| November 7th, 2004 02:35 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
Another side of Bob Dylan
November 7, 2004
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter
SEATTLE -- A museum is a strange notion for a poet in constant motion, but the times they are a changin'. "Bob Dylan's American Journey 1956-1966" is the first comprehensive exhibit dedicated to the singer-songwriter's landmark career. It opens Nov. 20 at the Experience Music Project in the shadow of the Space Needle in Seattle.
The exhibit traces Dylan's personal and artistic development, touching on his teenage years in Hibbing, Minn.; early live performances in New York's Greenwich Village, and his plugged-in wigout at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The retrospective includes more than 150 artifacts drawn from the Bob Dylan Archives, EMP's permanent collection, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Civil Rights Museum and private collectors.
Notable items include the 16-inch tambourine from the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village that inspired the song "Mr. Tambourine Man," and Dylan's paperback copy of Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory, which helped shape Dylan's artistic persona. "Bob Dylan's American Journey" runs at EMP through Sept. 5 and will then travel to other cities through 2008.
The exhibit is separate from the PBS "American Masters" documentary on Dylan by director Martin Scorsese, which will air in early 2005.
"You will see Bob Dylan in very much a contemporary museum with a contemporary strategy when it comes to creating exhibits and having a meaningful relationship with our community, locally and nationally," said Robert Santelli, director of EMP programs. "Being a 'project' means we're never done. We're still in motion. Popular music is that way. It never stands still. Also, we try not to be just what's behind the glass, but what goes on after hours, on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday night."
"Bob Dylan's American Journey 1956-66" features hundreds of cool Dylan items that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Pretty cool items include his Hibbing (Minn.) High School yearbooks from 1957, 1958 and 1959.
One of the two yearbooks from 1959 bears an inscription from Bobby Zimmerman to Judy Gane Setterstrom that reads in part: "You've got the most beautifulist [sic] hair in the school," and "My head's going round 'n' round; I doubt if I'll eve see you again after school lets out, Bobby Zimmmerman."
The other 1959 yearbook includes Dylan's senior picture and his stated goal to "join Little Richard."
Slightly more ridiculous is the opportunity for visitors to check out the camera that D.A. Pennebaker used to film Dylan during his 1965 British tour for the landmark documentary "Don't Look Back." Wow!
Is there anything curator Jasen Emmons wanted that he couldn't locate?
"We really wanted the electric guitar he played at Newport [Folk Festival] in '65," he said. "Nobody seemed to know where it is. Or the black leather jacket he wore at that concert."
For example, as part of the Nov. 19 opening night festivities, the Los Angeles-based tribute band Highway 61 Revisited will re-create Dylan's live set with the Hawks from the 1966 world tour. "Eat the Document," the unreleased 52-minute Dylan film chronicled that 1966 tour, will be shown as part of the exhibit. (The surreal film was edited by Dylan and Robbie Robertson.) And the venerable Izzy Young will appear in a free 90-minute panel discussion "Bob Dylan: As We Remember Him," slated for 4 p.m. Nov. 20 in the museum's JBL Theater. (Young founded the Folklore Museum in Greenwich Village in 1957.)
Santelli had the idea for a Dylan exhibit as far back as 1995, when he was director of education at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. "I worked on it for another three or four years before the Dylan camp saw that exhibits we had done in the past were high quality," said Santelli, who joined EMP in 2000.
"And I had a relationship with Jeff [Rosen, Dylan's manager and the conduit for Bob Dylan Archives]. Jeff helped me on the 'American Roots Music' series that premiered on public television a few years ago. I think Bob trusted us that if someone was going to tell his story in a museum setting, EMP was as good as anyone."
Work on the project, which covers 2,000 square feet, began 18 months ago. But Santelli, exhibit curator Jasen Emmons and Dylan's people agreed from the start not to attempt the entire Dylan story. It's too long.
The sometimes masked and anonymous Dylan camp was helpful in pointing the way to collectors without being directly involved. Emmons said, "There's such a network, once you talk to a few people, they go, 'oh,' and you get the secret handshake."
For example, a key item that has never before been shown is Woody Guthrie's Martin guitar, which emerged from a private collector. The guitar, on which Guthrie carved "Woody" on its back, was once owned by actor Eddie Albert. Guthrie's children Arlo and Nora didn't even know about the guitar. Santelli said, "I can end my collecting career now. That was the single most important thing I could find personally. It was a joy to me to make sure that didn't go somewhere else outside of America. We told the Guthrie Foundation they could borrow it any time they wanted."
Dylan's similar 1949 Martin 00-17 guitar is in the EMP's permanent collection.
A former software editor for Microsoft Corp., Emmons did some detective work in Hibbing and northern Minnesota, sniffing around for Dylan artifacts.
Born May 29, 1941, in Duluth, Dylan moved to Hibbing at age 6. He graduated from Hibbing High School in 1959, and then became scarce in his hometown. A few weeks ago, Dylan attended a family funeral in Hibbing. Until then, his last known public appearance in Hibbing was at a 1969 high school reunion.
The most notable Hibbing spot to recognize Dylan is Zimmy's Atrium and Restaurant, which opened at 531 E. Howard St., in 1993. The restaurant, which is filled with Dylan memorabilia, will sponsor its 4th Annual Dylan Days next May.
"Hibbing has an interesting relationship with Dylan," Emmons said. "If you went there, you would have no idea that Dylan was actually from there. A lot of it stems from the fact that he has never really said, 'I'm from Hibbing and I'm proud of it.' Where they will tell you right off [ex-Boston Celtics great] Kevin McHale is from Hibbing, because he summers there, and they still see him around. But people were very helpful. The library had an exhibit and they gave me some things.
"I spent four hours at Zimmy's. When I gave them the secret handshake, they called up Dylan's high school senior English teacher. He comes over, we talk for a while and after a time, he says, 'I think you need to come over to the house.'"
At the house, the teacher tells his wife that he's heading downstairs with the young detective. "It's the levels you have to go through," Emmons said. "Then we sit in the basement, where he graded Bob's papers. He's 82 years old now. We listened to Bob Dylan at top volume for about a half hour. We listened to the new stuff. He heard 'Not Dark Yet' and said, 'I feel like this song was written just for me.' There's a real reserve in Hibbing, but once you get past that, they're helpful."
Hibbing is so helpful, the city is sending 1,500 pounds of iron ore rock to EMP to use as a backdrop for the exhibit's Minnesota section.
Later, Emmons located an audio tape of Dylan's first concert in New York City, Nov. 4, 1961, at Carnegie Chapter Hall, a small room in the Carnegie Hall complex. (The exhibit will feature a 24-minute looping excerpt that includes Dylan talking and performing.) No one has ever heard the tape recording, which was made by a fan who kept the tape in a basement closet.
The Greenwich Village section of the exhibit will feature vintage handbills such as when Dylan opened for John Lee Hooker in April 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in New York City. This was Dylan's first official paid gig. "One thing that will make this exhibit interesting not just to the casual rock 'n' roll fan, but to the Dylan fanatic is that thanks to the generosity of the Dylan organization, we have access to reams of never before seen concert and television footage," said Santelli, referring to footage from the Canadian television program "Quest," which has been seen only by bootleggers. "It is unbelievable in its concept and its revelation."
EMP secured the footage from Rosen, who was gathering archival material for the Scorsese TV doc.
"Exhibits are most effective when they raise new questions, when they seek to look at the convention of traditional thought about a particular era, and perhaps revive it or look at it in such a way that sheds light on the period," Santelli said. "We tried to do that. It's very helpful to have Dylan recollecting about Dylan."
The EMP exhibit surely will place Dylan in a deeper social context. The late Alan Lomax subscribed to the belief that historical documentation can inform and invigorate music of the future. Emmons explained, "We want people to understand the tumultuous events that were occurring at that time. With his songwriting, Dylan was at the forefront of the topics going on at the time, the civil rights and anti-war movements. The folk revival was so tied into those movements. What made Dylan so exciting was that he was singing about contemporary issues, but doing it in traditional form."
This segment of the exhibit will be framed by historical documents about the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a small USA vs. Pete Seeger legal brief that was sent out to rally his friends and supporters, and other items.
Throughout 2005, EMP will present public programs, including a Dylan symposium with academics and journalists. Keyboardist Al Kooper is slated to perform and talk about working with Dylan and filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker; Jones Collinnian will discuss the films "Don't Look Back" and "Eat the Document."
The lingering question remains: Will Dylan personally take the time to look back at this period of his life? "Yeah, at 3 o'clock in the morning, after he plays a show in Portland, we'll get this call," Emmons said with a smile. "They'll say, 'He's ready,' and we'll walk him through. And he'll nod."
And it will be dark outside, in counterpoint to the determined glow of a singular American journey.
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| November 7th, 2004 03:43 PM |
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| Martha |
I want to go to SEATTLE!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for posting this news articleTTM!
;-) |
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