This is the chart we'll work with for Office Hours next Monday. If anyone has any good, not too long, biographies/ videos or articles on him - please feel free to share. Chart enclosed.
I'm about ⅓ way through Dont look back -- early Dylan before too much veneer and wariness. Highly recommend, but it's 1 ½ hrs. In U.S $3.99 Apple TV and other streaming.
"America was changing. I had a feeling of destiny and I was riding the changes. New York was as good a place to be as any. My consciousness was beginning to change, too, change and stretch. One thing for sure, if I wanted to compose folk songs I would need some kind of new template, some philosophical identity that wouldn't burn out. It would have to come on its own from the outside. Without knowing it in so many words, it was beginning to happen." [ "Chronicles: Volume One" by Bob Dylan ]
He was 21 when he hitchhiked to NYC, in search of Woody Guthrie. He became “a fixture” among those who hung out in the Village; showing up at a Hootenanny grew into featured performances. My particular interest is about the point Dylan went electric – one of the major times we see a turning point or Phase Change. His appearance at Newport in '65 gets the most attention – Sunday night, July 25. He was irritated and feeling too constrained about the “moral standard of holding up traditional music” the festival was known for, and had often denied being a folksinger. He wanted to change that world, and “Like A Rolling Stone” had been released just 5 days prior. On Saturday night he decided to pull guys from that recording session to be onstage with him.
It was his third appearance at Newport, and Dylan typified rock before he actually made the switch. He was not a joiner or a conformist. He was always attempting new and different methods, a definitive departure from traditional folk ideals. Dave Van Ronk even pointed to Jung and said Dylan tapped into the collective unconscious.
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: from a postcard Pete Seeger wrote to Bob Dylan.
"Bob! Someone just told me that you too think I didn't like your "going electric" in 1965. I've denied that so many times. I was furious at the distorted sound - no one could understand the words of "Maggie's Farm" and I dashed over to the people controlling the PA system. "No this is the way that they want it." They said. I shouted, "If I had an axe I'd cut the cable" and I guess that is what got quoted. My big mistake was in not challenging from the stage the foolish few who booed. I shoulda said, "Howling Wolf goes electric, why can't Bob?"
In any case, you keep on -
best, Pete"
Bob Dylan FULL 60 Minutes Ed Bradley 2004 Interview (upscaled to HD) at age 63 (15 min)
Thanks for all of this info everyone. I was shocked to see the amount of Taurus in his chart. I always felt Bob Dylan to be very "out" of his body, uncomforatable in his own skin. Is there something in a chart (his chart) that would indicate this?
So interesting. I pretty well wore out my old vinyl, Blood on the Tracks...
I wonder if that out of body vibe you are getting is the way he can seem far away in his presence / or like he has a fog around him- which I think could his south node in Pisces/ Neptune on the North Node. The Taurus on the 5th struck me as the folk music or root music he started with and building a life out of being a performer.
forgot to mention Venus square Mars - Air/Water, a clash of emotion with intellect
which suggests (to the riddle of Neptune conj NN) wasn't he striving for the higher octave of love...
Thanks Lisa! I think that's an interesting insight. Pisces S.N.... etc....
And ya, Jesse.... so much we could be discussing about any chart, huh?