Community Chat

[shoekitty]

Dylan, ah sweet youth!  I am his number one fan.   hitchhiking across the Bay to Berkley to concert, or to San Jose. 1994. Tickets were 3.50@, that was like a months allowance. lol!  I am the woman he dreamed of marrying...in my youth dreams. Lol. I have actually breathed the same air he did once, when I saw him out back by exit door.  lol.

I do have his anthology's, and one book he wrote. But you know he doesn't tell much. He is always elusive. To tell the truth in one big chunk, he must be right there in his life.  , I often wondered if he ever paid attention to to the feelings of others as he did to what he saw.    As Joan Baez said he was the elusive vagabond.   What  a man of word chains, so vividly strung together.  Each sentence sometimes like a movie in full color.  I am not sure about the man, but I love his work.  I think Joan had him loosely pegged in Diamonds and Rust.  I am just so glad he was born, and shared his gift. I think his legacy will live forever in the arts. 

by the way, I love most all his somgs . But one haunts me ....Ramona 

[shoekitty]

@Oznell   Hi Oznell, hey, I was a little comfised for a bit.  So, I skipped over part of your post I guess,  and was thinking this was a new release. Oh dear!   I have read that years ago.  It was okay, but sort of jumped around in thoughts, and as usual gave you a glimpse, but not the whole,story. lol. I did also rent it on audible a few years back, and actually enjoyed it a lot that way.  Sean Penn reads it word for word, and he was the perfect person to read it.  I highly recommend it. Thanks for the flash down memory lane. I enjoy your posts@, 

[Oznell]

Thanks for that up-close info on Woodstock, @spiderw !  Dylan loved the area, but it's astonishing how little privacy he got there--  I think his house was broken into, many other incidents.  Outsiders came from far and wide to see their idol....

You couldn't be more right, @shoekitty -- he's elusive, even in his own autobiography.  He's almost like a benign, harlequin figure, with that little half-smile, continually dancing away from scrutiny, following his own star.   In his writing, there's an odd mixture of a very down-to-earth shrewdness, and idealism.

An enigma, and I guess the answer is just blowin' in the wind...( that was terrible, ha).

[shoekitty]

@Oznell    Yes, I love Bob Dylan, but it's hard to believe anything you read about him. He will answer a question one day, and on other day he will contradict what he said, then say..."we'll, that's how I'm feeling today". His early life in Minn no one will ever get straight. One thing. He hated the cold in Hibbing, and the small town.  My first husband was from Duluth, and he disnt speak highly.  Mainly because of the bitter cold, and the mosquitos and weather.  He said the mosquitos were the state bird, lol. The area is gorgeous,he would say. He said winters were so bitter you had to walk to school in your snow suits, if you cried the tears froze.  lol. You never hear of people talking about him from that life either. He seemed stifled.  His parents, he doesn't talk fondly of his dad, or talk of his mom.   although he was raised Jewish, I think he he wrestled with that too. When he left, he did have a girlfriend he cared about for a while. She is The Girl From the North Country. I heard he stayed friends with her for years, and maybe even til recent years.  He did ramble in and out of peoples lives at will after he got to New York.  But who knows how he feels. Because he truely is never going to tell the whole truth. We didn't even know he had a daughter from his back up singer until a few years ago  when the time was right, he told everyone. An Enigma for sure. But that's what makes him Bob

[DMHSLIB]

I went to college near Woodstock. Dylan  (I still wonder why he thought Dylan was better than Zimmerman) used to come over to the local bar sometimes. I had a few drinks with him and just thought he was a jerk.  He was jumping on th folk music bandwagon to make a buck and as we all kniow, he went to electronic music as soon as he thought it was more profitable.

[CalminHeart]

I met Bob Dylan after a concert in the mid 70s. It was the only time I've been speechless. I've loved his music from day 1. 

[Northray]

I did read this book.  Because, of course, with so much made of Dylan by his generation I had to read up on him.

What struck me is how beautifully he uses words.  He is a wordsmith in the extreme.  And also how much he hated to be the voice of his generation.  How he was not instep with the "movements" of the time. 

I thought he was the oracle of the hippies, but he hated the hippies.  He really, truly was just doing himself and not wanting to start a revolution or be a leader of one. 

[layla2450]

I LOVE Bob Dylan. Sae him in concert several years ago. He was FANTASTIC. He was the third performer. Van Morrison was on first, followed by Joni Mitchell. ALL were GREAT. Bob and I have the same birthdate, different year. Have the book on hold at the library. Can't wait to read it!

[shoekitty]

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@layla2450 wrote:

I LOVE Bob Dylan. Sae him in concert several years ago. He was FANTASTIC. He was the third performer. Van Morrison was on first, followed by Joni Mitchell. ALL were GREAT. Bob and I have the same birthdate, different year. Have the book on hold at the library. Can't wait to read it!

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@layla2450  isn he something in concert,?  I went to a few in the early years.  My first in 1964, San Jose, second  at Berkley Greek theater in 1965. Shortly after that, Sausalito.  lastly, in the 1970's.  Amazing.   My friend and I knew that when Joan Baez came out at the end, that's when he disappeared. So we went out, to back exit.  There he was getting into. Limo type car.  It was night, he had sunglasses on. I saw him sitting in back. Man in back unrolled window. My friend asked for autograph, and he gave it. I didn't move. I couldn't ask. But it was okay, I saw him. lol. Van Morrison is the best. Every time I hear Moondance , I stop and my heart just aches, IDk why, memory of the 70's I guess,  what an experience!   You had to be there I guess 

[on the bay]

I finished the book yesterday.

Though I have loved Dylan's songs, especially the early ones, I didn't like the book. I couldn't wait to finish it but I was determined to finish it!

@shoekitty, I think you described a lot of it well and it is hard to describe.

To me it was a self absorbed, meandering stream of consciousness and a lot of the times as if he was just talking to himself.  Every once in awhile he would state some thought about life, or his thoughts about the music scene but it often wasn't very clear what he was saying.

Listing everyone he met and every book he read yet all of a sudden he's married with children and never describes how he met his wife.

I did appreciate how much he admired and talked about many other musicians. That was the part that was the most understandable to me, and that I liked to read. It was more relatable when I knew the ones he was talking about.

What was disappointing and hard to understand was how he never felt, or didn't say he did what so many of us felt about his early songs like The Times They are a Changing. He really didn't want any part of the movement. He complained about it all and the people too and did not feel a part of it. But how could he write the words of that song and not feel so much of it?

He became bitter and just wanted to get away and be a husband and father, which is understandable but then he hardly talked about his feelings about being a father and husband at all. Though it was nice to see him say he loved his wife and children. That sounded like some genuine emotion.

It was awful how he and his family were followed everywhere by fans and press to every home they moved to.

Except for Woodie Guthrie who he really idolized, he didn't seem to be emotionally connected very much for long except to music, and sometimes not even to that.

Maybe he was but he doesn't let us see that, maybe only glimpses like you said @shoekitty 

The most important thing to him was folk music as he said but what is folk music aside from to me a story of what is happening and people's feelings about it all. What is going on with their lives, experiences etc.

I probably agree and appreciate the comments of those who gave 2 stars on Amazon because I felt the same. I wish I could think of him now as someone who was more likable, but he doesn't really come across that way in his own autobiography.