39
“ ‘Yep.’
“He asked me about my family, where they were. I told
him I had no idea, that they were long gone.
“ ‘What was your home life like?’
“I told him I’d been kicked out.”
It goes on like this with poor Mr. James for a while. “I
hated these kind of questions,” writes Dylan, who would
hate them forever. “Felt I could ignore them.”
James asks him how he got to New York City. “I rode a
freight train.”
“ ‘You mean a passenger train?’
“ ‘No, a freight train.’
“ ‘You mean, like a boxcar?’
“ ‘Yeah, like a boxcar. Like a freight train.’
“ ‘Okay, a freight train.’ ”
Again, remember: This is Dylan at his brand new—really,
his first—place of employment. This is Dylan having just
been handed his big break.
Finally, James asks Dylan whom he sees himself resem-
bling in the contemporary music scene. “I told him, nobody.
That part of things was true, I really didn’t see myself like any-
body. The rest of it, though, was pure hokum—hophead talk.”
Dylan really wasn’t like anyone else, and not only as per-
tains to his sound and songs. Call it truculence or integrity,
but this fierce, immutable quirk in his personality allowed
him to walk out on Ed Sullivan (Columbia Records must
have been delighted about that); allowed him to treat Suze
Rotolo cruelly at Newport in 1963 when introducing her to
his new lover, Baez; allowed him to accept credit for what
seemed, to many listeners, other people’s arrangements;
allowed him to cuff Billy James around when the guy was
only doing his job; allowed him, through the decades, to
phone in a good number of subpar concerts in addition to
the sensational ones; and would allow him to go electric.
Chronicles: Volume One is a wonderful book, and a fas-
cinating one. Dylan regularly recounts in its pages what
might be considered by others to be embarrassing episodes,
but there is very little or no remorse. The book is self-reflec-
tive, but it also has a well, that’s the way it is—that’s the way I
am quality. Perhaps more to the point: You go your way and
I’ll go mine.
But, of course, Dylan intended (or, while never admit-
ting it, hoped) that an audience would go his way too—fol-
lowing him, moths to the flame, because of his irresistible
dynamism and obvious brilliance. “It wasn’t money or love
that I was looking for,” he writes. “I had a heightened sense
of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a vision-
ary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn’t need
any guarantee of validity. I didn’t know a single soul in this
dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change—
and quick.”
As we have already seen, it did change—very quickly
indeed. Within a season, he became the folk darling of down-
town. With Baez’s considerable help, he went national not
too very long after shaking the dust of Hibbing off his jeans.
And now, what next?DYLAN HAS FOUND THAT HE LIKES LIFE IN
Woodstock, New York, and that is where
these pictures and the ones on the following
pages were made in 1964. We have
mentioned that Dylan was influenced by Jack
Kerouac and the Beats; his direct association
with that group was always through
his friendship with poet Allen Ginsberg
(opposite). On this page, at top, Dylan and
fellow musician John Sebastian head out
on a motorbike. Above: He would scribble
lyrics any place, any time, and in the
workroom he types them.DOUGL AS R. GILBERT (3)
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