I’m a cultural connectcion, building bridges between regions and cultures. I didn’t plan it this way, but it began in Tupelo, Mississippi, when our hometown hero Elvis Presley came back to do a concert. Seeing the young Elvis live changed my life, and gave me a lifelong love of rock and roll. That’s why I wrote “Rock Eras. Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954-1984,” as well as my current book “Decoding Dylan. Making Sense of the Songs that Changed Modern Culture.”
But I’ve done other things in my life than listen to rock and roll. I received my PhD in Russian from Columbia University, and taught Russian at the University of Missouri for 31 years.
So…rock and roll and Russian literature. High culture and popular culture. It turned out that that was the perfect combination for writing about Dylan, because he too gives equal respect to high culture and popular culture,
