September 29, 2006

Big Bob Dylan fall: Broadway, Lincoln Center, Morgan

It's a big season for Bob Dylan in New York - whether he likes it or not.

On Broadway, a musical based on his songs, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," is in previews and Lincoln Center will stage a November 9 tribute to Dylan with the likes of Patti Smith, Roseanne Cash, Ryan Adams, Seal, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Natalie Merchant.

And today, the Morgan Library & Museum opens "Bob Dylan's American Journey 1956-1966," featuring edited, handwritten lyrics, guitars, and even his high school homework.

Though Dylan has had nothing to do with the exhibit at the Morgan.

"He's elusive," Robert Parks, the museum's curator for literary and historical manuscripts, said during Thursday's media preview of the collection. "He knows he'd be welcome."

The lyrics to "Gates of Eden," scrawled on the back of Holiday Inn stationery, reflect minor changes in word choices, and elsewhere, you can read a playful set of letters written to Joan Baez's mom by the couple just after they started dating. ("Better not let the old man see this. ...")

Also included is a March 1967 letter from Bob Shelton to the Fleet Street editor of the Disc and Music Echo, explaining the "Bob Dylan Mystery" of the singer's absence after a motorcycle crash in Woodstock, NY. It begins "confidentially, and definitely off the record," and continues:

He evidently was shaken up in the accident, but that, too, has been magnified and legendized. He seems capable of doing nothing without starting rumors and myths and murky stories, all of which is part of the magic and charisma of him."

September 29, 2006 11:46 AM in Midtown, Museums, Sightsology

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