Visions of Dylan

Alive in 1964 - revisited

Nick posed a wondering the other month when he sampled “Live 1964 – Concert at Philharmonic Hall” on his radio show - something along the lines that he had wondered what the people thought while hearing some of the Halloween concert songs for the first time especially the songs yet to be released on “Bringing It All Back Home”. The imagery of “Gates of Eden” and “It’s Alright, Ma” wasn’t exactly to be expected by those wanting or expecting protest and folk songs. But I believe that outside of a small percentage of insiders in the folk scene, most listeners at that time balanced their reception to hear what they needed to hear. Something was happening in 1964, and it was leaving the folk scene behind. The Fifties were ancient history – and the short lived American folk music (as popular music) revival was nearly history too. Nonetheless - how did it feel, sitting there, listening for the first time? I thought that wouldn’t take much thought…. but maybe a nostalgia wallow kind of got in the way.

I wasn’t at the NYC Philharmonic Hall concert on Halloween 1964, but was at Boston Symphony Hall one week earlier. Bob Dylan was there too.

24 October 1964, Boston, Symphony Hall
Bob Dylan (vocal, harmonica, guitar, & single spotlight)

1. The Times They Are A-Changin
2. Girl From The North Country
3. Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues
4. To Ramona
5. Who Killed Davey Moore?
6. Gates of Eden
7. If You Gotta Go, Go Now
8. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
9. Mr Tambourine Man
10. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
11. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
12. Talkin WW III Blues
13. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
14. With God On Our Side
15. It Ain’t Me, Babe
16. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
17. All I Really Want To Do

This was very much the same set list as one week later – but without a guest appearance by Joan Baez.

Of course we each have all heard all of Dylan’s songs for the first time, some time. But the time and place of hearing a song the first time is sometimes worth remembering - especially when it more or less coincided with the sequence written, as Dylan developed in style and content. And also especially before the mythology began: - the books weren’t written - set lists weren’t posted within minutes - downloads of the concerts weren’t available within hours, web-sites weren’t rampant.

The folk telegraph and newsletters did keep some university campuses in touch. Campus radio stations and some commercial stations played something other than the top forty formats. But most people listening had lives of which music was just a part.

Many in the audiences then, including me, would have been hearing many of Dylan’s songs for the first time. The albums were coming out twice a year – the songs were flowing faster. And songs in concert could be from the next album not yet released, or songs not to be released for many years. Outside of a few cities a Dylan appearance was rare.

Most listeners would not yet have their expectations so firmly set as later listeners might - their ears were more open to the changes around them – including what Dylan was saying in his songs. The words he was singing might be unexpected – but they fit in for many of his listeners as something they wanted and needed to hear.

The U.S. culture-society was at some turning points in 1964, some good to come and some not so good. The general mood was fairly optimistic at that time. The Vietnam mire was not at all yet the obvious quagmire that it became later in the Sixties. The anti-war movement was small.

Yes, Kennedy had been murdered a year before, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was two years previous. Nonetheless the overall current in 1964 was forward at least for another year or so.

Lyndon Johnson was to be elected president in November, within two weeks of this concert, with the largest popular vote landslide in history. The Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was a positive move forward, giving civil rights in areas previously hidden. The Voting Rights Bill of 1965 was working its way through Congress. Affirmative action was in motion. Immigration restrictions were being eased to remove racial bias. The ‘war on poverty’ was one war worth having god on your side.

Two years later, it seemed not so positive and four years later it seemed positively sour as Vietnam came to dominate the latter 60s, along with unresolved racial issues. But in 1964 there was lots happening and it wasn’t all bad and the majority of Dylan’s listeners accepted much of what was happening.

The times - they were changing. Dylan said so. The album confirming this came out in February of 1964. And – this was barely seven months after the freewheeling Dylan had hit the stores in 1963. And – this was also barely seven months before another side of the same songwriter was in stores in late summer of 1964. And - another seven months after that until he brought it all back home in early 1965.

Four landmark self-written albums – within two years – with no room on the albums for many worthy songs - who could top this two years of song writing?

Sorry - no prizes given for the answer to that question – Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde not that far away, as it turned out… and other lifelines and a lifetime of great music still beyond that.

Let’s get back to latter 1964. I didn’t have all of the first four Dylan albums yet until a few weeks after this concert. At least half the songs sung at the concert would have been new to me.

I couldn’t have heard the three “Bringing It All Back Home” songs – Tambourine Man, It’s Alright, Ma, or Gates of Eden.

While Tambourine Man had been played around and about, “It’s Alright, Ma” was sung for maybe the second time in public concert in Boston that night, and “Gates of Eden” for the first time in concert.

And I wouldn’t have heard Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues, Who Killed Davey Moore?, or If You Gotta Go, Go Now.

The latter may have had its first real concert performance that night – the other two had been around and about, but not in my hearing.

And I probably hadn’t heard some of the “Another Side of Bob Dylan” songs – that album had only been released for about ten weeks and I didn’t have a copy until after the concert. For sure I hadn’t heard “To Ramona” before… what a beautiful song to have not heard, but to hear in concert for the first time.

Most of the other songs in the concert had probably passed between my ears, somewhere in 1963-1964, since they were on Freewheelin or Times They Are A-Changin, and the real Dylan recordings did get minor airplay on some radio stations – and late evenings and weekends sometimes allowed some listening time. Covers of Dylan’s songs were played far, far more than Dylan’s versions. I can’t honestly say that I was particularly enamoured of Dylan’s versions before the concert, but it wasn’t a big issue either way at the time.

So why was I a Dylan listener at all at that stage? Having left my southern version of Hibbing behind, and having long since decided that the early Elvis was a spent force, and that Buddy Holly was truly gone, and that early rock and roll was something you were meant to grow out of, I had spent the previous three years in Boston taking advantage (when time permitted) of access to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and multiple classical music stations on FM radio. Beethoven and Mahler had become the composers and songwriters of choice, though much other classical music fit in too.

But sometime in 1963 or early 1964 a girl with green eyes (see also movie of similar name) and I crossed paths. She was a part-time groupie in the Jesse Colin Young scene. Jesse (who was really Perry Miller – another guy with an alias) was a solo performer then, this was before he was joined by the Youngbloods.

You know how the next bit goes – I didn’t want to meet her kin, or make her spin – but being friends seemed a good prospect – hence you do what you gotta do, and classical music fell a bit by the wayside in a low level pursuit of the campus folk concert and local coffee house scenes – going to concerts by Jesse Colin Young, Ian and Sylvia, and the like, culminating in a Dylan concert in the autumn of 1964 in the same Symphony Hall I had listened to twenty or more Boston Symphony concerts in the previous couple of years.

Now - a one man symphony of a different kind.

Outside the hall it was a cool autumn night with certainly a buzz of anticipation inside. Lucky on the seating -we had close to centre seats – maybe six rows from the stage.

At the concert I sat and listened and heard for the first time I now reckon - unable to imagine songs being sung in any other way. A lyrical parade sung and shared between performer and listener. How else could a story be told? And the stories were all worth telling.

The hall was full – maybe 2500 in attendance, with another 100 on stage in chairs behind the magician – otherwise on his own, except for his harmonica and guitar, with a single spotlight on him while performing, and a wooden stool beside him with a glass of water on top. He did make one minor joke when sipping about it being water in the glass. Compared to the following week, I’m reasonably sure the fuel in Boston was less potent than whatever he might have used on Halloween night. But the concert didn’t seem to need anything extra to fuel it and keep it moving.

Bob made only a couple of small comments during the evening – this was Boston and more innocent in audience than would be New York. Each song spoke for itself. Except he did introduce Gates of Eden as a song he had recently written (out in California….) – hoping we’d understand it – and thanked the audience afterward for the enthused applause.

Otherwise the songs were sung by Dylan and the songs sang to the audience
with gently sardonic wit, or
with sweet and bitter love, or
with unimagined imagery, or
with ringing passion.

Some of the songs did all of these things - on several levels.

The audience was respectful – seated throughout – serious and sustained applause for every song – laughter in the right places. No stage rushes in those days – no banter from or to the audience – again, this wasn’t the New York that Dylan was so engaged with.

Seventeen songs – to me all have stood the test of time. Sure – the time and place for performance of a couple of the songs has passed, but all the songs remain valid and fresh to me today.

But who then amongst us at the concert would have imagined listening to any of the same songs in later years? That wasn’t in thought at the time – the magic was there then.

Could anyone have realised the impact of repetitions through the years of ‘the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked’? It was Lyndon Johnson that night; there would be others and worse.

The overall imagery of It’s Alright, Ma staggers even today. What a marvellous song. Go read the words.

And Hard Rain – what twenty one year old had the talent to pen such an eternally riveting song?

Who needed folk music any more? Not those who were inside those Gates of Eden to be sure. Hmm - maybe it was those outside the Gates of Eden? What’s real and what is not? It didn’t really matter. The analytical mind would struggle to explain in words – but the illusions sufficed at that time and later.

The song man – the performer: the words mixed in with the melodies – written and sung with imagery beyond my imagination – a visual landscape in the mind – no drugs needed to listen when the bits between the words fit in so well time and time again – with the words themselves condensed or stretched and twisted into places that no such words could fit. And the interlaced harmonica spoke too in unexpected ways.

And then it was to walk through the back streets of Boston, wondering what it was that the magician had just done in spinning those words to those tunes. And wondering, just a little, what would come next.

That concert was a turning point in my appreciation of Dylan – his train a-travelin’ and my train a-travelin’ were at the same symphony hall station that night.

As he wrote “Then you heard my voice a-singin’ and you know my name.” It was pretty simple, really. It still is.

A few months later the girl with green eyes went her way, leaving me to go my way, but that’s part of a different story altogether.

Chapter 2 of the 1964 music story would soon enough become the 1965 music story – with “Bringing in All Back Home” in early 1965. The singer-songwriter’s evolution was increasing in intensity. I didn’t hear anyone complaining – except for my flatmate who was more into Brahms and The Beatles. I graciously shared my hard earned stereo equipment with him and his records – and he graciously shared his opinion with me that Dylan was a relatively clever guy with words, but not a great deal more. No future for Dylan; no future for my musical tastes. Time would tell.

Less than a year after the Boston concert – following a diversionary and busy first eight months of 1965 finishing off my degree at university – time to move on, heading west in early September 1965.

Four long days into the drive westwards from the Boston area to the San Francisco area, with all belongings in the back and boot of my car, sleeping in the car on quiet side roads in Kentucky, Kansas and Utah, and now an hour or two out of San Francisco, in the dark, coming to California for the first time, the radio kicked back into action to tune into something wonderful, that seemed to go on and on and on rolling through the car – wide awake now, wondering what it was, and what was happening, and where I was coming from, and where I was going, and what’s going on here since this music can’t be for real.

“Like A Rolling Stone” heard for the first time. And it blasted me away, to still ring in my ears these years later.

What a great way to roll into the Bay area.

Highway 61 – Revisited was in the air!

By Bill Hester in New Zealand

***************************************************

Dylan Revisited-2004

Boston – (November 2004)

Forty years after my first Dylan concert-also in Boston this is a postcard of the artist – as an older man.

Being stranded in the city that never sleeps between 3 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. after a trip back from Boston, making way from the downtown bus station to Queens with the local stragglers and strugglers from the previous night still very much in evidence at the stations and on the subway and the early Monday workers already on their way to their jobs for the day, gave time to consider some of the highlights of the past few weeks.

It always fits together when you think about it.

The pilgrimage to Boston worked out just fine - it has been a long time since I visited Boston, and this was the first time with tourist eyes, and the first time with Marilyn. It seemed both familiar and strange to walk through the old campus telling Marilyn where I lived each year, and what culture shock I had on coming from a small southern town and where various of us went to on weekends to eat the usual once a weekend day meal since there was no place to eat on the MIT campus and also the locations where freshmen had their feared early Friday morning weekly communal exams, etc…. ah, the good old days.

Should have done this much sooner - it was fun re-discovering old haunts and seeing the major changes to parts of the Boston and Cambridge cityscape.

The overall trip has been interesting tying together various things that I’m usually not too interested in (architecture, museums, etc) - certain themes popped up… the architecture of Frank Gehry and Steven Holl, for instance. It was intriguing to walk through their buildings at MIT, and also see tribute to their works in various museums in NYC - constructive artists in action.

And in the newly reopened Museum of Modern Art the original of the Milton Glaser poster with Dylan and his kaleidoscopic head.

And of course there was the Bob concert at Harvard. My son Kevin went with me. Going to the concert filled a need and was fun especially to see the students there enjoying the same sort of music I first heard in Boston 40 years ago. Two songs were repeats from my first Dylan concert. ….. It’s Alright Ma and Don’t Think Twice - both great songs.

And there were five songs from the somewhat more recent Love and Theft - all of which work so well for me in concert.

I was surprised by the number of young women at the concert (maybe 50% of the audience). I always filter Dylan’s music through my personal thought dreams and can’t quite fix how others would hear it. But it is nice to have an audience to listen to it with me on occasion.

The presence of women at Harvard and MIT makes both places so much more alive and human than 40 years ago – but that’s another story.

The ‘arena’ for the concert was one of many buildings used for athletics (hockey, tennis, track, swimming etc) across the Charles River from Harvard – in a bit of Boston known as Allston - 75 acres of playing fields and buildings to play in – all in an open area named Soldiers Field. Just a large box, the Gordon (Indoor Track) Athletic Center, was where the concert was held - with virtually all the floor covered with large pieces of plain brown wrapping paper to protect the track and inner floor from the hooves of the Dylan fans.

The weekend was an active one, with the season climactic Harvard-Yale football game on the Saturday. Plenty of action and life on the streets - on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. Harvard Alumni, parents, Harvard students, students from Yale and other such – in constant motion everywhere and in good spirits.

(Also many more homeless in the area than expected – their spirits not quite so high.)

Harvard fought fiercely on the Saturday and thrashed Yale to have an undefeated season.

The Sunday concert was a sell out but by no means filled the building. There were issues as to how many the fire marshals would let in. They could have fit in 8,000 or more standing but maybe couldn’t have gotten them out if the burning incense got out of control. There seemed to be about 4,000 on the floor, but it didn’t fill the floor area…. just a very large mob on the floor in front of the stage, well behaved it appeared throughout the concert.

There was an elevated ‘balcony’ standing area on one side of the building - which we traded our tickets for – we decided to not fight and scrum for front row floor viewing. There were five hundred tickets pre-sold to bobdylan.com ‘members’ and from something I read they sold out on the internet within 12 minutes. And it also took the same five hundred about 12 minutes to fill the front of the stage area too – the Harvard students all had to get their student IDs checked since they got tickets at half price – so that gave the bobdylan.com ticket holders a real head start from their separate entrance area.

You couldn’t migrate to or from the balcony area, and balcony tickets were limited to a couple of hundred people. It was the ‘right’ side for viewing of the band and Bob, but was fairly far away. Kevin and I were first in line for that area - not many people had tickets for the balcony and that suited us.

We had ideal front row standing in the balcony - could have sat with legs dangling, but preferred to stand. The guy next to us shared his binoculars, and that was good. The sound started out a bit shakily, but after a song or two it was pretty good to our ears for the rest of the concert.

Bob was resplendent In black with matching cowboy hat. He had a great time all evening – animated, bouncing, smiling, eye contact to his band and the crowd, and did four or five of his little dances between numbers coming out from behind the piano and wandering about in small eccentric orbits in front of the band – smiling with both arms outstretched and raised slightly with thumbs in the air – with an occasional swaying motion. Hey – he was having fun, and of course you can’t be a song and dance man without the dance.

“Rainy Day Women” got the place in motion – and “Forever Young” followed - poignant as ever. Then the expected/unexpected “God Knows” which only gets sung at Sunday concerts. Nice one to whoever figured that out. I guess “Bob Knows” why.

And then - those words which always get me in a trance for the whole song – 39 years ago, and since. “They’re selling postcards of the hanging” (must now be Rumsfeld’s 52 card pick up deck) – “they’re painting the passports brown “and so it goes on and on through desolation row. What a wonderful, wonderful song. I couldn’t hear it often enough. And similarly “It’s Alright Ma” - it’s life and life only, yet again, continuing through the years.

A laid back Lay, Lady Lay. And the ominous “High Water”. And the dark but fun-filled “Tweedles” next. Followed by a mellow flashback to “Don’t Think Twice” and a rocking “Stuck Inside of Mobile” too.

Then the only real unexpected – “John Brown”. It fit in just fine – and rings so true. (Some reviewer from the Boston Globe interpreted it as a mangled “Masters of War” !) And being performed at Soldiers Field? Maybe just a coincidence – maybe not.

Then “Honest with Me” in a version which has lost some of its earlier concert performance zing, but still rocks. And then “Sugar Baby” which is getting easier and easier to listen to as time passes - with “but love is pleasing and love is teasing, love is not an evil thing” slyly snuck in to counter a slightly more sardonic story line.

And then a raucous “Summer Days” – followed by the traditional five minute break for applause and the band members to have a smoke off-stage before “Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower”.

Before that last song Bob did the quick introductions…. with the joke about Larry being the golfer in the band…. and wearing two pairs of pants in case he got a hole in one. And introducing Tony as “and of course you all know Tony Garnier:”

Bob was in a good mood all evening – and so was I and the crowd around me – friendly one and all. No elbowing or pushing, no talking during the songs. A few younger ones behind us dancing away to add flavour to the concert.

I haven’t seen Dylan often, but feel renewed when I do. The first encounter was near Symphony Hall Station in 1964 - our trains-a-travelin’ coincided again this 40 years later near Harvard Square Station – just one transfer away on the subway system but a bit more than that in our above ground journeys.

In the meanwhile the Dylan lifetime masterpiece continues to be constructed, with no museum large or strong enough to encompass the dynamics of his particular art form. The songs with their tunes, their words and their resonance and meaning – yes, all vital to be sure, but the on-going Dylan performances also remain an essential element of Dylan’s art. It was good to be there to participate once again.

p.s.
someone asked….. what happened to Club 47? That coffeehouse on 47 Mount Auburn Street which so richly filled a need during the very late 50s and early 60s,and later moved streets but kept the Number 47 (now 47 Palmer Street) then turned into Club Passim, but is now known better by its name “Veggie Planet”, being the only vegetarian place to eat in Cambridge Mass., which is quite a surprise in itself.

It still exists, and still has music several nights a week, but its bread and butter (more likely non-dairy kind) is its vegetarian and vegan pizza.

I’m sure there’s a message somewhere in this postscript – as to how the folk boom of the sixties is now nothing more than ‘did you want your pizza to be veggie, or vegan?’

p.p.s.
The pizza was actually quite good, both the veggie and the vegan versions. But Bob and I had other places to be on the night, so the music came from elsewhere.

Disk 1
1. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 (Bob on piano and harp)
2. Forever Young (Bob on piano and harp, Larry on pedal steel)
3. God Knows (Bob on piano and harp)
4. Desolation Row (Bob on piano and harp, Larry on acoustic guitar, Tony on standup bass)
5. It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) (Bob on piano, Larry on cittern, Tony on standup bass)
6. Lay, Lady, Lay (Bob on piano and harp, Larry on pedal steel)
7. High Water (For Charley Patton) (Bob on piano, Larry on cittern)
8. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Bob on piano)
9. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (acoustic)
(Bob on piano and harp, Larry on acoustic guitar, Tony on standup bass)
10. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
(Bob on piano, Larry on acoustic guitar)
11. John Brown (acoustic) (Bob on piano, Larry and Stu on acoustic guitars, Tony on standup bass)
12. Honest With Me (Bob on piano, Larry on electric guitar)

Disk 2
13. Sugar Baby (aocustic) (Bob on piano, Larry on cittern, Stu on acoustic guitar, Tony on standup bass)
14. Summer Days (Bob on piano, Tony on standup bass)
(encore)
15. Like A Rolling Stone (Bob on piano, Larry on pedal steel)
16. All Along The Watchtower (Bob on piano, Larry on pedal steel)

By Bill in NZ