"Many writers have tried to probe [Dylan's] life, but never has it been done so well, so captivatingly."
-The Boston Globe
The most complete and up-to-date account of Bob Dylan's life uses exclusive interviews and previously hidden documents to fully chronicle the singer/songwriter's personal life and seminal musical career.
Excerpt
In many cases, coffeehouse owners exploited the folk music craze and young musicians like Bob who came to Greenwich Village to perform. The musicians would play for virtually no pay, apart from the paltry tips they collected passing a bread basket at the end of their set, and yet tourists crowded the bars and cafes to hear them. This was a recipe for healthy profits. Once club owners had the customers inside they would charge them as much as possible. A common trick was to turn off the air-conditioning so that patrons became hot and thirsty and ordered more drinks. Coffeehouses could not serve liquor, but customers spent a lot of money on ersatz drinks like rum-flavored cola, despite often exorbitant prices. The owners did not have it all their own way, however. Complicated licensing laws, limiting the types of entertainment that could be staged in coffeehouses, meant owners constantly had to dodge the authorities. "It was actually when the police began raiding the coffeehouses, because they were presenting unlicensed entertainment, that the publicity brought in enormous crowds," says Manny Dworman, who ran Cafe Feenjon on Seventh Avenue. He had a red warning light for when the police arrived. "We were permitted to have string instruments, but no singing and no drumming. So as soon as the light went on, the drummer ran off stage." The crowds loved the excitement. On weekends the sidewalks around Washington Square were so crowded the police had to stop traffic. Tourists flocked to hear artists like Carolyn Hester, Fred Neil, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton who were virtual unknowns at this time, drawn from across the United States with dreams of becoming stars. "You had to make it in New York first," says Oscar Brand, a veteran folksinger and radio broadcaster. "Every place else was the provinces."
[...]
Seeger and former Almanac Singers colleague Agnes "Sis" Cunningham were launching a mimeographed magazine, Broadside, to disseminate topical folk songs. Bob was invited to a get-together at Cunningham's home in February 1962 to see if he had any songs that might suit. Also present was up-and-coming singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. Born five months apart into Jewish families, Dylan and Ochs had much in common. They had both been obsessed with James Dean in their youth, and became involved in folk music in the coffeehouses of a university town. Both gravitated to New York where they began writing original material. In Ochs's case this was almost exclusively topical material inspired by stories in the daily newspapers. The musicians played for Cunningham and Seeger with such commitment that Seeger was moved to say he thought he was hearing the best new songs of the age all in one afternoon.
[...]
The wedding was a brief interlude in a very busy year. That winter Bob went back into the studio with The Hawks (with Bobby Gregg temporarily replacing Levon Helm on drums). They rerecorded "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" as a swaggering single. The lyric was slight, utilizing the opening phrase from "Positively 4th Street," but the band swung like a wrecking ball. Bob proudly played the song to Phil Ochs as they were riding together in a limousine. When Ochs's reaction was less than enthusiastic, Bob told the driver to stop. "Get out, Ochs," he said. "You're not a folksinger." Going for the jugular, he added: "You're just a journalist." Although this was vicious, Ochs admired Bob so much that he forgave him and the two men continued an uneasy friendship up until Ochs's suicide in 1976.
[...]
During rehearsals in the Starlight Ballroom, Bob and the musicians learned that drunken, crazed Phil Ochs had hanged himself at his sister Sonny's house in Queens, New York. He had been thirty-five. One of his final disappointments had been the fact that he was not asked to join the tour. Bob and Phil Ochs had always had an uneasy relationship, and had disagreed in the past. Bob was clearly upset by the news that Ochs had killed himself. Still, he did not attend the funeral or even respond when asked to take part in a tribute concert held on May 28. "If Dylan really cared about Phil he would have had the courtesy to pick up the telephone or write a letter," says Sonny, who was left feeling very bitter about Dylan, perhaps with some justification.