The importance of Bob Dylan to the history of popular music is incalculable. He transformed folk music from anodyne crooning into a vehicle for coruscating contemporary social protest. Within a couple of years he had transformed rock 'n' roll, too, bringing the intellectualism of folk lyrics to a genre still dominated by moon-in-June romantic convention. The phenomenal commercial success of his 1965 epic, gritty and streetwise single 'Like a Rolling Stone' together with the dazzling lyrical technique of Highway 61 Revisited established him forever as the poet laureate of rock 'n' roll. Egan presents a selection of the best writing on Dylan drawn from across the decades, interspersed with new narrative, record reviews, essays and interviews.