ABSTRACT
Most of the many existing published works on Bob Dylan are mainly biographical, literary, or musicological in their nature and approach. In Dylan’s case, both parts of that process of historical continuity became apparent in terms of, first, his early musical and literary influences and, later, his own profound influence on the nature of modern popular music, particularly its songwriting. More broadly, Bob Dylan and the British Sixties will examine Bob Dylan’s influence within the historical context of major social, cultural, and political change in Britain during that decade. In sharp contrast, the overdue emphasis upon the 1960s of many studies of Dylan’s work was noted by Lee Marshall in his largely sociological study Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star, when he pointed out that: ‘Dylan’s career beyond the sixties has received woefully inadequate coverage.’ As for the British Sixties, so much has been written about those years, with contrasting assessments and judgements.
