Excerpt from Daniel Mark Epsteins The Ballad of Bob Dylan-- [Happy] Traum also recalled an incident that may have occurred during the same visit [Woodstock], when Dylan showed his natural generosity with children. It was a funny story. My son Adam had been going to boarding school down in Poughkeepsie. That weekend he came home with a friend, this painfully shy Korean boy. Adam was playing the guitar at the time, he must have been fifteen. They were up in Adams room. The kid played bass, and so they were up there jamming. Bob [Dylan] was here, sitting around, and then he said, Oh, whats the music upstairs? I told him it was Adam and a friend of his. And you have to understand, this boy was so shy. Adam is very personable and outgoing, and for him Bob wasnt such a big deal. Hed known him since he was a kid, Jesses dad, see? But his Korean boy was so shy he couldnt even look at us. So the boys are upstairs jamming in Adams bedroom. Then Bob goes up there, and he picks up a guitar and stars jamming with them. And this kid... I think he thought the heavens had just opened up. He was speechless the rest of the time. Bob played a few songs with them and then came downstairs. It was sweet. A very nice visit. And totally by chance that we were home. A lawyer who once represented Dylan, humorously describing himself as an amateur psychiatrist (a useful sideline for an entertainment lawyer), has a long-standing theory about the notoriously guarded poet: I think - and its true - if you can get to Bob, you can almost get anything you want out of him, so he shuts himself off. Do you follow me? I think its part of his defense mechanism. He will only talk through Jeff [Rosen] now about business. I think that is Bobs idea. And those two or three friends he has [Louis Kemp, for one], he knows they dont want anything from him. Everyone is picking on him now, they want something. And along with the natural paranoia of stars, for Bob there is the fear that if they get to him, theyll get what they want. He doesnt know how to say no. ~Daniel Mark Epstein, The Ballad of Bob Dylan [Photo: Bob Dylan Happy Traum Woodstock 1971]
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 15:10:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015