Jim was just an incredibly talented, Baudelaire-ian, alcoholic, gorgeous naughty boy – says The Society
Jim Morrison’s childhood home in Melbourne Florida went up for sale for $2.4 million.
And his ancient bandmate Robby Krieger said at the time, it should become a shrine to Jim.
“Why not make it like a little Doors museum-type thing?” he said. “You’ve got to keep The Doors name going, you know.”
So, did the old house finally sell? We can’t find anthing confirming it.
Anyway, here at The Society we will keep the names of Jim and the rest of the Doors up there with the greatest like Dylan, Elvis, Sinatra, Hendrix and Cohen.
This appreciation is a homage to one of the world’s greatest talents … three vids inside, including a rare version of Hyacinth House
Jim Morrison joined the 27 Club amid mystery, controversy and trauma in a baroque apartment at 17 Rue Beautreillis, Paris, on July 3rd 1971.
It was his birthday today. He would have been almost 80 years old.
Sadly, when he died he was a fat bearded shadow of his former self, given to crippling bouts of hiccoughs and vomiting.
People of influence, including a drug-dealer Count Jean de Breutil fled Paris.
The heat in Paris when he died was intense and possibly the man who embodied the insane shaman-like beauty of rock’n’roll lay in his and Pamela’s bed packed in ice.
Then a death certificate was issued and it is said that nobody from the rest of the Doors, Pamela or his management ever saw it.
Today, Jim still occupies a small, almost hidden corner of a Pere-Lachaise cemetery.
He is a dark fable in the City of Light.
And long may he reign.
Now what is left of The Doors have released a 50th-anniversary deluxe reissue of their sixth and final album with Jim, L.A. Woman.
The three-CD, one-LP set includes the original L.A. Woman remastered by the Doors’ former engineer Bruce Botnick, two bonus discs containing more than two hours of unreleased session outtakes and a stereo mix of the album vinyl.
I saw him once at the Isle of Wight. He had the stillness and intensity of a god. He was real McCoy even in his twenties. As he died the dream of the 1960s fell beside him too.
But let’s all remember Jim Morrison for what he was, an incredibly talented, Baudelaire-ian, alcoholic, gorgeous naughty boy who lives in our hearts, iPods, radios and minds still today.
#alcohol #jimmorrison #thedoors #paris #pamela #27club #isleofwhite #manchester #17 Rue Beautreillis #Count Jean de Breutil
HOW DYLAN BEAT THE RESET OF OUR SHADOWY KINGDOM OF COVID AND CONSPIRACY
We have a look at Bob’s new ‘comic’ artwork and choose the Top Ten positive stories about Bob and his artistic return as the world got sick
The Covid years were destructive, no doubt. People talked about it being a dark greasy blanket of coughing and fear thrown across the world to hide The Big Reset.
And it is true, our times were inexplicably changing, a world in masks, house arrest for weeks on end, field hospitals popping up in car parks, hurried vaccines and people banned from family funerals.
Flights grounded, city centres abandoned and office blocks waving like empty bank books in the howling wind.
Empty pubs but parties in the rancid corridors of power, politicians exposed, liars, cheats, conmen and women, drunks and tractor tossers – Big Bad Buffoon Boris! – and Matt Hand-cock! The Grand Orange One!
The joys of drinking bleach and the White House raided by pretend Vikings, cowboys and para-military fashion victims.
Then the ‘buyin’ power of the proletariat went down, money got shallow and weak’.
Gasoline and diesel for your car became almost as expensive as rocket fuel. And fish ’n’ chips got close to ten pounds a portion.
Protesters glued their ears to anything cold, hard and inanimate – mainly tarmac and dogma – and nurses, lawyers, postmen and women along with so many others, approved strike action.
Our world is on its knees, let’s kick it down the hole!
And now we are on the cusp of a world war…
***
Even Bob Dylan was reset … the rebel without a pause showed himself to be one of the most enduring artists in the world with his Rough and Rowdy Ways, his Shadow Kingdom, his new book on songs, his new voice and his determination to stay on the road like Chuck and BB.
Here we look at how Bob Dylan kept his message on track during one of the most uncertain and confusing periods of our history … along the way he also made a pledge over prostate cancer, helped out a model railway club and reminded us of his links to the Ukraine.
We hope you enjoy this compendium – there are plenty of other stories about Bob on site too, have a look around…
… Spicy-Adventure Stories is probably one of the most revered pulp fiction comic mags of the 1930s and 40s … rare copies of it sell for a small fortune.
Today most of its covers would be banned … flashing of thighs and ripped bodices as scantily-clad blondes fight desperately for their honour against swarthy fiends going in for the kill … or worse!
But almost 100 years ago these comics were a knockout despite being loaded with innuendo …
Daughters of Doom became the backdrop to Dylan’s least popular album – but quite brilliant – Knocked out Loaded. The 1985 cover was the precursor of many album covers over the next 30 years which expressed an adversarial view of relationships, politics and the world.
The cover for Rough and Rowdy Ways followed the, by now, tried and tested path and capitalised on an old photograph that captured the 1950s speakeasy atmosphere of London’s underground clubs and coffee houses.
Anyway, as Freedom Day in the UK fails like a James Cagney prison break and our Covid app stinks – a ping pong, you might say – let’s have a look back at how Bob, in his dotage has come back all the way, the river boat captain guiding our boat through two years of hell and making sure it doesn’t get split to splinters …
Smashed and Eponymous, how the greatness of Bob’s film surrounded Leigh and Andrea in good sounds
Last night I had a fascinating and funny chat with LA film editor Bob Mori about the cinematic strangenesses of Bob Dylan … not the most successful part of his career as far as I’m concerned.
I think Mr Dylan has been involved in two filmic faux pas in these modern times.
First, Martin Scorcese’s Rolling Thunder Review.
And then the more recent Shadow Kingdom.
I felt a bit cheated by both films, although I loved them in a sort of dysfunctional way. It was as if my best friend had lied to me.
Bob Mori, the man who created the brilliant independent video to Dylan’s Murder Most Foul, went half way with me as far as Shadow Kingdom is concerned. We both agreed that there was something shadowy about the publicity to this film, a major event for any Royal Bob-ness fan…
Or should that be shady?
There is no doubt it was promoted as a ‘live’ show, which is simply wasn’t. Both Bob and I – and millions of others, I dare say – expected it to be just that, LIVE.
And in a way, it was. But it was a staged, posed, directed, edited recording of what could have been some live performances of a number of Bob’s beautiful and best songs.
Bob Mori
Far from being Bob winging it on a live stage, it was himembracing new technology when most people of his age are embracing a cup of Horlicks!
As far as Mr Mori and I are concerned though, it was ‘mis-sold’ to the public and we have both been a part of the world of advertising, so our thoughts are based on some knowledge of how smoke and mirrors can be used in the shadowy kingdom of selling dreams…
But we had totally different views on Rolling Thunder, so steeped in fact and fantasy that basically I found it a bit dishonest and misleading… in simple terms I just didn’t get the joke of Sharon Stone revealing her metaphorical ‘all’ about her youthful dalliance with Dylan, the appearance of a pretend politician, a bitter and bad tempered film-maker complaining how he had been treated…
Well, he wasn’t was he! He just wasn’t there!
I know his Royal Bob-ness has always used slight-of-mental-hand and noble literary spells to mislead, obscure, frustrate, entertain and charm us all. But we understand all this as fans.
But Scorsese? A mock-mentary? An in-joke? A series of lies?
Another bit of Bob’s failure on the big screen?
Mr Mori disagreed and put his argument this way: “In my opinion. It is a marvel, along the lines of Spinal Tap with real history attached. Not pure but truly perfect.”
Not pure but truly perfect … I respect the convoluted perfect articulacy of that statement.
So, what do you think? Let me and Bob know, join us in this great debate.
Leigh G Banks
Meanwhile, here’s a story about how I got hold of the totally wrong end of the stick while watching the fabulous Masked and Anonymous – and how finally I got turned on to it!
Leigh G Banks takes an unusual and hilarious journey around surround-sound, an old telly and the gold of silence in what could be one of Dylan’s most accomplished works of art…
It has to be said that Bob’s life as one of the true artistic geniuses of our times has not generally been complimented by his Big Screen acting career.
There have been many brilliant films about HIM – Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back, ABC’s Eat the Document and Scorcese’s No Direction Home for instance – but films involving him as a dramatic actor … well.
The sad thing is he is actually a brilliant actor! Any of his stage performances prove that – the hobo, the wild amphetamine fop, the white-faced ‘gypsy king’, the incendiary leather-clad biker, the stumbling eccentric rock n roller and, latterly, the riverboat captain, the growling, posing story-teller and purveyor of ancient poetry.
And his acting is subtle and multi-layered, containing multitudes of heroes and villains – with echoes in every nuanced movement of Hank Williams, Elvis, Little Richard, Guthrie, Ovid, Robert Burns and Arthur Rimbaud.
But film directors have seemed singularly unable to capture this genius on celluloid.
Dylan’s Alias in Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was far more mesmerising than the rest of this bad-tempered over blown film, Hearts of Fire was an embarrassment for Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand – Dylan was quirky and brilliant though.
Renaldo and Clara was stunning as far as the musical performances were concerned but Dylan let himself down by trying to make a poetic documentary fantasy love story travelogue that played for almost half a day!
And so to Masked and Anonymous, the 2003 dystopian film which bamboozled, entranced and embarrassed me and the Glorious Andrea…
Just before M&A came out we’d bought ourselves a surround-sound system for our telly which just served to amplify the fact we were headed at 90mph into middle-age.
It had all seemed so simple at first – 30 minutes to open the box, five hours to connect all the tweeters, monkey men and woofers. Another two hours to read the instructions and do it all again.
Simple!
Then we plugged it in and switched it on!
Amazing! Our ancient bulbous round-screen telly cascaded across the room like the flashing, spinning, clowning of Blackpool Lights – the surround-sound speakers burst into life with whoops and bells and whistling and cheering, puffing and blowing. Our telly looked shocked and abused but the system we’d attached it to had even taken over its screen and a big emoji of a grinning banana of a mouth appeared at the heart of its pixel life just below a shimmering, wobbly WELCOME!
Wow, we thought.
I have to admit we were well down our first bottle of red and our old hippy proclivities had already hung a heady smokey fug across the ceiling.
We felt good …
The fug got thicker as Andrea spent the next 40 minutes trying to get the cellophane wrapper off our DVD of M&A and the second bottle of red was opened.
Finally, I stuck our new DVD into the letterbox orifice of our old player. The Volcano hubbled and bubbled away on the coffee table, filling its dirigible of delight with vapour as our new sound system played the Mexicano opening to Bob’s new film with clarity and distinction.
And then Bob strode with purpose down the graffitied steps to take the bus to the future.
And that’s when it happened … stoned and a little bit squiffy I thought I had discovered the secret to Masked and Anonymous. The sound track.
The music was brilliant – everything from Diamond Joe to Down in the Flood! And his new magnificent growling crow of a voice…
But it was the fact that when the characters were conversing, there was no dialogue – there was the sound of tea-cups clinking, buses driving – the sounds of the city and the sounds of dystopia.
But no words! Bob had done it!
He’d made a silent film where the action spoke louder than words, where the music was the only vocality to lead the narrative. Bob had created a film of music and images and allowed the viewer to create their own narrative on the skeleton of pictures so startling and shocking – the murder of bus passengers, the death throws of a dying president, a carnival of showmen, show-women, performers, gypsies, journalists, writers, clowns, provocateurs and madness to match any of his ground-breaking works from the mid-Sixties.
It was magnificent – clink clink (of cups) humming noise of voices in the background, traffic going west … Bob’s crow-like brilliance “Now There’s a man you’ll hear about Most anywhere you go, And his holdings are in Texas And his name is Diamond Joe.”
The sound from our telly was exquisite and the bong boomed … then we returned to mysterious silence of Bob’s creativity ‘Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks, when you’re trying to be so quiet… “
One hour and 48 minutes in to the film the front door opened and our middle son walked in, listened to the silence on the TV, looked at us, looked back at TV, walked over to it and flicked a switch that brought ALL the speakers to life and low and behold Bob began to speak – and so did the rest of the cast … Masked and Anonymous took on a whole new aspect. It had words …
So, we watched it all again – and it was just as brilliant!
...If I know nothing else, I know at
least one thing is true:
that the sacred is in the ordinary, the common
things in life. They tell you that
everything is nonsense, that the laws
of nature are nonsense, gravity is
nonsense, relationships don’t exist,
jobs don’t exist. Everything is up
for grabs and there’s no cause of
anything. That’s what they’d like you
to believe. I guess you could say I
was pushed downhill, but my fall from
grace didn’t end at the bottom of
those stairs. It went on, and it
seemed to’ go on forever. All of life
is a balancing act, and we make
choices between extremes. Conformity
or freedom. Acceptance or doubt.
And do you know what, in a way, this little story about watching one of Dylan”s baffling trips into cinema, proves just how good his own film-making actually is.
Masked and Anonymous stood up – for us at least – as an almost silent movie, a long string of images and movement without the normal glue of narrative holding them together.
It was disconcerting because the soundtrack appeared to be representing the background noises of life and the only punctuation was the music.
The main thing is though that with all these elements missing, Masked and Anonymous wasn’t boring and kept our attention for more than an hour and fifty minutes.
But when the sound came on and we could react and understand the script, it didn’t make a mockery of what we’d been doing for the last 110 minutes, it actually validated it.
Dylan’s movie is a multi-layered multi-textual multi-dramatic work of art.
It was like a message from nowhere, a simple dignified tweet from beyond the Great Divide.
‘Rest in Peace Nanci Griffith’ … that’s all it said. The message was from country hero John Prine who died last year.
I met them both after a concert in the UK Midlands. A winter’s rainy night outside but the red velvet of traditional old English theatre, crackling fires inside, and the tinkling chatter of quintessential British accents in the foyer.
Nanci was tired after the show she’d just done … a marathon of beautiful, enigmatic, heart breaking but gentle songs, songs like Midnight at the Five and Dime.
She was waiting, with John, in the ‘green room’ at the back of the stage still sparkling with floating dust in the beams from the forgotten lights.
I seem to remember Nanci was sucking in the smoke of a cigarette and sipping from a beer. (My memory may be a bit smokey itself after twenty years in the ruins of time).
She looked cool, elegant, a little sassy. A demur Southern country wife with hidden sultry depths.
Nanci smiled and I smiled back.
John Prine wafted an amiable and bony hand from the slouching leather armchair that had almost consumed him. He was looking laconically bloated.
Nanci told me she’d been brought up 50 miles from Austin, Texas, and as a teenager played the clubs there but, then, in the 70s she chose to become a kindergarten teacher.
It wasn’t long though before she hankered after the travelling troubadour life again and in 1977 gave songwriting another chance.
And it worked.
We talked about the acclaim her 1993 covers collection, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” had garnered. It’s still one of my favourite albums, with guest appearances from John, Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan, who played harmonica for her on “Boots of Spanish Leather.”
How sad to have accidently come across John Prine’s posthumous tweet. It made that short chat all seem so far away, a dim trip down the memory lane of a woman’s artistry and my own pleasure in meeting her.
Now she is gone.
Born July 6th, 1953, in Seguin, Texas, Nanci Caroline Griffith began her performing career as a teenager, playing clubs and festivals around Texas.
We recently published the video looking at Bob Dylan’s strangely enigmatic and poetic history of America, Murder Most Foul, basically because it is quite brilliant.
In fact, the vid is, in our opinion, perfect companion to a brilliant song!
And today its director Bob Mori – award-winning film creator – contacted Our Society for publishing the article and our thoughts AND supplied us with a copy of vid he did for I Contain Multitudes …
Bob said: “ I am just seeing the MMF post you made = down the line in August of 2021.
Thanks for all these kind words regarding the music video. It was a passion project and an act of love, trying to honour the words of Mr. Dylan.
Both Dylan’s song and Mori’s film have of course been attacked – the film for featuring former US President Obama – and Dylan for the odd clunky lyric … but that’s all part of the art of creation and both men should stand proud.
Mori has edited feature films commercials, promos and experimental media projects.
His latest project was for Lionsgate and is a heist-thriller ’10 Minutes Gone…’
Well, all we at the preservationsociety and OurSociety say that this 17 minutes may be gone … but it was well spent.
Christo Andrus, one of our readers said this: “This video is a perfect compliment to this (archaeological relic); from the moment i first heard it (i must have replayed it dozens of times), it struck me Deeply (as i writer, i have been trying to capture ‘how it was, for me’, for over 50 years) it is my opinion that Every person in this country (& most of the world) have been in PTSD since that day…. a good explanation for why Our entire Govt has Been Dysfunctional since that day…. Bob’s dirge is a ‘first step’ back towards a healthier, saner, resolved national psyche…
And Michael Danzig said:
“This is a sensational piece of film-making, which translates Bob’s words into historical visual images that are spot on. I really appreciated the shot of Allen Dulles (the mastermind) right before LBJ, when he says we have someone to take your place. I hope people have noticed that all most all the reviews of this groundbreaking work from the greatest songwriter in history do not tackle the question that Bob directly asks. Why were we lied to? Who did this, and why? They choose to discuss the cultural references but ignore the relevant information that directly proposes that JFK was cut down for a reason by evil forces. Anyway, this is a great companion piece to the song. There is one image that the film-maker missed; when Bob sings, “Ride the pink horse…” he’s referring to a 1947 film noir work named, “Ride The Pink Horse.” It’s a quirky, strangely compelling film that, having seen it, I can understand why it would appeal to Bob’s sensibilities.”
Tell us what you think in the comment box below!
Seventeen minutes to kill … an amazing visual telling of Bob’s Murder Most Foul
Bob Dylan is the coolest man in the world, right? I think most of his fans will agree.
But we will also have to accept that not everybody sees him in that way, including my 90-year-old mother who still maintains after half a century that she can’t stand his ‘trilling’…
And as if to add injury to a personal slight, Odyssey, that hip online lifestyle magazine, for instance, put Morgan Freeman – a very cool dude indeed – at the top of its cool list.
Now, I think many of us could live with that, out of respect for Morgan if nothing else. He’s a forces vet who is, at 84, Dylan’s elder after all.
Then they put Brad Pitt at number 6. Fair enough. After all he is so cool that he did once dress up as a giant chicken to advertise, ‘el Pollo Loco’.
And he turned down a role in Apollo 13 to be in Se7en
AND was engaged to Gwyneth Paltrow
AND has been banned from visiting China because of Seven Years in Tibet.
But who the hell bent it for squeaky voiced, tattoo totem pole David Beckham? He got in at number 3 somehow.
And while we’re at it, who the hell is Kobe Bryant?
He’s classed as the 9th coolest man on earth.. and Odyssey describes him as the ‘realest’ man in the world!
WHAT?
Well, like Spartacus I stand up and shout: “No! I am the ‘realest’ man in the world!”
And, as I shout with pride, I’m joined by millions of others who have just as much right to mash the English language and blow their own trumpets…
No!, they cry! I am the ‘realest’ man in the world!
In fact Bob Dylan didn’t get a look in at all on this Odyssey cool list! He was left out in the cold, you might say.
And yet, at 80, Bob is so hot that he is really really cool – here is some factual evidence:
He once traded a priceless Andy Warhol painting for a couch
He has both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize under his belt
He predicted his appearance in a Victoria’s Secret commercial 40 years before it happened
He’s toured with everyone from Paul Simon (not cool as far as I’m concerned) to the Foo Fighters (quite cool)
Yep, way back in 2004, Bob Dylan appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial with model Adriana Lima. The ad used “Love Sick,” as Lima and Dylan explored the streets and canals of Venice.
Spookily, in an interview from the mid-1960s when asked what product might entice him to sell out, Dylan replied, “Ladies’ undergarments.”
Naughty Bob!
Then in 2018 his Royal Bob-ness showed a flash of anger at audience members who were constantly snapping him and the band.He stopped singing Blowing in the Wind to berate them with: “Take pictures or don’t take pictures, we can either play or we can pose, OK?”
He stood still for several seconds cynically posing for the crowd while the band pointed at offenders.
It was definitely a case of Mr Cool, Mr Right, Mr That Told Him… but then it all went a bit t*ts up for him.
We’ve all been through it, haven’t we? We’ve all done it, made our point, stood on our dignity and immediately slid right off it!
Have you seen dignity?
Well, Bob did one of his famous tip-toe walks, and tripped backwards over a guitar amp. It looked for an agonising second that he was going to hit the deck – a band mate reached out to grab him.
But Bob recovered, regained his feet, patted his hair and carried on like nothing had happened.
What a super trooper!
Plenty of people still describe Bob as ‘the joker man’ – a label he acquired right at the beginning of his career when he was pulling Chaplain-style comedy stunts on stage, in photos and scraps of film. He was good at it and has retained his sense of humour across parts of two centuries.
Bob is a funny man. Everybody says so.
But it was no joke when he met the Pope. He tripped up the steps as the Pope waited to greet him.
Bob was wearing his best Hank Williams outfit, resplendent in big boots and Stetson. The Pope waited in his white dress and best Pope regalia at the top of the stairs.
Some high-end ring kissing was only a few steps away when Bob stumbled and nearly fell.
Again.
Quickly, as befits the world’s coolest man, he recovered with aplomb, whipped off his Stetson in reverence and the two prophets came face to face.
John Paul told Italian Catholics that the answer was indeed “in the wind” — but not in the wind that blew things away, rather “in the wind of the spirit” that would lead them to Christ.
Now that’s cool!
So, let’s give Bob massive applause for the decades of unbelievable music, lyrics, singing, theatre, performing art, literature, poetry, prose, paintings, sketches, wrought iron gates, whisky, laughter and joy…
Here is one of the greatest artists of all time good-naturedly clapping along with his audience in Madrid in 2018 to Desolation Row.
Claudia Levy, the once-blonde bombshell who tried to blow a hole in Dylan’s sale of his songs, has earned quite a bit of celebrity off him over the years.
She was pictured at the launch of Scorese’s bleary Rolling Thunder fantasy film, for instance.
She also did an interview with Ray Padgett in Flagging Down the Double E’s.
It read, in parts, like a mash-up of Tangled Up in Blue and Highlands … “I first met Jacques in the grocery store. I don’t know why I gave him my phone number.
“I met Bob in the Dante Café, where I was working as a waitress … I said, “You look very familiar to me. Are you a dancer?” … I could see he was writing and it looked to me like he writing poetry or something … so I said, “Oh, are you a poet”? He said, “Well, I like to write.”
She drops names like fame bombs too… Allen Ginsberg, Jack Elliott, Abbie Hoffman, Joan Baez, the list goes on. And it’s all absolute fact I’m sure, just as she admits ‘The thing is, I was basically quite extraneous. I just watched everybody more than anything. I was having the time of my life’.
And what a fabulous time it all was for Claudia, just as it would have been for anybody who got the chance to jump on Bob’s almost psychedelic bus and dance and pose and sing and create theatre and film and music and poetry along with some of the most avant-garde names of the mid-mad 1970s.
I know many people disagree with me, but I found Rolling Thunder by Scorsese – one of my favourite film-makers – a bit misleading to say the least. People say I didn’t get the joke… and maybe I didn’t.
But the film does not really tell you what it was like for people like Claudia and the crew, hangers-on and ‘helpers’. The footage for instance is attributed to a rather angry film-maker who in reality is Martin Von Haselberg, husband of Bette Midler.
And, some say, Martin was actually playing the part of Jacques Levy whose influence on the tour was massive and included filming!
Then there is, of course, a politician who turns out to be the actor Michael Murphy.
Then Sharon Stone claims to have burst into tears when she realised that Bob’s Just Like a Woman was not based on her.
All I can see is that these non-people, misleading characters and bitter-sweet fantasies were ham-fisted attempts to capture Dylan’s mystical use of masks and white faces on this strange-days tour.
But what masked the real reason for Claudia to go after seven million of Bob’s $300m back catalogue? Was it the mask of greed? Opportunism? Or a genuine belief that Jacque’s estate was owed that money?
I’m sure it has to be the last one.
However, In January of this year, Dylan lawyer, Orin Snyder, called the Levy lawsuit ‘a sad attempt to unfairly profit off of the recent catalogue sale’.
“The plaintiffs have been paid everything they are owed,” Snyder said. “We are confident that we will prevail. And when we do, we will hold plaintiffs and their counsel responsible for bringing this meritless case.”
It is certainly true that when Bob was having writer’s block in the 70s he enlisted Jacques to help out. Until then Jacques had mainly been famous for directing the New York production of Oh! Calcutta! British drama critic Kenneth Tynan’s sex-mad review of everything a bit below the belt, so to speak.
Jacques had done the rounds and certainly wasn’t short of money. He’d earned a few million for sure.
He died in 2004 and an obituary in the UK Guardian newspaper had this to say, “much of Desire’s success lay in the interplay between Dylan and Levy and since then Dylan and his musicians have often reworked Levy’s contribution. In 1975, Levy effectively stage-managed Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue.”
But a few days ago the desire for a bit more dosh floundered: A judge in New York ruled in Bob’s favour.
Judge Barry Ostrager of the Supreme Court said the agreement drafted between Dylan and Levy in 1975 made it clear that he was not a participant in ownership of the material, and that his profit participation would consist of a share of songwriting royalties.
The court noted that Levy’s estate has continued to receive royalties from the co-written songs, before and after Dylan’s catalogue sale with no ownership conferred.
Ostrager quoted from the ’75 agreement, which describes Levy as an “employee-for-hire” as a lyricist — noting that the word “employee” was used for Levy “approximately 84 times” in the contract.
“We’re pleased with the decision,” Dylan’s attorney, Orin Snyder, said. “As we said when the case was filed, this lawsuit was a sad attempt to profit off the recent catalogue sale. We’re glad it’s now over.”
And so, what was a grand collaboration – between one of the world’s greatest artists and one of not such grand reputation but certainly of dignity, style and ability – has been tarnished by unnecessary exposure to the iron will and steel of America’s judicial system.
And a woman who certainly had quite a lot has been shown in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t have it all.
Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard said that Hill died in his sleep at his home in Houston, Texas. They did not give further details. He had recently suffered a hip injury.
Dusty had played with ZZ Top for over 50 years.
#dustydead #zztop
The kingdom of the man in the shadows isn’t there if he doesn’t want you to see it …
If Bob Dylan doesn’t want you to see him, then you don’t.
He’s not there …
And believe me the depleted army of Paps in California rarely chase celebs like him down the street any more anyway
It works far more simply than that. And it benefits the celeb, the Paps and, of course, the fan who still wants to know what his star is doing in his ascendancy or his dotage.
Nowadays celeb’s ‘people’ let the Paps know when their charge is going to be hitting the streets, whether, like Janis, it is noon or midnight.
Of course there’s always the off chance that an itinerant lens-man might spots a celeb’s car going somewhere. To the supermarket for instance.
But the days of the stalking paparazzi are a thing of the past.
So, to this article below …
When the story and pic came out (a) to celebrate Bob’s 80th birthday (b) when interest in him had been revived by the success of Rough and Rowdy Ways (c) when Bob was about to announce he was going to champion the cause of prostate cancer (d) when Shadow Kingdom was … well … standing in the shadows and (e) another bootleg album was on the way … it is pound for a penny that Bob and his people knew exactly what was going on and what they were doing.
And the Paps were grateful because, compared to the 80s and the 90s, they are having a lean time of it. Now they had a pic of a very popular funky cool pensioner indeed.
And they had a story!
And the story still running – was Bob wearing a wedding in that picture or not? Has he remarried? And who is it?
This is not prurient press interest in a little old man … this is the power of Bob’s celebrity and his deterioration to keep on keeping on until his day is done…
And don’t forget that ring on his finger isn’t a new thing, he’s been spotted sporting it at live performances for the last decade at least. Just nobody bothered to ask the question.
Here is the original story taken from publicity:
HAS BOB MARRIED AGAIN? WELL, THE ANSWER MY FRIEND IS BLOWING IN THE BLING!
SEE THE OTHER PHOTOS OF BOB AND THE RING BY CLICKING THE LINK AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE
Our favourite man of mystery Bob Dylan gave the world a birthday present! And something for his fans to think about!
And I for one love him for it!
Just days before his 80th Bob took to the streets of his happy stomping ground, Santa Monica, wearing, shades, a garish black and white shirt, cargo pants, big boots – and wait for it …
He’s also wearing what to all intents and purposes looks like a wedding ring!
But does it have the ring of truth to it? Take a look for yourself by clicking the link at the end of this article. We couldn’t bring the photos directly to you because they are exclusive at the moment.
Well, as a writer covering Dylan for many years for regional and national newspapers in the UK, I would remind everybody that Bob is not only one of the greatest artists in the world, he is also a king of chameleons.
And if he doesn’t want you to see him, then you don’t. He can quite happily disappear from the public eye for years except for his public performances.
Good on him, it adds to the legend behind his genius, part of the back story which began more than 60 years ago when he ‘killed off’ his parents.
The media, both social and traditional, is awash with stories about him at the moment, so why wouldn’t he join in and give us something to talk about at this milestone in his amazing career? Publicity is the life-blood of a superstar’s life…
He is a man dedicated to his family and he might well have decide that his rollicking rolling stone life needs a bit of stability and he could have tied the knot again behind closed doors at his 6,000 square foot mansion in Malibu. He’s certainly had a lot work carried out there in recent years. Santa Monica is less than 20 miles from his home near the Pacific Ocean.
Bob has put in a trampoline, a small water tower and a basketball court along with a small cabin with a boat in the backyard. Horses and dogs roam the property
In 2014 reports said Bob had split with a third wife, Darlene Springs after a brief marriage that was never acknowledged or confirmed.
One thing is for certain though, the enigmatic star has been quarantining in LA since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Santa Monica is a place close to Bob’s heart – he has a boxing club there and it is rumoured that he has even had a synagogue built behind the cafe in the picture above which some say he also owns.
All we can say is thanks Bob for so many decades of fabulous entertainment both on and off the stage.
To so many, Bob Dylan’s career in the 80s was drear and unfocussed … but there was a springtime and it happened in New York.
And here it is, documented as part of the never-ending bootleg series.
In some ways Bob Dylan in the 1980s was completely alternative, more than most of us ever noticed. He did a series of alternative versions of his already massive back-catalogue, he used an alternative voice, an alternative sartorial style and alternated between being hated and ridiculed.
And yet is so many ways, the truth is that the 80s was a brilliant part of his sometimes glittering, sometimes tarnished ballroom of a career.
In a way he was more alternative than he was perceived way back in the Sixties when he was branded like ‘pants and shirts’ as the voice of a generation and a folk hero.
Well, he was a folk hero for a bit, yes – and it’s still used as a ‘scratch’ biog by writers and bloggers who never noticed he actually moved like warm mercury in to blues, rock, country, folk, bluegrass, spiritual and Sinatra-style crooning.
And now, as Shadow Kingdom showed, he is plugged in to the cyber world of the covid-ridden PRESENT..
But from Empire Burlesque to Down in the Groove, Dylan seemed to be drifting to far from the shore of his audience – and yet his concerts, on the whole, were brilliant.
And now we are going back there with Springtime in New York, from 1980 – 1985
This next part of the bootleg series offers loads of alternate takes, unreleased numbers and rehearsals.
I for one want to back there…
Available as a 2 x LP or 2 x CD set, or a five-disc deluxe set, and will be released on September 17th.
