Michael Gray
Michael Gray is a critic, writer & broadcaster recognised as a world authority on the work of Bob Dylan, and is an expert on rock’n’roll history and the blues, with a special interest in pre-war blues.
He grew up on Merseyside, went to The Cavern, studied History & English Literature at York University, including under the controversial, brilliant critic F. R. Leavis, and as a student journalist interviewed A. J. P. Taylor and Jimi Hendrix.
His pioneering study Song & Dance Man, published in the 1972, was the first full-length critical study of Dylan’s work. A second, updated edition was published in 1981. The massive third edition Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan - 994 pages, including a 112-page study of Dylan’s use of the blues - was published a fortnight before the end of the 20th Century (and in 2000 in the US). Still selling, a seventh reprint was issued in February 2008.
In 1985 he published Mother! The Story of Frank Zappa, updated editions of which came out 1986, 1992, 1993, 1994, 2003 and 2007; a selection of pieces on Dylan, All Across The Telegraph: A Bob Dylan Handbook, was co-edited by Gray in 1987, and in 1996 he co-authored The Elvis Atlas: A Journey Through Elvis Presley’s America, published in hardback in New York by Henry Holt’s Reference Books Division.
He has given talks for the Institute for Folklore Studies in Great Britain & Canada, the Northern Ireland Arts Council, at York, Exeter & Liverpool Universities and Goldsmiths College, London, and at conventions in Austria, Manchester & Leicester. In Spring 2005 he was the Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner at Girton College, Cambridge, and was the closing speaker at the University of Minnesota’s Bob Dylan Symposium in 2007. Since 2000 he has given over 60 talks at arts festivals, literary festivals and arts centres on the topics ‘Bob Dylan & the History of Rock’n’Roll’ and ‘Bob Dylan & the Poetry of the Blues’ - talks that are more like one-man shows than lectures - including at the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame.
His work has been published in Melody Maker, Let It Rock, Creem, Rolling Stone, The Times, Literary Review, Independent, Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Weekend Telegraph, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Telegraph, Canadian Folklore Canadien and many other journals. He is a Guardian obituarist for tennis players and major figures in rock’n’roll.
His vast book The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, published by Continuum in New York in 2006 (paperback 2008) won the International Association of Music Libraries’ C.B. Oldman Prize for an outstanding work of reference and research. The first investigative biography of pre-war bluesman Blind Willie McTell, Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes: In Seach of Blind Willie McTell, which is also part travelogue, was published by Bloomsbury in 2007 (paperback 2008) and was shortlisted for the 2008 James Tait Black Prize for Biography. Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes will be published in the US by Chicago Review Press on September 1 (2009).
Michael lives in South-West France with food-writer Sarah Beattie.
47 articles
List of articles in the library
Bob Dylan: An Attempt at Analysis: What's So Good About Dylan?
Essay by Michael Gray, Oz, October 1967
DYLAN'S LYRICS are not poems, they are parts of songs. This is not to assert that Dylan is not a poet but simply to remember that ...
Bob Dylan: From Rock to Acid Rock
Essay by Michael Gray, International Times, 18 October 1968
FROM ROCK to Acid Rock is first a ride to freedom, second an illusion. Rock, the kind of music for which Rosko still does extravagant ...
The Incredible String Band: Incredible String Band: York University, York
Live Review by Michael Gray, Rolling Stone, 9 August 1969
YORK IS A WALLED medieval city that belongs to Rowntrees Chocolate. You step off the train on some evenings and the scent of After Eight ...
Emerson Lake And Palmer: Emerson, Lake & Palmer Ascending
Profile and Interview by Michael Gray, Crawdaddy!, August 1971
Their first album rides high in the bestseller lists. Their first tour, from the Fillmore East to Carnegie Hall, has been a real and resounding ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, December 1972
GLORIFIED MAGNIFIED is a new album from a famous star and his relatively new much-publicised band, and comes in a glossy, snazzy package – fold-out ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, January 1973
A NEW ALBUM by John Prine is an event. Let it be said at once that Prine is immeasurably the best singer-songwriter to come out ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, March 1973
THERE ARE TIMES when rock music seems about as relevant as O-level Geography, and listening to Don McLean's new album is one of them. ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, March 1973
THIS IS ONE of those albums which makes me feel I should apologise to the artist concerned for previously undervaluing her work. Even as late ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, July 1973
WHEN YOU HEAR of an album a fortnight or so before getting hold of it, and pepper the intermediate couple of weeks with anticipation, you ...
The Everly Brothers: Creators Of Country Pop
Retrospective by Michael Gray, Melody Maker, 10 November 1973
THE EVERLY BROTHERS – Don and Phil – first emerged in the rock 'n' roll market in 1957, with a unique harmony-vocal sound, a modern ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, December 1973
SLADE REMINDS ME of 1963 – not because their music is that regressive, but because the pattern is the same: Lennon-McCartney/Jagger-Richard (or Nanker-Phlenge, as they ...
Jimi Hendrix: How Rock Society Blew Another Mind
Essay by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, February 1974
WHEN JIMI HENDRIX flew into England for the first time, with Chas Chandler, they went straight from the airport to Zoot Money's house for an ...
Elvis Presley: Revolt Into Style
Essay by Michael Gray, Melody Maker, 9 March 1974
ELVIS PRESLEY. The giant among giants, and yet also that strange kind of comic-book hero, Mr Reverso Man. ...
Roy Orbison: 1960's Man Of Integrity
Profile by Michael Gray, Melody Maker, 9 March 1974
ROY ORBISON seems fated to be Mr. 1960. That's when he began a cascade of hit singles. That's when he became a star in Britain. ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, April 1974
ME, I LIKE IT. I don't accept the much-aired view that if it had been up to Dylan, he would never have issued an album ...
Maggie Bell: Queen Of The Night
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, April 1974
THIS REVIEW WAS planned as a joint one, intended to incorporate new albums from Carole King, Buffy St. Marie and other notable women artists. However, ...
Buffy Sainte-Marie: Buffy St Marie: The Best Of Buffy Sainte-Marie Volume 2 (Vanguard)/Buffy (MCA)
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, June 1974
WHEN BUFFY ST. MARIE is good she is very, very good, and when she is bad she is horrid. It is her misfortune that her ...
Curtis Knight, Jimi Hendrix: Knight Life: Curtis Knight
Report by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, June 1974
JIMI HENDRIX FANS will be familiar with Curtis Knight’s name: he’s the man who found Hendrix down and out in New York in 1965, gave ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, June 1974
I FOUND VAN MORRISON by a most tortuous, circumlocutory route: first (after the mediocrity of 'Here Comes The Night') there was, of course, 'Gloria', which ...
Frank Zappa: Outrage And Invention
Profile by Michael Gray, Melody Maker, 6 July 1974
FRANK ZAPPA is the only West Coast musician who emerged in the 1960s without giving free promotion to the California Tourist Board. ...
Brian Auger: Straight Ahead Again
Interview by Michael Gray, Melody Maker, 27 July 1974
BRIAN AUGER has been stomping round the commercial radio stations as part of his duty in promoting his latest album Straight Ahead by the Brian ...
Joe Cocker: I Can Stand A Little Rain
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, November 1974
ONE APPROACHES a new Joe Cocker album in the same way one peers back at a road accident – to see if what's there is ...
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, December 1974
DOUG SAHM'S LAST album, Doug Sahm And Band on Atlantic Records, was one of the very finest bits of squashed vinyl of 1973. Sahm's band ...
The Byrds, Roger McGuinn: Roger McGuinn and Country Rock: Older Than Yesterday
Retrospective and Interview by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, January 1975
IT'S FRIDAY 30TH AUGUST, in Birmingham England, and it's afternoon. Roger McGuinn is listening to a track off his second solo album, Peace On You. ...
Lynyrd Skynyrd: My Top Ten: Lynyrd Skynyrd
Interview by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, February 1975
Compiled on coach-trips and in hotel bars by Michael Gray ...
Bob Dylan: Blood On The Tracks
Review by Michael Gray, Let It Rock, April 1975
I DON'T KNOW HOW, but some adjustment in our consciousness must now follow from the fact that it is Bob Dylan who has produced, in ...
R.I.P.: Calendar of Death in Rock
Special Feature by Michael Gray, Record Mirror, 29 October 1977
WE'VE HAD heavy rock, blues rock, folk rock, glam rock and punk rock. And now, in 1977, it's... snuff rock. ...
Buzzcocks: The Buzzcocks: The Other One Speaks!
Interview by Michael Gray, ZigZag, May 1979
WHEN YOU GO and see Buzzcocks, there are four of them. Up at the back, as high on his rostrum as an Old Bailey judge, ...
Eric Clapton: Eric Suits Himself: Clapton At Birmingham NEC Arena
Live Review by Michael Gray, The Times, 1990
ERIC CLAPTON IS a complex man – or, expressed in the terms his image encourages, he's an odd bloke, old Eric. ...
Report by Michael Gray, The Times, 7 May 1990
IT HAS TAKEN the music industry five years to transform the rock-stars-for-charity mega-event from Bob Geldof's coherent effort to ameliorate a real tragedy to this ...
Tony Bennett: Hi-De-Hi-Me To The Moon: Tony Bennett At Butlins
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 30 December 1990
IT WAS AN ADVERT in a tabloid that caught my eye. "Lose Your Heart To Tony Bennett... Butlin's Super Weekend Break." Mesmerised, I read on: ...
Frank Zappa: The Double Life Of Frank Zappa,
Profile and Interview by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 18 September 1992
SINCE CONTRACTING prostate cancer in 1989 Frank Zappa, now 51, has cancelled many public appearances and new projects. Tonight he re-emerges at the Frankfurt Music ...
Obituary by Michael Gray, Daily Mail, 7 December 1993
FRANK ZAPPA, who has died of cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 52, might well be seen as the last wild man of ...
East Coast Lives: The Rockin' Chiropodist
Profile by Michael Gray, LiveWire, October 1994
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to interview Charles White if you walk alongside him around the streets of his adopted hometown, Scarborough: too many people are greeting him ...
Elvis Presley: 25% Of The King: Col. Tom Parker
Obituary by Michael Gray, The Guardian, 23 January 1997
COLONEL TOM PARKER, the flamboyant tent-show hustler who was Elvis Presley's Svengalian manager, has died in Las Vegas at the age of almost 90. He ...
Obituary by Michael Gray, The Guardian, 17 December 1997
ROBERT PALMER, THE distinguished American music journalist and blues expert, has died in New York aged 52. ...
Bob Dylan: The Art of the Ageless Bob Dylan
Retrospective by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, April 2001
Bob Dylan is approaching his 60th birthday on a tide of adulation. Michael Gray, a long-time Dylan chronicler, considers his lasting appeal. ...
Elvis Presley: The King and I: A Visit to Graceland
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 15 August 2001
KREATURE COMFORTS – "the Lowlife Guide to Memphis" – claims that Memphis can offer visitors "the best or worst of vacations: you could hit a ...
Bob Dylan: On the trail of the Bobcat: Bob Dylan
Live Review by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2002
THE OMENS are bad from the start. Take the Stockholm subway to Globen, the stop for the arena, and you alight in a postmodern estate, ...
Elvis Presley: He Made Old Men's Blues Sound Young: Remembering Elvis
Comment by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2002
WE REMEMBER his ignominious end, and the cavalcade of white Cadillacs driving through Memphis for his funeral 25 years ago this month, but mostly the ...
Elvis Presley: Memphis Still Sings The Blues
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2002
MEMPHIS IS ONLY technically in Tennessee. In psychic reality, it's the capital of Mississippi. Everyone who lives there knows it. What this 50 per cent ...
Bob Dylan: Is It Rolling Bob?: A Reggae Tribute to Bob Dylan
Review by Michael Gray, Observer Music Monthly, 15 August 2004
THE SUBTITLE CONFESSES that all we have here is a concept album – that despite the liner notes claiming that "Jamaica was into Bob Dylan", ...
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 24 October 2004
Michael Gray follows the trail of some great American musicians who moved from the rural South in the early 1900s. ...
Profile by Michael Gray, Rock's Backpages, December 2010
N.B. This profile is an updated version based on Odetta's entry in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia ...
The Humblebums, Gerry Rafferty, Stealers Wheel: Gerry Rafferty, 1947-2011
Obituary by Michael Gray, The Guardian, 4 January 2011
Singer and songwriter known for 'Stuck in the Middle With You' and 'Baker Street' ...
Memoir by Michael Gray, Michael Gray Outtakes, 2012
IT'S 20 YEARS since the writer, socialist and East End of London doctor David Widgery died prematurely, and I want to join those who have ...
Obituary by Michael Gray, The Guardian, 22 August 2021
Half of the Everly Brothers, the famous US pop duo known for hits such as 'Bye Bye Love', 'Wake Up Little Susie' and 'Cathy's Clown' ...
back to LIBRARY
