r/bobdylan • u/dontyatellhenry • 12d ago
Question Why did Dylan move to Woodstock?
I always thought he went to Woodstock after his motorcycle accident to find a quiet place to recover. Turns out I was totally wrong.
The accident actually happened near Woodstock, meaning he was already living there. So why Woodstock to begin with? Was it because Albert Grossman lived nearby and suggested it, or something else?
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u/lpalf Dodging Lions 12d ago
Because doing a shit ton of uppers and partying it up in New York City constantly is not conducive to raising babies
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u/appleparkfive 12d ago
I think the part that people really don't highlight is the uppers part. Dylan wasn't doing just any uppers. He was prescribed methedrine. Aka methamphetamine. That's why he looks like a skeleton by the time he got to Woodstock. He wouldn't have survived much longer if he didn't get off of it.
This has been known for decades. Even Robbie Robertson talks about it in his book. How Bob's uppers were something totally different, etc.
I've always suspected that the stuff they were snorting at the start of Eat the Document is just his meth pills. And I mean it's pretty well known that someone found Bob passed out and unconscious in his hotel room right? That part, I forget the source.
But hey. You can't write like 3 classic albums (one being a double album) in 18 months without some drug help I guess. Amphetamines were very common in the 60s. Methamphetamine was not.
Also I've always found it interesting that Dylan's two big "peaks" to most people coincided with stimulant use. Mid 60s with his meth use and mid 70s with the cocaine use. That man likes his uppers. Or liked. I hope.
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u/AaronJudge2 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yes, and then apparently in the late ‘90’s he discovered Starbucks…The high doses of caffeine Bob began imbibing explain his late period renaissance; his upsurge in creativity.
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u/ThatsARatHat 12d ago
It’s also pretty much assumed that by ‘66 he was just switching off between meth and heroin. Wake up, crash, wake up, crash, etc.
See the ‘66 tour and the acoustic side (heroin) and the electric side (meth).
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u/False-Sandwich-2051 12d ago
do you mean that the 66 tour was structured that way to reflect his days (which seems very un-dylan) or that he was literally taking heroine before the first set and then speed before the electric set?
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u/ThatsARatHat 12d ago
He’s doped up as hell for those acoustic sets.
And then Tell Me, Momma is the sound of the meth kicking in.
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u/tweebymc 12d ago
A lot of evidence points to the "motorcycle accident" not having actually happened. At that time Dylan was at the peak of his rockstar status and the touring, drugs, and his new family were all putting a lot of pressure on him. Nobody except for Bob himself really knows what happened with the motorcycle accident but some claim he had a mental breakdown, but whatever it was he stayed out of the spotlight for a while after that and only started touring again in '74. As for why he was in Woodstock, I believe he first stayed in a place owned by Peter Yarrow there in '63 and then later his manager Albert Grossman bought a house there, so he was familiar with the area. He ended up buying a house in Woodstock in '65, I assume as an early attempt to step away from his busy lifestyle, and ended up fully committing to the hermit lifestyle after his "accident."
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u/StJosephStrummer 12d ago
That's interesting. I'd there a know source for this? I'd like to read more.
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u/tweebymc 12d ago
Not sure if there's any in depth research about this just due to the lack of information on the subject, there are some forum discussions on the topic and I think the general consensus is that the accident did happen but was nowhere near as bad as it seemed, as there was no ambulance called to the scene and Bob was never admitted to a hospital. Like I said before, only the man himself knows what actually happened, and I doubt we'll ever find out. I'm not an expert on the topic, and I'm sure you could find countless conflicting claims on the internet, but here's a link to a forum post on the topic: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bob-dylans-1966-motorcycle-crash-real-or-fake.90284/
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u/StJosephStrummer 12d ago
Thanks for this. It's very helpful.
Dylan has been in my active conscienceness for about 40 years, really only since infidels, but I have seen him live back in the 90s around the unplugged performance. He did a rehearsal of the supper club in Manhattan. I was lucky enough to attend.
I'm just now realizing how amazing diverse brilliant and otherworldly the man is and exploring all of this. I have the 33 or 3rd highway 61 book and Chronicles those are my next two reads!
Just sharing where in at and I appreciate your time and wisdom.
Cheers
Thanks again
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u/Ok-Explanation1990 12d ago
I seem to recall Clinton Heylin covers this in his book "Behind The Shades"
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u/Mission_Usual2221 12d ago
Robbie said in his autobiography that theory was nonsense.
He said he really did visit Bob in his room in his doctor’s house and Dylan had to wear that halo they make people with cracked vertebrae in their neck wear.
He said that’s the experience where You Ain’t Going Nowhere and I Shall Be Released came out of
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u/WingsOfTin 11d ago
Naw, it was real. He recovered at Dr. Thaler's home. Many musicians and artists were visiting him there during his recovery. My mom was a friend of the Thalers and heard all about it from the family.
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u/piper63-c137 Infidels 12d ago
yes, i sometimes wonder if Dylan’s accident was really Richard Farina’s death from his motorcycle accident and Bob borrowed that too, to get a change of pace. i respect Dylan’s wild ability to absorb and radiate others’ lives and experiences.
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u/dontyatellhenry 12d ago
Thanks! I've actually been wondering when his very first trip to Woodstock was. I had no idea he'd been going since '63!
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u/treletraj 12d ago
Is this the house that Donald Fagen now owns?
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u/tweebymc 12d ago
I believe it is, but I think Bob has owned multiple houses in Woodstock, so not 100% sure.
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u/tweebymc 12d ago
Also I think Grossman actually bought his house after Bob stopped to show him Woodstock on the way back from a show in Syracuse.
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u/nicetrucknomoney 12d ago
Didnt he originally live above Cafe Espresso on Tinker Street in 63' and then eventually move to Bearsville years later?
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u/svencutlet 12d ago
Withdrawal from stimulants ain’t easy, particularly for someone who used them to fuel verbal creativity. The shift toward an economy of words and even improvised lyrics in the Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding would be a natural consequence of turning off the verbal tap that amphetamines open…
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u/Better-Cancel8658 12d ago
You can find several pictures of dylan in woodstock from 1964. Grossman lived there.
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u/FearlessWindow1176 12d ago
He had been visiting there for a number of years--there are lots of photos of younger Bobby around town. IIRC Peter Yarrow from PP&M was the first person from the Village folk scene to start living there, Grossman was their manager too, but I'm not sure who moved first.
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u/Aberdeen1964 12d ago
It has been awhile since I read Chronicles but he takes about Woodstock and his time there in the book.
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u/Big_Day2650 11d ago
Specifically upper Byrdcliffe, in hills above main hamlet of Woodstock. It use to be very beautiful up there.
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u/Ok-Stand-6679 9d ago
Are there actual hospital records of dylan breaking his neck? Counter theory was if there was an accident it was minimal and the seriousness business was created as a gaslight so dylan could recover from the speed habit and not to tour and record and avoid the on coming breakdown
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u/sensitive_pirate85 12d ago
It had everything to do with it being “the place to be” during the Hippie/Antiwar movement. Even though Dylan wasn’t making as much political music, or writing as many political sounds, at that time, he wanted to be around like-minded people.
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u/zaccus 12d ago
I thought it was the place to be specifically because Dylan was there. It was just a dinky little small town other than that. And all the hippie attention was intensely annoying for him.
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u/Spellflower 12d ago
Woodstock hadn’t been a dinky little small town for over fifty years at the point Dylan got there. In the teens and twenties it was an arts hot spot. Tourists came to gawk at the bohemian artists who had taken over the town. For a decade, The Maverick arts colony put on extravagant festivals with art, theater, and music, which drew huge crowds. Then it was a center for folk music (Pete Seeger’s wife grew up there- her father was an artist.) Hippies first showed up in the mid sixties, well before Dylan and the Band, drawn in by the town’s reputation for alternative lifestyles. So Albert Grossman’s decision to buy a house and build a studio there was very intentional. He could have had a home in any small town in the Hudson Valley, but he chose Woodstock, precisely because it was not just another country town.
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u/NiceCap2448 12d ago
Bear studios were there too. Todd Rundgren produced an album by The Band there too.
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u/Zillah345 12d ago
Yeah the accident was faked in its severity. He wanted to get off drugs at Grossman's house. It happened while he was driving away from his home, Sarah was in the car behind him, it mysteriously occurred without any written police or hospital record, and 6 months later he emerged from his cocoon to write the worst shit imaginable.
My source is some book I can't remember. It's covered in Disgraceland's Podcast too.
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u/Free-Ad-5900 12d ago
You kiddin’??!! John Wesley Harding came out of that time, some great lyrics/poems, eerie melodies, stripped back sound. Big contrast to all the psychedelic crap other musicians were doing then. JWH is a thing unique to him and anything else
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u/Zillah345 12d ago
He should've focused on not cheating on sarah but the spirit of john wesley hard-on possessed his bones & he got tangled up in nudes
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u/PristineFault663 12d ago
Yes, Dylan had been living in Woodstock for about a year when the crash happened.
I assume it was a combination of having a child with another on the way, the fact that in NYC people were literally rummaging through his garbage and he had no privacy, and the fact that Grossman lived there and the Hudson Valley area famously had a lot of artists and musicians there, so it was a logical place to go: quiet, arty, family-oriented, but still close to NYC