Al Aronowitz, or "The Blacklisted Journalist", has nothing if not a shedful of the rock n' roll tales for to regale a fella with. Stories revolving around The Beatles' first taste of the old ganja, or Dylan's tours with The Band, or introducing "left-wing Jesus freak" Scott Ross to Dylan and The Beatles, all these nostalgic narratives bound forth from the man's pen.

Inevitably, though, ones appreciation of these tales of the "rock history" and what not, ultimately depends upon ones fondness for Aronowitz himself.

Never being one to play-down his own importance, Aronowitz peppers his stories, some reprinted from a number of sources, both print and digital, with an endearing arrogance that some may find off-putting, but which The Duke, no stranger to a bout of the old self-aggrandising himself, found to be rather refreshing. Not for Aronowitz the faceless rock journalist existing in the margins of contemporary culture and the reportage of such. He ploughs a trail not that terribly far removed from, say, Lester Bangs, and the contents of Volume One Of The Blacklisted Journalist are all the more engrossing as a result.

It's quite the achievement, is what The Duke would suggest, to publish a book about Dylan and those four fellas from Liverpool in this day and age, and have it appear quietly revelatory. Bookshelves squeal in anguished torment at the thought of another tome devoted to what these folks might have got up to on the morning of August 17th 1967, or how many pairs of sunglasses Dylan wore between 1965 and 1968, and yet Aronowitz comes off less as a fella re-treading ground long since battered to all hell, but as a fella offering a distinctly personal, on occasion surprising, account of these folks' existence at the height of their fame.

The chapter dealing with The Beatles first visit to the US, for example, may seem to be something of a pointless endeavor, on account of not only the reams of text already devoted to said event, but also the wonderful flick by Dougherty, Froemke and Maysles, recently issued on DVD, what offers a fairly exhaustive account.