Playing Bob Dylan amidst the prying eyes of the neighbors

BarcelonaIf it's a bit chilly and you're in good company, even better. You have to stand on the corner of Jones Street and West 4th Street, facing west, and ask a pedestrian to kneel down so you can find the right angle. And then you can play at imitating one of the most famous album covers in the history of music, that of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan From 1963, with the singer and Suze Rotolo embracing. Their relationship didn't end well, but the photo is beautiful. They look young and in love. And the record is a treasure. Some neighbors who live on the corner spend their time snooping around when tourists want to copy the photo. It seems that most of them are European, curiously..

Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village with the dream of making a living singing. And he succeeded. Many people wander the streets of this neighborhood, which has surprisingly managed to maintain a certain bohemian and artistic air, to see the places where so many artists lived. Walking allows you to learn about the fight for civil rights with episodes such as the dignified revolt of the LGBT+ community in 1969 at The Stonewall Inn pub, tired of being persecuted by the authorities. Or imagine what it was like when a young Dylan started charging a dollar a day to play the harmonica and sing in the Cafe Wha?, a musical temple that has been open for more than sixty years. hootenanny, nights where everyone could go out and sing. Most of the brave ones were ignored. Dylan covered two Woody Guthrie songs and was applauded. Later, other musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen, comedians like Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby, and Woody Allen would come to Cafe Wha? It was a den of beatniks and also anarchists who called for revolutions that never came.

The neighborhood was full of bars. Some unfortunately no longer exist, like The Gaslight Café., where Dylan's first concert was recorded, or The Village Gate at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker streets, where Dylan wrote In Hard Rain's Gonna Fall in the ground-floor apartment where Chip Monck lived, who would later become one of the fathers of the Woodstock festival. Fortunately, however, The Fat Black Pussycat Café is still open, where the singer reportedly needed only twenty minutes of inspiration to write Blowin' in the Wind sitting at a table. Back then, his relationship with Rotolo was already going badly. And Dylan spent nights with Joan Baez at the Hotel Earle, now known as the Washington Square Hotel. It was a seedy place then. Now it's expensive.

Recommendation for traveling to New York

Album: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Author: Bob Dylan

Year: 1963