The Republican Cage Match XIII:  Don Trump Takes On The Political Establishment

 

Establishment

By

R.E. Prindle

 

Republican Cage Match XIII or some such Roman numeral extravaganza was staged in the basketball court of some Miami college Thursday 3/10/16.  It was the same day I got my annual haircut for a comparison in importance.

While it didn’t happen I expected them to introduce the players like this:  Bouncing on to the stage now is Don ‘the Man’ Trump wearing number 14 at center,  limping forward Jack Kasich wearing number XXIII, at fast forward Oleaginous Teddy Cruz wearing the number of ill omen, and at short guard in number 00, Little Marco ‘Rube’ Rubio.  And in the counting house Rupert ‘Rupey’ Murdoch whose most famous saying is:  This gate seems a little light.  Well, you know Rupey, the help these days.

It didn’t happen quite that way but on the ludicrosity scale it was still a 10; a really big shoo.  The earlier games were a cross between basketball, football and fake wrestling.  They were faster paced unlike this one that was something of a yawner, but what a yawner folks!!

The highlight of the show was the Heil Israel Moment or March.  It was led into by the revelation that the Donor Class was not exactly disinterested but sought, get this, a tit for tat.  ‘Everybody must give something for something they get, so I reached in my pocket and felt with my thumbs and offered my very last piece of gum.’  to make the obligatory St. Bob Dylan quote.  That settled it became clear that all the other players were obligated to the Donors except Don ‘the Man’ Trump.  He had enough pocket change to pay his own way.

That raised the question of who they were obligated to.  Teddy ‘Wobbly’ Cruz was wearing Goldman Sachs letters stitched to the back of his uniform so that settled that.  Battling Georgie Soros seemed to have sprinkled money liberally around.  Being a sore loser he promised to spend more money to defeat Don Trump than he had to buy all the others combined.  Georgie seldom makes a mistake in valuing his purchases so he knows the worth of that towering Center, Don Trump.

This scene cheered on by Jake Tapper the so-called moderator then devolved into the Heil Israel Moment.  Forming a line the contestants goose stepped around the stage seeing who could shout Heil Israel the loudest.    As in the Soviet Union when Stalin was applauded the guy who quit first became the scapegoat.  Don ‘the Man’ Trump flagged out first.

There was no effect then as the other three, fully amplified by neck microphones and the guy in the basement were still lustily shouting Heil Israel, Heil Israel, Heil Israel.

However the following day March 11 or March 12 whichever number comes after 10, I forget which sometimes, Don Trump began to be attacked for inciting riots at his own rallies.  To the uninformed this seemed odd if not preposterous.  Then it was explained that Don was only holding these rallies to incite Barry’s Boys and Hillary’s Girls to invade Don’s Rallies at which they became incensed upon hearing ideas forbidden them.  You’d riot too wouldn’t you, who wouldn’t?

So if Don didn’t hold these rallies that mortally offend Barry and Hillary there wouldn’t be any riots.  Problem solved.  So as Don’s ideas differ then he should obviously allow these rude unprincipled Democrats to take over his rallies and destroy them.   Who wants to hear Don’s crappy ideas anyway?  It is such an obvious solution I’m amazed it hasn’t occurred to Don spontaneously.

Jake the Dapper Tapper the master moderator bowed his head in disgust at Don’s loutish wanting to win.  It is appropriate that he works for CNN down there in the ratings basement.  Who else would want to?

In the aftermath of the aftermath Don says he’s not going to do any more of these silly exhibitions.  Wouldn’t you do the same?  Who wouldn’t?  Vote for Don, make him feel good.

Bob Dylan: Livin' Life On The Fly

Bob Dylan:  Livin’ Life On The Fly

by

R.E. Prindle

Bob Dylan created the character of Bob the Drifter back at the beginning of the Sixties.  He has since done his best to live the life of the ultimate drifter.  Early influences on the persona were probably Hank Williams musical alter ego Luke the Drifter and possibly Simon Crumb the alter ego the country singer Ferlin Husky.  His immediate role model was definitely Ramblin’ Jack Elliot who was born Elliot Adnopos making his adopted goyish name a cover for his Jewish identity much as Bob Dylan was doing.  Thus these two very Jewish guys have lived out their lives under assumed goyish identities.

Like Ramblin’ Jack Bob Dylan further patterned his life on the life  of the goy drifter Woody Guthrie.

Bob learned Jack’s style when both men lived in the early sixties folk environment of Greenwich Village in New York City.  When that particular bubble burst in the mid-sixties partly through the machinations of Dylan himself who introduced electricity into the Greenwich Village folk scene a dispersion took place.

I say partly because seemingly unnoticed by everyone while being completely overlooked today The Lovin’ Spoonful with the really legendary John Sebastian and Sol Yanovsky had used an electric guitar since early 1965 while also writing their own songs.

After leaving recording for a year or two after 1966 Dylan led a sedentary life in Woodstock New York with his wife Sara and a growing family.  The call of his destiny on the road was too strong with Dylan gradually edging back to the role of the roving hobo.

Mentally adrift for most of the seventies and eighties Bob then devised the perfect drifter life.  He became a drifting troubadour.  He not only roved but he made it pay to the tune of a billion dollars or more.  He got himself a couple buses and phased through several identity crises. He styled his drifting as The Never Ending Tour.

While living his early years in Hibbing Negro music appears to have made no impression on him.  He does say that he listened to Black music over the radio on stations blasting up over the central plain from locations such as Shreveport but I don’t detect that influence in his music too much.  Of course, once in New York he saw the necessity for Negro roots and reacted socially.

Dylan does however know all the great C&W tunes and artists.  His first great plagiarism was from Hank Snow one of the absolute greats.  C&W was however not mainstream.  In the peculiar White mentality C&W was rejected as ignorant White hillbilly music and I mean rejected.  You had to cover up your liking of C&W as though it was the original sin.  On the other hand with that peculiar mentality of Whites they were able to embrace equally ignorant Negro ghetto music as their own.  I could never figure it out.

Dylan didn’t try.  Sometime before he got to UMinnesota in the Fall of ’59 he realized he wasn’t he wasn’t going to make it as a rocker so he switched to Folk from Fall ’59 to January of ’61 when he left for NYC.  At UMinnesota he had listened to a few Folk records while someone gave him Woody Guthrie’s autobiography Bound For Glory so that in some mad burst of teen infatuation he came to the conclusion that he was the reincarnation of Woody Guthrie.  He adopted the persona to the best of his ability beginning to create a hokey Oklahoma drifter’s accent and vocal style.

One gets the impression that his folk act in Minnesota was raw enough that he was merely tolerated.  Bob, himself, knew he was a genius so he took his half-digested act East to New York City in that January of ’61.  But he was wary.  Cagey then as now he decided to scope the scene before he burst upon it.

While arriving in NYC in January he didn’t make his official appearance on the Village scene until late February.  Dylan himself explains that missing period by claiming to have been hustling his buns in Times Square.  People have refused to take him at his word but why would he say it if it wasn’t true?  Why would he say it even if it were?  Dylan had very low self-esteem at the time while being a very serious drunkard.  At UMinnesota he had blottoed out and spread out on the ground at full noon in the main crossroads at the U.  You have to glory in your shame to do that.

We don’t know how much money Dylan had when he stepped out of the car in NYC although he was never really broke when he buskered on the street; his Ace In The Hole was the folks back home.  They did send him money.

Perhaps though Dylan was so down so low that he needed to debase himself in the worst possible way.  He probably did stroll 42^nd St. looking to be picked up.  Perhaps receiving money picked him up a little; gave him value.

As he scoped the Folk scene and picked up the odd dollar he was devising a persona to splash into the scene.  His persona was totally absurd and his Ten Weeks With The Circus story would be, or should have been, seen through before he got it out of his mouth.  This was sophisticated NYC for Christ’s save, New Yorkers have seen and heard every hustle ever devised.  You couldn’t fool them so they must have been humoring Dylan.

Nobody could have done all the things he said he’d done and graduated from high school two years or less earlier.  He also tried to conceal that he was Jewish which seems ridiculous to me, but then Dylan didn’t see the obvious Jewishness of Jack Elliot so maybe it’s just me.  Anyway it took these sharp New Yorkers a year or more to figure Dylan was a little Jewish kid.

Dylan had analyzed the scene well.  He realized he couldn’t go in and do what everyone else was doing.  Besides there were a lot of good guitarists in the Village and Dylan wasn’t one of them.  He had to shake the scene up a little.  At the time the Village Folk scene was a bore.  Folk was on the down trend.  The New Lost City Ramblers, one of the more formidable Village folk groups were so trite they were unlistenable.  While not on the Village scene I was aware of the phonograph records made by the artists and quite frankly I was amazed that anyone would record those people.  I mean, like Dylan, I was a hillbilly.  There were many amazing records being made by real folk artists like the Carter Family.  These pale Village imitations by middle class Jews aping the mountain people were far less than authentic. 

So Dylan practiced this garish voice, blew harmonica in an incomprehensible way and banged the guitar in an equally noisy and unmusical way.  Bud and Travis couldn’t play guitar either.  It boggles your mind to watch them flail the instrument.

People that say they liked his first couple records may very well be telling the truth but the truth is virtually no one bought them.  Fortunately Dylan soon learned to write songs.  They too made little impression as sung by him; sung by others, such as Peter Paul and Mary they sounded good enough to become hits.  Of course, Peter Paul and Mary had that religious sounding name and earnest style that opened a lot of doors for them.

Nevertheless by 1964 Dylan was beginning to make a name for himself as a songwriter so that people were more willing to accept his bizarre performances.  Andy Warhol said that Dylan began by singing political protest songs then shifted to singing personal protest songs.  That change began about 1964 with his Another Side Of Bob Dylan LP.

His friend and sometime road manager Victor Maymudes said that all Dylan’s songs were about his girl friends.  If you read his lyics with that in mind they will make more sense.  You still have to work at it though.  The language he uses really obscures the content.

It was at this point that Dylan went electric and moved out from his folk cover  (Dylan said that his folk music years were just a shuck.) and began his conversion to rock and roll.  Dylan began performing in high school as a Little Richard clone so the move should come as no surprise knowing what we do today.  When his rock and roll phase ended in 1966 Dylan then returned to his basal influence C&W.

As he shifted to personal protest on a rock and roll frame he made his impact as ‘a spokesman for his generation.’

Dylan was never a spokesman for the generation but he was a spokesman for people with the same psychosis as his.  Dylan was unbalanced as were all the people who took his message.  I was one of those who Dylan characterized as ‘abused, misused, strung out ones or worse.’  Dylan converted his angst into sexual frustration and his sexual frustration into lyrics.  We weren’t able to understand the lyrics because we were looking in the wrong place but we understood the songs perfectly on the subliminal level.  Dylan’s psychology matched ours.

Dylan’s last album as a New York folk singer, Blonde On Blonde, also expanded his audience while also confusing those who weren’t on his wavelength.  That is, people who hated him, and largely for psychological reasons, were forced to acknowledge him.  At the time the LP was so far outside our musical experience that we literally had heard nothing like it before.  Little Richard redux.

On the other hand I realized that he had peaked in that style and would no longer be able to continue in the same vein.  At the same time the pressures of the previous five years on Dylan were such that his mind was at the breaking point and actually broke.  He probably had what was called a nervous breakdown. Shortly we heard that Dylan had been in a motorcycle accident and might be dead.  He wasn’t, of course, and it has never been reliably determined that there ever had been an accident.  His brother David just laughs it off while many others reduce it to the equivalent of a mere scratch.  Dylan himself says that his manager Albert Grossman was driving him so hard that it was killing him.  He had to stop and catch his breath or die.

Dylan hadn’t yet learned to live on the road; he would master that later.

At any rate he had married his Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands, Sara in 1965 and needed time out to raise a family.  He did do that.

Regardless of whether he had been hurt or not he was not musically idle.  About a year and a half later in December of 1967 he released the awaited new LP John Wesley Harding.  The LP was a total rejection of his first incarnation.  He used a crooning voice backed by a C&W band.  He returned, as they used to say, to his roots.  He was no longer a trailblazer, just a C&W singer.  While I knew he would not follow up in the same style I was stunned by the reversion to a conventional country style.  At that time no one knew that his roots were C&W.

I loved the instrumental backing of his three big albums but had no interest in what seemed to be pseudo-country with rather ordinary lyrics.  (Let Me Be Your Baby Tonight.)  I abandoned him completely and never have gone back.  This was 1967.  The next wave of the British Invasion was in progress and it was astonishing.  The music was all fresh and picked up where Dylan had left off.  The sounds were all new like you’d never heard before.  The lyrics were nearly as inscrutable as Dylan’s.  Dylan was not missed by me nor a lot of his former fans.

As I said Dylan was not idle; he was busy.  The evidence of that appeared six months after John Wesley Harding.  Music From Big Pink by the Band.  This was relatively sensational music and lyrics.  Of course The Band was Dylan’s back up and his association with Big Pink buttressed his reputation a lot.  And then the legend of the Basement Tapes appeared that was even more tantalizing than the actual music although the songs from it that appeared by other artists were remarkably good.

So while Dylan left the Sixties with a much diminished reputation it was on a positive note.

-II-

The Never Ending Tour

While talent such as Dylan’s was is important, talent will not out without good luck and a helping hand.  Dylan undoubtedly had both.  There has always been some mystery about how a half skilled musician could show up in Greenwich Village in March 1961 and be signed to a record contract with Columbia Records seven months later in October.

People who had been around the Village were just blown away when the news got out.  Dylan’s talent was not that obvious to everyone.  Many could not see it at all.  He couldn’t play guitar and he couldn’t blow the harp.  His voice, at the time, was so raw it grated, and still does for me.  He hadn’t written a song in those seven months so his much vaunted songwriting skills weren’t in evidence.  Yet Robert Shelton, the music reviewer for the ultra-prestigious New York Times gave him a rave review that amazed everyone.  John Hammond of CBS signed him virtually without hearing him.  Other CBS staffers had such a low opinion of Dylan’s talent that they called him Hammond’s Folly.  Was there something going on behind the scenes, was something happening here that the Village couldn’t understand?   Listen to Positively Fourth Street and Something Happening again closely.

Well, you know, I’ve thought about this and studied this and I’ve put together the following scenarios for your delectation.  Granted it is highly conjectural yet based on facts.

Remember that Dylan is Jewish and New York City including the Village was and is a Jewish colony.  Being Jewish in the Village did and does count.

Back in Hibbing Minnesota the Jewish community was three or four hundred strong while Dylan’s, or Bobby Zimmerman’s, as he then was, family was chief among them.

Both Dylan’s father, Abram Zimmerman, and his mother, Beatty Zimmerman were of the Frankish sect of Judaism.  Dylan’s Jewish name, Sabtai, was derived from the last acknowledged human Jewish messiah.  This undoubtedly indicated the high hopes Abram had for his son as a deliverer of the Jews; in other words, a messiah.

Father Abe was the Anti-Defamation League representative in Hibbing.  That may have caused some friction between himself and the goy townsmen.  There seems to be an undercurrent of resentment both to Abe and Bobby Zimmerman in Hibbing.  As an Orthodox Jew Abram had connections back in New York probably with the Chabad Lubavitcher sect led by its chief rabbi, Menachem Schneerson.  Abram traveled frequently on religious business including to NYC.

Abram wanted son Bobby to also embrace the Lubavitcher sect.  Thus, as Bobby approached thirteen and his Bar Mitzvah Abram sent back to New York for a Lubavitcher Rabbi to come to Hibbing specifically to educate Bobby in the Lubavitcher belief system.  This was the rabbi Reuben Meier.  In full Lubavitcher gear he was an anomaly  in Hibbing where according to Dylan he embarrassed the Jewish community.

As Dylan tells it he got off the bus one day, spent a year teaching Bobby ‘what he had to learn’ then got back on the bus presumably returning to NYC his mission accomplished.

Dylan has or had a messiah complex.  Still, as he observed the fate of Jesus (look what they done to him, he said) he was unwilling to pick up the cross thus never declaring himself.  Still Abe had connections in NYC that could be and probably were useful bumping Dylan’s career along.

I haven’t found any evidence that Dylan ever contacted the Lubavitchers once in NYC but then it can’t be ruled out and he didn’t have to.  His father could have worked with them unknown to Dylan.  Still, Dylan later in life did associate himself with the Lubavitchers.  Could be coincidence, of course.

Shelton who wrote his glowing review of Dylan worked for the New York Times which was and is owned by the Jewish Sulzberger family.  Thus in all probability Abram called in some favors from the Lubavitchers to forward Dylan’s career.  Among them Abram had some position, and asked them to make sure that Dylan wasn’t overlooked.  Thus within the synagogue, so to speak, Shelton wrote his actually preposterous review of Dylan.

Now, Shelton came to New York from Chicago in the late fifties.  Dylan’s future Jewish manager Albert Grossman also came from Chicago where he had owned the seminal folk club The Gate Of Horn.  Shelton knew Grossman in Chicago where he wrote reviews of the folk acts.

When Grossman went East for whatever reasons in 1959 he helped found the Newport Folk Festival with the Jew George Wein.  Thus the Newport Folk Festival was a Jewish organization giving them the control over who could and could not make it.  Grossman hung around the Village analyzing the talent as he had plans.  He didn’t necessarily let the acts come to him but he went out and created them as in Peter Paul and Mary which was his total conception.  Sensing the direction of things he realized that a trio of two men and a woman with the right lineup would succeed and spread the message.  His final choices were two male Jews, Noel Stookey who became Paul and Peter Yarrow and a woman Mary Travers.  He chose well. 

Prodded by Shelton Grossman took a look at Dylan but could see no use for him until Dylan began to write.  At that point he fit into Grossman’s plans who then created Bob Dylan as a commercial entity.  Dylan justified the confidence in himself when he scored with the puerile Blowin’ In The Wind.  Dylan was still unlistenable to most people but with the voices of the more musical Peter Paul And Mary he began to establish his reputation as a song writer.

The Synagogue was behind him so that coupled with his talent he was given maximum and incredible exposure.    Now, Peter Yarrow who was very close to Grossman, one might say almost a collaborator, said that without Grossman there would have been no Peter Paul And Mary and more importantly no Bob Dylan.  Yarrow believed that Dylan’s success was due to Grossman.  Luck was with Dylan then when Grossman came to town a couple years before he did while Shelton was there at the Times.  You must have that luck.  Grossman definitely nurtured Dylan as a songwriter and put his career on track.  Whether Grossman was connected to the Lubavitchers isn’t clear but I’m sure the religious connection was there.  It was all within the Synagogue; strictly a Jewish affair.

Those who closely analyze Dylan’s songs love to point out the Biblical references with which his songs have always been replete.  Indeed, when Dylan was writing John Wesley Harding his mother who was visiting him during the period says that he kept a large Bible open in his living room that he would jump up to consult it from time to time.  Obviously the Bible informed his lyrics as he dealt with his injunction to be the new messiah, if I am correct in my analysis.

His religious training would surface in the seventies when he explored Jesus’ relationship to the Jews.  Contrary to what people believe Dylan never turned to Christianity, he was interested in the Jewish Jesus cult.  At the same time he was getting the Christian take on Jesus through the Vinyard Fellowship he was studying with the Jews For Jesus cult.  Indeed, when he came out as a Jesus freak at the Warwick Theatre in San Francisco Jews For Jesus people were used to proselytize  outside the theatre but not the Vinyard Fellowship.

Having satisfied his curiosity about Jesus he next showed up in full Lubavitcher gear in Jerusalem.  The Christians were stunned at the seeming turnabout.  Rabbi Reuben Meier had not failed the Lubavitchers back in the fifties in Hibbing.  Dylan came home.

-III-

On The Barricades

Jewish self-confidence was ruined in the wake of WWII but began to resume with the establishment of Israel in 1948.  A feeling of power began to revive after the 1956 war; then after the Six Day War of 1967 a feeling of invincibility seized the Jewish mind.  Born in 1941 Dylan was 26 in 1967.  In 1968 the aborted Paris insurrection took place.

As a result of the Six Day War the New York Rabbi Meir Kahane organized the Jewish Defense League (JDC) as a terrorist organization from which came the JDO or Jewish Defense Organization.  The JDO was murderous.  Both were terrorist groups who engaged in serious bomb attacks in NYC and assassinations.  It was pretty nutty.

At roughly the same time the Weatherman group was formed that was a combined Goy and Jewish affair designed to bring down the US government.  That group was headed by the Chicago terrorist nutcake Bomber Billy Ayers.  The JDL, JDO and Weathermen traced their origins back to Dylan while including Dylan as one of them.  Dylan had JDL members as bodyguards and possibly JDO so at one time he seems to have been a member.  More regular Jews warned him to dissociate himself publicly from the JDL and JDO so that he did disassociate them from himself at least as far as one can see.

Dylan’s association with the Weathermen if it existed was more tenuous.  It would be interesting to know if through Greil Marcus Dylan knew Ayers.   All groups considered Dylan a revolutionary.  This could easily be inferred from songs like Subterranean Homesick Blues and Ain’t Going To Work On Maggie’s Farm No More plus many of his Negro protest songs.

Now, when Dylan was awarded the French decoration, The Legion Of Honor, in 2015  he was commended for his contributions to the Paris insurrection of ’68.  What those contribution were weren’t specified; it may only have been the moral support of his songs that the revolutionaries heard as a call to arms.  Or perhaps Dylan functioned as a courier during his tours throughout the world.  It wouldn’t be the first time entertainers were used as covers.

In 2007 when Sarkozy had been elected President of France one of the first things he did was to call a number of people to Paris to receive awards.  Three relevant Americans made the trip, Dylan, Greil Marcus and David Lynch the filmmaker.

As it turns out Dylan and Greil Marcus are or were fairly closely associated.  Marcus was ostensibly a music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine, another Jewish set up, but he was also a member of the French Jewish revolutionary group, the Situationist International led by Guy Debord.  Debord and his SI claim to have been the moving force behind the Paris revolt thus tightening the connection between Marcus, Dylan, the SI and the Paris insurrection.  Dylan was also associated with the revolutionary group centered around John Lennon and his widow Yoko Ono.

Now, in 2001 Dylan, Marcus and future president of the United States Barack Obama were in Chicago as associates at the time of 9/11.  Dylan’s LP Love And Theft was released on that date that has references that seem applicable to the destruction while Marcus published an article shortly thereafter that seemed to celebrate the attack.  So Dylan’s actions seem to point to revolutionary ends.

Now, as Dylan was touring the world from the Sixties through the present he may have been a courier connecting global revolutionary activity.  It would not have been wise to communicate by phone or internet in later years as phones and electronics are easily tapped so it would be necessary to communicate by hand delivered messages.  Such services would have been invaluable while coded messages in songs or interviews on radio and television appearances are possible.  Eric Burdon formerly of the Animals was arrested by the German authorities on that suspicion.

You don’t get awards just for being cute.

A Review Of The Bob Dylan Show: Portland Performance 10/21/14

A Review Of The Bob Dylan Show: Portland Performance 10/21/14

by

R.E. Prindle

 

The steel is moanin’, the guitars are speakin’,

The piano plays a jelly roll. 

The man on the drums is far from dumb,

The bassman he plays from his soul.

The tables are quakin’, and your nerves are shakin’

But you keep on a-beggin’ for more.

You’re havin’ your fun you lucky son of a gun

On that Honky Tonk hardwood floor.

Sung by the late great Johnny Horton

Showman

 

 The Bob Dylan show dropped into town last night.  And what a show it was.  My first Dylan show, from reading all these reviews depicting the shows as atrocious my expectations were very low.

I can’t imagine what these critics are thinking.  The Show as absolutely sensational.  Dylan is one of the great Rock and Roll showmen.  Beats anyone else I’ve ever seen.

I hope I can hit a stride here commensurate with the show and my muse doesn’t let me down.  The venue, the Keller Auditorium, is a twenty-five hundred capacity house and it was filled.  The stage is relatively big about sixty wide and fifty high.  Bob and his musicians used the whole space like they had been performing there for a year.  The lighting while minimal was dramatic, effective and beautiful putting one in a good mood. An aura was provided that brought one into the Secret Garden.

The electronic gear seemed to be artfully scattered haphazardly across the whole stage.  The musicians wore red blazers while Bob came out in a white planter’s outfit, uniting the Templars with the old plantation down South.  Jeb Stuart rides again.

The musicians appeared to be encamped among the gear with the lead and rhythm guitarists to the audience’s left.   The drum stand was middle as is proper flanked by the bass player and finally a steel guitar player cum banjoist on the right end.   Bob’s keyboard was forward and on a level with the steel.  It was all very minimalist and effective.  They filled the stage while being placed in perspective by the high fifty foot frame keeping everything human size.  Dylan must have been studying performance art under Yoko.

It is a mistake to go to the concert to hear Dylan sing.  He apparently learned to vocalize by listening to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.  At first I thought it was a cabover with two cylinders not hitting coming up a mountain grade hauling a hundred thousand K in triple bottoms.  Then I saw that it was Bob.  The music is the thing; as a composer and conductor lies Bob’s genius.

The band was incredibly disciplined, everyone knew his role, fit tightly with the others and played their instruments without exhibitionism. The harmonics and spacing was incredible.

The drummer carried the band on his back.  He was so sensational that like the Hindu elephant  he could carry the world on his back.  I mean, he had time in his hands, the money in his pocket and could walk the dog on a long leash.  I haven’t seen anyone like that since Michael Shrieve.  The guy was terrific, he couldn’t only play he looked good doing it.  The bass player standing next to the kit kept the beat rolling forward.  Bob understands the rhythm section.  No amateurishness near.

While relatively unobtrusive the steel player was carrying a lot of the weight.

Now, the band doesn’t play any songs; what Bob has written is some sort of symphonic suite in several movements.  The lead and rhythm play a succession of chord progressions loud; there is no melody as such.  The music has a strong forward flow that sweeps along like the Mississippi in flood before it was channeled and diked.
When Bob steps up to the mike he just mouths some words without reference to what the band is doing.  The set list gives a bunch of song titles but I never heard them.

The band set the crowd off from the first chord, it was all daylight from there.  Like nearly everyone else I flipped to the ozone, shouting and howling.  Amazingly the audience responded differently to different chord progressions; sections would shoot from seats with a roar that competed with the amplification.  It was like a huge sea of deep rollers rising and falling.

A wonderful crowd, best I’ve ever seen.  Everyone looked good and went way into the show.  There was no one not having the time of their life.  Dylan was flattered and showed it, trying a little harder to deliver the goods.

His singing was irrelevant.  Why he is charged with plagiarism is beyond me.  I won’t say you couldn’t understand a word because I was able to snag a few while even getting a phrase or two- Tangled Up In Blue that he snarled in his regular voice.

If he was singing from his catalogue it was hardly noticeable  although I did get the faint impression that one  of them was She Belongs To Me.  Either that or Love -  Zero = No Limits, or something else maybe The Star Spangled Banner.  Didn’t matter Bob had to do something to justify his being there.  He had the band so tight they could have performed without him.

The band was the cake.  The progressions were so powerful it was like Godzilla walking in rhythm.  There were two sets and the first one was a power walk.  Just unbelievable.  If all Bob’s shows are like this one I can’t imagine what critics are belittling.  Forget the singing, it’s some kind of frosting to add a little variety.  So is Bob’s posturing.  He struts around a little like the Lord of the Manse directing the slaves striking what I suppose are meant to be power poses.

The end of the first set leaves you exhausted but energized and hoarse.  During the intermission most people didn’t leave their seats but in their high excitement there was a huge billowing roar rising up; I was in the first row, first balcony.  It was a kindly roar.  Dylan’s fans are OK.  No weirdos there regardless of Kinney’s book, The Dylanologists:  Adventures In The Land Of Bob.

I was there with my wife and our friends Mark and Jenna, two old fans.  On my left I sat next to a couple from Medicine Hat, Alberta who had driven down for the show.  He was a wheat farmer with 600 acres.  Using three John Deere combines he harvests all 600 acres in one day.  Gives him a lot of leisure I suppose.

The second set was a little more frivolous  lowering the energy level considerably.   But, before you went to sleep he pepped it up a little ending on a power note.

I have heard that he doesn’t do encores but after a steady drum roll of about ten minutes he and the band came back for not a one piece encore, but two, ending the show with a medium power progression while Bob mumbled the words to Blowing In The Wind apparently a very personal lyric.  Ah, Hibbing.

By this time I had a firm grip on the situation paying attention to the band, but it is Bob’s band and I imagine that he has composed the music.  As a composer he is no mean hand.  I hesitate to say it but the music is at least as good as Beethoven although falling short of Mozart.

I don’t know how long the piece was but they must have given us five to ten minutes with the crowd and myself going wild.  The woman four seats to my left had virtually taken leave of her senses screaming doing a wild gyration of a dance. 

OK, I confess it.  I did some involuntary things.  The band was really showing off their discipline and expertise.  Now this is really spectacular, they were powering along then cut off simultaneously leaving a half beat silence before resuming at the same pace and volume.  They did this three times.

I sensed it coming on, now I’m not bragging because I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing but in that brief half beat space was total silence.  I shouted out a perfect rock and roll ‘hey’.  I did it the second time slipping that hey into that narrow opening.  I think the band was surprised by the first one then sort of amazed at the second one.  Then consciousness came slipping back and I missed the third opening.  It was still terrific.

The band was terrific.  Dylan was terrific, the whole show was breathtaking and invigorating.  If you are being swayed by all the negative reviews, disregard them.  Dylan’s show is a can’t miss situation.  Carpe Diem!  Good things don’t last forever.

 

Chap. 15 Edie Sedgwick: Maid Of Constant Sorrow

Edie Sedgwick: Maid Of Constant Sorrow

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Chapter 15

Edie

We are now at the beginning of June 1966. Life was careening very fast for Edie, Andy and Bob. Oddly enough all three were headed for life threatening experiences. The first to take a hit was Dylan. He had his famous spill from his motorcycle in July of that summer. His back wheel locked up sending him flying over the handlebars. It has never been made clear how badly he was hurt or if he was even hurt at all but he was observed in a neck brace so a report that he had a cracked vertebra in his neck may be accurate. He may have come within an ace then of being paralyzed from the neck down or killed.

It seems to me unlikely that the rear wheel accidentally locked up. As Dylan was one whose conduct from, say, ‘63 to ‘66 should have made him a lot of enemies it seems likely that someone was seeking revenge. There are strong indications if not evidence that Andy Warhol was the most likely candidate.

Andy was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve but my thinking after reading extensively and thinking deeply is that in his own way Andy was deeply in love with Edie. Given his homosexuality there was apparently no way for him to express his feelings to her. Edie on her part remarked to Dylan that she had really tried to get close to Andy. While Andy strove to appear indifferent he express his resentment at David Weisman and his movie Ciao Manhattan that exploited Edie’s fame while destroying whatever was left of her reputation.

At the same time too he resented Dylan for purloining Edie and then discarding her. Andy was controlled by the notion that there was no stopping a person from following their bent or as he put it: How do you stop someone from doing what they want to do. Indeed, all one can do is step out of the way and let them do it. Thus, while the attitude is callous he was heard to remark that if Edie was going to commit suicide he hoped that she let him film it. The logic is not unreasonable but the attitude comes across cold.

As Edie seemed intent on going with Dylan Andy felt that there was no way to stop her. It never occurred to him that he himself was exploiting her by using her in his movies. As he saw it he was creating avenues to success for his people and it was up to them to create their own opportunities from that fame. Not too much different than he was doing for himself. It apparently never occurred to him that none of his people had the talent to do anything on their own although some did try.

He does not seem to have been aware that what was fame for him was mere notoriety for them. He had merely created a clubhouse for drugged out buffoons. Thus when things began to fall apart in mid-’66 when the mise en scene was broken up by Andy’s trip to Hollywood his entourage was merely dispersed with no direction home.

The case with Ondine was as pathetic as that with Edie. With the accession of Paul Morrissey and Fred Hughes who encouraged Andy to drop the whole A-head and Silver Factory crowd which they correctly saw as a liability. This was made easier by the end of ‘67 when Warhol was advised that his lease would not be renewed. Everyone was told there would be no place for them at the new quarters. The Factory building was subsequently torn down in 1969 to make room for the Dag Hammerskjold project.

For Ondine who was completely burned out by the amphetamines this was disastrous. He ended up at the post office for a while then tried to capitalize on his notoriety by stealing a film in which he starred trying to make money by exhibiting it while lecturing on his Factory days. He was apparently pathetic while Andy turned his back on him without a thought.

The same was true of Gerard Malanga who was dumped in 1967. Andy’s treatment of this most competent and valuable assistant is a real blot on his record. Malanga was a man of some talent and ability. I don’t think much of poetry but Malanga has a position in the NYC poetry scene. He introduced Andy into a milieu beneficial to him that he would not have known otherwise.

At a time when Andy was turning his art in the direction of multiple copies, essentially posters, Malanga who was knowledgeable in silk screening taught Andy the process. I am of the opinion that Gerard was essentially a collaborator in Warhol’s art. He assisted in the screening contributing skill and know how while undoubtedly making good suggestions. Of course he followed Andy’s lead. All this time he was paid only the minimum wage so, in a sense, he sacrificed a half dozen of his most valuable years for little recompense and as it turned out nothing in the way of thanks. In 1967 he went to Italy in an attempt to further his fortunes. While there he ran out of money having no way to pay his fare home. Andy refused his pleas for help, so Gerard who was completely familiar with Andy’s process of selecting photographs, such as the Presleys, selected a photo of Che Guevara and screened a few copies representing them as genuine Warhols. From my point of view they were authentic Warhols produced without the Master’s hand but still, perhaps, genuine.

When art authorities checked with Warhol, Andy dropped the ball. He should have confirmed them as no one could tell the difference and rescued Gerard. Instead he made Gerard guilty of art fraud which gave Gerard some very trying moments with the Italian authorities. Gerard made it back to New York but now having served as Warhol’s apprentice during his twenties, at thirty he had no marketable skills while being essentially a convicted criminal. Having no other recourse and some rights in my estimation he expropriated, as the Leftist criminals used to say, some of Andy’s multiples and sold them. In a way in Andy’s mind this acknowledged his primacy and he didn’t press charges but he did disavow authentic prints as genuine.

We now move to ‘68, Andy under the influence of Morrissey and Hughes qhile forced to change quarters as his former space was condemned, disavowed the whole former Factory crowd telling them to get lost, that they were no longer welcome at the new Factory.

You can’t do this without making a large number of enemies. Andy just before his shooting was not so popular a fellow. And we are not quite there yet.

Edie going into the last half of ‘66 and into ‘67 was in dire straits. She was now completely unable to function without amphetamines. Cut off from all sources of income she was forced into thievery to support her habit. She was caught and did time. She was to spend more time at public mental hospitals that were quite unlike the posh Silver Hill of Connecticut. One can only guess the effect this disastrous series of events, a series with no seeming end, had on her psychology. Or perhaps we can get a glimmer from the biker group she hung out when she returned to Santa Barbara after the stunning humiliation of Ciao Manhattan. There she became a biker chick offering herself to all comers for a dose of drugs. Certainly her self-respect had been obliterated. Certainly she no longer thought she had any value as a human being. The mind can only be battered so much before it gives way. The men in her life had treated her shamefully. Her father, Fuzzy, Warhol and Dylan as well as her evil mentor, Chuck Wein.

If, as claimed in the movie Factory Girl, her father had sexual relations with her as a young girl then his obligations extended much further than a paltry allowance that he cut off . Then he is morally liable for her degradation. If as Warhol thought there was no way to stop someone from doing what they want to do, then he was under no obligation to provide the ways and means. In all probability in the environment of NYC of the early and mid-sixties Edie would have drifted into amphetamines anyway. Indeed, as Andy said, Edie was a regular patron of the feel good doctor, Roberts.

Roberts was a licensed physician as was that other chief Dr. Feelgood, Max Jacobson. Doesn’t society have to obligation to protect its citizens from charlatans and quacks? Didn’t they throw some poor innocent Jim Bakker in jail because they disliked his religion? Didn’t society pursue hapless marijuana smokers and criminalize them by the thousands? Can the doctors actually claim they didn’t know the deleterious effects of amphetamines when they had the example of the most notorious amphetamine user ever, Adolf Hitler, before them?

Even if they tried they were still were medical malpractitioners and criminally liable. Read this quote from Edie by Jean Stein for an account of these doctors’ methods and practices. This is absolutely terrifying. There is a problem with Stein and Plimpton however. Apparently there was no Dr. Charles Roberts; Roberts is a name substituted by Stein to ‘protect’ the real doctor, who in any event would likely have been discredited c. 1968 when the Dr. Feelgoods were finally discountenanced. Also there may be confusion with the Dr. Robert, without an ‘s’ of the Beatles song. He was apparently Dr. Roberty Feynman, a sixty year old man who was discredited in 1968. In any event since Stein and Plimpton didn’t announce the name change their whole history of Edie is compromised more than somewhat. Who knows what edit’s the two authors made. To quote the account, p.261, Edie:

Joel Schmacher reporting:

I’ll give a description of what it was like to go to Dr. Roberts. The time is two-thirty in the afternoon. I’m going back for my second shot of the day. I open the door. There are twenty-five people in the waiting room; businessmen, beautiful teenagers on the floor with long hair playing guitars, pregnant women with babies in their arms, designers, actors, models, record people, freaks, non-freaks…waiting. Everyone is waiting for a shot, so the tension in the office is beyond belief.

Lucky you, being a special Dr. Roberts person who can whip right in without waiting. Naturally there’s a terrible resentful, tense moment as you rush by because you’re going to get your shot.

You attack one of the nurses. By that I mean you grab her and say, “Listen, Susan! Give me a shot!” You’re in the corridor with your pants half off, ready to get the shot in your rear. Meanwhile Dr. Roberts comes floating by. Dr. Roberts has had a few shots already, right? So in the middle of this corridor he decides to tell you his complete plan to rejuvenate the entire earth. It’s a thirteen part plan, but he has lots of time to tell it to you, and as the shots start to work-Susan having given it to you- you have lots of time to listen.

In Dr. Roberts’s room would be Edie…so thin that she cannot be given her shots standing up; she has to lie down on her stomach. It was a big shot- all those vitamins, niacin, methedrine. God knows what else- for a little girl she has had to take it lying down.

Meanwhile everyone who’s back in the corridor for the second or third time that day complains that the shots they received that morning haven’t worked. Out in the waiting room you can hear the people complaining that they haven’t even received their first shot yet.

And Dr. Roberts is still going on. In the middle of his thirteen-part plan he decides to tell you about a movie he saw on television…in detail. You however, are telling him your ideas for whatever you are going to do. But then Dr. Roberts begins to describe his idea for a plastic Kabuki house. Someone else is showing his sketches for redesigning the Boeing 707 with a psychedelic interior. Big doings at Dr. Roberts all the time.

Now you decide to go back out through the waiting room, right? Now you have all the time in the world. Life is a breeze. You’ve used the sun lamp, I mean, you were in a great rush when you came in; now, finally, you decide you’ll leave.

But there in the room are all these people who are not Dr. Roberts special people and who still haven’t been served. They’re there to spend as much money as you have, but they’re not part of the “in” crowd. So they’re drifting off into craziness because they haven’t gotten their shots. A couple of people are wandering around…their poor systems are so riddled with the methedrine they got half an hour ago they feel is not working that they’ve come back for what Dr. Roberts call “the booster.” The basic Dr. Roberts shot goes for from ten dollars to fifteen dollars. As your resistance to the drug gets to the point of diminishing returns, you move on up. There is a big shot for twenty-five dollars, and if it doesn’t work you go right back and get the “the booster’ for five dollars. That’s what some of these poor people are doing- standing out there waiting for the booster. But you …you are flying high, having just had your twenty-five dollar special, and you walk out ino the outer office and say: “Hi, Oh, hi! What a beautiful sweater! Gee you look wonderful! How are you? Oh, hi! Isn’t it wonderful to see you! What’s happening?”

Before leaving, I’d often go and find Edie in Dr. Roberts’ sauna. If we’d been up all night on drugs, the sauna and steam-bath were wonderful things. We’d go and walk for blocks and blocks…just be together, because we didn’t know what we were saying half the time.

The speed thing was so wonderful because everyone was walking around scared to death…scared because they couldn’t sustain the pace. And so these shots from Dr. Roberts and all those other speed doctors gave you a false sense of being together. You cold face everybody when you went out at night. You could dance all night. It was like “the answer.” Nobody knew much about speed in those days.

Once Edie’s mother came to Dr. Roberts! I remember she was on crutches. He looked like Betty Crocker-gray hair with a little hairnet, a blue print dress, and little glasses. She looked like a librarian from the Mid-west standing next to Edie with her cut-off blond hair with the dark roots, thigh-high boots, and mini-skirt, and a kind of chubby fur jacket that looked like it was made out of old cocker spaniels. There they were- the two of them. Mrs. Sedgwick had come to see if Dr. Roberts was taking good care of her little girl…and I guess the parents paid for her treatment. It cost a lot for those shots.

I’m not sure I trust Joel’s memories but that is sure good speed freak talk. Love it. And then there’s this from Cherry Vanilla, p. 265:

Quote.

I became like an acid queen. I loved it. My looks got crazier and crazier. I started getting into things like pink wigs, teasing them up to make them real big and like bubbles. I’d wear goggle glasses and real crazy make-up: spidery lashes and white lips, and micro-minis. I saw a micro-mini on Edie and immediately started cutting everything off. Kenneth Jay Lane earrings. Big Robert Indiana LOVE earrings, giant love paintings on my ears. Little bikini undies, a band around the top; and we made these silver dresses that were just silver strings hanging on us. I was surrounded by a lot of gay boys in designing and decorating who would always give me a hand in pulling some look together. I would go out half-naked with see through things. You took a scarf and wrapped it around you and thought you were dressed.

I gave Dr. Roberts a shot once. In the ass, in his office about five o’ clock in the morning. I had been playing records at Aux Puce- I was the disc jockey there- and he had some around to visit and said, “If you come back to my office with me, I’ll give you a shot.” It was a freebie, which was nice because those shots were not cheap.

 I really got into having a needle in my ass. Just the feeling of it. You get the shot, then this taste in your mouth, and you get a rush and you knew you were getting high. It was all very sexual in a way, and very “in” and social and stylish to do it. So I went back to his office with him and I gave him one and he gave me one.

I don’t know what he shot me up with, but it was something I had certainly never had before. I was really very numbed. Maybe it was cocaine. Sometimes he would shoot you with LSD. You never knew what he was going to shoot you with. So we got involved in a rather heavy sex encounter.

All of a sudden there was blood everywhere. I was bleeding like crazy. He laughed and said, “Oh, I think you should go and see a doctor.” Very bizarre. I started freaking out. I thought, “Oh, my God, this man has done something to me.. He’s killed me. I’m going to die here in his office, all shot up with drugs, and it’s going to be a disgrace and terrible..” I told him I had to get out. He said, “No, no, you can’t leave. I’ll fix you. I’ll give you a shot.” I said, “No, no, no more shots!” I got dressed. I never thought he was going to let me out. Perhaps he was scared I would go to the police.

When I did get out, I ran around the corner to Aux Puces. Some of the staff used to hang out there very late at night taking LSD. Sure enough, they were there. We called doctors. We couldn’t get anybody. Then the bleeding began to subside suddenly- about seven in the morning. I never actually knew what happened. I had been cut inside- scratched with something, fingernails or jewelry…probably by accident. I think we both just got carried away. 

Exciting times. And finally we have this from Edie. This is a transcript from Ciao Manhattan.

It’s hard to choose between the climactic ecstasies of speed and cocaine. They’re similar. Oh, they are so fabulous. That fabulous sexual exhilaration. Which is better, coke or speed?” It’s hard to choose. The purest speed, the purest coke, and sex is a deadlock.

Speeding and booze. That gets funny. You get chattering at about fifty miles an hour over the downdraft, and booze kind of cools it. It can get very funny. Utterly ridiculous. It’s a good combination for a party. Not for an orgy, though.

Speedball! Speed and heroin. That was the first time I had a shot in each arm. Closed my eyes. Opened my arms. Closed my fists, and jab, jab. A shot of cocaine and speed, and a shot of heroin. Stripped off all my clothes, leapt downstairs, and ran out on Park Avenue and two blocks down it before my friends caught me. Naked. Naked as a lima bean. A speedball is from another world. It’s a little bit dangerous. Pure coke, pure speed, and pure sex. Wow! The ultimate in climax. Once I went over to Dr. Roberts for a shot of cocaine. It was very strange because he wouldn’t tell me what it was, and I was playing it cool. It was my first intravenous shot, and I said, “Well, I don’t feel it.” And he gave me another one, and all of a sudden I went blind. I just flipped out of my skull! I ended up wildly balling him and flipping him out of his skull. He was probably shot up…he was always shooting up around the corner anyway.

It would appear that Edie was very familiar with drugs and very welcoming to them. The quote doesn’t tell us whether Edie was first introduced to amphetamines at the Factory and then found Dr. Roberts or vice-versa but we do have an environment at the factory in which Brigit Berlin walked around injecting people with or without their consent. The question then is how innocent is Andy really. What sort of milieu had he created for his amusement.

The Factory was a clubhouse for what were essentially lowlife homosexual drug addicts. (insert Time article) This must have been the overriding first impression. As such the women had to be accessories to attract men and outsiders. They were there essentially to be abused. They put the Factory in bad odor. As Andy says the police were through the Factory so often it might s well have the precinct house. Warhol himself was generally known as ‘that creep’ while the more respectable people thought the place poison.

Andy’s genius however did turn it into an ‘in’ place by 1966 where certain celebrities with cachet found the place exciting and for a short period gave it a certain status.

As I have pointed out Warhol was a leader in both the Homosexual Revolution and the Underman Revolution. By late 1966, early 1967 we are not too far from the Stonewall Riot of ‘69 that ended restriction and harassment of homosexuals in NYC and the rest of the country. It was the end of rock n’ roll. After Stonewall the period began that homosexuals called the Candy Store Era. It was a time when anything went that ended about ten years later when AIDS made its appearance on the scene. Of course if any of us had heard of the Stonewall Riot we would have missed its significance nor did anyone understand the astounding change that was the Candy Store Era. A sub-text of the Homosexual Revolution is the subversion of heterosexuality which goes without saying. Thus the Factory was a prototype of the nightclub that would realize the ideal of absolutely promiscuous sex- Studio 54. Thus as the homosexually led nightlife of the Candy Store Era developed Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager created the ultimate Factory in Studio 54. That club was everything Andy wanted the Factory to be- a celebrity paradise. The place was filled with celebrities, sexual perversion and drugs. All inhibitions were down. Studio 54 became Andy’s clubhouse where he spent his nights as a voyeur.

Rubell and Schrager were not overly discreet so that the Feds, at least, were onto them from the beginning although NYC authorities must have been paid off as they didn’t harass the club. At Studio 54 the Undermen forged a very destructive attack on elite White America. According to Anthony Haden-Guest in his book, Studio 54, a concerted assault was made to corrupt prep school youth- boys and girls using drugs, liquor and sex. According to Haden-Guest the conspirators were quite successful in debasing both boys and girls in much the same manner Edie had been debauched under Warhol’s tutelage.

This raises the question again of how innocent Andy really was. His competitor Bob Dylan is supposed to have hated Andy for debauching Edie but that may have been the pot calling the kettle black.

Andy’s record of the treatment of women is not good but in keeping with the homosexual ethos. The gays dislike women as competitors, as they believe, for men’s favors. While not considering themselves psychotic they believe that if there were no women all men would be theirs. The irrationality of the belief shall pass without comment. Hence they imitate women to attract men. An inevitable consequence of their attitude is the need to debase and humiliate women.

While being of this mindset Andy as the little Ruthenian immigrant boy who was himself humiliated and rejected by the upper crust of Pittsburgh found delight in debasing and humiliating upper crust women. This runs through his whole career. Edie came from a very old American family that was very prominent in both Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Boston, from whence they arose and New York City. Her father had moved West from New York only shortly before she was born. Although raised as a half wild girl on a vast ranch near Santa Barbara Edie could claim to be a New York society girl. Indeed, her grandmother still maintained her position on the East Side.

While Andy may indeed had loved Edie it was probably more for her background than for herself. The prized of an Anglo-American princess must have been beyond Andy’s juvenile dreams. Indeed, it was through her that Andy first tasted any social success. If they were inseparable during that glorious summer of ‘65 it was because Andy was basking in Edie’s social glamour. And yet one doesn’t find reverence or respect for Edie as a person. Andy allowed her to pick up the check at expensive restaurants not only for himself but his whole entourage of freeloaders. As these were all Underclass people you may be sure they took full advantage of her largesse. I am perhaps a trifle old fashioned but to me this is unforgivable in Andy.

While Andy may have been hard pressed financially to maintain the large and growing establishment there appears to have been no gratitude for Edie relieving the strain. As his entourage grew Andy began to yearn for a restaurant where he could exchange art for food and drink. This was provided in 1966, after Edie was out of favor, when Mickey Ruskin opened Max’s Kansas City in December of ‘65.

The rest of women at the Factory were treated with disrespect although they submitted to it with stoic resignation. One reads with horror the treatment of Viva in Tucson during the filming of Warhol’s cowboy parody and putdown, once again a homosexual extravaganza.

And then there was the ever present sado-masochism that permeated the Factory. An acceptance and celebration of the perversion. The attitude was expressed successfully in the films of Paul Morrissey begun while Warhol was recuperating from Valerie Solanas’ assault. With Andy unable to interfere Morrissey quickly turned out the movie Flesh with Joe Dallesandro which turned out to be a success in Germany. This gave Andy confidence and Morrissey produced several more movies among them Flesh For Frankenstein. I have no intention of reviewing the movie here but certain barbarities of the French arch-sadist Gilles de Rais were celebrated.

Women of some prominence played roles in the nude while performing sexually deviant acts. This rather negative attitude toward women was reflected all through the history of the various Factorys carried on in the most degrading circumstance.

To add insult to injury when Edie was actually falling into her psychological abyss Andy shot The Andy Warhol Story with Rene Ricard and Edie in which both expressed their hatred and revulsion of Andy. ( http://.warholstars.org/warhol/warhol1/warhol1f/warhol.html )

So by this time she had bad been debased more than any man or woman should ever be debased. Edie herself lay her destruction at the feet of Andy, the great facilitator, the sado-masochistic doyen of New York. I think Andy, then bears a feat deal of responsibility for Edie’s shame.

Now, it will be noted. The Andy Warhol Story was filmed at about the same time as his Bob Dylan Story so Edie and Dylan were connected in Andy’s mind.

As I said Warhol and his troupe left for LA in May of ‘66 after a successful month of the EPI. When he returned to resume this lucrative enterprise he found that his hall, the Dom, had been leased from under him by- Albert Grossman and Bob Dylan. They turned it into a venue inanely named The Balloon Farm. Another act of plagiarism by Dylan. I think this was too much for Warhol. First Edie and then the Dom. This was surely provocation asking for trouble.

Now, if you’ve watched the post-1968 Warhol movie Bad how far is it from Bad to conjecture that Andy and his crew were responsible for Dylan’s accident? Bad concerns a woman who runs a clearing house for dirty deeds written by Andy’s amanuensis, Pat Hackett. Andy had to have been angry at Dylan and Grossman and indeed he filmed a put down of the two. Quoting Warholstars.org:

Sterling Morrisson of the Velvet Underground:

“Dylan was always around, giving Nico songs. There was one film Andy made with Paul Caruso called The Bob Dylan Story. I don’t think Andy has ever shown it. It was hysterical. They got Marlowe Dupont to play Al Grossman. Paul Caruso not looks like Bob Dylan but as a super caricature he makes even Hendrix look pale by comparison. This was around 1966 when the film was made and his hair was way out to here…On the eve of the filming, Paul had a change of heart and got his hair cut off- close to his head and he must have removed about a foot so everyone was upset about that. Then Dylan had his accident and that is why the film was never shown.”

So, in July smarting from the indignities imposed on him by Dylan and Grossman Andy was making a ‘hilarious’ film about the two. Perhaps Andy thought that was not enough so somewhere during the filming, one conjectures, he conceived this motorcycle rigging. Thus, in late July Dylan went over the handlebars when his rear wheel locked. Anything could have happened to him from paralysis to death. As it was he fractured his neck coming within an ace of serious injury.

Andy hadn’t finished with The Bob Dylan Story. He wanted to work in the accident. Probably aggrieved at Dylan’s survival Andy recommenced the film in October of ‘66 probably with the Andy Warhol Story starring Edie in mind.

Warholstars once again:

  Susan Pile speaking:

Andy filmed the Bob Dylan Story starring Paul Caruso…Ingrid Superstar and I were folkrock groupies who rushed in (to Paul Caruso) attacked his body and taped him to the motorcycle…Paul Morrissey suggested all of Paul Caruso’s lines be from songs, but Andy, knowing it was a good idea (this is a direct relay from Paul Morrissey) vetoed it…My one line (what I wasn’t supposed to say; I was to remain mutely sinister) was “You’re just like P.F. Sloan and all the rest- you want to become famous so you can get rid of those pimples.” (accompanied by quick slaps to P. Caruso’s acne remnanted cheeks.)…

So, what do we have here? Bear in the mind the subject matter of Bad which is a very violent movie of revenges made in the most casual treatment. Morrison’s account is given before the accident while Pile’s is after.

Pile and Ingrid attack Caruso/Dylan and mockingly tape hi to the motorcycle so that he can’t fall off. (ha, ha, ha). Pile the delivers a devastating putdown comparing Dylan unfavorably to P.F. Sloan. Sloan was the guy who wrote the puerile Eve Of Destruction that was very near to being a humorous parody of Dylan’s songs such as Blowin’ In The Wind. If Dylan had seen the film he would likely have been enraged. Pile than calls Dylan’s song ‘pimple music’ another put down as rock n’ roll was derisively called pimple music because teenagers had pimples. And then Caruso/Dylan is physically abused by having his face slapped while being unable to retort because he is taped to the bike.

Psychologically then what Andy is saying is that he felt the filching of Edie as a slap in the face while when he was in LA he was unable to foil the filching of the Dom.

This combination of Dylan and the motorcycle in a film called The Bob Dylan Story points clearly to Andy as the perp.

And so the final chapter will concern the filming of Ciao Manhattan and the demise of Edie. I have some other work to be done so there will be a delay before Chapter 16 appears.