"Dylan has burrowed into our flesh and lodged in our minds…his words, images, tunes have been swimming through my head, rising up from the depths at unexpected moments. The electric violin on desolation row. Breadcrumb sins… the ghost of electricity howling in the bones of her face. The orphan crying like a fire in the sun. Her Jamaican rum and how she did come. The hard rain forever falling. The answer forever blowin’…" Chimes of Freedom rells the story of an irascible individual artist in a period of great social upheaval, a mass movement for social change-ad the complex, often tortured relationship between the two. Re-establishing Dylan’ sixties’ master works in their historical context. The books sheds new light on both the songs and the era that produced them. This was a decade that saw widespread civil rights protest, the rise of black consciousness and Black Power, student protest across the globe, the Vietnam was and the anti-war movement, the summer of Love and flower power, the Birmingham bombing and Woodstock. Studying the impact of the times on Dylan and Dylan on his times (he remains arguably the most influential protest song writer we have seen) Chimes of Freedom is not an exercise in nostalgia: rather, it is an urgent book that draws lessons for the future from the struggle of the past. It informs, entertains, and stimulates.
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