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“Abandoned Love,” “Something There Is About You,” “I’ll
Be Your Baby Tonight,” “To Be Alone with You,” “If Not for
You,” and those classics from 1965: “Desolation Row” and
“Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” If the consensus opinion holds
that 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, with its recurring themes of
loss, heartache and anger, is perhaps the greatest breakup
album of all time—a view Dylan disputes, insisting the songs
were inspired by Chekhov short stories—then Sara’s legacy
extends. Jakob Dylan, of the Wallflowers, reportedly dis-
misses his dad’s demurral. Andrew Slater, the Wallflowers’
former manager, told the The New York Times in 2005 that
Jakob told him, “When I’m listening to ‘Subterranean
Homesick Blues,’ I’m grooving along just like you. But when
I’m listening to Blood on the Tracks, that’s about my parents.”In the 10 years between the romance of Bringing It All
Back Home and the recrimination of Blood on the Tracks, the
Dylans lived in Woodstock—also back in New York City and
out in Malibu, but often in Woodstock—and raised a family
that would come to include their four children, Jesse, Anna,
Samuel and Jakob, plus Sara’s daughter from her marriage to
Lownds, Maria, whom Dylan adopted. When at home, Dylan
tried to live a sheltered existence, and Sara—a rarity among
rock star wives—stayed thoroughly out of the public eye.
Still today, after so much effort has been put into unearth-
ing Dylaniana through the decades, relatively little is known
about Sara. In the song that bears her name, Dylan calls her
“radiant jewel, mystical wife,” and there is certainly some-
thing of the spiritual to her image. It has been said that DylanDURING A FINAL SOUND CHECK AT NEWPORT
on July 25, 1965, Dylan wore a polka dot
shirt, and the photographer Dick Waterman
recalled to LIFE that the singer stopped and
let Dick make this picture, then went off to
change his clothes for the big show. So at
the very moment registered here, Dylan
knows full well what he is about to do, and
perhaps what the reaction will be. Below, he
does it, wielding his Fender Stratocaster like
a sword as he duels with the crowd. Dylan
has been investigating this new course
for several months, of course, but now the
course is firmly set.PHOTOGRAPH BY DICK WATERMAN MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY
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