Bob Dylan (60 page)

Authors: Greil Marcus

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Composers & Musicians, #Entertainment & Performing Arts

BOOK: Bob Dylan

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I thank all those who helped see the work collected here into print: at the
San Francisco Express Times
(later
Good Times
), the late Sandy Darlington, Marvin Garson, and Joyce Mancini; at
Rolling Stone,
over the years from 1968 to the present, Jann Wenner (from before
Self Portrait
and on from there, but especially for his understanding my contribution to the issue on the 2001 mass murders in an instant), John Burks, Ben Fong-Torres, Robert Kings-bury, Barbara Downey Landau, Christine Doudna, Sarah Lazin, David Young, Terry McDonell, Susan Brenneman, Anthony DeCurtis, Robert Love, Joe Levy, Ally Lewis, and Nathan Brackett; at
Creem,
Dave Marsh, the late Barry Kramer, the late Connie Kramer, and Deday LaRene; at the
New York Times,
the late Seymour Peck, John Darnton, Martin Arnold, Olive Evans, and John Rockwell, who found the piece I was trying to hide inside a review of
“Love and Theft”;
at
City,
John Burks; at the
Village Voice,
Robert Christgau, Richard Goldstein, and Doug Simmons; at
San Francisco Focus,
Heidi Benson; at
New West
(later
California
), Jon Carroll, Nancy Friedman, Janet Duckworth, Bill Broyles, and B. K. Moran; at
Artforum,
Ingrid Sischy, David Frankel, Robin Cembalest, Ida Panicelli, Jack Bankowsky, Sydney Pokorny, Melissa Harris, and Anthony Korner; at
Threepenny Review,
always a port in a storm, Wendy Lesser; at
Image
(later
San Francisco Examiner Magazine
), Paul Wilner; at
Interview,
Ingrid Sischy, Graham Fuller, and Brad Goldfarb; at
Salon,
Bill Wyman and Gary Kamiya; at the
Los Angeles Times Book Review,
Steve Wasserman and Tom Curwen; at
Nouvelle Revue Française,
Michel Braudeau; at
Granta,
Liz Jobey and Sophie Harrison; at the
East Bay Express,
Michael Covino; at
City
Pages,
Steve Perry, Will Hermes, Terri Sutton, Jim Walsh, Michael Tortorello, and Melissa Maerz; at
Mojo,
Paul Trynka and Andrew Male; at
Black Clock,
Steve Erickson; at
GQ Style,
David Annand.

I thank as well those who gave me the chance to tell many of the stories I found in public: Tom Luddy, Gary Meyer, and Julie Huntsinger of the Telluride Film Festival; Jerome McGann and Eric Lott at the University of Virginia; Akeel Bilgrami at Columbia University; M. Richard Zinman at Michigan State University; Rabbi Alan Berg at Temple Beth El in San Mateo; Mary E. Davis at Case Western in Cleveland, with Warren Zanes and James Henke at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; Eric Weisbard, Ann Powers, and Robert Santelli at the Experience Music Project in Seattle; Colleen Sheehy for heroic work at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota; John Harris and Thomas Crow at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; Karen Kelly and Evelyn McDonnell at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York; Ben Saunders at Duke University; for the events commemorating the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, the late Michael Rossman; Ramona Naddaff at the University of California at Berkeley; Robert Batscha at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York; the late Harvey Weinstein and Pamela Johns of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Foundation in New York; Lawrence Weschler at the New York Institute for the Humanities; Margaret O’Neill of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Zebrock in Paris; Heather O’Donnell at Princeton; Mark Francis at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; Robert Parks at the Morgan Library in New York; Adele Lander Burke at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles; Steve Weiss of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; Barry Sarchett at Colorado College in Colorado Springs; Grazia Quaroni, Isabelle Guadefroy, Alaín Dominique Perrin, and Sophie Perceval at the Fondation Cartier de l’art contemporain in Paris; James Cushing at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo; Toby Kamps of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston; Andrea Veyaveeran at the Graduate Center for the Humanities in New York; Michael Lesy, Ralph Hexter, and Norman Holland at Hampshire College in Amherst; Jay Bonner of the
Asheville School in Asheville; Liam Kennedy of the Clinton Center for American Studies at University College, Dublin.

I thank those who let me find my themes, and hear so much I would never have thought of myself, in the semipublic of a seminar room or a lecture hall: at the University of California at Berkeley, Kathleen Moran and Carolyn Porter, many times over; at Princeton, Sean Wilentz, Carol Rigolot, Anthony Grafton, and Judith Ferszt; at the University of Minnesota, Ann Waltner, Paula Rabinowitz, David Weissbrodt, Barbara Lhenhoff, and Nicole Tollefson; at the New School in New York, Robert Polito, Laura Cronk, Luis Jaramillo, and Lori Lynn Turner.

I’ve been lucky to spend years of hours in record stores and book stores: Record City, where from 1963 to 1965 you could find same-day tickets to Bob Dylan’s Berkeley Community Theatre shows, where I bought
Magic Bus—The Who on Tour,
the first record I ever reviewed, and where I came across an album with a dramatic cover called
King of the Delta Blues Singers;
Moe’s Books, which for years featured an elegant
Royal Albert Hall
bootleg; Rather Ripped, where the most commonplace item could seem unlikely; Asta’s, named for Nick and Nora’s dog; Down Home Music, with its vast caverns of obscurity; Amoeba Records, a fan’s paradise from the day it opened. The office of Bob Dylan Music has itself been a kind of record store, not only for tickets and records so warmly and generously provided, but for the kind of
I can’t believe you haven’t heard
talk that goes on in record stores, or ought to; it’s a pleasure to thank Debbie Sweeney, Diane Lapson, Robert Bower, April Hayes, Callie Gladman, and Lynn Okin Sheridan—and, for his keen understanding of metaphysics, Jeff Rosen.

As twice before, Clive Priddle of PublicAffairs has been an editor with a sharpening sense of where a book is in a manuscript; working with him is always gratifying, as it is with Susan Weinberg, Melissa Raymond, Tessa Shanks, Robert Kimzey, Christine Marra, Jane Raese, and Gray Cutler. I hope a long relationship with Lee Brackstone at Faber and Faber will only be longer; my thanks there go as well to Helen Francis and Kate Burton. I have relied on
the friendliness, responsiveness, and judgment of Wendy Weil, Emily Forland, and Emma Paterson at the Wendy Weil Agency, of Anthony Goff at the David Higham Agency in London, the late Mary Kling of La nouvelle agence in Paris, and Christian Dittus and Peter Fritz of the Paul and Peter Fritz Agency in Zurich.

Emily and Cecily have been a constant presence in this book almost from the time the first piece in it was written, and Steve Perry, first as an editor, then as a friend, then as a family member, for more than twenty-five years. But Jenny was there from almost before I first heard of Bob Dylan, and as a girl from St. Paul, she already had.

LYRIC AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Lyric Credits

“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams, from
The Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909-1939,
copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Illustration Credits

Page 120: Revenant Archives.

Page 147: Joyce Harris, Domino Records publicity photo.

Page 261: Used by permission of Bob Carlin Music.

Page 262: © Tate, London 2010.

Page 281: Gemma Baumer.

Page 347: Courtesy of the author.

Page 368: Courtesy Colleen Sheehy and Monte Edwardson.

Page 385: Courtesy of the author.

Page 405: Photo of Lee Monroe Presnell, 1951, from
Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still—The Warner Collection, Volume I
(Appleseed Records, 2000).

Page 407:
mptvimages.com
.

Page 415: Courtesy of the author.

Page 432: AP/Wide World Photos.

Page 440: Photo of Paul Nelson courtesy of Jann S. Wenner Archives.

INDEX

Songs and albums not otherwise
identified refer to commonplace
material (“Omie Wise”) or to
performances by Bob Dylan; films
are noted by director

“Abraham, Martin and John” (Dion)

Absolutely Fabulous
(television)

“Absolutely Sweet Marie,”

“Acadian Driftwood” (Band)

Ace, Johnny

“Across the Great Divide” (Band)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(Twain)

Adventures of Phoebe Zeitgeist, The
(comic serial)

“Against the Wind” (Seger)

Agee, James

Agnew, Spiro

“Ain’t No Grave” (Crooked Still)

“Ain’t No More Cane” (Band)

“Ain’t Talkin’,”

Alabama Sacred Heart Singers

“Alberta #1,”

“Alberta #2,”

“All Along the Watchtower,”

“All American Boy, The” (Parsons)

“All the Tired Horses,”

“All This Useless Beauty” (Costello)

Alleged in Their Own Time
(Holy Modal Rounders)

Allman, Greg

Allman Brothers Band

Amendola, Scott

“America: A Tribute to Heroes” (concert)

American Hot Wax
(Mutrux)

“American Pie” (McLean)

Anas, Brittany

“And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (Pogues)

Anderson, Emma

Anderson, Eric

Anderson, Laurie

“Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes, The” (Costello)

Angus, Ian

Animal House
(Landis)

Another Side of Bob Dylan

Anthology of American Folk Music
(Harry Smith)

Apollo Theater (Harlem)

“Apple Sucking Tree,”

Arbus, Doon

“Are You Leaving for the Country” (Dalton, Drones)

“Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Presley)

Armstrong, Louis

Arthur, Emry

“Arthur McBride,”

Artists in Times of War
(Zinn)

Arzu D2

“As I Went Out One Morning,”

Ashcroft, John(fig.)

Ashley, Clarence

Astaire, Fred

Astral Weeks
(Morrison)

“At Last” (James)

Atkins, Henry

Avedon, Richard

Ayers, Bill

“Baby Don’t You Do It” (Gaye/ Band)

“Baby Let Me Follow You Down,”

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