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.
I saw Dylan after Time out of Mind came out (1997 or 1998), and it was a double bill with Van Morrison at the Columbia River Gorge theatre. (joni mitchell also played a set, but I spent that time in the beer garden). Best copncert I'd ever been too, and I've been to alot. The live version of Cold Irons Bound was worth the price of admission alone.
One of Dylan's best, no doubt. Two songs on that (GH II) album that also deserve mention (and that aren't on any of his earlier releases) are "Watching the River Flow" and "Down in the Flood." Leon Russell did the arrangements on all three of those tunes. .....best arranger in the biz, imo.
Bob, Van, and Joni? Man, that must've been some show.
Add: Tomorrow is such a Long Time, You ain't Goin Nowhere, and Tonight I'll be staying Here with You to the gems on that album.
It's the only time I've seen Van the man live, unfortunately, but damn what a show it was. Jonit and Van joined Bob for I Shall be Released at the end.
Highlands just cracks me up everytime I hear it. I guess the producer edited it down to 15 minutes from 20+. I'd like to hear the original take. LOL
lol....yeah, Bob's mid-song conversation with the waitress in "Bostontown" is an all-time classic:
I make a few lines, and I show it for her to see
She takes a napkin and throws it back
And says "that don't look a thing like me!"
I said, "Oh, kind miss, it most certainly does"
She says, "you must be jokin.'"
I say, "I wish I was!"
Man. Dylan AND Van Morrison?
I know that was good.
I think he wrote that song in about 10 minutes. LOL
Oh yeah. Van was finally returning to singing some of his older songs, like Domino. Amazing. And Bob is Bob. Took him about 3 songs in to get his voice into shape, then he snarled out the lyrics pretty well after that.
Seen Dylan only three times, which is even weirder. First was in '79 at the Santa Monica Civic during his "Saved" tour. I wanted him to play some of his old tunes, but no go. ....every song was from his recent "Born Again" period.
The next time I saw him it was quite by accident, in '87. I went to a Taj Mahal - one of my favorite bluesmen - show at the Palomino Club in N. Hollywood and saw Dylan and George Harrison hanging out at the bar about an hour before showtime. Then I knew we were in for a treat. John Fogerty showed up a little later and all three joined Taj during his second set and jammed classic rock and roll tunes for the next couple hours. Epic night.
Final time was in '91 (or '92) at the Palladium. .....the most "normal" of the Dylan shows I'd seen, and a great one.
First time I saw Dylan was during his born again phase after Slow Train Coming. It was a good show, but he only played a couple of "classics". Funny though, because now I consider that album to have it's own classics. Slow Train Coming is a great song.
All three of his "Gospel" albums ('79 - '81) sounded a lot better to me about a decade after they were released. ....and yep, there are plenty of classic tunes on all three.
Robbie Robertson has put out some great solo albums and is a leading musical producer for movies. The rest never quite got it together afterwards.
Very true. I think it was the shock of it at the time. But just as shocking was Infidels in 1983. Man of Peace is one of his best, IMO.
He's a great Humanitarian
He's a great philanthropist
He knows just where to touch you
And how you liked to be kissed
He puts both his arms around you
and you feel the tender touch of the beast
You know sometimes Satan, comes as a man of Peace.
Actually, I think it was TBS.
two of the Band are dead, Richard Manuel killed himself and I can't remember how the bass player died, Rick Danko.
Bob's a weird dude.
I'm not sure they are the better than the material on the original album, but he certainly could have made a double album. But yeah, the bootleg series has some real gems from all his eras up to that point.
I absolutely love the song called Wallflower, a little country tune that was included (by a different singer) in a movie I saw, and I cannot remember the movie, though I think it had Dennis Quaid in it. Nobody 'Cept You is awesome as is Seven Days.
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