Our Book-of-the-Month for July 2025 is John Bauldie’s Chameleon Poet: Bob Dylan’s Search for Self. Published in 2021, the book comes to the Book Club 29 years after John’s untimely death in 1996 at the age of 47. Bauldie’s friend and colleague Bill Allison supplied the book’s introduction in his Portrait of the Artist as a Bob Cat, taking us from John’s first encounters with Dylan to the legacy that John left behind. Our meeting host is Book Club member and Advisor, Brian Walsh (a short introduction to Brian is HERE).

John Bauldie began as a collector of bootlegs and concert lore. Those long-ago-days – before email, before the internet, before CDs, before the easy capture of video, and, of course, before digital copying and files – are remote to us now, but John Bauldie’s deep interest in Bob Dylan’s songs and Bob Dylan lore is immediately recognizable to modern scholars and fans. Bill Allison describes Bauldie’s history with Dylan and his many accomplishments. I was also impressed that Bauldie is an astoundingly good writer. As he develops his themes in Chameleon Poet he lets Dylan do the “talking” frequently, through quotes of song lyrics, interviews, and other sources. He writes with clarity and elegance and deep thought and thorough research is always evident.

Oh No, Not Another Bob Dylan Book
Alert members of our Book Club will note that Bauldie was co-author, with Patrick Humphries, of Oh No, Not Another Bob Dylan Book (see my 1-page outline of an answer to the question, WHY are there so many Bob Dylan books HERE). By my count using the Book Club booklist, 392 books have been published on Dylan’s life and work since the Humphries and Bauldie book was released in 1990!

I end with an excerpt from Bill Allison’s introduction that quotes John Bauldie. When you read this, you will be reminded of the many times Bob Dylan has talked about the importance of how songs and other art works are meaningful in so far as they affect each listener (see The Philosophy of Modern Song, which we discussed in September and October 2024). The excerpt:
”In answer to a question about the possibility that Dylan is vague and often writes about things that few can understand, John replied: It is surely up to the listener to investigate the song. Dylan, in writing songs, an art form that needs to be listened to, is offering the listener the opportunity to do this for themself. This is what art is about: an invitation to deduce something from it for yourself. What you find in it is up to you. Dylan puts it in the song for you to find. If you listen to ‘Isis’ for example you might want to investigate vegetation rituals, an understanding of which is perhaps crucial to the understanding of the song itself. You have to investigate the song yourself. What you find out is up to you but Dylan puts it in the song for you to find.”

Bauldie, John. The Chameleon Poet: Bob Dylan's Search For Self (pp. 18-19). Route. Kindle Edition.