I published this as a Note on Facebook in 2009, shortly after Michael Jackson had died. Since Facebook has shut down that feature, I will begin migration of some of my Notes to Medium, editing them a bit in the process.
In the summer of 1969 or 1970, I borrowed a handful of LPs from my friend Frank, who lived about a block and a half away from me. Two of the records, as I recall, were by The Byrds, and one was Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. The Byrds, of course, had had a huge hit with Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and several not-quite-as-big hits with a couple other songs of his. My experience with Dylan recordings until that point had been most likely limited to radio airplay of “Like A Rolling Stone”, “Positively 4th Street”, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Lay, Lady, Lay”.
But upon listening to the Dylan collection (which was released by Columbia Records shortly after his “motorcycle accident,” and not long after the release of what is regarded by many as his masterpiece, Blonde On Blonde), I was astonished beyond astonished at what I was hearing. “Mr. Tambourine Man” had a couple more verses to it (The Byrds had recorded but two, in keeping with radio airplay song-length standards at the time) and the sheer poetry of those lyrics blew me away*. “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” was an absolute gem of a song with some of the finest word-images I have ever heard (and has always since been the song I point to when people spout that Dylan couldn’t sing). It’s one of the few Dylan songs that I would consider performing in public myself, if I were still playing out. It’s one of his most beautiful songs.
The first Dylan record I recall having purchased — at the old G.C. Murphy on the East Side of Toledo, Ohio — was Self Portrait, with which I was severely disappointed at first listen. It was a two-record set of songs Dylan recorded (reportedly) as warm-ups during various recording sessions (mostly non-originals), a few live cuts from a rare live appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969, and a few outtakes from New Morning. The opening track — “All The Tired Horses” — was one line sung over and over and over again by a chorus of female singers, complete with syrupy strings. While not a masterpiece, the record eventually grew on me.
In August of 1971, I was in New York with my parents, and while visiting my grandfather in Manhattan, the news on the television was all abuzz about George Harrison’s Concert For Bangla Desh benefit at Madison Square Garden and the rumour that Dylan might be appearing. He had made very few concert appearances since 1966, so it would be a pretty big deal for anyone in attendance. The rumours turned out to be true, of course, and from the concert, a three-LP set was released, as was a feature-length film of the event. Of all the guest stars that Harrison had invited to be part of the show, Dylan performed the most songs — five — at both the matinée and evening shows. He was given an entire side of one of the album’s three discs. His presence, if the applause on the record is to be any indication, was thunderous and electrifying. (By the way, it’s my contention that George Harrison’s selection of “Here Comes The Sun” as the song that preceded Dylan’s appearance was a brilliant intentional metaphor.) If I had not been a Dylan fan up until this point, listening to his performance of “Mr. Tambourine Man” on record certainly cinched it. It is one of the most stirring performances I have ever heard, despite that he left off a verse.
I soon began buying everything in his œuvre. In most cases, I hitchhiked either to the now-defunct Woodville Mall in Northwood, Ohio, or to the now-defunct K-Mart in Oregon, Ohio. I recall the night I bought Another Side of Bob Dylan as my friend George Liebherr, with whom I’d gone to school for twelve years, picked me up and shared a joint with me. When I got home and listened to the record, I was still a bit high so was quite entertained by “I Shall Be Free No. 10.”
Sometime in 1975 or so, I became a collector of rare Dylan recordings. I had come across a bootleg record in a local record store (Disc Records at the Franklin Park Mall in Toledo’s west end) and a whole new world opened up to me. Some of Dylan’s best songs and recordings and performances had never made it to his official LPs but somehow were being made available by a multitude of illegitimate record labels.
I subscribed to Rolling Stone in those days, and in its Classified section, I discovered listings for a number of these labels from which I ordered more and more of the “boots.” Eventually, I bought a classified advertisement of my own in the magazine looking for rare Dylan recordings, particularly his early electric performances of 1965 and 1966. While there wasn’t a great deal extant at the time, I was contacted by a number of people who had more organized collections than the bootlegs tended to provide. That is, the bootlegs were often mishmashes of songs from various sources — something from this performance, something from that studio session. The tapes I received, however, were more complete collections of various recording sessions, concerts, and radio or television programs.
Soon, I was receiving reel-to-reel recordings and cassettes from around the world, and in turn, I duplicated them for other collectors in France, Germany, Sweden, Italy and various places in the United States. I became part of a trading network and eventually developed friendships with several of my contacts. One of them in New York City, Jeff Friedman, turned me on to The Alpha Band.
Within a couple of years, I had amassed almost everything that was available at the time. I had audience recordings of virtually the entire 1974 tour with The Band, as well as almost everything from 1976’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
In 1978, I finally got a chance to see Dylan, and attended shows on consecutive nights in Toledo and Dayton. I recorded both shows, but (long story short) was able to find a superbly better recording of the Toledo show, which included a great version of “Tangled Up In Blue”. Dylan had reworked the song considerably from its official recording, and I fell in love with the song all over again. (The best performance of the song occurred in Carbondale, Illinois, recorded by one of my contacts who, I was so sad to learn, died just a few years ago.) Naturally, I set out to collect all of the shows from that tour.
In the summer of 1980, however, I met the woman I would eventually marry, and while my collecting became somewhat abated, I continued to pick up a few things here and there. I graduated from Bowling Green State University in the spring of 1981 and I began concentrating on getting work. After getting married a couple of years later, I maintained a few connections with traders, but pretty much got out of the network. Energy had shifted; family and time and money had become issues. I continued to buy the occasional tome about Dylan (of which there are only a handful of significant ones, most notably, Paul Williams’ books) and bought each new album as he released them.
I attended a couple more of his concerts, one in Ann Arbor (1989) and one in East Lansing (1990), the latter of which was probably one of the worst shows I’ve ever seen, and which made me decide that I didn’t need to see Dylan in concert again. So much of the show was perfunctory, and my friend Kathy told me when I talked to her about the show that he was requesting to have the lights on during his performance of “Like A Rolling Stone” so that he could see his adoring fans. I recall a television interview from that time as well, which suggested to me that he was quite focused on his cultural status, his legacy. He was having health issues at the time, so perhaps his awareness of his mortality was beginning to show. For me, though, his songwriting had become less interesting and inspiring since Oh Mercy, and I’ve moved on to other, more compelling songwriters such as Richard Shindell, Dar Williams, Peter Mulvey, Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, and a few others.
For much of my life, music has been a constant companion. It was there for me during all the moments in which I needed a friend to comfort me and I didn’t, you know, have one. At the top of the playlist for so long was Dylan, for somehow his words (in particular) and his music had a certain inexplicable ability to take my mind off other things; to take me away to some better place. While certainly this obsession subsided during my marriage, I recall something my then-wife had written (to complement a piece of artwork she had created) in which she proclaimed that I was “in love” with Dylan. She was wrong, of course, but the point is — if you’ve not recognized it by now — Dylan had a severe impact on my life. As an (eventual) writer of songs, as a thinker, as a quasi-artist, as a quasi-poet, as a human being.
But…
When he dies, he will be dead, and while I might recognize the influence his music and writings have had on me, while I might recognize the major impact he had on popular music, I will not praise him as anything more than what he has been — a musician and artist. I will not attend midnight candle vigils; I will not cry openly; I will not make a pilgrimage to the gates of his home to place flowers; I probably won’t even write him a song.
So, that’s all I have left to say about Michael Jackson.
*In 1978, I believe, I read Michael Gray’s Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan, which described “Mr Tambourine Man” as a drug-influenced song and all I have to say about that is: “Asshole!”
