Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

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Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby justdrew » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:01 am

Exclusive: Bob Dylan on His Mystical Rebirth
In wild exchange, Dylan points to death of Hells Angels president as significant moment

In a startling stretch of his interview with Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan assigns a special spiritual significance to the death of Robert Zimmerman, the president of the San Fernando chapter of the Hells Angels, in the Sixties.

"Have you heard of transfiguration?" Dylan asks Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Mikal Gilmore, referring to the New Testament account of Jesus Christ's transformation from physical to spiritual form. "Well, you're looking at someone that's been [transfigured]."

Bob Dylan first learned about the death of Zimmerman in the book Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hells Angels. Dylan even brought the book to his interview, and he asked Gilmore to read a passage aloud. Dylan was struck by the fact he and the Hells Angel had identical names and both had motorcycle accidents a few years apart. "I didn't know who I was before I read the Barger book," says Dylan.

The biker Bobby Zimmerman died during a Hells Angels' run to Bass Lake in California when a muffler fell off his motorcycle. When he turned around to retrieve it, he was accidentally run over by another biker.

Later in the interview, Gilmore presses Dylan for more details on his ideas. "You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church," Dylan says. "You can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it's a real concept . . . So when you ask your questions you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist."


http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-strikes-back-at-critics-20120912
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby Hammer of Los » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:25 am

...

Hell's Angel?

Ya gotta be kiddin' me.

I'm the Jack of Hearts. The Jack of all Trades. Master of None.

...
Last edited by Hammer of Los on Wed Sep 19, 2012 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby The Consul » Wed Sep 19, 2012 1:09 am

Sometimes a lightbulb doesn't work. Sometimes it comes back on. But he was talking to Gary Gilmore's brother, after all, so infusing the moment with a sense of cosmic mystery may have been apropos. I don't know who's keeping score and how you would do it, but it does seem some of us are prisoners and some of us are guards.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby justdrew » Wed Sep 19, 2012 1:31 am

The Consul wrote:Sometimes a lightbulb doesn't work. Sometimes it comes back on. But he was talking to Gary Gilmore's brother, after all, so infusing the moment with a sense of cosmic mystery may have been apropos. I don't know who's keeping score and how you would do it, but it does seem some of us are prisoners and some of us are guards.


wow, yeah, that is his brother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikal_Gilmore

I guess he is familiar with a sort of literal transfiguration then
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby hanshan » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:03 am

...

justdrew wrote:
The Consul wrote:Sometimes a lightbulb doesn't work. Sometimes it comes back on. But he was talking to Gary Gilmore's brother, after all, so infusing the moment with a sense of cosmic mystery may have been apropos. I don't know who's keeping score and how you would do it, but it does seem some of us are prisoners and some of us are guards.


wow, yeah, that is his brother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikal_Gilmore

I guess he is familiar with a sort of literal transfiguration then


bumping


...
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby Jeff » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:38 am

Reminded me of this for some reason:

Dylan wrote:I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don't know exactly... what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too—I saw some of myself in him. I don't think I could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things he felt, in me...not go that far and shoot.


He said that while accepting a civil rights award, Dec 13, 1963.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby justdrew » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:41 am

It's been said Dylan will sort of "make stuff up" in interviews, for personal reasons, a way of masking his exposure and to keep the press chasing their own tails. I suppose he may be really "trying on the idea" - but I doubt the spirit of a hells angel did a "walk in" and just found someone who had the same name. I guess I don't really see what Bob's saying happened exactly.

Jeff - IIRC he ended up trying to explain that for some time afterwards. Think there's a youtube of it or something, as well as his return visit.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby hanshan » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:48 am

...

Jeff wrote:Reminded me of this for some reason:

Dylan wrote:I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don't know exactly... what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too—I saw some of myself in him. I don't think I could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things he felt, in me...not go that far and shoot.


He said that while accepting a civil rights award, Dec 13, 1963.



Yeah - Dylan danced on every stage

&... you can't make this sh*t up

just saw this: (so, amending the above, you can make this sh*t up,
as the moment[ DID] dictates)


justdrew


It's been said Dylan will sort of "make stuff up" in interviews, for personal reasons, a way of masking his exposure and to keep the press chasing their own tails. I suppose he may be really "trying on the idea" - but I doubt the spirit of a hells angel did a "walk in" and just found someone who had the same name. I guess I don't really see what Bob's saying happened exactly.

Jeff - IIRC he ended up trying to explain that for some time afterwards. Think there's a youtube of it or something, as well as his return visit.




...
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby The Consul » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:17 pm

I was born just a few minutes after Emmett Till died. You get a rumbling of things some times, things you thought you sensed without knowing, things you knew without thinking. You have those instants where everything seems to expand and collapse simultaneously. Like when Mikal had not seen nor heard from his brother in years until one day there was a knock on the door and there was Gary, with his fingers threw the ring of a half guzzled six pack...who barges in the room, lowers the shades, peaks out and says "you don't have a gun, do ya?" Before he even says hello. So who are you now? I got up this morning and had me some Identity Flakes for breakfast, there are some left over if you are empty. Some people believe in flashbacks. I saw Dylan once in the Alexis hotel dressed up like a woman smoking Virginia Slims, having what looked like whiskey. I wanted to say something stupid, but all I could think of was that National Lampoon record or was it Firesign Theater that back in 74 imagined ahead of time a washed up Dylan appearing on late night television like Johnny Ray. Hi, I'm Bob Dylan, remember me. And then starts hawking moldy hits from the sixties. There are those times when you feel infected by the personalities of others, other times inspired. And then there are those woeful moments when you feel a crushing demand to impersonate yourself. So, take on Isis, with two parts Little Egypt, as was foretold to you by Rolling Thunder when you had all but had it.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby brekin » Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:49 pm

Well maybe the Hell's Angels will get Bob to finally kill Mick Jagger for them.

Image
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I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby jingofever » Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:03 pm

justdrew wrote:It's been said Dylan will sort of "make stuff up" in interviews, for personal reasons, a way of masking his exposure and to keep the press chasing their own tails.

PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the
rock-'n'-roll route?

DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started
drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then
I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big
Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to
Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns
down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I
start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-
old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes
in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a
job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I
move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and
hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes
and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so
mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in
Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own
bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck
and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every
Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who
also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to
look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can
turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until
that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless
to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The
first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a
star. What could I say?

PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock-'n'-roll
singer?

DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby The Consul » Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:33 pm

Reminds me of the time I tripped over a faith healer at the peep show.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 19, 2012 4:03 pm

This is one of my favorite Dylan stories


You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


-Dylan

Huey Digs Bob Dylan

Among his tales of police brutality and revolutionary fervour, Seale inserted a chapter entitled ‘Huey Digs Bob Dylan’. The setting is the home of radical lawyer Beverly Axelrod in 1966: Newton and Seale are laying up the pages for the first issue of their party newspaper, cunningly titled The Black Panther. ‘While we were laying that paper out, in the background we could hear a record, and the song was named “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Bob Dylan. Now the melody was in my head... but I didn’t really hear the words. This record played after we stayed up laying out the paper. And it played the next night after we stayed up laying out the paper. I think it was around the third afternoon that the record was playing. We played that record over and over and over.

‘Huey P. Newton made me recognize the lyrics. Not only the lyrics of the record, but what the lyrics meant in the record. What the lyrics meant in the history of racism that had perpetuated itself in the world. Huey would say: “Listen, listen – man, do you hear what he is saying?” Huey had such insight into how racism existed, how racism had perpetuated himself. He had such a way of putting forth in very clear words what he related directly to those symbolic things or words that were coming out from Bobby Dylan. ‘I remember that the song got to the point where he was talking about this cat handing in his ticket and he walked up to the geek, and the geek handed him a bone. Well, this didn’t relate to me, so I said: “Huey, look, wait a minute, man”. I said, “What are you talking about a geek? What is a geek? What the hell is a geek?” And Huey explains it.’

Newton’s explanation runs for almost a page: ‘“a geek”, he tells Seale, “is usually a circus performer”, who has been badly injured and can’t work any longer. But he knows no other life than the circus, so he agrees to do the lowliest jobs just to stay in the community. Maybe he even agrees to eat live chickens in a cage as a freak attraction.’ Newton continues: ‘These people who are coming in to see him are coming in for entertainment, so they are the real freaks. And the geek knows this, so during his performance, he eats the raw chicken and he hands one of the members of the audience a bone. ‘Then to put it on the broader level, what Dylan is putting across is middle-class people or upper-class people who sometimes take a Sunday afternoon off and put their whole family into a limousine, and they go down to the black ghettos to watch the prostitutes and watch the decaying community.(...) That makes the middle-class and upper-class people, who are down there because they get pleasure out of it, freaks.

And this goes into the one-eyed midget. What is the one-eyed midget? He screams and howls at Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones doesn’t know what’s happening. Then the one-eyed midget says, give me some juice or go home. And this again is very symbolic of people who are disadvantaged. They’re patronizing Mr. Jones, the middle-class people. You know, they’re not interested in them coming down for entertainment. But if they’ll pay them for a trick, then they’ll tolerate them, or else they’ll drive them out of the ghettoes. This song is hell. You’ve got to understand that this song is saying a hell of a lot about society.’

Seale digests this explanation, and notes: ‘Bobby Dylan says, you don’t know what’s happening, do you, Mr. Jones? And to hand him the naked bone was too much – was really too much.’

An insignificant if amusing interlude, you might think, suggesting that Huey P. Newton missed his vocation as a literary critic. But as Seale explains later in the chapter, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ came to occupy a key place in the imaginative landscape of the Panthers: ‘This song Bobby Dylan was singing became a very big part of that whole publishing operation of the Black Panther paper. And in the background, while we were putting this paper out, this record came up and I guess a number of papers were published, and many times we would play that record. Brother Stokely Carmichael also liked that record. This record became so related to us, even to the brothers who had held down most of the security for the set.



Huey P. Newton -Picture A Revolutionary

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby Jeff » Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:53 pm

justdrew wrote:Jeff - IIRC he ended up trying to explain that for some time afterwards. Think there's a youtube of it or something, as well as his return visit.


In part it read

Bob Dylan wrote:it is a fierce heavy feeling
thinkin something is expected of you
but you don't know what exactly it is...
it brings forth a weird form of guilt

...

I should've remembered
I am Bob Dylan an I don't have t speak
i don't have to say nothin if I don't wanna
but I didn't remember


In Masked & Anonymous, Jeff Bridges plays a journalist who tries to hold "Jack Fate" to account for his withdrawal in the late 60s. ("Oh yeah; you weren't at Woodstock. Why weren't you there, Jack?") I don't believe it's incidental that later Bridges' character gets beaten to death with Blind Lemon Jefferson's guitar.



I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago.
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Re: Bob Dylan, Hells Angels, WTF?

Postby vanlose kid » Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:04 am

justdrew wrote:
Exclusive: Bob Dylan on His Mystical Rebirth
In wild exchange, Dylan points to death of Hells Angels president as significant moment...

Later in the interview, Gilmore presses Dylan for more details on his ideas. "You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church," Dylan says. "You can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it's a real concept . . . So when you ask your questions you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist."


http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bob-dylan-strikes-back-at-critics-20120912


from way before the accident:

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/its-al ... z26zdSi9hR


...

You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat
That it ain't got you licked
It can't get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope's just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve

But that's what you need man, and you need it bad
And yer trouble is you know it too good
'Cause you look an' you start getting the chills

'Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house
And it ain't made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain't on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it's funny
No you can't find it in no night club or no yacht club
And it ain't in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you're bound to tell
That no matter how hard you rub
You just ain't a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain't in the rumors people're tellin' you
And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' you
And it ain't in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star's blouse
And you can't find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain't in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain't in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain't in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin'
Sayin' ain't I pretty and ain't I cute and look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry
When you can't even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows
No you'll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain't in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who'd turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', 'Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN'T REAL"

No but that ain't yer game, it ain't even yer race
You can't hear yer name, you can't see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown


Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/its-al ... z26zeS5mBk


you gotta serve somebody:



Robert Zimmerman died in a motorcycle accident.
Who do you think the chief commander is? Dylan ain't tellin.

*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
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