1. UNIJUÍ - UNIVERSIDADE REGIONAL DO NOROESTE DO ESTADO DO RIO
GRANDE DO SUL
MARCELO FABRÍCIO DA FROTA
HEADING OUT FOR NOWHERE:
SUPPOSITIONS ON A MAN CALLED DYLAN
OFFICIAL BOOTLEG EDITION…
IJUÍ
2010

2. 2
MARCELO FABRÍCIO DA FROTA
HEADING OUT FOR NOWHERE:
SUPPOSITIONS ON A MAN CALLED DYLAN
OFFICIAL BOOTLEG EDITION…
Monografia apresentada ao Curso de Letras –
Habilitação em Língua Inglesa e Respectivas
Literaturas da Universidade Regional do Noroeste do
Estado do Rio Grande do Sul, como requisito parcial
à obtenção do título de Licenciado em Letras.
Orientador: Larry Antonio Wizniewsky
IJUÍ
2010

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DEDICATÓRIA
Dedico esse trabalho a mamãe Maria e papai Edson, que
se orgulham muito do filho maluco beleza que eles têm e que por mais
que não ele fale muito, os ama de coração e mais do que tudo no
mundo...

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AGRADECIMENTO
Agradeço a Deus e aos deuses do rock’n’roll, que
estiveram sempre comigo, tanto na realização deste trabalho
quanto em todos os momentos importantes da minha vida.
Agradeço também meu professor orientador e amigo
Larry Antonio Wizniewsky, por seu empenho e extrema paciência
com esse maníaco perfeccionista que entregava os textos dois meses
depois do prazo, mas que sempre buscava honrar o privilegio de tê-
lo como mestre e orientador.
A todos aqueles que estiveram comigo nesses anos de
faculdade, amigos eternos como Ricardo V. Alves (Judeu), Camile
Merten, Jamile Konageski, Taise Dornelles, Lucian Engers (Gelol),
Anne Elise Martins Fucilline e tantos outros que vieram e que
foram, mas que nunca serão esquecidos.
Amo vocês seus bastardos, onde quer que estejam.
Um agradecimento especial a Simone Drunn, que amo de
uma forma especial e única.

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EPÍGRAFE
I know, it’s only rock’n’roll, but I like it...
Eu sei, é só rock’n’roll, mas eu gosto...
Mick Jagger/Keith Richard
Esse trabalho foi desenvolvido com doses maciças de The
Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Clash, Miles Davis, Paul
McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, George
Harrison, John Coltrane, Radiohead, Coldplay, Melody Gardot,
Frank Sinatra, Tom Jobim The Smiths, Joy Division... e Bob
Dylan.

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RESUMO
Este trabalho tem como objetivo fazer um parâmetro entre a vida e as
muitas personalidades de Bob Dylan, fazendo assim uma ponte entre sua biografia e
a evolução/revolução da música americana nos anos 1960. Para isso, além de uma
extensa pesquisa biografia, também foi usado o filme Não Estou Lá, cinebiografia de
Dylan produzida em 2007 e que faz um parâmetro preciso e meticuloso do homem e
do mito que Bob Dylan se tornou através dos anos. Além da pesquisa biográfica e
fílmica, nove músicas foram analisadas, com o intuito de descobrir/desvendar
aspectos da personalidade do homem Bob Dylan por trás de sua obra. As três
mídias que o trabalho usou como referencia: música, cinema e literatura ajudaram a
compor um quadro rico e detalhado de Dylan e sua obra, na medida em que uma
complementou a outra, ao passo que também mostrou que a obra de Bob Dylan
caminha livremente entre gêneros, características de uma obra completa e que se
completa a com o passar do tempo.
Palavras-Chave: biografia, gênero, música, filme, interpretação, Bob Dylan.

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ABSTRACT
This work aims to make a parameter between the life and the many
personalities of Bob Dylan, thus making a bridge between his biography and the
evolution/revolution of American music in the 1960s. To do this, besides a vast
biographic research, it was also used the film I'm Not There, Dylan biopic produced in
2007 and that is a meticulous and precise parameter of man and the myth that Bob
Dylan has become over the years. In addition to biographical and filmic research,
nine songs were analyzed, in order to discover/uncover aspects of the personality of
the man Bob Dylan and what lies behind his work. The three media that the work
used as a reference: music, cinema and literature have helped to compose a rich and
detailed picture of Dylan and his work, as it complemented one another while also
showed that the work of Bob Dylan walks freely between genres, features of a
complete work, a work that completes itself as time goes by.
Key-words: biography, genre, music, film, interpretation, Bob Dylan.

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INDEX
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................09
1 BOB DYLAN: FROM BIRTH TO (FIRST) DEATH……………………………………11
1.1 A Good Writer is Hard to Find………………………………………………………...11
1.2 Hibbing, Minnesota..............................................................................................12
1.3 The University of Dinkytown.................................................................................18
1.4 Talking Greenwich Village…………………………………………………………….22
1.5 The Times They Are A-Changin’……………………………………………………..28
1.6 The Ghost of Electricity........................................................................................31
1.7 Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Road…………………………………………..39
2 I'M NOT THERE: SUPPOSITIONS ON A FILM CONCERNING DYLAN...............44
3 I'M NOT THERE: THE SOUNDTRACK………………………………………………..64
3.1 Song's Analyses ……………………………………………………………………….67
3.1.1 Song to Woody - Hey, hey Woody Guthrie I Wrote You A Song……………….67
3.1.2 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - I'm On The Dark Side Of The Road………...71
3.1.3 My Back Pages - Ah, But I Was So Much Older Then…………………………..75
3.1.4 It Ain't Me Babe - I'll Only Let You Down………………………………………… 80
3.1.5 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Strike Another Match, Go Start Anew………….85
3.1.6 Like A Rolling Stone - When You Got Nothing, You Got Nothing To Lose……91
3.1.7 Positively 4th Street - I Used To Be Among The Crowd, You're In With……...101
3.1.8 Just Like A Woman - But You Break Just Like A Little Girl…………………….107
3.1.9 I Shall Be Released - I See My Light Come Shining……………………………117
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………….121
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..123

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INTRODUCTION
The present work consists in a study of who is Bob Dylan, from his birth in
Hibbing, Minnesota, until his fatidic motorcycle crash in Woodstock, in 1966. The first
chapter consists in a biographic study, using as sources books, documentaries,
magazines, record’s booklets and the internet and seeks to uncover the many faces
of Bob Dylan, from the time he was an Elvis Presley/Woody Guthrie fan until he
becomes one of the pillars of American music in the XX century, being an influence
to great bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds among many
others.
In the second chapter the search for Bob Dylan takes place in his biopic I’m
Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007). Here I try to find out who is Bob Dylan, through the
many character and many personalities that appear on screen. The second chapter
also seeks to show the relation between Dylan and his music, because it is the music
that is present in every frame of the film, and the main reason of Dylan existence as
a myth. I also try to show as much the “real Dylan”, if there is a real one, is there in
the film, as much as he is imagined, invented, omitted or ignored.
The third and final chapter consists in a brief analysis of the film’s soundtrack,
seeking to show how the soundtrack was important in the making of the film. It also
consists in the analyses of nine Dylan’s songs, such as: Song to Woody, Don’t Think
Twice, It’s All Right, My Back Pages, It Ain’t Me Babe, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue,
Like a Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street, Just like a Woman and I Shall Be
Released. The songs were analyzed considering their weigh in Dylan’s mythology as

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well as, their significance in Dylan’s life and the influence they caused in the music at
the time they were released.

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1 BOB DYLAN: FROM BIRTH TO (FIRST) DEATH
1.1 A Good Writer is Hard to Find
The interpretation of the word, its use, as powerful instrument of beauty,
controversy, change, and massage is an art that many ambitious to master, but only
a few do it properly. Artists that through their words involve us in a universe that first
began in their minds, and through their books, verses, songs, becomes part of our
universe, and many times, of our lives. But what makes a great writer? That’s a tough
question to answer, and certainly many people have tried to answer that question
since literature began to be referred as literature. For me, a great writer is a person
who can master the art of the word, and through this mastering, transcend the barrier
of time and place, and be relevant, no matter where, and mainly, when. It seems like
an easy thing to do, but in fact, it isn’t. Not many writers have transcended this barrier
of time successfully and become today, recognizable, just for their names, and their
works, for the masses. For instance, when we say Shakespeare, people almost
immediately remember Romeo and Juliet, some might remember Hamlet or even
Macbeth, or Hamlet’s most famous line “To be or not to be, that’s the question.”
Even people who don’t speak English as their first language know this line. When
one says Bram Stoker, we remember Dracula, Mary Shelley links to Frankenstein,
Mrs. Dalloway to Virginia Woolf, On the Road to Jack Kerouac, Blindness and The
Gospel According Jesus Christ to José Saramago and so on.
This work will not go through the easy way to pick up one of these great
writers and talk about their careers and their masterpieces, which would be too
obvious and easy. This work is about a great writer who wrote a bad book and

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discovered in 1965, while writing a song of 42 verses that he could say whatever he
wanted to say in this format of writing. He doesn’t have one line like Shakespeare
that people recognize instantaneously, or others that only scholars do, he has many.
If you sing out loud, “Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I'm not sleepy
and there is no place I'm going to. Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, In
the jingle jangle morning I'll come following' you.” or “How does it feel, How does it
feel, To be without a home, Like a complete unknown, Like a rolling stone?”, people
will know immediately who you’re talking about. This work is about the man who is
consider today, by the Time Magazine, “The Greatest American Artist Alive”, a man
who changed the course of American music, an artist that was imitated, analyzed,
hated, loved, followed as a messiah, ignored, hated and loved again, but never
equaled or easily understood. The man who is still a mystery, for his fans and his
biographers, the man that in his image is “more than one person”, as Todd Haynes,
in his 2007 film I’m not There wisely put. The man who has chosen to be called Bob
Dylan.
1.2 Hibbing, Minnesota
Robert Allen Zimmerman, alias Shabtai Zisel Ben Avraham, alias Bob Dylan
was born in St. Mary's Hospital at 9:05 p.m. on May 24, 1941. He was the first child
of Abraham and Beatrice Zimmerman of Duluth, Minnesota, a small mining town
located near the Canadian border. Dylan’s father, Abraham Zimmerman was son of
Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, two immigrants that came to America in 1907,
escaping from the anti-Semitic persecution in Odessa, Russia. Dylan’s mother,

13. 13
Beatrice Stone was daughter of Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, Lithuanian Jews who
arrived in America in 1902.
The Zimmerman’s were a traditional American family who believed in hard
work and in the sanctity of the family, doing well in the New World. But in 1946, they
were facing hard times, when Dylan’s brother David was born, Abraham Zimmerman
had lost his job, and was stricken with polio, making it impossible for him to work. The
family had to move from Duluth to Hibbing, that was only 75 miles away up country.
Hibbing was Beatrice Zimmerman hometown and the family moved to her mother’s
house, since their income wasn’t enough to get their own place. However, after
settling down in Hibbing, it didn’t take a long time to Abraham gets back on his feet
and soon he joint his brothers Paul and Maurice in a new business enterprise, selling
furniture and electrical goods.
After the World War II was over, the business bloom and the Zimmerman’s
circumstances improved, allowing the family to leave Beatrice’s mother house to
move to a house at 2425 Seventh Avenue. In the documentary No Direction Home
(Martin Scorsese, 2005) Bob Dylan remembers his childhood at his father store, “The
first job I ever had was sweeping up the store, I was supposed to learn the discipline
of hard work or something, you know, and the merits of employment”.
Dylan grew up in the nest of a respectable and comfortable middle class
family, showing since his early age aspects of his personality, such as being quiet
and introspective, not giving any sign of the genius that would astonish American
music in the 60’s. As Patrick Humphries wrote:
“With every crumb picked up from the detritus of Dylan’s early years and
adolescence, you try to detect the extraordinary, sifting for signs of that
remarkable future. But in truth, and without the benefit of hindsight, you

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would have been hard-pressed to distinguish the young Robert Zimmerman
from his contemporaries.” (The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, page 06)
Dylan himself, in Chronicles Volume One recalls of himself at that time as
“ordinary to the point of Dullness”.
One thing that might have distinguished him from his classmates was his love
for poetry and music. Dylan used to spend hours in his room scribbling, drawing and
writing poetry. It was maybe the beginning of Dylan’s writing that in a matter of years
would place him among the greatest American songwriters of the XX century.
“I always wanted to be a guitar player. Since I was ten, eleven or twelve, it
was all that interested me. That was the only thing that I did that meant
anything really. Henrietta was the first rock’n’roll record I heard. Before that
I’d listen to Hank Williams a lot. Before that, Johnny Ray. He was the first
singer whose voice and style, I guess, I totally fell in love with. There was
just about something about the way he sang When Your Sweetheart Sends
a Letter that just knocked me out. I loved his style, wanted to dress like him
too, that was real early though.” (Bob Dylan, Biograph booklet, page 05)
In 1955, the rebellion spirit was beginning to spread in the American’s youth
and one film in particular helped to light that spark on Dylan. Starred by James Dean,
Rebel Without a Cause arrived in Hibbing when its protagonist, James Dean was
already dead, victim of a fatal car crash that same year. The story of the young rebel
Jim Stark impressed a lot the young Dylan, at the point of him and his closest friend
John Bucklen trade lines from the film with perfect accuracy. Dylan also devoured
Dean’s two other films, East of Eden and Giant, at the point of sneaking home to go
to the movie theater.
James Dean would soon be replaced by Elvis Presley as Bob Dylan’s idol and
eminent adolescent inspiration. Dylan himself reminds the first time he heard Elvis
voice and the impact it had on him:

15. 15
“When I heard Elvis’s voice I just knew I wasn’t going to work for anybody
and nobody would be my boss. Hearing him for the first time was like a
busting out of jail”. (The Rough guide to bob Dylan, page 08)
Dylan had shown some musical ability since his early age, and by the time he
was eleven, he had learned the rudiments of piano. He tried also to play other
instruments, such as trumpet and saxophone, before jumping to acoustic guitar. At
that time, soon before Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Hank Williams, Dylan’s
musical influences were Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
The school classmate B. J. Rolfzen remembers one of Dylan’s first time on
stage:
“Robert was in my class, and that was the era they had the talent show.
Robert, of course, was up the stage. His concert began and it was quite
surprising. I saw Robert stand at the piano and my guess is that he was
trying to destroy it. He was pumping on the thing. It was a most unusual
thing to observe. The principal pulled the curtain on him. He said to me, “I
didn’t think that music was suitable for the audience, so I pulled the
curtains””. (No Direction Home Documentary)
In my point of view, Dylan first experience on stage in Hibbing showed him
that if he really wanted to pursue a career in the music industry, the first logical step
was to get out of that town.
In 1956, Bob Dylan was playing in a band called The Jokers, which he and his
friends Larry Keegan and Howard Rutman formed at a Jewish summer camp. The
band lasted about one year and they played at school dances and even appeared on
a local TV show in Minneapolis.
After The Jokers split up, Dylan formed The Shadow Blasters also with school
friends in 1957. The Shadow Blasters played some gigs in Minneapolis and St. Paul,
but also split up.

16. 16
Playing around town, if wasn’t making Dylan famous, at least was catching the
attention of the girls. The first girl he recollects to have a crush on him was Glory
Story, and in the documentary No Direction Home Dylan reminds that this was her
real name. The other one was an adolescent from Hibbing called Echo Star
Helstrom, and in the same documentary Dylan says that it was a very “strange
name”, since he never met a girl called Echo. He also adds that “Both these girls, by
the way, brought out the poet in me”. Echo Helstrom must really have left some mark
in Dylan, because it’s believed (by some or many people, depending on the source)
that Girl from the North Country, one of the best Dylan songs, was in fact, written for
her, although it also contains elements of a future girlfriend called Bonnie Beecher.
Echo was different from the other Hibbing girls, and Dylan was attracted to her
blonde hair, leather jacket and jeans while the other girls in Hibbing were still wearing
skirts up to their knees and ponytail. Dylan and Echo met each other in the L&B Café
and discovered they both loved the same late night radio show No-Name Jive. After
that night, and for the period of one year, they were inseparable.
Dylan’s new band, The Golden Chords was formed in 1958. It was a trio
composed by Leroy Hoikkola (Drums), Monte Edwardson (guitar) and a certain
Bobby Zimmerman (piano). Here we’re able to see the first attempts on Dylan to alter
his name. The band played in school dances and in one of this occasions Dylan
adapted the words of a Little Richard song including the name Echo in the lyrics,
showing how much in love he was at that time. In that same year, Dylan’s
enthusiasms by rock’n’roll was beginning to fade away. We can see Dylan’s
disappointment in this line: “Tutti Frutti and Blue Suede Shoes were great
catchphrases and driving pulse rhythms and you could get high on the energy. But

17. 17
they weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a serious way.” (Liner notes to 1985’s
Biograph compilation).
In fact, according to The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, the records that would
change his musical taste and throw him to a completely deferent way of the “easy”
rock’n’roll were given to him by an uncle in his high school graduation party. They
were of a folk singer called Leadbelly, and contained songs such as Rock Island Line
and Midnight Special that became the Holly Grail for Dylan at that time and certainly
trailed his way into folk music. Dylan himself gives his impression on what was folk
music for him in the documentary No Direction Home:
“I had heard folk music before leaving the Iron Range. I’d heard John Jacob
Niles somewhere, strangely enough. I don’t know, folk music was delivering
for me something, you know, which was the way I always felt about life, you
know, and people and, you know, institutions, and ideology and it was just,
you know, uncovering it all.” (Bob Dylan line, No Direction Home
documentary)
Soon before going to the University of Minnesota, Dylan played some gigs
with Bobby Vee and the Shadows, who was quite a famous band in the area. He
played some gigs but was not accepted as a member because he could only play in
the key of C. This few presentations didn’t prevent Dylan to tell everybody in Hibbing
that he played piano at Bobby Vee’s hit song Suzie Baby. Few people believed in
him, apparently, Dylan’s ability to mix true with fantasy were already infamous among
the ones who knew him.

18. 18
1.3 The University of Dinkytown
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are cut by the Mississippi River,
the same river that have inspired blues musicians for decades and that Dylan himself
celebrated in many of his songs.
When Dylan arrived in the Twin Cities to “study”, he was still full of rock’n’roll in
his head, but rock wasn’t quite famous at Dinkytown, the bohemian neighborhood
adjacent to the university campus, that in many ways came to offer Dylan much of
the education he needed to become the composer he was about to be. Two years
earlier, On the Road, by Jack Kerouac had become a national best seller, and the
students used to read beatnik literature regularly, the politic was left wing and the
sons that were listened to at the Scholar and in other places of Dinkytown was the
folk. (Dylan – A Biography, Sounes, Howard, page. 54)
The artists of the blues and folk music were the heroes of the students,
musicians like Pete Seeger, Odetta, Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. Dylan himself
states that Odetta was one of his first big influences in folk music:
“The first thing that brought my attention to folk music was Odetta. I heard
one of her records in a record store… At that precise moment, I went out
and exchanged my electric guitar and my amplifier for an acoustic guitar.”
(Dylan – A Biography, Sounes, Howard, page. 55)
Soon Dylan became part of the folk music scenario of Dinkytown. By the
winter 1959, he was wandering from house to house, practically homeless, sleeping
on the floor or in the coach of friend’s apartments and playing with a local musician
called Spider John Kroemer at the Scholar. Kroemer taught Dylan about the blues
and introduced him to musicians such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Patton,
Blind Willie McTell and others.

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In Dinkytown Dylan met the second significant woman in his life. Bonnie
Beecher was just a mouth older than Dylan and became a true love for him for the
year to come. She helped Dylan to get by, smuggling food out of her sorority house
for him and sometimes helping him find a place to sleep. Her persona was later
immortalized in the song Girl from North Country, which was also written for Echo
Helstrom.
Also in Dinkytown Dylan began to introduce himself as Bob Dylan. And the
stories about how Robert Zimmerman became Bob Dylan are many. Echo Helstrom
claims that one day in 1958 Dylan drove her home and told her he had changed his
name to Dylan. Other version given by Dylan himself in the early 60’s is that he took
the mane from an uncle on his mother’s side of the family called Dillon. The thing is
that there was no Dillon in the family. There was a family in Hibbing that traced to the
days of the pioneers called Dillion, which may have impressed the young Bob
Zimmerman. Another explanation still related to the name Dillon was the character of
the TV show Gunsmoke, which Dylan must have watched when he was a teenager.
The most popular version is that Bob Dylan took his name from the Welsh
poet Dylan Thomas, which is the one that I’ve chosen to believe and for many years
Dylan strongly tried to refute. Dylan told to one of his biographers “Straighten out in
your book that I did not take my name from Dylan Thomas.”
There are people that give substance to its version: Larry Kegan, a friend from
Hibbing, recalls Dylan waling around town with a Dylan Thomas poetry book in his
hands. Other friend from Hibbing says that Dylan told him in 1959, that the name
came from Dylan Thomas. There’s also a friend from the Greenwich Village time that
says: “Out in Minnesota, there was a young man who was inspired to change his

20. 20
name to Dylan because of the poet Dylan Thomas.” (Liam Clancy, No Direction
Home documentary). Dylan himself said in 1968:
“I haven’t read that much of Dylan Thomas. It wasn’t that I was inspired by
reading his poetry and going ‘Aha!’ and changing my name to Dylan. If I
thought he was that great, I would have sung his poems and could just have
changed my name to Thomas” (The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, page 11)
In Chronicles Dylan said he thought to change his name to Robert Allyn after a
sax player named David Allyn. Therefore he rejected the name on account of its
abbreviated for (Bob Allyn), and admitted he was reading some poems of Dylan
Thomas at that time, so, as he puts: “Dylan and Allyn sounded similar”. It seems to
me it is the more truth we can get from him.
Woody Guthrie was the next, and the greatest influence Dylan would have for
the years to come. Dylan came to know Guthrie’s music via a drama student called
Flo Castner, and remembers it as, “an epiphany, like some heavy anchor had just
plunged into the water of the harbor”. Dylan expresses his admiration in the
documentary No Direction Home:
“Woody Guthrie had a particular sound. And besides that, he said something
to go along with his sound. That was highly unusual to my years. He was a
radical, his songs had a radical slant. I thought “ooh” you know, like…
“That’s what I want to sing.” “I wanna sing that.” I couldn’t believe that I’d
never heard of this man. You could listen to his songs and actually learn how
to live.” (Bob Dylan, No Direction Home documentary)
Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound for Glory also impressed Dylan:
“One guy said, “You’re singing a Woody Guthrie song.” He gave me a book
that Woody Guthrie wrote, called Bound for Glory, and I read it. I identified
with that Bound for Glory book more than I even did with On the Road. This
songs sound archaic for most people. I don’t know why they didn’t sound

21. 21
archaic to me. They sounded like these songs were happening at the
moment, to me.” (Bob Dylan, No Direction Home documentary)
Having found a true hero in Woody Guthrie, Dylan soon started thinking that
the Twin Cities weren’t big enough for him. It took him some time to emulate Woody
Guthrie style to sing and to talk. Bonnie Beecher said that Dylan, in many
conversations, insisted on being called Woody, refusing to respond if she didn’t call
him so.
This fixation on Woody Guthrie was lighted due to a bronchitis that according
to some theories altered Dylan’s voice, giving him that nasal whine that we know
today. It was in the same time that Odetta come to town. Odetta heard Dylan sing,
and he asked her if he could do that professionally. She responded that she believed
it was possible. (The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, page 20)
With Odetta’s words of encouragement, Dylan concluded that the Twin Cities
had, in fact, became too small for him. He went back to Hibbing to inform his parents
that he was leaving college to dedicate entirely to music, a decision that didn’t leave
Abe and Beatrice happy. But even with their disapproval, Dylan went on with his
decision. Dylan comments his need to reach the big city:
“I just go up one morning and left. I’d spent so much time thinking about it I
couldn’t think about it anymore… I made a lot of friends and I guess some
enemies too, but I had to overlook it all. I’d learned as much as I could and
used up all of my options. It all got real old real fast. When I arrived in
Minneapolis it had seemed like a big city or a big town. When I left it was
like some rural outpost that you see once from a passing train. I stood on the
highway during a blizzard snowstorm believing in the mercy of the world and
headed East, didn’t have nothing but my guitar and suitcase.” (Biograph
booklet, page 06/07)

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With his mind made, on December 21st, 1960, in search of Woody Guthrie,
Greenwich Village and fame, Bob Dylan headed to New York City.
1.4 Talking Greenwich Village
Dylan arrived in New York City on January 24th, 1961. It must have been hard
for the young Dylan to give his first steps in the big city, a wild vast place where he
knew nobody, having no job contacts or a place to spend the night.
“Got out of the car on George Washington Bridge and took the subway down
to the Village. I went to the café Wha?, I looked out at the crowd. I most
likely asked from the stage: “Does anybody know where a couple of people
could stay tonight?”” (Bob Dylan, No Direction Home documentary)
Greenwich Village was the logical place for Dylan to land. Like Dinkytown, the
Village, located in downtown Manhattan, was a bohemian center for singers,
songwriters, poets, artists and writers, as well as political activists, free spirits, and
people who liked living on the fringes of mainstream society. There were corner cafés
and coffeehouses where folksingers performed, usually for the other pay than the
charge thrown into a hat at the end of the night. In the 1950’s the Beats had ruled the
Village and embraced jazz as their means of musical expression. By the time of
Dylan’s arrival, the clubs began to featuring more and more folk music, making it
possible for Dylan to fit in and find work. (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook 1956-1966,
page 15)
Now that he got to New York City, Dylan’s next step was to find Woody
Guthrie. Woody Guthrie was confined in a hospital in New Jersey, patient of the fatal
Huntington’s chorea. Dylan met Woody in January 29, and sung him some songs, as
well as talked to him. Woody Guthrie wrote in a sheet of paper and gave it to Dylan.

23. 23
Although impressed of having met Woody Guthrie and waving that sheet of paper as
if it was a sacred thing, Dylan felt quite disappointed to find Wood Guthrie in the state
he was.
“So I found out where Woody Guthrie was and I took a bus out to
Morristown. Basically, I think it was an insane asylum. I thought about it
later, it was a sad thing, they put him in a mental home because he just had
the jitters. He’d asked for certain songs and I’d play them. I was young and
impressionable and I think I must have been shocked in some kind of way to
find him where I found him.” (Bob Dylan, No Direction Home documentary)
Back in the Village, Dylan wrote Song to Woody, his first serious composition,
and soon was performing it at any stage he had the chance to step up. Sleeping on
friend’s couches, playing some songs here and there, Dylan got by the first months in
New York becoming part of the Village musical scenario. His first big shot came when
he was invited to open for John Lee Hooker in April, 1961 at Gerde’s Folk City. It was
the first time he shared the stage with someone famous and this opening would
receive one of the most important reviews of his life, given by Robert Shelton and
published in The New York Times. A proud Dylan read and re-read the review
several times, showing it to friends and to whoever was interested in it.
In May, even after receiving a good review and being doing fine in New York,
Dylan went back to Minneapolis, claming he didn’t intend to come back to New York.
He recorded a tape with 25 songs at Bonnie Beecher’s apartment and tried to come
back with her. However, Bonnie was dating someone else and refused Dylan. This
rejection fastened his return to New York, where in the summer 1961, he met Suze
Rotolo, his muse for the next four years. (The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, pages
24/25)

24. 24
Suze Rotolo was a key figure in Dylan’s life. Although being only 17, she
played a key hole in Dylan political education. It was only after having met her that
his writing began to address to themes such as civil rights or nuclear war. She was
also responsible for two of Dylan’s most beautiful love songs, Don’t Think twice, It’s
All Right and Tomorrow is a Long Time. She was portrayed with Dylan in the cover of
his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Back in New York, Dylan’s life started to improve as he was making enough
gigs to get by quite well and even rent an apartment at 161 West Forth Street, which
would later be immortalized in the song Positively 4th Street. The only thing missing
was a recording contract, but little did Dylan know that the man who was near to
change his life forever was quite near him, looking for folk revivalists and in a place
where Dylan would never dream of.
John Hammond was A&R at Columbia Records, a place where Frank Sinatra,
Miles Davis, Count Basie and Billie Holiday were immortalized and that didn’t use to
record folk singers. Hammond met Dylan in early September 1961 when Dylan was
playing harmonica on three songs in the first album of a folk singer called Carolyn
Hester. Hammond was intrigued by the Woody Guthrie obsessed folk singer and
became specially interested in Dylan when Dylan told him he was writing his own
material, and that fact in particularly might led John Hammond to sign Dylan and
become him a member of the Columbia Records family. Dylan recalls this moment:
“I couldn’t believe it. I left there and I remember walking out of the studio. I
th
was like on a cloud. It was up on 7 Avenue and when I left I was happening
to be walking by a record store. It was one of the most thrilling moments of
my life, I couldn’t believe that I as staring at all the records in the window,
Frank Laine, Frank Sinatra, Patty Page, Mitch Miller, Tony Bennett and so
on and soon I, myself, would be among them in the window. I guess I was

25. 25
pretty naïve, you know. It was even before I made a record, just knowing I
was going to make one and it was going to be in that window. I wanted to go
in there dressed in rags like I was and tell the owner, ‘You don’t know me
now, but you will.’ John Hammond recorded me soon after that.” (Biograph
booklet, page 08)
Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan (1962) was recorded, with Hammond as the
producer in two days in November 1961, costing a total of $402. The album was
released in March 1962 and sold very little, just about 5.000 copies, giving the idea
that Dylan might be dropped off Columbia Records. However, Hammond faith in his
protégé kept Dylan at Columbia Records, making his second album, The
Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan possible.
Suze Rotolo’s influence on Dylan began to appear more and more in 1962. In
early that year he wrote his first protest song, The Death of Emmett Till. Emmett Till
was a fourteen-year-old boy who was killed just for whistling at a white woman some
seven years early in the state of Mississippi. Other protest songs were Talking John
Birch Paranoid Blues, a sarcastic song about chasing communists everywhere, Let
me Die in my Footsteps, a beautiful anti-Cold War song about how brave someone
must be to face a possible meaningless death. But it was Blowin’ in the Wind that
made Dylan known beyond his Greenwich Village public.
Blowin’ in the Wind was written in a matter of minutes in a café in the Village
and had his melody borrowed from an old slave song called No More Auction Block.
The song key lyric “The answer is blowin’ in the wind” seemed to offer, at least on the
surface, little hope that solutions could be found to the world’s severe problems
including nuclear holocaust, poverty and widespread racial injustice. (Bob Dylan
Scrapbook, page 25). Dylan himself makes a very interesting commentary about this
song in the documentary No Direction Home:

26. 26
“I didn’t really know if that song was good or bad or… it felt right. But I didn’t
really know that it had any kind of anthemic quality or anything. I wrote the
songs to perform the songs. And I needed to sing, like, in that language.
Which is a language that I hadn’t heard before.” (Bob Dylan, No Direction
Home documentary)
Mavis Staples, of The Staple Singers, also makes a remarkable comment
about Blowin’ in the Wind in the same documentary:
“How could he write: “How many roads must a man walk down before you
can call him a man?” This is what my father went through. He was the one
who wasn’t called a man, you know. So, where is he coming from? White
people don’t have hard times. You know, this was my thinking back then,
because I was a kid too. What he was writing was inspirational, you know,
they were inspirational songs. And they would inspire. It’s the same as
gospel. He was writing truth. (Mavis Staples, No Direction Home
documentary)
With these songs, plus A Hard Rain A-Gonna Fall, and the song believed to be
written for Suze Rotolo, Don’t Think twice, It’s All Right, Dylan started recording his
second album, again having John Hammond as producer. Differently of his first
album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1962) was mostly written by Dylan, with the
exception of track 11, Corina, Corina, which is a traditional song and track 12, Honey,
Just Allow Me One More Chance, a Henry Thomas song that Dylan re-wrote
massively.
The album was recorded for several months, differently of the first one,
recorded in two days. This long producing time was fundamental to the album’s
quality and also shows how Dylan’s confidence as a songwriter increased. There are
22 outtakes of the album, most of the cover songs that were set aside to
accommodate Dylan’s compositions.

27. 27
Mark Spoelstra, a folksinger at the Village told Dylan’s biographer Howard
Sounes:
“Bob began writing anywhere and everywhere. He’d be in a booth
somewhere, in Gerde’s Folk City, and everybody else is jabbering and
drinking, and he’s sitting there writing a song on the napkins. And you
couldn’t interrupt it. He was driven, and obviously enlightened.” (The Bob
Dylan Scrapbook, page 25)
The album as we know was released on May 27, 1963 and was a big hit.
Music critic Tom Riley said that “Freewheelin’ was the first Dylan album that conveys
the enormity of his talent”. Biographer Howard Sounes claimed it was Dylan’s “first
great album”, simply stating that Freewheelin’ put Dylan on the map and signaled a
wildly creative run of songs and albums, the likes of which had never been heard
before in folk or pop music. (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 28)
“On my second album, all of a sudden people started to take notice that
never noticed before. Albert Grossman (Dylan’s first manager) came into the
picture around there. He was kind of a Col. Tom Parker figure, all
immaculate dressed, every time you see him. You could smell him coming.”
(Bob Dylan, No Direction Home documentary)
The success of the album put Dylan in another level. While his friends of the
Village were still performing in clubs and cafés, Dylan started to perform concerts and
to socialize with the cream of folksingers, including Joan Baez, the queen of the new
folk movement.
Dylan’s friendship with Joan Baez was fundamental for the growing of his
career at that time. Dylan started to appear at Baez shows, where she began to
introduce him to her fans, telling them he was an important voice in the folk
movement and performing a couple of songs with him. She wanted everybody to
know the man that wrote things she wished she could have written.

28. 28
The Dylan-Baez relationship grew stronger in early 1963 and peaked in the
summer. In July, they both performed in The Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan’s
popularity literally went to the stars. At Newport, rumors that Joan Baez had become
more than a friend started to circulate. Suze Rotolo and Dylan chose to ignore the
rumors and carry on with their lives, but at that time, the distance between them were
starting to grow stronger.
1.5 The Times They Are A-Changin’
Dylan’s popularity was growing fast, and Columbia Records wanted him back
in the studio to cut another album. This time with Tom Wilson producing the album,
Dylan followed the path he started with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, being most of
the album’s songs topical songs. Unknowingly, Dylan was becoming a spokesman
for his generation. A “title” he would later deny and curse. As he wrote in Chronicles,
his 2004 memoir book:
“… the big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece,
spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny. All I’d ever
done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new
realities. I had very little in common with and knew even less about the
generation that I was supposed to be the voice of… My destiny lay down the
road with whatever life invited, had nothing to do with representing any kind
of civilization. Being true to myself, that was the thing. I was more a
cowpuncher than a Pied Piper.” (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 31)
However, the power of the songs cannot be denied. The title song, The Times
They Are A-Changin’, which was also the name of the album, became an instant
anthem. The song claims that change will come even people want it or not, being in

29. 29
perfect timing with what was going on in America at that time. Another powerful song
was The Lonesome death of Hattie Carroll, about the death of a black woman at the
hands of a white man named William Zanzinger, who ended up doing time in jail for
only six months. The Ballad of Hollis Brown relates the story of a father, unable to
feed his children, uses his last cents to buy shotgun shells and “frees” his family of
misery. With themes like those, Dylan was exposing America’s most terrible
nightmares for everyone who wanted to listen to it. Dylan Comments:
“When I started writing those kind of songs, there wasn’t anybody doing
things like that. Woody Guthrie had done similar things but he hadn’t really
done that type of song. Besides, I had learned from Woody Guthrie and
knew and could sing anything he had done. But now the times have
changed and things would be different. He contributed a lot to my style
lyrically and dynamically but my music background had been different, with
rock’n’roll and rhythm and blues playing a big part early on. Actually, attitude
had more to do with it than technical ability and that’s what the folk
movement lacked. In other words, I played all the folk songs with a rock’n’roll
attitude. This is what made me different and allowed me to cut through all
the mess and be heard. (Biograph booklet, page 10)
But the album was not composed entirely of dark protest songs; Booths of
Spanish Leather and One Too Many Mornings were kind, love songs and take some
of the albums heaviness. Dylan also uses the last song of the album, Restless
Farewell to say goodbye. Feeling uncomfortable with the attention of adoring fans,
folk purists looking for a new messiah and the media, Dylan used the song as a
public announcement that he was moving on. And his personal change would
change the course of American music in a way that few, if any, after him managed to
accomplish.

30. 30
The change started with his next album, Another Side Of bob Dylan (1964). It
marks the translation between the protest songs and the trilogy of electric-rock
albums that would shake the very foundation of American music. The songs were
written in a period of several months, and recorded in a six-hour session with jars of
wine that began at 7:30 p.m. and was concluded at 1:30 a.m.
The songs recorded for Another Side of Bob Dylan are among the most
personal and confessional songs written by Dylan until that period and would remain
so until his compositions for the album Blood on the Tracks (1975). The another side
of Dylan is seem in songs like It Ain’t me Baby, All I Really Want to Do, I Don’t
Believe You and To Ramona, all songs that express heartbreaking and tenderness,
quite different of the protest songs Dylan was doing the year before.
The only song that resembles a protest song is Chimes of Freedom. The song
is laced with layers of personal meaning and dazzling surreal wordplay, which gives it
a widespread meaning, as the song doesn’t concentrate in one specific fact, but
advocates fighting against the wrongs of society as a whole. (The Rough Guide to
Bob Dylan, page 171)
Maybe what Dylan wanted to say with Anther Side of Bob Dylan can be
summed in one song. My Back Pages and its line “But I was so much older then, I’m
younger than that now,” says goodbye to the early protest songwriter Dylan and
shows the audience a new artist opened to new ideas. (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook,
page 38).
The only song Dylan regretted having written for the album was Ballad in Plain
D. The song details the night of Dylan’s breakup with Suze Rotolo, describing the
terrible fight among Dylan, Suze and his sister Carla. As Clinton Heylin wrote:
"Dylan's portrayal of Carla as the 'parasite sister' remains a cruel and
inaccurate portrait of a woman who had started out as one of [Dylan's]

31. 31
biggest fans, and changed only as she came to see the degrees of
emotional blackmail he subjected her younger sister to."(Wikipedia)
Another Side of Bob Dylan was released in the middle of the Beathemania,
and received less attention from the media than his other two albums. What people
might not know at that time is that The Beatles were bowled over by Dylan’s music.
The Beatles first contact with Dylan’s music was through The Freewheelin’
Bob Dylan and they also were impressed with Another Side of Bob Dylan. Dylan and
The Beatles met for the first time in New York in August 1964, and soon after that
encounter, The Beatles began their gradual move away from pure pop songs to a
more experimental, deeper meaning kind of sound. Dylan was also influenced by The
Beatles as their music confirmed something he had been feeling: that he wanted to
explore rock’n’roll possibilities and take his music where few people expected him to
take it to. (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 38)
With Another Side of Bob Dylan, Dylan gave his fans only a glimpse of what
his music was becoming, but I guess, few would be able to realize what was about to
come in a matter of two years, and how interesting that was going to be.
1.6 The Ghost of Electricity
As Robert Santelli wrote in the first line of the fifth chapter of The Bob Dylan
Scrapbook:
“Dylan started 1965 by putting into full gear his move away from finger-point
(protest) songs, and ended it by changing the course of American popular
music. Along the way he recorded two stunning albums – masterpieces that
blazed a trail where no other folk or pop or rock albums had gone before –

32. 32
and almost as an afterthought, reinvented himself once again. “(The Bob
Dylan Scrapbook, page 40)
The Woody Guthrie disciple who came to New York four years earlier had
gone for good. The once protest songwriter, working class man had gone. The work
clothes were gone, and were replaced by hip, high-collared shirts, stylish jackets and
pants, black boots and dark sunglasses. His hair was longer, wider, as his face often
expressed a look of boyish innocence instead of unintentional arrogance.
Dylan had also moved from New York to Woodstock, where his manager had
a house, and besides having a love affair with Joan Baez, a new woman was
entering his life, the model Sara Lowndes. Dylan was now what he wanted to be and
there was only one question to be asked: what music would come out of all this
change?
The answer wasn’t blowing in the wind, but coming in radio waves of what was
happening in the rock’n’roll world. Influenced by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and
other British groups, as well as by the electric blues bands coming from Chicago, the
ghost of electricity was already haunting Dylan, and it would become flesh and blood
in his next studio album, Bringing It All Back Home (1965).
Dylan had almost no idea of how changing his sound. He didn’t use to play
electric guitar very often and wasn’t used to guide a band, as he performed most of
his sets alone or with Joan Baez in the previous years. However he was somehow
convinced it would all work out fine when they where in the studio.
The songs of the album were all written in the previous months and were
songs rich with symbolism and surrealistic images. The album was remarkably
recorded in a matter of days. As Daniel Kramer, the photographer who was covering
Dylan’s new look and direction states:

33. 33
“It was obvious from the beginning that something exciting was happening,
and much of it happened simultaneously. When the playback of “Maggie’s
Farm” was heard over the studio speaker, we were all elated. There was no
question about it: It swung, it was happy, it was good music, and most of all,
it was Dylan”. (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 41)
Guitarist Bruce Langhorne, who was one of the musicians who recorded
Bringing It All Back Home recall the experience:
“The Bringing It All Back Home session was really fun because it was this
sort of spontaneous, telepathic thing, you know. Like he might have, you
know, played through a song very briefly and that was all the rehearsal or
preparation that anyone had for the songs. Everyone was really good,
everyone was really funky, you know, everyone had a great time. And
everyone really got behind Bobby’s songs. It was almost like getting together
and jamming without any mandate or any charts or anything.” (No Direction
Home documentary)
The album starts with Subterranean Homesick Blues, a torrid volley of words
conducted by a rocking beat. Dylan “rapping over a searing R&B groove on a lyric
crammed with beat cynicism, drug paranoia and a sweetwise nihilism that questioned
the American Dream as potently as any of the earlier, more overt protest songs”,
(The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, page 173) sets an incendiary start for the album.
What follows are other electrical pieces. Maggie's Farm is Dylan's declaration
of independence from the protest folk movement. Punning on Silas McGee's Farm,
where he had performed Only a Pawn in Their Game at a civil rights protest in 1963.
Maggie's Farm recasts Dylan as the pawn and the folk music scene as the
oppressor. Outlaw Blues expresses Dylan’s desire to abandon the political folk
lifestyle and explore the bohemian, "outlaw" lifestyle. Love Minus Zero/No Limit and

34. 34
She Belongs to Me are deep love songs, quite different from the sweet ballads that
characterized rock music at the time. (Wikiepedia)
The acoustic songs, in the B-side of the album include Mr. Tambourine Man,
Gates of Eden and It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Sleeping) work as accurate critics to
society. The songs are well defined by Nigel Williamson:
“...full of poetic influences drawn from the French symbolists such as
Rimbaud and Baudelaire, the Beat writings of Ginsberg and Kerouac, the
visions of William Blake, and the hipster slang of Beat comics such as Lenny
Bruce and Lord Buckley, as well as the folk vernacular of Woody Guthrie.”
(The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, page 173)
It’s All Over Now Baby Blue concludes the album. It’s a sad love song that
declares the end of a long time relationship, and the last line of the song, “Strike
another match, go start anew”, leaves no doubt about the new direction Dylan was
taking. After Bringing It All Back Home, things would never be the same.
After concluding the album, Dylan went to England, where Bringing It All Back
Home reached number one at the music chats. The Dylanmania was happening and
the British tour spirit was fantastically captured by D. A. Pennebaker in his
documentary Don’t Look Back (1965). The documentary presents an accurate insight
on Dylan’s persona at that time, registering the media craziness, the fans hysteria
and astonishing music performances.
Today, Don’t Look Back is one of the greatest rock’n’roll documentaries of all
times, as well as a unique portrayed of Dylan’s during one of his most prolific and
creative periods.
Dylan came back to the U.S. and was glad to find out that a Los Angeles rock
band called The Byrds had recorded Mr. Tambourine Man. The Byrds used jangling

35. 35
guitars, rich harmonies and a soft backbeat to interpret the song, soon turning it into
a radio success, which topped the Billboard charts in early June. The band had found
a more accessible way to blend rock with folk, enabling the music and not the words
to own the spotlights. Soon, other artist did the same, recording Dylan’s songs or
writing their ones in Dylan style, turning folk-rock into a new genre in American
music. (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 44)
Folk-rock had soon become a dominant sound of the 60’s, being considered
an American answer to the British rock bands that had been dominating the charts in
the previous years. However, folk-rock wasn’t an excusive American trend. In
England, a band called The Searchers had a very similar sound to The Byrds. The
Beatles influenced both by Dylan and the folk-rock trend released two of their best
albums, Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). And The Rolling Stones, notorious
bad boys of the rock’n’roll embraced a more contemplative folk-rock sound in the
album Between the Buttons (1967).
In the middle of all that, Dylan began the recordings of his next album,
Highway 61 Revisited (1965), a few days after returning from England. Mike
Bloomfield, guitarist of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band from Chicago, and who later
would be of great importance in the Newport Folk Festival incident was among the
musicians hired for the album’s recording. There was also Al Kooper, responsible for
the incendiary piano playing in the song Like a Rolling Stone, despite never having
played the instrument before.
Dylan didn’t care for the fact that Al Kooper had never played piano before, as
he didn’t care much about rehearsing with his backing band. The song was recorded
in a few takes and became a massive success, breaking the rules of single’s release.
Singles at that time were two-and-a-half minutes long, almost all the time being

36. 36
lightweight pop songs. Like a Rolling Stones was nearly six minutes long and its
complex lyrics were much deeper than any other rock song released as a single
before that. However, the radio stations couldn’t deny the song’s popularity and the
continuous fan’s request for playing it in. Like a Rolling Stone topped second in the
U.S. chats, becoming Dylan’s best single of his entire carrier. (The Bob Dylan
Scrapbook, page 46)
Despite of its huge success, Highway 61 Revisited has much more to offer
than just Like a Rolling Stone. Songs like Tombstone Blues, Queen Jane
Approximately, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, Ballad of a Thin Man and Desolation
Row were way more meaningful lyrically than any other rock songs before it.
Producer Bob Johnson remembers the album’s recording sessions:
“The music actually changed by, I think, the word is freedom. Everything was
changing. It wasn’t like four songs a session. There wasn’t any clock. I took
all the clocks down. Nobody had a fucking clock there. It’s just like, “Play
some music.” “What about this thing? What about this?” … I believe in giving
credit where credit’s due. I don’t think Dylan had a lot to do with it. I think
God, instead of touching him on the shoulder he kicked him in the ass.
Really. And that’s where all it came from. He can’t help what he’s doing. I
mean, he’s got the Holy Spirit about him. You can look at him and tell that.”
(No Direction Home documentary)
And with this climate of success and continuous changing and innovations in
his music and style, on July 25th, Dylan climbed up the Newport Folk Festival looking
more like a British rock star that the folk hero audiences were familiar to. A lot had
changed since Dylan’s first performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. In
1965, he was the most anticipated artist in the festival, still a star of the folk revival,
despite had gone electric in part of the album Bringing It All Back Home. And when
he performed his first set, on July 24th, he did what his fans where expecting him to

37. 37
do, sang and played acoustic guitar like the old time. Although, the night of July 25th
was near.
Later, during the blues workshop, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band played an
electric set, irritating the purists by playing electric instruments onstage where there
only had been space by old black bluesmen playing acoustic instruments. What
happened next changed pop music forever.
Dylan had decided to perform Like a Rolling Stone, since the song was being
played on the radios. According to Dylan:
“Like a Rolling Stone had been out and was being played on the radio, and I
had started out playing electric music anyway, long before the folk scene.
The Newport band for me was a pickup band and the players were already
at the festival anyway.” (The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 49)
Dylan quickly got together a backup band with member of the Paul Butterfield
Blues Band and Al Kooper, who coincidently was at the festival. They only had time
to rehearse three songs, Like a Rolling Stone, Maggie’s Farm and Phantom
Engineer, which later would be named It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to
Cry.
A hard rain in the afternoon resulted in a rearrangement of presentation
schedules and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band would be onstage just before Dylan
was scheduled. And when Dylan stepped onstage, with the blues band backing him
up and playing and electric set at the Newport Folk Festival hell broke loose.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen. They certainly booed, I’ll tell you
that. You could hear it all over the place. I don’t know who they were…
they’ve done it just about all over… I mean, they must be pretty rich to go
some place and boo. I mean, I couldn’t afford it if I was in their shoes. (Bob
Dylan, Biograph booklet, page 11)

38. 38
Dylan also gives a more detailed perspective on what happened onstage that
night in the following piece.
“I was thinking that somebody was shouting… “Are you with us? Are you
with us?” And, you know, I don’t know what that, you know, like... What was
that supposed to mean? I had no idea why they were booing. I don’t think
nobody was there having a negative response to those songs, though. I
mean, whatever it was about, it wasn’t about anything they where hearing.
(Bob Dylan, No Direction Home documentary)
Dylan is right about that. The staff didn’t have the proper time to set the
volume correctly and the sound was extremely loud. Pete Seeger recalls the episode:
“You could not understand the words. And I was frantic. I said, “Get that
distortion out.” It was so raspy, you could not understand a word. And I ran
over to the sound system, “Get that distortion out of Bob’s voice.” “No, this is
the way they want to have it.” I said,”God damn it, it’s terrible. You can’t
understand it.” “If I had an axe, I’d chop the mike cable right now.” (Pete
Seeger, No Direction Home documentary)
After finishing his three songs, Dylan left stage with cheers and boos,
demanding that he played more, as well as shots claiming that he never returns to
Newport. Dylan eventually returned onstage and played to more songs, now
acoustically, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue and Mr. Tambourine Man, which seemed to
calm the audience down.
Dylan’s performance at Newport Folk Festival ended the folk revival. (The Bob
Dylan Scrapbook, page 50) From that day, folk music and rock’n’roll music were
freely integrated into a new and powerful genre, the folk rock, which soon would
assimilate country music and blues. Dylan was already on his way to break rules
again, with his next studio album in the following year.

39. 39
1.7 Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Road
The Newport Folk Festival incident is now considered a major turning point not
just in Dylan’s carrier, but in all pop music. From that moment on anything was
possible, and Dylan was one of the any who kept the dream alive.
After the festival, Dylan went back to studio to finish cutting the album.
Highway 61 Revisited was released on August 30th, 1965, soon becoming a hit
record, picking number 3 on Billboard pop charts and number 4 in U.K.
The experience of having a rock band backing him up pleased Dylan in a great
deal. Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman had booked Dylan a concert to play at the
Forest Hills Stadium, in Queens, New York soon after his new album was released.
Dylan decided to play the concert with a rock band and asked Al Kooper, Mike
Bloomfield, bass player Harvey Brooks and drummer Bobby Gregg to join him in the
New York gig. Kooper and Brookes accepted the invitation, however Bloomfield and
Gregg had to decline on account of previous booked gigs. Dylan then invited
drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Robertson, of The Hawks, a virtually
unknown band from Canada. Little did he know at that time that he was forming the
band that would play a key role in his musical carrier in the near future.
The Forest Hills gig was most like Newport Folk Festival, with Dylan playing an
acoustic set and a rock’n’roll one. Dylan started playing acoustic songs from his
previous albums, getting a cool response from the audience. But the moment the
band stepped on stage and plugged their instruments, chaos was installed for good.
A waterfall of boos and cheers set the mood for the concert, however, in Forest Hills,
the boos were less wild than at Newport, and Dylan saw it as a progress.
A full American tour was schedule and Dylan needed a backing band. Due to
the enormous amount of work, Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks declined Dylan’s

40. 40
invitation to tour over America. He set then his eyes in the band from where he had
recruited Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm. The Hawks had been playing in New
Jersey for a while and where reluctant to accept Dylan’s invitation to back him up in
his U.S. tour, since the band had plans to explore a new music direction on their own.
It was Robbie Robertson who saw it as an opportunity and convinced the others to
join Dylan.
Dylan and the Hawks hit the road in September. They crossed America and
then ended up in Europe. The Dylan going electric created a never seeing before
music’s emotional intensity. Everywhere they went they where booed and cheered.
Robbie Robertson recalls the experience:
“We traveled all over the world, and people booed us everywhere we went.
What a strange concept of entertainment. We’d go on to the next town, and
they’d boo us again, and we’d pack up our equipment and go on to the next
place, and they’d boo us again.” (Robbie Robertson, The Bob Dylan
Scrapbook, page 54)
All those booing upset The Hawks, but the one who took it really serious was
Levon Helm. He ended up leaving the band and would return only after the tour
nightmare was over.
When the tour reached England the audience response was way intensified.
Not only they booed but also many of them walked out during the electric set. In
Manchester, a famous incident took place. One fan, outraged with Dylan’s electric
performance stood up and shouted “Judas!” Dylan shouted back saying, “I don’t
believe you! You’re a liar! You’re a fucking liar!”, and then ordered The Hawks to play
Like a Rolling Stone as fucking loud as they could. This scene can be seen in the
documentary No Direction Home, as Martin Scorsese uses it in the end of the
documentary and also in the end credits.

41. 41
Even in this insane climate, Dylan found time to marry Sara Lounds, the model
he had been seen for the previous year. Dylan was also writing songs compulsively
and was eager to get back into studio to record them. As soon as the tour ended,
Dylan reunited with producer Bob Johnson and The Hawks for a few recording
sessions. What came of that didn’t please nor Dylan nor his producer. Apparently the
chemistry among Dylan and The Hawks was much more explosive onstage than in a
recording room. Bob Johnson suggested Dylan he needed a new place to record,
and also new musicians, and being a country music fan, he suggested leaving New
York and going to Nashville, America’s country music Mecca.
And as in other Dylan’s albums, there were no rehearsal, but Dylan expected
the Nashville musicians would contribute for the songs in their way. Robbie
Robertson was the only member of The Hawks invited to perform at the album, and
Al Kooper was also there. They both had worked with Dylan and ended up showing
the way for the other musicians.
Blonde on Blonde, Dylan’s seventh album in four years was recorded between
January and March 1966, and was released in May. The double album, the first one
in rock’n’roll history contained fourteen new songs that continuous Dylan’s way into
rock and was quite different from anything he had recorded earlier. (The Bob Dylan
Scrapbook, page 55)
It can be seen in the album’s opening track and single Rainy Day Women
#12&35. The song most famous line, “Everybody must get stones” became Dylan’s
first party song. And the sound of it was like a drunken, stoned band, with horns
blaring, people laughing (Dylan among them) and Dylan coaxing chaos at every turn.
(The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 55)

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Rainy Day Women #12&35 topped number 3 on Billboard chats, and another
single, I Want you reached number 20. Blonde on Blonde had a total of five singles of
its 14 tracks. The album was claimed as Dylan’s masterpiece and critics used it to
show how Dylan and rock’n’roll had evolved since the early 1960’s. (The Bob Dylan
Scrapbook, page 57)
Dylan went back on the road with The Hawks, and invited filmmaker D.A.
Pennebaker, who had previously worked with him in the documentary Don’t Look
Back to shoot a new film. Dylan wanted Pennebaker to film whatever he was doing,
no matter where or when. The film, Eat the Document was never officially released,
though there are bootlegged copies circulating. D. A. Pennebaker recalls the
experience of shooting Eat the Document:
“It was Bob’s film, and he wasn’t really interested in making a concert film.
He was interested in making a film for television… he was interested
primarily in directing material off the stage. Stage material did not interest
him.” (D. A. Pennebaker, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 57)
With Eat the Document, Dylan as trying to demystify the prophet, savior
persona the fans and the media had imposed to his image. He recalls that during an
interview on the TV show 60 Minutes:
“It was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story. You’re just not that person
everybody thinks you are, even though they call you that all the time. You’re
the prophet, you’re the savior. I never wanted to be a prophet or a savior,
Elvis; maybe, I could easily see myself becoming him, but a prophet? No.”
(Bob Dylan, The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, page 58)
In 1966, Dylan had been working furiously for more than a year. His image in
that period shows and exhausted man. And during a break with his wife in
Woodstock, Dylan decided to take one of his motorcycles to be repaired. On the way
to town, as Dylan’s remembers, “…the back wheel locked, I think, I lost control,

43. 43
swerving from left to right”. And Dylan crashed. (The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan,
page 58)
Dylan had most bruises and cut, but the media made a circus on account of
the accident. The first information was that Dylan was paralyzed or even dead. As
Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman provided little information, it contributed for the
press pandemonium and for the rumors to run out of control.
No matter what happened, Dylan saw it as an opportunity to run out of public
life for a while and to get his life together. The motorcycle accident put an end in that
period of his carrier, and the Dylan that emerged out of it was a completely different
one.
At that point of his life, in a four year period, Dylan had contributed like no one
for the folk music revival, being one of its most significant figures. As a folk singer he
composed some of the best protest, topic songs ever written in that genre, as well as
being a master in expose in songs the most fearful American’s Nightmares. As a rock
musician, was a precursor of the folk-rock movement, as well as one of the creators
of this genre, also elevating pop music into a level it has never reached before,
transforming rock’n’roll from pure fun to a conscious, relevant form of art.
What came after this four-year period was never so strong and genius, with
exceptions of the fantastic albums Blood on the Tracks (1975) and Time out of Mind
(1997), but was rarely less that extraordinary.
This year of 2009, marks Dylan’s comeback to pop charts as number 1, with
his new album Together Through Life, showing audiences worldwide that the man
might be old and ugly and even voiceless, but never defeated.

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2.2 – I’m Not There – Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan
“I’m not there is the name of a song from The Basement Tapes. But I
love the name I’m not there as a way of backing this idea of this
person who is always moving on, is always a step ahead and every
time you try to grasp him and contain him like a flame. He’s gone, he
is no longer there. It is like the Rimbaud famous line “I is another, I is
someone else”. That even just to say I, you’ve already creating
something outside yourself and you’re already somewhere else.”
(Todd Haynes, I’m not There Film Extras)
I’m not there starts with Dylan/Jude Quinn, masterly played by Cate Blanchett
being conduct to the stage. Jude’s face is not shown in this opening sequence, but every
Bob Dylan fan can perceive that the character refers to Dylan’s electric faze as the
images resembles D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back. When Dylan/Jude
Quinn gets on stage, the scene abruptly cuts to Dylan’s mythical motorcycle accident,
which fans and biographers consider to be the end of the first phase of his career. Then,
as the motorcycle gets down a dusty road the film’s title emerges, and it sets the whole
“spirit” of the film.
The title starts with the subject pronouns I… he, then it cuts to I’m… her, next
composing very fast not… her, then, fast again it cuts to not … here and finally the
whole title I’m not there. I see these crossing words, forming different meanings as
the very first clue that this film is going to show us absolutely everything we need to
know about Dylan’s persona, but at the same time it will show us nothing at all, since
any Dylan fan, after watching the film, and I include myself in this affirmation, really
doesn’t discover anything they previously didn’t know, as fact, speculation or even
both.

45. 45
The next scene shows Dylan/Jude Quinn in a hospital bed, ready for his
dissection. Metaphorically, it shows that Dylan’s persona is going to be analyzed,
scrutinized as a body, invented, killed and reborn as the narrator (Kris Kristofferson)
says: “There he lay. Poet (Arthur Rimbaud). Prophet (Jack Rollins). Outlaw (Billy the
Kid). Fake (Woody Guthrie). Star of Electricity (Robbie Clark).” It suddenly cuts to all
the faces that portraits Dylan, passing on screen very fast, with the sound of gun
shots and the line, “But the song is something that walks by itself”, spoken by
Dylan/Arthur Rimbaud. Director Todd Haynes explains this scene as one of the key
scenes of the film and also how he discovered the perfect person to be the film’s
narrator:
“The film starts with a metaphoric death. “Only the dead can be born again.”
And that’s what this film is about, getting born and born again. And the text
comes from a passage in Tarantula, his (Dylan’s) 1967 book. All the lines of
the film and the setting and the scenario come from something in the Dylan
universe. The original concept of the voice over narration in the beginning
was it has to be a woman and we couldn’t get anybody on board. And one
night I was going to sleep and I just started to think about Kris Kristofferson
and I was like: oh my God, it has to be Kris Kristofferson. He has actually
been janitor working at the studio where they recorded Blonde on Blonde
(1966). So, he witnessed the entire recording. But he is like Dylan’s age or
older. He was an interesting guy. (Todd Haynes, I’m not there film
commentary track)
The opening song, Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, from
the album Blonde on Blonde (1966), rolls loud as it shows a sequel of images from
the late 50’s and the early 60’s. These scenes set the whole mood of the film, as they
are documentary footage mixed up with studio scenes, and its beautiful black and
white photography illustrate quite well the hard life of ordinary working people, hobos,

46. 46
nobos, the all-time losers. As it cuts from black and white to color, the first image we
have is from a rural area and the face of Dylan/Billy the Kid waking up, probably in a
train wagon. The scene continues for a few seconds, and we can spot not only
Dylan/Woody Guthrie as he runs to catch a train (and maybe meet his other self) but
also the opening credits that show “Inspired in the music & many lives of Bob Dylan”.
It itself clearly says that beyond strict facts, the film will interpret lyrics, legends, here
it say, gossips to try to show all the faces and the personas of Bob Dylan, in an
attempt to make an understandable unity of the many personalities that cohabited
and cohabit Dylan’s mind.
As the Dylan/Woody Guthrie jumps in the train wagon, and meets two hobos
in there, an important part of early Dylan’s life is about o be revealed. This black kid,
played by Marcus Carl Franklin represents one of the most well-known Dylan’s
personas, the young boy who invents himself a brand new, almost unbelievable past
to him. In the film, Hibbing (Dylan’s hometown) is called Riddle, an interesting choice,
as riddle, according to the Password – English Dictionary for Speakers of Portuguese
is, “noun a puzzle usually in the form of a question which describes an object or
person in a mysterious or misleading way”. In fact, a puzzle is all we get from
Dylan/Woody Guthrie because it is virtually impossible that an 11-year-old boy, as
portrayed in the film and a 17 -18 years old (as in Dylan’s “real” life) could have done
and have been in all those places mention in the film and in Dylan’s biography. As
director Todd Haynes objectively puts:
“When Bob Dylan first appeared in New York City he’d completely
incorporated Woody Guthrie’s songs, style of dress and general attitude into
his persona and really used that as his first step out of where he came from
and who he really was. Basically impersonation as freedom. What I find
amazing in Dylan under the spell of Woody Guthrie is how much people fell

47. 47
for it. This exuberance of performance that I think is why people accepted
him in disguise initially. And it was why I decided to make the kid black in
the film and play on this side gag that he keeps telling all this crazy stories
and calling himself Woody Guthrie but no one once mentions his color. It is
really Dylan passing as anything but the middle class Jewish kid that he
actually was.” (Todd Haynes, I’m not there film commentary track)
Dylan/Woody Guthrie narrates his absurd journey as a man who lost his only
true love and starts drinking and gambling, meeting his destiny when he met a
Chinaman who loved his sound and hires him as an attraction for his circus. Those
are all themes of Woody Gruthie’s songs, which Dylan has incorporated to his
“reality”. And as the experience doesn’t quite go so well, the young Dylan/Woody
Guthrie hits the road and joins the union cause. In this part, an interesting line of one
of the hobos “Don’t he know its 1959? We done unionized 20 years ago”. This part is
particular interesting in reason that one characteristic of the folk revival in the early
60’s was to “glamorize” the depression era and sing songs about trains and unions
and poverty, neglecting the real time. Bob Dylan did it in his early years, as he was
heavily influenced by traditional folk music and was a devoted disciple of Woody
Guthrie.
The film cuts to Dylan/Arthur Rimbaud’s sort of interrogation, a constant in the
film, that mimics the ways how the media tried to invade Dylan’s privacy during the
years. We actually can hear bits of the lines that Dylan/Arthur Rimbaud speaks in the
film and on the documentaries No Direction Home (Martin Scorsese, 2005) and also
in Dylan Speaks (2006). Director Todd Haynes explains the dynamic of his scenes:
“Arthur’s interrogation setting came from the court records that I’d read over
Arthur Rimbaud being interrogate after he was shot by his lover Paul
Verlaine. And all of Arthur’s language comes from extraordinary interviews
that Dylan gave in 65 or 66 where he played around with the interview

48. 48
process and by doing so he reviewed so many different hypocrisy about the
artist up there being interviewed for his truth and motivations.” (Todd
Haynes, I’m not there film commentary track)
As Dylan/Woody Guthrie steps out of the train, he somehow ends up in the
house of Oldman Arvin (folksinger Richie Havens). This sequel, in the sound of
Tombstone Blues, shows Oldman Arvin, Dylan/Woody Guthrie and probably one of
the sons of Oldman Arvin playing in the porch. Here we can see Dylan/Woody
Guthrie’s techniques as a guitar player, scene that shows us probably what Bob
Dylan was able to do at the time. As they go in to have dinner, Dylan/Woody Guthrie
stars his small talk and all the others follow him without questioning any of his stories.
The only one who seems upset is the lady of the house, who doesn’t buy
Dylan/Woody Guthrie’s bullshits and gives him perhaps one of the best advises of his
life, which is “Sing about your own time”, what visibly makes Dylan/Woody Guthrie
thinks. I wonder if somebody did say something like that to Bob Dylan around that
time, to make him abandon the songs about the depression to concentrate in the
facts of the time he was actually living in. Director Todd Haynes comments why he
hired Richie Havens as well as an interesting fact, that I’ve never found reference in
any Dylan’s biographies:
“Tombstone Blues is the song that Woody sings with the Arvin’s. Of course
Oldman Arvin portrayed by Richie Havens. I know I wanted to cast a real
musician and someone hopefully with a history that related to the real life of
Dylan’s in the role of Oldman Arvin. He was gonna perform in the film and
sort of be a line back to some of the ruts to the kind of music that inspired
Dylan at the beginning. So we were blown away when Richie Havens
agreed to take part in the film and to record this extraordinary cover of
Tombstone Blues himself. Richie Havens’ career really began in the Village,
I think in the late 50’s, so he was really on the scene when Dylan first

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emerged and was one of the first people to be utterly blown away by this
young songwriter and whose own interpretation of A Hard Rain a-Gonna
Fall, which he performed in a club one night at the Village. Richie Havens
had never met Dylan and didn’t even know that Dylan had written the song,
and, at the end of the concert, this man (Dylan) had come to him in tears
and said, “That’s the most beautiful version of that song I’ve ever heard.”
And it was only later that somebody told Richie that that was Dylan. That
was the guy who wrote the song.” (Todd Haynes, I’m not there film
commentary track)
In my opinion, these sorts of details and commitment with the plot enrich the
film greatly, making it more believable and close to the reality it is intending to show.
And even if the ordinary audience never watches the commentary track, I think the
audience can feel some sort of substance, as I felt the first time I’ve seen the film.
The next scene of the film is a summary of what was the Greenwich Village,
telling it was a bohemian jazz paradise that turned into the Mecca for the folk revival
in the early 60’s. Here we are introduced to Dylan/Jack Rollins (played by Christian
Bale), a representation of Bob Dylan’s early years in New York City as a club singer
and Columbia’s recording artist. The film summarizes quite well an interesting fact of
Dylan’s life, that he, among many talented people, got the media’s attention and
within a year passed from practically an unknown person to become one of the most
celebrated artists of the folk revival and soon on of the most influent artists of the 20th
century. It’s due to the fact that Dylan wrote and performed some of the finest tunes
of his era. The song The times they are a-Changin’, from the album of the same title,
punctuates this part of the film as it show a Dylan/Jack Rollins quite shy and
uncomfortable with media’s attention who doesn’t seems to understand why young
people identify themselves with him and his songs.

50. 50
The Dylan/Jack Rollins co-relates with the Dylan/Robbie Clark (played by
Heath Ledger), who is not a musician, but a movie star, and represents not only the
rebel part of Dylan but also a man who seems to search a meaning for his life.
Maybe this is the most “real” Dylan, as I see him as a common man in a superstar
position that falls in the traps of fame and glory and can never find his true place in
the world. The Dylan/Robbie Clark also represents an ambitious that Bob Dylan was
never able to reach, that was to develop a career in the cinema industry.
As the song The lonesome death of Hattie Carroll, from the album The Times
They are A-changin’ (1964), is played by the Dylan/Jack Rollins we are introduced to
Alice Fabian (played by Julianne Moore), who represents the folk singer Joan Baez
and also Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s most serious girlfriend at the time. She reveals her
point of view that Dylan’s song elevated the level of folk and popular songs, as Dylan
sang what was going on in the world with extreme competence, applying the
traditional form to contemporary concerns. This semi-documental part of the film is
quite similar to the interviews that the real Joan Baez gave to Martin Scorsese’s
documentary No Direction Home (2005).
Another similar statement made by Alice Fabian/Joan Baez was that:
“Every night I would call this ragamuffin on stage and introduce America to
Jack Rollins. I’d say, you know, that he had something to say and that he is
speaking for me and everybody who wants a better world. (Alice
Fabian/Joan Baez line, I’m not there film)
These “favors” that Alice Fabian/Joan Baez did were fundamental to turn
Dylan into the “voice of his generation”, and for two albums, most of them composed
of protest songs, he really was if not the voice of his generation, the voice of the folk
movement. But it all stopped around 1963 when Dylan/Jack Rollins realized that he
couldn’t change the world with a song. This part of the film starts to show Dylan/jack

51. 51
Rollins getting distant of the folk movement, fact that would unchain his most creative
side and the best part of the film. As director Todd Haynes comments:
“Dylan was moving so quickly in the first half of the 1960’s that he would
completely enter into thoroughly sort of embody and then completely move
on from this particularly period, the political period, where he was already
over it, he was already moving away from the sort of assumptions about
what political music can do and the kind of direct change it could effect and
moving more toward poetic and internal ways of approaching songs. (Todd
Haynes, I’m not there film commentary track)
The song Visions of Johanna, from the album Blonde on Blonde (1966), cuts
the film from the Dylan/Jack Rollins to the Dylan/Robbie Clark as he ends shooting a
fictitious film called Grain of Sand, and sees among the crowd a woman who
captures his attention. The Dylan/Robbie Cark narrates the meeting with the woman
who would soon be part of his life. “We first met in New York, in January of ’64; in the
Village… love was in the air”. The woman’s name is Clair (character played by
Charlotte Gainsbourg) and she’s a representation of Suze Rotolo (Dylan’s most
significant girlfriend in New York) and the model Sara Lownds, who would soon
become Sara Dylan. The film creates a fictitious background for Chair/Sara Dylan, as
she was indeed a photographic model and not a painting student (as showed in the
film), but little is know about who Sara Dylan is, as she never gave an interview at all.
Though the album Blood on the Tracks (1975) and the song Sad Eyed Lady of the
Lowlands were written for her, Sara is still a mystery. So, what we see in Clair’s
character may or may not be true. But I guess we’ll never know.
The song I want you, from the album Blonde on Blonde (1966) punctuates the
early relationship of the Dylan/Robbie Clark and Clair, showing them as a happy
artistically active couple. A particular scene that proves that this character is also a
representation of Suze Rotolo is the one in which the couple walks by the streets of