So, I finished reading Positively 4th Street a little while ago. It’s a neat book about the life and times of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, mostly. I’m a weirdo for reading stuff like that maybe, but hey, what’re ya gonna do? So anyway, some of the more interesting tidbits that come to mind are;

– Dylan and Baez dated back then quite a bit, even got close to getting married,
– Baez is basically responsible for Dylan’s rise to fame, she had him sing at her shows before he could get his own gigs, they did duets together, she scolded her very conservative audience for talking during his set(!).
– Bob recorded Subterranean Homesick Blues and a few other songs from Bringing It All Back Home with a group of studio musicians the very first time they had met, let alone played together. The musicians hadn’t even learned the songs, it’s all more or less ad lib. That’s the take they used for the album. That’s way cool.
– Dylan invented most of his public persona several times over the course of his career, and the book I read made it out like Dylan only wrote protest songs because they would sell well, he abandoned the whole social protest thing after a period to do rock and roll with The Band, known as The Hawks at the time.
– During this same period Dylan also nearly drank and drugged himself to death. Shocker, I know.

Anyway, there’s lots more stuff in here that’s pretty neat. One revelation was that these folk musicians really didn’t do concerts very much, really much less than I thought. Also, most excellently there are several quotes from Tom Rush in there, he was always around there in the beginning. Cool stuff.

That will be all for today.