On November 27, 1964, Bob Dylan gave a performance at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. My parents dropped me off at the concert with cab fare, the address of a party they were attending in “the City,” and careful instructions about calling a taxi after the show. I was 13 years old.
Cultural Icons
I had seen Dylan before in Berkeley and could not wait to get another dose. By this time, he was an international phenomenon and adulation was running high. Just as Joan Baez had been a spokesperson for my longings for “truth and beauty,” Dylan expressed my anger at what was happening in the world around me. His surreal imagery created something that had not been embraced by songwriters in the folk and protest idioms. Dylan’s lyrics harked back to the Beat poets and looked forward toward the psychedelic future—yet they were neither of the above. He was an original at a time when we all aspired to be original, yet he also tapped into the collective consciousness of the times that were a-changin’. Sam Andrew, rhythm guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company, told me what so many of us felt: “I paid attention to Dylan’s lyrics as my pattern for living.”
The Concert
On that night, I excitedly slipped into my seat in the sold-out auditorium. The performance had a prickly, uncomfortable feel to it, as if Dylan didn’t really want to be on stage. He made the audience come to him on his terms; he didn’t make any attempts to woo his public. In fact, he played hard to get, ignoring us, seemingly turning inward to the deep place from which his magnificent lyrics emerged. His rough voice and intermittent harmonica were a gift, a glimpse he offered as an afterthought to those fortunate enough to witness his own private jokes, musings, epiphanies, sarcasm, and rage.
The audience loved it. Following Joan Baez’s lead, we regarded him as a prophet operating on a much higher plane of existence from the hordes of pedestrian mortals. He could see and understand the workings of the universe. Bob Dylan was better than us!
Baez made a surprise appearance for three duets, draping an arm over Dylan’s shoulder, claiming him as her own. His body language indicated something less reciprocal. At one point, he tried to shake off her arm—that was confusing. But he was a poet, a seer. Bob Dylan could act any way he wanted, even towards Her Royal Highness of Folk, Queen Joan.
Curbside Post Concert
The concert was over all too soon. As the magic dissipated and the packed house slowly emptied, I found a phone booth in the lobby and called a taxi, carefully mimicking my parents’ instructions.
A half-hour later I was alone, sitting on a bench in the massive polished-granite foyer, still waiting for the cab. Through the row of glass doors, I watched the rain pouring down outside. The wet street was as shiny as the lobby walls, reflecting car headlights, neon signs, and streetlights in what seemed like a visual counterpart to the surreality of Dylan’s lyrics. I sank into a reverie, reliving the concert and my hero’s enigmatic presence.
The sound of footsteps jogged me loose from my thoughts and I looked up, expecting to see a cabbie. Instead, it was Bob Dylan, staggering and weaving across the lobby in my direction. His shock of unruly hair was even more disheveled than usual, his skin even more pallid, and his normally hooded eyes unfocused and partially closed. Before I could take in what was happening, Dylan collapsed next to me on the stone bench. His head fell into my lap face-down, and his arms wrapped around my hips as if by their own volition. He was out cold. I froze, staring in catatonic terror at the sainted head between my legs.
A few seconds later, more footsteps, and Joan Baez appeared. Seeing her beloved sprawled unconscious across a paralyzed teenage girl, she hit the lobby at a dead run. She hurled herself onto the bench and dragged him off, placing the holy head into her own lap. She stroked Dylan’s face and tenderly crooned to him.
“Someone, get some water!” Baez ordered the empty lobby. She cast an accusing look at me. I stared into those beautiful dark eyes, now filled with urgency, and slipped even more deeply into catatonia. Unlike Michelangelo’s Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, who was brought to life by the touch of God, I had been rendered inanimate by the touch of my god in the lobby of the Masonic Auditorium.
Baez looked disgusted. She gently propped Dylan’s inert body against me as if I were a statue. The creases in his brown suede jacket pressed into my arm and his hair tickled my cheek as I struggled to support the surprising heft of his slight form. His body language gave every indication that he was about to slide onto the floor, so my arms suddenly rose as if on their own and wrapped themselves tightly around him.
Baez surveyed the lobby until she located a trash can. She fished out an empty Coke bottle and filled it with water from a drinking fountain. She returned and quickly poured it over his head and into his mouth. I watched rivulets of Coca Cola-laced water cascade down my best dress, then pool and sink into its immaculate black velvet.
Dylan slowly regained consciousness and pulled slightly away from me, his suede jacket making sandpaper noises against my soaking dress. Baez draped one of his arms over her shoulders to support him and hoisted him to his feet. For just one brief, shining, shaky moment, Dylan turned around, placed his free hand on my shoulder, and gave me a slight, lopsided grin. “She’s a friend of mine,” he muttered to Baez.
At that moment my cab pulled up. I held the door open for them as Baez half-guided and half-dragged Dylan out of the building and down the rainy steps. She folded him into the back seat and then climbed in, her body curled towards him with almost maternal concern. I watched them as my cab pulled into the snarl of traffic and disappeared amidst a parade of taillights, two silhouetted heads in the back seat, Baez’s arms tightly around her man, her cheek pressed against his, and Dylan appearing to pull slightly away.
I called another cab.
Blowin’ in the Wind
Reflecting back on that magical time, I wonder: What was really going on with Dylan? Was he exhausted from the concert? Was he high? Did it have something to do with pressure from his ambivalent relationship with Baez? All of the above? The answer, my friend. . . .
Note: This story is a chapter in Miriam’s upcoming book on the music and culture of the 1960s. When author Elijah Wald read her story, he told Miriam that he wished he’d known about it before he wrote his book Dylan Goes Electric! (on which the movie A Complete Unknown was based) because it illuminated aspects of Dylan and Baez’s relationship.
Miriam Kasin is a former resident of Fairfield. She is the author of Heaven’s Banquet and The Age of Enlightenment Cookbook. She also co-authored Asphalt Renaissance and contributed to The Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Sugar and Sweets. She has been a TM teacher for 52 years and currently lives in Berkeley, California. For more information, see MiriamKasin.com.