Description:

By the middle of the 1970s, Bob Dylan’s position as the pre-eminent artist of his generation was assured. The 1975 album *Blood on the Tracks *seemed to prove, finally, that an uncertain age had found its poet. Perverse or driven, Dylan refused the role. By the decade’s end, the counter-culture’s poster child had embraced conservative, evangelical Christianity. Fans and critics alike were confused; many were aghast. Still the hits kept coming. Then Dylan faltered. His instincts, formerly unerring, deserted him. In the 1980s, what had once appeared unthinkable came to pass: the ‘voice of a generation’ began to sound irrelevant, a tale told to grandchildren. Yet in the autumn of 1997 something remarkable happened. Having failed to release a single new song in seven long years, Dylan put out the equivalent of two albums in a single package. He called it *Time Out of Mind*. So began the renaissance, artistic and personal, that culminated in 2012’s acclaimed *Tempest*. In the concluding volume of his groundbreaking study, Ian Bell explores the unparalleled second act in a quintessentially American career. It is a tale of redemption, of an act of creative will against the odds, and of a writer who refused to fade away. *Time Out of Mind* is the story of the latest, perhaps the last, of the many Bob Dylans. This one might yet turn out to have been the most important of them all.