Dylan & Me: 50 Years Of Adventures

★★★ Louie Kemp with Kinky Friedman WESTROSE PRESS. $28.95 (IMPORT) Bob’s best friend captures the Everyday Dylan. Louie Kemp is that most rare of Dylan biographers: a verifiable lifelong pal. The two met when Bobby Zimmerman was 12 and Kemp 11, and they remained buddies for a halfcentury. While the author breaks no literary ground – he’s a raconteur more than a scribe – this memoir captures Everyday Dylan: how he thinks and speaks, what makes him laugh or angry. As proof of their friendship, Kemp steers clear of certain intimate details and there are no accounts of Bob and Sara’s marital discord. But he chronicles, with examples, Dylan’s savvy instincts as artist/business-man, his loving dedication as a father, and his spiritual journeys, including his Christian years. (Kemp takes credit for steering Dylan back to Judaism.) Fascinating sections profile friendships with Marlon Brando, Bill Graham and Allen Ginsberg, as well as war stories from the Kemp-produced Rolling Thunder Revue.