How Bob Dylan Viciously Cut His Competition Down to Size
Michael Ochs Archives/GettyThe below has been excerpted from Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital ©2024 David Browne and reprinted by permission from Grand Central Publishing/ Hachette Books /Hachette Book Group.As the scene was growing more amped up, in every way, its unofficial clubhouse remained the Kettle of Fish. But with Bob Dylan’s success and the pressure and attention that came with it, the dynamics at those gatherings began to shift. In 1964 Robert Shelton of the Times watched—with a sense of wonderment rare for such a fixture on the scene—as Dylan entered the Kettle one night with the Supremes and members of the British band the Animals, whose sulking, electrified makeover of “The House of the Rising Sun” had given the ballad an audience far beyond the coffeehouse crowd. Those pop stars were a departure from the small, insular posse Dylan generally preferred, one that protected him and, many thought, egged him on as he dissected the peers and strivers at the Kettle on any given night. For extra privacy, Guido Giampieri would close and lock the front door at a late hour.Dylan’s gang was usually led by Bob Neuwirth, his road manager, side-kick, and would- be bodyguard. An artist by trade and education, the Ohio- born Neuwirth had attended art school in Boston, where he learned to play guitar and banjo and eventually made his way into the Village; Dylan would recall first seeing him in the audience at the Gaslight. Neuwirth’s barbed-wire gibes and hipster persona were also of a piece with Dylan’s. As a source told Rolling Stone a few years later, regarding Neuwirth’s arrival in New York in 1964, “Dylan started to change at that time. Part of it was Neuwirth; he was a real strong influence on Dylan. Neuwirth [was] stressing pride and ego, sort of saying, ‘Hold your head high, man, don’t take shit, just take over the scene.’ He was the kind of cat who could influence others, work on their egos and support those egos.” Neuwirth’s striped pants would soon be seen behind Dylan on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited, the album that announced, as much as any, that the folk revival had passed its expiration date.Read more at The Daily Beast.
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