Part two of No Direction Home: Bob Dylan picks up where part one concludes, with Dylan’s growing disenchantment with the press and his audience, their anger at him for “abandoning” folk for rock, and the political turmoil that swirled in the ’60s.
There are many more historical clips interjected into this half of the documentary, somewhat clumsily, I thought: Vietnam and the draft protests, the march on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedy assassinations. Although he’s shown playing at the Washington march, Dylan made a point of not attending many rallies or protests, as he didn’t want to be associated as the voice of a generation or as one with the answers to society’s ills. “Spokesman of a generation,” he says. “That I could not relate to.”
Not as enthralling as the rise-to-fame theme of part one is a focus on Dylan’s celebrity. He’s berated by fans and, at press conferences, thrown inane question after inane question, and although he answers with derision or humor, he seems weary. He appears on the Steve Allen Show; hangs out with Andy Warhol for one of the artist’s screen tests; and is shown backstage with Johnny Cash, who Dylan compares to a religious figure and says was the “high thrill of a lifetime” to meet. There’s an amazing impromptu clip of the two harmonizing on Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” accompanied only by Dylan on piano. (In 1969, they’d sing a duet on Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album.)
While fame gained him relationships, it broke others. Joan Baez invited Dylan along to play many of her U.S. performances, and assumed he’d return the favor for her on his European tour, but she’s not invited to perform with him, and they drift apart. “You can’t be wise and in love at the same time,” he says simply. In 1968, Baez released Any Day Now, an album of Dylan covers, including “Love is Just a Four-Letter Word,” which he wrote when they were together but claimed to have forgotten, according to Baez.
The beginning of the end for Dylan’s folk fans was the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he played electric guitar with a full backing band. A third of the audience booed and hurled catcalls; the consensus seemed to be that rock, compared to folk, was a sellout and a selfish statement. After only 15 minutes of loudly amped playing at Newport, during which Pete Seeger is said to have wanted to sever Dylan’s mic cable with an axe, the band beats a hasty retreat offstange, while Peter Yarrow tries to calm the audience and get Dylan to return with his acoustic. Dylan does, for a brief, spittingly direct rendition of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
Despite what his fans wanted, it’s clear going electric was a foregone direction for Dylan’s music. Typically crusty, he cracks a big grin recalling how Mike Bloomfield, who was responsible for much of the electric guitarwork on 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited, joined the ragtag band: “He had heard my first record and wanted to show me how the blues were played.” Al Kooper remembers Bloomfield, too—Kooper was originally to play guitar for Dylan, took one listen of Bloomfield’s licks and retreated to play the organ. (That’s him playing on “Like a Rolling Stone.”)
The documentary ends with text overlays on Dylan’s debilitating 1966 motorcycle accident, after which he became a recluse and did not tour for eight years. Here’s hoping Scorsese can someday pick up from this point. Although the years covered are undeniably Dylan’s most popular and influential, there’s still a lot more to tell.