Seeing The Real You At Last: Life And Love On The Road With Bob Dylan |

18 May 2016

Of the countless books written about the many aspects of Dylan’s life and work, few – if any – have focused so precisely on the years 1986-87. After all, what is there to get excited about? Knocked Out Loaded and Down In The Groove are poor showings in anyone’s career. 

The sort of person interested in this period is a Dylan obsessive – someone who knows that Britta Lee Shain briefly dated Bob during this time, and how he, spiralling fast, torpedoed a decade-long friendship with Gary Shafner (appearing in the book under the guise of “Ernie”), Shain Lee’s then boyfriend and Dylan’s right-hand man, when he made her the focus of his attentions on the Temples In Flames tour of 1987.

Shain Lee is not blameless – far from it. But what she perhaps lacked then in circumspect she certainly possesses 30 years later, now she’s an accomplished songwriter in her own right. Though it understandably bristles with the energy of a fan turned spurned lover, Seeing The Real You At Last is far from a kiss’n’tell. The side of Bob Dylan we see here is a sort of man-child, his every whim catered for while lost in the fog of being “Bob Dylan”. Salacious details are few; insight into how miserable Bob could make life – for himself and those around him – is plentiful. You wouldn’t have thought to look at him, but he was famous long ago – the sort of fame, at that point in his career at least, that corrodes.

Jawbone | ISBN 9781908279941, 280 pages

Reviewed by Inky Tuscadero

Read the review in Record Collector Magazine