What is Bob Dylan up to with this Instagram Post about Aaron Burr?

 

              Aaron Burr, Jr. John Vanderlyn, c.1803, Yale University Art Gallery. 

On September 15, 2025, Bob Dylan posted a video to his Instagram account that contained a first-person biographical account of Aaron Burr, Jr. The post is not a new song or a comment on current events, but rather a direct recitation of detailed historical events. The exact meaning of the post is, like the artist himself, open to interpretation.  Here is the post:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOojlNEgls7/

Summary of the Instagram post

• The video consists of a block of text presented in the style of a journal entry or memoir.
• The text is written from the perspective of Aaron Burr, describing his family history, including his father, Aaron Burr Sr., who was the second President at The College of New Jersey and his mother's father, the famous Puritan minister Jonathan Edwards.
• It does not include any other commentary, music, or explanation from Dylan himself. 

Possible interpretations

As Dylan did not provide any context for the post, its meaning can only be speculated:

• A historical project: The post could be a piece of a larger historical or narrative project. Dylan is a lifelong student of American history and culture, and his work often draws on historical figures and events.  It is reminiscent of his song "Cross the Green Mountain" that reflects deep historical research into the battles and personalities of the Civil War and the period depicted in the film:  "Gods and Generals."  The Music video is a must see: https://youtu.be/Iw8YjVrRNRU?feature=shared.  There have also been a series of posts on Bob's instagram account that follow a similar pattern, which has also featured other historical figures like Andrew Jackson, Stephen Foster, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frank James.
• Lyrical inspiration: He may be hinting at a new song or album that incorporates the story of Aaron Burr, using the post to introduce the theme.  That would certainly be cool.
• Artistic diversion: The post could be an artistic exercise or a simple diversion for Dylan, who is known for his unconventional and sometimes cryptic social media presence.
• Thematic connection: A deeper thematic connection may be intended. Dylan may be drawing parallels between Burr, a brilliant and controversial figure, and the larger themes of legacy, power, and historical injustice that have been present in his own music.  Maybe he sees some parallel in the brilliant but tragically misunderstood "outlaw" figure of Aaron Burr and Dylan's own incredible story.  Burr was just one electorial vote shy of the presidency in 1800. He served as the third vice-president under Jefferson and was the sitting Vice President when he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel. He was a senator from New York for six years 1791-1797.  He was the grandson of America's most famous theologian, Jonathan Edwards. He lost both of his remarkable parents when he was just two-years-old.  The orphans Aaron and Sally Burr were taken first to the household of Dr. William Shippen in Philadelphia until his famous grandfather and grandmother took up residence in Aaron's former home, the President's mansion in Princeton.

• His famous grandfather and grandmother took up residence in the President's home and retrieved Burr and his sister, but Jonathan soon died of complications from a failed smallpox innoculation. Burr's grandmother Sarah Pierrepont Edwards intended to take the two small orphans back to the Edward's home in Stockbridge, MA, but she contracted dysentery on the journey and she aslo died.  They were eventually found a home and were cared for by their twenty-year old bachelor uncle Timothy Edwards.
• Reference to Hamilton: The post coincides with a recent revival of interest in Aaron Burr due to the musical Hamilton. While Dylan's post is serious in tone, the timing could be a subtle nod to the cultural conversation surrounding the historical figure. 

What I find most interesting, as a guy working on a Biography of Aaron Burr's teacher John Witherspoon, is that Dylan demonstrates a deep familiarity with Aaron Burr, Sr. and his role as the President of the College of New Jersey.  Also he also gives us some reflection on Jonathan Edwards, and his role in the first great awakening, and author of the famous Sinners in the hand of an Angry God sermon.  He then goes into some detail about the mother of Aaron Burr, Jr., Esther Edwards Burr.   Dylan appears to have read The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, 1754-1757 which are letters written to Sally Prince, her friend in Boston.  The letters give a picture of their eighteenth-century evangelical sisterhood. 

In October 1754 Esther began a journal which she sent at intervals to her best friend Sally (Sarah) Prince of Boston in the form of numbered letters, and received similar missives from Sally. Prince's letters have perished, and Esther's break off early in September 1757.   A few days before the death of her husband, Esther describes her son Aaron:  He is a "little dirty Noisy Boy....very Sly and mischievious" and he is "very resolute and requires a good Governor to bring him to terms."

Her husband Aaron Sr. died later that month.  Then in February 1758 her father, Jonathan Edwards, was inaugurated president of the College to succeed Aaron Burr, Sr. but he too died in March; Esther herself succumbed to a fever early in April of the same year as her father.  Bob Dylan has put together an accurate timeline of all this tragedy and shows its potential devastating impact on the later character of the infamous Aaron Burr.

This is a 1764 copper engraving by Philadelphia artist Henry Dawkins — copied from a drawing by William Tennent, a 1758 alumnus.  It shows Nassau Hall (at left) as it likely looked when the Aaron Burr, Sr. family lived here. The building, Nassau Hall, as the largest stone structure in America at the time, was completed in 1756.  The house on the right is the President's house where the elder Burr family lived, moving in December, 1756. Jonathan and Sarah Edwards came to be installed as the new president after Aaron Burr, Sr. died. The younger Burr's mother, Esther died in April of 1758 less than a month after her father passed away from a failed smallpox inoculation.  Sarah Edwards traveled to Philadelphia to retrieve and care for her orphaned grandchildren Aaron and his sister Sally. Sarah Edwards died in October of 1758.

The journal of Esther and Sally is a rare self-revelation of a beautiful person. Bob Dylan seems to have read these letters.  Has Mick Jagger gotten into this yet?  Could Bruce Springstein give a good account of historical significance of The College of New Jersey in colonial America, even though it is in his native state?  What could Paul McCartney tell us about The Great Awakening and the eighteenth century evangelical sisterhood?

The artist has a good imagination which is revealed as he is accurately imagining what it would be like to live in early Colonial America.  He has some beautiful writing in here, for example, in the hot summer days, "your shirt clings to you like guilt."  "The wind took on that clean edge [in the fall] that told you to prepare."

Dylan has all the details right about Burr at the College of New Jersey, and Burr being a young prodigy coming to the college at the early age of 13 and his accelerated track to early graduation in 1772 at age 16.  It would have been interesting to hear more about his college days being one of the 22 graduates in 1772.  One in attendance along with him would have been the future president of the United States, James Madison who graduated in 1771.  Madison, like Burr, wisely spent an extra year with Dr. Witherspoon studying Hebrew, and other subjects to match his remarkable expertise in Latin.  In this way, they were both likely the very first American Graduates students.  Madison, like many of Witherspoon's students, went on to incredible future success as "The Father of the American Constitution" and he was Secretary of State under Jefferson for 8 years (1801-1809) before serving as President of the United States for 8 years (1809-1817).  Aaron Burr was Vice President under Jefferson during his first term (1801-1805), having tied with Jefferson in the electoral college, each receiving 73 electoral votes in the 1800 Presidental election. 

Dylan gives a good gritty account of what it was really like at Valley Forge.  As well as an unvarnished look at General Washington who never got along well with Aaron Burr.  And Dylan also describes Burr's rivalry with Alexander Hamilton very well.  "Civility yes, but war beneath the skin." .... "He sought legacy, I sought reality.  But in the end we both lost."

This is another interesting art form, coming from a guy who has released 40 influential albums, over 600 published songs, 230 paintings, according to collector and gallery sources tracking his official output.  There are his films and his best-selling books.  Chronicles received widespread critical acclaim and spent 19 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover nonfiction books. Although Dylan later won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, this honor was awarded for his overall contribution to literature—especially his songwriting.  And lets not forget the metallurgy! 

What Dylan is doing in exploring this new art form, and what this context-less post means is anybody's guess.  Maybe at age 84, he is trying his hand at historical fiction in case he ever needs to pick up a side hussel to suplement his retirement should he ever decide to retire from his never-ending tour.

Doug

You can find the full written text to the Instagram Post at this link and scroll down.

Tell me what you think is going on with this Instagram Post in the comments.

"Property of Jesus" is just a "Positively 4th Street" redux

To really get inside of Bob Dylan songs you have to go back to when they were written and understand the forces at work. That is one of the benefits of the new film "A Complete Unknown." Some of those early songs take on new meaning when you know the back story.

"Property of Jesus" is really an excellently crafted song. It hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves because of it's lethal content, which comes on kinda strong. At that time, Copywright © 1981, many of Bob's fan's had turned on him for releasing three albums in succession of what his atheist producer on Slow Train Coming, Jerry Wexler, called "wall-to-wall Jesus."

But isn't that what we love about Bob Dylan? He is no half-way kind of guy. If he has something worth saying, he is gonna say it, in the best way he knows how, and he is gonna let the let the chips fall where they may.

When "Positively 4th Street" first came out in 1967, I remember hearing the song off of the first Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Album (1967), but this wasn't even a previously released song, so how can it be one of his "Greatest Hits?" That's just Bob doing his thing, messing with your mind. It's akin to releasing a second album of the Traveling Wilburys called Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 3 in 1990. You picture all these fans looking through their stacks of albums for Vol. 2, with a puzzeled look on their faces. The bottom line is, Bob thought "Positively 4th Street" was one of his greatest hits, so therefore it is include on this album for its first official release.

In the song we hear him dispensing a series of unmitigated blistering attacks on his "fair-weather friends." I remember thinking at the time, I have never heard a song like this in my whole life! But I like it! And I can relate to it! But can you really say things like this and get away with it? Is it legal to attack somebody this hard? Isn't he gonna get in trouble for baring his soul and his true feelings about somebody like this? Surely the targets of his abuse must know who they are!

The copywright on this song is 1965, so that is right after going through what Bob has recently called "the fiasco at Newport" back on July 25th, 1965. With those words he was encouraging people to go see the new film "A Complete Unknown." The film did a fine job taking us back into the zeitgeist of where he was at the time. In one of the final scenes of the movie, he decides he is just going to take off, riding his motorcycle into the sunset while Pete Seeger is trying to take down and put away the chairs from the Newport Folk Festival. I can see Bob coming up with this song while he is riding off into the sunset.

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning
You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it

.....

I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with
Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with
You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it

.......

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you

He just ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more!

The themes are very similar in "Property of Jesus," and when Bob turns on you, you best look out! Just ask A.J. Weberman. Weberman claimed that Bob Dylan assaulted him in 1971, pushing him to the ground, down on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan when Dylan became upset that Weberman had reneged on their agreement not to search through his trash.

There are some great jabs in the "Property of Jesus" song at people like John Lennon who were upset by Dylan's conversion to Christ because it seemed to go against everything Dylan had previously represented. So Dylan writes: "Remind him of what he used to be when he comes walkin’ through." And Dylan then puts himself into the seat of scoffers: "Hope he falls upon himself, oh, won’t that be sweet."

What is so great about this song is Dylan's full recognition of the reality that everyone is serving some kind of king.

"Because he doesn’t pay no tribute to the king that you serve."

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed You’re gonna have to serve somebody Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

So Property of Jesus winds down these strong lines:

You can laugh at salvation, you can play Olympic games You think [erroniously] that when you rest at last [i.e. When you die] you’ll go back from where you came But you’ve picked up quite a story [a story of sin and thus impending judgement] and you’ve changed since the womb What happened to the real you, you’ve been captured but by whom? [You been captured by Satan, who sometimes comes as a man of peace.] A couple of wise women, heard and understood the dynamic power that always lay latent in this great song, "The Property of Jesus." Chrissie Hynde used it as a closer for some of her concerts. You gotta love the grove that she set up in the first minute of her amazing cover . Then check out Sinead O'Connor doing it on the Chimes Of Freedom Album: These ladies knew that you can throw down some seriously strong shade, along with some epic declamations, and also get a lot off of your chest, when you attack the work of the devil and his minions in this way.

Doug

How to Prepare for the Bob Dylan Movie A Complete Unknown scheduled to be released on Christmas Day, 2024

Now there is always a danger of over-hyping a movie that you are looking forward to seeing with eager expectation.  You might see something in a trailer or an interview, or maybe even an early review that will spoil the whole plot line for you.  Or it is also possible for your expectations to be raised to such a high level that the film will never be able to reach up to your exalted projections.  We don’t want to go there if we can help it.  Sometimes your best experiences at the movies are when you hardly know anything about what you are going to see, and the film surprises you.  But on other occasions getting a little more context in advance and doing a little research can enhance your experience because there are many things to be known about the subject matter.  In these cases, you are not able to catch all of the subtleties and nuances that you might otherwise miss.  I think that this new release, which covers Bob Dylan’s early days in Greenwich Village in 1961 up to 1965, might be one that fits into this latter category of films.  Because there is a lot to know about Bob Dylan.

I remember going to the Lincoln movie with Daniel Day Lewis playing the title role.  We arrived a little late, so my companions and I had to sit in the very front row on what was the very first day of the movie’s release.  There was Daniel Day Lewis, bigger than life, right in front of me, fully inhabiting that Lincoln persona.  I was blown away.  I have since learned that Daniel Day Lewis is a method actor.  This means he moved into the woods as part of his character research for The Last of the Mohegans film and that he learned to live off the land and forest where his character lived, camping, hunting, and fishing.   Day-Lewis also added to his wood-working skills and learned how to make canoes.   He carried a long rifle at all times during filming to remain in character.  Then for the Lincoln movie, he spent a year in preparation for the role.  He read over 100 books on Lincoln and worked long hours with the make-up artist to achieve a strong physical likeness to Lincoln.  He was only speaking in Lincoln's voice throughout the entire shoot, and he requested that the British crew members who shared his native accent not to chat with him.  I have read that young Timothee Chalamet, who plays Bob Dylan in the new movie, is making a similar effort to find the young Bob Dylan who arrived in New York from Minnesota in 1961.  He says that he and James Mangold, the director, have been working on the project for the last 5 years!

In a recent interview in Minnesota, Timothee Chalamet said that he had made a few trips from his native New York City to Dinkytown, formerly a bohemian section near the University of Minnesota's East Bank campus where Dylan made his debut as a folksinger, and then traveled up Route 61 (the name of an important Bob Dylan song) to Duluth were Bob was born and then on up to Hibbing in Northern Minnesota where Bob was raised. 

He checked out the high school there where Bob first performed with a band called The Golden Chords and Timothee tasted the vibe of the Mesabi Iron Range.  He referenced a couple of Bob Dylan songs that reek of the surroundings including North Country Blues and Rocks and Gravel.  In the first link that I have provided here, to North Country Blues performed at the Newport Folk Festival of 1963 (importantly not 1965, when all hell broke out), pay close attention to the folk singer behind Dylan who looks like Andy of Mayberry, who lends Bob a guitar pick at the outset of the song.  I known Andy would do that, if it were Andy.  Bob introduces the song as “about Iron ore mines in an Iron ore town.”  He might as well have said, this is about Hibbing, Minnesota, where I was raised.  But as Suze Rotolo describes the scene in Greenwich Village, it didn’t matter so much where someone had come from, as it was much more about where they were going, so Bob had to keep it a bit cryptic in this introduction.  Timothee could have also visited the Sunrise Deli, in Hibbing, 

which is located in the former Lybba Theater, named after Lybba Edelstein and owned by Dylan’s uncle Mel Edelstein, which meant that Dylan could watch movies for free as a child.  This reminds me of the first line of a magnificently epic Bob Dylan song that is a song that is kind of a movie in its own right,

“Well, there was this movie I seen one time
About a man riding ’cross the desert and it starred Gregory Peck “

It was wise for Bob to keep it short in the introduction at Newport in 1963 as he had told tall tales of running away from home and living out in the mythic Western states, so he had to be careful not to step on any of these fantastical stories.  The song, North Country Blues ends with the words “my children will go, as soon as they grow, for their ain’t nothin’ here now to hold them.”  That’s his story.  He says it was like he was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong body, with the wrong name, and he needed to get out of there to find his place and his destiny.  If you watch the folk singer sitting behind Bob, the guy who looks like Andy Giffith,  

his smile gets bigger and bigger as the song goes along.  He knows he is witnessing something special.  As someone writes in the comments below the video, Bob’s “hair is touching the flames, they're witnessing something beyond both them and Dylan.  It's as though Dylan's channeling something.”  Yeah, that’s right.  Timothee has described a couple of good choices in these two songs that he mentions about Minnesota, but he could have added some more where Bob describes “The country he comes from, they call the Midwest” in With God on our Side, or from Girl from the North Country 

“If you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see she has a coat so warm
To keep her from the howling winds”

And we know from our own experiences, living and being raised right next door in Wisconsin, up there in the winter time:  “The winds do hit heavy on the borderline.”

I put together a Bob Dylan Primer which gives a larger overview of the subject matter in the forthcoming film. Look that over for more background on the bigger picture.

But now I want to focus on what in the world we could possibly do to prepare to watch the new film.  

There might be some background details that we could get a hold of that will help when different characters or references appear in the movie.  In doing a little homework, we might come to know little more about that person or thing in the story that is be being referenced.  Let’s take Dylan’s first muse Suze Rotolo whom he met fairly soon upon his arrival in New York City when he says in his book Chronicles Vol I, “cupid’s arrow hit him in the heart” upon meeting 17-year-old Suze Rotolo and he was 20.  He sings soon thereafter, “I once loved a woman, a child I am told, I gave my heart, but she wanted my soul, Don’t Think Twice its alright.”  She held off for 40 years before she wrote a memoir in 2009 called: A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties that can be picked up now very inexpensively in the used market.  Or we could listen to the incomparable Terri Gross interview her in a 2008 NPR radio interview with Suze describing those unforgettable days.  Terri does her usual great job of getting into the questions we all want to know, like What was it like to watch her former boyfriend and live-in companion get totally swept up into the arms of fame and the beautiful and mellifluous Joan Baez?  Listen to her soft, (I had to turn my speaker up to hear her) and carefully measured response to these questions.  It appears from the trailer from the new movie that we are going get into the tensions of these personal relationships in some detail.

Another example of our need for more background to catch all the nuisances is the film comes from the film Inside Llewyn Davis.  This film never garnered too many accolades, which maybe places it in the category of cult film favorite.  But if you’re not paying attention, and you don’t know the backstory to some of the careful details in that film, you might miss it.  Bob Dylan is everywhere haunting this film, even though his name is never even mentioned once.  The title character, Llewyn Davis, is a folk singer from the early 1960’s, which is exactly the same era that is being portrayed in the new film.  The poor guy Llewyn Davis is trying to share his creative and artistic talents with the world, which are many, but he can’t seem to catch a break.  He does his thing in basket houses (that’s what we call the coffee houses and bars in Greenwich village because the performers were originally paid from what appears in the basket at the end of the night) like the one called the Gaslight that Bob Dylan first played and sang in on MacDougal Street in Greenwich village.  But poor Llewyn is a true starving artist, he has trouble landing steady work to pay his bills and has nowhere to lay his head.  He finally has to opt to return to the Merchant Marines where he used to have a seaman’s license, but just can’t seem to put his hands on it and getting a new one is prohibitively expensive for the always broke Llewyn.

When we look at the poster for the movie for Inside Llewyn Davis, he is strolling down the street in front of the Gaslight Café with his guitar in hand, it conjures up the famous pictures of Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking together outside their nearby apartment at this very same time.  But Bob gets the pretty girl on his arm, while poor, black and white Llewyn only gets nothing but a stray cat which he is trying to return to its rightful owners, since he mistakenly let him out, while crashing on his friend’s sofa.

 So here is something we could do, we could watch the movie Inside Llewyn Davis and then compare and contrast that with what we see in the new movie.  Llewyn is the Anti-Dylan, living in the same place at the same time, but his reach for sharing his gifts with the world, in the cool confines of Greenwich Village of the early 1960's is a nightmare.  This will lead us to a question, is it then all about timing, a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and catching a lucky break?  Llewyn, who is played by Oscar Isaac, is really a great folk singer as evidence by his renditions of some classic folk tunes that are truly amazing and remarkable.  Here is a partial list well worth listening to:

"Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,"

 "Fare Thee Well (Dink's Song)"

"Green, Green Rocky Road"

“The Death of Queen Jane”

"The Shoals of Herring"

The Music director and singing coach for that Llewyn Davis film was the very gifted T Bone Burnett who toured with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review in 1975 and 1976, and he has since done some stellar and grammy award-winning work on soundtracks like the one for the 2000 film O Brother, where art thou?  We would be remiss if we didn’t mention his outstanding single: Diamonds are a girl’s best friend which includes the very best advice ever given for women in relationships with men:  “Get that ice or else no Dice!”

So here is something else we can do, we can listen to these folk songs to get into the ethos of the era and try to picture these guys, like the fictional Llewyn Davis, or Bob and maybe Dave Van Ronk singing these beautiful tunes in the small venues along MacDougal Street. 

Dave Van Ronk, who appears to have been the personage that the Llewyn Davis character is based upon, was an earlier leader, sometimes referred to as “the Mayor of MacDougal Street,” on the folk scene but he turned out to be less successful.  Less successful than his friend and singing companion from those early years, Bob Dylan.  Bob hints that Dave turned him on to some important ideas, like never singing the same thing twice in the same way.  But Dave has little bone to pick with Bob about one of the songs that he arranged called “The House of the Rising Sun.”  He had planned on recording “his version” but Bob beat him to it in his first album.  Bob had been singing this song since back in Saint Paul, Minnesota in the Purple Onion as early as June 1^st, 1960.  But New York Times critic Robert Shelton, whose review of Bob's work in the NY Times put him on the map, quotes Dylan as saying, “I always knew this song, but never really knew it until Dave Van Ronk sang it.”  The story of Dylan “borrowing” Van Ronk's arrangement is told by Van Ronk in his biography The Mayor of MacDougal Street.  As a public domain folk blues song (i.e., never originally copyrighted), artists could take an arrangement credit when they recorded it and receive songwriter royalties.  Imagine the smoke coming out from under Dave’s hat when Eric Burton and the Animals, took "Bob Dylan’s version" and recorded it in 1964 and it became a number one smash hit on the UK Singles Chart and in the US and Canada, being described as the “first folk rock hit!”  This reminds me of a very funny scene from in Inside Llewyn Davis where Llewyn signs away his royalties, for a few quick bucks, to the smash hit Please Mr. Kennedy where the guy catching the grove and snapping his fingers in the control room is like the guy who discovered Bob Dylan, John Hammond of Columbia Records.

It appears that Dave Van Ronk never forgave Bob for that.  And this speaks of the somewhat competitive nature of the many talented people performing and crowding into the many small venues in Greenwich village at the time which included people like Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Richie Havins, The Greenbriar Boys, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Carolyn Hester, who hired Bob for one of his first gigs recording where he is playing some backup harmonica on one of her early albums.  And there were many others seeking to perform and make a name for themselves on those streets.  Bob pays a very heavy tribute to Dave Van Ronk in his book Chronicles Vol. One, one that you should be sure to listen to if you want to hear some of Bob’s most beautiful writing from that book, along with some beautiful reading from his book, in a purple passage where he gives the highest tribute to  Dave Van Ronk on this link.

But what about the artist himself?  What does he think about all the hype surrounding this new movie?  Timothee says in the interview in Minnesota that Bob Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen came on the set and gave them his hearty congratulations and approval to what was going on there.  We know that got back to Bob.  Then last week, on December 4^th with three weeks left to go before the release, we get a Tweet on X that says:

There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!). Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me. The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric – a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve seen the movie read the book.

So now we seem to have something of an encouragement from the man himself.  We probably have to parse this out a bit.  We know Bob loves to use double entendre, so when he uses a word like “fantastic” or “retelling” we should realize it can mean more than one thing.  And there have been many different incarnations of “me” from the guy who is always, “shedding off one more layer of skin.”  There was even a female version of “me” in the 2007 musical drama I’m Not There played by the great Cate Blanchett.

Ok I have given you some ideas, now it time for you to get out there and do your homework on YouTube University in advance of the movie being released.  You don’t want to be like these guys, these Gen Z'ers who in their podcast, refer to themselves as “Music Reviewers” who can’t even come up with the Number of the Highway in Highway 61.  Then they have misidentified the song anyway which is “Like a Rolling Stone” or how can they ask, “Joan Baez is the brunette, but who’s the Blond?”  They call the song that begins the trailer as “The North County Fair” like Bob is at some County Fairgrounds somewhere, then they get the sequence of the Muses all mixed up, putting Joan Baez in front of “the blond chick” then they erroneously talk about Simon and Garfunkel being against Bob going electric, but Simon and Garfunkel didn’t come even out with a debut album until late in 1964 and then they didn’t really come onto the scene until their second album Sounds of Silence in 1966.  By this time Dylan had already had a motorcycle accident and was in semi-retirement up in Woodstock, NY and had already released his seventh studio album and half of the important songs of the 20th century.  Then they misidentify Pete Seager and then speculate about him possibly being Bob’s manager.  They can’t even come up with the name of the “Newport something festival,” come on dudes!  I am ready to offer them all a dime to call their mothers and tell her that, “I’m not going to make it as a music reviewer.”  These guys deserved to be flunked out of Dylanology 101.

We don’t want to be like them, so Do Your Homework!  Don’t be sitting around in some pancake house somewhere after the movie sharing your ignorance of these seminal moments in American popular culture.  Mangold and Chalamet have already received “The Visionary Tribute at the 2024 Gotham’s” last week and Chalamet says, in his acceptance speech:

“Getting to study and immerse myself in the world of Bob Dylan is one of the greatest educations a young artist could receive.  If you are already a fan of Bob Dylan this will make perfect sense to you, and if you’re not familiar with his work, perhaps our film can serve as a humble gateway to one of the great poets and chroniclers of our times.”

He rightly understands that there are two tiers of people who will be seeing the movie, there is the initiated who can process what he is saying, and then there are the other folks who need this humble gateway to get into the subject matter.  Let’s try to get ready for a proper viewing.  

Doug