Grant Maxwell examines the recorded music of popular culture with the same subtlety and care as he brings to the literary and philosophical texts of high culture. He seeks not just breadth of knowledge but coherence of insight not just accumulation of knowledge but depth of understanding. Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind Grant is a very distinguished cat. James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere The first three chapters, about each title character and their particular artistic genesis, are good cultural history and excellent pop music analysis his explication of Dylan's rejection of modernity is one of the better summations available of this complicated figure. . . . The accounts provide fresh, rewarding perspectives on historical moments that have been theorized to death, if not outright mythologized, and Maxwell's historical blow-by-blow does great service as a patient, careful examination of each watershed. . . . Grasping at any threads that