Together Through Life its a New Morning for Bob Dylan
Eleven at Eleven.
That's how old I was when Bob Dylan's eleventh album 'New Morning' was released. With the release of Dylan's thirty-third studio album, 'Together Through Life,' which I just picked up, I am reminded of the first Dylan album I ever owned, his eleventh, 'New Morning.'
My Life in Records, Chapter One.
Something of a 'comeback' album, after the scathing, mystified reviews of Self-Portrait, 'New Morning' greeted me one morning when I was lying in a hospital bed in Manhattan after being hit by a NYC cab. It was my fault, basically, an impatient sixth grader crossing mid-block to catch a bus not looking where he was going when a Yellow Cab cornered 76th Street and York Avenue. Wham. I was on my back and then back up. Dazed, I saw my gym teacher, Ms. Weisman, who told me to lie back down. My friends, also waiting, circled around me. A few moments later, an ambulance whisked me away to Lenox Hill Hospital.
After school that day, I had crossed York Avenue to Goldberg's Pizza with a few friends for an after-school snack. Goldberg's had opened not long before and was rapidly becoming a culinary mecca for its-at the time-revolutionary gourmet deep dish pizza. For a kid like me, it was the closest pizza joint to school and just across the street from the bus stop. (The proprietor, Larry Goldberg, became quite famous for his pizza, and sadly died with Alzheimer's disease at the age 69 in 2003: www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/us/larry-goldberg-69-fabled-food-and-diet-lover.html). So, with a full belly, and thinking only of my friends, I was hit by a speeding cabbie.
Fortunately, my injuries were not life threatening. I had fractured my pelvis, and was being watched in the hospital for two weeks for possible internal bleeding. I guess it wasn't nothing and alot of my freinds and my parents' friends came to visit me in the hospital. Two of the cutest girls in my class brought me a cake they had baked that they had topped with huge pink plugs of bubble gum, but I couldn't eat it. Doctor's orders.
I developed a mad sixth grade crush on both of them.
One morning, an attractive young woman walked into the hospital room and sat down next to my bed. To my male eleven year old eyes she looked like a super model! She was working in my dad's office and had brought me a present. Obviously a record, I pulled off the wrapper to see a benign looking curly headed man staring back at me. I knew the face, knew the name, even knew some of his songs as sung by Seeger or Peter, Paul and Mary. Had never heard Dylan himself. The record sat displayed for all to see by my bedside for the rest of my hospital stay.
I developed another mad sixth grade crush on the attractive young woman.
A few weeks later, recuperating at home, I opened up the GE Wildcat stereo that sat in the book case next to my bed and put on the mysterious disk. The sound of his voice startled me. It wasn't smooth, in tune, in key. Driven by his 'Band' mates, Dylan's music rattled and chugged, sending shoots of old weird American music into my soul for the first time in my life. Put off by the sounds, but strangely attracted, I left the record on and flipped it over to hear the second side. It sounded so grown up in contrast to the pop of Simon and Garfunkel I was consumed with at the time.
And then I didn't listen to it again for a few years. Too much for me at the time. I waited, saved the record. Felt like there was something there. And returned to it when I was older, no wiser, but a little more experienced. And then I was hooked. For Life.
Together - with Bob Dylan - For Life.
Dylan was my first concert! Not sure how old I was - 12? It was the Blood on the Tracks tour, I believe, Buffalo, Memorial Auditorium, blue section. My Mom took me - we sat enshrouded in pot smoke. It was a mystifying and glorious evening. Thanks, Mom.
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My first concert? Wings in Madison Square Garden. Even (especially?) as a teenager I thought it was cheesy. Billy Joel opening for Janis Ian, I think, was next....oh, heck, it was the seventies...maybe because these were my initial forays into live pop concerts, I was never that much of a concert goer, more of a record guy. But in college, one of my friends, Charlie Hunter, worked at Toads Place in New Haven - he made their window signs and posters - so he got me into see a lot of great bands...most of whom I've forgotten, unfortunately. Charlie, if you're out there - is there a list of the groups who passed through Toads from 1977-1981? If I saw the names, I could tell you if I was there!!! I know I saw the Go-Gos, Root-Boy Slim and his Sex Change Band, and Taj Mahal. Who else?
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