Speaker 1: Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Double Elvis. Bob Dylan was a musical genius
Speaker 1: and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He
Speaker 1: didn't follow leaders. He chased that thin, wild mercury sound.
Speaker 1: He never looked back. Even as the times changed, and
Speaker 1: as the times changed, Bob Dylan changed. He tried on
Speaker 1: and discarded identities like they were mass. He transformed. He
Speaker 1: transfigured in somewhere along the way, the Bob Dylan that
Speaker 1: you thought you knew died. This is his story. This
Speaker 1: is Dr Ed Sailor once again. It's now day two
Speaker 1: U nineteen sixty six. The patient Robert Zimmerman a K
Speaker 1: eight Bob Dylan remains here at my home in Middletown,
Speaker 1: New York. He is showing some signs of improvement physically,
Speaker 1: although he remains unsure of the details of his motorcycle accident.
Speaker 1: He can't seem to play specifics or even explain the
Speaker 1: cause of his injuries. He is still someone erratic and
Speaker 1: is complaining of pain all over his body. Despite his complaints,
Speaker 1: something unable to detect major problems. I have given him
Speaker 1: morphine to calm him down and numb his pain. There
Speaker 1: is just one thing that needs to be addressed, though
Speaker 1: possibly without psychiatric evaluation. He keeps talking about about destiny.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about that. Destiny is a
Speaker 1: feeling you have about yourself. You know something about yourself
Speaker 1: that nobody else does. I always believed that had a
Speaker 1: great sense of destiny. I always felt that was headed
Speaker 1: for bright lights. I talked to you before about inventing yourself.
Speaker 1: The universe helped me realize that. It also helped me
Speaker 1: believe in myself, and believing in myself gave me a
Speaker 1: lesson to invent more. Which I did. Things happened to
Speaker 1: me in my life that signal of the path I
Speaker 1: should take. I feel like I made a deal with
Speaker 1: someone who's been guiding me. But the universe has helped
Speaker 1: me transform and make myself again again. I've lived multiple
Speaker 1: lives in my ears, done so many things, and left
Speaker 1: so much blood on the tracks. Chapter two, Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: is a Hell's ANGELA those doors, I can still see
Speaker 1: them now. The paint was peeling off of them. White
Speaker 1: gave way to a faded blue. As I put my
Speaker 1: hand to the door, I could hear screaming from the
Speaker 1: other side. I had no idea what I would find
Speaker 1: behind it. I pushed it open and prayed for what
Speaker 1: I might see on the other side. After the motorcycle crash,
Speaker 1: I took it easy, like I told you. I settled
Speaker 1: into family life, and while writing songs wasn't my top
Speaker 1: priority in the beginning, I knew it wouldn't be long
Speaker 1: before I was back to it writing recording. I also
Speaker 1: tried to finish that film we'd shot for ABC on
Speaker 1: the UK tour. I thought we should shoot some additional
Speaker 1: scenes to finish it off. So Rick Danko and Richard
Speaker 1: Manuel from The Hawks as they were known, then joined
Speaker 1: me in Woodstock. The Hawks were my touring band. They
Speaker 1: became the And of course, and went on to be
Speaker 1: quite successful in their own right. It was February and
Speaker 1: it was freezing. Streams were iced over and the roofs
Speaker 1: of the houses and Woodstock had a smattering of snow.
Speaker 1: It felt like a magical place. The rest of the Hawks,
Speaker 1: including Robbie robertson leave on Helm Garth Hudson, drifted up
Speaker 1: from New York City, joining us in our frozen wonderland.
Speaker 1: I guess that's no real surprise. They were a road
Speaker 1: band without a road to go on, it made sense
Speaker 1: for us all to get together. Plus, after what we
Speaker 1: went through on that tour of England, we all felt
Speaker 1: some sort of bond. I guess I hadn't intended to
Speaker 1: record an album in Woodstock, the double album that appeared
Speaker 1: almost a decade later, the basement tapes that kind of
Speaker 1: just happened. Destiny is a feeling. We started recording for
Speaker 1: Fun at my house high Low, Hi. We set up
Speaker 1: some tape recorders in the red Room, which wasn't actually
Speaker 1: read but had been at one time, and the name
Speaker 1: just stuck. Soon I realized that the one thing I
Speaker 1: had gained since the crash, a sense of separation between
Speaker 1: my music and my life. I guess that's what they
Speaker 1: call work life balanced these days. Well, that was being
Speaker 1: marginalized by this record. I didn't want to be working
Speaker 1: where my home was, so we moved to a house
Speaker 1: that Garth, Richard and Rick had rented. It was a
Speaker 1: newly built house with pink siding, a soft, faded pink
Speaker 1: that blended well with its surroundings. Because of that, we
Speaker 1: started calling it Big Pink. I don't know if everything
Speaker 1: in Woodstock was named after the color it was or
Speaker 1: had once been, but that was certainly my experience. It
Speaker 1: became a recording environment like no other. No pressure, no
Speaker 1: watching the clock, no having to go home at a
Speaker 1: certain time, inventing yourself. It was purely music based. We
Speaker 1: were there for the songs to play together. I didn't
Speaker 1: even think the world would ever hear the stuff we
Speaker 1: were recording, let alone it becoming this supposedly legendary thing
Speaker 1: to invent. Once at Big Pink, we settled into a routine.
Speaker 1: I realized routine was what I craved at that point.
Speaker 1: You see, so every day I'd show up at noon,
Speaker 1: usually with my poodle, his name was Hamlet. I'd put
Speaker 1: on a pot of coffee, make sure to clatter around
Speaker 1: extra loud. If the band were still in bed, then
Speaker 1: I'd sit at the typewriter and wait for them to
Speaker 1: join me. You know, that's how they started calling themselves
Speaker 1: the band, you know, Capital T, Capital B, right, because
Speaker 1: everybody just referred to them as the band. They didn't
Speaker 1: begin performing under that name until the next year. If
Speaker 1: you didn't believe me when I said these songs were
Speaker 1: never intended to be released in the form we recorded them,
Speaker 1: then take Clothesline Saga as an example, we cut that
Speaker 1: as a joke. Back then, Clothesline Saga was a song
Speaker 1: called Answer to Ode, the ode in question being Ode
Speaker 1: to Billy Joe, a Bobby Gentry song man. That song
Speaker 1: that was everywhere, and I mean everywhere. You turned on
Speaker 1: the radio and you were never more than five minutes
Speaker 1: away from it. It was inescapable. The whole country was
Speaker 1: talking about it. I've been thinking a lot about that.
Speaker 1: The story of the thing is the suicide of a
Speaker 1: kid named Billy Joe McAllister is told by a young
Speaker 1: woman who has had something to do with the boy's death.
Speaker 1: She's somehow involved or something has happened, but you never
Speaker 1: find out what. That's the secret. The secret of the
Speaker 1: song is. It's secret. This thing became huge. It was
Speaker 1: like who shot Jr? Decades before people were asked sing
Speaker 1: that based on some TV show, you know something about
Speaker 1: yourself that nobody else does. I mean, hell, Bobby Gentry
Speaker 1: even appeared in Life magazine. That's how big it was.
Speaker 1: Closed Line Saga wasn't really meant to be an answer
Speaker 1: to it, more of a joke, a kind of a parody.
Speaker 1: I guess point being that's what those sessions were about. Fun,
Speaker 1: cutting loose well to begin with, At least in those sessions,
Speaker 1: we've blurred the lines between the old music of America
Speaker 1: and our new compositions. I felt like we were continuing
Speaker 1: in old tradition, which was ironic given the public opinion
Speaker 1: of me at the time, calling me judas because I
Speaker 1: plugged in a new fangled electric guitar. Geez, Louise, I
Speaker 1: talked to you before about inventing yourself. I also personally
Speaker 1: found common ground with the stories in these old songs,
Speaker 1: with the people who wrote them, who were in them,
Speaker 1: people like Doc Boggs, a hardened coal miner and banjo player.
Speaker 1: He was like an Appalachian Robert Johnson. He made music
Speaker 1: about death, always about death. He was an outlaw, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I could relate to that. These songs
Speaker 1: were healing from me sense of destiny. One afternoon, with
Speaker 1: the basement windows open and the breeze passing through, we
Speaker 1: cut the song I Shall Be Released. While the majority
Speaker 1: of the recording with the Hawks had been fun and
Speaker 1: care free, when we cut that song, I knew, I
Speaker 1: knew there was something more. This wasn't just about having fun,
Speaker 1: This was my return. I felt like crying When we
Speaker 1: were cutting that, I thought I'd cry and never stopped.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful. Actually that's not true. You want to
Speaker 1: know what was really going on as those sessions progressed money,
Speaker 1: that's what. Yeah, In the early days, it was for fun,
Speaker 1: like a gang in a clubhouse, and that didn't stop.
Speaker 1: But we needed to cut demos to sell to other artists. Well, Albert,
Speaker 1: my manager, needed demos for other artists. I had always
Speaker 1: had a successful career of writing songs that were covered
Speaker 1: by other artists, and that needed to continue. I wasn't
Speaker 1: going on tour anytime soon. I still had bills to pay.
Speaker 1: You know. I made a deal with someone. It was
Speaker 1: successful too. Some of those big pink songs did well.
Speaker 1: Manford Man had a top ten hit with Quinn the
Speaker 1: Eskimo the Mighty Quinn. The Birds charted with You Ain't
Speaker 1: Going Nowhere, and Peter Paul and Mary had a hit
Speaker 1: with Too Much and Nothing. Sooner or later you come
Speaker 1: to realize that this business, the business, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really all about money. You can't escape it. The world
Speaker 1: is powered by money. You either jump aboard that train
Speaker 1: or you get crushed by it. And I had to
Speaker 1: choose a man dressed all in white, led me down
Speaker 1: a corridor. There were these doors everywhere. There must have
Speaker 1: been fifty, no sixty, all in a straight line. They
Speaker 1: all had a thick, square glass viewing window. Each one
Speaker 1: smudged and discolored, brown and yellow crept up their sides. Finally,
Speaker 1: the man said to me, said this is the one
Speaker 1: you're looking for, and my heart leapt. I told you
Speaker 1: about how Bob Dylan died, how he died on that
Speaker 1: motorbike that day in Woodstock, But he was also born too,
Speaker 1: Ninette Man. That was a year for me. People talk
Speaker 1: about important years in my career, they all mattered one
Speaker 1: way or another. But sixty one, that was a year
Speaker 1: I've lived multiple lives lives. It was the year I
Speaker 1: met the King Woody Guthrie. It was the year I
Speaker 1: started playing New York. The year I settled on the
Speaker 1: spelling of my last name, d y l A N.
Speaker 1: Robert Zimmerman had been my birth name, but I had
Speaker 1: been changing it around for a while until that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the year I became that man, that artist,
Speaker 1: that persona he was born to invent. Two things happened
Speaker 1: that year, two that are forever linked. One led to
Speaker 1: the other, and that other led straight back to the first.
Speaker 1: It was the year I realized that fate and destiny
Speaker 1: play a role in life, and you must make deals
Speaker 1: with those fates and destinies. Universe has helped me transform.
Speaker 1: It all started in California. There was this Hell's Angels guy.
Speaker 1: He was about my age at the time, young or
Speaker 1: something like that. He was the president of the San
Speaker 1: Bernardino chapter of the Motorcycle Club. He was cruising down
Speaker 1: the highway, going fast and getting faster. The whole chapter
Speaker 1: was riding home from the Base Lake Run, an annual
Speaker 1: angel event immortalized in that Hunter S. Thompson book. His
Speaker 1: bike pipes were gunning, but there was a problem, a
Speaker 1: problem that, like all lingering problems, started out small and
Speaker 1: ended in catastrophe. Three weeks later, and on the other
Speaker 1: side of the country, I'm in the wings of Gertie's
Speaker 1: Folk City in New York. Girty's was a legendary venue
Speaker 1: on the folk scene. Everyone played it and it was
Speaker 1: the place you went to see the best of the best.
Speaker 1: It was also the place artists were made. Destiny is
Speaker 1: a feeling of that night. I wore a shirt tie
Speaker 1: and a waistcoat, and I topped it off with a
Speaker 1: motorcycle hat. I was nervous. I stood there in the wings.
Speaker 1: My hands were sweating, my toes twitching. I was due
Speaker 1: to go on any second. You know. There's nothing like
Speaker 1: that feeling of standing by a stage just before you
Speaker 1: go on. It's like a bardo, the Buddhists would say,
Speaker 1: an intense, timeless place, especially on that night because it
Speaker 1: was my first time there. The universe has helped me transform.
Speaker 1: Girty's was hot and busy. It felt like I could
Speaker 1: be born or killed on that stage. It was like
Speaker 1: life and death for that scene. Back in California, that
Speaker 1: San Bernardino angel realized what was wrong. The muffler on
Speaker 1: his bike could come off. It had just been wired
Speaker 1: on until he could get around to welding it, but
Speaker 1: now it was on the road a few hundred yards back.
Speaker 1: He pulls a U turn to go back and get it,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't see another angel flying along the wrong
Speaker 1: side of the road as he turns the head of
Speaker 1: bright lights. Of course, then he sees him straight away,
Speaker 1: but he knows it's too late. In New York, they
Speaker 1: announced my name, my stomach doest Somersaults I try and
Speaker 1: look nonchalant as I walk onto the stage. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I failed. The stage of Girty's wasn't really a stage
Speaker 1: at all. It was more like a raised platform too microphones,
Speaker 1: one which looked like it was from a CBS radio
Speaker 1: station that flat news mike they had in the thirties,
Speaker 1: was pointed at my guitar. The other was one that
Speaker 1: would have looked at home in front of Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 1: That was from my voice. It instantly felt right in
Speaker 1: front of me. For the briefest moment, I felt like Frank.
Speaker 1: I can't explain it. I just felt like I had
Speaker 1: played this place a thousand times, like the stars are aligning,
Speaker 1: like I gained something from somewhere else. I talked to
Speaker 1: you before about inventing yourself. I welcomed the crowd and
Speaker 1: with my hands on my gifts and acoustics, saying Rangers
Speaker 1: Command by Woody Guthrie back in California. After that, you turn.
Speaker 1: The Angel tried to avoid the other bike by throwing
Speaker 1: his ride left, but it was not enough. The road
Speaker 1: was too narrow and both bikes collided, smashing into one another.
Speaker 1: Metal crunches against metal, last slit skin. Rubbert burns against pavement,
Speaker 1: there's black marks all across the road. That horrible, blunt
Speaker 1: sound of the impact reverberating round and now it's accompanied
Speaker 1: by the smell of gasoline rising up from the wreckage.
Speaker 1: In New York, feedback screeched from my microphone at Gertie's,
Speaker 1: I apologized before singing a song arranged by everyone's favorite
Speaker 1: band introducer Alan Lomax, Dink's song you Know That. It
Speaker 1: was that song which came halfway through my set when
Speaker 1: it was confirmed to me that I knew I had
Speaker 1: done it. I'd won them over. The night was mine.
Speaker 1: That also helped me believe in myself. The day after
Speaker 1: the show, I appeared in the New York Times for
Speaker 1: the first time. It was a glowing review announcing my
Speaker 1: arrival in New York. The day after the Times piece
Speaker 1: came out, I was standing in the Columbia Records producer
Speaker 1: John Hammond, who had met a couple of weeks earlier.
Speaker 1: He's offering me a recording contract. Six months later, I
Speaker 1: released my debut album, Destiny Is a Feeling You Have
Speaker 1: about Yourself. It was a happy ending in New York,
Speaker 1: but back in California, California wasn't so good. The President
Speaker 1: of the San Bernardino Chapter didn't make it home that day.
Speaker 1: In fact, he died instantly on the road, the muffler
Speaker 1: from his bike a few hundred yards back in his wake.
Speaker 1: It was September three. But that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the story. This is why I'm telling you all this.
Speaker 1: I've lived multiple lives in the President of the San
Speaker 1: Bernardino Chapter. His name, this is the thing. His name
Speaker 1: was Robert Zimmerman. Don't you think that's strange? Everything happened
Speaker 1: so quickly for me in New York. It all snapped
Speaker 1: into action after Bobby Zimmerman died on that highway transfiguration
Speaker 1: three weeks before the Gurdie Show. He stopped being Robert Zimmerman.
Speaker 1: And in a different way, I stopped being Robert Zimmerman.
Speaker 1: I was born. You know something about yourself that nobody
Speaker 1: else does. I told you about the motorcycle crash that
Speaker 1: killed the Bob Dylan. You knew, well there was another
Speaker 1: crash that gave birth to him too. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know this myself. No, it's not why I wrote a
Speaker 1: song called Highway sixty one Revisited, or why I chose
Speaker 1: that as the title from my sixth album, Highway sixty
Speaker 1: one is a road that runs from Duluth, where I
Speaker 1: grew up, to New Orleans. But I will agree that
Speaker 1: it is strange that what happened on a highway and
Speaker 1: sixty one had such an impact on me. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: the universe talking back and leaving behind some clues. Regardless,
Speaker 1: I always felt different for years, decades even, and then
Speaker 1: I found out why there was something different in my soul,
Speaker 1: in my destiny around that time. Transfiguration is a change
Speaker 1: in form or spirit. I didn't know it then, but
Speaker 1: that's what I was going through. I'd had a new power,
Speaker 1: a new addition to myself, brought from somewhere else. The
Speaker 1: universe helped me realize that a casual connectedness you heard
Speaker 1: of that it's the idea that two things with no
Speaker 1: cause and effect between them are on some level responsible
Speaker 1: for each other's manifestation. It's what allowed me to crawl
Speaker 1: out from under the chaos and fly above it. That's
Speaker 1: how I can still do what I do. But the
Speaker 1: problem with it is it never stops. Whether you like
Speaker 1: it or not, it never stops. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: after this. We were were the room was small and
Speaker 1: yet imposing. It's white walls of brick were thick, felt
Speaker 1: like they'd been imported right from Victorian London. In the
Speaker 1: corner was a single wire framed bed with itchy white
Speaker 1: sheets and a gray blanket on top of it. I
Speaker 1: pulled it back, stenciled onto it and yellow typeface print
Speaker 1: with the words gray Stone Park Psychiatric Hospital. After that
Speaker 1: motorcycle crashing Woodstock, I didn't play live for almost two years.
Speaker 1: It would take something big and important to get me
Speaker 1: back on stage after what happened on that previous tour
Speaker 1: of the UK, that Judas tour. I've lived multiple lives
Speaker 1: in my If you'd have asked me back then when
Speaker 1: I would be on the stage again, I would have
Speaker 1: told you it would be a very, very long time.
Speaker 1: But things change. Destiny isn't always yours to choose. When
Speaker 1: I did play live again, I wished it was years
Speaker 1: down the line, but for different reasons, done so many things.
Speaker 1: It was January at Carnegie Hall, and it was on
Speaker 1: one of the saddest nights of my life. I met
Speaker 1: Woody Guthrie in one I told you that big year.
Speaker 1: His music ruled my world for a long time. I
Speaker 1: always believed you could listen to his songs and learn
Speaker 1: to live. I mean literally. I'd only been in New
Speaker 1: York for five days when I tracked him down. I
Speaker 1: knew being in the same city as him meant I
Speaker 1: had to see him as soon as possible. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't how I imagined it. When I met him. He
Speaker 1: was not functioning at I still remember the first journey
Speaker 1: to see him. I got the bus from the Port
Speaker 1: Authority terminal, made the hour and a half ride, and
Speaker 1: walked the final half mile up a big hill. The
Speaker 1: building he was living and loomed into view as I
Speaker 1: walked down that hill. There was a hospital, at least
Speaker 1: that's what they called it, but it was really an asylum,
Speaker 1: one thousand acres of distress set in the New Jersey countryside.
Speaker 1: It was a place that had no spiritual hope of
Speaker 1: any kind. It was somehow oversized, built out of granite,
Speaker 1: full of anxiety. It wasn't the kind of place anyone
Speaker 1: should be let alone the true voice of the American spirit.
Speaker 1: Like all institutions of its kind, who was underfunded and understaffed,
Speaker 1: it looked like the kind of place that could be
Speaker 1: taken out of service at any minute, but due to
Speaker 1: the sheer desperation of the city, suation carried on existing
Speaker 1: wood He had been suffering from Huntington's disease, although at
Speaker 1: the time they thought it might have been some kind
Speaker 1: of schizophrenia. You know something about yourself that nobody else does.
Speaker 1: My first visit is still so vivid. I remember pushing
Speaker 1: open the heavy wooden doors of the front entrance, seeing
Speaker 1: a once grand double staircase, then the quiet of walking
Speaker 1: down the corridor with the Orderly. The whole place had
Speaker 1: a threatening silence, but it was punctuated by loud noises
Speaker 1: every so often shout here, of banging there. The whole
Speaker 1: building was arresting to your senses, bright lights. The Orderly
Speaker 1: showed me to Woody's room and I waited there for him.
Speaker 1: When he arrived, they had to bring him in on
Speaker 1: a wheelchair. He could barely move. I was told his
Speaker 1: speech weather good days and bad, and I was shattered
Speaker 1: to learn the possibility of him performing was long behind him.
Speaker 1: We spoke as much as we could. Eventually, on subsequent visits,
Speaker 1: I played for him, usually his own songs. He liked
Speaker 1: it would often ask for specific songs. I felt it
Speaker 1: was my duty to play for him a privilege. Even
Speaker 1: patients would come in and out as I played. There
Speaker 1: was a guy who was constantly falling to his knees.
Speaker 1: He had fallen and get back up again and repeat.
Speaker 1: There was another who thought he was being chased by spiders.
Speaker 1: He'd run around his circles. Someone else imagined he was
Speaker 1: the president who walked around and Uncle Sam had would
Speaker 1: he just sat there in the middle of them. As
Speaker 1: I was leaving at the end of that first visit,
Speaker 1: he beckoned me towards him. He had a little card
Speaker 1: that he weakly handed over to me, and it read,
Speaker 1: I ain't dead yet. I've kept it ever since. I
Speaker 1: would try to visit him as much as possible. From
Speaker 1: that day on, I was always on the bus then
Speaker 1: walking up that hill. That building put a rattlesnake into
Speaker 1: my stomach each time it came into view. I've been
Speaker 1: thinking a lot about that. During one trip, when he
Speaker 1: was having a good day wood he told me about
Speaker 1: a box of poems and songs that hadn't been put
Speaker 1: to melodies yet. They were stored in a basement in
Speaker 1: his house on Coney Island. He told me they were mine.
Speaker 1: If I wanted them. I just had to go and
Speaker 1: see his wife, Margie. A few days later, in the
Speaker 1: freezing cold New York winter, I was on the subway
Speaker 1: from West Fourth Street, riding it all the way to
Speaker 1: the last stop. His Coney Island house was across the field,
Speaker 1: so I began my journey. A few steps in in
Speaker 1: the field had turned to a swamp. I sank to
Speaker 1: knee level, but I kept going anyway. I was a
Speaker 1: servant to Woody. When I got to the other end,
Speaker 1: my pants and shoes were drenched. They actually started to freeze.
Speaker 1: My toes were numb too, and my legs were going
Speaker 1: the same way. I desperately knocked at the door, but
Speaker 1: to my surprise, I didn't find Margie. Instead, there was
Speaker 1: a much younger woman who turned out to be the babysitter.
Speaker 1: She explained Margie was out and that she didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about any poems or songs. I've been thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about that. I ended up back on the subway platform,
Speaker 1: even more drenched than before, which was almost physically impossible.
Speaker 1: I never did get my hands on those songs or poems,
Speaker 1: but this guy named Billy Bragg did. Forty years later,
Speaker 1: He and that band Wilco put melodies to them and
Speaker 1: brought them to life. As for Woody, Woody wouldn't have
Speaker 1: an easy road to travel. I carried on visiting him,
Speaker 1: but he got worse and worse. Huntington's does terrible things
Speaker 1: to a person, uncharacteristic aggression, emotional volatility, social disinhibition. It's
Speaker 1: like watching a man morph into something else in front
Speaker 1: of your eyes, but not in a good way. He
Speaker 1: lost his speech, then he was bedbound. On my last visit,
Speaker 1: I still saw the Woody I had listened to for
Speaker 1: years in his eyes, but everything else was different. He
Speaker 1: died aged fifty five and nineteen sixty seven. There's a
Speaker 1: legend about him being asked about his religion on his
Speaker 1: deathbed and he replied, all of them in the orderly
Speaker 1: or whoever said, there's no box for that on this form,
Speaker 1: so wood he said, then say none of them. Now,
Speaker 1: I told you he lost his speech, so I don't
Speaker 1: think that's what really happened, but as sure as a
Speaker 1: fitting story for Woody. In ninety eight, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to play a show at all, any show, but this
Speaker 1: was for Woody, for his legacy, for everything he gave me,
Speaker 1: for everything, he gave folk music for everything. He gave America,
Speaker 1: for all religions and for no religions, again and again.
Speaker 1: It was an honor to play that memorial concert for
Speaker 1: him at Carnegie Hall. I opened up with his song
Speaker 1: I Ain't Got no Home, and by the time I
Speaker 1: was finishing up on my second, another woody original, Dear
Speaker 1: Mrs Roosevelt, I thought I would start crying and never stopped.
Speaker 1: And this time that's the truth. In early night, Garth
Speaker 1: Hudson rubbed his full beard as he stood outside the
Speaker 1: house he'd come to call Big Pink, took one last
Speaker 1: look at it for picking up a large pine box.
Speaker 1: The box's exterior was beautifully varnished. Garth ran his hands
Speaker 1: down its smooth sides. It had taken him a while
Speaker 1: to make it, but he didn't mind. One of the
Speaker 1: perfect transport for his precious cargo. After struggling to handle
Speaker 1: both the box and his car's door, he put the
Speaker 1: box onto the back seat of his station wagon, carefully
Speaker 1: making sure it wouldn't slide around. During the fifteen minute
Speaker 1: drive to Bearsville and home of Albert Grossman. Garth drive
Speaker 1: reminded him of the beauty of woodsuck it's a cold day,
Speaker 1: but the sun was bright yellow. It lit the small
Speaker 1: roads lined with trees in a never ending stretch of
Speaker 1: telephone poles. Upon his rival at the Grossman's, Albert's wife, Sally,
Speaker 1: opened the door. She hadn't been expecting anyone to visit
Speaker 1: that day, least of all the keyboard player for the band.
Speaker 1: She explained to Garth that Albert was out. Garth didn't
Speaker 1: feel much like waiting around in the large, messy kitchen.
Speaker 1: Garth carefully removed the lid of the pine box, revealing
Speaker 1: real to real tapes, each one wrapped in cardboard notated
Speaker 1: with Garth's precise, fluid handwriting. In that box was the
Speaker 1: entirety of what would come to be known as the
Speaker 1: Basement Tapes, every single song the band and Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: had recorded together in those fabled Woodstock months. But it
Speaker 1: was more than that. They weren't just songs, and there
Speaker 1: were moments in their conversations, jokes, memories. It was the
Speaker 1: sound of an icon coming back as a thing that
Speaker 1: had given him micn status in the first place. It
Speaker 1: was also the sound of a legendary band finding their
Speaker 1: and growing into what they would become. At points on
Speaker 1: those tapes, you could hear the Hawks becoming the band,
Speaker 1: the one that would announce itself to the world with
Speaker 1: their legendary nine debut album Music from Big Pink. It
Speaker 1: was the sound of an old America blended with the
Speaker 1: sound of the counterculture. It was an important musical artifact,
Speaker 1: and this time would show a cultural one too. Garth,
Speaker 1: with an uncharacteristically serious face, looked directly into Sally Grossman's
Speaker 1: eyes and told her to guard the tapes with her life.
Speaker 1: She must not let them leave the house with anyone
Speaker 1: except maybe Bob Dylan, and briefly loaning them to the
Speaker 1: Grossman's Garth Hudson held onto the tapes for decades until finally,
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, he sold them to Jan House
Speaker 1: to Canadian music archivist and producer Housed began the huge
Speaker 1: task of digitizing the fragile home recordings that had barely
Speaker 1: seen the light of day since Lindon B. Johnson was
Speaker 1: in the White House. Most of the tapes held up,
Speaker 1: but to the producer's dismay, one of them was recorded
Speaker 1: over by the band's bass guitarist, Rick Danko. Rick had
Speaker 1: left the tape running while at home trying out some
Speaker 1: piano ideas. After his experiment on the keys, he didn't
Speaker 1: shut the recorder off, so most of the remaining tape
Speaker 1: featured Rick and his girlfriend watching television. No one knows
Speaker 1: what was originally on that tape. It was in that
Speaker 1: moment lost Forever House finished his cleanup, and the songs
Speaker 1: were released by Bob Dylan in two thousand and fourteen
Speaker 1: as the Basement Tapes Complete. The set was nominated for
Speaker 1: the Best Historical Album at the Grammys and finally gave
Speaker 1: the world the full story of the recording that took
Speaker 1: place a Big Pink In the same year, Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: magazine drove Garth Hudson around Woodstock. He was back there
Speaker 1: for the first time since nineteen as part of the
Speaker 1: promotion for the new box set. On his way to
Speaker 1: the Big Pinkhouse, he passed places he'd never seen before,
Speaker 1: like a chain drug store that sticks out of the
Speaker 1: geography like an unwelcome sore thumb. He also saw some
Speaker 1: sights he had seen before, like the motel now boarded
Speaker 1: up where the band stayed before Big Tank back in
Speaker 1: the very early days. He also saw Dylan's old home
Speaker 1: Hi Lo Ha, which elicited a smile on Garth's face when,
Speaker 1: for a brief moment he spied the red room through
Speaker 1: the trees. His smile disappeared. At the next site and
Speaker 1: the car passed a cemetery, Garth spoke up Rick and
Speaker 1: leave On are buried there. When they got to Big Pink,
Speaker 1: Garth instantly remarked at how much smaller it now looked.
Speaker 1: He spent the next few hours looking around the place.
Speaker 1: He ran his hands over the window frames pine original
Speaker 1: apparently it reminded him of that box he made years ago,
Speaker 1: and he also played on an organ that the current
Speaker 1: owners had installed for the many music tourists who came
Speaker 1: to stay at the joint. Later, Garth made his way
Speaker 1: down to the basement, which is occasionally rented out as
Speaker 1: a studio, and with a smile on his face, he
Speaker 1: remarked to everyone present about the basement's limitations for music recording.
Speaker 1: There's a happy return, though. When it came time to leave,
Speaker 1: Garth took one last look at the place. He knelt
Speaker 1: down and scooped a small handful of gravel into his
Speaker 1: hand and then stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Big
Speaker 1: Pink became a sanctuary for Bob Dylan in the band,
Speaker 1: a place where the woodstock breeze danced in through the
Speaker 1: windows and brought something special with it. Winemakers called it
Speaker 1: tear War, a tranquil mix of domesticity and creativity, two
Speaker 1: things that usually don't go hand in hand. But they
Speaker 1: weren't able to remain in their safe haven forever. Eventually
Speaker 1: they all had to venture back out into the real world.
Speaker 1: Out there, in the real world, life wasn't always a
Speaker 1: woodstock breeze. In fact, it could be quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: The calm always came before the storm, and what lay
Speaker 1: ahead was going to put a lot of blood on
Speaker 1: the tracks. Blood on the Tracks produced by Double Elvis
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. It's hosted an executive
Speaker 1: produced by me Jake Brennan, also executive produced by Brady Sadly.
Speaker 1: Zeth Lundie is lead editor and producer. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Ben Burrow, Story and copy editing by Pat Healey,
Speaker 1: Mixing and sound designed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and
Speaker 1: score elements by Ryan Spreaker. This episode feature Chris Anzeloni
Speaker 1: is Bob Dylan. Sources for this episode are available at
Speaker 1: Double Elvis dot Com and the Blood of the Tracks
Speaker 1: series page. Follow Double Elvis on Instagram at double Elvis
Speaker 1: and on Twitch at s Grace Sland Talks. Need You
Speaker 1: Talk to Me per Usual on Instagram and Twitter at
Speaker 1: Disgrace Land, Pond rock and Roll, or Dad