Secretive singing star Bob Dylan, seen by some as the voice of the Protest Generation, has reached a deal with his publisher, Simon & Schuster, to write his autobiography. There have been many biographies written about him but never before has the notoriously private singer stepped forward to offer in-depth information about his personal life.
Dylan has promised that no story will be left untouched in the multi-volume biog, entitled Chronicles. Every detail of his life, however painful, will be covered, including his change in faith from Judaism to Christianity and his harrowing divorce from his first wife Sara. He told Time magazine: “I think that what I’m writing has been trying to find its way out for some time now.”
Having written over 500 songs and a book called Tarantula, which was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature, Dylan is not a newcomer to the writing game. But even he admits that he cannot explain the majority of his past work. “I’ve become a different person since I’d written them,” he confesses, “and, frankly, they mystify me too.”
The only setback to this planned autobiography is the rock legend’s self confessed amnesia. “My retrievable memory goes blank on incidents and things that have happened,” he says. To help him remember these events clouded by his foggy past – like they say, if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t there – he is recruiting witnesses who were around him at the time to help him piece it all together.