‘Bob Dylan: Electric’ showcases the musician’s influence on American culture
“‘Dylan goes electric’ is still shorthand for any time an artist or anybody does some radical turn in their music or in their work where they’re sort-of ‘Audience be damned, I need to make the sound I need to make,’” says former Spin editor and Rolling Stone music critic Alan Light, who curated the latest exhibit at the American Writers Museum — “Bob Dylan: Electric.”
“Fifty years later, that’s still the marker of that kind of independence and that kind of fearlessness. Whatever it is that made it that kind of a mythic thing, it still holds up.”
Scheduled for a five and a half monthrun, “Electric” features dozens of artifacts from 11 collections across the country marking the music Dylan made at beginning of his electric years 1965-1966 — including the 1964 sunburst Fender Stratocaster he plugged in at Newport Folk Festival to the horror of his devoted folk fan base, in 1965.
In a statement, AWM president Carey Cranston described the exhibit as “a firstof-its-kind experience,” adding the museum “is honored to present one of music’s most iconic instruments together with a unique collection of musical, literary, and cultural artifacts.”
“The world knows Bob Dylan as a prolific songwriter,” he continued. “’Bob Dylan: Electric’ gives the public a chance to see how his writing shaped more than just American music but American literature as a whole.”
Tracing the music icon’s literary and musical influences — including Odetta, Robert Johnson, Jack Kerouac and Little Richard — from his adolescent years and initial arrival on the East coast to his winning the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature and current artists who cite him as an inspiration, the exhibit paints a portrait of Dylan as a rebel with a cause through copies of his lyrics and prose. “Electric” presents an artist who flipped the foundation of writing on its head by marrying elements and themes of classic literature and poetry with the “American” experience that’s often opposite of a dream; feeling lost in or used by the system, war, racism, acceptance, lonerism and false idols, while creating a world where a song with as many words, and as long as, “Like a Rolling Stone” could make it to No. 2 on the Billboard pop charts — though the artist himself would be the last to admit it.
Apart from the storied institutions (Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Sony Music Entertainment Archives, Woody Guthrie Center, Pennebaker Hegedus Films and Arthouse18) that contributed photos, newspaper and magazine clippings, audio, copies of Dylan’s recording schedules and more, three of the major, individual collectors — Mitch Blank, Barry Ollman and Bill Pagel — were in attendance at the opening.
Blank, a New York native who still lives in Greenwich Village (in an apartment which he refers to as a museum; filled with so many archives and collections of other artists besides Dylan, he lets writers, historians, etc. do research there), was 14 when he saw him with Joan Baez at Forest Hills Stadium in 1964.
“August 8, 1964,” Blank specifies — remembering it like it was yesterday. A few of his contributions to the exhibit include the invitation to the Nobel Prize Award ceremony and translations of speeches, D.A. Pennebaker’s original film poster for “Don’t Look Back” and a program from the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival. A fan from the start, he remembers really committing to his collection and attention to the artist’s authentic memorabilia in 1968.
“Look, collecting is a disease,” he laughs. “But ’68 was the year. People were angry, everyone was assassinated — Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy; the Vietnam War. Dylan was the light through it at the end of the tunnel.”
“I flipped a coin to decide who I was going to collect,” joked fellow contributor Bill Pagel. “Heads was Bob, tails was Wayne Newton.”
Pagel, who lives in Dylan’s native Hibbing, Minn., was first introduced to his music in 1961. He was family friends with Peter McKenzie — the son of Eve and Mac McKenzie, of whom Dylan was a frequent houseguest upon his arrival in New York City in 1960.
“By 1963, you could tell he was going to be really important,” he says. “That’s probably when I started collecting more seriously.”
Featured items from Pagel’s collection include an original Highway 61 road sign, which he says he found hanging off the side of a barn, Dylan’s original manuscript for “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” and the artist’s heavily-marked copy of J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” (but not in a Mark David Chapman way). Noted ‘Summer ‘1961’ by Eve McKenzie in blue ink, Dylan doodled a bottle of rye whiskey -adding the note “Good book! Bob.”
In addition to smaller items, Pagel is also the owner of a major piece of Dylan history: his family’s former home in Duluth.
“Electric” presents an artist who flipped the foundation of writing on its head by marrying elements and themes of classic literature and poetry with the “American” experience that’s often opposite of a dream.
“It was on Ebay,” he says. “I’m just keeping it up. People come to see it.” And his current home in Hibbing just happens to sit across the street from the music legend’s childhood home there.
While “Electric” doesn’t necessarily introduce anything new to the legend that surrounds Dylan during that creative period, it does put him and his work in the context of those he’s been accused of plagiarizing or stealing from. George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics professor at Harvard University Richard F. Thomas, who wrote “Why Bob Dylan Matters” in 2017, put it like this:
“T.S. Eliot put it best, ‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal,’ by which I think he meant they take it and make something better out of it, or something different out of it. I’m sure Dylan has read that.”
Throughout the exhibit’s run, the museum will also host its singer-songwriter showcase, featuring songwriters and musicians from a wide array of genres, including Grammy-nominated folk singer Robbie Fulks on Dec. 1 and influential Chicano rock band Los Lobos Dec. 9, who will discuss their writing processes and the impact songwriting has had on American writing.
“People continue to come to him — at different points in his life, but also at different points in their life,” Light says. “That hasn’t gone away. Whether it’s Adele or Kendrick Lamar, he still continues to mean something to these future generations. He continues to re-examine and reinterpret everything he’s ever done and his refusal to be pinned down as one thing or as any of the work, meaning one specific release, is a driving force. Bob Dylan is on a lifelong exploration of American music -he did country, blues and gospel, now he’s singing standards and Sinatra songs. It’s all about this perpetual examination of this tradition and this history, this is the most dramatic representation of that.”
“Bob Dylan: Electric” runs daily (except Christmas Day) through April 30, 2019 at American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave -second floor. Included in $8-$12 general admission at americanwritersmuseum.org.