Jenny Erpenbeck introduced me to the phrase "flat product," which refers to archival material. Bob Dylan sold a whole shitload of flat product to the Center named after him in Tulsa. It's not far from the Woody Guthrie Center, which I skipped. Different generation.
As I watched dozens of video clips projected on all four walls of the room that introduces visitors to the Center, I got goosebumps. Dylan has been around my entire life, and deservedly famous in a non-celebrity way for most of it. And I'm not even that big a fan, although I do include Blood on the Tracks on my favorite albums list, the kind on which there's not a single bad track.
An upright piano displays the sheet music for "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall," an early allusion to the threat of nuclear war that defined my childhood. Yep, I remember those drills when we had to crouch below our desks. As if!
Imagine the world's most sophisticated scrapbook and you'll have a good idea what awaits you at the Bob Dylan Center. These are some of the 45s you might have found in Dylan's record collection.
Elvis Costello curated the jukebox of Dylan songs, including many of the most memorable covers as well as originals. Has there ever been a more heartfelt refrain than the one he sings in Like A Rolling Stone? It's supposedly about his brief affair with Edie Sedgwick, my favorite female Warhol superstar. They hung out in the Chelsea Hotel long before Taylor Swift was born.
There's also a faux studio where you can mix several of his greatest recordings. I chose "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," from the soundtrack of Pat Garret & Billy the Kid, a Sam Peckinpah film that nods to my Southwestern roots even if Kris Kristofferson was way too old to play one of America's most notorious gunslingers.
You get a sense of Mr. Zimmerman's trend-setting fashion sense, too.
There are some home movies shot at Woodstock, long before the festival. Life with Bob definitely looks like a '60s blast. At least until his hush-hush motorcycle accident. He's definitely a guy who ran from the tabloids.
Of course there are plenty of photos, too. In this one, he's squatting in Times Square. You can see the reflection of the sign for Colony Records in the window behind him. I visited that store, long gone, in college.
Thanks to a brief stint at the National Orchestral Association in the 1980s, I once stood in exactly the same position on the stage at Carnegie Hall. In a bowtie, without a microphone, guitar or stool, but still, looking out at those red velvet seats, even empty, was quite a thrill.
Has there ever been an odder couple in pop culture? This shot was taken back stage at the Letterman show in 1984.
I count myself among those who absolutely believe that Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. If you don't agree, just try humming along to works by any of the other laureates.
But I really wasn't familiar with his other artistic skills, including this painting which was really about to resonate as I continued my road trip thru the Far West.
The Center houses temporary exhibits on the second floor.
The one I saw highlighted the rise of Dylan's political consciousness. "Blowin' in the Wind" definitely defined the tumultuous 60s for me, although it was the version by Peter, Paul and Mary that I heard first.
Bags of flat product, in this case fan mail, remain unopened.
Before exiting, I asked if the enigmatic Dylan ever had visited. He hadn't. I have just one question: How does it feeeeeeeeeeel?
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