ChrisCrossArts&Culture
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No Direction Home - Bob Dylan, directed by Martin Scorsese, Monday & Tuesday,
26 & 27 September on BBC TWO, 21.00 British Summer Time.
See also http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossarts &
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossculture &
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrosssixties &
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/songsthatchanged
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/songsnstories &
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossnews . .
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The Bob Dylan SeasonArena: No Direction Home - Bob DylanStarts Monday 26
September on BBC TWO, accompanied by a Dylan season on BBC FOUR
Overview


There is no simple way to tell Bob Dylan's story. The painting is too large.
Focus on one small aspect, and you miss the big picture.

It's a story of American culture in transition, of music in the air, of politics
and of art, of literature and of poetry.

Drawing from hundreds of hours of unseen footage and rare recordings, in-depth
interviews and revealing photographs,

No Direction Home - Bob Dylan, directed by Martin Scorsese, strikes a remarkable
balance – telling the story of one man's journey and at the same time placing
that story within the greater canvas of human events.

No Direction Home - Bob Dylan starts in the eye of the hurricane. Bob Dylan,
live, 1966 in front of a hostile audience inflamed by his decision to electrify
his music.

There are boos, cat calls, fans streaming out. On stage, in newly discovered
footage, is Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone. It's hard to imagine anyone
walking out on this performance, much less booing it.

A story told in flashbacks, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan intertwines the
immediacy of Bob Dylan's controversial 1966 tour of the British Isles with his
remarkable personal and musical journey.



Producers: Anthony Wall, Jeff Rosen, Nigel Sinclair, Susan Lacey and Martin
Scorsese.



A production of BBC Arena, Spitfire Pictures, Grey Water Park Productions,
thirteen/WNET/PBS, Sikelia Productions.



In co-production with Vulcan Productions and NHK in association with Box TV.


Part One (26 September, BBC TWO)
Part one is a portrait of the artist as a young man. It traces Bob Dylan's
journey from a rock'n'roll-loving kid in the Midwest to his arrival as a major
musical force in the world of folk music.

His high school teacher recounts a disastrous rock 'n' roll appearance at the
local talent show and a school friend plays one of Dylan's first recorded songs.

In his own words, Dylan tells viewers how he became smitten with folk music as
the story shifts scenes from the iron range in Minnesota to Greenwich Village in
New York City.

An amazing cast of characters is introduced – Dave Van Ronk, the King of the
Greenwich Village folk clubs; Joan Baez, the Queen of the folk music world;
Allen Ginsberg, America's beat poet laureate.

And most importantly, the wide range of music that influenced the young Bob
Dylan is explored.

Dylan's fame and notoriety grows, his skill as a performer matures rapidly and
the songs begin to pour out: Blowin' in the Wind, Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall,
Masters of War, Don't Think Twice It's All Right and many more.

Part one ends at what seems to be the dawn of a new generation. Dylan, hands
intertwined with musician Pete Seeger, The Freedom Singers and Odetta singing
Blowin' in the Wind at the closing night at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.



Part Two (27 September, BBC TWO)



Part two sees the story turn dark.



At 23, Bob Dylan is already a newsworthy phenomenon, capable of filling Carnegie
Hall without ever having a hit song on the radio.



And with that success come expectations: expectations from the old left to
become a political activist, expectations from the media to articulate the
concerns of America's youth.



It's a role in which Dylan is completely uninterested. And Dylan is already on
the move, finding a new musical vocabulary to capture the complexity of a
seismic cultural shift.



He injects a heightened sense of poetry into his writing. He adds electricity to
his music; electricity that now seems inevitable, but at the time labeled him a
sell-out and a traitor.



At a disastrous concert at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, his electrified
instruments set the audience in turmoil.



Director Martin Scorsese delicately balances Dylan's internal world with
signpost images from the external world. Dylan's music is the backdrop as the
war in Vietnam escalates, the free speech movement in Berkeley signals a new
youth movement, and the nightly news brings home images people would never have
dreamed of seeing on their television sets.



Scorsese takes the time to let viewers really see the music unfold in revelatory
concert performances.



And now the past catches up to the 'present era' that is the starting point for
the film. It is 1966: Desolation Row, Mr Tambourine Man and Visions of Johanna
echo against a changing worldwide landscape and resonate in Dylan's personal
world of constant touring and press conferences.



By the end of the film, Scorsese has taken viewers on an emotional, musical and
intellectual journey.



And it is plainly obvious, for Dylan and indeed for everyone, that there are
some journeys from which there is No Direction Home.






Contributors




From Joan Baez to Allen Ginsberg, No Direction Home - Bob Dylan features the
anecdotes and contributions of key people who were on the scene during Dylan's
key creative years of 1961 to 1966. They include:



Joan Baez: musician

Liam Clancy: musician

John Cohen: musician, photographer

Allen Ginsberg: poet

Tony Glover: musician

Bob Johnston: record producer

Mickey Jones: musician

Dick Kangas: high school friend

Al Kooper: musician

Bruce Langhorne: musician

Harold Leventhal: concert producer, artist manager

Mitch Miller: record company executive, musician

Artie Mogull: music publisher

Maria Muldaur: musician

Paul Nelson: journalist

Bobby Neuwirth: musician, artist

D.A. Pennebaker: filmmaker

Suze Rotolo: artist - on the cover of the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

Pete Seeger: musician

Mark Spoelstra: musician

Mavis Staples: musician

Dave Van Ronk: musician

Peter Yarrow: musician - of Peter, Paul and Mary

Izzy Young: Folklore Center owner






Footage of key Dylan performances


No Direction Home – Bob Dylan features some of Bob Dylan's most remarkable
performances from that time period, captured in rare and previously unseen
footage. They include:



Man of Constant Sorrow

Television, 1963



A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Television, 1964



Blowin' In the Wind

Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963



With God on Our Side

Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963



Chimes of Freedom

Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1964



Mr Tambourine Man

Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1964



It's Alright Ma

Live in Europe, 1965



Maggie's Farm

Live at Newport Folk Festival, 1965



Like a Rolling Stone

Live at Newport Folk Festival, 1965



It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Live at Newport Folk Festival, 1965



Mr Tambourine Man

Live in Europe, 1966



Desolation Row

Live in Europe, 1966



Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

Live in Europe, 1966



Ballad of a Thin Man

Live in Europe, 1966



Like a Rolling Stone

Live in Europe, 1966





Bob Dylan on BBC FOUR: Introduction


Bob Dylan, unquestionably one of the most revered and influential musicians of
the past century, is celebrated this autumn on BBC FOUR with a season of new and
archive films exploring the life and work of Bob Dylan.



New Productions



Arena: Dylan In The Madhouse

Arena: Dylan's Legends

Talking Bob Dylan Blues at the Barbican



Archive Films



D.A. Pennebaker: Don't Look Back

M. Scorsese: The Last Waltz

Arena: Highway 61 Revisited






Arena: Dylan in the Madhouse


Remarkably, Bob Dylan first visited Britain to take part in a BBC play.



It was the coldest winter on record: Britain was frosty and grey. Millions of
milk bottles were buried in snow drifts, Cliff was number one, and there were
two TV channels and three radio stations (all BBC).



This was the world a 21-year-old Bob Dylan entered when he visited London for
the first time in December 1962, having never left America before.



Dylan had been spotted playing in a Greenwich Village club by enfant terrible TV
director Philip Saville. Saville felt he'd be perfect for the part of Lennie,
the rebellious young lead in a high-profile BBC drama, Madhouse on Castle
Street.



Despite his total lack of acting experience, Dylan was hired for a substantial
fee, brought over to the UK and put up at one of London's poshest hotels, The
Mayfair.



He was in London for three weeks. He introduced himself to the folk scene, which
was a direct parallel of the one he'd left behind in New York. Both were
leftish, vibrant, cultish affairs that would provide Dylan with the springboard
to transform popular music single-handedly.



As for the play, it exposed Dylan to Britain's disturbing and surreal new genre
of so called boarding house drama.



Madhouse on Castle Street is set in a boarding house somewhere in England. One
of the tennants, Walter Tompkins, has retired to his room and vows never to come
out again.



Dylan sang four songs, including the first ever broadcast of Blowin' in the
Wind.



The BBC wiped the play in 1968 and it's since become the Holy Grail of missing
Dylan archive. Arena goes in search of that lost treasure, finding the
rarest-ever Dylan tracks along the way and exploring the bizarre, magical, not
to say hilarious story of the first time Bob Dylan was let loose in London.



With contributions from director Philip Saville, Evan Jones who wrote the play,
folk legends Martin Carthy and Peggy Seeger, and supreme Dylan collector, Ian
Woodward.






Arena: Dylan's Legends


From the American folk singer Woody Guthrie to boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter,
over the years, Dylan has written songs capturing his fascination with the
stories and lives of real people – alive and dead.



Dylan's Legends focusses on three of these people and tells the true story of
each of those individuals, with Dylan's song as its musical theme.



Woody Guthrie



The great folk singer/songwriter, Woody Guthrie, was Dylan's idol. His
ferocious, funny, beautiful songs and style were the basis for Dylan's own early
vocals guitar and harmonica.



Song to Woody is his tribute.



Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter



Rubin Hurricane Carter was a contender for the world middleweight crown. Then in
1967 he was convicted of murdering three men in a New Jersey bar.



He languished in jail for 18 years until his innocence was finally proved and he
was acquitted in 1985.



Dylan wrote a furious saga, in the song, of the events of the night of the
shooting. Hurricane was his contribution to right the wrong done to Rubin
Carter.



Lenny Bruce



New Yorker Lenny Bruce was the most notorious and influential comic of the
Sixties.



In spring 1962, at the invitation of Peter Cook, he played a season at London's
legendary Establishment Club. It captivated packed houses night after night but
was denounced in the press as obscene.



When he returned to London the following year, Tory Home Minister, Henry Brooke
was ready for him: he barred Bruce entry, citing him as an undesirable alien.



Dylan's Legends tells the story of Bruce's brief confrontation with the old
British establishment as it gasped its last breaths.


Blind Willie McTell



'No-one could play the blues like Blind Willie McTell,' sings Dylan in one of
his most haunting masterpieces.



McTell was a blind itinerant musician from Georgia who, by chance and almost
alone among blues musicians of his generation, was able to tell his story on
record as well as sing it.



Legendary folklorist John Lomax happened to spot him playing and singing on an
Atlantic street corner.



In the recordings that he made, McTell talks poignantly about his life and
music.



Dylan was captivated by McTell's moving story and his exquisite slide guitar as
a microcosm for the whole experience of the blues in the southern states of
America in the first half of the 20th century. -->





Talking Bob Dylan Blues


A tribute concert co-produced with the Barbican, Talking Bob Dylan Blues
celebrates Dylan's songs, his influence, his guitar playing and his delivery.



All of the performers will offer their own individual view on Dylan's influence
and significance to them personally.



This concert, to be screened on BBC FOUR, assembles a broad range of
singer/songwriters, bands and artists from the UK and the US inspired by the
writing of Dylan, including revered UK folk guitarist Martin Carthy, American
blues and folk legend Odetta, UK rock combo Razorlight, hotly tipped lo-fi blues
folk singer Willy Mason and the 'Baird of Barking' Billy Bragg.



Also featured are Liam Clancy, Robyn Hitchcock and Barb Jungr, with more artists
to be confirmed.



A songwriter for over 40 years, there is currently a renewed interest in Dylan's
craft and in those early songs that came out of the folk tradition, leading up
to the cataclysmic moment when he and the band went 'electric' in 1965.



A BBC Music Entertainment production







Don't Look Back

Directed By D. A. Pennebaker.

Pennebaker's 1967 portrait of Bob Dylan



The Last Waltz

Directed By Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese's film about Dylan's band



Highway 61 Revisited

Directed By James Marsh.

Arena's Tales of Rock and Roll series






The season online


Found at bbc.co.uk/bobdylan, the BBC's dedicated Bob Dylan site will contain a
whole host of supporting material to go with the historic broadcasts on BBC TWO
and BBC FOUR.



The site will feature picture galleries, video out-takes, reviews, profiles of
Dylan and major associates, a Dylan timeline, celebrity features, stories and
pictures from Bob fans.



All this plus competitions to win DVDs, books and CDs.



SEE ALSO:
www.bbc.co.uk/bobdylan
Autumn on BBC TWO: coup unites Dylan and Scorsese
BBC FOUR Autumn season
Scorsese directs first feature-length film biography of Bob Dylan





http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/09/dyla\
n_arena_overview.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/09/dyla\
n.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/bobdylan/




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Archives and more in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossarts &
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossculture .








http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossconnections - Links to all my groups,
including + http://groups.yahoo.com/group/songsnstories +
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chriscrossculture +
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/songsthatchanged +
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/taliesinfoundation +
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