Free wheelin again
The Dylan movie still haunts me.
Maybe it's because I always wanted to be him, or to live the
life he lived. As with the Beatles, his music made up the sound track of my
life.
I didn't like his first album, but then, I suspected,
neither did he.
But Free Wheelin knocked me over.
I was 13 years old, living in my grand parent's house, not
yet knowing that I already had history with Dylan since my mother was in
Graystone Park during Dylan's visits to Woody Gutheri – and it is possible I
passed him during many visits to see my mother without knowing it.
When I heard Dylan's music I convinced myself that I might
someday become a folk singer, and tried my best to learn the songs on Free
wheelin on my uncle's jumbo Guild guitar.
In those days and up until the early 1970s, no coffee house
performer could avoid doing Dylan's music – or for that matter many of the
other performers that once made up the heart of the Greenwich Village scene in
the 1950s and early 1960s.
I avoided learning Suzanne only because so many other people
did it, and it was incrediably long.
While some of Dlyan's songs were also long, they seemed to
have more substance. Some songs were too difficult for me to play (and still
am) because I was never really a musician, but this did not keep me from
trying, playing out in some venues near Paterson such as the Bottom of the
Barrell on the border of Haledon in 1972-73 – by which time Dylan had evolved
into a whole different performer with things like Tangled up in Blue.
Dylan's Lay Lady Lay became a haunting anthemn for my time
in the army in the late 1960s.
While I loved his eletric shift, I was never good enough to
be able to perform those songs, and clung to many of his earlier work – yes,
even Blowin in the Wind (though I liked other songs of his better).
I tried to write songs of my own like his, but could never
manage to capture an era the way he did. Even his small personal songs were far
beyond my capability.
I lived and hung out in the Village for a brief time he was
there, and later, visited Woodstock when he was rumored to still reside there
as well.
Dylan music often filled the airwaves of WNEW when I worked
in warehouses during the 1970s, part of the continuing sound track of a life I
can't imagine living without him.
We all knew Dylan was not perfect, the movie hinting of some
of this. He was a womanizer, a liar, a recluse and other things. He didn't seem
to particularly like other people, except for a very small group.
He was moody even before he became famous. Few people
realize just how huge he became, and how fame twists people. He like Elvis had
to endure being bigger than god. At least, the Beatles had each other. But
Dylan stood alone, and only many years later did I come to realize how painful
fame can be, and how unfriendly, who to trust, how to survive,
I'm told these days, he never stops touring, perhaps getting
fulfillment from the one aspect of his life that matters most: his music.
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