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COURTESY OF THE BOB DYLAN ARCHIVE, TULSA, OKLAHOMA, 3“Visions of Johanna” on yellow legal paper
with alternate lyrics (including mentions
of “nightingales” and “infinity codes”).
Look inside another and find the leather
jacketheworeatthe1965NewportFolk
Festival,andtheguestlistfora1974show
atMadisonSquareGarden(YokoOnogot
twotickets;AllenGinsberggotfour).An-
otherhasa1969letterfromGeorgeHar-
rison: “Dear Bobbie, Thanks for Nashville
Skyline, it is beautiful. Love to you all.”
Thecollectionisstillarrivinginstages
atTulsa’sCenterforAmericanResearch
at the Gilcrease Museum, but it will even-
tually include about 6,000 largely unseen
itemsstretchingbackmorethan50years,
culled from Dylan’s exhaustive personal
collection.It’stheresultofareported$
million to $20 million deal between Dylan
and the George Kaiser Family Foundation
thatwillgivethematerial–whichalso
includes digital and video files – a perma-
nent home in Oklahoma. The public will
be able to see a curated set of items when a
planned Dylan museum opens downtown
intwoyearsorso,butaccreditedDylan
scholars and select journalists are already
combing through some of the memorabilia
inasecureroomattheGilcrease–andit’s
clearthatthecontentsofthearchivecould
revolutionise Dylan scholarship. “It opens
upaworldtoDylanscholarsthatwedidn’t
knowexisted,”saysClintonHeylin,who
haswritteneightbooksaboutDylan.
Robert Polito, the first scholar allowed
accesstothearchive,isresearchinga
bookonDylan’sworkfromthepasttwo
decades. On a June afternoon, he’s sitting
infrontofaboxfilledwithpapersfrom
Love and Theft,along with a business
card from a Santa Monica boxing gym on
which Dylan scrawled the phrase “I’ll get
asfarawayfrommyselfasIcan”–arough
version of a line in 2000’s “Things Have
Changed”.“Forthefirsttime,”saysPolito,
“it’spossibletofollowasongfrom...ano-
tion on a hotel notepad through multiple
draftsandthenintomultipleversionsof
recordings, sometimes with different lyr-
ics or different arrangements.”
The archive will also house digital cop-
ies of the raw session tapes from every
one of Dylan’s studio albums, as well as
audioofnearlyallofhisconcertsover
the past five decades. To guard against
bootlegging, the archive will maintain
the audio files on a secure, offline network
accessibleonlybythreecomputertermi-
nalsatthelibrary.Employeesarestillin
theprocessoftransferringmanyofthe
audio files, though they do haveJohn Wes-
ley Hardingouttakes that
have never been heard by
fans. A click on the first
take of “As I Went Out One
Morning” reveals a drasti-
cally slowed-down, dirge-
likerenditionofthesong.
Overseeing the project
is Michael Chaiken, an ar-
chivist who has curated the
film collections of docu-mentarians like the Maysles brothers and
D.A. Pennebaker. Chaiken’s work with
Pennebaker included poring through out-
takesfromthe1967Dylandocumentary
Don’t Look Back,ataskthatbeganChai-
ken’s involvement with the Dylan camp
and eventually landed him the coveted
job of head curator of the Dylan archive.
ChaikensaysheassumesDylan’smotiva-
tion for the sale was simple: “If you want to
leave any sort of legacy behind, you want
themassofyourmaterialatasingleplace
wherefuturegenerationswillbeableto
come and see it.”
Thefloodoftouristsexpectedtoseethe
archivewillhavetobepatient.TheKaiser
Foundation is still sorting through bids
from architects and exhibition companies
to create the Dylan museum, though they
dohaveasiteready:Thebuildingthatwill
eventually house it sits next to the Woody
Guthrie Center, funded by the same foun-
dation – likely another reason Dylan chose
this deal and location.
The biggest surprises may well be in
the collection’s video as-
sets, which include all of
theDon’t Look Backout-
takes, plus hours of unseen
Pennebaker-shot footage
from Dylan’s 1966 tour and
Dylan-directed outtakes
from 1978’sRenaldo and
Clara,shot on the Rolling
Thunder Revue tour. ThereAnother Side
(1)Early notes for
1965’s “Tombstone
Blues”.(2)Johnny Cash
gave his number to
Dylan in 1966.(3)A
never-before-seen
typed manuscript for
“Like a Rolling Stone”
reveals alternate lyrics.[Cont. on 14]132