64 LIFE BOB DYLAN
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 1968: BOB AND
Sara, with Jesse, Anna and Sam, at home
in Byrdcliffe; Jesse and Bob outside the
home; Bob doing his truck-and-guitar thing,
perhaps thinking of Woody. It’s certainly not
all an act: After the motorcycle accident, he
really was doing a truck-and-guitar thing,
driving “keep-’em-running” vehicles every
day and regaining his musical footing with
the help of his friends in the Band. Once
Sara asked him and the boys to rehearse
elsewhere, the family station wagon
became his conveyance to Danko’s big pink
house, where some of the most memorable
American music ever made was miraculously
captured on tape.Dylan was insistent at this time that “there must be another
way of life for the pop star, in which he is in control, not they.
He had to find ways of working to his own advantage with
the recording industry, his book publisher, the TV network.
He had to come to terms with his one-time friend, long-
time manager, part-time neighbor, and sometime landlord,
Albert Grossman.” This he would do, but not quite yet; he
and Grossman would not part ways until 1970. But a first step
in redefining life for this pop star was to just sing and play,
quietly, with friends, and without an agenda.
The therapeutic new music-making we speak of, which
really was done without an eye to any commercial potential,
involved the men who had, in recent months, dared to take
the stage with him night after night and face the catcalls, the
boo-birds and the occasional thrown object. The musicians
who were about to morph from the Hawks into the Band
needed a bit of quietude just as much as Dylan did, and one
by one they drifted into Woodstock—to see what the boss
was up to, and to see what might be next for themselves.
One reason, certainly, that the Band relocated is that
Dylan had put each of them on a weekly retainer—Rick
Danko and Richard Manuel, as if “working,” started visiting
Dylan regularly to help with Eat the Document. But an even
larger reason was that they had realized, by the time the pre-
vious year’s tour had hit England, that they and Dylan had
discovered what Robbie Robertson called “this thing”: this
terrific sound that was unlike any prior Dylan sound and
very much unlike that of the roadhouse Hawks. The audi-
ences hadn’t heard it—they were too busy screaming bloody
murder—but the guys onstage certainly had. It was worth
exploring further.
Danko and Manuel very much liked the Woodstock vibe,
and as Danko recalled later, “The next I knew, I found that
big pink house that was in the middle of a hundred acres
with a pond [in neighboring West Saugerties]. It was nice.”ELLIOTT LANDY/MAGNUM (3)
60-79 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Retreat.indd 64 FINAL 1/13/20 4:27 PM