Posted on 07/29/2006 8:18:50 AM PDT by Rocko
On July 29, 1966, something happened to Bob Dylan while he was riding his motorcycle near his Woodstock, New York, home. Forty years and a small library of biographies later, it’s still hard to be much more precise or detailed than that. What really befell Dylan on that day remains, like so much in this pop-culture icon’s closely guarded life, cloaked in mystery.
Ill-defined or not, the accident has been treated as a major event in Dylan’s life; at least one biographer divides the founder of folk-rock’s career into “pre-“ and “post-accident.” What made the event so significant?
Since 1961, when he had arrived in New York, Dylan’s life had moved quickly. In 1965 and ’66 the pace only increased. As one observer put it, Dylan wasn’t merely burning his candle at both ends; he was using a blowtorch. His incredible productivity—perhaps his three best albums, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and the double album Blonde on Blonde, were recorded within a 14-month span—was very likely fueled by methamphetamine; bone-thin in ’66, Dylan had the giveaway look of a speed freak.
In June 1966 he returned from a nine-month world tour, made especially grueling by the relentless hostility with which audiences met his new sound (he’d plugged his guitar in and added an electrified backup band). Though he was exhausted, embittered, and thoroughly road-weary, his aggressive manager, Albert Grossman, had booked him into a 64-date American tour, due to start in August. If Grossman had gotten his way, writes the biographer Howard Sounes, Dylan would have been “on the road interminably until every last ticket dollar had been sucked up.” Other commitments loomed as well. Dylan’s stream-of-consciousness “novel,” Tarantula, was scheduled for publication. Reading the galleys in July, he had misgivings about the entire book and told Macmillan, his publisher, that he wanted to revise it. He was given two weeks. At the same time, ABC-TV wanted an hour-long documentary of the just-completed world tour; all that existed as of July was miles of unedited footage.
The accident was Dylan’s means of escape from an unendurably fast-paced, pressurized life. As he said in a 1984 interview, “When I had that motorcycle accident . . . I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin’ for all these leeches. And I really didn’t want to do that.” At some point during his convalescence he realized that he wanted a much more tranquil, family-centered life. (He had secretly married Sara Lownds in 1965, and he and she would raise five children together). His music changed, too, from the white-hot fury of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde to the sparer, quieter sound of 1968’s John Wesley Harding and 1969’s Nashville Skyline. He stayed off the road until 1974, when he toured with the same players who had backed him on the 1965-66 tour; they had since become famous as the Band.
But enough about the crackup’s aftermath; what about the crackup itself? According to Sounes, who gives the fullest, most judicious account, on the morning of July 29 Dylan and his wife drove from Woodstock to Albert Grossman’s house in nearby Bearsville. Dylan’s motorcycle was in Grossman’s garage, and Dylan wanted to take it to a repair shop. He set off on the bike from Grossman’s with Sara following him in their car.
An anonymous source, a close friend of Dylan’s, told Sounes that as Dylan started on his way, he lost his balance and fell off the bike, and it fell on top of him. He himself told his biographer Robert Shelton that he hit an oil slick. He gave a different, longer account to the playwright Sam Shepard, who published it in Esquire as part of a one-act play. “It was real early in the morning on top of a hill near Woodstock,” he told Shepard. “I can’t even remember how it happened. I was blinded by the sun for a second. . . . I just happened to look up right smack into the sun with both eyes and, sure enough, I went blind for a second and I kind of panicked or something. I stomped down on the brake and the rear wheel locked up on me and I went flyin’.” It’s impossible to choose between these varying accounts. In other words, we’re not likely ever to know what really occurred.
The first reports of the accident had Dylan barely escaping with his life. But if he had been seriously injured, an ambulance would have been called. None was, nor did Sara take her husband to the hospital. Instead, she drove him to the home office of his doctor, Ed Thaler, 50 miles away in Middletown, New York. As Sounes writes, “This was a grueling one-hour drive by country roads, not a journey for a man in dire need of medical help.”
It’s impossible to pinpoint Dylan’s injuries. By most accounts, including his own, he broke several vertebrae. “The damp weather still affects the wound,” he told Shelton some time later. When the filmmaker D. H. Pennebaker visited him several days after the accident, he was wearing a neck brace, although, says Pennebaker, “he didn’t appear very knocked out by the accident.”
Dylan stayed at Dr. Thaler’s for six weeks. If he wasn’t extensively injured, why the long convalescence, especially when he had a wife and baby waiting at home? Rumors have long circulated that he was recovering from a heroin addiction, although Thaler has denied this. ”He did not come here regarding any situation involving detoxification,” the doctor told Sounes. But Dylan had to stop using drugs—if not heroin, then amphetamines—at some point, and this was a logical time. Post-accident photographs of Dylan show him fleshed out, not the wraith of 1965-66.
The accident itself was not a major event, but it gave him a much-needed chance to stop, rest, and take stock of his incredible journey since 1961. When he returned to work, it was at a much less frenetic pace than before the accident. He may not have been exaggerating when he later told an interviewer, “I was pretty wound up before that accident happened. I probably would have died if I had kept on going the way I had been.”
—Tony Scherman is a writer who lives in Nyack, New York.
why did he mention Keyes in the song?
cancer, I think.
"I remember seeing her on the Grammys. I think I was on the show with her, I didn't meet her or anything. But I said to myself, 'There's nothing about that girl I don't like.'"
never heard her stuff . . . but Dylan's thumbs up is always a plus.
On April 30, 1966, two days after the publication of his book, Richard Fariña attended a book-signing at a Carmel Valley Village bookstore, the Thunderbird. Later that day, while at a party to celebrate Mimi Baez Farina's 21st birthday, Fariña took a bike ride up Carmel Valley Road east toward Cachagua, but only made it a mile or so before wiping out. He was killed instantly.
David Hajdu's "group portrait" of Dylan, Farina, Joan & Mimi in his 2001 book 'Positively 4th Street' was a portrait of the relationships
Can't help thinking that Dylan's brush with death coming so close on the heels of Farina's untimely demise had something to do with his introspection..
interesting.
I think Dylan's perfect albums are:
The Times They-Are-A-Changin'
Blonde on Blonde
Planet Waves
Shot of Love
Infidels
Oh Mercy
Time Out of Mind
At one point I had 79 Dylan albums (including bootlegs and boxsets) on my ipod. I love my Ipod.
good albums in my opinion, but not perfect.
Highway 61 Revisited: "Queen Jane Approximately" is out of tune and painful at times. I generally skip this track when I play the album.
Bringing It All Back Home: "Gates of Eden" annoys me for some reason. Dylan's voice is like sandpaper on this one.
Blood on the Tracks: "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" . . . Why Bob? Why?
Slow Train Coming: For me, the jury is still out for this one. Of the Born Again albums, I reach for "Shot of Love."
I just got a 60 gig player, I have over 100 albums on there (Including every album Charles Mingus has ever done) and I have only used about 20 gigs.
My ipod includes my all time perfect albums:
Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
Allman Brothers - At the Filmore East
Bad Brains - I Against I
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
Beatles - Revolver
Big Star - #1 Record
Black Flag - Damaged
Black Flag - Loose Nut
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blind Faith - Blind Faith
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders of Mars
Byrds - Mr. Tamborine Man
Cake - Fashion Nugget
John Cale - Guts
Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Safe as Milk
Cardigans - First Band on the Moon
Johnny Cash - American
Clash - London Calling
Elvis Costello - Spike
Cream - Disralli Gears
Cure - Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
Dead Milkmen - Big Lizard in My Backyard
Derek & the Dominoes - Layla & Other Love Songs
Eric Dolphy - Candid Dolphy
Doors - The Doors
Duran Duran - Seven & the Ragged Tiger
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Eminem - The Marshall Mathers Album
Ella Fitzgerald - Ella & Louis Again (w/ Louis Armstrong)
Funkadelic - One Nation Under a Groove
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Grateful Dead - American Beauty
Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction
Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced?
Langston Hughes - Weary Blues (w/ Charles Mingus)
Husker Du - Zen Arcade
INXS - Listen Like Thieves
Jane's Addiction - Ritual De Lo Habitual
Billy Joel - An Innocent Man
Kiss - Alive
Kinks - The Kinks Are The Village Greeen Preservation Society
Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
John Lennon - Imagine
Love - Forever Changes
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams
Paul McCartney - McCartney
Metallica - Master of the Puppets
Charles Mingus - & Friends in Concert
Charles Mingus - Alternate Takes
Charles Mingus - Changes One
Charles Mingus - Changes Two
Charles Mingus - Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus - Complete Atlantic Recordings
Charles Mingus - Cumbia & Jazz Fusion
Charles Mingus - Debut Recordings
Charles Mingus - East Coasting
Charles Mingus - Fables of Fabus
Charles Mingus - Final Works
Charles Mingus - Jazz Portraits: Mingus in Wonderland
Charles Mingus - Jazzical Moods
Charles Mingus - Let My Children Hear Music
Charles Mingus - Live at Chateuville 1972
Charles Mingus - Live in Europe, Volumes 1 & 2
Charles Mingus - Me, Myself, & Eye
Charles Mingus - Meditations: Live in Paris 1964
Charles Mingus - Mingus
Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Charles Mingus - Mingus at Carnegie Hall
Charles Mingus - Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus
Charles Mingus - Mingus Moves
Charles Mingus - Mingus Plays Piano
Charles Mingus - Mingus Revisited
Charles Mingus - Mingus Three
Charles Mingus - Modern Jazz Symposium of Music & Poetry
Charles Mingus - Mysterious Blues
Charles Mingus - Reincarnation of a Love Bird
Charles Mingus - Revenge
Charles Mingus - Right Now: At the Jazz Workshop
Charles Mingus - Something Like a Bird
Charles Mingus - Statements
Charles Mingus - Stormy & Funky Blues
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady
Charles Mingus - The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (Prestige)
Charles Mingus - The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (Verve)
Charles Mingus - The Young Rebel [Box Set]
Charles Mingus - Three or Four Shades of Blue
Charles Mingus - Tijuana Moods [Deluxe Edition]
Charles Mingus - Timeless (Jazz Workshop)
Charles Mingus - Town Hall Concert (Blue Note)
Charles Mingus - Town Hall Concert (Prestige)
Charles Mingus - West Coast, 1945 - 1949
Ministry - The Land of Rape & Honey
Joni Mitchell - Blue
Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
Monkees - Headquarters
Morrissey - Viva Hate
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
Police - Outlandous d'Amour
Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
Elvis Presley - The Complete Sun Sessions
Prince - Purple Rain
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
Queen - A Night at the Opera
R.E.M. - Document
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic
Lou Reed - Transformer
Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Rollins Band - End of the Silence
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here are the Sex Pistols
Gene Simmons - Sex Money Kiss [audio book]
Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends
Sly & the Family Stone - There's a Riot Going On
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Smiths - The Queen Is Dead
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
The Stooges - The Stooges
Talking Heads - Talking Heads '77
Television - Marquee Moon
They Might Be Giants - Flood
Traveling Wilburys - Volume One
U2 - Achtung Baby
Van Halen - Van Halen
Van Morrision - Tupelo Honey
Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground
Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
Weezer - Weezer (The Blue Album)
The Who - The Who Sells Out
Brian Wilson - Smiile
Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
Weird Al Yankovic - In 3D
Yes - Fragile
Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
Frank Zappa - We're Only In it For the Money
and then some compilations from MOJO Music Magazine
"Every Grain of Sand" is one of his most beautiful works.
Wow...quite the list. I'm not a huge jazz fan. Just never took the time to "discover" it.
Every Grain of Sand is a spectacular song, one of my all time favorites.
Jazz is not everyone's taste. Also, it is quite time consuming.
Thanks to the Internet, I'll probably have the same in the next year or so. Now I just need to find the time to burn them!
No; would you send me the link? I've been getting all my stuff from Expecting Rain.
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