A Review: Part Two
The Early Days in New York
Fresh off the coffeehouse gigs in Minneapolis, Dylan was on a mission when he landed in New York in 1961."It wasn't money or love that I was looking for...I was there to find singers, the ones I'd heard on records...most of all, to find Woody Guthrie...I was at the initiation point of square one but in no sense a neophyte."
He delves into colorful descriptions of the joints, streets, people, and places where he connects with other performers, sleeps on couches, and soaks up everything within his reach. The prose is poetic and the metaphors uncanny, with explicit details to capture the mood of the city and its characters in the early 60s.
Freddy Neil, who ran The Cafe Wha?, could "whomp the audience into a frenzy" with his guitar. Freddy reminded Dylan of himself, "polite but not overly friendly." Norbert, the cook, "...wore a tomato-stained apron, had a fleshy, hard-bitten face, bulging cheeks, scars on his face like the marks of claws -- thought of himself as a lady's man -- saving his money so he could go to Verona in Italy and visit the tomb of Romeo and Juliet. The kitchen was like a cave bored into the side of a cliff."
Unlike the performer Dylan who maintains a distance with his audience, the youthful Dylan connected with people, learned from them, and even stayed with them. He didn't rent an apartment for months because people like Dave Van Ronk, one of the folk singers he wanted to meet, invited Dylan to perform during his gig, and later, to stay at his place. One couple provided Dylan with a particularly comfortable home where he could hear trains and church bells, symbols of comfort and security from his childhood in Minnesota. Drawn to the books in their floor-to-ceiling library, Dylan read and dissected classics and authors for hours at a time.
Like a good storyteller, he keeps us wondering throughout the book how he got his big break. Only at the end does he finally pick up from where he left off in the second chapter to describe another artist's recording session in New York that opened the door to his future.
Other Artists
One day, Dylan heard a familiar voice coming through the speaker as he stood in the kitchen at Cafe Wha? It was Ricky Nelson, singing his new song, "Travelin' Man." He and Nelson grew up during the same era so he felt they probably had a lot in common. It was Nelson's smooth touch, fast rhythm, and tone of voice that Dylan liked, because it was different from other teen singers. "He sang his songs calm and steady, like he was in the middle of a storm, men hurling past him."
He praised Harry Belafonte, a man with strong convictions who could relate to poor folk, seasoned politicians, upper crust audiences, and youth. "To Harry, it didn't make any difference. People were people."
Roy Orbison "sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountain top and meant business...made you want to drive over a cliff...Orbison was deadly serious -- no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile."
Dylan credited Sun Records and Sam Phillips with creating some of the "most crucial, uplifting and powerful records ever made...Johnny Cash's records were no exception...ten thousand years of culture fell from him."
Before Dylan jumped on the Woody Guthrie bandwagon, Hank Williams was his favorite songwriter, but he notes that Williams was a singer first. Hank Snow was a close second to Williams and Harold Arlen was a strong favorite, as well.
Folk Music
Hard-core folk songs with loud strumming were Dylan's style in the early days in New York, but he wasn't sure there was an audience for this type of music. It wasn't from a lack of confidence, but more from what was trending in music, that caused Dylan to reach this conclusion.
A devout folk disciple, he said folk songs were the underground story about what was really going on with people. Always playing in his head, they helped him "explore the universe." They were "worth more than anything I could say." While he observed that other performers appealed to the audience, he was completely committed to the song, which might suggest one reason why he avoids talking to the audience even today.
Songwriters like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann were pumping out number one hits (see Beautiful Review), but Dylan's style didn't lend itself to the type of songs being played on the radio. "There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore...[they] were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality."
He spent a lot of time at the Folklore Center, "the citadel of American folk music" in New York, and befriended its owner, Izzy Young, who educated Dylan about the blues artists he liked. Dylan spent hours listening to folk and blues records in the back room. Similar to Elvis, who played the radio day and night and listened to records nonstop in the small apartment where he lived with his parents in Memphis (Elvis Presley: A Complicated King), Dylan was obsessed with listening to other artists.
Celebrity Life
Elvis and Dylan had little in common when it came to celebrity life. Elvis thrived on attention from fans and played to his audience while Dylan kept a safe distance with little need for adoration. Elvis hired his relatives to man the gate where fans gathered at Graceland. Dylan avoided fans who chased after him out and refused to leave him alone.
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At the age of twenty-five, he suffered a motorcycle crash (July 29, 1966) and took time off to recover from his injuries ( 50 Years Later Dylan's Motorcycle Crash Remains Mysterious). He was so exhausted from touring that he decided to extend the recuperation and take a respite from his career.
Married with children, he wanted to enjoy his family and provide some space for artistic development. It seems the traditional upbringing in Minnesota kicked in. His parents provided a stable, secure life for his brother and him, and he wanted the same for his own children. He believed whole-heartedly in American freedom and liberty and wanted to make sure he passed these values on to his kids.
Stepping out of the public eye when you're branded the "voice of a generation" is a difficult task. So many people expect so much from you. Dylan said he didn't belong to anybody. He ran from fans and moved multiple times to escape the crazies who disturbed his property and family because he was their savior or scapegoat.
"I really never was any more than what I was -- a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze. Now it had blown up in my face and was hanging over me."
The family first moved to Woodstock, New York where he played with musicians who would become known as The Band. Songs from that period were released years later in an album titled "The Basement Tapes." When fans found him, he rejected claims that he could predict the future and lead the way. At times, he said he "felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs." His self-proclaimed fantasy was to live on a tree-lined street, work nine to five, and grow pink rosebushes in the back yard.
A distraught Dylan concluded that "privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back." The difficult withdrawal from public life undoubtedly influenced future attitudes toward the press and fans. Already a private person, this seemed to dig him in deeper. After several moves to escape fans, he set out to manufacture a new image. He was photographed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem (he was called a Zionist); he recorded a country-western record in a new voice (the music press scratched their heads); and he started a rumor he was quitting music and going to the Rhode Island School of Design (on a search to find himself). All of that was fine with him. He recorded a bunch of songs and filled an album with whatever stuck, then went back, and filled another album with everything else. He didn't care what people thought because he was the father whose "family was my light and I was going to protect that light at all cost."
In a final effort to secure privacy, he moved the family to East Hampton, New York. The Dylans rented a house in his mother's maiden name. Hedges protected them from onlookers and their backyard led to a sand dune on the Atlantic. It was an idyllic life doing all the things that normal families do, like soccer games, bicycling, and boating. Still in his twenties, Dylan painted landscapes and concluded this was a place where a person could find his balance.
But the fangs of fame were never far away. When he accepted an honorary degree at Princeton University, he was introduced as someone who doesn't like public events, is very private. He cringed, but in the end, decided it was worth the effort because it gave him legitimacy, something he sorely needed in the late sixties after a long break from recording.
To be continued...
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