Douglas Barbour wrote:
> There's a bit from Donovan's memoir about being with Dylan in The
> Guardian the other day. He seems not to feel he was all that dismissed.
From where I sat it sure looked like Dylan was playing games with him.
I'll take Donovan's word for it--he was the one on what might have been
the receiving end.
> A lot of the footage in the Scorcese film is from Don't Look Back, or
> its out takes. One of the most interesting things for me, as someone
> who absolutely loved the rawer electric stuff from the get -go, is
> just how amazing his performances with what was to become The Band
> are; & the stiff -upper lip rejection by so many of his British fans.
> And the great humour in the interviews with others, like Al Kooper,
> who's a hoot.
...and it all brings back evenings in the East Bronx with my old friend
Hank Berman, out of our skulls (did I really say that?:-), listening to
Dylan's early electric stuff. I was mesmerized. I was surprised that
when he brought the small-b band onstage at Shea Stadium in 1965, some
guy is supposed to have yelled "You scumbag!" at Dylan, who replied "Aw,
come on now...." Did I hear right that they found the guy in the UK who
shouted out "Judas!"?
I'm sitting here with a newly purchased two CD set from his 1975 tour.
Some of the early stuff he kept doing..."Hattie Carroll," "Blowin' in
the Wind," "It Ain't Me, Babe," "Hard Rain." Personally I think Joan
Baez sang the last one much better, and I'm not thrilled with the cuts
he made in "Tangled Up In Blue," but hell, it's Dylan.
I managed to hear The Band up in Binghamton in 1969. It was the best
concert by a rock band that I ever heard.
> And, looking at the way the press treated him, it seems the only way
> to sruvive was to act as he did, go hide behind the wit & the shades.
Curious--I can't think of one review of his work that I ever read. It
wasn't that I didn't see any, I just didn't care.
ken
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Kenneth Wolman
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