What Did You Hear?

“Rings hears what others don’t—because as he listens, sounds spark thoughts. This takes him inside Bob Dylan’s songs, hearing how their elements—rhythms, melodies, words, and sounds—make what we hear as whole and finished. But that way of listening also takes Rings outside the songs, to hear what others hear: the musical gestures that have shaped them, that have spoken to them. In Rings’s pages, that conversation comes fully to life.” -- Greil Marcus, author of “Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs” “What Did You Hear? sings like that Japan ’94 ‘Hard Rain,’ spotlighting not Dylan the songwriter but Dylan the performer. Through detailed argument and copious musical examples, Rings breaks down Dylan’s technique on his various instruments: voice, guitar, piano, harmonica. The sounds Dylan fans have loved for decades now have a conceptual framework, demonstrating just how much care Dylan puts into the delivery of his words, not just the writing of them. Rings knows his music theory but doesn’t rely on the reader to, making his analysis easily accessible for the layperson. The most intriguing Bob Dylan book I’ve read in some time.” -- Ray Padgett, author of “Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members” “The best study of Bob Dylan’s musicianship to date. At once a compendium of thinking on the totality of his music and a close study of several songs, the book offers bountiful insights that will excite readers both avidly and casually interested in Dylan.” -- Sumanth Gopinath, author of “The Ringtone Dialectic: Economy and Cultural Form”