Gene Krupa @ Metropole NYC Sep 1. Page 3 - Vintage Venue - . A provocative 1966 Q-and-A with Muhammad Ali. A thought-provoking question-and-answer session with a 24-year-old Muhammad Ali in 1966. Page 3 of 4 - Gene Krupa @ Metropole NYC Sep 1966 - posted in Vintage Venue: I was born and raised in Manhattan. In 1966 I was 17 and the Metropole was between 48th. Lizzie Widdicombe is a Talk of the Town editor. She writes for the magazine and for newyorker.com. PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN February 1966. A candid conversation with the iconoclastic idol of the folk-rock set. Do any of you guys remember the little old guy that used to put on a tuxedo and heavy stage make- up and play his snare drum for tips on B'way across the street from the Metropole? He was a real character this guy. ![]() He was old, maybe in his late 6. Very strange looking little guy with red lipstick, painted on eyebrows like Groucho Marx and he couldn't play worth a lick! LOL Any of you ever see/hear him? How about Moondog? Seven foot tall giant of a man that used to dress like a viking, fur skins, horned helmet, enormous shield, lance and all, and just stand there silently, staring straight ahead, on street corners in Manhattan. From time to time he used to hang out at the start of 5th Ave. So many memories.. John. Edited by Purdie Shuffle, 2. December 2. 01. 0 - 0. The Owa of Ido-Ani, Oba Olufemi Olutoye, is a retired Major-General in the Nigerian Army. In this interview with PETER DADA, he shares his experiences as a soldier. Playboy Interview. As a versatile musicologist and trenchant social commentator, Nat Hentoff. With his leather cap, blue jeans and battered desert boots - . Dylan looked like an updated. Huck Finn. And like Huck, he had come out of the Midwest; he. The son of Abraham Zimmerman, an appliance. Hibbing, Minnesota, a bleak mining town near the. Canadian border. Though he ran away from home regularly between the ages of. Zimmerman did manage to finish high school, and went on to. University of Minnesota in 1. By then, he. called himself Bob Dylan - in tribute to Dylan Thomas, according to legend. Dylan. Dylan stayed and tried to. According to those who knew him then, he. But they argued about his voice. Some found its flat. Midwestern tones gratingly mesmeric; others agreed with a Missouri folk. Dylan sound to that of 'a dog with his leg caught. All agreed, however, that his songs were strangely personal. Guthrie, echoes of the Negro blues singers and more than a. Dylan was developing his. Yet the voice was so harsh and the. Cold War that most of his friends couldn't conceive of Dylan making. In September of 1. The New York. Times caught his act at Gerde's and hailed the scruffy l. Minnesotan as a significant new voice on the folk horizon. Around the same. time, he was signed by Columbia Records, and his first album was released. Though it was far from a smash hit, concerts and club. Dylan scored his storied triumph. Newport Folk Festival in 1. His next LP began to move, and in the. Blowin' in the Wind.' That same. The Ed Sullivan Show'. CBS wouldn't permit him to sing a mordant parody he'd written about. John Birch Society. For the nation's young, the Dylan image began to. James Dean with over tones of Holden Caulfeld; he. His concerts began to attract. One of them, 'The Times They Are. A- Changin',' became an anthem for the rebellious young, who savored its. More and more. folk performers, from Joan Baez to the Byrds, considered it mandatory to. Dylan songs in their repertoires; in one frantically. August - 1. 8 different recordings of Dylan ballads. More and more. aspiring folk singers - and folk- song writers - have begun to sound like. Dylan. The current surge of 'protest' songs by such long- haired, post- beat. Barry Mc. Guire and Sonny and Cher is credited to Dylan. Backed by the big beat of the new group, Dylan tours. England with as much tumultuous success as he does America, and the air play. Beatles, Herman's Hermits and the Rolling Stones on the Top 4. His dress is still casual to the point of exoticism. But there have been changes. No longer. protesting polemically against the bomb, race prejudice and conformity, his. His lyrics are. more crowded than t! Adults still have. Dylan has become elusive. He is no longer seen. Village and on the Lower East Side. With few. exceptions, he avoids interviewers, and in public, he is usually seen from. His home base, if it can be called that, is a house his. Woodstock, a fashionable artists' colony in New York. State, and he also enjoys the run of his manager's apartment on dignified. Gramercy Park in New York City. There are tales told of Dylan the. We met him on the 1. CBS and Columbia Records. Manhattan. The room was antiseptic: white walls with black. In this sterile. setting, slouched in a chair across from us, Dylan struck a refreshingly. Sitting. nearby - also long- haired, tieless and blackjacketed, but wearing faded. Taco. Pronto. As Dylan spoke - in a soft drawl, smiling only rarely and. Tense and guarded at. Dylan gradually began to loosen up, then to open up, as he tried to. Under the circumstances, we chose to play straight man in our. Dylan's responses. The only place where it's. That's where the people hang out. All. this art thev've been talking about, it just remains on the shel. I. It. doesn't make anyone happier.? DYLAN: Statistics measure quantity, not quality. The people in the. Art, if there is such a thing, is. To go to an art gallery thing where. That's just a status affair. I'm not putting it down, mind you; but. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I think museums are vulgar. They're. all against sex. Anyhow, I didn't say that people . PLAYBOY: Why do you think rock 'n' roll has become such an international. DYLAN: I can't really think that there is any rock 'n' roll. Actually. when you think about it, anything that has no real existence is bound to. Anyway, what does it mean, rock 'n'. Does it mean Beatles, does it mean John Lee Hooker, Bobby Vinton. Jerry Lewis' kid? What about Lawrence Welk? He must play a few rock- 'n'- roll. Are all these people the same? Is Ricky Nelson like Otis Redding? Is. Mick Jagger really Ma Rainey? I can tell by the way people hold their. Ricky Nelson. I think it's fine to like Ricky. Nelson: I couldn't care less if somebody likes Ricky Nelson. But I think. we're getting off the track here. There isn't any Ricky Nelson. There isn't. any Beatles; oh, I take that back: there are a lot of beetles. But there. isn't any Bobby Vinton. Anyway, the word is not . DYLAN: I don't think jazz has ever appealed to the younger generation. I don't think. they could get into a jazz club anyway. But jazz is hard to follow; I mean. I don't know what the motto of the younger generation is, but I. I mean, what would some. Charlie. Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? Yet you're doing more. DYLAN: Everything is changed now from before. I guess I was. going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it. I mean, when you do . Anyway, I. was playing a lot of songs I didn't want to play. I was singing words I. I don't mean words like . I. mean it was some thing that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having. Contrary to what some scary people. I don't play with a band now for any kind of propaganda- type or. It's just that my songs are pictures and the band. PLAYBOY: Do you feel that acquiring a combo and switching from folk to. DYLAN: I'm not interested in myself as a performer. Performers are people. Unlike actors, I know what I'm saying. It's. very simple in my mind. It doesn't matter what kind of audience reaction. What happens on the stage is straight. It doesn't. expect any rewards or fines from any kind of outside agitators. It's. ultra- simple, and would exist whether anybody was looking or not. It could be called arsenic music. Phaedra music. I don't think that such a word as folk- rock has. And folk music is a word I can't use. Folk music is. a bunch of fat people. I have to think of all this as traditional music. It comes about from legends. Bibles, plagues, and it revolves around vegetables and death. There's nobody. that's going to kill traditional music. All these songs about roses growing. It's all those paranoid people who. They're. already dead. Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean. you'd think that the traditional- music people could gather from their songs. I. listen to the old ballads; but I wouldn't go to a party and listen to the. I could give you descriptive detail of what they do to me, but. It strikes me. funny that people actually have the gall to think that I have some kind of. It gets very lonesome. But anyway, traditional music. It doesn't need to be protected. Nobody's going to. In that music is the only true, valid death you can feel today off. But like anything else in great demand, people try to own. It has to do with a purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy. PLAYBOY: Some of your old fans would agree with you - and not in a. Newport Folk Festival, where many of them booed you loudly for. The early Bob Dylan, they felt, was. How do you feel about it? DYLAN: I was kind of stunned. But I can't put anybody down for coming and. They could have been maybe a little. There were a lot of old people there. Vermont, lots of nurses and. Indian polka or two. And just when everything's going all. I come on, and the whole place turns into a beer factory. There. were a lot of people there who were very pleased that I got booed. I saw. them afterward. I do resent somewhat, though, that everybody that booed said. PLAYBOY: What about their charge that you vulgarized your natural gifts? DYLAN: What can I say? I'd like to see one of these so- called fans. I'd. like to have him blindfolded and brought to me. It's like going out to the. These people that said this - were they Americans? PLAYBOY: Americans or not, there were a lot of people who didn't like your. In view of tbis widespread negative reaction, do you think you. DYLAN: A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. There could be no such. Either people understand or they pretend to. What you're speaking of. I don't know the word for. In any case, it has nothing to do with my music. PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock- 'n'- roll route? I lost my one true love. The first. thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a. pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to. Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up. in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and. Then this big Mexican lady from. Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I move in with a. Then this. 1. 3- year- old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery. boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know. I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a. Thursday night. I move in with a. Everything's going good until that delivery boy. Needless to say, he burned the house down. I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to. PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock- 'n'- roll singer? DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis. PLAYBOY: Let's turn the question around: Why have you stopped composing and. DYLAN: I've stopped composing and singing anything that has either a reason. Don't get me wrong, now. I've never thought of myself as such. It's an amusement- park. A normal person in his righteous mind would have to have the hiccups. Well, we each have our thing.
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