Home Movies of Dylan Finally
Dusted Off
Drummer Captured Dylan Going
Electric
by Scott Bauer, AP Writer
Monday, September 30,
2002 2:25 PM
Home
movies aren't supposed to be this cool: footage of Bob Dylan goofing around at
Hamlet's castle. The Beatles taking the stage in 1964.
But
for more than 30 years, drummer Mickey Jones had those and other 8 mm images sitting in
his garage collecting dust. He says he never gave it much thought. Now he is releasing
them for the first time.
"I
just took my home movie camera to kind of document my trip going around the world,"
Jones said. "It adds a little bit more texture to the world of Bob Dylan
photographs."
Jones,
61, took the movies during his career as a drummer, most famously backing Dylan during his
1966 world tour. It was on that tour that Dylan played electric rock for the first time,
shocking many fans who saw it as selling out. Historian C.P. Lee of the University of
Salford in Manchester, England, said Jones' films offer a fresh window on a cataclysmic
period in both Dylan's career and rock music.
"To
my way of thinking, it's better than writing a diary," said Lee, who has written
books about Dylan on film and the 1966 tour. "If you've got a diary, you mediate it.
If you've got a camera, it just shows what it shows."
The
silent, full-color tapes include a dark-sunglass-wearing Dylan getting a private tour of
Hamlet's castle in Denmark, members of his band goofing off between gigs, and fans waiting
outside hotels for a glimpse of their hero.
In the
past decade there has been a greater demand for rare footage, insider documentation and
other rock 'n' roll collectors items, said Pete Howard, a Dylan historian, and editor and
publisher of ICE Magazine.
"The
whole landscape for releasing outtakes has moved into the mainstream," Howard said.
"Ten years ago this would have been a freaky release."
Dylan
was unaware of the project and did not participate in it, said his spokesman Elliott
Mintz. "He just has nothing to say about the project," Mintz said.
The
Jones tapes show Dylan and his band who would later become The Band on
stage, in hotel rooms, taxis and buses, and walking the streets of Europe.
Dylan's
concerts in the spring of 1966 came on the heels of his infamous performance at the
Newport Folk Festival in the summer of 1965, the first time he plugged in. By going
electric, Dylan was largely abandoning the formula that had propelled him to fame.
Jones,
now a TV and film actor living in California, offers a firsthand account in voiceover of
the booing, slow hand-clapping and foot-stomping that greeted Dylan each night from Hawaii
to London. The drama reached a high point in Manchester, where an enraged audience member
shouted "Judas!" at Dylan. The band responded with an in-your-face version of
"Like a Rolling Stone," highlighted by Jones' cannon-fire-like drumming.
The
film images along with Jones' commentary on such things as haggling with Dylan over
pay are important and unprecedented pop culture documents, Howard said.
Aside
from snippets shown at a Dylan convention in England five years ago, the footage has not
been seen by anyone besides Jones' friends and family.
At the
urging of Joel Gilbert, who portrays Dylan in the cover band Highway 61 Revisited, Jones
set about transferring the films to digital for sale on DVD and video.
The
91-minute movie, titled "1966 World Tour, The Home Movies," is being sold only
on Jones' commercial Web site, http://www.1966tourhomemovies.com/ ($19.95 VHS, $24.95
DVD).
Although
Dylan is the focus, Jones includes footage of other famous people he met during his
career, including the Beatles in never-before-seen shots on stage in Paris in 1964. Jones
wasn't the only one with a camera rolling during Dylan's 1966 tour. Filmmaker D.A.
Pennebaker shot a documentary called "Eat the Document" that has been shown
sporadically in public but is not commercially available.
Jones
said he hopes his home movies, which show Pennebaker making his film, will motivate Dylan
to release "Eat the Document."
©
2002 The Associated Press |