Rock iconoclast, street poet, social critic, pop icon - Bob Dylan's influence on American culture and music is unrivaled. Here for the first time is an album-by-album look at the most influential figure in American popular music since Elvis Presley, and a chronicle of his journey from little-known folk musician to rock legend.

In Hard Rain, Tim Riley, author of Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary, gives us an in-depth portrait of Bob Dylan's ever-changing persona - his relationship with his songs, his players, his critics, his audience, and ultimately himself - through careful analysis of Dylan's music and performances.

Riley examines all of Dylan's incarnations - folksinger, rock star, gospel proselytizer, country-and-western singer - as well as his stints with the Band, the Traveling Wilburys, and the Grateful Dead, all within the context of rock's "least likely longest-running act." The author traces Dylan's humor and social conscience back to Woody Guthrie, and his eccentricity and subversiveness to Presley and early blues singers.

And he shows how Dylan stretched the boundaries of the music industry and informed America's consciousness in the sixties and beyond. Comprehensive in detail, provocative in its interpretive insight, Hard Rain is a richly original evocation of Bob Dylan's work and career. It is essential reading for both longtime Dylan fans and anyone interested in American popular culture.