Robert Shelton wrote the rave review of Bob Dylan in the New York Times that is generally credited with being the piece that "discovered" him in 1961, just after Dylan arrived in New York City, an aspiring folk musician fresh from Minnesota. Twenty-five years later, Shelton, who had faithfully followed Dylan's career ever since and been given unprecedented access to the reclusive star, finally published No Direction Home.
Here is the "empathetic and rather magnificent" (Washington Post Book World) story of Bob Dylan: man and musician, lover and explorer, loner and phenomenon.
"The most exhaustively prepared biography that any pop artist will ever reap. Shelton interviewed nearly everybody who has had a definitive or salient story to tell about Dylan."
-Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"Almost two decades in the writing, this is the first biography to have enjoyed such close cooperation from the subject . . . thoughtful and compassionate."
-Time
Robert Shelton (1926-1995) wrote about folk and rock music and youth culture for the New York Times until the late '60s.
Excerpt
In came Phil Ochs, and Happy Traum, another member of Turner's group, The New World Singers. Pete said, "You know, in the past five months I haven't heard as many good songs and as much good music as I've heard here tonight." Along with Paul Krassner's The Realist, and The Village Voice, Broadside probably pioneered the 1960s underground press. In 1970, Friesen said of those 1962 meetings: "There was no pressure from the need for commercial success. We recognized that this was unlikely in any event, with Broadside strong on protest songs. . . . I was willing to bet Columbia Records would never record Dylan's 'Masters of War' and 'With God on Our Side.' " Columbia became the first major record label to recognize the topical-song upheaval. Through John Hammond, Columbia signed Pete, and social-comment music began to reach a wider audience.
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Q.: Bobby, we know you changed your name. Come on now, what's your real name? A.: Philip Ochs. I'm gonna change it back again when I see it pays.
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Pop pacemakers did not disdain books; they wrote them. John Lennon wrote two Edward Lear-like books, In His Own Write and Spaniards [sic] in the Works. Leonard Cohen closed his poetry readings with guitar in hand. Cohen told me that Dylan had inspired him to sing his own poems. "Dylan is not just a great poet, he's a great man," Cohen told me. Paul Simon's work reflected this new wave, and he was soon singing about alienation and vacuums. Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote astonishing lyrics. Ginsberg taught Indian chants to The Byrds. Richard Farina moved from page writing to singing and composing with his wife, Mimi Baez. Five experimental New York poets, led by Ed Sanders, taught themselves music and formed The Fugs. Phil Ochs adorned one of his album jackets with poems by Mao, and told me: "I want to be the first Left-wing star."
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NEWPORT '64 REVISITED
Newport '63 had been so Dylan-centered that, not surprisingly, he found the 1964 festival an anticlimax. He had had time to consider the burdens of leadership and to decide that overtly political songs were only part of his work. No longer was he "writing songs for everybody else, but writing songs now for myself." As Dylan had grabbed the spotlight in 1963, he virtually shunned it in 1964. He was prepared, like Seeger before him, to step back from stage center and feel wonder at the numbers who were working the same vein. Phil Ochs was coming on strongly as the chief political banner-waver. For the Newport program book, Phil wrote that there'd been such an upsurge of topical song "that I wouldn't be surprised to see an album called 'Elvis Presley Sings Songs of the Spanish Civil War' or The Beatles with 'The Best of the Chinese-Indian Border Dispute Songs.' "
In the year between the festivals, topical songwriting had established itself. Ochs was becoming a campus darling; Paxton, the careful craftsman, was not far behind.
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In December, a Broadside writer, Paul Wolfe, who Dylan had praised, treated Newport '64 as the point when Ochs emerged the political-song champion and Dylan "renounced" protest. The "new" Dylan, Wolfe found, has "defected . . . into higher forms of art." Pitting Dylan vs. Ochs, the writer weighed "meaning vs. innocuousness, sincerity vs. utter disregard for the tastes of the audience, idealistic principle vs. self-conscious egotism." Wolfe deemed "Tambourine Man" "a failure," and lambasted "Chimes of Freedom" for raising "bewilderment to the highest degree." The Dylan he sketched was a Lonesome Rhodes - a trickster, hypocrite, and manipulator of his audience.
Ochs leaped to Dylan's defense: "It is as if the entire folk community was a huge biology class and Bob was a rare, prize frog. Professor Silber and Student Wolfe appear to be quite annoyed that the frog keeps hopping in all different directions while they're trying to dissect him. . . . Who does Dylan think he is anyway? When I grow used to an artist's style, I damn well expect him not to disappoint me by switching it radically. My time is too precious to waste trying to change a pattern of my thought. . . ." Ochs's sarcasm here was followed by straight anger: "To cater to an audience's taste is not to respect them, and if the audience doesn't understand that, they don't deserve respect."
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Around the Village, what Eye later titled "The Dylan Gang," was a half dozen folk singers whom he felt to be kindred spirits - Elliott, Andersen, Van Ronk, Blue, Ochs, Tim Hardin, and a very few others. These Villagers felt compelled to explain and defend Dylan when he did not do so himself. Ochs remained the most articulate, even after the many times Dylan put him down. Summarizing Dylan's impact on his Village entourage, Michael Thomas wrote in Eye, August 1968: "Dylan made everybody aware of themselves, while he became aware of himself, and because he could hear the tambourine man, he was a prophet. He touched his contemporaries at the core of their ambitions. Some, like Ochs and Paxton and Tim Hardin, felt his energy and were energized; some, like Andersen and Blue, and others, like Richard Farina, the destructive her of his own life, and Paul Simon, the last great sophomore, were stricked by Dylan, but he was not to blame. . . ."
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On May 9, 1974, an unbilled Dylan appeared in New York at a Felt Forum benefit for Chilean refugees from the junta that deposed Socialist president Salvador Allende. Hosts for this Friends of Chile concert were Phil Ochs and actor Dennis Hopper. Dylan jammed with Ochs, Van Ronk, Seeger, and Arlo Guthrie. He spent time then with Joan Jara, widow of Victor Jara, the Chilean folk singer whose fingers had been smashed with an ax before the junta executed him in Santiago's National Stadium. Joan Jara, reliving her loss at rallies around the world, was under great strain. Dylan asked if she could ever relax. " 'Come down and see some nice pictures,' Dylan said to me, 'Meet me at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street tomorrow afternoon at three, and I'll take you to see some nice pictures.' I never imagined he would be there. But I showed up, and there he was, leaning against a lamppost. And he took me to the Museum of Modern Art and showed me around, said he was with us." He was difficult to talk to, Joan Jara said.
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December 1971: New Musical Express carried an exclusive report that Dylan, Lennon, and Phil Ochs were holding heavy political talks with Bobby Seale and Jerry Rubin. Recurring reports of imminent tours, of great new departures, of "returns," all proved erroneous.
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David Blue, Phil Ochs, Donovan, Tom Paxton, and Pat Sky were among the first new Dylans. Paul Simon, with his canny ear and indisputable talent, qualified as a suburban new Dylan. Ochs was so rigorously Leftist, he could write the marching songs when Dylan drifted out of overt political statements. Carly Simon told New Musical Express in 1971 that Grossman " 'was trying to make me into a female Bob Dylan and that ended up in just demoralising me so much I thought I would never sing again.' "
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One morning in October, about twenty musicians were jamming at The Other End. More signed on: Allen Ginsberg joined the chorus, fellow-poet Peter Orlovsky enlisted as a "baggage handler," David Blue and Denise Mercedes as musicians, and security people, advance men, and lighting technicians. What started as a troupe of seventy swelled to more than one hundred by Toronto. On October 22, at The Other End, David Blue was finishing his gig. Dylan sang duets with Ronee Blakley, the beauteous country singer who starred in Nashville. Ginsberg sang to McGuinn's guitar. "Allen, you're the king," Dylan told him.
The following night, a little surprise for Mike Porco, who was turning sixty-one. To Mike's astonishment, four film technicians showed up at Folk City, mumbling "educational television." (Under the direction of Dylan, Howard Alk, and Mel Howard, this began hundreds of hours of shooting footage.) On hand were Phil Ochs, Patti Smith, Baez, Commander Cody members, Bette Midler, and Buzzy Linhart. A bit after one A.M., Dylan's red Cadillac Eldorado cruised up to Folk City, and in loped Bob, Kemp, and Neuwirth. Dylan, as "the greatest star of all," went to the stage; he brought up Baez. They sang "Happy Birthday" and "One Too Many Mornings." Mike Porco grinned from wall to wall. He'd been waiting for this a long time!
This was a dress rehearsal for the Rolling Thunder Revue, as performers took to the little stage of Folk City. Hours later, a hoarse Phil Ochs did a set of his own, some traditional songs and "Lay Down Your Weary Tune." Everyone at Dylan's table stood gaping at Phil. Dylan praised Phil when he finished. (When thirty-five-year-old Ochs hanged himself on April 9, 1976, some said his exclusion from the RTR was the last in a long line of crushing events that gave him no way out. Ochs could not be signed on the tour because of his heavy drinking and unpredictability. His friend and eulogizer, Ed Sanders, has described Ochs's "final flameout" as a reaction to "the tyranny of booze, despair, and maddening mood swings.")