36 LIFE BOB DYLAN
Dylan and the Baez sisters, Joan and Mimi, and of Richard
Fariña (who would become Mimi’s husband) and other
creatures of the Village in the early 1960s. “We set something
up,” continued Collins, “and we had coffee, and when it was
over, I walked away, thinking, ‘The guy’s an idiot. He can’t
make a coherent sentence.’ ” Baez herself recalled for Hajdu
the first time she ever heard Dylan sing, having previously
met him: “I never thought something so powerful could
come out of that little toad.”
Yes, Dylan could be difficult to fathom or just plain dif-
ficult, even for those close to him. What can be seen as an
inherent petulance both was and was not an act. Like his
friend Allen Ginsberg, he enjoyed toying with his inquisi-
tors: a cat pawing the mouse during any kind of Q&A. But
this wasn’t a habit he developed only after he was famous
and was therefore in a position of power.
Consider an episode he recounts in Chronicles: Volume
One. It’s the fall of 1961, John Hammond has just signed
him to a standard contract at Columbia Records and has
handed him over to Billy James, the publicity chief of the
label, who is “dressed Ivy League like” and whose job it isto put together the Dylan dossier for dissemination to the
press. Remember: Dylan is still a kid, a nobody, and hasn’t
recorded a single song.
James asks Dylan where he’s from and Dylan says
Illinois. “He asked me if I ever did any other work and I told
him that I had a dozen jobs, drove a bakery truck once. He
wrote that down and asked me if there was anything else. I
said I’d worked construction and he asked me where.
“ ‘Detroit.’
“ ‘You traveled around?’D
ylan, even beyond his singular singing voice, was going to be difficult for lots of people.
It is good to understand that this was an inevitability; he was simply a difficult guy
when measured against standard norms of social or professional interaction. ¶ “ I w a nt-
ed to meet the mind that created all those beautiful words,” the singer Judy Collins told the author
David Hajdu when he was assembling material for Positively 4th Street, his fine group portrait ofPlugging InCAN THIS CAT PROWLING IN LONDON
in 1966 possibly be the same one we saw
pictured in New York on page nine? Those
bright eyes are now hidden behind shades
day and night, you could never stuff all that
hair into one of those folkie caps, denims
have yielded to leathers and the soft, open
gaze has given way to an often brooding
aspect. It can be said, however: The evolving
image fits the changing music. DAILY HERALD/MIRRORPIX/GETTY36-59 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Plugging.indd 36 FINAL 1/13/20 4:24 PM