62 LIFE BOB DYLAN
into the garage for repairs, when the back wheel locked and
he went hurtling over the handlebars. After the fall, he was
rushed in a friend’s car [to his doctor in nearby Middletown]
with reported broken vertebrae of the neck, a possible con-
cussion, and head and facial bruises. A major concert at the
Yale Bowl, scheduled for eight days later, was canceled. Dylan
only knows just how severely he was hurt and at what point
in his convalescence he discovered that he wanted to think,
reorganize his life, spend time with his family, and listen to
the silence.” Even if it was as bad as reported, the accident
became a metaphor, a time for change, a possibility of release,
the start of seven and a half years of withdrawal to a more
tranquil existence.
All these decades later, we can imagine Albert Grossman
spinning in his grave.O
ver time, the storm passed, and Dylan was, if never
forgotten, at least back-burnered. He certainly had
work to engage him—“new priorities,” as he put
it—in fatherhood. Jesse Byron Dylan was born on January 6,
1966 (he would grow to be a businessman and filmmaker;
in 2008 he directed will.i.am in an Emmy-winning music
video, Yes We Can, that supported Barack Obama’s quest for
the White House), and Anna Leigh Dylan arrived on July 11,
1967 (she is today an artist based in Santa Monica, California).
Sara would give birth to Samuel Isaac Abraham Dylan and
Jakob Luke Dylan in the next two years, completing the fam-
ily as it would be constituted in Woodstock. A person might
ordinar ily suppose that Dylan was an absent parent—busy
and peripatetic as he had been his whole life, constitution-
ally eccen tric as he was—but the children certainly benefit-
ted from Dad’s extended downtime in the late 1960s and early
’70s. He was often home, driving the station wagon, singing
lullabies and even, if we can guess from the ear-and-mind-
boggling 2009 album Christmas in the Heart, holiday carols.
The idea of the nuclear Dylans sitting close to the hearth in
Woodstock and harmonizing on “O Little Town of Bethle-
hem” or “Must Be Santa” brings great cheer.
When Dylan began to work again, he did so from home.
One project he became deeply involved with was the edit-
ing of the Pennebaker footage from the 1966 tour, which was
intended to become a follow-up film to Dont Look Back and
air as part of ABC television’s Stage ’66 series. Pennebaker
later said that Dylan essentially commandeered the film.
Whatever, the rough cut that was shown to ABC was
rejected as far too bizarre for a national audience. The film
did get finished—sort of—and today exists as the never com-
mercially released and seldom screened Eat the Document
(a double bill of this and Renaldo and Clara—we’ll get to
that—might be seen as Dylan waterboarding). As with any-
thing Dylan, there were vignettes, outtakes and side-stories
that today not only fascinate in memory but actually can be
accessed. Martin Scorsese used bits of Eat the Document in
No Direction Home. A duet of Dylan and Johnny Cash per-
forming “I Still Miss Someone” is charming. Cut from the
documentary (perhaps by Dylan himself) but available onbootleg versions is an extended scene of John Lennon (of
all people!) counseling an addled, exhausted Dylan during
a limo ride: “Come, come, boy, it’s only a film. Pull yourself
together.” Lennon later told Rolling Stone that he and Dylan
had both been on “junk,” and later still, the Lennon-Dylan
car ride provided fodder, as did the Nat Hentoff Playboy
interview, for Cate Blanchett’s scenes in the film I’m Not
There. Very little in the Dylan universe goes wasted—or, in
any event, unseen.
Why Dylan, in the serenity of Woodstock, would want to
spend his time revisiting the madness of the disastrous ’66
world tour is anyone’s guess. Far closer to what he was trying
to accomplish in his psychic recovery was his measured, if
purposeful, return to music-making. According to Shelton,60-79 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Retreat.indd 62 FINAL 1/13/20 4:27 PM