MUCH OF THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF DYLAN
in Woodstock, including all of it on these
two pages, was taken by Elliott Landy, who
was the one person to whom Bob granted
access in this interesting, personal period.
The Dylan visual record is all the richer for
this allowance. Opposite: Landy remembers
Bob exclaiming, “Take one like this!” on a
fun day at the Ohayo Mountain Road house.
In the sequence, from top, Bob is on the
trampoline with Jesse, Anna and Maria; then
holding Anna; then flying on his own. Below:
with Anna again. Happy days of Little League
games and cookouts and bouncing in the
backyard with the kids...that the question was in the air (and surely he did), then he
should never have issued Self Portrait in 1970, his second
double-disc album but not even in the arena with Blonde
on Blonde in terms of achievement. There were bad cover
versions (how dare he do this to “Early Morning Rain” and
“Let It Be Me”?), tossed-off renderings of traditional tunes,
a few uninspired originals, a couple of live versions of pre-
vious hits, a general malaise. The Rolling Stone review by
Greil Marcus put the matter succinctly in its first sentence:
“What is this [expletive]?”
Dylan later hemmed and hawed, at different timesclaiming that the album was a joke, or that he had still been
recovering from the motorcycle accident, or that he was
fighting bootleggers by putting out his own bootleg. But
facts were facts, and for the first time in Dylan’s life, he was
recording and releasing bad tracks, and he wasn’t writing
more than an occasional tune that was worth a lick. When
New Morning came out only four months after Self Portrait—
rushed to press, perhaps, to stem the tide?—it was hailed as a
comeback, but in retrospect it wasn’t a patch on Highway 61,
just multifold better than Self Portrait.
He did have one semi-triumph in this period: his
1969 appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in England.
Another big rock fest had come to his doorstep, and that is
perhaps why the ever-contrary Dylan chose not to perform
at Woodstock. He was put off by disciples constantly mak-
ing their Dylan pilgrimage, to the point where he bought a
townhouse back in the Village, on MacDougal Street, and
briefly moved his family into the city. But the fans found
him there, too, and he was becoming frustrated by his
inability to find true peace and solace. Perhaps choosing
the Isle of Wight Festival over Woodstock was some kind of
message: I’m outta here.
Since he had not performed live, except for brief appear-
ances at benefit concerts, in three years, this became a very
big deal. Dylan was billed over the Who and Free, and it was60-79 LIFE_Bob Dylan 2020 Retreat.indd 71 FINAL 1/13/20 4:28 PM