Long before the ACL Fest, Dylan electrified a smaller Austin venue

Transcript, photos from September 1965 visit reveal a loose young icon.

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, September 15, 2007

Imagine what it was like to be Bob Dylan in September 1965.

You were "the voice of a generation" who had slapped the sensibilities of your early fans with an earsplitting rock set at the Newport Folk Festival two months earlier.

You were about to play your first concert in Texas, where they killed the president, with a new touring band comprised of four Canadians and a drummer from Arkansas that would later call themselves the Band. And you were shooting up the Billboard charts with "Like A Rolling Stone," from the all-electric album "Highway 61 Revisited."

With an unorthodox singing voice in direct opposition to the sunny harmonies of the Beatles and a new album that began "God said to Abraham, kill me a son," you were the most intriguing, polarizing figure in pop culture.

You were 24 years old.

And you were in Austin to play the Municipal Auditorium (later renamed Palmer Auditorium).

The day of the show, Dylan held an informal news conference at the Villa Capri Motor Hotel on Red River Street near the University of Texas. American-Statesman photos of that question-and-answer session, recently discovered at the Austin History Center, show a loose and smiling icon. The Statesman's entertainment writer at the time, Jim Langdon, can't name the photographer, but he remembers the meeting well. "There were maybe five or six of us there," Langdon said. "Dylan was pretty cool with everybody." As evidenced in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary "Don't Look Back," Dylan could be a contentious interview subject, but the transcript of the Villa Capri Q&A session shows Dylan to be more playful than acidic in his reluctance to be pinned down.

Asked to classify what he does, Dylan replied, "I like to think of myself in terms of a trapeze artist." Langdon follows that by noting a carnival-like sound on the most recent albums. "That's not a carnival sound, that's religious," Dylan says. "That's very real. You can see that anywhere."

When asked about the inspiration behind "Ballad of a Thin Man," Dylan says it's based on "a fella that came into a truckstop once." Asked to name his favorite performers, Dylan rattles off, "Rasputin, Charles DeGaulle, the Staple Singers."

Has financial success changed his life? "Yeah, I have more money now," Dylan answers. What has he done with it? "I buy things."

Feeding off Dylan's cryptic, off-the-wall attitude, Langdon turned in a "Night Beat" column that contained elements of free verse not commonly found in a daily newspaper — then or now. A close friend and former Jefferson High classmate of Janis Joplin, Langdon quit the Statesman in 1966 to write fiction but returned to the newspaper business. He retired from the Houston Chronicle four years ago and lives in Colorado.

That first Austin show, the first time he'd been backed by Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm, was one of Dylan's favorites of the '65 tour, he said in an interview in San Francisco three months later. For one, it was the first time he'd played electric where he didn't hear boos from folk purists who pegged him as a pop sellout in the aftermath of Beatlemania. According to an account of the show written by Gilbert Shelton (who'd later create "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers"), Dylan didn't get much of anything from a crowd of "mostly high school couples, all dressed up for church, almost ... (who) sat like a bunch of toads, watching Bob Dylan rear back and shout, jump across the stage ... waving around (his) Fender Jazzmaster electric guitar ... "

Noted New York photographer Stephanie Chernikowski, a former Austinite, wasn't sitting on her hands, but screaming in approval. "It never entered my mind — or heart — not to love the electric stuff," she recalled. "Dylan and the Band were stunning. There were moments that felt like you were the only person in the room with them."

Dylan opened with a solo acoustic set, which he'd been doing since the Newport fiasco, playing "Gates Of Eden," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Desolation Row" and "Mr. Tambourine Man." When he brought the Band onstage, they burst into "Tombstone Blues," "Baby Let Me Follow You Down," "It Ain't Me Babe," "Ballad of a Thin Man," "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Maggie's Farm," with Dylan on piano for that latter tune.

Promoter Angus Wynne, who booked the show after calling "information" in New York City to get the number of Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, said of the "in your face" electric segment: "You couldn't really understand the words — quality concert sound systems were nonexistent back then — but you could feel the energy. It was like being knocked over by this huge burst of sound."

Bob Dylan, who closes out the Austin City Limits Music Festival tonight, has long held ties to Austin. Charlie Sexton and, then, Denny Freeman have been his guitarists since 2000. His longtime bassist Tony Garnier came from Asleep At the Wheel. Steel guitarist Cindy Cashdollar and violinist Elana James have played with the ultimate rock icon, whose son Jakob's band the Wallflowers is named after a song Dylan wrote for Doug Sahm.

And so the mutual affinity continues. Dylan still plays too loud and you can't always make out the words, but he's come to know, during the past 42 years, that Austin can dig it.

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652