Almost Wordless Wednesday: On the Road Again with Nevada Bob Gordon

Miscellaneous images from Nevada Bob's current road trip up the East coast, 
now heading to the Midwest,  photographer Gary Firstenberg
along for the ride to document this journey.

Listening to the wind and soakin' up the rays.

Cooperstown. A lot of history here.

Grave site of Levon Helm. 

Howdy. My name's Bob Gordon.

Maine lobster. It doesn't get much better than this.

Big man Bob.

Sometimes it feels like the world is upside down.

Yes, Im willing to promote Coors. It's the only beer I drink.
When it's available.

"I wonder if this Gordon is also kin."

Forrest Gump sat here. Savannah.

Time to hit the road.

"By the time we got to Woodstock..."

Bob Dylan was here. Big Pink.

Cooperstown

HERE COMES THE PITCH
Nevada Bob is one of a kind. His soon to be published memoir is a story of an overcomer who did whatever it takes to shoulder the responsibilities of taking care of a growing family. Adversaries included a first job in a corrupt police force, a "we give up" prognosis by doctors when he battled cancer at age 31, and the hardships of carving out a life in the wilderness of the great Northwest. He's sung in Monaco, recorded in Nashville with one of the cornerstones of Nashville's A-team, and more.  Look for his book 50 Years with the Wrong Woman sometime in early 2022.

Gary Firstenberg is an award-winning photographer who has been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

* * * 

Related Links

Gary Firstenberg: Turning Negatives Into Positives

Come Along and Ride Nevada Bob Gordon's Long Train To Nowhere

Singer/Songwriter Nevada Bob Is A Storyteller, Too

Looking for a photographer to document your next road trip? Contact ennyman3@gmail.com and I'll see if Gary's available. 

Recommended: If you are a Netflix show producer, consider a pilot with Nevada Bob when he goes on his next road tour.

1966-07-29 Bob Dylan Hurt In Motorcycle Accident Near Woodstock, New York

ON THIS DAY
THIS STORY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PUBLISHED YESTERDAY

There were three big stories in 1966. One of them was Bob Dylan's World Tour, a fast and furious even that contributed to his icon status.

The second was the release of Blonde On Blonde, the third in a trio of remarkable albums unlike anything ever produced beforehand, or even since. (Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited being the two others in this trilogy.)

The third was his famous motorcycle crash, 55 years ago yesterday. 

Dylan was living in Woodstock at the time with his wife Sara. His album Blonde On Blonde was just beginning to ascend the charts. He went out for a ride on his Triumph motorcycle and what really happened we will never know. How badly he was hurt we don't know. How it happened, we don't really know. 

I say that only because some have concluded, after analyzing a lifetime of interviews, that anything Dylan says is suspect. 

Dylan in Woodstock. Even as a recluse,
the press could not stop talking about him. 

What we do know is that he stopped touring for a while. During this period of hibernation, the legend of Bob Dylan continuously grew. The recluse was talked about as much as when he were out in public.

I read somewhere that one of the reasons the Woodstock Festival of 1969 was held in Woodstock was because promoters were hoping Dylan could be induced to return to the stage. As it turns out, while Hippie Nation was descending on Woodstock, Dylan and family were packing their bags for the Isle of Wight Festival in the British Isles. 

Painting by the author.

* * * 

Other big events that have taken place on July 29 include the release of The Beatles' Help movie one year earlier, and the death of Vincent Van Gogh in 1890.

Related Links

Anniversary of the First Rock Double Album, Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde

That Thin Wild Mercury Sound by Daryl Sanders Turns Readers into Blonde On Blonde Insiders

Woodstock Story in a Bottle: Another Defining Moment of 1969

Insignia that appeared on Yasgur Farms milk bottles.

That summer two men walked on the moon. And in August 400,000 people saw stars.

Just as a good movie is made of memorable scenes, so history is remembered by its defining moments. For Americans, the year "1968" brings Viet Nam, assassinations (Bobby, MLK, Jr), and riots to mind

In 1969, two very different images were impressed upon us, that "one giant leap" for mankind and that escapist utopian dream, Woodstock.  (It's convenient to keep Altamont off-camera when we want to feel good about this Woodstock music and love experience as a culmination of the Sixties.)

There were many ironic features of the event, one being this one: the song we've all associated with it, "By the time we got to Woodstock," was penned by someone who wasn't event there. Joni Mitchell was in New York City to be on TV that weekend.

Here's a second irony. As every Dylan fan knows, Woodstock's most famous resident-in-hibernation, who many considered the hippest cat on earth, was packing his bags to head to England for an Isle of Wight concert.

* * * *
I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free

Yasgur's farm was actually 43 miles Southwest of Woodstock, in Bethel NY.
Photo courtesy Bill Pagel.

How many farmers can you think of, besides Old MacDonald, have been memorialized in song? Here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia account, by way of introduction.

Max Yasgur was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants Samuel and Bella Yasgur. He was raised with his brother Isidore (1926-2010) on the family's farm (where his parents also ran a small hotel) and attended New York University, studying real estate law. By the late 1960s, he was the largest milk producer in Sullivan County, New York. His farm had 650 cows, mostly Guernseys. 

Though Yasgur was a conservative Republican, his conscience also told him that older folks need to do something to bridge the generation gap. He was motivated by his principles and did not yield to those who were pressuring him to call off the festival.

* * * *

When I saw this bottle from Yasgur's farm, I couldn't help but think of the Old Testament Psalm 56:8 in which the psalmist/poet writes, "You put my tears in Your bottle." I think of all the tears that were shed during the 60s, from JFK to all the grief and sadness caused by Viet Nam. And sadly, worse was yet to come.

My next thought was even stranger. What were bottles like 3,000 years ago? King David wrote this song when he was captured by the Philistines. Whatever shape they took, for the psalmist it was not a time of music and celebration.

* * * *

Photo by Francisco Moreno on Unsplash

Woodstock took place from August 15 to 18, 1969. The performers most of us remember most were the ones on the album and the film. Some were excluded due to contract issues.

Here are some stories that go deeper and provide more perspective than I have time to produce. If you have time, check them out.

A New York Times account of one of the iconic photos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/arts/music/woodstock-famous-couple.html

A good summing up of Woodstock by the NYTimes
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/arts/music/woodstock-50-anniversary.html

Rolling Stone interview with Bob Weir, who was shocked. (Literally)
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/woodstock-grateful-dead-bob-weir-855472/

Time Magazine published this review of the latest Woodstock documentary
https://time.com/5638166/woodstock-pbs-generation-review/

Here were a couple thought-provoking paragraphs from the above.

For those who were coldbloodedly watching numbers, even in 1969, Woodstock simply identified a big, promising segment of the youth market, ready for the commercial exploitation that would ensue almost immediately. “Woodstock Nation,” despite Abbie Hoffman’s hopes when he coined the term, turned out to be a demographic rather than a political force.

This one is also barbed.

But forget the nostalgia. Millennials have every right to point out how Woodstock represented baby boomer privilege in crystalline form. We got a free marathon all-star concert. (I don’t begrudge my $18.) We swarmed a previously unspoiled dairy farm and its surroundings. We absolutely thought we were the center of the universe. And afterward, someone else had to clean up the giant mess we left behind. Insert the global-warming analogy.

You can insert a number of alternative messes here.

Were you there? What was your story?

Related Links
For Carlos Santana, Woodstock was a Trip
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/arts/music/santana-woodstock.html
Surviving Woodstock, a New Yorker story by Hua Hsu
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/surviving-woodstock

Elliott Landy's Woodstock Photo Shoot, Nashville Skyline and a Few Extras

Landy's famous shot.  The music was great, too.

Many of us are unfamiliar with the name Elliottt Landy, but most of us recognize a few of the photos he took. One set of photos from the Landy portfolio is the iconic cover shot of Dylan's Nashville Skyline. Two weeks ago a friend sent this story about that famous Woodstock photo shoot. The article prompted me to plunge into one of my containers of Dylan memorabilia to find the Saturday Evening Post in which another photo shoot of Dylan at Woodstock took place. Were these Landy's as well? It's not the same guitar. Nor the same outfit. And the article by Alfred G. Aronowitz offers no clues, cites no identity for the various photos of pop legends.

The first three featured stars in the article, titled Pop: The Royal Family, are Jimi, the Doors and Janis. Morrison, Hendrix and Joplin all dead within a couple years.

Dylan in hibernation mode at Woodstock.

It was an unusual time, when the recording industry took risks. Not everyone who got a swing at the plate would have Dylan's longevity. Some of the artists in this Post overview included The Fugs, Ravi Shankar, Tiny Tim and Charles Lloyd, who were all in the spotlight for a time. The Beatles' unending allure had already been cemented, but within a year or so the Fab Four would splinter, releasing the individual members to produce work that corresponded with their own internal rhythms. Simon & Garfunkel likewise parted to follow their own paths.

Interestingly enough, when the Post article came to Dylan he was clearly separated from the herd. His portion of the the Post's coverage of the pop music scene was titled, Enter the King: Bob Dylan. He was the very definition of hip. (Click link for a list of others who were featured in the article.)

All this to say it was fun to read the article about Landy at the BestClassicBands.com. And while looking for that old 1968 Saturday Evening Post I came across a few other images that seemed worth sharing, some quite local in scope. Enjoy!

The times were a-changing. This was a generation in motion.

This Wheel's On Fire: An Insider's Take on Life with The Band

Not quite finished but far enough along to throw my two cents into the ring regarding Levon Helm's version of his life, The Band and the roots of Rock and Roll. Born Mark Lavon* Helm in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas in the heart of "Tornado Alley" seems as far removed from fame as you can get, so it just goes to show where dreams can take you when you apply yourself.

In addition to being a musician with The Band, the team of musicians Dylan selected to back him on his first tour when he went electric, Helm went on to have a career in Hollywood, playing Loretta Lynn's father in Coal Miner's Daughter, and Chuck Yeager's pal in The Right Stuff among other things. What gives the book its chops is his eye-witness experiences during the emergence of rock and roll, and the manner in which black Mississippi Delta R&B crossed into the popular culture.

Helm's account of life as a boy in Turkey Scratch is as interesting as life in Woodstock making music with Dylan after his motorcycle crash. The houses on stilts, the floods, tornados and the amazing synthesis of black and white culture in shared rural poverty where music carried the human spirit aloft all proved formative for Helm. It was a period of history that will not be repeated as the times changed for rural farmers everywhere.

Like many musicians who got the bug to play, Levon Helm hung out in places he was too young to be and began performing as a guitar player at a very early age. When Ronnie Hawkins invited him to play with his band the Hawks, Helm headed north to Canada to where their rockabilly energy set them apart from everyone and everything.

The story is told sequentially about how this band was formed, one by one brought on for their talent as other dropped off -- primarily to settle down because these were some wild cats. Most of these fellows came from rough backgrounds, not quite the starched collar kids from prep school, and they weren't afraid to mix it up when necessary (drunk boyfriends of the girls who they seemed to attract like flies.) After six years of performing -- in Canada, the Deep South and the Jersey Shore -- Dylan contacted them to join him in a world tour. He was doing something new, a 2-part concert in which the first set would be acoustic and the second electric.

The Hawks had been Ronnie Hawkins' band, shaped after the back-flipping leader's vision of what a band should be, but eventually even Hawkins dropped out for a more domestic life. When the Hawks were recruited to surround Dylan with sound, their name became what we now know as The Band. Being associated with Dylan certainly helped strengthen their cred and a record contract led to songs most everyone is familiar with such as The Weight, Up on Cripple Creek, and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

You know from the outset it's going to be a sad book. Helm begins with the suicide of Richard Manuel, foreshadowing the stresses their success would bring them later in the story.

(L to R) Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel.

As with everything in life, nothing remained the same as circumstances evolved. Success did not make them happy as drugs and greed got in the way. This book is Helm's version of how the whole thing fell apart. Martin Scorsese's film The Last Waltz, produced by Robbie Robertson, proved to be the nail in the coffin for the group.

Here's an accurate review of the book at Amazon.com by someone named Marian:

"Technical writing flaws make This Wheel's On Fire hard to read in spots, but the description of a remarkable collaboration from the inside is brilliant. Any creative person will benefit from reading it. And, of course, mild through his description is of the legal/copyright betrayal of the other four by the guitar player, there's a hard lesson on view for creative people."

I picked up the book for a little more background for Dylan's latest Bootleg Series #11: The Basement Tapes. Helm was there and pulls no punches. It sounds authentic and fair. The book gets mostly four and five star reviews at Amazon, but some of the problems I had with the book were shared by others a few times. Here's my short list:

The book is co-written by Stephen Davis, who frequently incorporates narratives and stories from other people who were there at various points. The problem is, on numerous occasions I didn't catch who was talking so it became confusing and hard to follow. I got tired of the extra work required to try to figure it out.

For me it was a little too boastful. I lost track of how many times Levon Helm stated that The Hawks were the best band ever, or statements to that effect. On one occasion he states that he believed they were better than the Beatles and the Beach Boys. This would be overlooked had he not also included numerous references to how good looking he was.   

The real power in the book comes from his candid assessment of the events that unfolded as the Band disintegrated. You could feel his pain.

And for anyone serious about a recording career, you'll gain plenty of insight on the importance of reading your record contracts and knowing your rights. All too often we can't see the dark side of success because we're blinded by the lights.

I still believe it was an important book. 4.5 stars out of 5. 

*Though born Lavon, so many people mispronounced or spelled his name wrong that he just went ahead and changed it to Levon. 
EdNote: Like all the members of The Band, Helm was a multi-instrumentalist. I have pictured him singing while playing drums, but he began with a guitar and took up mandolin while in Woodstock, among other things.
Photo source: Wikipedia / Heinrich Klaffs via Flickr

When The Post Called Dylan King

"When you're young, you think you're going to live forever. The sooner you learn that you're not, the more time you have to do something about it." ~Alfred G. Aronowitz

So begins the 1968 Saturday Evening Post feature story on the royal family of pop music. It's more pictorial than text, but that's what magazines like Life and National Geographic did for us in such vivid color. The showed us, and didn't just tell us the stories, each picture worth a thousand words.

The cover of this November 2 issue is a photo discretely captioned, "A rare picture of Bob Dylan in seclusion." In the upper right of the page, where it lists the exclusive stories in this edition, we read, "Bob Dylan and the Pop Scene."

Publications like Readers Digest and the Post work overtime coming up with story titles and cover shots that will sell more magazines. Testing must have shown that for this story Bob Dylan would draw more buyers than the clan of pop music characters assembled within.

The first portion of the article is called "Pop: The Royal Family." In retrospect, the opening lines are almost frightening by their prescience. The first three pictures feature Jim Morrison and the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. All three would be dead by age 27. It's a sobering beginning to a piece that is aimed at celebrating the antics and excess of youth. But in the world of pop, excess appears to be the path to success.

The selection of celebrated musicians ranges across genres and anticipates much. Janis holds center stage on her page, surrounded by smaller images of Buck Owens, Frank Zappa, Country Joe McDonald, B.B.King, and Arlo. Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane feature prominently on the next two page spread, surrounded by The Fugs, Aretha Franklin, Ravi Shankar, Dionne Warwick, Tiny Tim, Al Kooper, Otis Redding, Merle Haggard, Mavis Staples and the Beach Boys. The next spread is equally exciting for fans of the era. Ritchie Havens, Diana Ross, Charles Lloyd, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, Herb Alpert, and The Rolling Stones fill this spread.

Turn the page. Big black and white shot of Dylan playing his guitar and smiling big. Caption across the centerfold reads: Enter the King, Bob Dylan. The article is a one page summary of how Dylan ended up in Woodstock, how he'd gather Robby Robertson and the band to join him there where the rented a house nicknamed Big Pink. It's the story of Dylan's controversial motorcycle accident and convalescence out of the public eye.

Aronowitz spells out why young Dylan was king to many followers of the scene. "He had started a civil war in the folk community, rearranged the pop charts, fathered a new generation of poets and helped shaped the probability that contemporary music will become the literature of our time. Even the Beatles, after they met Dylan for the first time in 1964, yielded to his influence."

This period of seclusion seems, in retrospect, to have been one of the most significant decisions the young Dylan made. Pulling out of the spotlight gave him a chance to incubate in preparation for a much longer career than many of his peers.

The following summer a major event occurred in Woodstock. Everybody who was anybody would have loved to be there performing. A motion picture came out of the event. Albums as well. And the musicians who played became household names.

But quietly, the resident of Woodstock spent the weekend packing his bags, for he was heading to another concert that week, where he would be the headliner. It would be his first live performance in three years... the Isle of Wight. 

TO BE CONTINUED

Woodstock Myths and Realities

For the past several weeks I’ve been planning to write something about Woodstock, simply because the theme seems obligatory at some point during the month of this 40th anniversary year. When I stumbled upon the article The backlash against Woodstock's 40th anniversary it seemed like a good start point.

Michael Lang’s article is mildly tinged with a cynical contempt for the overindulgent homilies to this symbolic moment in time. He begins in this manner:

Reaching the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival can only mean one thing: nostalgia. It’s been in plentiful supply during the past few months. Predictable retrospectives have been written. An obligatory Blu-ray DVD of Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary Woodstock has been released, with a multitude of extras and a hideously tacky dashiki cover. Even the director Ang Lee is capitalising on the occasion with his portrait of Elliot Tiber, a key figure in finding the festival site, in the forthcoming feature film Taking Woodstock. While those boxes of remembrance have all been ticked, an official 40th anniversary concert is off the agenda.

I myself bought into many of the hippie ideals of the time, but I wasn't blind to the manipulations that were taking place as well. The notion of city kids dropping out and living off the land in communes was a fantasy no one in their right minds could expect to work for raising families, but there were a few kernels of value within the ideals, such as living more simply, sharing, the importance of community among others. Unfortunately, in a broken world these ideals tend to deteriorate in the face of rank selfishness and irritating pettiness.

Lang points out that the commercialism surrounding the anniversary has been part of the Festival since the beginning. He also addresses the co-opting of the Flower people by political machinations.

In truth, the rebellious flower-power spirit so closely intertwined with the American pop culture of the 1960s was in its death throes by the time Woodstock happened. The youthful push towards liberal politics, social unity and higher states of consciousness reached a peak in 1967 with the Human Be-In, in San Francisco, which popularised hippie culture, giving rise to the so-called Summer of Love later in the year. Subsequently, the term “counterculture” became a part of the national idiom, but the hippie movement’s rapid growth also signalled its dilution. In 1968, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and the ensuing chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, left political reformists floundering. The slaying of Martin Luther King Jr further polarised the civil-rights movement between nonviolent protesters and the growing “by any means necessary” contingent. Meanwhile, the nationwide unrest over the escalating Vietnam conflict grew ever more pronounced. Perhaps most damning for the hippie populace, however, was Nixon’s victory in the 1968 presidential election — something he achieved, in part, by appealing to that “silent majority” of the electorate who viewed the counterculture as an ugly blot on the American landscape.

The article is worth reading only as a balancing act against the nostalgic hype, though frankly it (the hype) has been much less than I expected actually. Forty years is about the right amount of time for nostalgia to come to fruition. Barbie and Slinky each made a brief comeback at forty.

For an alternate view of how the rock festival scene played out, check out the film Gimme Shelter, a documentary which follows the Rolling Stones who went on tour in late 1969, culminating in the ugly out-of-control free concert at Altamont Speedway in Oakland. Not pretty. And the Isle of Wight festival that followed was even more harrowing.

Hopefully idealism among youth will not be a passing fancy. I'll be more disappointed if we find our young people to be cynics from the getgo, attracted more to apathy than to dreams of a better future for those generations to come.