I’m eager to get to see the new Dylan film ‘The Complete Unknown’ as it covers exactly the period I cover in the book. It’s getting rave reviews. I hope it’s accurate. I always find that these rock biopics take liberties with the truth.

Excerpt – Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track

   Bob settled in to life in Minnesota, living hand to mouth, playing the coffee bars where baskets were passed round for change. This was the start of his freewheelin’ days; cadging meals, renting a small apartment, sleeping on friends’ floors, playing music, listening, absorbing and developing fast.

   Minnesota wasn’t big enough. He instinctively craved a bigger canvas and had heard that Woody was still alive but suffering from a chronic illness, the dreadful hereditary disease Huntingdon’s Chorea, and holed up in a sanatorium in New Jersey. There was only one place to be, where the remains of the Beat movement had morphed into a vibrant underground folk scene, and that was Greenwich Village in New York but this young man, pretending to be the wild maverick, still had to persuade his father to allow him to drop out and give it a try. His father grudgingly agreed to allow him a year in which to make it.

   In 1961, at the age of twenty, still looking like a young kid, a nascent Bob Dylan rolled into town, not on a freight, but having secured a lift in an old Buick. Stepping out into the icy blast of a New York winter Bob had little apart from a bag containing all his possessions and a guitar. He had two major aims. The first was to meet his new idol Woody Guthrie. The second was to break into the thriving new Folk scene. He set about finding a café to play in with a warm place to crash down and get out of the cold. He found it at The Café Wha?. He was allowed to back Fred Neil on harmonica and play the odd set which gave him somewhere to escape the cruel wind while earning a dollar or two and filling his stomach with a greasy burger. The Café Wha? Provided him with a base to learn and grow from.

   The Greenwich Village scene was based around a number of small clubs and overrun with a range of musicians all competing for time, money and status. Pretty cutthroat. The musicians ranged from old well-versed blues musicians like John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Jesse Fuller and Big Bill Broonzy, seasoned folk singers, Woody Guthrie acolytes, like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston, folk groups like the Bluegrass Boys, Clancy Brothers and the new generation of up-and-coming singers Tom Paxton, Mark Spoeltra, Odetta and Richard Farina. The leading light was Dave Van Ronk, a powerful figure, nicknamed ‘The Mayor’ who presided over the whole scene like a brooding grizzly bear.

   No naive middle-class novice was going to stand a chance of breaking through into that environment. Robert Zimmerman from Hibbing morphed into Bob Dylan. He intended to drop the Zimmerman and become Bob Allen, but thought that Dylan sounded better than Allen, so he adapted it – not so much stealing his name from a notorious Welsh poet as simply preferring the sound of Dylan to Allen. Having a new name he set about creating a hard-living mythology – an orphaned past, running away numerous times, life on the road, carnivals, hard times. Bob was constructing a suitable persona and appearance. The black corduroy cap, crumpled shirt, jeans, belt and boots were a carefully choreographed image. There had to be no chink in the armour. From the nasally Woodyesque drawl, to the embroidered back story the whole package had to hang together. Dylan grew into the disguise. What helped was the huge natural talent that Bob was so obviously saturated with.

Bob Dylan 1962 to 1970 On Track (Decades) : Opher Goodwin: Amazon.co.uk: Books