootlegs which form a key part of Dylan fan networks (p. 7) and which are necessary if one really wishes to analyse changing performance. Here the very scope of the book is impressive. Dylan is an artist for whom everything is always a work in progress, as the endless variations of songs he performs live testifies. There are artists who feel that their job on stage is to try to recreate the recorded version of the song. Bob Dylan is not one of them. This creates something of a methodological issue. If ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ has been performed live 2075 times (bobdylan.com/songs/, accessed 22 December 2025), then which ones to analyse? Rings does not fall into this trap, instead focussing on common motifs. However, a nagging feeling remains that in Dylan’s case there is so much to choose from that exactly what is selected remains a key issue, especially given his ‘famously idiosyncratic playing and singing’ (p. 11). In short, Rings could easily be accused of being too selective, of choosing examples which suit his arguments. However, the selections he makes are generally illuminative and any such suspicions are soon overcome.
While he is obviously a fan, Rings generally comes neither to praise nor bury, but to explain, to elucidate. He claims that Dylan deliberately makes imperfect sounds meaning that the job of the scholar is to find out what gives them such great potency (p. 12). Rings argues in the Introduction that Dylan uses both ‘flaw imperfection’ and ‘change imperfection’ (p. 13). In what follows, it certainly helps if one reads music, as there is much use of notation here. But as someone who doesn’t, I was reassured by Rings’ assertion that ‘This book is still for you’ (ibid) and that those who do not read music should ‘never fear!’ (p. 89). While this was true, the tone adopted here in such instances was notably different from that which characterises the rest of the book. Moreover, the encouragement for readers to skip some parts of the book (e.g. p.253) made for rather odd reading.
For those who dislike Dylan, the ‘voice’ is often cited as a reason. It is certainly the most prominent sound Dylan makes and vitally important for someone to whom lyrics are crucial, arguably even paramount. So, Rings starts with chapters on The Fashioned Voice, Identity and Plurality, The Emphatic Voice, followed by two on Words Music – speechword and songword. There are discussions of Dylan’s voice compared to others and its usage in duets, notes on his phrasing, and his sources. Rings suggests that listeners find truth in Dylan’s voice, despite the fact that he is well known for telling many false tales, by suspending disbelief (p. 82). Those listeners can hear many things in Dylan’s voice – contempt, love, anger but rarely fear.
Of course, there is much speculation here (and even more elsewhere) about who the real Bob Dylan is. Rings rightly notes that it is deeply ironic that many listeners find in Dylan (or at least his voice – again) a certain sort of ‘truth’, when this emanates from a man who has adopted several personas and self-consciously avoided being tied to any particular one. There thus might be several ‘truths’ at play here.
In retrospect the attempts which Dylan made very early on in his career to wrestle himself free from political pigeonholing, and critics’ claims that he was ‘the voice of a generation’, were perfectly natural. Having only just invented himself, he could not bear to have others reinvent him. That was his job. Unwittingly Pete Yarrow could not have been more wrong when he introduced Dylan at Newport 1965 with the words ‘He’s ours, he’s yours’. Dylan was always his own man and he has spent his career finding out what that means.
Meanwhile the audio examples selected here show how much the voice (alongside arrangements of songs) has changed over the years. So, if you don’t like the sounds which emanate from Dylan’s mouth, then it is perhaps fairer to say that you don’t like his voices (plural), as there clearly is no single voice here.
The second part of the book, Playing, contains sections on guitar, harmonica, and piano. In the chapter on guitar, Rings examines ‘the tension between sound and symbol in Dylan’s guitar’ (p. 141). The chapter on harmonica (arguably Dylan’s iconic instrument) covers ‘history, identity, emotion and eloquence’ (p. 171), while the chapter on piano argues that ‘The keyboard … is as central to Dylan’s musical life as are the guitar and harmonica’ (p. 200). There is much for musicologists to enjoy here as Rings not only persuades us to listen but also to listen for different things.
To be honest, I found the third part of the book heavy going. It consists of four chapters marking the different ways in which Dylan has performed ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ between 1962 and 2017. As with other parts of the book, this was illuminating, showing the sources Dylan drew on for the song and how it and its constituent parts developed over the years. However, unlike other parts of the book, I was left wondering why this mattered. What is at stake? Rings wants to find out ‘what […] its sounds do’ (p. 231, emphasis in original), but I am not sure that he succeeds as while there is detailed description, argumentation takes a back seat.
I was also rather surprised that there is no discussion of Dylan’s role as a producer under the pseudonym of Jack Frost. He has been involved in producing his own albums since 1990’s Under the Red Sky and this obviously affects what listeners hear when they listen to Dylan’s recorded work. Rings is interested in hearing and so it is strange that he does not address this role. While it could be argued that Rings is more interested in the sounds emanating from – or caused by – Dylan’s own body throughout his career, the omission of his role as a producer is a major one, even if that role has only been for part of his career.
However, it would be churlish to end this review on a sour note (no pun intended). This is a fine piece of scholarship which does make the listener listen differently. I found myself asking if such a book could have been written about another popular musician. The answer is possibly, but it would almost certainly not be as rich. Moreover, I can think of no artist where it is possible to examine so many versions of the same song over so many years. This book covers an extraordinarily wide range of topics and is generally revealing and insightful, providing much food for thought for those who want to understand Dylan better.
Recommended.
