It is interesting that they used the expression “the Exploding NY Underground” for part of the title of this documentary. I know it falls under the banner of “transgressive.” In cinema, transgression would be the equivalent of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” compared to Frost’s “On a Snowy Evening.” It was stark, sometimes opaque, and didn’t follow narrative rules of the mainstream. Usually names like Nick Zedd and Richard Kern tend to pop up, but it was the women who were the most experimental and interesting, such as Beth B, and especially one of the pioneers, Barbara Rubin.
The title is also quite a nice play on words, considering Rubin’s associations with the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, who often showcased happenings he called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. It has been told that it was, in fact, Rubin who introduced the band to the pop artist. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Rubin was a troubled child of the ‘50s who was an early experimenter in drug culture, winding up in the psych ward for a while. When she got out in her late teens, it was pretty obvious that she was not going to be (or possibly capable of) living a “normal” life for that time. Through some connections, she found herself as an apprentice to underground filmmaker Jonas Mekas. It was through him she saw what is now considered a transgressive grandfather of cinema, Jack Smith’s 1963 Flaming Creatures (Mekas was the cinematographer), which could almost be seen as a sexualized interpretation of Stan Brakhage’s works (e.g., Cat’s Cradle in 1959 or possibly Dog Star Man, started in 1962). With that impact, she began her own film, Christmas on Earth (1963), now considered a classic in the non-narrative genre but seen as pornographic at its time (the film focuses on explicit pan-sexual acts projected over closeups of naked vaginas).
This certainly was a door opening to the avant-garde Beat culture for her, where she befriended the likes of poet Allen Ginsberg. In return, she helped introduce him to others. While still considered a filmmaker, she possessed a new role as a matchmaker, or go-between on the scene, introducing Bob Dylan and the Velvet Underground to Andy Warhol, whose Factory scene she became not only a part of, but worked for by filming some of his infamous 5-minute “audition” reels. She also appeared in a few of Warhol’s (i.e., Paul Morrissey) films like Chelsea Girls (1966).
She was a mover and a shaker and who knows how the scene would have been less interesting or infamous without her involvement. The problem with this role though, is that some people who are at the beginning of a “scene” find themselves left behind as the movement gains momentum, turning into synergy. This was the case for Barbara, who obviously (though the film doesn’t really deeply focus on this) had some issues to work on, including the mind altering chemicals.
This part of Rubin’s life is pretty well known, and it’s fascinating to see it in more detail and hear her friends of the time talk about what it was like to not only know her and the scene, but her place in it. What I found particularly fascinating is what happened after the honeymoon phase of the Factory, when she discovered her “Jewish” identity through the Kabbalah, the mysterious mysticism end of Judaism that so fascinated/enthralls the likes of Elie Wiesel and – of all people – singer Madonna Louise Ciccone.
After a stint at an Upstate New York commune (I’m assuming in the Catskills) she helped found with a bunch of poets including Ginsberg, after a heartbreak, she had a strong conversion to Orthodox/Hassidic Judaism. As others do when trying to change a direction of a life that feels without purpose and filled with drugs, this is hardly a surprise in the same way people in trouble and filled with angst often come to rely on the Jesus myth.
What I find interesting is that through her entire adult life, Rubin took gender politics roads that previously were expressly open only to men, such as that particular style of filmmaking and the Kabbalah, and essentially blew the hinges off of those doors, and yet here she was subjecting herself to a life of religious servitude to religious men (as is true of all Judeo-Christian-Muslim orthodoxy).
There are only two extras on the DVD, one being the film’s trailer, and the other is a 6-minute documentary centered on Jonas Mekas called “Keep Singing: A Tribute.” Interviewed for this documentary, he passed away at age 97 in 2019.
Of course, decent music is disbursed throughout, including some cuts by Dylan and the Velvet Underground (“Heroin” is played in part twice) of course, and also notably by Melanie Safka and Lee Ranaldo, among others.
Two quick comments about what I wish would have been incorporated. First is more information about her second film, Emunah (1972; the title is translated from Hebrew as “Faith”). There are some clips from it, but unless I missed it, it is not really discussed. Also, I was kind of hoping they would have included the complete Christmas on Earth in the extras section, rather than just clips throughout (which I also appreciate).
The documentary is full of images, especially films, taken by Rubin, or have her in them. There are also tons of stills showing a life full of action and meaning, especially before it essentially passed her by on its own thing. Also, there are recordings and letters by her interspersed throughout, giving a better picture of who Rubin was, both to herself and to others, until her passing in 1980.
The reason I put these two reviews
together is because they both deal with different perspectives of the same
group of people in overlapping time periods, essentially from 1966 through
1978. Though both have different viewpoints and distribution companies, they
really are companions as both are British release documentaries from the same parent
enterprise and have an Executive Producer in common. The second DVD listed here actually was released first, but I reviewed them in the order I watched them.
Bob Dylan and the Band: Down
in the Flood – Associations and Collaborations
(aka
Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, The Band
& The Basement Tapes) Executive Producer Rob Johnstone Narrated by Thomas Arnold Prism Films / Chrome Dreams Media 114
minutes, 2012 www.chromedreams.co.uk www.MVDvisual.com
The
title of this documentary is a bit misleading as it focuses not so much on the
Zimmer-Man as much as the group that would first become famous backing him up,
The Band. Actually, the documentary’s narrator, Thomas Arnold, vocalizes the
“elevator pitch” of just what this DVD is about in one sentence: “This is the
story of the relationship between Dylan and the Hawks, their reinvention of
American Music at the close of the ‘60s, and the legendary amateur recordings
they made together in Woodstock: The
Basement Tapes.”
It
all starts in the mysterious Deep South of the early ‘60s when rockabilly rebel
Ronnie Hawkins gathered a band together and called them The Hawks. The Beatles
were breaking and rockabilly was fading fast. That is when the call came from
Toronto and Hawkins and the Hawks move to our friendly neighbor to the north.
With attrition (and probably some work visa issues), the band is replaced one
by one by Canadians, with the exception of the drummer, some guy named Levon
Helm (d. 2012). Perhaps you’ve heard of him? The rest of the new group
consisted of Rick Danko (bass; d. 1999), Garth Hudson (keyboard / sax), Richard
Manuel (piano; d. 1986), and Robbie Robertson (guitar).
When
The Hawks outgrew Hawkins’ rockabilly sound and struck out on their own just a
couple of years later, they would eventually rename themselves The Band,
outshining Hawkins with their own illustrious career.
Hooking
up with Bob Dylan after his motorcycle accident in 1966, Dylan talked the Hawks
into moving to Woodstock, NY (a very lovely, quaint and New Age-y town that is
miles from where the so-called Woodstock Festival was held). They all moved
into a house with pink exterior which they dubbed The Big Pink, which would
eventually be the name of The Band’s first solo record after Dylan abandoned
them once he got what he wanted. To date, 138 of their sessions, taped by
Hudson, would emerge and be called The Basement
Tapes, for obvious reasons. Decades before the release was official, the
Tapes were floating around as a 2-LP bootleg. I still remember listening to it
in a friend’s house in the early ‘70s. It was in a plain white cover with a
stamp that read Great White Wonder. I
recall the quality of the records not being that good, as it was probably
several generations down the road.
Dylan
does play a recurring role in the story of The Band, but that’s pretty much it.
He used the group to help get him figure out the direction he wanted, and then
dropped them to record his next LP, John
Wesley Harding, and using studio musicians in their stead, without the
people who had just spent all that time with him. This would apparently become
a pattern with Bobby, using The Band as his touring group, and then dropping
them before reaching the studio. On the other hand, this kind of forced The
Band to strike out on their own, borrowing what they learned in that basement,
and releasing their seminal first folk rock album, The Big Pink. It also contained their first – and one of their
biggest – hits, “The Weight” (a song I really
do not like, but I digress…).
The Big Pink would
quickly be considered a classic album, a trendsetter in Americana roots rock
(hence the “reinvention of American Music” comment above), and blast them into
the A-list. While “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was also a huge hit,
they never really came up to the level of Big
Pink status again.
As
happens with most bands, a power struggle emerges, in this case between
Robertson and Helm, along with a few deaths here and there, and The Band
dissolves into history not as much with a whimper but a bang, thanks in part to
the release of the Martin Scorsese-directed final The Band concert, The Last Waltz, as infamous for its
guest musicians (e.g., Dylan, Joni, Neil, Ronnie) as for the group’s last
hurrah. All in all, the life and death of The Band really never touched me, as
I always found them kind of uninteresting, even while recognizing their talent
as musicians.
As
with most of the prodigious series of documentaries put out by the Chrome Dream
company (there’s over a dozen of just Dylan alone), the film is not just a
collection of comments: there are multiple clips, both live (including arenas
with Dylan and by themselves, their appearances on Saturday Night Live, and clips from The Last Waltz) and commentaries by various writers and critics
(many of them British), musicians and technicians, with both first and second
hand anecdotes and theories. Of course, it’s the first-hand anecdotes that
attracted the most of my attention, such as Hawkins, Mickey Jones (who played
drums during their 1968 world tour), The Band’s early producer John Simon,
Nashville session guitarist Charley McCoy (Blonde
on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline), and the one who
interested me the most, Garth Hudson, who was known for both recording TheBasement
Tapes and also credited for giving The Band their sound. As is common with
Chrome Dreams releases, there are few women who are questioned, making this a
testosterone-driven doc; this is a comment I’ve made before, and I’m sadly
probably going to posit again.
While
I’ll never be a fan of the Band, it’s still good to get a history of them
that’s somewhat thorough, and that’s one thing about this series, they really
tend do delve into minutia through clips, interviews and theory. I’m glad
they’re keeping track.
Bob Dylan: After the Crash 1966-1978
(Special Edition 2 Disc Set) Executive Producers Rob
Johnstone and Andy Cleland Narrated by Mandy O’Neale Pride Films / Chrome Dreams Media DVD:
Disc 1: 118 minutes, 2005 / 2013 CD: Disc
2: 50 minutes 1971 / 2013
This
DVD is especially interesting to watch after the one above, because even though
they cover essentially the same timeframe, and have in some respects the same
format, the focus is incredibly different.
Again
we approach Dylan after his motorcycle crash in 1966, but this time we hear
some skepticism about whether it even happened the way Dylan explained by his
friend, Al Aronowitz (d. 2005; I had the opportunity to meet Al once a year or
two before he passed at an Andy Pratt / Moogy Klingman [d. 2011] show in New
York City the night I got kicked out of a Starbucks; but I digress…). Either
way, it infamously led to Dylan holing himself in a house in Woodstock, NY with
a group of guys called the Hawks who would soon change their name to The Band.
Funny
thing is, in this story, the equally infamous Basement Tapes that came out of that are just a blip in this
telling of the story. The Band gets little shrift here, even when they are
backing him on tours, the exception of which is towards the end when they show
a clip of Dylan and the Band playing the group’s last show in Martin Scorsese’s
The Last Waltz (1975); it’s the same
clip from the other DVD, “Baby Let Me Follow You Down.”
The
story here follows Dylan through his Nashville albums, such as John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, the latter in 1969. This
is accompanied by a clip of Dylan singing a duet of “Girl from the North
Country” with Johnny Cash on Cash’s ABC television show (which is also shown in
the other DVD).
One
major difference between this DVD and many of the others from this label is
that there are a remarkably fewer musical clips here, and a lot more talking
head interviews. As this one originally came out a few years earlier, perhaps
they were still developing the “formula” for this series? While hearing the
music is great, it also can see seen as padding to make these longer, and at
near two hours, I’ll take the info and be as happy as if there were snippets of
songs (they never ever play full
numbers, just 10-30 seconds each).
One
thing I also like about the Chrome Dream series is that while they’re happy to
lionize the artist in focus, there is also a level of honesty, even on the
negative side. For example, for Dylan’s show with the Band at the 1969 Isle of
Wight Festival, Aronowitz tells a story of why Dylan was an hour late due to a sound
system issue; this is contrasted by Ray Foulk, the Festival’s organizer who
blames the Band for playing too long and that it was only starting an hour later
than scheduled. Much like the folkies not expecting Dylan to go electric, the
Festival fans were not expecting his new country style, leading to bad reviews
from press there.
Another
example of this frankness is British music journalist Nigel Williamson (he
appears regularly on Chrome Dream documentaries), who plainly states about
Dylan’s Self Portrait LP, “It’s
almost as if he deliberately set out to make an album that everyone would hate.”
For New Morning, Nigel calls it a
“good rather than great” album.
Around
this time in the story, we are introduced to AJ Weberman, a fan who claims he
was Dylan’s friend that searched Dylan’s garbage trying to find clues about song
meanings. This led to some angry (and both pathetic and funny at the same time)
phone calls in 1971 from Dylan asking Weberman to cease and desist. At some
point Dylan physically beat Weberman up, something that would have been all
over the television now; then again, Weberman couldn’t do what he did
(harassment) either.
The
phone calls, which Weberman recorded, have been available as bootlegs for
decades, and are collected here in an accompanying CD, licensed to the
documentary directly from Weberman. I found it fascinating to listen to
Weberman, who is interviewed (probably part of the deal of the rights, as he
comes across as a strange yet narcissistic man). This is part of the story of
Dylan that has fascinated me, so it’s nice to actually see Weberman in the
(digital) flesh, as he humorously claims he is starting the Bob Dylan Liberation Front against
Dylan’s newer styles. I find it curious that in all the information that is
flowing through this DVD, there is no mention of Dylan’s manager, Albert
Grossman (d. 1986), a usually sore topic for Weberman.
There
is some digging into Dylan’s only Asylum Records release Planet Waves (after pressure from David Geffen), a 1974 tour after
8 years off the road, the more successful Blood
on the Tracks in 1975, and his Desire LP in the film, but it feels more
informational and chronological that delving. For the deeper look, they discuss
Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy
the Kid, which was Dylan’s first acting role (and the first and only film I
ever saw stoned on weed). The film is looked at critically, but we see no clips
other than the trailer, which has a brief shot of Dylan. In other words, for
all the talking, there is very little imagery other than concerning the
accompanying album. Weirdly, no verbal mention or musical clip is made of the
biggest hit on the soundtrack (and one of my fave songs of later-day Dylan),
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
The
next big piece in the story detailed here is the Rolling Thunder Review, a tour
that started out successfully and fell under the weight of its own success and
Dylan’s boredom. We see it through the eyes of Dylan’s band leader for the
show, Rob Stoner (nee Rothstein; I still have a couple of his solo albums).
He’s a good storyteller of what it was like to work with Dylan in both the
studio and on tour, and though he left midway through the second RTR tour, he
still has good words to say about Bob. What I felt was his most intriguing
comment is that Phil Ochs was turned down for the RTR, and soon after took his
own life in 1976, so Stoner wonders if there is a correlation. This segment is
followed by the Bob Dylan directed disaster of a film, Renaldo & Clara, which all the critics interviewed here say
essentially that the live footage was good, but as a piece of cinema, as a
whole, it was not a success.
Towards
the end of the story here, Dylan gets a bigger band, and records and releases
the Street Legal album, which is well-received
everywhere except on his home turf of the US. The end of this DVD comes in November
1978, when Dylan becomes a Born Again Christian.
Again,
with the Chrome Dream collection, there are lots of interviews, here more than
usual, consisting of writers, journalists, and some of the people who were
integral to the period, such as Weberman, Stoner, Aronowitz, Foulk, as well as
Ron Cornelius (guitarist on Self Portrait
and New Morning), Bruce Langhorne
(guitarist for Pat Garrett and Billy the
Kid), Eric Weissberg (guitarist on the New York session of Blood on the Tracks), Kevin Odegard
(guitarist for the Minnesota sessions of Blood
on the Tracks; Jacques Levy (d. 2004; playwright and lyric collaborator on Desire), and Paul Colby (d. 2014; owner
of the Bitter End). And finally, giving a strong female voice to the boys club is violinist Scarlet Rivera (Desire, Rolling Thunder Review).
The
information here is both direct stories and second-hand journalism by
professional writers in the field, but it flushing out pretty well, which is
just what I expect from the Chrome Dream team.
Earlier this year I did an interview with keyboardist Barry Goldberg for a British blues magazine that then elected not to publish it. Rather than see it disappear into the void I'm presenting it here for anyone who's interested. Goldberg was best known as the keyboardist in Michael Bloomfield's Electric Flag. He also played with Dylan at the 1965 game-changing Newport gig and has done a ton of other stuff. At the time I interviewed him he had just finished recording a new blues album with Stephen Stills and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. That has since come out (under the name the Rides) and the band did tour, but at the time I had not yet heard the record.
JT: How did you come to record a blues album with Stephen Stills and Kenny Wayne Shepherd?
BG: My friend Elliot Roberts, Stephen and Neil’s manager, said, “Stephen said he would like to do a blues-oriented record. Why don’t you guys get together?” We knew each other a long time ago from doing the Super Session album. We’ve seen each other from time to time but we weren’t really that close. I contacted him and they set up a writing session for Stephen and me to at Stephen’s house. We were just hanging out and he started playing some licks on the guitar and it blew me away. I forgot what a great guitar player he was. Then he started singing and one thing led to another and the vibe carried itself to a blues-rock kind of feeling. We were fooling around with some grooves and I had a couple of things in mind. My idea, after I heard the great guitar playing, was to make the vibe guitar-oriented with a lot of room for him to play soulful licks and sing as well. We instantly connected. It was like finding a new soul brother. We didn’t live far from each other and we wrote two or three things together and then the idea was not just to have a younger guitar player but a really hot young guy who can really play. A few guys were mentioned—John Mayer was one of them and Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Kenny’s always been one of my favorite young guys so he came in and all three of us started writing together at Stephen’s studio with the idea not just of writing songs together but getting ready to do an album together. The original concept was a jam kind of thing but then Kenny came up with some great grooves, Kenny came up with some lyrics and I came up with some hooks. The three of us were like a special force. We got along great together. It wasn’t a forced project where you put people together that had nothing in common. We all had our roots that were deep into the blues and rock and roll, and it was a natural transition for the three of us and it started flowing. We wrote five or six songs together, four of which the three of us wrote on the album. It transcended into something more than just a jam record.
JT: Stephen said you were originally going to call it Super Session 2.
BG: That was the original idea. It was Bill Bentley’s idea but for whatever reason we weren’t allowed to use that name. The first song that Stephen and I wrote together was called “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love,” and Kenny Wayne said, “Why don’t you just call the album Can’t Get Enough?” Stephen’s sounding like Joe Cocker. His singing is phenomenal from the first song on. It’s a whole other thing. And his guitar playing—Kenny Wayne brought out the energy from both of us. We needed that young guy to come along and bring the electricity.
Who is the rhythm section on the record?
BG: Kenny Wayne’s drummer, Chris Layton, who played with Stevie Ray—Kenny said, “We’ve gotta send for him.” At first he couldn’t make it but the right things took place and he came in. He’s an unbelievable shuffle and blues and rock and roll drummer. Then Stephen chose the bass player, Kevin McCormick from Crosby, Stills and Nash. They each felt really comfortable with the choice of the other two guys and then Luis Conte was brought in for percussion. He’s phenomenal; he’s a Cuban guy. We went to the studio and I wouldn’t say it was intense but the energy demanded itself to get to another level. There was no fooling around; it was business. The grooves came out—I don’t even know if there are any second or third takes. It just happened in the studio—EastWest Studios on Sunset. The producer, Jerry Harrison, was supervising—he worked with Kenny Wayne before—and this guy E.T. [Eric Thorngren], who does a lot of Kenny Wayne’s records, was the engineer. I was happy. I wouldn’t say I’ve been in the minor leagues but I haven’t been in the major leagues for a while, in an A studio. The luxury of that, and the luxury of Stephen’s guys and Kenny’s guys tuning my piano and bringing this over and “What do you need?’ is something I haven’t had for a long time. That was wonderful for me.
JT: Are you playing organ or just piano?
BG: I’m playing B3 and piano.
JT: Are there any cover songs?
BG: Jerry had an idea to bring in Iggy Pop’s “Search and Destroy.” Stephen and I couldn’t relate to it but Kenny Wayne thought it was a great idea. As soon as we got into it, the young kids in the studio—Stephen’s daughter and Elliot’s son—went crazy. So Stephen and I looked at each other and said, “Yeah, OK.” Then Stephen came in one day and said, “I want to do this song.” And it was “Rockin’ in the Free World.” He said, “I want to do this for Neil.” Wow! It’s really a great version of the song. So it’s very diversified. But it all fit. There’s a couple of traditional blues songs on there and the songs that we wrote. Kenny Wayne’s singing, Stephen’s singing. It’s just a fun record, a really cool record. The name of the band is the Rides because Kenny and Stephen are into cars. Gary Burden designed the album cover. He does all the Eagles and Crosby, Stills and Nash and Neil’s stuff.
JT: Are you going to tour behind it?
BG: They said something about going out for three weeks in August, after Stephen is done with Crosby, Stills and Nash.
JT: You’re also involved in a new documentary called Born in Chicago. What is the story behind that?
BG: I was involved in producing it. That was almost five years of trying to bring that story of the guys from Chicago—who really didn’t get the recognition for what they contributing to the rock and roll arena. They were just as important as the English guys in bringing the blues to rock and roll. That’s the story of how we learned first-hand; being from Chicago it was just a few miles away from us. We could go as teenagers and a group of us—Butterfield, Bloomfield, myself, Nick Gravenites, Harvey Mandel—you went to the South Side and the West Side to discover first-hand from the masters: Wolf and Muddy. And in reverence and respect and dedication it wasn’t at all considered a ripoff, it was out of love.
JT: You played with Muddy and Wolf.
BG: Oh yeah. We were like freaks at first, these young white kids. They were so nice to us. Whatever we needed to know about the music, about them—they became an extended family. They took us in and we played alongside them. When Otis Spann wanted to take a break he called me and of course Muddy noticed that it wasn’t Otis Spann on piano. But eventually, after months, I did get it right to where it didn’t bother him that I was playing. We just learned so much from them and we gave it back when we played the Fillmore and Michael introduced Muddy and B.B. King to Bill Graham. It was in reverence, which we carry with us today in our band Chicago Blues Reunion. What we’re trying to accomplish with this documentary is to bring more of an awareness to who we were and what we did, us and Nick Gravenites and Janis Joplin. And Dylan—when we played at Newport it was Sam Lay and Michael and myself. Even the sessions with Mitch Ryder, “Devil With a Blue Dress On,” there’s blues influence in my licks that I play on that record. it was a number one pop record but it couldn’t have happened without he Chicago blues.
JT: Fast forwarding a little bit, what do you remember about Newport ’65, playing with Dylan? Did you have any clue what he had in mind?
BG: Not at all. When we did that we opened it up for everyone to do and it wasn’t easy. Butterfield asked me to play with him and Michael at Newport. We all got in the car and drove. We didn’t really get out of Chicago that much so this was a big adventure. We went to Newport and when we got there, Paul Rothchild, who was Butterfield’s producer, said, “I don’t hear a keyboard with the band at all,” without even hearing me. So Paul said, “Sorry, man, but our producer said that you can’t play with us.” So I was incredibly bummed. I was there alone in a strange place. The next night there was this big party and Michael had played a few months earlier on Dylan’s record “Like a Rolling Stone” in New York. Bob said, “I don’t know if my keyboard player was gonna show”—that was Al Kooper—“and I don’t know what to do.” Michael said, “This is my friend Barry Goldberg.” Bob said, “Would you like to play with me tomorrow night?” We rehearsed the next afternoon and people were not liking the electric music—Peter Yarrow and Pete Seeger were giving us dirty looks. So we went on and Bob was black leather and the whole deal and Michael was just blasting away. We went into “Maggie’s Farm” and we did another song and then “Like a Rolling Stone.” I felt that we were definitely all on a mission. It was something new. Al Kooper did show up and there were two pianos, but on “Like a Rolling Stone” Jerome Arnold couldn’t get the changes so Al played bass. I’ve felt, and Sam Lay felt, that something different was happening, something great. When you do something different, most of the time people aren’t going to accept it. This was so different for these people, that when we were done playing “Like a Rolling Stone” I felt so energized on another level—it was like the magic from Dylan transferred into me and to this day I carry that.
JT: Were people definitely booing?
BG: Some people booed and some people liked it and applauded.
JT: How did the Electric Flag come together?
BG: I was playing in New York, doing the Mitch Ryder stuff, and Michael had this concept that he came to me with. I was doing some session work in New York and he said, “I want to start an American music band,” with all different elements of American music: Stax, R&B. He knew I knew about Percy Sledge and R&B and the Phil Spector sound. He covered the blues. He said, “I want to have a horn section so we can do ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ and ‘Higher and Higher,’ and I want you to help me put it together. We decided we were gonna use Harvey Brooks, who was the premier session bass player in New York. We didn’t think he’d ever leave but he jumped at the chance. Then we went to the show where Mitch was playing, the Murray the K show, and the drummer was Buddy Miles. Michael and I looked at each other and there’s this guy who was rocking the whole theater to “Midnight Hour.” We took Buddy back to the Albert Hotel, where Michael and I always roomed together—it was a real funky, filthy Village hotel. We bought like four boxes of Oreo cookies. We laid Buddy down on the bed and kept dropping cookies in his mouth. After the fourth box and telling him he could meet all the flower children girl groupies in San Francisco, which I knew nothing about, and he could run the city, Buddy said OK and Pickett was not happy about it. For a year he was threatening us. But that was the nucleus. Nick Gravenites was already in San Francisco looking for a place for us to start rehearsing. We all got there and Susan, Michael’s wife, was sort of like the den mother, the house mother. She took care of us. The first warmup gig was at the Fillmore West. The next gig was Monterey Pop.
JT: What was your take on Monterey?
BG: That was another moment where I felt that something exhilarating was happening in my life. I’d never seen so many people, like 50,000. I was hanging out with guys like Brian Jones and meeting the Mamas and the Papas. I though we really came through, having the horn section and having Buddy. People had never seen anything like that. Only to be blown away by Otis Redding. He was, to me, the greatest thing I’d ever seen. We didn’t even know if the flower children would understand what he was doing but they really did. Soul is a universal thing and when he came out with Cropper, oh my God. I remember Ravi Shankar, I remember Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. Those were the highlights for me.
JT: Of all the solo records you’ve done, do you have a favorite?
BG: Probably Stand Back! with Charlie Musselwhite. That’s one of my favorite records, and a record I produced called Blue Night by Percy Sledge. The guitar section was Bobby Womack, Steve Cropper and Mick Taylor. We got the Soul Album of the Year award and W.C. handy and Grammy nominations. Percy has always been my favorite R&B singer so to get to work with him in the studio was the most beautiful experience.
JT: What is your feeling on the blues today?
BG: There’s guys that are carrying on the tradition. It’ll never happen in Chicago like it did or anywhere else but it’ll never die. You can still hear the influence today of the Chicago blues. Not only New Orleans blues but Chicago blues. Guys like Gary Clark Jr. and Robert Cray and Kenny Wayne—he lives for the blues. To talk blues with a 34-year-old kid and there are kids coming up that are younger than that, hopefully the film will tie it all in and the young kids will hear it. That’s another point of this film is to educate to the kids how this whole thing evolved and how important it was. Maybe some of them will listen and go back and say, “What is this?” like we did. Because it’s magical.
It was
inevitable that Bob Dylan would go electric, sending the folk masses either
running towards or away from the electronic medium.It wasn’t as much a rebellion when he showed
up and plugged in his Strat during the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, shocking and
rocking the status quo with “Maggie’s Farm,” as a growth spurt.
Dylan’s previous
albums started out professing their loyalty to what preceded, nodding a head to
Woody Guthrie, Delta Blues, and his upbringing in small city Minnesota.When he hit the folk circuit in New York, his
retro sound and vocal meanderings were as shocking to that audience used to the
more subdued folk sounds of the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, and Peter Paul
& Mary, as his hard hitting excursion in 1965. However, the first time was
a revivalism to the hootenanny crowd who grasped his sincerity and bravery, putting
him at the head of the pack. This became especially true when he started
producing original numbers that were not about sea shanties (“Greenland
Fisheries”), lost loves (“Barbara Allen”) and murder (“Down By the River”,
“Willow Garden”), but of current events (“Blowin’ in the Wind”) and the changes
in society (“The Times They are A-Changin’”); he even wrote nasty ditties about
people he didn’t like (“It Ain’t Me Babe”).
Much like
the beginning of rock and roll, where the smaller songwriters were copied and homogenized
by the larger, and more mainstream sounding artists, this also followed in the
folk milieu, with many artists such as Peter, Paul and Mary covering Dylan, or
even Judy Collins having a hit with “Suzanne” before its creator, Leonard
Cohen. But as with the examples for both folk and rock, having the smoothed out
versions led the way for the lesser known artists, especially Dylan, whose
voice was hardly AM radio friendly.
Dylan was in
a constant mode of expanding and stretching, each album being more progressive
and far reaching, with fame and ego pushing him ever forward. By the time he
played England in spring of 1965, it was obvious he was bored. As much as he
was influencing the whole folk genre, spurring on new sounds from the likes of
Phil Ochs and Simon & Garfunkel, he was also, in turn, tuned into the newer,
relatively harder and updated eclectic electric sounds of the British Invasion, as well as the more harsh
music that was coming out of the Pacific Northwest, with bands like the
Kingsmen and the Wailers. Most likely drugs were also spurring him on, as
evidenced by the classic footage of Dylan and John Lennon completely in an
outer range of mind alteration in the back of a limo, as they mumble and burble
along; it’s as painful as it is unintentionally funny.
If Dylan had
not plugged in, surely someone else would have eventually, as technology manages to eventually change everything, but it was the
combination of Dylan’s stature as a folk artist and being in the bailiwick of
the traditional celebration of the genre that broke the folk rock sound
barrier. If Dylan had played somewhere else, even Folk City on Bleecker St., or
it was someone else who had electrified Newport, the shock wave would not have
been as big and certainly not as electrically instantaneous at that moment. It
was all the elements forming into a perfect time-binding flash that changed not
just one genre, but many, and forming a completely new sound that would spark
the likes of the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. This kind of moment would not
occur again until the Beatles would release Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.
Side note: Music historian Tom Bingham
states that “Some of us would argue that the
release of Pet Sounds a year earlier was a far
more groundbreaking moment (and current historical perspective seems to
corroborate that).” While I agree with him on some level, I believe the effect
of Pet Sounds was more on a music industry level, and Sgt. Pepper’s was more on a mass cultural one, i.e., everyone had the Beatles record, but the Beach Boys’
excellent release was less populous.
Elvis Found Alive Directed and Produced by Joel Gilbert Highway 61 Entertainment, 2012 128 minutes, USD $14.95 Highway61ent.com Elvisfoundalive.com MVDvisual.com
Taking an opposite tack this time, Joel Gilbert, who brought you the amusing yet well researched Paul McCartney Is Really Dead is back with Elvis Found Alive.
The premise is set up after Gilbert visits Graceland on a vacation, Joel and his audio/video crew (who we meet and act pretty stiffly, obviously not professional actors) send off for Elvis’ file from the US government via the Freedom of Information Act. But when the package arrives in 2012 (I received this DVD in 2011, FYI), the ink on the redacted parts are still wet (!) enough for them to clean off some of it, and find out that Elvis is not only alive, but living in the Simi Valley of California, just a few miles away from Gilbert’s studio, under witness protection, using his infamous “hotel registry name” of Jon Burrows! (Actually, just about every sentence in this review probably deserves an exclamation point, so just add it wherever you think it’s needed.)
Grabbing Elvis co-star Celeste Yarnall (from his 1968 film, Live a Little, Love a Little), they go out to pay him a visit. In front of the suspected house is a 1957 Caddy with numerous Republican presidential bumper stickers, including Nixon (is the one), Reagan, Bush (both), and Dole. The back seat has a stack of Elvis 8-Tracks (hahaha). It just gets better and better (not meant sarcastically in any way).
Gilbert talks to someone at the house’s front door while mic’d – his crew starts to freak out because they recognize the voice – and ask if it’s okay to interview him. Let me say right here and now that whomever mimicked the voice did a truly splendid job, even though “Elvis” (I’m leaving out the quote marks on the name and the pronoun “his” after this) sounds just like he did in the ‘70s. Elvis agrees, and the crew comes inside, including Yarnall, who is wearing a cap and stands in the background. Elvis is lit so we cannot see his face at all, which is more likely due to adding the vocal in a studio later. He sits and plays with his rings, as Elvis was – er – is known to do.
As with the Paul-is-Dead documentary, what follows is actually a very meticulously detailed history of Elvis, through his own words in 2012. The chapters are broken down into sections by dates and events (listed below). Except for some biting comments about the Colonel, most of the first half of the story is mostly researched knowledge, such as his deep devotion to his mom, his rise to fame, and his career. But there are also some interesting speculations to keep the viewer on her or his toes, such as Elvis being forced into the Army because the government was afraid that Jailhouse Rock promoted homosexuality (e.g., “No. 47 said to No. 3 / You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see” – Ed.). Another is after the army, Elvis is introduced to the Vegas mob by Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Jr. privately tells him to am-scray for his own good; apparently the only reason Presley would ever play the town is to pay back huge gambling debts owed by the Colonel.
Further, the reason he married Priscilla is because Ann-Margret (“the female me,” 2012 Elvis states) turned him down. A fun comment though is “The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one.” And Elvis definitely had his share of them, thank is large part to the Colonel’s misguided direction (though I remember hearing a quote at some time that Elvis wanted to be like Dean Martin).
As the lame – and yes, they were – films drag down his career (though Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas - especially for the “female me” - are still watchable for me), he tried to resurrect his career with “The Ghetto” and “Suspicious Mind.” However, there was trouble brewing in America that concerned Elvis to the core: the Weathermen Underground and the Mafia were controlling the kids through drugs, and Elvis wanted to put a stop to it, so he famously contacted Prez Nixon and asked to be a officer in the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Rather, Nixon sent him a badge (Elvis collected police badges, which are on display in Graceland) naming him an honorary agent for the “Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.” And here is where this film starts to interestingly invent history (supposedly…). For the purposes of this story, he actually was made an undercover Marshall, and with the help of the Memphis Mafia (his ironically named posse), he helped bring down the Weathermen Underground and subsequently the Mafia by using hidden and elaborate stings so that they didn’t connect it to him.
Gilbert asks Elvis, “Are you saying the man who invented cool wanted to be a narc?” Elvis calmly answers, “I felt God wanted to use me in a much more important way.”
Another interesting turn of events has Elvis using Bob Dylan (see, I really should be using a lot more exclamation points) to introduce him to mobster Joey Gallo, leading to the latter’s hit. With wiretaps overhearing of Elvis’ Memphis Mafia being suspect, he fires them all (with their blessing) to protect them; but of course, Presley is also suspect.
Here comes the plan to protect his own life by faking his death, and then going into the witness protection program where he worked as a hotel clerk in Kalamazoo, Michigan (one of the famous “Elvis sightings”).
An amusing side-story is the Mafia telling Dylan he better “find Jesus” after Gallo’s assassination, meaning keeping his nose clean, as it were, Dylan misunderstands and pretends to become a born-again Christian. When he learns what was really meant, he goes back to Judaism. Hahaha, that is such a nice touch!
Gilbert researches this tale well, and includes bits about Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s book Is Elvis Alive? and a Bill Bixby-hosted speculative television special on the subject.
Being that 2012 Elvis is a big Reagan fan (“He had strong American principles”), there is a great PhotoShop’d picture of a graying Elvis with Big Ronnie, and also completely gray with Bill Clinton (it is posited here that Chinese spies tapped Bill’s phone and learned about Monica, which is why Clinton gave them Most Favored Nations status; oh, and Elvis also states that “everyone killed JFK”). But it stops there, because Elvis apparently is not an Obama fan because of his connection to ex-Weather Underground leader Bill Ayres (“Both hate American values”; Little Georgie W. Bush did? But I digress…)
One of the more imaginative aspects to this pseudo-documentary (again, meant kindly) is director Gilbert’s use of the Capt. Marvel Jr. comic books as a thread throughout the entire film. He uses panels that so closely represents Presley’s life, it really is almost like it was based on Presley. It’s known Elvis was a fan of the comic (there are photos of him reading it, and there are stacks in Graceland today that were Elvis’ property; shame they couldn’t work Stan Lee into this…). This theme also used as expressing throughout how much Elvis thought he resembled Marvel Jr., how both Priscilla and Ann-Margret looked like the Marvel’s sister, Ann Marvel (kinda creepy), and how Elvis’ arch-enemy Bill Ayres resembles the villain of the comic, Capt. Nazi.
There is a touching moment as Elvis and Yarnall, someone refers to as “the one that got away,” are reunited. Wonder what her husband thinks about that, I ask bemusedly.
So not only is Elvis Presley alive, but he’s back. There is a new CD by “Jon Burrows” available with some of his old songs redone and rearranged, and some new tunes as well, such as “Lisa Marie” (which also has a music video on the DVD).
Believe me, I’m only skimming the surface on what is presented here. The stories are incredibly imaginative, and as one who is not engulfed in Elvismania I’m sure there’s some stuff I’m missing. And yet, this was a fun ride from beginning to end. Sure, it could have been trimmed probably by about 20 minutes rather than its over two-hour running time, but this is definitely for not just Elvis fans, but anyone who is into rock’n’roll history or just the mysteries of the 1960s counterculture.
I sure do look forward to see what’s next for Joel Gilbert and his crew.
Chapters: Part 1: 1935-1955 – Captain Marvel Jr. Origins Part 2: 1956-1958 – Elvis the Pelvis Part 3: 1959-1960 – US Army Intervention Part 4: 1961-1967 – Hollywood Shlock Formula Part 5: 1968-1969 – America Under Siege Part 6: 1970 – Federal Drug Enforcement Agent Part 7: 1971-1974 – Fighting the Weather Underground Part 8: 1975-1976 – Battling the Mafia Part 9: 1977 – Fake Death Plot Part 10: 1978-1979 – Witness Protection Program Part 11: 1980-2004 – The Struggle to Return Part 12: 2005-2001 – The Obama-Weathermen Nexus Part 12: 2012 – Elvis is Back
Here We Are in the Years: Neil Young’s Music Box Produced and directed by Alex Westbrook
Narrated by Thomas Arnold
Sexy Intellectual
120 minutes, USD $19.95
Chromedream.co.uk
MVDvisual.com
I can’t remember now, as it’s been years, if I read it or some musician told me directly that when someone wants to interview him/her, first the reporter gets asked what they think of Neil Young. If the potential interviewer is not a fan, the Q&A doesn’t happen because obviously they are just not knowledgeable, or cool enough.
To be honest, before the mid-1980s, I would not have been on the interviewer list. All I knew of Young, essentially, was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and I put them in the same category of boring as Kansas, Rush, and any of those other guitar-meandering Classic Rockers. Hey, I was a punk, and I liked my music short and brash, with some exceptions (usually produced by Phil Spector, Brian Wilson or George Martin). Then someone at work gave me a copy of CSNY’s Greatest Hits. While I still found the first couple of songs meh, starting with “Teach Your Children,” I found that I selectively liked them. Of course, from there, the trail led to Buffalo Springfield and Crazy Horse, and I found myself a Young fan. It’s true, rust never sleeps.
To the casual listener, Neil Young may seem like an auteur, but the man has been changing to different styles and genres every decade or so, along the lines of a Frank Zappa, the Who to some extent, or, if you’ll pardon the connection, Madonna. His career has been multi-faceted, to say the least, and this British documentary is out to show his path.
From Toronto, Neil Young (not to be confused with Yonge St.) was born in 1945, being just the right age of around 10 at the birth of rock and roll. Clips of Chuck, Little R and Elvis (singing “Tutti Frutti”!) are used as examples of what Young was seeing. But it was Roy Orbison’s pure vocals and style that touched Young. Later Young would write “The Birds,” which has an Orbison-esque tone, and contains the lyrics, “It’s over / It’s over.”
Having moved to Winnipeg when he was 16, he started being influenced by the surf instrumentals of the likes of the Ventures, Link Wray, and the Tornados, as he became more and more obsessed with the guitar. Around this time, he started his first band, the Squires. And then Mersey Beat hit. Being Canadian, he probably had better access to the early British sounds than those in the US, and like everyone else, he drawn into the new variations, especially the double guitar attack of The Stones’ Brian Jones and Keef.
And that is just the start of this two-hour look at Young’s life and career (mostly the latter). As usual in this series, there is more focus of thoughts, beliefs and opinions by music writers and historians than the actual musicians who played with Young, though two of his early band mates tell some tales: Ken Smyth (The Squires) and George Tomsco (The Fireballs). Along with this series’ usual suspects and critics, the likes of Anthony Curtis (Rolling Stone mag), Johnny Rogan (Neil Young: Zero to Sixty), and the ever present Nigel Williamson (Neil Young: Stories Behind the Songs), joining them is one of my favorite musicologists, Richie Unterberger, who wrote amazing books about the Velvet Underground and The Who, among others. It is so good to see him get his own thoughts in.
The subtitle of the DVD is accurate, as there are many great points about Young’s music and especially influences, sometimes played right after each other. Among those people and styles who had sway in his styles presented here include Randy Bachman (pre-Guess Who / BTO), Bob Dylan / Ian & Sylvia / Joni Mitchell, punk, Devo’s electronic bent, and neo-punk like Pearl Jam, who appeared with him on MTV Video Music Awards in 1993.
Of course, he also had an even larger influence on others, mostly good, but occasionally icky, such as Kurt Cobain’s suicide note quoting one of his lyrics. But that is all part of the mythos that is Neil Young.
Young, as Anthony Curtis states, “Can’t be written off.” He is still touring, still writing, and still recording. And possibly grumpy as ever.
The extras include a seven-minute-plus interview with one of his earliest band members, Ken Smyth, in a piece titled, “A Brief History of the Squires.” This includes a number of rare still photos of the band, shown under Smyth’s narration. His story of how they broke up gave me a smile.
There is also a collection of contributor bios, giving some back-up to the many critics and historians who appear within the DVD, but as with most of the series, the text is too small to read on the small screen (I have a 19”); not everyone has a large plasma, y’know.
If you’re a die-hard Young fan, odds are there may not be much new information, other than opinions and conjecture that you haven’t heard before, but I find it positive, because for casual fans there is a lot of new material and insights, presented in a measured yet enjoyable way.
Most of this series concerns British music (next up for me is about Robert Plant), and a slice of American rockers, but this is one of the few Canadian acts I’ve seen them cover. Nice. Meanwhile, I’ve heard that there is a town in north Ontario…
Bob Dylan 1990-2006: The Never Ending Narrative Executive Producer: Rob Johnstone Narration by Thomas Arnold Music by T-Bomb; Dylanesque Chrome Dreams 105 minutes, USD $19.95 Chromedream.co.uk MVDvisual.com
When I think back looking at Dylan’s career, it seems kind of seamless. He’s just always been there my whole sentient musical life. And yet, he’s had his trials and tribulations on and off over the past few years, and that’s exactly what this CD covers.
We start off on this DVD in 1990 with Dylan entering his 50s, and putting out the Under the Red Sky LP, with its sing-song, almost child-like rhythms, which essentially tanked. Despite it having such guest musicians as Elton John, George Harrison, Slash, and David Crosby, it was not well received by the critics or his audience alike. This leads to possibly the lowest point in his career.
The tour that follows is also called “lackluster” here, and guitarist and band leader, G.E. Smith (ex-Saturday Night Live musical director and Gilda Radner’s ex-husband) left the tour early. Dylan auditioned guitarist on stage during performances. That must have contributed to an inconsistent level of professionalism that people had to pay to hear.
This was, of course, followed by Dylan’s appearance at the Grammys in February of 1991, when he sang a stupefying version of (supposedly) “Dogs of War” (a wonderful clip of the performance is shown here). This is described by one author here as his “nadir.” I remember during a Saturday Night Live “newscast” they had Adam Sandler (in one of his few funny bits) as Dylan, and David Spade as an equally mumbling Tom Petty translating (this clip is not included here, but should have been). Back to the Grammys’ song, Anthony Curtis of Rolling Stone (who is in a lot of these British music icon documentaries) stands up for Dylan, positing that it was cool that Dylan played atonal at a corporate function.
Speaking of music experts, let me discuss some of the people who appear on this documentary to explain what you are seeing. With the exception of a couple of the engineers on his Oh Mercy release, all the people discussing Dylan and his career are writers and journalists, most of them British (this is a UK-based production). While this is all well and good, nearly all of what is presented are opinions, conjecture and impressions. I would have liked to have seen more people who were actually there discussing what they were seeing, rather than what they were hearing (about). This is second or third hand. Yes, it is good to hear from people (all men; these British docs need more women) who know enough of Dylan’s catalog to give a cohesive overall picture, but rather than hearing about Dylan being depressed, I would like to hear from someone like G.E. Smith who can testify, and while it’s an interesting concept to say that during his low point, Dylan was possibly jealous of and competitive about his son Jakob’s success with the Wallflowers during the ‘90s, how about an opinion from Jakob? I have many friends who are intimate with the Dylan cannon, such as Bernie Kugel or Nancy Neon, and I respect their opinions as much as whoever is on this DVD.
Some who appear here are Nigel Williamson (British author of The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan who also is in a lot of these), Patrick Humphries (British author of The Complete Guide to Bob Dylan), Clinton Heylin (British author of Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades), Derek Barker (British editor of Isis magazine), and Robert “D-“ Christgau (ex-Village Voice music editor; currently with Rolling Stone).
But getting back to the narration… Dylan was in a funk and stopped writing songs because, as he is heard to question here in an audio clip, why bother writing songs anymore because the world already has enough of them. In fact, after a break, his next two albums, Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong were both acoustic and full of covers of blues and folk traditional pieces. By digging up the (his?) past, he laid the groundwork for his future.
And almost in a reflection of 1965, after the two acoustic releases, he goes full electric with band at Woodstock II (I was just across the Hudson River interviewing singer-songwriter Margo Hennebach), and his star was on the rise again with a whole new and younger audience enthralled by him. The DVD theorizes that he is finally appreciative of his listeners, and it shows. The performance is followed by the obligatory MTV Unplugged (clips of both are shown here). Finally, the following year with new songs in tow, he released Time Out of Mind. This is a return to critical success, especially after a heart infection puts his life in danger (raising the rhetorical question, is a life-endangering disease worth it if it gets you enough publicity?).
By his next release, Love and Theft, produced by himself and using his touring band (something he rarely did), he was “on top of his game” as one of the authors professes. Well, he does win a Grammy for it. This follows by a couple of film appearances (one he writes and directs) and soundtracks, another album (Modern Times), a Victoria Secret ad, and his autobiography, Chronicles Vol. 1 (which Christgau describes as, "It's just one more mirror in the hall of mirrors that has been his continued public life"). By the end of the DVD, we are hearing Dylan as a disc jockey on his Theme Time Radio Hour, a long way from his incomprehensible Grammys “Dogs of War” performance.
With the release of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home” Dylan has become “The Elder Statesman of Rock,” even though the film is about his career up until 1966. And as he approaches his ‘60s, and he is dressing like a swarthy cowboy with a pencil thin moustache, he is starting to facially resemble Leonard Nemoy.
Throughout the DVD there are numerous clips, photos, and performances by Dylan, alone making this worth seeking out. The research done by Angela Turner is spectacular, and even the opinonators (authors, et. al) get some good comments in along with the conjecture.
Marshall McLuhan once said that old technologies get replaced, and then come back as “art.” This DVD shows that this can be true of people, as well.
Bob Dylan Revealed Directed by Joel Gilbert Highway 61 Entertainment 112 minutes, USD $14.95 Highway61ent.com MVDvisual.com
The last release I saw from Highway 61 was a pseudo-documentary about the alleged cover-up of the supposed death of Paul McCartney. It was ludicrous, but definitely imaginative. Then recently, this new Bob Dylan bio came into my hands, and I was wondering: real/fake? Imaginative/same-old-same-old?
BD Revealed takes a slightly different slant on the whole bio of Dylan, and rather than the usual narrator with live clips and talking head experts, this is almost an oral history of BD from his humble beginning until the early ‘90’s Never Ending Tour, just before it all fell apart for him.
Without narration, the only outside framework for the linear chronology is title cards presenting different sections, including chapters and sub-headings.
Most music-based documentaries, I find, are filled with authors who have written about the artist, which is all well and fine, but it’s sort of like having the Cliff Notes of those who have already done the research. Here, however, the documentary is chock full of those who know or knew him, worked with him in the studio, and had some kind of relationship with him, such as musicians with whom he has toured. This is much more anecdotal than researchers positing opinions or hearsay about they have learned. In other words, it’s first hand rather than once removed. This makes for a more dynamic telling. Do you want to hear from his childhood friend, or someone who had interviewed that friend? That’s a rhetorical question.
The segment between 1962 and 1966 is pretty short, but includes the likes of producers Jerry Wexler and Al Kasha, and his childhood friend Barry Feinstein, who uses descriptors of early Bobby Zimmerman as “interesting,” “magical,” and “hard to make out the words.” Kasha describes how he used the first low-selling album for fodder for other musicians, to help spread BD’s songs. Dylan himself is heard in a press conference clip (there are a number of them included throughout the DVD), including him stating, “I don’t know any college students.”
The next section is from 1966, and concerns his Electric World Tour. Drummer Mickey Jones (he was hired by Albert Grossman) describes extensively on what it was like to be traveling with Dylan during that period, and how the band as they were booed across Europe and Australia. It’s easy to see from the press conference clips that Dylan is exhausted, and also humorous to see him snap at the reporters, including one incident where he is asked about his songs being written to be contentious, to which he responds, “You’ve heard the songs, haven’t you!?” Another time he states his first name is “Penizovich.”
Another short segment that is full of impact is about 1967, when Dylan has his motorcycle accident. Jones describes what happened when the tour was cancelled and it’s affects on the musicians, and both Feinstein and Wexler question the reality of the crash, with Wexler going so far as to state, “He’s full of shit.”
His big comeback tour in 1974 with the Band is legendary, and there is a wonderful montage of amazing tour pix. His next outing, 1975’s Rolling Thunder Revue, has been viewed both as astonishing and a circus in its laid-back, anything goes style. Violinist Scarlet Rivera and Rob Stoner describe both being on tour with him (and how that occurred in the first place), and their working on the Desire album (which was recorded in one night). The main crux of this section is setting up the tour, the rehearsals, and the tour itself, including the “Night of the Hurricane.” Other interviews include Ramblin’ Jack Elliot who was one of the musicians involved, and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter himself. Further descriptions include BD’s involvement on the 5-hour long film, Renaldo and Clara.
With Jerry Weintraub (BD’s new manager) in tow, we are introduced to The Entertainer tour of 1978. With the promoter wanting basically a greatest hits show, Stoner explains how “We did what we could to make it unrecognizable.” Also interviewed is Joe Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle, who includes his memories of attending the show.
For the section where Dylan becomes “Born Again” at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Chapel,” we hear from Pastor Bill Dwyer (who believes Christian revitalization came after the disillusionment of Viet Nam), Kasha, and AJ Weberman, who states, in part, that at Vineyard, “it was not Christianity, it was Jesus.” The paradox of Dylan being brought up Jewish is dismissed by Dwyer who posits that Jews can be Christians (no, they can’t, but I won’t go into that now). However, Mitch Glaser, who represents the Jews for Jesus, states here that Jews are actually Christians because Jesus was a Jews, so it’s the Gentiles who are the converts” (this makes no sense at all). Regina McCrary, a singer on Dylan’s Being Born Again tour, explains her view of Dylan’s acceptance in a positive light. Wexler, who worked with Dylan on Slow Train Coming, and describes himself as a “62 year old card carrying Jewish Atheist,” comments about the “horror” of working with Dylan in this state.
For the Spreading of the Word tour, keyboardist Spooner Oldham tells about crowd reaction on the road, such as in some places each song getting half clapping and half booing. There are some smile-inducing exit interviews of the audience from period newscasts, ranging from praise to “He stinks.” The DVD also plays some of the audio track from one show where he tries a bit of preaching to audience ridicule.
Of course, Dylan famously followed this by becoming Orthodox Jewish as he rebounded from his disconnect from Christianity. The clip of him appearing on a Chassidic Lubavitch telethon is nothing short of painful as he looks so lost.
The last section of the DVD is 1992’s Never Ending Tour, told almost exclusively through the eyes of drummer Winston Watson who describes what it was like not only playing with Dylan, but hanging out with him and his host of celebrity friends and hangers-on (among them Neil Young, Al Kooper, and his opening act, the glorious Patti Smith… as a side-bar, that is a tour I would have definitely loved to have seen).
Never mind Madonna and Lady Gaga, Dylan is the original when it comes to reinvention, and this documentary takes him through four decades of growth spurts, including the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly. The presentation here is riveting, between the interviews and the clips of the period, and whether you are immersed in Dylanology or a casual attendee, there is a lot of material here that makes this a find.
Note that there are no extras included with the DVD, other than all the amazing information.
Currently living in Saskatoon (email at RBF55@msn.com for address). From 1977-88, I used to publish a print version of a music magazine in New York called FFanzeen, which dealt with the wide-ranging independent music scene. I also photographed many bands from the period (and since). Now I write this blog. And the beat goes on.
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