Bob Dylan Center sits at the corner of Reconciliation Way, presumably named for shame and a Trail of Tears. And, depending which way you look, the corner of Cincinnati Ave or Martin Luther King Blvd.
South is Cincinnati, named for the Roman farmer-statesman turned his plowshares into swords and back again—accepted leadership of the Republic for 16 days to quell a revolution, then returned to his humble plow. North of Reconciliation, Cincinnati becomes MLK, and past becomes prologue.
In other words, the museum’s at the crossroads of Native and Afro-American history, and Roman democracy.
Enter the doors you see this, “The Gates of Eden,” if you wanna wax poetic, riff on the singer who sculpted it.
“Gates appeal to me because of the negative space they allow. They can be closed, but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways, there is no difference.”
Bob Dylan, “Entry Gate Sculpture” 2021
Reminds me of another line about seasons and gates, one I often sing to remember. From “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” on The Basement Tapes.
Clouds so swift, rain won’t lift
Gate won’t close, railings froze
Get your mind off wintertime
You ain’t goin' nowhereWhoo-ee! Ride me high
Tomorrow’s the day
My bride’s going to come
Oh, oh, are we gonna fly
Down in the easy chair
To me that song’s about settling down to family life in the country, after the wheels came off and Dylan was recovering from his motorcycle crash. Following a whirlwind, 65-66 world tour, presenting Dylan’s new, electric rock & roll with an avant-garde, urban sensibility. He got married to Sara Lownds, and after the tour they settled downs. In rural Woodstock, settin’ roots.
Buy me a flute and a gun that shoots
Tailgates and substitutes
Strap yourself to the tree with roots
You ain’t goin’ nowhere
They were happy there, during the Summer of Love.
In 1967, when The Band was recording new versions of old American roots music in The Basement—a pivotal movement, copied by other artists later—the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s, chasing Dylan’s earlier avant-gardism.
The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper which I didn’t like at all. I thought that was a very indulgent album, though the songs on it were real good.
Dylan didn’t know how to record like the Beatles. Didn’t want to. In a 1969 interview with Jann Wenner, he said:
That’s really the way to do a recording—in a peaceful, relaxed setting—in somebody’s basement. With the windows open… and a dog lying on the floor.
Dog named Hamlet. And Dylan under a coonskin hat.
Guitarist Robbie Robertson (I mentioned here), the “Canadian-born son of a Jewish gambler and small-time-hood father,” according to Rolling Stone, whose mother was Mohawk, spent many summers with mom on the Six Nations Reservation in Ontario.
Here’s something interesting, for a man born north of the Canadian border—like all The Band members except Levon Helm—obsessed with Southern music. A postcard from Robbie Robertson, rhapsodizing cotton fields.
According to Robbie:
One of the things is that if you played loud in the basement, it was really annoying, because it was a cement-walled room. So we played in a little huddle: if you couldn't hear the singing, you were playing too loud.
A quiet, easy-going time. When Bob wrote anew, piano player Garth Hudson recalls.
It amazed me, Bob's writing ability. How he would come in, sit down at the typewriter, and write a song. And what was amazing was that almost every one of those songs was funny.
Time of humor and healing. Bob and Sara lived in domestic bliss, like Boccaccio characters in the country, for six or seven years… a Family Man.
Until 1973. When they sold their Woodstock home, moved to Malibu, started building a big house.
And Bob started taking art lessons.
I went home after that first day and my wife never did understand me ever since that day. That's when our marriage started breaking up. She never knew what I was talking about, what I was thinking about, and I couldn't possibly explain it.
Now, that’s all prologue. “The Gate.” I promised some folks I’d keep this under 10 minutes… this’ll make it a lucky 13.
But you’ll get where I’m headed with that gate to nowhere.
Too much to say and see about Bob Dylan Center. It was sad and beautiful, full of joy and tears. Tragic Comedy. Left me exhausted passing through it, having combed the Woody Guthrie archives first, and I’m feeling ornery and exhausted looking back. Got the whole damn House of both Muses on my phone, picture of every last word, letter and artifact. From Bob and Woody.
Here’s an example of why “it’s a sad and beautiful world,” as Tom Waits sang it. And why I’m feeling ornery and lonesome, in the face of beauty this morning. “The Man in Me.”
Every support structure on the ground floor of BDC, every blue beam, is surrounded by the history of a song. Here’s what Bob said about one of the many songs he wrote for his wife.
The way he pictured himself at the time.
And a description of the fallout, on a plaque.
That, in the wake of one of the most joyous songs ever recorded about the shortcomings of being a man, and finding strength in a woman:
The man in me will hide sometimes, to keep from bein’ seen. But that’s just because he doesn’t wanna turn into some machine. Take a woman like you, to get through to the man in me…
But, oh, what a wonderful feeling. Just to know that you are near. Sets my a heart a-reeling. From my toes, up to my ears…
A la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la.
What a tangled-up mess. Like handwritten lyrics.
That’s on a personal note. Sad and beautiful.
Take Blood on the Tracks (1975). Breakup album if there ever was one. When the walls were going up at the new house in Malibu, and the marriage came crumbling down. Here’s the notebook for that.
“Tangled Up in Blue,” top right. Lyrics aren’t quite what they’d become on the album, but the words I remember go:
She was married when we first met, soon to be divorced. Helped her out of a jam I guess, but I used a little too much force.
Could be written from the husband’s perspective, or the dupe that stole her. “Two voices.” Or more.
Bob managed to express the sorrow and joy of love in the same breath. Sing of careless love, with just the faintest whiff of bitterness. Even when the words on the page taste like apple cider vinegar. Wrote like cider, sang like honey. Love and hate, in the shoes of himself as well as the lover lost.
“Idiot Wind.” Probably the sourest of Blood on the Tracks. Same couple, same album, same predicament. She’s an idiot.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth. You’re an idiot babe. It’s a wonder that you still know how to breath.
In the end, so’s he.
Can’t feel her anymore. Can’t even touch the books she’s read. Every time he crawls past her door, he’s wishin he was someone else instead. Yet he takes her perspective too.
I been double-crossed now
For the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffered
Nor the pain I rise above
And I'll never know the same about you
Your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorryIdiot wind
Blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves
Shared love, shared sorrows. Equal idiocy… on a sliding scale.
Won’t discourse on everything personally. I’ll just add that next door at the Guthrie archives, where there’s some truly tragic material history, I discovered Woody’s early lyrics for “It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song.”
Original title: “It Takes a Married Man to Sing a Worried Song.”
Later, for the record:
“I’m-a worried now, but I won’t be worried long.”
Anyway, I’ll shut up about myself. Here’s the highlights, or the ones that fit.
Words on the wall, from a favorite historian I’ll introduce in the future, Sean Wilentz:
Notes from George Harrison.
A postcard from Pete Seeger, explaining why he screamed he’d hack Dylan’s sound cable with an axe, if he had one, when Dylan went electric for the first time at Newport Folk Festival in 1965—it was the sound quality, not the rock & roll. The postcard’s a peace offering.
Correspondence from Johnny Cash. Zoom-in for a closer look—“It’s such a glittering thing to read a letter from a friend who hasn’t lost the lost art of letter writing.” Bob’s “in the large economy amount of moods from the top of the paper to the end,” and leaves John “loose as a goose and laughing.”
A display case containing Dylan’s wallet from 1966, with reproduced contents, including Johnny Cash’s handwritten number and address.
And Otis Redding’s business card.
1964 notebook, with addresses of Nico and Lenny Bruce.
Upstairs there’s a posthumous letter from Bob to, and about Jimi Hendrix, addressed to one Carol Snow, in appreciation of Hendrix’s interpretation of Dylan’s work.
Letters to dead people, like Petrarch.
(The words I took to be most meaningful, are excerpted below. Took the liberty of breaking Dylan’s stream of thought into paragraphs for clarity, too.)
“it can’t be expected that a performer get under the song, inside & blow it out. It’s like getting inside of another person’s soul. most people have enough trouble getting inside of their own souls & to take on another one, really most of the time can’t be worth the ride.”
Of course some songs are simpler. Like Chuck Berry’s.
“You just kind of learn the riffs, mouth the words & they sing themselves…same thing with the beatles. you learn the chords & sing the words & youre a beatle.”
(Not sure I agree with you about Beatles karaoke there, Bob. But I take your point about soulless singers.)
“theres no pain involved here. Youre just doing songs that fly along, dont step on anybodys toes & having a good time doing it. my songs are different & I don’t expect others to make attempts to sing them because you have to get somewhat inside and behind them & it’s hard enough for me to do it sometimes & then obviously you have to be in the right frame of mind. but even then there’d be a vague value to it because nobody breathes like me […] giving a heartless rendition of what was it to begin with.
jimi knew my songs were not like that. he sang them exactly the way they were intended to be sung & he played them the same way. he did them they way i wouldve done them if i was him […]
now that years have gone by i see that message must have been his message thru & thru. not that i ever could articulate the message that well myself, but in hearing jimi cover it, i realize he mustve felt it pretty deeply inside & out & that somewhere back there, his soul & my soul were on the same desert […]
its not a wonder to me that he recorded my songs but rather that he recorded so few of them because they were all his.
bob dylan
If you’re wondering why Bob doesn’t use apostrophes or capital letters here, it’s cause, well… its a pain in the ass to type on a royal caravan. theres one in the lobby. could be Bob’s original… i wonder its not a replica since its just sitting out in the open for all to touch, though they beg you not to. goes to show you never can tell.
I know it’s a pain in the ass to type on one of these contraptions because in the reading alcove, there’s another Royal Caravan. Where visitors are welcome to tap-tap away.
There’s also a copy of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, which I wrote about here, sitting on the alcove shelves.
The gist of that book can be summarized here, at the top of the stairs to Shaker heaven, next to that spiritual society’s “Gift Drawing” mural I wrote about last week. Turns out the author of The Gift’s also a curator for the museum.
All the tracks I’ve been walking seem to intersect, at the Switchyard and BDC. Pilgrims here are asked to write something on the imitation of Dylan’s Royal Caravan typewriter in the reading room. Take a photo of it, and share it with #BecomingBobDylan on social media—as a “Gift.”
I’ll spare you mine, but trust me, Becoming Bob Dylan is impossible. Especially on a typewriter. Let alone a beat-up model of Bob’s machine, despite the Royal moniker.
Too much to see, too much to hear, too much to know.
Handwritten lyrics to some of the best songs ever dreamt. Dylan’s Nobel Prize for literature. Leather jacket he donned for Newport ‘65, a fashion turn-signal towards rock & roll. Gold album for Blood on the Tracks. Christmas cards from Paul and Linda, John and Yoko.
Postcards from Allen Ginsberg, and photos of the two of them, along with Seamus Heaney, visiting Soviet dissident writer Yevgeny Yevtushenko in Moscow. (Yevtushenko went on to teach at the University of Tulsa, til he died in 2017).
Picture of Dylan at Leo Tolstoy’s country home, where a tour guide let him ride the author of Anna Karenina’s bicycle.
Presidential correspondence from Carter to Clinton and Mrs. Obama. Drawings, illustrations, costumes, paintings—masks. Behind every one of them a heap of stories left to tell.
Here’s what Greenwich Village looked like circa ‘61, when Bob strolled into town. Artists, just hanging out… the windows.
Here’s what’s left of the piano Dylan used to compose “Like a Rolling Stone.”
That part of a piano, I learned, is called the “harp.”
That’s pure gold, just beautiful. Biblical, angelic. David—David and Goliath—was the harp Hendrix. Supposedly, King Saul summoned his humble warrior-shepherd to play the instrument, to dispel evil spirits, or whatever was ailing the King. It worked, sounds like, cause David healed Saul. Returned one day to become King of Jerusalem himself, welcomed to the tune of flutes and tambourines accompanying his royal procession. So the story goes. One of the oldest instruments known to man, the harp.
Even older is the tambourine. Derived from sieves for shaking grain. Went from being an instrument of agriculture to an instrument of musical percussion.
Here’s the tambourine that inspired “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a couple of display cases down from Dylan’s harp.
It’s actually a Turkish drum frame, with jingle bells attached to the inside. Belonged to a fellow musician by the name of Bruce Langhorne.
According to Dylan:
"Mr. Tambourine Man,” I think, was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce was playing guitar with me on a bunch of the early records. On one session, (producer) Tom Wilson had asked him to play tambourine. And he had this gigantic tambourine. It was like, really big. It was as big as a wagon-wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind. He was one of those characters ... he was like that. I don't know if I've ever told him that.
Biograph, reflections (1985)
There’s a video interview with Mr. Tambourine Man, Bruce Langhorne, on a screen next to his wagon-wheel sized tambourine, at the Bob Dylan Center. For the life of me, I can’t find it online. I emailed the BDC for directions; let you know if I find what I’m looking for.
Some things just can’t be recalled in 1’s and 0’s. It’s something has to be heard, sung and played to be remembered.
In the interview, Bruce Langhorne plays a beat on that old grain-sieve in the display case, before he died in 2017. Claims it’s the oldest percussive rhythm known to man, from 7000 years ago in Mesopotamia, or somewhere in that fertile crescent. I don’t know how he knows it, but for some reason, I believe that dead man talking on the screen. I trust his musical memory. And I’ll keep searching for his rhythm, that Bruce, following his trail, til the last mañana.
In the jingle-jangle morning.