Down The Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan by Howard Sounes (Black Swan, £7.99)

LIKE the bluesmen and hobo guitar pickers he so relentlessly milked for a repertoire and lifestyle, Bob Dylan only had so many different tunes.

He would almost certainly have been an Elvis clone had he not come across a radical rambler by the name of Woody Guthrie, borrowed his persona and then sold the idea to coffee bar students in New York's Greenwich Village. The rest has certainly been well-documented. Acoustic guitar and harmonica for the huddled masses quickly turned into electric guitar and full band for the emerging rock masses.

Soon, the cry of sellout not so much applied to the artist but also to numbers of records shifted.

By 1965, Bobby Zimmerman from Duluth, Minnesota, had become good product.

Then came the motorcycle crash and the reinvention began all over again. He was now Johnny Cash.

Howard Sounes has achieved the impossible with this book. This year marks the 40th anniversary of Dylan's emergence on the popular music scene and you would think that there wasn't much left to say.

Yet the author rakes over the ashes and comes up with much that is new.

Like his mentor Guthrie, Dylan was also bound for glory and, although it may be hard to like the man, there is no denying his contribution to the world songbook.

But will the real Bob Dylan stand up, please?

John Phillpott.