Keith Negus, Bob Dylan

When, during a performance in 1964, Bob Dylan was recorded referring to a “Bob Dylan mask”, he provided a perfect soundbite for later critics keen to highlight the artist’s seemingly deliberate manipulation of his audience’s expectations. Keith Negus’s short, lucid analysis of Dylan as popular music icon opens with a discussion of the mask quip, the importance granted to it by previous Dylan commentators and the usefulness of biographical information in explaining the work of public figures. ..