Icon #24 - Bob Dylan: The Vibe Vampire

In this edition of the Iconograph, Jack and Miles are joined by comedian/musician Chris Crofton to talk about the weird guy with the scary songs:

Bob Dylan!

They'll explore his humble Midwest beginnings, his biscuit tin of lyrics, his many phases and much more!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to this spinoff episode.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Of Dilley zaegeist Chilling, which we're calling the Iconograph.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Instead of looking at the zeitgeist through Curt events on
Monday mornings, we were looking at the zeitgeist through the
powerful pop cultural deities that are our icons. We dress
up as these icons during holidays. We misquote them to
make something true. We give them Nobel Prizes for literature.
We ignore that they're occasionally terrible harmonica players, even though

(00:34):
that's like one of the main things that they do. Uh,
that's right, we're talking about Bob Doylan this week. A
guy who went to college as a teenager named Robert
Zimmerman emerged a few years later in New York with
a different name, a different voice, a different accent, a
new personality, a new backstory, and as one of the

(00:55):
most famous people in the world. He was so famous
that when he moved to wood Stock, New York in
nineteen sixty six, he indirectly caused the Woodstock Festival to
happen three years later, because the original pitch for that
festival was, like, what if we had a concert in
Woodstock featuring the sorts of people who live in Woodstock,

(01:16):
like I don't know Bob Dylan and the band, and
he was like on a hiatus from the public eye.
But people were basically just like, maybe we'll get him
out of his house, and so they threw like one
of the craziest parties of all time. And he didn't show.
He just gat speed that shit. I'm joined as always
by my co host, mister Miles.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
I'm this is I'm glad to be in this one
because I don't know I know fuck.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
All about fucking shit. I don't know fucking shit about me.
It's a man's playing. Oh my god, Chris's legs just
spread so far.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Oh my god, he's doing He's jumping up and down
like Usain Bolt for a sprint.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Right living essay prepared.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
He's got a thera gun that he's going against his throat,
getting ready to In our third seat, we have a
hilarious stand up comedian, actor, musician. You can listen to
his podcast Cold Brew Got Me Like. There's a new
documentary about him, Chris crofton Nashville Famous. He's got a
new album that rips. It's called I'm Your Man, available
on ben to Camp right now. The Poetry Window is

(02:24):
open because it's Chris motherfucking Craft.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
What's up.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
I'm glad to be here, excited to talk about Bob Dylan,
but I do think that I'm too much of a
fan and the show is going to be one dimensional
as a result.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
I'm gonna be like, hey, I could never I don't
think anyone listening right now goes, yeah, one dimensional show
with Chris as a guest.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
Yeah, but like I feel like Chris Farley, like you know,
when he's like that was cool when.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
I remember when cool when Jimmy Hendricks did All Along
the Watchtower.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
You're a singer songwriter. I kind of had a feeling
you might be a Bob Dylan fan.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
I mean yeah, and like yeah, he's yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
I mean he's got lots of problems. I can make
fun of him. And he's really funny too. That's the
thing is, he's so funny. He's so yeah, Like he's
a troll, like he knows, like he's always been a
pain in the ass.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Like he's one of the things that I feel like
it was missing. Like the research for this. Shout out
to Jay and McNab who helped with research on this.
He has some really great moments of trolling that I
want to bring back. But do you agree with me?
Do you agree with me? He's not great at the harmonica.
Like I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan, like

(03:37):
maybe the artist I've listened to the most in my life,
Like the musician I've listened to the most of my life,
and like, there are plenty of songs that I'm just
like kind of grating my teeth through the harmonica solo.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
You know, I'm grateful for the Internet in the sense
that this is the only reason too, well besides pornography
on there, the pornography. I never considered Bob Dylan's harmonica
playing because like I was so like dazzled, and also
like you know, when I came along, he was already

(04:09):
sort of a legend, so it was like I just
I don't know, I just took I didn't know much
about harmonica playing, you know when I first heard.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Bob Dylan, so I accepted it.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
But now you didn't realize I had pretty version.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Wonder there's no other.

Speaker 5 (04:26):
Ways to approach the harmonica, and and he had like
my favorite album of his maybe is Desire, and like
that's the one where he had like this amazing fiddle.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Player I think it is who's like a copying him.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, and they're like, uh, just songs where there's a
good musician on it with him. It's like, holy shit,
this is fucking incredible. But he doesn't give a fuck.
Like his recording style was just like you you would
like hear his like buttons hitting against his guitar and
he was like.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
That's it, man, pretty as the one. Yeah, he's really weird.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
I mean, it's like there's so many stories about him,
like seemingly he's so like anal about lots of stuff,
and then there's certain times where he's like I don't
care at all about things that you're.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Like, what, Bob, you cough in the middle of that one.
I don't give a fuck. We print doing it again.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
He never does. He doesn't watch his cough. Yeah. Yeah,
definitely iconic.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
You give an emoji a pair of wayfars and a
messy hairdoo and it's Bob Dylan.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
The guy is a true icon.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
And there was just a big hit movie about him
starring Timothy shadow May that covers the Dylan goes Electric thing,
which is probably the most iconic thing in his career.
I think a little bit overrated. We'll get into it
like the that moment. So I just want to pitch

(05:53):
my two favorite things from the research that I think
could have made the movie more interesting. First is, so
in the movie, he kind of shows up in New
York and he's like kind of Bob Dylan already, like
he's not famous yet, but he's like this fully formed,
kind of hipster asshole poet. And Miles You've talked on

(06:16):
here about being tired of biopics that have to start
with like the musician being born on a farm, having
their brother killed, you know, But I do feel like
if we had just gone back a couple of months,
so he's he's from Minnesota, I don't think we need
to start with this childhood, but like just he's when

(06:38):
he's a child. The number one song on the radio
was Roote Oflph the Red Nose Reineer, like the artist
he idolized what he got through. An amazing songwriter, but
like his most famous song is this Land is Your Land,
which is a beautiful song but something that I kind
of grew up thinking was a children's song. And just
like Dylan getting access to rock and roll records, was

(06:59):
like a big deal to him. He had to like
steal them. So he's like you can kind of see
in real time, he's kind of like making up the
character of Bob Dylan, like on the drive from Minnesota
and in like his first couple months in New York.
He sort of assembles his character from different people. He's
almost like Dicky Greenleaf, like in the town to mister Ripley,

(07:21):
or like single white femaling people like. He's like, people
are like, yeah, I noticed that he started dressing like me,
and people thought it was creepy. But I thought he
was a pretty good songwriter, so I thought I was
cool with it. I was kind of honored. But just
this scene from months before the Chaba May movie starts,
he sat down with his parents and made an agreement,

(07:45):
and this is a quote from his dad. He wanted
to be a folk singer and an entertainer, and we
couldn't see it, but we felt he was entitled to
the chance. It's his life, after all, and we didn't
want to stand in the way. So we made an
agreement that he have one year to do as he pleased,
and if at the end of that year he was
not satisfied. We were not satisfied with his progress. He'd

(08:07):
go back to school, like he was like on a
like plan with his parents when he went to New York.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Just yeah, well you get one year to make it work.
Huh hey, Bobby, the parents were irish.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
No, no, they're just like Minnesota. I was just trying
to do like Minnesota.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
It's just like so.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Funny to me that he was like just from the yeah,
so quaint and like he like comes up and was like,
I just escaped the circus man.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
He was like what he didn't. Yeah, people let him.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
I didn't realize that was like kind of what he
was presenting as he gets to New York was that's
so funny.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
Yeah, he made up a lot of stuff, and he
also stole a lot of people's everything, their look, their songs, everything,
just like yeah he did and then people were like, well, yeah,
he was like so good though that it was like
kind of I let him do it. But then they
also ended up they ended up pretty mad though, because
he ended up so rich, so famous, they thought he

(09:10):
was going to be like, oh, he's just gonna be
some weirdo.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
So he he went to college for one year and
he was trying music then too, and it was like
people weren't putting bread in his jar and saying, man,
what are you doing here? If you asked everyone in
like the folk scene in I think it was University
of Minnesota where he went for a year, if they
thought Dylan was going to be famous, they would have said,
who the fuck is Dylan? Do you mean Spider John?

(09:36):
Because that that was the name of the hot shit
folk artist on the scene.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
He was like.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Spider John. Everybody you like, go back and reading everybody
at the times, like we all loved Spider John, and
Dylan was just this wanna be nobody like liked him.
We all knew his name wasn't Bob Dylan, but yeah,
we all.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Just like Bob Dylan. He he didn't.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Spider John fucking ruled though.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
It's such a poser name.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
I worked with Spider John.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, good, Spider John.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
What a name? Yeah? What happened to spider ended up having? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yeah, he ended up having a pretty good career and
like made some good fun like in the Minnesota, in
the Minnesota folk scene.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Ye, Spider John kept his same name and became a
successful rapper in the.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Two that's right.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Oh, yeah, the seventy year old rapper Spider John uh huh.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Everybody knows him anyways, that magic trick of going from
small town Minnesota failing to make it in like college,
to inventing Bob Dylan and like doing it by stealing
people's records and personalities and voices, seems like it would
have been like, I feel like you could have had
a getting ready montage where he comes out of the
closet wearing like different personalities and his girlfriend is like.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Huh uh huhuh m hmmm around.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
But yeah, as Chris, as you said, I think it's
driven by the fact that he's like one of the
best thieves, like artistic thieves of all time and like
one of the most permeable artistic vessels of all time.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
But well, he.

Speaker 4 (11:13):
Said something really like I mean, I was going to
say it at some point. It seems like now it's
a good time to mention it, like one of the
time things he said that's stuck stuck with me. And
why I like him is he has wise things to say.
He also has like tons of trolling and stuff, but
he'll say some things that really helped me out as
a person who came from a family that was at

(11:33):
times really difficult, and I think his you know, he
grew up in like a mining town where everybody was
just like a Christian miner, and he was like, what
am I supposed to do here?

Speaker 1 (11:44):
You know?

Speaker 4 (11:45):
And that's how I felt growing up in Connecticut, Like
I was like, what am I supposed to do here?
I don't understand. It doesn't fit. I don't know where
to fit. It doesn't seem right. So he said at
one point, people are born all the time in the
wrong places, to the wrong people, Yeah, like to the
wrong families, which I remember thinking that would be such
a hurtful thing to hear if it was his parents,

(12:07):
you know, his parents hearing that quote.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
But it made sense to me.

Speaker 4 (12:09):
I mean, he just that that all that changed my
opinion of a little bit how to. I mean, it
made me feel better about my life choices, you know,
and like, but he really said that, like I just
couldn't believe it. Like sometimes you're born to the wrong family,
you know. And that's like when you go to therapy
and you find out like, no, you're not your dad,
You're somehow connected to your dad, but you're a whole
new kind of person.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Yeah, and so like he take that, he took that
to a massive extreme where he just like completely invented
a new person.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yeah I can relate to.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
Yeah, like you don't have to go all the way
with him where he calls himself whatever. Yeah, where he
starts dressing like a matador or you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
He was doing that, although I do recommend you do
that one part the Matador.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Obviously trying out different things, but I understand like I
tried out different things. I tried out being a deadhead
when I was like in Connecticut, you know, because I
thought that was the way forward, you know what, I
couldn't do it. I did for a couple of months,
and I was like, I just can't stand this and
I have to listen to Prince.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
I can't listen to this shit, you.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Know what I mean that I thought, like socially speaking,
that would have been a better character for me if
I wanted to have a better life. So what about Yeah,
so you try on different He just did it in
an extreme.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
And he tried it on and like they worked really well,
and he just wrote it all the way to the top.
My other favorite scene that I just would have liked
to see in the movie December nineteen sixty three. He's like, very,
very famous. At this point, he had just played at
the Mark for Freedom in Washington. He was literally like
feet away from Martin Luther King Junior as he gave

(13:38):
the I have a Dream speech him and Joe Bias
and so people are like, this guy might be a
civil rights figure. And so the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee
gives him this John Payne Award and he gets up
to accept it shitfaced. And it's less than a month

(14:00):
after Kennedy was assassinated, and this is the speeches. This
is the speech he gave. I have to be honest.
I gotta admit that the man who shot President Kennedy,
Lee Oswald. I don't know exactly where what he thought
he was doing, but I gotta admit honestly that I too,
I saw some of myself and him. I gotta stand
up and say I saw things that he felt in me.

(14:23):
Not to go that far and shoot booze and hisses, Hey,
you can boo but Boone's got nothing to do with it.
It's I've just I got to tell you, man, it's
Bill of Wright's his free speech and I just want
to admit that I accept this Tompayn war On behalf
of James Foreman of the student's Non Violent Coordinating Committee,
and on behalf of the people who went to Cuba.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Booze wow.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
I didn't know that less than I Kennedy got shot,
being like, hey, I'm not saying I agree with the guy,
but I understand I understand some next level career in relation.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Boo boo boooo the president.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Like when I was like I for most of my life,
that generation hasn't been able to get over Kennedy being assassinated.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know the people who are around for that, right.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
And like a month after to be like, hey, I'm
just saying, Oswald has some interesting idea.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
I saw a little bit of myself, Like.

Speaker 4 (15:24):
Nine to eleven's an inside job, like right.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
After yeah, right now.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
No, that's like saying they're like, hey, man, I heard
about that Mohammed Atta in the cockpit.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
I'm just saying I let a bit.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Of myself and him You're like you you're the nine
to eleven pilot.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
This just would have been so funny to put that
in that movie. He's there wasn't an Internet, or he
wouldn't have had a career.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
I know, truly like the fact that he was able
to somehow bounce back from that.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
He said that truly.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Does that change how you feel?

Speaker 2 (15:55):
No, Chris No.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
She also wrote the song about the Kennedy assassinated, like
he has the song I think his best song of
recent years is a Murder most Foul I think or
something like that that uh is about the head of
the assassination. It's like twelve minutes long. Doesn't need to
be that long, but it's fucking great. All right, Let's
talk about the most iconic moment, which is when he

(16:17):
went electric at the nineteen sixty five Newport Folk Festival.
Do you know this story, Miles, I just know of
it as a thing in lore of like the moment
that he was being an acoustic guy to then playing
amplified guitar, and so people were like, that's not the
spirit of the fucking game.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, it's my understanding, and that's my like thirty thousand
foot view of the Dylan goes Electric.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, right, I think that's basically right. That's definitely the
version that you get in the movie is like he
had made his name or like some of his most
successful appearances have been at this Newport Folk festival and
he had been embraced by the folk community. And then
he comes out and plays these three rock songs and

(17:01):
in the movie including like a Rolling Stone, which you know,
so it's a good one to open with if you're
gonna be like, Hey, I think I want to try
this rock music out. It's you know, often ranked as
one of the great rock songs of all time. But yeah,
in the movie, it's like he's inventing rock. Like it's
like he's playing to a crowd of people who've never

(17:22):
seen It's like the part and Back to the Future
where he shreds an electric guitar solo and people are
like looking at each other like what the fuck, Like
Marvin Barry's in the back on the phone Colin Chuck.
But they also include the somebody shouting Judas at him,
which is something that did happen a year later at

(17:43):
what was like often shared as the Royal Out Prince
Royal Albert Hall performance, but it was actually Manchester Free
Trade Hall bootleg in nineteen sixty six. Multiple people claimed
to be the Judas shelter. There's a shouter. There's this
quote where this guy's like it came at the same
time as the revelation that someone else, Keith Butler, was

(18:04):
claiming it was they that did the shout. But I'm
absolutely convinced it was me that the microphones picked up.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Convinced it was me it was.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
They that did the shout.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
It's also just like such a funny claim, Like it's
like claiming to be the first person who fled the
theater when the train was coming at the movie screen,
It's like, what are you so proud of? Man being
well afraid of electric guitars.

Speaker 4 (18:28):
A great movie to watch is, I mean, really great
movie period is that documentary No Direction Home by Martin Scorsese.
That movie is great and it shows this whole period
like really well, but he the thing was he would
have he had been embraced by the folk community, which
at that time was connected to labor unions and socialism

(18:51):
from like the twenties, all those immigrants that were socialists
and communists from like there was a strong communist movement
in New York City and trade union movement, and then
also these rich kids just started messing around with it,
and I Pete think Pete Seeger was one of the
rich kids that started messing. His family was a sort
of old money family that started getting into union pro

(19:13):
union causes and stuff. And so I think like Pete
Segert felt like he had given Bob Dylan the keys
to the kingdom, like he was basically he thought Bob
Dylan wrote the best protest songs, and they thought he
was going to be there pet protest, like he was
going to lead their movement. He's like this he wrote
Blowing in the Wind, and like they were like, this
is the guy, Like we all have been looked praying
for this guy. He's the guy who's going to lead

(19:34):
the union movement. He's gonna, you know, he's going to
carry on this tradition of protest songs. And Bob Dylan basically, yeah,
he got stuck. Bob Dylan got stuck. He felt stuck
creatively in this. He basically was like, I don't want
to write protest songs anymore. I just wrote him because
I figured I could do it. Like I just I

(19:56):
just realized there was an opening and I took it
because I can write. And he's like he's also not
he's pretty confident. So he's like, I figured I could
write the best protest song. So I did it, but
then they wanted me to be there to do that. Yeah,
they made rules around him. So the song that they
played he played first at the Newport Folk Festival was

(20:16):
ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no More, which is
supposed to be a metaphor or you know, an allegory
about him quitting the folk movement.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
He's like, you want me to scrub the floor all day?

Speaker 4 (20:24):
I just get bored. And so that song was his
statement against Pete Seeger. And and then he got that
guitar player I can't remember the guitar player that played
on it, and he was this really badass telecaster player
and he played he told him to play like real
aggressive during that song.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
That guy later died of a heroin overdose not long
after that.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
He was this awesome guitar player, but anyway, he he
basically was played that as a like see later folk movement.
And Pete Seer was enraged because he's like, I gave
you everything, you know what I mean. I gave you,
I hyped you up. I've made you the center of
all this. And so apparently Pizzeger tried to cut the
chord with an axe.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Right, That's that's what happens in the movie. He's like
trying to grab an axe to cut the cord. Like
he was really really I don't.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Like to just like take like the pot for the
amp or something.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
The whole stage there where I just want to cut
the But it was Bob Dylan saying like I'm much.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
More than this.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
You know I'm gonna be I'm not doing this if
you think I'm doing this for the rest of my
life being Pizza GROW's pet protests in.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
I truly just because the really brutal distillation of it
is just sort of like and then he played an
electric guitar and they didn't like that. So I'm glad
to know all this like other texture around it because
that makes so much more sense of like people are like, dude.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Pizza is not wrong.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Like he wrote some really good like left wing ship
at this time. He has a song like the Paranoid
John Birch Society Blues that is like just shitting on
the John Birch Society like uh, you know, decades before
the Christmas Adventures Club.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
And the death of Hattie Carroll. Yeah, racism written by
a white guy. Yeah, pawn in their game and lonesome
death of some lonesome Death of Hattie Carol. When I
first heard that song, I was just like, oh my god, yeah,
like you know, you can just say this in a
song like I can't imagine, and it's just a beautiful song.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Masters of War is like a great protest song. Was
just like still fucking so like just still so such
a great description of how how the world works. But yeah,
Pizzier is not wrong that he's like then going forward
to like write songs about drugs, and you know, people
are like he's turning inward, He's and like abandoning sort

(22:45):
of this leftist movement. It's just you never, like we've
seen this before in these icon stories, like you never
want to be the person telling the hot twenty something
person who's like whose career is taking off to be
like now, now if you follow these rules, like we
saw this with Freeda Collo. There was this guy who
was like Freda, you could be part of my surrealist

(23:06):
movement if you just followed these rules and stopped sucking
my wife. Yeah, and yeah, it's just like a tough
position to be in. You're never kind of gonna win
that one, so you might as well just not try
and chop the chords in half. There's also evidence that, like,
for instance, the three songs they played were not the

(23:29):
only electric songs at the Newport Folk Festival that year.
There were other ones that were received well. People were
mad that I think one of it, so there was
like rolling Stone Maggie's Farm, and then another one that
they were still working out that people who are like
Dylan fans who were there at the time were like,
they didn't really know what they were doing. It kind
of sucked, like the second one, and so and even

(23:51):
the documentary footage from the time they like took the
booze from people booing after they had left the stage
after only three songs and move it to make it
look like people were booing during the electric part. So
they're like, definitely, it's been played up to make it
seem like people were like, unplug those guitars right now,

(24:12):
which I think that he just has this ability to
see his own narrative ahead of time, like see himself
and his place in the cultural narrative.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Like I think that's actually.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Like a weird counterintuitive skill that seems to recur in
these icon episodes like with the people we've covered, like
Marilyn Monroe studied herself in photos and like how she
appeared and like knew better than directors, like how she
was going to look to people on camera, and like
she just like she would like speak to photographers about

(24:47):
what made her look good and then like just incorporated
that into her DNA, like Dolly Parton speaks like a
movie character version of Dolly Parton, Like like everything is
just like note perfect for the character of Dolly Parton,
Like Bob Dylan being able to like piss his fans
off in a way that made narrative sense for his

(25:08):
career without being like, first of all, is everyone mad
at me? But also you know, like without like harming
his career is just so interesting and like a weird,
like next level thing that I feel like he you
know the like for an example of a non iconic
famous person who doesn't have the skill, I was talking

(25:30):
on the Steve Jobs notebooked up about how Ashton Kutcher
was like a biopic about a generational genius. Sounds like
a job for me. The guy from Dude wears my car.
It's like, what do you like just no sense of
how anyone sees them whatsoever.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
But like, I think every biopic should star Samuel L. Jackson,
no matter who it is, even if it's Amelia Earhart.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
I hate that they cast people because they look like
the famous person. I think it's the lamest thing, and
I'm not there actually is a good example of a
biopic that changed that or tried to mess up, where
that Kate Blanchett was Bob Dylan.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
That was actually twenty different people were Bob Dylan. Yeah,
that was a pretty cool movie. So one more thing
about the movie.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
He's kind of about the thing we're talking about with
him being at like this shape shifter.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Can we go out of him being electric or going electric?

Speaker 4 (26:23):
The guitar player that played with him at the Newport
Folk Festival that played all the ripping leads was David Bromberg.
He's the one who died of a heroin overdose not
very long later. But he also just to tie it
in for our somewhat younger listeners, uh, David Bromberg's song
Sharon was the guitar sample for Johnny Ryeal.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
By the Beastie Boys on Paul's Boutique that.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
Jut down out is from David Bromberg song.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Well there's one for our I just want I just
wanted the whitest man alive, or guess anyone was wondering boutique.
I'll take my ward.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
Tell oh god, this is I just realized while I'm
sitting here, this is gonna make me sound This whole
episode is guaranteed to make me sound like the whitest
asshole alive.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
That's actually we I said, we've got a Bob Dylan
episode coming up, Producer, Victor, get me the whitest asshole.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
God.

Speaker 4 (27:23):
I mean, I'm just like, I'm just restraining myself. I
have so many fucking facts like that.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I could be thrown out.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
I'm just just just boiling over here with it's no,
you don't it'll be the rest show.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
It'll never leave this period.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
All right, Let's let's take a quick break and we'll
be right back.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
And we're bad. He's clear whatever's doing that break that break.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Chris revealed that Bob Dylan was looks maxy with a mistake.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
I think by mistake he didn't everybody was doing that,
like everybody was taking speed back then, Like I don't
know how that happened, I guess because it was over
the counter and diet pills.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
That's why pills yea amphetamines where yeah, you could get Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
So Bob Dylan like during that period where he got
kind of hot looking because he looked like a little
kid when he first came to New York.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
He was like, had like kind of a fat, round
face and looked.

Speaker 4 (28:25):
Like a.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Look at him on the cover like of the Free
Willing Bob Dylan, He's got a little baby fat stuff.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
And then three years later he's like hot guy wearing
these like skinny trousers and crazy. You know, he looked
like a whole different person. It was because he was
on speed and lost tons. He looked like a skeleton.
And then if you watch that movie, like he totally
crashed like out.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, like he ended up like.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
He ended up like he did so much speed that
I saw Q and A with Barry Gibb from The
Beg's Thank You More Whitest Man Alive, and he talked
about to his speed. He said, we did speed. They
were like, how'd you write all these songs? He's like,
we were just on speed. We took speed in the
morning and then we stopped writing songs. So when we
ran out of speed, he's like, but that was normal.

(29:15):
We did not consider it taking speed. We just considered
it what you did.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, he was definitely on a ton of amphetamines, as
we'll get to, on a bunch of other drugs, but
amphetamines seems to be the and he says like, oh,
I didn't use the amphetamines to write songs. I used
them just to like stay up on the stage, like
belding them out for people. Like that's what got him
through the tour. But then he does have a crash

(29:42):
and disappears for eight years, as we'll get to. But
just in terms of his I will say I think
speed accidentally making him, you know, wiry, is one accidental
thing that worked in his favor. Also, he got bronchitis
at one point and his voice totally changed from like

(30:03):
when he was singing in Minnesota. There's this one album
of his actually where he's like, you like, you know
the song Nay Nashville Skyline where he like it sounds
like he's like doing a bit the whole time, and
apparently mathis Yeah, it's like it sounds like he's like,
you're hey, this is you, Like it's.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Something that everybody google Johnny Mathis.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
And like the song Lay Lady Lay is like one
of his most popular songs, but it sounds like he's
like doing like.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Every time I hear that song, I picture singing yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
I picture him singing in Grout Show Glass.

Speaker 4 (30:42):
I wonder if he did that on you know, oh yeah,
go ahead and.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
You're the best thing.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
What yeah, yeah, Bob Dylan just randomly, it's like I
think he just tried. He was like, what if I
say in my yeah one time and was like jumped ahead.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Because that's interesting because that's part of the part where
he had done that. That was after he got skinny
from anaphetamines and had sort of like retired a little
bit or he took a break, and then he came
back with that album basically to annoy even further people
who thought he was the voice of a generation. He
decided to come out as a crooner, which an irritated
shit out of everybody because they're like, not only did

(31:25):
these songs suck, you don't want to We don't want
to hear you sing about some lady on a brass bed.
We want to hear you talking about the mysteries of
the universe. Yeah, so he sang basically like soft rock
just to annoy. Wow, his voice like that that drove
his fans insane because they thought he was going to
tell them how to live their live.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
My point is that the voice that his fans loved
I think was a voice that he discovered after he
got bronchitis, like the voice that we all know where
he's like like his girlfriend from college was like, that's
not how he sang. He got bronchitis and started singing
like that and people were like that that I don't.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
Believe, he says though, either.

Speaker 4 (32:06):
So he was probably like just started doing that because
he just wanted to be annoying.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
And then he was like, it's because I got brokitis,
you know what I mean. She's like, I don't remember
having bro.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
His girlfriend says, I feel like he doesn't like, you know,
telling stories like that where it's just like a random thing,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (32:21):
Well, no, he would probably come up with a more
colorful story than I brokas.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, I got shot in the throat back cannon when
I was in the Many. But uh yeah, so his
more political era that we're talking about with uh, you know,
Pete Seeger and all that. That starts while he's dating
Susie Rittola, who is the woman who appears on the

(32:46):
cover of the pre Will and Bob Dylan with him
between sixty one and sixty four they date, Don't I
Know it. She's a political activist and is the person
who first made him aware of the labor in civil
rights movement. Her cousin got blocked from moving up in
the military because she appeared on that folk on that
cover because that's how like dangerous folk music was considered

(33:10):
at the time. But when he gave that speech being like, yeah,
you know, I kind of identify with the guy who
just shot President Kennedy weeks ago. Relatable, that's kind of
my dude. So he didn't get an FBI file started
on him. He got mentioned in her FBI file because

(33:30):
she was already on the FBI's like watch list because
she was a leftist. She was like eighteen or seventeen
when they started dating, like she uh, they were like
she was super young and already the FBI was like, uh,
we don't we don't fuck with this person.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
I've read so much bullshit about Bob Dylan, and I'm like,
I wish sus Rotolo would get out of my face.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, I've heard her discus her name is Suze, and
then I don't know if it's I've heard it pronounced
Susan Susie. So whatever, we'll go as Sues because that's
how it's spelled. She got dropped like a hot potato
for Joan Bias. Yeah, that's right, because he was a
fucking climber. And then the movie Don't Look Back is

(34:12):
him dropping Joan Bias.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, it was a real climber. It was like or
needs you either? Where do you go after? Who's after
Joan Bias? Sarah? Everybody?

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, yeah, everybody and somebody named Sarah who was his
wife and the mother of his four children and who
the song Sarah is about. But another thing, just like
in terms of him being sort of an energy charisma vampire,
he has the story that seems very important to him
where he saw Buddy Holly play in Duluth, Minnesota in

(34:45):
nineteen fifty nine, just three days before Buddy Holly's plane crashed,
and he in his twenty seventeen Nobel lecture, he tried
to spin this moment as like a borderline paranormal thing.
He said, like, Holly looked me right straight dead in
the eye, and he transmitted something something I don't know what,

(35:07):
and it gave me the chills. And then like Buddy
Holly dies and he becomes it's a it's almost like
he believed he got like it follows from Buddy like
via rock like rock stardom got. It follows by just
like the making eye contact with him, Yeah, which is

(35:27):
I don't know, I get which it makes sense. It's
probably not true, but it I it makes sense to
me that it makes sense to him as somebody who
is just like looking to steal the essence of other people.
Buddy Holly like gives him some vibe thing through eye contact,
and he's.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
Like, I just don't look at things as grandiosely as
Bob Dylan. But I could see, like the Columbia Record
Club sending me Prince Purple Rain, I could look at
look at it that the same way, you know, like
like moments where you like attach a lot of importance
to it, you know, like but it's really for you.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Think about all the people who saw Tom Petty at
the Hollywood Bowl the night before he died, in her.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
Yeah, good time for a Neil Hamburger joke. This is
a Neil Hamburger joke.

Speaker 6 (36:16):
Why why did Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Richie
Vallens all retire from the music industry on the same day.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Give me a why. Why?

Speaker 6 (36:32):
Well, because their vocal chords were severely damaged in an.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Accident Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
In terms of theft, he as I mentioned, he was
literally stealing people's records. He was like, fuck, he stole
this record by this guy rambling Jack Elliott, who was
one of Woody Guthrie's friends, and he like stole that record,
almost got arrested for it when he had like hitchhiked
down to Denver while he was still in college. Basically

(37:01):
got chased out of Denver for stealing this person's entire
record collection.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
The reason why a lot of people leave Denver still
to this day.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, and then he once he gets to New York,
he goes to find Woody Guthrie, who's his favorite, you know,
folk singer, and he Woody Guthrie is in a mental
institution at the time, and he's like spending all this
time with him, kind of studying him. And when he's there,

(37:29):
he actually meets the guy Ramblin Jack Elliott, whose record
he had stolen.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Before at the mental institution.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well, because he's Woody Guthrie's like accolade good friend, and
so he's also visiting Woody got I thought it like
the it's like well well well, but then like this
is when friends of Elliott would tell him that Dylan
was stealing his style, but Elliott didn't mind. He kind
of felt honored. So this is like he meets him

(37:59):
in person and is like, Okay, your whole ship is
like my whole shit now. And he's also like he
starts singing like Woody Guthrie around this time, complete with
an Oklahoma accent, copies of the look of Ramble and
Jack Elliott. It just gets his politics from his girlfriend.
He just like kind of goes from person to person.

(38:21):
There's also at this time there is a false rumor
that he stole or bought the song Blown in the
Wind from a New Jersey high school student. Do you
know that? Yeah, a high school student named Lori Wyatt.
There was like a rumor that she had performed that
song for her high school before Dylan wrote it. She

(38:44):
denies this, but there are reports that somewhere. Did you
find that Jack Snopes? It's a it's a known like conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
You ever heard that.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, Dylan sounds like one of these people, Like I'm
sure we all know these kinds of people who like
whoever they hang around, they kind of become yes, you know,
like they're sort of like this person. But I know
people who are like that to the point where like
when I knew them in high school, they were kind
of like into the ship I was into. Now they're
like into some they're around like oil rig people. Yeah,
and they are now like completely inverted their values just

(39:16):
by osmosis.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Do you think Dylan like could have been anything.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
It's just that he happened to get involved with like
just people who have to be in the good size way.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
He essentially invents Christian rock because he goes goes through
a phase where he's dating a Christian woman. Oh yeah, wow,
he starts some of them are pretty good saved. Yeah,
Jesus's hand stretching out that song. One of the songs
on there is pretty good. Slow Train Coming is really
good record. But yeah, he's he's done so many different

(39:48):
versions of himself. It's crazy, but I.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Mean, like, do you think his like moral compass is
just but it is sort of attuned to something to
be positive, like whether that's like folk music or the
civil rights movement or things like that.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Like, but if he had any it.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Up with some other weird characters that he might have
not been, you know, had the same sort of like
message or value to his work.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
You can go to his Patreon right now and listen
to lectures from AI historical.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Forgot about that.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
I think that's just standard kind of old person ship
where they're just like amazed by AI. I don't know,
he seemed to have some moral compass and like even
like the protest songs, Like people were mad at him
for writing protest songs in the first place. It seems
like people were always like, you know, the pushing back
against whatever he wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
So he was passionate about civil rights for real.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah, and he wrote a song for I mean, he
was consistent with that through his career because he wrote
on Desire there's a song Hurricane, which came about Ruben
Hurricane Carter and helped get him out of jail, right,
And he definitely wasn't winning any fucking white friends with
that shit. I mean, he was he was a he
was a real he had a real heart. He wouldn't
be interesting if he was just a manipulator. You know.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, sure, I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
But in terms of his stealing and borrowing throughout his career,
I do think it's almost a bit like I think
as people became aware of it, he started kind of
using it to troll people.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
So there's this two thousand.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
And one album I really like called Love and Theft
by him, and one of my favorite songs on is
Twetally Dumb and tweedled Bee, and it has lyrics that
it seems like he stole from this New Orleans travel
guy from the year two thousand. Like there's just like
these little snippets that he took from a New Orleans
travel guy that like it's like they're kind of vague,

(41:43):
but like, so there's one part where he says they're
dripping with garlic and olive oil and somebody, And there's
a part in the travel guy that says dripping in
garlic and olive oil, which would like on its own,
you're like, well, that's probably a coincidence. There's another part
where he writes, she's wearing a multi thousand dollars goalnon,
which is a line from the travel guide. So it's
like the same travel guide he's just like pulling shit

(42:05):
out of. And then people like went and looked at
his memoir Chronicles, volume one, and uh it also is
like pulling from that same New Orleans Travel Guide.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, he's like a he does.

Speaker 4 (42:20):
He likes to make little mysteries, you know, like he'll
do that just so someone will find it and they'll
be like, wait a minute, is he always play darising everything?
And then they're like, no, he doesn't do it there,
but it's like he's definitely like a kind of a troll.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, he's also plagiarized.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
He's also played ary song lyrics from like Civil War
letters that were like written between like Civil War soldiers
writing to home, Like he would like steal little pieces
from that. It's like he just has like really weird
like finding the most obscure like a year two thousand
New Orleans Travel Guide is like so right, like why

(42:55):
the fuck are you even reading that?

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (43:00):
Have you seen the clip of him when he's like
in like the height of like his like he's got
the answers to the universe folk you know god moment
in the mid sixties where the guy asks him what
the cover of the album means with the motorcycle on
his shirt, Like, he's like, I noticed you're wearing a
Triumph motorcycle shirt on the cover of your album.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Uh, what does that mean?

Speaker 4 (43:25):
Have you ever seen that clip? And Bobla goes, I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
I hadn't. I hadn't given much thought.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
The guy goes, I've thought about it a lot.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
And Bob Dylan laughs.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
You know. So, Bob Dylan's like doing a bunch of
things at once, Like he holds himself up definitely as
a leader sometimes, but when he doesn't feel like it,
he's kind of like, I'm just normal, and people are like, no,
you're not. You're not normal.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Admit you're not normal.

Speaker 6 (43:51):
Admit.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
So much of the Bob Dylan thing is trying to
pit him down to being like, admit you're not normal, motherfucker,
and he's like, no, I'm just normal.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
That was a clue about the motorcycle accident you were
about together.

Speaker 4 (44:00):
Are you fucking taking lines from a travel guide?

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Mean by travel?

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Guy?

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Depends what you mean by lines? Yeah, exactly and then
he starts doing that ship. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
People notice that parts of his Nobel acceptance speech were
taken from Sparks notes because he quoted Moby Dick, and
people are like, that's not for Moby Dick, Like that's
I mean general vibe. And then they went and looked
at the Spark notes and like the Spark notes of
Moby Dick's had a very similar summary of what he said,

(44:36):
which is really great. And then, uh, another thing that
he would do is he would write, I mean, like
a rolling stone is like one very long, detailed fuck
you to somebody who he was annoyed at. And there's
lots of theories about who it is. Some people think
it's Joe Bias, some people think it's uh this model
who was like the muse for Andy Warho and kind

(45:00):
of went back and forth between Andy Warhol's Factory Said
and like Bob Dylan the movie Factory Girls about her.
That one kind of makes the most sense to me
because it feels like I kind of picture Andy Warhol
when you're like hearing him talk about like the people
Nico or was that Edie Sedgwick Eadie Sedgwick. Yeah, Okay,
but Anyways, there's also these stories where like he will

(45:23):
turn just like him being a complete baby and asshole
into an amazing song. There's this song ballad in Plane
D where it came from a time when he threw
a tantrum while breaking up with Susan Rotolo and her
sister like tried to throw him out of the apartment,
and in the song he refers to the character's sister
as a parasite. And then there's this amazing song when

(45:45):
the ship comes in that I was familiar with. That's
like from his folk godface, and it like the language
feels like very biblical and like, oh, the foes will
rise with the sleep still in their eyes, and they'll
jerk from their beds and think their dream but they'll
pinch themselves in squeal and know that it's for real
the hour when the ship comes in. Then they'll raise

(46:06):
their hands saying, we'll meet all your demands, but we'll
shout from the bow your days are numbered, and like
the Pharaoh's tribe, they'll be drowned in the tide, and
like Goliath, they'll be conquered. That's how the song ends,
when the ship comes in. Joe Bias was there when
he wrote that, and she says that it was written
purely out of spite after a hotel concierge was rude

(46:27):
to him. Yes, it was just like, okay, man, you
can have free breakfast, will you just like not write
me being Damned by God into your eternal songbook?

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Like? What the fuck that reminds me?

Speaker 4 (46:41):
One time on MTV News, they interviewed the singer of
God Smack about their new album, and he said it
was a lot of songs were motivated by how angry
he was that the guy was renovating his house.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
I just like that.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
He's like the Michael Jordan of songwriting. Like that, It's
just like a person slight and he'll just have this reaction.
He's like, and now I'm gonna write. I'm just gonna
block out that personal.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, stayed up all night just writing this amazing song
because they.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Were like, we we'd rather talk to her. We're big
fans of Joan Biaz.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
He Yeah, So in terms of his eras the sixties,
he has his folk era, then he drops like Blonde
on Blonde and you know a bunch of really great,
you know, rock records, and then he gets in a
motorcycle accident in nineteen sixty six. Is there a sixty
six I think, and disappeared for eight years essentially, and

(47:40):
like during that time he's not touring, but he's like
making the basement tapes with the band. And this is
when they're like they throw woodstock to try and draw
him out of retirement essentially. But you know, the sixties
are really interesting, the seventies are really interesting. The eighties
are a real are a different thing, man. So nineteen

(48:02):
seventy nine he releases Slow Train Coming, which is the
first of his three explicitly born again Christian albums, including
one called Saved that just has a giant Jesus hand
like coming down from the top saving his listeners, I guess.
But the pivot isn't done for money, since Christian music
wasn't a known quantity. But the album Slow Train Coming

(48:27):
went platinum and like basically made people realize, oh shit,
like this like Christian music. There's a lot of Christians
out there, like and this record just like went platinum
like and is doing incredibly well. And in keeping with
him just being the most susceptible to peer pressure person

(48:48):
of all time, he was living with a woman who
became born again and told him about her faith and yeah.
So it's just like he goes from one person to
the other and is like that this is my whole shit.

Speaker 4 (49:02):
Now there's a record from before Saved, right before he
became into his went into his Christian period, Street Legal.
I just want to recommend it because it's he was
like obsessed with Elvis. He wrote a song about meeting
Elvis called Went to See the Gypsy Memphis. He got

(49:22):
so obsessed with Elvis that when Elvis died, he tried
to get his whole band to be his band. And
he was also on drugs. Like he was on drugs
like pretty consistently and he never will. No one can
really exactly figure out what drugs he was on, but
they think he was like addicted to heroin. Crazy They
think he was on heroin. They think he was on
he was not sober. So if you look pictures, look
at pictures of him from the late seventies, Yes, during

(49:44):
even is Born Again stuff that's not just pure Jesus,
that's like Jesus plus cocaine and stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
So so like.

Speaker 4 (49:51):
Like Street Legal was when he was kind of like
on coke, I think, but not hadn't gotten done so
much coke that he became Christian. Yeah, so he was
just he was just like sort of on the edge.
And Street Legal is such a great record. It's like
and it has a bunch of Elvis's band in it
on it, so he got a bunch of Elvis's band
to join him. And he kind of dressed like Elvis
during that period, and he had like this pencilvan mustache,

(50:13):
and he looked like kind of ship like he had
like powder on his face, like this white like not
the white from the you know, the famous or no,
just like just generally he looked like kind of like Elvis.
He was trying to look like Elvis, except he looked
like like vampire Elvis, just like a really ugly Elvis. Yeah,
you know, but check that record out. It's like it's
right before the Christian Ship and it really rocks. And

(50:35):
it's also like got great words and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Let's let's take another quick break, we'll come back. We'll
talk about the drugs that people think he was on
and uh and his later era as a doddering old man.
He has like one of the best doddering old man
eras I think.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
He's still he's still ever.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
He's killing it in the dodder and we'll be right back,
and we're back. Dylan and drugs, like you said, Chris,
like it seems pretty uh safe to assume he was

(51:18):
on just loads and loads of amphetamines. I think it's
confirmed he was on loads of amphetamines in the early days.
The most famous story involving Dylan and drugs is the
time that he introduced pot to the Beatles in nineteen
sixty four, thus making them cool. But again, this is like,

(51:38):
even though he wasn't at Woodstock, he like kind of
his shadow looms over Woodstock and like you know, he
introduced the Beatles to pot and like suddenly they're making
like Sergeant Peppers and shit. Yeah, he decides to stay
home and be like a house husband. Yeah, like always
was fucking people up.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Ya know.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
The Beatles are like Bob Dylan's gonna love this. Dylan's like,
I'm a farmer now. I think it's bullshit.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah, yeah, he's releasing John Weasley harding. I dreamed I
saw Saint Augustine. It's like, what the fuck I thought
we were doing LSD together. Brother, So he didn't realize
the Beatles had never tried weed because he misheard the
lyric from I want to hold your hand as I

(52:23):
get high I get high, which apparently I always thought
it was I get high, but it's I can't hide.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
I thought I get high too. Look at Daily's eye.
Guys doing great services to I know.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
The Beatles looked at each other apprehensively and said, we've
never smoked marijuana before. And Dylan looked disbelievingly from face
to face and said, what about your song, the one
about getting high? And the Beatles were like, which song?
And what he said? You know, the one where you're like,
I get high? And John Lennon was like, so embarrassed.

(52:57):
He's like those one with the woods. The words are
I can't I can't hide. But that's from the Beatles
Bible dot com.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
I like how there's somehow like a line for line
historical documentation of this interaction.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Was that unrecorded or is that.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
Just kind of like someone was like, I was there, man,
and I remember that's what Dylan said.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
And John was like, no, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Oh you know what, Actually I do know how we
have that one because Dylan's tour manager from this time.
As they were like going on the tour, was going
like after every day and just like leaving these very
detailed recordings of like everything that happened. Yeah, and then
when he died, his kid found it and wrote a book. Yeah,

(53:43):
so that's where that one, I think came from. But
they moved fast. Two years after introducing the Beatles to Weed,
Dylan and Lennon are filmed in the back of a
limo for the documentary Eat the document and according to Lennon,
the pair are on junk at the time.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Oh wow, Oh I didn't know that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:01):
Yeah, but Dylan barf's out of that. They have to
stop the tax sit at.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Dylan to bar she looks so fucked up in that.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
And John Lennon was making fun of Bob Dylan in
that scenario when he was all fucked up, Bob Dylan,
he kept going like Bobby, Bobby, Bobby.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
Over a few months early before that, Dylan told critic
Robert Shelton, I kicked a heroin habit in New York City.
I got very very strung out for a while, I
mean really very strung out, and I kicked the habit.
I had a twenty five dollars a day habit and
I kicked it twenty five dollars a day.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, but that's two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
What year was that I was on nicotine? Last year,
I had a twenty five dollars a day vaping habit,
Like twenty dollars a day.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
That's interesting.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
I never knew he'd confirmed to anybody that he was on.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
On heroin, but he was saying I kicked the habit
in New York City before the scene that we're talking
about where he's seen in the back of a limo
and John Lennon was like, oh, yeah, we were on
junk at that time.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
So yeah, he's always like.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Straight in glasses and he's like yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
face like he could stop changing his eyes.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
John. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
John Lennon, who obviously must have done Heroin many times.

Speaker 6 (55:14):
Before that, was like, bye bye bye Bee, can handle
your junk, Hey bye bee.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Yeah that was my British. That was my father. Think
I'm so good at impersonations.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
So this is when he crashes his motorcycle July twenty ninth,
nineteen sixty six. This is also always a sign of
an icon when there's like weird death conspiracy theories around them,
and a lot of people think like he died and
was replaced by a doppelganger at this time and that's
why his music changes so much and why he like
withdraws from touring. But there are other theories that suggest

(55:47):
that he this is when he actually got sober and
like just didn't want to be on on tour and
constantly in the public eye and like that it was
essentially killing him. So the story about his motorcycle accidents
are is like really weird. Like his wife was driving

(56:08):
in a car right behind him and like picked him
up and like while he was like you know, was
injured and had to go to the hospital. Like there
aren't really many details of like what exactly happened to him,
so I could see like whether the accident like really
happened or you know, whether it happened and then was

(56:28):
like a convenient excuse. It does feel like it was
sort of a convenient pivot point. And him being someone
who is like smart enough to play his career, like
you know, almost rite his career like it's a movie,
is like, well be better if you know, it'd be
better if they were booing me, because they were afraid

(56:50):
of electric guitars than they were booing me because the
set was kind of shitty. In this case, was like,
it'd be better if I almost died in a motorcycle accident.
I have motorcycle on the front of my t shirt
that everybody was reading into already, so maybe I can
just make that part of the legend instead of saying
I went to rehab. But Robbie Robertson of the band

(57:11):
says that he was genuinely quite hurt, said that he
was in a neck brace for a while after the
accident and couldn't move his neck from side to side
like Michael Keaton's Batman suit. I don't think he specifically
said that. And then the guy who was like his
tour manager who was with him all the time, says
that Dylan got sober in nineteen ninety four and stopped

(57:35):
drinking on a dime. Chris, you can tell me if
this sounds familiar. He didn't talk as much once he stopped,
and he didn't laugh as loud either. It was really
a big deal for him, really showed his commitment to
changing his behavior. He was capable of dealing with a
broader range of personalities when he was drinking, and after stopping,
his tolerance for certain types of behavior diminished, which.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Is I mean, that's not I don't know, Oh, that's
not what I had happened to me.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
But that's if he didn't do any kind of any
program or anything. I mean, I don't know, like not
that I got super into the program, but it does
help to put some context to it, because it's not
just usually you're not just drinking all the time just
because you I mean, there's usually a little bit more
to it. I mean, it's a pretty pretty big decision
to get drunk all the time. You don't think about

(58:21):
it that, you don't think about it that way when
you're thirteen or whatever, But after eight twenty eight years later,
I'm like, well, that's kind of a significant decision to
be fucked up. Every U fucked up all what was
hiding from you know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
But if you just get sober and just I.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Don't have any don't really think about it that much.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
Yeah, But he also like I have friends who I
do know some people who played with him, and I've
talked to them firsthand about him, and he just from
being in Nashville, and he is like they say, he's
just really private, like because he's just bothered. There's no
way he cannot be bothered everywhere, and they so he
just puts on a hoodie. But he's really nice and

(59:00):
playful person in general, and it has a sense of
humor and and and he just is like really guarded
with h with his you know, is just the.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Public I'll say.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
I when I stopped shrinking, I noticed that one of
the things I was using drinking for was to hang
out with people who I wouldn't otherwise have enjoyed hanging
out out.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, that's definitely true. That's definitely true.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
And I definitely got a little bit more quiet I was,
I did not.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Or are you more selective?

Speaker 4 (59:29):
Like, you know, I thought, like, you know, hanging out
with fucked up people was like more real than hanging
out with anybody who had.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Any sort of success.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
So I was like, I'm purposely gonna hang out with
fucked up people because that's more authentic. And that's not
really necessarily true at all. I mean, it's like so
there's just lots of components to it. I mean, but yeah,
I do. I think like one of the things I
did like about drinking is I could be in any
situation and if I was drunk, it didn't freak me out.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Like I could be in a fucking.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
You know, tenement building with like a bunch of people
up for two days and I felt like I fit
right in if I was drunk, and then if I
was not drunk, I'd be like, and that happened.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
I'm thinking about a specific time.

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
Yeah, you know, and they were you know, we were
all ill, you know, I mean, it wasn't there was
no authenticity to it. We were all sick. Well, you
just didn't think of it that way. It felt authentic
in this way. It definitely felt more authentic than playing
lacrosse in Connecticut. So that was my thing, you know,
and it's always I'm like, I think it is more
authentic than that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
But being a deadhead who secretly likes Prince.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Yeah, split.

Speaker 4 (01:00:31):
So when you get sober, you split the difference. You
learn to make judgment. It doesn't mean you isolate, but yeah,
you might be more selective.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
I think, still the same person. Yeah, all right, And
then I do just want to.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Talk about So the back half of his career arguably
as fascinating as the earlier part it's just like less famous.
But one weird thing is that he's been on the
so called never Ending Tour since nineteen eighty eight. He
obviously takes breaks, but he is mostly on the road,
playing shows across the world every year, whether he has

(01:01:03):
an album to promote or not, and he told Sixty
Minutes that he's constantly performing as part of his bargain
with the quote, chief commander on this earth and the
world we.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Can't see, so fucking just I meet like he just
speaks like I say that shit all the time.

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
I say that stuff when people ask me why I
haven't been on Dailly Zeitgeist in a while.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
It's part of part of my bargain with that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
It's a contract the chief commander on this earth and
the world we can't see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
It's not just because they haven't booked you. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
That's that's who does the booking. Brother is a chief commander.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Take it to the big picture whenever the small picture
doesn't suit me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
That's right, which is I think what he's doing here,
because he's also said times in my life the only
times I've been happy is on stage, so.

Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
Oh man, I think it's cool, Like I like that
in terms of like his inspiration for like life behavior
for me, Like, you know, I think sometimes I think
being on stage can feel self and indulgent, But you know,
I think in other ways, it's like his commitment to
be on stage has made a lot of people's lives
pretty fun and probably organizes his life because if he's

(01:02:09):
not doing that, what is he going to do?

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Like who's he gonna hang out with?

Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
I mean, like, I'm sure he is somewhat stuck with it,
but also like I'm looking at the lyrics to Tangle
Up and Blue off of Blood on the Tracks, which
is another record if you're like a beginner Bob Dylan fan,
I recommend Blood on the Tracks. I recommend Street Legal also.
But what does he say? He says, Yeah, so now

(01:02:34):
I'm going back again. I got to get to her somehow.
All the people we used to know, they're an allusion
to me. Now some are mathematicians, Summer Carpenter's wives don't
know how it all got started. I don't know what
they're doing with their lives. But me, I'm still on
the road heading for another joint. Yeah, we always did
feel the same, we just saw from a different point
of view Tangle Up in Blue. But I always like that,
you know, there's there's certain things to like, like just

(01:02:55):
putting your head down. I think he when he was younger,
like a lot of people when they're young, is trying
to figure out who he was, and then he figured
out I'm an entertainer. I mean that's he says funny
stuff like that. Remember that there's a quote where he
says he's a song and dance man when he's being
interviewed by Time Time Magazine.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
I also recommend Don't Look one of my favorite one
of my favorite dancers.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
Go get Go watch the documentary Don't Look Back. Even
though it's Dylan at his meanest, it's like when he
was in at his height and so he was kind
of a bully to the press and stuff. But still
seeing him talk to the Time magazine people and stuff
is really funny.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
He invented being mean to the press a little bit
like the Beatles and like Elvis are like uh, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, yes, sir,
and like he's just like, what the fuck are you
talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
He understood his power.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
That's the thing about him is at a certain point
he realized people looked up to him, and he couldn't
jeopardize that. He'd written enough songs that people thought were like,
you know, supernaturally good. You know that he realized his
power so in kind of a fun way. You know,
he actually played with it. And it's just like sometimes
it was too mean, but I liked his you know,

(01:04:01):
you know, just like the way he played with people
was sometimes very cool. Like the Time magazine guy, he
was just like, you don't you don't publish the truth,
and he was like, what's the truth that you know?
The interviewer says, he said, the truth would be just
a picture. He's like, just put two pictures in your magazine,
one of John D. Rockefeller getting out of his limousine
and the other picture a hobo barfin and the gutter.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
Like say like that to a Time magazine reporter in
nineteen sixty five. That guy was not used to hearing
that shit, you know, which I liked. I still say that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
He still say all I say, all these bobs, all
those things. He also just say, if you're looking for
a place to start later erab Bob Dylan, what's the time?

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Out of mind?

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Is a fucking great album. That's like the first one
that was like really highly produced and he hates it.
He was like, this is bullshit, but like he worked
with a really good producer and it sounds fucking awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
I highly recommend that one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
But he's in his free time. He enjoys wandering around
and has been picked up by the cops multiple times.
While he was making the movie Mask and Anonymous, he
went for walks when he wasn't shooting in his civilian uniform,
which is gray hoodie, khaki pants and army boots, and
a patrol car picked him up after a neighbor called

(01:05:18):
the cops reporting a homeless man wandering around the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
His look is like Unibomber.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
He looks like In two thousand and nine, he started
visiting sites connected to famous musicians, like the childhood homes
of Neil Young and John Lennon, and while in New Jersey,
he went to check out Bruce Springsteen's old house and
someone called the cops on him again and the police
he was like Bob Dylan and they were like, uh huh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Sure, and yeah we picked up the scale. Yeah, the
cop this scale.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
The coph picked him up, said he was nice, and
despite the fact that Dylan is famously quieter and concerts, apparently,
wouldn't shut the fuck up, kept blabbering in the back
of the squad car. He told me he's famous for singing.
He told me he wrote all these songs. Didn't actually
occur to me to ask him sing me a song.
That was the third question. My mom asked, why didn't

(01:06:11):
you ask him to sing? I was like, I don't know, Mom,
I didn't think about it. In retrospect, it was the
number one thing I should have done, was the woman
who arrested him. And in two thousand and seven, it
was reported that Dylan had been routinely dropping by his
grandson's kindergarten class to play songs for the kids and
didn't tell anybody. The parents just heard stories about the
weird man who kept singing scary songs to them. This

(01:06:38):
song would, I mean, started from a place of this
land is Your Land, which is a song that they
still sing in my kids preschool.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
So many what was I wonder what the teacher's like, Oh,
your grandpa is here again.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
He's like I want to sing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
They're like, oh, hey.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Crawling all over my skins because I was kicking junk man.
They're just frying anyways.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
I mean, there's so much to talk about, but that
that kind of brings us up to the present. Any
anything you you wanted to particularly hit Chris before we
get you out of here.

Speaker 4 (01:07:21):
Well, just the things he likes, some things he like.
There's there's a rumor that he can't write anymore, and
he's he's had this box he called He's referred to
it a lot that he has this box that he
at one time filled with lyrics and he pulls from
the box. And he's also been interviewed that Ed Bradley interview,
which is fascinating to watch, where he says he can't

(01:07:41):
do the They're like, can you still write songs like
you did in the beginning? And he's like, no, those
songs are like he's specifically, uh like, uh, what's the
song that these references were? A handmade blade, a child's
balloon eclipses both the sun and moon.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
Uh, that's a hard.

Speaker 4 (01:07:59):
Ring's gonna fall. I think he's like, I can't write that.
It's incredible. I can't write songs like that. He's like,
I don't know why I was able to do that,
but I can't do it now. He's like, I can
do some other things now, but I can't do that anymore.
But anyway, like just in terms of confusing things, like
I don't know if he writes all his lyrics from
some box and he can't write lyrics anymore. But David

(01:08:19):
bar Wald, who's this musician who was in this band
called David and David and I love their record Boomtown,
but they were not they were not big stars. David
Barwald went on to co wrote songs for Ryl Crow
on her first record, like that, you know, all I
want to do is have some fun. So he's had
a career. But there was a song called Swallowed by
the Cracks and it was like kind of a hit

(01:08:39):
on alternative radio in like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Maybe eighty nine or something.

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
And he met Bob Dylan during that period, and Bob
Dylan asked David barwell Wald how he did it, and like,
David Barwall was like, how did I do? What?

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
He's like, write that song? And he was like what
do you mean? He's like, what do you mean? Why
are you like?

Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
You know, he's like one of my heroes. I was like,
what do you you know? How to write a song?
He goes, no, I have a box.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Those kinds of stories.

Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
I just love those stories because it's like he comes
away like I don't know if he was telling the
truth right. It was so confusing because I was about
to just tell him how bad ass he was, and
he asked me how he wrote, how to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Write a song? Have some fun?

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Real? So there was that one and then okay, this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
Is a you mean the one from like every Freedo
Les commercial of the He was even going bigger.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
He was just like, how do you write a song?
You know? Who knows what drug?

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
He was?

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
There was an interesting thing and chronicles his memoir is
really interesting and like you can't really use it as
a tool for learning anything about reality, like what actually happened.
I think it's just like him kind of riffing, but
like one of the he writes about this period in
I can't really tell what it is. I think either
the seventies or eighties where he's like touring with Tom

(01:09:56):
Petty and he's like, I couldn't even like perform more
than ten of my like all of my songs like
just seemed completely foreign to me, and I just like
lost any connection to music whatsoever. And then he like
has this weird experience with a grateful dead and like
suddenly rediscovers it. But it does feel like he's constantly

(01:10:16):
struggling with like his own creativity, which is crazy for
somebody who's been as prolific as he has.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
So yeah, so like yeah, he's always he goes through
like him like it during the We Are the World,
the the you know, the the you know that that
video of him trying to sing we Are the World
and it's like, have you ever sung before? Maybe has
to wonder, like has to help him, like the melody
is this, Bob, and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
He's like I don't understand, you know. So it's like
so many times he's gone, it's like he's been.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
Then you see him like on MTV talking to Martha Quinn,
you know, and like joking around with her like in.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
A good mood.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
So it's like he's very strange that way. But two things,
just all this stuff, because I could go on and on,
but there's a.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Great uh you guys were like, oh no, the guy,
the guy.

Speaker 4 (01:10:59):
There's this guy. It's called finding Dylan. I think it's
like or tracking down Dylan. It's a BBC special where
this guy went to try and interview him when he
was on the set of that movie he did, Hearts
of Fire or something like that, where he.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
Him as an actor is kind of a disaster.

Speaker 4 (01:11:14):
Yeah, but he was going through a period in the
late eighties where he didn't really know what to do,
you know, he was he didn't want to be a
nostalgia act.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
He didn't know how to go forward.

Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
So he's making this movie and this BBC guy tracked
him down and wanted to ask him the usual questions
like where did those early songs come from?

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
How did you get access to those songs? Like where
did you know?

Speaker 4 (01:11:33):
The same questions that he, you know, just can't stand
and no one will stop asking them, especially Europeans. So
there's always some Swede who wants to track down Bob
Dylan be like, where did these songs come from?

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
I don't understand shaking shoulder?

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
How do you American? How did an American do this?
I just sweed.

Speaker 4 (01:11:51):
I've tried to investigate my feelings for years and I
get nothing. So he this guy drags him down and
Bob Dylan says, okay, and you can sy this on video.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
It's so great.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
So he says, you can come on my trailer and
I'm gonna draw you, and when I'm done drawing your head,
you the interviews over. But and then while you're drawing, oh,
I'm drawing, you can ask me whatever you want. And
the guy's like from Sweden, I think, or maybe just
Rangland or whatever it is. He's asking the same shit
everybody asked. And he's like, finally, he says, where did
these songs come from? Like where did some people say
they came from the divine? Like maybe did they come

(01:12:22):
through some sort of pipe? And Bob Dylan just stops
drawing for a second and looks up at him and
goes a pipe.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
He goes back to drawing.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
The last one is aj Weberman, who was the guy
who went through Dylan's garbage and made a whole career
out of going through Dylan's garbage.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yeah, and Bob Dylan.

Speaker 4 (01:12:43):
Talked to him on the phone forever because he was
obviously the only person who would talk to Bob Dylan honestly,
because he was also like sort of a narcissist. So
he was telling Bob Dylan how much he sucked and
stuff like, because he was like he used to be
good and now you suck it. Bob Dylan was so
glad to hear it, because no one ever says that
to him, like, this is what I've been saying in
So he stayed on the phone with them forever until
they actually had a physical altercation because this guy was nuts.

(01:13:06):
But there's a great documentary about aj Weberman that you
can find on YouTube, the guy who basically became Bob
Dylan's friend by just annoying him. But Bob Dylan obviously
got a kickout of being told the truth. So there's
a clip where he says to Bob Dylan that the
album's self portrait was all covers, and it was. He
says it was a Stone ripoff, and Bob Dylan goes.

(01:13:27):
He goes, there are only two good songs on there,
and Bob Dilly goes, wait a minute, man, wait a minute,
they are more than two, just like I just want
to more than two.

Speaker 6 (01:13:35):
And the National skylines with his.

Speaker 4 (01:13:39):
Stone rep horses.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Many people play played it once and stuck it on their.

Speaker 6 (01:13:42):
Shelf, either album land to objective reality.

Speaker 4 (01:13:45):
Tell themquietly, we're only were two good shows, one portrait
playing nine.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Copy kettle, Hey you know, you don't have to change it, man,
but I'll pay you more than too.

Speaker 1 (01:13:59):
I like had this written out. He was like, all right,
let me just read you my essay about how you
suck shit.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Yeah, he was writing an essay.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
For nobody cares about this when you're like, all right, dude,
he was.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
Writing an essay.

Speaker 4 (01:14:10):
He was at that time, this guy aj Weberman was
writing essays for articles for a hippie zine called Like
the Crystal. Like back then there are lots of like
alternative presses, yeah, or alternative press kind of papers, and
so he was like, Bob Dylan was mad.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
He was going to publish something, so we wanted to
fact check it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:26):
But it ended up being this relationship and then eventually
they had a fight because Aj Webman probably insulted him
one too many times and they actually had physical We.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
See him fucking like shoot him, you know, because that's
also the relationship of like, you know, the David Chapman
to John Lennon, like somebody who's like, I'm literally your
biggest fan and I'm not happy with the direction of
your career is going.

Speaker 4 (01:14:50):
I think Bob Dylan was enjoying really the dose of
like actual This guy did not have any fear of
Bob Dylan, and that made him, I think, feel like
exhilarated to talk to someone who was really like but.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
They're essentially best friends.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
But he was lucky because that guy did end up
He ended up teaching a class about Bob Dylan. This
is how their final falling out happened. He was teaching
a class that he started which was like highlighting, like
he found letters Bob Dylan wrote to Johnny Cash and
his garbage that was like his main thing. He should
put that on a blackboard and like pointed at it
with a pointer. And he had a whole crew of
people that went to Bob Dylan's apartment and he was

(01:15:23):
teaching the class like standing on like Bob Dylan stoop
while Bob Dylan was inside and he came out, he
was like what the hell are you doing and like
chased away the whole Anyway, it's a great chapter of
Bob Dylan's life.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:37):
A j Weberman A j Weberman, What a psycho, Chris,
Such a pleasure having you on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
It was fun. Where can people find you? Follow you
all that good stuff?

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
You can find me at the crofton show on Instagram
and you can find me at.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Go listen to my record, Hello, that's an old record me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:16:00):
Go listen to my new record I'm Your Man, which
you can listen to anywhere you want, and also go
buy it. And also go buy my Advice King book
Advice King Anthology, and listen to my podcast man, because
Colebrew Got Me Like has turned into such a good
podcast and we've had, like, we have a pretty good following,
and man, we're getting to some really good places. Just
check out the check out the titles. Check out the

(01:16:23):
titles of my Cold Brew Got Me Like episodes and
say that you can't you're not at least intrigued.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Try and tell me, look at me with a straight face,
and tell me that it's a Stones ripoff.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
Miles where do people find?

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
You find me everywhere at Miles of Gray find me
talking about ninety fans unfortunatey fancy if I'm talking about
English soccer on ain't and footy. All right, man, he's
mumbling to bro.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
Many congratulations on your arsenal willing.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
Chris, You're too kind.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
So good.

Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Going to be right back in a moment with the nook, dumb.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
And I'll talk to you in a few seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Thanks guys, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
Oh right, that was our episode. Thanks to Chris Crofton
as always, thanks to Miles as always.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
Thanks to jam McNabb for the writing and research on
this one. And thank you as always to Brian the
editor for cutting it together and for being a lively
presence in the chat. All right, this is the No
No note book dump. We ended talking about the song

(01:17:44):
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which is about a
rich Southern man who murdered a black barmaid, opens with
the line Williams and Zinger.

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Killed poor Hattie Carol.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
So just something that I didn't fully realize prior to
doing research for this episode. So Dylan was twenty three
when he wrote that song, but it should be noted
William zand Zinger was twenty six when that song dropped.
For some reason, the immediacy of the song was lost
on me when I first heard it. But Dylan wrote

(01:18:22):
it like after hearing the verdict on the way to
the recording studio, like it was an immediate response to
a news story that was happening in the moment. He
wrote great protest songs like while the events he was
protesting were still going on. I mentioned talking John Birch Society,
paranoid Blues, or some combination of those words, which is

(01:18:44):
a very funny song from the point of view of
a paranoid John Birch Society member who thinks that every
sound in his house is a communist. He ends up
pulling a gun on his mailman and getting punched, getting
knocked out by the mail man. But that that song
was still so current and of the moment that he

(01:19:07):
tried to play it on the Ed Sullivan Show, you know,
the one where Elvis broke into the American mainstream Dick
First and where the Ed Sulden Show dropped the Beatles
on all our asses. Eight years after, when Dylan's moment came,
he wanted to play the John Birch Society song, and

(01:19:28):
they were too worried about offending the John Birch Society
to let him perform that song. And it's it's a
funny song. It's weird that they would, but I guess
that's the problem. It's too it's too effective. And then meanwhile,
like Masters of War, also a great protest song that
still holds up, is not funny at all, just earnestly.

(01:19:49):
That song is like my thesis statement is I want
to watch you bleed to death, bitch. He writes in
that song, fear to bring children into the world. For
threatening my baby, unborn and unnamed, you ain't worth the
blood that runs in your veins. That's that's the fear,
that's the anger I feel now, And he you know,

(01:20:10):
he was feeling it back then. So there's a timelessness
despite the fact that he was writing about shit that
was happening in the moment in the news. Just looking
around writing songs. Another thing I didn't fully appreciate because well,
it's possibly not true. But in his memoir he speculates
that Denzel Washington fellow icon Denzel Washington as a fan

(01:20:33):
of his. I knew that they were related because he
plays that. Denzel played Ruben the Hurricane. Carter got nominated
for an Oscar for playing the hurricane in the movie
The Hurricane. The Boxer wrongly imprisoned for a murder he
didn't commit that Bob Dylan wrote a song about. But
he was also in a movie called The Mighty Quinn,

(01:20:55):
which is another Bob Dylan song that is not about
I think that one's about a Jamaican detective, and the
Bob Dylan song is about an Inuit, not using that word, using.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
The word that we no longer use.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
But anyways, the fact that Denzel was in two Bob
Dylan's song movies was something that he remarked on in
his memoir. I don't think we spent much time on
the logic of the name change, just that he changed
his name. But he started using the name Bob Dylan
instead of Robert Zimmerman in nineteen fifty nine after trying

(01:21:34):
out a bunch of different ones. We unfortunately don't have
the record of what the other names were. He has
like jokingly been like, oh, it was better than Bob
Donuts when asked why he chose Bob Dylan. But again
trying personas on like an eighties getting ready montage, is
kind of the impression you get of this time of

(01:21:56):
his life where he's just like, I don't know, call
me this, call me that. Okay, this one feels right,
and suddenly I'm writing great songs, so I'm gonna stick
with that. But he so, the two things you generally
hear about why he chose Bob Dylan. One is that
it was based on Dylan Thomas, famous poet. He claimed

(01:22:16):
that is not the case, telling the New York Times
that Dylan Thomas's poetry is quote for people who aren't
really satisfied in their bed. Man, which does he mean
people who can't like get comfortable, who keep tossing and
turning and like the can't find the cool side of
the pillow. I think he means people who are bad
at sex. I've just never heard people heard that described

(01:22:40):
as people that aren't really satisfied in their bed for
someone who's good.

Speaker 2 (01:22:46):
At words, I'll tell you, Bob.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
And then he's also said that it wasn't motivated by
fears of anti Semitism, which would would have made sense.
But that's that's the other explanation I've always heard. He
said he was just trying to create a character, and
I guess he did a pretty good job. Finally, I
talk about him being artistically permeable, like he's a great songwriter,

(01:23:12):
But the ideas that flow through him, like trees to branches,
cliffs to avalanches, are other people's ideas.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
There sues his first girlfriend's ideas about the civil rights movement,
and so I just it's so appropriate that he sucked
during the eighties because the country kind of sucked. Like
if you just read him as channeling what is happening
all around him in the zeitgeist. He like comes alive

(01:23:41):
with the civil rights movement and you know what his
girlfriend tells him to write about, and you know, the
sixties and seventies. He's really very I don't know, or
fertile times, Like if you go through his top songs list.
I like to go on Apple Music and look at
top songs for a given artists, and it shows like
the most popular songs, and like, you know, he's very healthy.

(01:24:05):
Mixture of songs from the seventies too, like knocking on
Heaven's Door. He wrote for a movie called about Billy
the Kid. I forget what the name of the movie is,
but he had a small role in it and made
all the music for it and wrote the song knocking
on Heaven's Door. The Man in Me from Big Lebowski

(01:24:25):
was the seventies song, and then absolute classic album Blood
on the Tracks comes out in the seventies. But I
just there's something about the fact that he couldn't function
artistically during the eighties. There's no songs from the eighties
and in like the top fifty on his top songs,
and then there are songs from the nineties. The nineties

(01:24:46):
kind of brought him back. But I just admire that
he sucked during the eighties, that he couldn't cope rather
than going with like the Death of the American Soul.
I appreciate that he just like, yeah, he never wrote
his version of Kokomo, you know, or like Ebony and Ivory.
In the case of Paul McCartney, there's like no number

(01:25:06):
one hit single that chased the eighties like right off
the edge of good taste into sucking shit, And I
admired that he had the self respect to make a
decade of nothing but skips during the eighties. Anyways, this
is one of the icons that probably you know, have

(01:25:28):
too much to say about, so I appreciate you guys
listening though. This is a fun one to do, super
fun to have crofton On that is going to do
it for Bob Dylan.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
We are back next week with the.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Woman who knocked man off his pedestal and can stop
the rain just by asking nicely. We're joined by Katie
Golden to talk Jane Goodall, and we will talk to
you on next week's Iconograph, plenty of regular episodes of
Zeitgeist in the Meantime and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
Talk to You Then by the Daily. Zeitgeist is executive
produced by Catherine Law, co produced by Victor Wright

Speaker 6 (01:26:09):
Co written by j M McNabb, and edited and engineered
by Brian Jefferies.