Boos & Booze: Dylan Knows a Bit About Both

Dylan as guest with The Band, NYC 1 January 1972.
Photo Joseph Sia, courtesy Bill Pagel archives.

Did Dylan really like boos? Levon Helm, in his autobiographical This Wheel's On Fire, shares an insider's take on Dylan's first world tour after going electric at Newport. The Band, formerly the Hawks, had never experienced anything like it. They were accustomed to being enjoyed, appreciated, loved. So when Dylan took his backing band on the road, not only were his fans shocked, the band was similarly in a new zone. According to Helm's account, the more the crowd hated it, the more Dylan seemed to enjoy it. (Levon ultimately dropped off the tour. That wasn't his thing.)

Greil Marcus, in his Like A Rolling Stone, offers this account of the Newport Folk Festival experience that preceded that world tour in 1965. "The crowd was with Dylan all the way for the acoustic half of the show, instantly catching the rhythm and refrain of the still-unreleased, never-before-played 'Desolation Row"... When Dylan came back with the band, for "Maggie's Farm," and electric "It Ain't Me Babe,"... and more songs that would appear on Highway 61 Revisited, again and again fury coursed through the crowd like a snake, the wails of hate beyond belief."

Eventually, Marcus writes, once they climaxed with "Like a Rolling Stone" the cheers outnumbered the boos.

For Dylan the being misunderstood didn't begin at Newport. When he was performing in a Hibbing High School talent show/assembly, standing at a piano, playing and singing, the music he performed was quite different from anything Northern Minnesota teens were accustomed to. While he was playing, the theater curtain was slowly and unceremoniously pulled closed.

And being disrespected didn't end a Newport either. In 1981 my brother and his wife caught a Dylan performance in Philadelphia during his three-year Gospel phase. Unfortunately, their fourth row seats were directly behind a group of belligerent drunken hecklers who had no qualms about expressing their hot displeasure as regards Dylan's latest iteration.

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The trigger for this blog post was a typo. That is, I was doing a Google search for Dylan books, and left off the "k" so that Google fed me links related to Dylan and "boos," which itself is a homonym for Booze. What follows are a few links to stories on this latter theme, beginning with this first, a website with 38 photos of Bob Dylan drinking.

If you didn't check it out, the big surprise is how in most of the photos he's drinking either tea or coffee.

The Google search was for "drinking Dylan" which resulted in a number of other Dylan's besides Bob, including an Irish Times story titled Drinking with Dylan, as in Dylan Thomas, whoever he was. I might have passed this over but for the surprise discovery that DT's firstborn son was named Llewelyn, which is awfully similar to Llewyn, the young folk singer navigating 1961 Greenwich Village in the Coen Brothers 2013 homage to the scene. Intentional?

The introduction of Heaven's Door, Dylan's new line of whiskeys, surprised a lot of folks, though the big surprise for one reviewer was that he'd never pegged the Bard as a whiskey man. My take is that he seems perfectly suited to the role, appears quite natural while sipping.

The image that first came to mind for me with regard to Dylan and drinking was of that evening he famously recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan in a single evening, many of the songs in one take, "lubricated by Beaujolais." I'd just looked up an account of that event while researching "My Back Pages" last month, so the story was fresh. Less fresh in my mind are a few descriptions I'd read of Dylan in the latter 80's drinking too heavily and performing while not always into it or at the top of his game. Word on the street at that time was that catching a good Dylan show was hit or miss, and it may have had something to do with...

Dylan fans who have taken delight in his Theme Time Radio Hour may recall that he did one of his early shows on Drinking, which begins with Dylan scarfing out this intro: “Sit down and enjoy yourself as we discuss the world of liquid libation, booze, sauce, hooch, white lightning, fire water, hard stuff, pick me up, gin and juice, moonshine, canned heat. We’re going to start out with George Zimmerman and the Thrills doing “Ain’t Got No Money to Pay for this Drink.” I need it bad...."

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A good place to sum up might be here with this excerpt from a Reddit Q&A with Jacob Maymudes. Maymudes' father Victor (1935-2001) served as Dylan's tour manager, body guard, companion and chess opponent over a period of decades. After a falling out and before his death Victor recorded stories from his lifetime of inner circle experiences. Jacob later completed the project of turning these stories into the book Another Side of Bob Dylan.

Here's an excerpt from the Reddit site:

Q: How did his drug use evolve over time?
Jacob M: Like a bell curve from one extreme to the other, now he's clean and sober. My father mentioned that they tried everything under the sun but the only thing that really "worked" for them was smoking pot and drinking booze.

Q: How did Bob Dylans personality change during all these years?
Jacob M: Stopping drinking had a big impact on Bob's personality. That was the biggest change. Anyone who's fought addiction like that can attest to the changes you endure, alcohol is mask you can wear to hide your insecurities, when you stop drinking you're forced to confront yourself and redefine who you are socially. That happened to Bob, he was much quieter the first couple of years sober but then began to be much more social.

You can read the full exchange here.

Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.

Gypsy Gal

When it appeared that all was lost, that both mother and child would soon perish, Olney sent word to the gypsies to send someone who could help deliver his wife from her suffering.

Three gypsy women arrived and his son was born within the hour. Partly out of gratitude and partly from delirium, the young father asked the gypsies to bless his son. The women wept and said it would be a privilege.

The boy, who was named Thomas after his father, was placed in the midst of a circle of candles. A strange ritual followed, with incantations in strange languages. The women rubbed a foul ointment on the infant's forehead and proceeded to prophecy. "One day, when this boy is a man, he will be permitted the gift of having one wish granted by the gods, when he wishes for it with all his heart. It will be like a dream, and the world will never be the same."

The prophecy was accompanied by a curious feeling of both elation and dread, which pierced Olney's heart like a thorn. He wondered what it would be that his son would wish for. And he wondered how the world would be changed.

~Excerpt from my short story "Unremembered History of the World"

When I wrote this story, which is now published and available in my first collection of published stories, I didn't know all that much about gypsies. Or rather, my understanding of gypsies was a fuzzy one associated with scenes in movies, fortune tellers and a sense of the exotic. One of our dogs, a black border collie, is named Gypsy.

So I woke this morning thinking about gypsies because the Bob Dylan song Spanish Harlem Incident was playing in my head. Spanish Harlem Incident appeared on his third album, Another Side of Bob Dylan.

Gypsies are not a homogeneous entity, however. According to the Joshua Project, there are approximately 266,000 people in this ethnic group that originated in India. They were musicians, entertainers and metal workers who were pushed out of India and went to Persia where they eventually broke into two branches, one group moving into Europe and the other remaining Middle Eastern. But there are also Scottish gypsies, and according to Wikipedia there were a number of different groups of these as well, tinkerers and the like.

According to the Smithsonian Education Project, on a page titled Migrations In History, there are as many as six groups of gypsies in the United States. Each has cultural, historic and linguistic traditions. Hungarian, Rom, Ludar, and "Black Dutch" are a few of these.

In many respects these gypsy groups reflect the sense of being strangers and pilgrims in a weary land, of being outcasts. Those who have their heart's hope set on a better place often feel as if "this world is not my home." Gypsies and many other groups through history have known this feeling of being outcast, this sense of apartness.

The word gypsy conjures up an image of something foreign yet fascinating. While the Beatles were singing I Want To Hold Your Hand, Love Me Do and She Loves You, and Gale Garnett was making popular his We'll Sing in the Sunshine, Dylan was scrawling lyrics like these from another dimension of the lyric universe.

Spanish Harlem Incident

Gypsy gal, the hands of Harlem
Cannot hold you to its heat
Your temperature’s too hot for taming
Your flaming feet burn up the street
I am homeless, come and take me
Into reach of your rattling drums
Let me know, babe, about my fortune
Down along my restless palms

Gypsy gal, you got me swallowed
I have fallen far beneath
Your pearly eyes, so fast an’ slashing
An’ your flashing diamond teeth
The night is pitch black, come an’ make my
Pale face fit into place, ah, please!
Let me know, babe, I’m nearly drowning
If it’s you my lifelines trace

I been wond’rin’ all about me
Ever since I seen you there
On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I’m riding
I know I’m ’round you but I don’t know where
You have slayed me, you have made me
I got to laugh halfways off my heels
I got to know, babe, will you surround me?
So I can tell if I’m really real

Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

Armory Update and other stories

If you are a building, it's not very comforting to know that there is a fate worse than abandonment. It's called the wrecking ball. Ten years ago Duluth's Armory was designated for demise. Then fate stepped in. Thus spared, proponents for the historic building began the arduous uphill task of finding funding to restore the building where Buddy Holly played his second to last concert. Bob Dylan was in the audience that day, claiming it as an experience that helped propel him to seek a career in music.

This weekend a front page story by Christa Lawler in the Duluth News Tribune got my "Aye"... Duluth Armory gets a million bucks.

Lawler wrote, "It’s another step toward making the Duluth Armory, on London Road at the far eastern edge of downtown, a usable public space. The Duluth Armory Arts and Music Center, the nonprofit that bought the facility for $1 in 2003, also announced Friday a partnership with the Alexander Company, a Madison-based developer that already has historic renovation credibility in this area: They restored the Irving School about 20 years ago."

I'd be curious what the final tally will be in the Armory's renovation. The pictures here show what years of neglect can do to an old building. Top right: a wall in one of the rooms. Below that, the buckled tile floor in another room.

Historic buildings do have an appeal. It puts us closer to the past somehow when we recall that entertainers like Will Rogers, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash and even pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff were here. It helps create something of a mystical ambience, as memory and history merge.

Personally I've been more than impressed by the restoration that has occurred at the old Clyde Iron Works complex in Duluth's West End. I'd done a few photo shoots there and trust me, it must have taken real imagination to see the potential in that disaster area. Today we have a classy restaurant, bakery, brewery, offices and a fabulous venue for events in a complex of building that was once a steel foundry manufacturing hoists and cranes.

In other news:

The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl last night, in case you missed it.

During the game CNN announced in an alert from Egypt that all the president's men and Mubarek himself had stepped down from power. Less than a minute later CNN announced that it was mistaken and that President Mubarek had not stepped down. In other words, CNN had overstepped.

In the meantime, it's time to run... have a great new week.

To Ramona

Another Side of Bob Dylan was Dylan's fourth studio album, released in August 1964 by Columbia Records. His previous album, The Times They Are A-Changin', has always been one of my favorites with its point social commentary evident in songs like Only A Pawn In Their Game, but there's not a one of these early productions that isn't a treasure. This album, while still acoustic, was criticized by many for the very reason that he did not produce more "finger pointing" songs. There is a lot of great material here, though.

I find it quite astonishing that Dylan could walk into a recording studio with nothing more than a guitar and a harmonica and produce a whole album like this with one take on each cut. That's right. Each song was recorded once. And he even had three leftovers that didn't make the LP including Mr. Tambourine Man.

These songs were months in the making though, with many gems. A number of pieces in this collection were covered by groups like The Byrds and The Turtles, a tradition that has continued now for five decades. (That is, the tradition of other artists performing Bob's songs.) The lines from one song here were written in response to JFK's assassination the previous November. Others show a deeper introspective stance than previous.

The Beatles made their first trans-Atlantic voyage in the beginning of that year, and though they never did a Dylan cover, his influence on their music is clear.

Recorded that evening on June 9th at Columbia's Studio A in New York, To Ramona is both lyrical and poignant.

To Ramona

Ramona
Come closer
Shut softly your watery eyes
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike
Get deathlike at times
And there’s no use in tryin’
T’ deal with the dyin’
Though I cannot explain that in lines

Your cracked country lips
I still wish to kiss
As to be under the strength of your skin
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I’m in
But it grieves my heart, love
To see you tryin’ to be a part of
A world that just don’t exist
It’s all just a dream, babe
A vacuum, a scheme, babe
That sucks you into feelin’ like this

I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin’ and returnin’
On back to the South
You’ve been fooled into thinking
That the finishin’ end is at hand
Yet there’s no one to beat you
No one t’ defeat you
’Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad

I’ve heard you say many times
That you’re better ’n no one
And no one is better ’n you
If you really believe that
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose
From fixtures and forces and friends
Your sorrow does stem
That hype you and type you
Making you feel
That you must be exactly like them

I’d forever talk to you
But soon my words
They would turn into a meaningless ring
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring
Everything passes
Everything changes
Just do what you think you should do
And someday maybe
Who knows, baby
I’ll come and be cryin’ to you

Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

Ennyman's Dylan

It boils down to this. I had painted an image of Dylan last month which impressed me and got a good reaction from friends. While mulling over a follow up, the idea of painting a new background came to mind. The curious thing about it is that the new background was actually a foreground.

One of the windows on our house is being replaced. The windows which had been removed needed to be discarded. I decided to place one of these window panes in front of the Dylan portrait I’d done and created a new background… on the glass in the foreground. It seemed the perfect reflection of Dylan’s multidimensional ambiguity, reversing foregrounds and backgrounds to provide a new way of looking at reality.

This past Friday evening I created the window background. On Saturday, I took pictures of the new image. I frequently photograph my art in the early morning sunlight, which gives a richer vibrancy to the colors.


Initially I set up my easel with the original Dylan behind the windowed background. But other varieties of Dylan soon began to emerge. First the window on the lawn, with the original on the easel. Then the background by itself, with Dylan as a lawn silhouette. (You can click on images to view larger.)

This variation reminded me of some of my early art experiments (around age 6) in which I did drawings, then cut out the eyes and looked at how the picture changes against different backgrounds. This evolved to posterized faces where I cut out the white part -- a cheek, portion of forehead, ridge of nose – and watched how the face changed when the paper was placed against a wall or carpet or other varieties of background.

Another photo here is a blend of my shadow and the Dylan image. I could call this “Dylan on My Mind” though a fixed title seems to escape me. Perhaps “Dylan, My Shadow and Eye” would be a suitable working title. I was trying to put the shadow of my mind on Dylan’s skull and get some kind of mind meld going. My head is so filled with forty years of Dylan lyrics that there are very few experiences that do not have a Dylan quote to go with it.

Finally, I took a photo of the Dylan background from behind and called it Another Side of Bob Dylan, a tribute to his fourth album. My Back Pages is one of my favorites songs from this collection. The lyrics, popularized later by The Byrds and re-collected on the Internet decades later, express some of the challenges and wonders we’ve all experienced.

Following these lyrics are two YouTube videos of Dylan performing the same song, first as recorded in 1964 for Dylan’s Another Side, and then a 1998 recording of Dylan live in Toronto. Enjoy!

MY BACK PAGES
Crimson flames tied through my ears

Rollin' high and mighty traps

Pounced with fire on flaming roads

Using ideas as my maps

"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I

Proud 'neath heated brow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth

"Rip down all hate," I screamed

Lies that life is black and white

Spoke from my skull. I dreamed

Romantic facts of musketeers

Foundationed deep, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path

From phony jealousy

To memorizing politics

Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists

Unthought of, though, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue

Too serious to fool

Spouted out that liberty

Is just equality in school

"Equality," I spoke the word

As if a wedding vow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand

At the mongrel dogs who teach

Fearing not that I'd become my enemy

In the instant that I preach

My pathway led by confusion boats

Mutiny from stern to bow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats

Too noble to neglect

Deceived me into thinking

I had something to protect

Good and bad, I define these terms

Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.

Ah, but I was so much older then,

I'm younger than that now.