Journalist Anthony Scaduto did not write many books about popular music, but his first, Dylan, was a groundbreaker in the field. Before this biography about Bob Dylan appeared in the early '70s, virtually all biographies about rock singers, and for that matter most other performers in the popular music field, had been cheap and superficial knockoffs, primarily devoted to cashing in on celebrity. Scaduto's book was the first, aside from Hunter Davies' authorized Beatles biography in 1968, to employ the same kind of in-depth investigative research that authors applied to other kinds of nonfiction works intended as serious studies of a subject. Even Davies' book, as an authorized biography, had to leave certain sensitive and controversial subjects off-limits. Scaduto was under no such constraints, and talked with many of Dylan's associates (and, briefly, with Dylan himself) to get a well-rounded portrait of his music and life. In so doing he helped make this approach acceptable, and even expected, for subsequent authors endeavoring to write meaningful biographies of rock musicians.

Before tackling the Dylan book, Scaduto was a reporter for The New York Post. He did some stories on pop music, and even did an obscure quickie on the Beatles, unimaginatively titled The Beatles, which came out on Signet in 1968. Oddly, when a publisher's editor first contacted him with the possibility of writing a rock biography, she suggested Johnny Winter. Scaduto made it clear that the only rock musician whose life story he wanted to write was Bob Dylan. As he remembered in Record Collector in 1997, he told the editor at the time, "'Basically, if I do anyone it has to be Dylan. There's no one else worthwhile to me. Dylan is a mystery and I want to solve that mystery.' At that time, his background was unknown."

The fact that he was, for that era, old for a rock critic (he was around 40 when he wrote the book) probably worked to his advantage. It was a time when young rock critics tended to idolize their subjects, an approach Scaduto never bought into. He also had a lot of reporting experience, not just about music, but also as a police reporter, sometimes covering organized crime. He knew the importance of investigative research, and digging for material that wasn't always going to be easy to find. Although he was unable to get interviews with some important figures -- Robbie Robertson, Scaduto recalled in a Record Collector interview, told him years later, "My God, if I knew that you were doing a legitimate book like you did, I would have talked to you" -- he did speak with crucial colleagues such as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, Jack Elliott, and Eric Von Schmidt.

Then Bob Dylan himself got concerned about the book's content after creepy Dylanogist A.J. Weberman -- the guy who would dig through Dylan's personal garbage bags in hopes of finding revelations -- told the singer, in Scaduto's phrase, that the book would be a "vicious exposé." Dylan called Scaduto and asked to read the manuscript. Under the condition that Dylan would not be allowed to make any changes, Scaduto granted this request, and was subsequently allowed to interview Dylan in a limited fashion. He would also make some changes, based on conversations with Dylan, that eliminated inaccuracies and filled information gaps, even if Dylan wasn't quoted. The mercurial Dylan, however, fell out with Scaduto shortly after the book was published, as the result of a letter Scaduto had written to The Village Voice criticizing the performer's "George Jackson" single.

Scaduto was not especially interested in making a career out of rock writing, but was at work on a Mick Jagger biography right after the Dylan one came out, enticed by a good advance from the publisher. In contrast to his Dylan book, the Jagger bio is not nearly as well respected by historians. In part that's because much information was based on interviews with Marianne Faithfull, who had recently broken up with Jagger; it was subsequently determined that some of this material was inaccurate, to Scaduto's regret. In addition, he never got cooperation or input from Jagger himself. Scaduto also wrote a biography of Frank Sinatra that, although (according to Scaduto himself) it was a combination of firsthand material and rewriting of coverage that had already appeared in newspapers and magazines, achieved notoriety as the first book to cover his possible connections to criminals.

Scaduto did a lot of writing on topics that had nothing to do with music. In his New York Post days he was known as an expert on the Mafia, and he did a book on Mafia king Lucky Luciano. He also wrote a mystery novel using an investigative reporter as the protagonist, A Terrible Time to Die, and wrote for Playboy and Penthouse. His Dylan biography has sometimes fallen out of print, but made the transition to the digital era with a Kindle Edition published in March 2009. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi