Victor Maymudes and Jacob Maymudes
Another Side of Bob Dylan: A Personal History on the Road and off the Tracks
Published by St. Martin's
Oct 28, 2014 Web Exclusive
Victor Maymudes was Bob Dylan’s tour manager for much of Dylan’s career, from his beginnings in the early 1960s and, excepting a short hiatus, for a decade from 1986 to 1996. Jacob is Victor’s son, a child who grew up in the shadow of Dylan, and who was left to cope with the specter of his father’s life with the master after Victor passed suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 2001. At the time of his passing, the elder Maymudes had recorded 24 hours of audio on cassette tapes, orally documenting his time with Dylan. Having passed before bringing his memoirs to fruition, Maymudes left his tapes and his son was left to finish his story.
Ostensibly, Another Side of Bob Dylan is of interest because of Victor’s proximity to Dylan. For the most iconic years of Dylan’s career, Victor was present, Dylan’s confidante, protector, and aide. However, Another Side is as much a cathartic process for Jacob in coping with his father’s passing, and there is much Maymudes history in the book that would not particularly interest Dylan-ologists.
Disappointingly, even of the Dylan lore in the book, much is fairly inconsequential to anyone but the most devoted fan-overly long discussions of Dylan’s van and of Dylan’s dog come to mind. But there are revelations, chief among them Maymudes’ truth regarding Dylan’s infamous motorcycle accident of 1966. [No spoilers here but I will say that the story behind the accident, as it’s portrayed in the book, is rather hilariously benign, and taken in the context of how important the accident is in Dylan lore and the implications it is said to have on the man and his art, Maymudes’ story becomes even more terrific for its lack of drama.]
To a degree, Another Side of Bob Dylan also humanizes the artist, whose public perception these days is so often as an inscrutable and cantankerous old man. However, there’s plenty in the book that also affirms this view. Dylan often comes off as something of a self-aggrandizing ass, a fact made more irritating by the book’s often overly deferential stance to the artist.
All this said, Another Side of Bob Dylan is just that, another side, another perspective, another view. Whether you find it interesting probably depends on the degree to which you are fanatical about the man in the first place. (http://us.macmillan.com/smp)
Author rating: 5/10
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