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Oh my godness, it's Frank Being Frank, where the only way to be is Frank. Hello everyone, and welcome to Being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host, Frank Leborono, and I'd like to thank you for joining us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation Podcast, where no conversations out of bounds at all points of view are welcome. As you know, we go live to tape, we record live to tape, and it's our first show of twenty twenty five. It's
the new year. I hope everybody had a wonderful, happy and safe new year. It is the third of January, and we got a fabulous program for you coming up by virtually all measures. The new film A Complete Unknown has been both a critical and commercial smash hit. The so called biopic portrays the nineteen sixty one arrival of a young Bob Dylan on the emerging folk scene in
the cradle of where it All happened, Greenwich Village. The film culminates with Dylan's legendary and incendiary performance at the nineteen sixty five Newport Folk Festival is directed by James Mangold and stars among an outstanding cast Timothy Chalomet as Dylan and Edward Norton as one of his mentors, Peter Seeger.
Both actors' performances are being considered oscar worthy. If there has been any legitimate criticism at all, it comes from the fact that the film takes creative liberties with certain characters and events, as well as omitting other important ones. But people must keep in mind a complete and known is a dramatic film, not a documentary. Accounting for time
and dramatic effect, this is bound to happen. However, the film can still force a debate as to what really happened and perhaps why, and who better than to pose those questions to than a woman who was there from the very beginning and wrote the book on the time
and place where it all happened. Literally in nineteen sixty one, she became Dylan's first manager, and despite her not being featured in the film, along with her husband, the folk singer Dave van Ron, played a significant role in Dylan's career. Her book is My Greenwich Village, Dave, Bob and Me, Please welcome back to being Frank the author of that book, Terry Thal Terry, thank you for taking the time.
Thank you, it's all such fun to be here.
Thank you. I really appreciate it. I know you're very busy with the release of this very very successful movie, and I know you've seen it now at this point and twice. So let's start broadly and then we'll get a little bit more specific. What were your thoughts on the movie? First, and I guess easiest. Did you like it and what did you like about it?
Well, to my surprise, I liked the movie. And it is to my surprise because I thought I would not like it at all, to think literally, not metaphorically. And I knew it wasn't an attempt to be an accurate biography. But it's a biopic which dramatizes somebody's life rather than tells us a story of that life. But I don't
usually react lots of that kind of thing. One of the people I saw with, a woman named Lauren Miller, who's a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles, pointed out that the movie uses the structure of the arc, which has a start that poses an issue takes it on an adventure and ends with a resolution. So I will get to that and how the various elements of the arc or the arcs affected me in a few minutes. But as I said, to my surprise, I liked it.
It sets pop up as a rather sympathetic person immediately in its first ten minutes, because it takes him to visit his hero, Woody Guthrie, who is a labor hero folk singer songwriter who is dying over a long period of time of Huntington Huntington's disease, which is a dreadful, dreadful.
Wasting, wasting disease. Yeah.
Yeah, I had a friend who died of it. It's like awful. At the hospital, Bob also meets Pete Seeger, who is the hero of the folk musical world, and Peter is struck by the young man's intensity and his interests in folk music, and he's sort of a top spot. And this is one of the major arcs of the movie. Will Bob remain within the folk music community and it's limited musical and commercial outreach, But they grabb you in
the first ten minutes. I mean, he walks in and he meets Woody, and he meets Pete and Peter's impressed with him, and of course Bob is awestruck by meeting Woody who can barely speak. But what he listens to Bob he has consist same one song Bob does modestly, maybe the last modest thing he did, but he does it honestly, and you're hooked. There you go.
Then, obviously he continues over the course of the next four years as he develops as an artist, a person. And he was young. He was only nineteen, I believe when he came so really kid, when you think about it in the final analysis, really nineteen was a bit older, a little bit older, but job as.
A year younger than me. And in sixty I was born in thirty nine, So in sixty of course stuff.
Sorry, I don't do the mathods.
I can't do arithmetics.
We did, we get the relevance. It had no better to talk to than someone who actually, yeah, well, let's get back to it Dad. So, and we've had discussions leading up to today and everything, and one of the things is what did that Let's start first, of course, what did they get right? And then it we'll talk about what they got wrong. But first you mentioned why you liked it what within the film and again not being a documentary, but overall in essence, what did they get right?
What did they get right? Yes, it's not the trajectory of what happened right. Bob came as a Woody Guthrie folk music officionado, old timey folk music, music that had been passed down in the mountains, in the hills, whatever, stuff that had been written by labor leader, by labor people. I mean there was you know, folk music. There's a whole mix of things. And uh, that's what he came. That's what he ostensibly and I think in reality at that time incidentally came to be part of He became
part of that world. He stayed within that world, he grew to become a leader in that world, and eventually he moved into another one. And there are a couple of other arcs in that movie. One of them is pretty much correct. It was how and why did he move out of it? What got him? What got him to leave? What pulled him out of it? What? How did he How did why did he get why did he leave it? Was it a struggle to get out of it? Where did he go? How did he? How did he do it? That part is over the overall
part of that is accurate. So I mean that's you know, that's I mean that that's the overall, basic, fundamental, straight line Bob doing story, and that piece of it is very good. The other piece of it that's very very good is the music.
Yes, I enjoyed it.
I think I didn't think, you know, I read. I have probably read sixty reviews of the movie.
At least I know.
My friends on Facebook. I'd say ninety percent of them are in the focus work and.
They're sending you all the articles up. Sure.
Yeah, everybody's posted reviews and I see their views there. It's a common thing. A lot of people know a lot more than I do, incidentally about you know, the story of what happened later. But the music, everybody said the music's very good, And I thought the music is very good, Timothy Fallon, it did a wonderful job learning, you know, learning all this. The woman who plays Joan Bias is wonderful.
They're singing it and they're not dubbed. That's actually their performances. From my understanding is it's actually them performing. And often from my angle, the director, if I might interject here that they did both a studio version so they could get a more higher quality sound, but you prefer to actually use their live performances while they were actually filming, because they captured that energy and the realism of it. So that, yeah, that was an important part.
Yeah, so those pieces of it, fundamentally, I think were.
We're correct now, so let's flip that coin. You know, they got some things wrong, even within the creative allowance of as I said, it's not a documentary, but still within that there were certain certain aspects of it that you feel were wrong in a way that could have easily been corrected, and you thought, we're really not accurate to the point of concern.
Well, the things that bothered me, I mean, you know, it's one thing to say, oh I read about so and so, and he was different from the way he was characterized, or things happened differently. I've read books and things happen differently. I'm talking about my friends. I'm talking about my first husband, and while we broke up after eleven years together, we said very good friends for the until he died.
Let's day Van Ronk.
Let's just to qualify I also managed, Yes, I'm talking about people I know and people I knew and my life, I mean, I was part of I was part of that world, So there were things about it that bother me. I'm talking about Susie, Susie, Bob's first girlfriend, who was one of my closest friends until she died.
By Hell Fanning, I believe in the film does a fabulous job as well too.
Yes, he does a very very good dog uh incorrectly playing but following the you know the route that she.
Was told she was given, right, I hear, yep.
Yep, playing somebody. So some of those things bothered me very much, some of them.
Let's get to a little detail there, Terry, if I might as Susie Weatler, we're talking about his girlfriend, and again, even though it was well played, you felt the characterization was not fair, that she was much more of a person than that kind of this dull eyed, sad person who hung on every move that Dylan made. That was not accurate in your eyes.
Right, let me back up and start with Dave, because my criticism there is Shortervid David Mine met Balgain two days above sitting New York. We became very good friends. He hung out in our house, he slept on our couch. We like him interminably on Marxism, as I write about my book. We played records for him. Dave introduced him to certain poetry. We spent a lot of time together. We played nicol poker, Henny Anti excuse me. Bob was very cheap or very poor or both together almost every day.
You know, we spent a lot of time together. We were good friends. When he met Susie, we all became good friends. And Dave was among the many people who mentored who mentored Bob, and I think he was I think he could legitimately say he was probably one of the most two or three most influenzal And he was a kind of leading musician in the village. He didn't become famous, but he was a leading musician in the village. I became Bob's manager and had certain influence on him.
But letting, you know, leaving me as Eifman, just talking about about Dave. The whoever made the movie chose to have a certain limited number of people portrayed in the movie for whatever reason. I mean, they couldn't have everybody who was in his world selected. They you know, they selected fairly well known people to be in the movie, they did not select the Dave, except that they have one little scene with David. Bob Hits Town, Hits New York.
He walks into a coffee house in the village and some guy walks up to him and he says one of them Bobs does something about where can you find Woody, and this guy who was obviously Dave, tells him that Woody's in gray Stone, which is at a hospital in New Jersey, and he could go there to me, and that's it. You niver see Bobby Universitee Dave.
Again, and he's never really even identified as Dave and wrong, it's just credits at the end to find out who that guy is.
The first time I saw the movie, it went right by me. I didn't I I had no idea that that was David. People had told me that Dave did that, but I didn't even notice, you know, it just sort of came and went. I find that kind of insulting to me because of the way the movie runs. I find putting David at that point in that way saying Hi, Bob, welcome to Woody. Go through Land. Bob comes to Woody, gous three land, He comes to the village. He comes to folk music, Bob says, hight here is we're gonna
hear your God. And Bob goes and he meets his God, and eventually he works his way out of that scene and into another one and leaves it, leaving all the people in it, including Dave, who's never seen again behind. They do not show Dave showing Bob anything being shown anything bye Bob, having any kind of interaction with Bob. It's Hi Bob, There's Woody over and out and it's like, okay,
Van Bronk welcomes Dylan to folk music World. Eventually Dylan leaves Folk Music World, walks out on Dylan, or walks out on Van Ronk. Goodbye Van Ronk, You're left behind. I think it was bloody insulting. I don't know if it was meant that way, maybe not, but it was. That's my take on it.
Oh No, And I know you want to cover a little bit of the relationship with the two women.
The relationship to the women. One of the big arts in the movie is the so called triangle. The so called triangle Bob Susie Joan Buyers, that's a made up triangle that really wasn't there. Bob and Susie met shortly after Bob came to the village. They were together for several years. He met Joan maybe toward the end of his relationship with Susie, but it was not a triangle. Susie was seventeen when she met Bob. She turned eighteen
a few months later. She lived with her mother, who's been a member of the Communist Party, and her stepfather, who liked my parents, and like my parents, they were not very thrilled about their daughter falling in love with a ruffy, would be folks singer. They saw a very iffy financial future in that, and Bob and Susie started to live together in sixty two. One of the things the movie shows is a trip to Italy. Susie going on a trip to Italy. It's shown as a twelfth
week school trip. It wasn't twelve weeks. It was several months. I forget how many six may be. And it wasn't a school trip. It was Susie's mother offering Susie a bribe. I want to get you away from this guy, and this is the way I'm going to do it. Here is an opportunity to go to art school. Because Susie was an artist. We will send you to art school in Italy, which is like kind of top notch. And in the back of in the back of the whole thing was Susie's mother and her stepfather hoping that Susie
would never come back to Bob. Come back to the United States, yes, but not to Bob. They wanted it to become a permanent separation. Susie went nuts, Should I go, Should I not go? Should I go? Should I not go? I know, we had long talks about it. I kept saying, you know, maybe he won't come back, maybe he will not wait for you. It's it's iffy. And Bob was pissed because he wanted you to say don't go, which
I couldn't do. I mean, you know, I couldn't. So that was you know, that was one whole mischaracterization in the movie. However, during that time, Bob was not seeing Joan, He wasn't seeing anybody. Incidentally, I don't believe because we saw a lot of him during that time. Was no other woman. N and Bias did not come dashing down from Cambridge to hop into bed with Bob Dylan when his putative girlfriend was away Susie. The Susie character is portrayed as a soppy young lady with nothing on her
brain but Bob Dylan. She It is a typical, typical portrayal of a teenage girl by men portrayed by men. It just like any Hollywood movie, no different. Susie was active in core when she was in Bob. With Bob, I think her concern with civil rights affected his songwriting, and I think it led to some of his more politically oriented songs. Susie introduced him to author Rimbau, who was an early symbolist poet who used odd rhymes and
apparently disorganized structure to create poetry. She introduced him to bertol Brett songwriting. She herself created art. I show a photograph of a small piece of book art that she made in nineteen ninety three in my book Bob My Grantwich Village. She wasn't yet making book art when she was with Bob, but she was making art, and she was using found objects to make interesting jewelry. She had a life. She wasn't soppy. She didn't stand around and cry and mourn when Bob was busy. And the triangle
between her and Bob and Joan didn't exist. It was created to be part of that arc of tension that I talk about. Joan was a Cambridge folk singer, a Boston folk singer. She wasn't in New York very much at all. She and Bob not having a romance when he and Susie were together. And it's insulting to Joan as well as Susie to suggest that Joan came down and bounced into bed with Bob whenever Susie was away.
Should I stop or can I go on? This is highlighted in a scene that both is good and that bothers me for the most part, and I went back. The reason I went to see the movie a second time was to see if I was correct about the
way I remember this, and I was. The movie, for the most part, doesn't show very much representing the huge political conflict that was going on at that time, and it was a conflict, especially especially among young people in the United States at that time, and it was a conflict that really became a major force in catapulting book to fame. It affected his songwriting. I mean, Bob eventually stopped writing political stuff, but he never stopped writing socially
conscious stuff. To day, he writes socially conscious stuff if you read it, if you look at his stuff, and back then he was his songs were even more explicit. The nuclear bomb, the civil rights struggle, the war of the Vietnam these simply aren't really in the movie except in one scene, but these are among the forces that brought people to the village. One scene is devoted to this, and while it's really very good to me because I
was there, it's clearly in their show and Tell. It's sort of like, oh, yeah, we're going to give you a bit of background on what the music was all about, and it's the scene. It's the scenes about the Cuban Middle Missile crisis, which incidentally were very well done, so you know, there is a good part about them. And then to my perspective, it's that they were showing toll and there was they were used to create something about Bob and Susie and Joan that I think was not
well done. Those scenes clearly show the fear that everybody had. People frantically trying to reach drillers, people trying to hail cabs and not able to get them, people calling family members, just in case they wouldn't be there tomorrow. People. I mean, I had an analysis. I was a left winger, as you know, and my Marxist analysis told me that all of this nothing was going to bed, was going to happen. I knew that the whole thing was going to be solved.
Still in all, I picked up the phone that night and I called my parents, just in case. Millions of people are doing that kind of thing. So in that and in the movie, Bob is working at the gas light and a small terrified group of people are riveted to him. Meanwhile, with Susie away, Joan, who is as scared as anybody else, acts a suitcase, rushes to the village, can't get a taxi cab, walks to the gas flight from wherever, and she and Bob go to his and
Susie's apartment with a tumble into bed. I got to tell you something, It was well done. But Dave was working at the gas light that night. I don't know where the hell Bob was, but he sure as hell wasn't in the gaslight because David was working there. And the scene in the gas light of a small group of people riveted to Bob is exactly what it looked like. A small group of people rivet it to David. Bob weren't there because I said, I have no idea where
he was in someplace Bias wasn't there. I'm sure she was in Cambridge. I'm sure she was not in Dylan, in Dylan in Susie's bed. I don't know, but I would put my money on it. It was, you know, I mean it was. It's an interesting thing to do. And nobody but me and the people who Dave and I took to Sam Wos, which was I'll go to play in Chinatown after he did his set, and who came back to our apartment none of us would, nobody else would know. But that's that's the way it was.
And I have always remembered that night. I don't even remember who came back to my apartment.
Yeah, well that's that's. Thank you so much for sharing it with us, Terry. I want to go to your book for a moment and read something. It's about your first, uh not direct encounter, but your first exposure if you will, to Dylan when when your your husband at the time, Dave Van Ronk saw him for the first time.
Am I taking too long to answer, not at all.
This is about you people here, but you have to say Terry, not me, So please feel free to continue. I think it's fascinating, and I believe our listeners will as well. But you start chapter nine and it's titled Dylan Friend and Client, which he became certainly both a friend and a client. But if I want to, if I might, I want to read a small clip and then get your.
Thoughts on I don't have.
One night in nineteen sixty when Dave was out without me, he came home and said, I just heard this kid who's a friggin genius. We've got to hear him. Within a few days, I made a point of going to a basket house where I was sure Bob Dylan would play a few songs for no pay, just to be heard. He played, and I agreed with Dave. Bob was neither a great guitarist nor a great singer. His voice was rough and had a distinctive, disconcerting way of emphasizing odd syllables.
He stumbled about on stage with and one leg twitched. Dave and I thought he had brilliantly absorbed the way Charlie Chaplin had moved and that his music was effective. That was before Bob started to write songs. At that early time, he mostly emulated Woody Guthrie. When you finally met him, did his personality conform to his performing genius? When you met him, did you see that there was something there that extra? I mean, some people talk about maybe so they call it star quality or an aura.
Did you did you feel that not only when he was performing, but but in person? Can can you say something like that.
In person? In personal? I don't know. Bob was not incredibly articulate, but it was you know, the whole Tillom thing was kind of strange. And since I wrote the book, I've been forced to think about this because I talk about it. And it was sort of interesting because Bob came to New York, he was not He came to a world in which a music ability, musical ability was prized, and he was not the best musician in the world. But within weeks that guy was the most talked about
musician in the village. I never quite put my finger on why.
Yeah, the next logical why, I don't know?
This is it?
You know, it's people you know, like now, you know, I love his songs, but his voice, and it's he's not universally certainly like not as a musician anyway, maybe as a poet. And there's something later on I want to read to you where he always kind of saw himself more as a poet than a musician. But that's yeah.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean later on we thought of him more as a writer, writer than you know.
Then that's a good.
Although he worked very hard at becoming a good musician and he did, uhh. But in the you know, the in that beginning, there was something charming about him. He was God, if I used the work cute.
Was there innocence? Would that be fair? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, thank you? Yeah yeah yeah, I don't get it in retrospect, is that innocent? I mean, you know, I mean you think of this person as being, on the one hand innocent and on the other hand as planning what he was going to do to become famous, not so much rich. It wasn't that. I don't think he was really not interested in rich. He was interested in famous and the two combined. But everyone in the village felt that there was something special about this guy.
When I went looking for photographs for my book, there are not a ton of photographs with Dave and me or of me, and there are some people who aren't of us. And I went online and I found photographs of Bob crawling out the walls. I mean, there were photographs of Bob and Alley's two days after he got there. Bob in the basement, the sub basement of the cafe was you know, in Ratty invested sellers and god knows where in people's bedrooms, and you know, I don't know
where he was the most photographed he was. I think literally he was the most photographed polk singer in Granite Trilogy at that time. So yes, people people spotted it. What did they spot about it? I don't know. I don't know. I know that within a fairly short time, things that I realized, and I didn't realize then that I realized them. I didn't. I wasn't aware of it until a long time later. Was that this was somebody who absorbed stuff like a sponge. And a lot of
people have said that. I mean, I'm certainly needed the first note the list, and the other piece of it is that he could tuck information away in a very interesting way. He could remember, he could learn something and he could remember part of it to use later, he could throw part of it away totally discarded because it was never going to be useful to him, And then he could use a piece of it that morning and throw it away that evening because he had used it
and he didn't need it anymore. That's a really strange ability.
You know. And I have all these questions, You're answering them without even sim terry. So it's terrific, you know, seriously, And as I go down my list here, what did you know when I saw the film, he almost comes across I know this is the best word for it, but almost impish, if you will, in the beginning. Is that accurate? That's what he appeared to me. Was he really kind of like that?
Yes? Absolutely? On stage he was on stage, he was I mean, this guy who stumbled around and Charlie Chaplin, who he was emulating, didn't quite realize it at that moment, but you know, this guy who's tripping all over himself, who's adopting his cap h this was city Lights?
Yeah, yeah, you know what is it then about? And you you started to mention it and hinted at it, what is it about his personality, you know what? And you also you know sometimes his songs are political, sometimes not, but they're only always emotional. Uh, he connects to a raw emotion. What was it about his personality or style that allowed him where you know, superficially you didn't necessarily see it, but internally in his music it was expressed
so beautifully. What was it about that connection? Is there anything that you could see there within his personality that allowed him to to to tap into that emotional reservoir within him?
I don't know, I really, honestly, I don't know. I couldn't. I couldn't identify.
It really, even even from knowing again, because to me, that's what struck me. He in some ways like he's fun, but he's he's so ordinary. I don't know, if another word from the way he dressed his his floppy clothing, et cetera, I think kind of wasn't.
It wasn't uti ordinary. Nobody else did that, well, nobody else in our world did that at that time, but.
Just a almost like the little tramp, like he was cultivating as an image. But I guess as Chaplin did, there's a certain genius within that innocence and sim city did you always see that in Dylan? Was that? Was that cultivated or was that natural? I guess that's what I'm I'm aiming.
I think it was cultivated. I think it was cultivated. Interesting I do I do? You know that goes along with I mean, one of the things that you have in the movie is well, I was constantly telling people that he he spent summers in carnivals. Yes, he told everybody that he had worked in carnivals. But no, he didn't say that he had spent every summer in carnivals. We thought he had worked maybe maybe as a kid in a carnival once he did talk about he obviously
had a thing about carnivals. I mean, he obviously loved them. What would he have loved about them? Well, you know, again, I didn't think of it then, but I'm a lot older now, and carnivals people and carnivals are shape shifters. Maybe they didn't want to be. Maybe they're doing it because they have to, some of them, but that's what they are. And that's you know, I mean, as I said, it runs. You know, it's an interesting it's an interesting
theme throughout throughout that movie. Although I got to tell you this nonsense about Susie talking to him years after they met and saying, I don't know you. Everybody, within within six months or a year, I know Dave, and I knew where who he was and where he came from and stuff like that. Within six months, within a year, I think everybody knew. And yes, his parents were at certainly his first Cornegie Hall concent. It wasn't that much of a secret.
Well, I think that leads me to my next question too. You know, and his real name is Robert Zimmerman, as most people know, or so with that in mind, is is Bob Dylan a creation? I mean? Is that? I mean, it's certainly part of him, but it's it's also something that he made of himself. Isn't it fair to say that he created? He created? If you will, He's not only is Bob Dylan, he created Bob Dylan. I don't know if that makes sense to you.
Huh uh, I'm sorry.
What what I'm trying to say is, you know, internally where one thing, but also but what the image sometimes that we project can be. It is just a projection, what you know. I guess I'm stumbling over it. But uh, how how much of Bob Dylan is how can I put it one person? As you said, he through the course of his career a shape shifter, So is he constantly and you can even hear it in his music
in a sense, he's almost continually reinventing Bob Dylan. That Bob Robert Zimmerman is almost constantly reinventing Bob Dylan, as he did, as you see even hinted at in the film.
I think, you know, I guess as a ys to know. I don't remember. I haven't seen him since herely seventies, so I don't know what he's like. I know people who know him, I know people who work with him, and they say he's very quiet. He's fairly inclusive in you know, in sessions. He doesn't socialize an enormous amount. He doesn't give a lot of direction to his bands. He'll come in and he'll expect people to follow him.
I have read that he did come off into a reading of this movie and then signed off on the whole thing. So two to that extent, I mean, is that somebody who is changing or who is aloof or or I don't know, I really don't know.
Well, you know what if I can again from your book. I want to read a couple of little things from your book that kind of describe him as a person, and.
We can go from a long time ago, remember.
Yes, But but I think it still has validity through the film and from what I've read heard, and here's from the book. I don't want to lecture any anybody, he told me once. I'm not like you. I don't want to tell anybody what to do. I want to tell my truth, sounding a little like Reverend Gary Davis saying he didn't write a song. It was revealed to me. I thought that it was fine for his music. I wasn't trying to convince him to write or sing political songs.
I was trying to bring him, not his music, into left wing politics. This was not going to happen. Bob was not about to join anything or become a messed with any group. He was neither interested in not capable of doing so. And then one more, one more section here he said several times that he perceived himself more as a lyricist or a poet than as a songwriter. He started with a poem or proposed song. I'm not in the old I'm not in the old music anymore.
Bob commented once after he had started to write songs, I have to write what I see, and if it's not back there, it's what I know. Now? Would that be the essential Bob Dylan? Does that really kind of sum up what he's about as an artist?
I get I guess so. But you know, isn't that kind of true of anybody who's an artist who isn't doing what he's commercially he or she is commercially told to do. I'm doing what I see at this time. People change and there art changes, and it doesn't necessarily remain static and what they what they are going through. I mean, you know, you've seen people change from Christians to Buddhists to micro macro bios people, and at each point along the way there are reflects whatever they have become.
And I guess it's truef I mean, why wouldn't that be truful? You know, I think it would be.
Well, I guess the point that I'm trying to get at is what I took from the movie and from what I know of Dylan and his music too. There's this kind of a duality love hate relationship. And you mentioned a little bit before. For example, with fame, he kind of desperately wanted fame and it certainly at least hinted at in the movie. Then when he got it, he hated it. He hated the he wanted the attention.
You know, you mentioned the screaming girls, and he wanted that, and then at one point he can't get far enough away from it, to the point where he's almost rude about it. So it's this of nature that always and I guess maybe that's deliberate. It keeps you interested because it keeps him interesting. He has this love hate relationship with his music, his career, and almost with himself. Do what you did? You feel like I said, he wanted to be famous. Then he was famous and they didn't like him.
Yes, yes, you know. I mean, look at this guy. This guy is he's what a year younger than me, So he's eighty four years old. He's still touring. I mean, just the physical strain of doing that kind of thing. Why are you still doing that? He could be making records? Who is he touring for?
Interesting?
Is who is this? Who is this all about? Is it about him? Is it for himself? Is it for an audience? And aging and aged audience. Incidentally, I mean, he's not getting thirty ten year olds.
Do you think do you think the movie will change? That was a question I was gonna have late, But since we're talking about it now, why don't we go forward? Do you think the film will bring him a new audience? People become interested in the older Bob Dylan and therefore the new Bob Dylan.
I don't know, and that's a question I have. I mean, one of my questions is who is this movie made for? I went twice. I went twice. I'm in the suburbs. I'm not in a big city anymore. The audience was middle aged, middle aged to older. Yes, quite literally, not one, not one young person there. Who is you know, it's who is the who is the mayvie? Look at the story? Look at the story of the movie tells uh, look at those various arts and those influences. Why who do they?
Who do the makers of the movie expect understand the Civil rights movement and the nt Vietnam War movement? Why wasn't more background provided about what the village is and what was going on in the United States at that time? They assume people know who knows older people. When I wrote my book, everything that I mentioned, I went and explained. My publisher took it out my public it was just too long. I mentioned McCarthyism. I wrote two pages about mccarthuism.
I figured to abody, you know, the new people, young people wouldn't know what it was all about. It got deleted because it made the whole thing, made the book much too long, much too long, and kind of turgid. But and maybe that kind of stuff would have made the movie kind of turgid. But why is the thing in there about the civil rights movement? Why is there nothing in there about the warm Vietnam? You have, you have the CuW Missile Cristis. You don't know anything about the warm viety.
Maybe they felt that was enough to say, you know, he had a certain social conscious, and then he kind of moved on. I guess, I don't know.
I don't know. But but the early stuff, the early songs, the longsome death of Harry Harry, Pattie Carroll, and you know, some other stuff, and itself that was all civil rights stuff, and puff not there, not at all.
And it was such a such a key part of the of the whole scene the.
Anti war stuff not there at all. Nobody, nobody, not one person in that movie and you've seen the movie. Not only person in that movie objected to the war, not one scene the.
Yeah, and at that point it was starting to really rage in the country too, And you know, certainly did you could hear Dylan as anthems played a lot of those routes.
They showed him. They showed him and jol at the Morton Washington right sixteenth. That was it. It was a big deal. They didn't show it because it was the civil or maybe they did. Maybe it was their way of showing the civil rights thing. But that wasn't a portrayal of the civil rights thing. It was a portrayal of their little romance, you know, non existent romance.
But you know, Terry and I wouldn't necessarily associate Bob Dylan with with humor or humorous, but you make it clear in the books he did have a sense of humor. Yeah, and in that impish sort of way. And one of the things he had called people by nicknames. He liked to use nicknames. And you have an interesting story. If you wouldn't, it's in your book, so help you don't mind about how you got how you got your nickname from Bob Dylan, about how you used to dress and
your your your baggy pants. If you would, could you relate that story to the nickname that he had for you.
I walked around the pants and a bra most of the time. I was not trying to look sexy. Apparently I did. And I mean it was sort of funny because I was not buying my own underpants at that time. My mother was still buying them for me, and she was buying the size that I wore when I lived at home in Brooklyn, and I was like several sizes skinnier. And Bob talked about you, talking about my droopy doors.
Roopy draws. Yes, and he called your droopy Yes, that's that story. I think that's pretty funny. Bob Dylan accord around, Hey, droopy draws.
So you were you.
And and you know it's funny.
I'm sure he still is.
Yeah, And again it's not something it comes out I think a little in the film, but most of the interviews he's just, you know, he's taciturn. He doesn't like the publicity. He's difficult with the press. So you know, the only image the public image that most people had seen of Dylan, certainly until this movie was one of you know, he can be difficult, he's you know, he's a he's an artist, and he's sacrificing everything of his art,
and he's always so serious. At least that's the impression I always had of Dylan until I read your book and saw the film, which really kind of made him more human.
Well, I've seen I've seen interviews. I've seen interviews, and I think some in some of them, if you look at what he is doing, he is being very, very funny. He is being sardonic. Okay, I mean a lot of them, a lot of them. He's just putting the press on and the people who listen.
So he got me, so of course he got me too. But that's why it's you know, you you were there, Terry, you saw it, you know it. It gives us such an interesting perspective. You know, the film can hint at it, but you can, you know, you fill in a lot of the missing blanks there. It's really really.
Let me give you one of the scene that bothered me.
Yeah, of course, do I have time, you do.
There's a scene in which I don't know how the producers did this, but they got Muddy. Muddy Borders was a superb blues musician, Chicago blues musician, and he had a band and he was incredible, and they got his son, whose name is Mud. Morganfield has a band. I saw him a few years ago and he's really good. And in the movie he plays the part of an old drunken blue singer who is interviewed on a radio show by Pete Seeger, the god of old folk music and
who had a PBS show for children. Radio television might have been television. It might have been it was a television show. Yeah, And I don't know why Morganenfeld agreed to do this, But there's a scene in which Dylan is supposed to be on the show. He doesn't. He's not going to make it. So Pete has this old blues musician who I guess was rediscovered recently, played by Morganfeld appearing on the show. And morganfeldt plays this guy who is sitting with a pint of booze.
Drinking and stipping it.
Away and talking, you know, and drunkenly and blah blah blah, and Dylan shows up. It turns out that he can make it, and he shows up and he slides into his seat, and the Blue guy hands him the bottle and Bob takes a swig and proceeds to take the guitar from Morganfeld and they play together and Bob plays well he does. He plays the boones very well with
the guy again. Talk about insulting. Why on earth do they choose to show an elderly black blue singer sitting and swigging blue sitting and swigging pints of booze on a television show. Who else would they show doing that? I mean, I know Hurd and Gary Davis and Skip James. They came and they sat on stage, and they went on television shows, and they went on radio shows. They were gentlemen, they were like anybody else. They were performers. They came on and they played. It was so weird.
It was just such a strange, insulting thing to do. I don't get it. I don't they'll play that agreed to play that role. Incidentally, But like, there were some things in the movie that were just wrong mm and this was wrong.
In one of them. Terry got to take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit about the book. And also you have an auction coming up. We'll be pretty exciting with a with a very special tape that you made of Dylan many years ago, and we want to we want to talk about that. Thank you, Okay, so we'll be coming right back. Our very special guest is is Terry Thal who wrote the book My Greenwich Village, Dave, Bob and Me about her time with Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan in the village.
And we're discussing the new movie Uh Complete Unknown. So much more to come right here on Being Frank. I'm your host, Frank Lebona. Please don't go anywhere yet. This is great, got a little bit more to go. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere yet. Hudson Riverradio dot com.
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Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation Podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Lebruno and our engineers the mailman mister Neil Richter. Our very special guest is the author of the book My Greenwich Village Dave, Bob and Me by Terry Thal about her time living in Greenwich Village and with David Runk, the great folk singer, and of course Bob Dylan, and she was her first manager.
We've been talking about the film Complete Unknown, the good, the bad, and the indifferent, and we're bringing to the end of our coming to the end of our program, Terry and we'll talk about the end of the film, which was the kind of classic, I don't know any other way to put it, controversial appearance by Bob Dylan at the nineteen sixty five Newport Folk Festival. What did
they get right? It was very pivotal scene because it launches kind of launches Dylan from as we mentioned, his transitions from strictly kind of a folk guy to a more diversified rock and roller, plus et cetera, et cetera. But he didn't do it without some growing pains, and that includes the nineteen sixty five Newport Folk Festival. You were there, Yeah, David and.
I were there at Newport. We were sitting in the audience sort of sort of in the front. They got it pretty right. And the book was based on Elijah Wall's book, on which focuses around that event, is a very good book, incidentally, focuses around that event, and substantively that's what happened.
Was it really that that chaotic?
It was? It was. I don't think it was quite that chaotic, but it was chaotic. It was people were people were not. I don't think people were as upset as the movie shows. I mean, you know, the movie did dramatize it, I'd say fairly heavily, But.
Did Dylan did care? You know, you get you get the feeling that you know, well, this is what it is, this is where we're going, and this is who I am, and you can take it or leave it, can come with me or not. Is that accurate?
This is where he was going? And I think that the whole you know, this whole arc of the movie leading up to Bob. What was Bob going to do there? You know, I am not sure frankly, whether it was showing that Bob was on his way to being a genius poet or a rock and roll musician. It kind of seems to emphasize that he was on his way to becoming a rock and roll musician. And I know
those people. I knew Newarth, Bobby Newarth, I knew a lot of those rock musicians, and I knew Butterfield, Paul Butterfield. I knew Mike Bloomfield, the guitarist he wanted, he really wanted to play for him. And I liked Mike. We were friends. I thought he was I think he was wonderful. So and at that time, I'm not quite sure that Bob himself knew whether he wanted to go beyond becoming a rock musician. What did he want then, I don't know, but he wanted to move forward. He wanted to move on.
He wanted out of the acoustic background and limitations of folk music, and the rock world was very exciting then.
Uh.
So that's where that's where he was going.
File thoughts on the film. What should people take from the film? Terry?
Uh, that there was a there was a a conflict between the folk, the old folk, a lot of the old folk music world, and the people who UH wanted to move on with the burgeoning, developing, burgeoning new musical trends that were happening, particularly the rock groups. UH. And I think it's especially interested in noting that within a year or it's who a lot of the people who who had been acoustic folk musicians had bands, They had rock rooks, they had developed rock groups, and they were
very happy, very happy playing playing on rock groups. And meanwhile, you, partly because of Bob who was a leader in this, and partly because of Phils and some other people who were not portrayed in this movie sing a Songwriter, one of the things that had been going on, and it wasn't shown in the movie, was that the old music, traditional music, music that was handed you know, passed down verbally, uh was dying out and to a large extent, was
being replaced in that world, in that Greenwich village world, in the Boston world, by seeing the songwriters, people who were writing their own people who are writing their own songs. I mean Tom Paxton had been writing his own song since he came to New York also in nineteen sixty one, and nobody criticized him for it. Ever, he was a
wonderful songwriter. Still, Tom just retired incidentally a few weeks ago, and as a dear friend, and so this is one of the takes that the music was changing, The music was changing tremendously.
Well, what would you say, what would you say, is Dylan's legacy at this point?
I don't answer that question. I can't. I really can't answer that question. I can't.
Well, I know answer could be an answer not he's still going, He's still still going.
I can't answer that. I can't answer that question.
Well, you have something exciting that you wanted to talk about, an auction of a very special tape. Tell us a little bit about that, Terry.
Well, it is about Dylan in nineteen sixty one. For nineteen sixty one, when I was managing Bob, he cut a tape for me in the gaslight. It was an audition tape. I needed something to play for out of town clubs to get them to maybe be interested in hiring him because they'd never heard him. And I had some little cassettes made of the tape, which I took with me to Boston and to Philadelphia into other places. Most of us turned me down and said we don't
want to hear him. But I did get him a few gigs, and I put when he left my management for that of Albert Grossman, who is shown in the movie and very prominently in the movie. I put the tape away and I found it about a year year and a half ago, and I took it to a studio had I played it and it is gorgeous. The sound is magnificent. I only own the tape, the physical tape. The songs are owned by Dylan and the Dylan people, whoever has the copyrights on them. But the tape itself
is just clear and clean as as could be. And I am putting it up for auction. It'll probably go up for auction in February, in the February or March, tented only in February, So.
Which walks house is going to handle it?
Terry are our auction house unless something changes attentively, That's that's the plan.
And what will bidding storm that? Do you? Do? You have any idea what they might start the bidding at for the tape? You don't know.
I will post. I will post on my Facebook site and on as many Dylan related sites as I can get my hands on.
Notice of now's the time to strike, that's for sure. With the popularity of this film and Terry the book my British village, Dave, Bob and me, how can people get a copy of the.
Book unless you passionately hate Amazon? I suggest going online and getting it on a lot of bookstores read books here.
I believe in Nayak has they did anyway, Well, I'll have to check with them to make sure it's still in stock. I have my copy. It's signed too by the author. Terry though, how about how about that?
What fun? I still do book signings as possible, Terry.
I I really want to thank you for spending us time, and I still have another dozen questions, but I will leave some of the reserves so I can invite you to come back again.
Thank you so much for having me. It is so great. You're just such a wonderful person to have conversations.
With, Terry. I really appreciate that, and you know, because it's interesting. You're interesting and fascinating, and I believe our listeners will feel the same way.
And I really appreciate you're interesting. I always think, oh, I don't know what I'm going to talk about, and then I babble.
You certainly matched, Terry. You're always welcome here on being frank. Thank you so much.
Thank you, And I want to thank Neil, who makes me sound decent.
Yes, we got to be nice to him for another couple of minutes. Because he keeps us on the air after we go. It's a no holds hard any way, Terry, I really want to thank you once again. Of course you want to us offer special thanks to our listeners. They take time to give us a voice in their lives. We know how important that is. Remember offer a fresh topic just about every week. Catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcasts. Check us out on the
Hudson River Radio Facebook page. Like us, leave us a comment, and we also ask you to share being Frank with others. As always, I like to leave you with two little nuggets, as I called them, one a quote and then some great closing music. The quote comes from Why Not Bob Dylan himself, where he said I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet, and I'll die like a poet. I hope that's no time.
I hope that's no time. But yes, I did a little research and I did find that, and we got some great closing music from one of my favorite bands, Fit in the show, and they're going to be forming at one of your favorite places in Piermont. Terry. The turning point if you're like that great. If you're listening before Saturday the fifth, we're taping here on the third. Go down and see Finn and Shark. Finn and the Sharks. They feature the Rouse Brothers of the eight pm January fourth,
Saturday at the legendary turning Point in Piermont. This is Voice in My Dreams by Finn and the Sharks. I'm your host, frankle Bono. This has been being Frank, and we hope to see you the next time. Last around, I can sleep up on the leave things too. I wait, won't As.
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