Crawdaddy! The Magazine of Rock

Originally published in Outlaw Blues, Chapter 3, August 1967

As I write this—August 1967—Bob Dylan has been silent for more than a year. It’s been a curious calm. Between Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde was a gap of some ten months—but a gap broken up with the release of several 45’s of exciting new material, a winter concert tour, a fascinating interview in Playboy, and finally the cheerful, triumphant “Rainy Day Women”—“Everybody must get stoned.”

1967 has offered no such relief. Dylan suffered severe damage—three broken vertebrae—in a motorcycle accident in August 1966, and retired from public view. All concerts were canceled—first till January, then March, then—perhaps—forever. Tarantula, Dylan’s much-promoted first book, never appeared. TV specials scheduled for ABC-TV and the BBC in Britain were canceled amid bad will and lawsuits. MGM announced it had signed Dylan, discovered it hadn’t, and prudently shut up; and meanwhile Columbia issued a greatest hits LP, just to be on the safe side. And still no sign of a new recording.

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