Grossman's barn. "The two of us sat and talked for about an hour," Markel recalled. "He drove a car. He looked fine, older, serious. He was far more friendly, far less distracted. He was more grown up and professional, easier to be with. He said he didn't know if he wanted the book published at all. It wasn't something he wanted to improve; it didn't interest him anymore. He'd gone past it. He wasn't sure if he wanted it published as a 'relic' or an unfinished work. I harbored the hope that eventually he'd want this youthful work shown to the public, but left feeling ambiguous about his intentions." Dylan admitted it had no story to others, and only after his accident, when he had the time to read, had he discovered that there were many ways to tell a story. There were many ways to live a life as well. Nineteen sixty-eight was that kind of year. The battle lines drawn by Dylan, other musicians, and spiritual politicians in the first half of the decade defined those ways. Some people found the answer in murder, and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy fell. Some found it in democratic politics, and Gene McCarthy rose with them, only to fall victim to those who found the answer in toeing the line, be it drawn in Vietnam or Lincoln Park, Chicago. In Paris, the month of May was filled with blood and riot and Danny the Red. In England, in October, anti-war sentiments spilled into the streets of a country that was fighting no war. All the energies of The Summer of Love spilled in a thousand directions after the death of hippie, whether fueled by inertia, drugs or dogma. The Rolling Stones were recording Beggar's Banquet, the Doors were at the peak of their popularity, as were Cream, Jimi Hendrix, and the Zig-Zag man. Revolution was in the air, even if many of its proponents saw it as a garden party. For a year, it would seem as if the good fight would end in victory. Nixon was the inherent contradiction of capitalism come home to roost. Or so it seemed.
In the fall of 1969, scraggly bearded Bob made his first network TV appearance on "The Johnny Cash Show."
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BOB DYLAN
In the spring of 1968, Abraham Zimmerman died and Bob traveled to Hibbing for the funeral. He returned to Woodstock where Sara gave birth to Seth Abraham Isaac Dylan, his second son. In his house, a Bible sat open on a stand. According to his mother, he used it all the time. She said his kids were "climbing all over Bob's shoulders and bouncing to the music. They love music, sleep right through the piano, and Jessie has his own harmonica, follows Bob in the woods with a little pad and pencil, jots things down. This is the way he's chosen to live his life," a simple life, apart from the storm. In June, the release of Music from Big Pink again focused attention on Dylan's absence from the scene. For the first time, radical young people began to criticize him for staying away from the fight. The Saturday Evening Post ran a cover story on Dylan in semi-seclusion, and' the musician renewed his friendship with country singer Johnny Cash. His creativity was being subsumed in a greater need: the need for a good life, the creation of children, the serenity of home. In June and July, Happy Traum and John Cohen did the first taped interview with Dylan since '66, for an issue of Sing Out! that would appear that summer. Bob started talking about Eat the Document, the abortive ABC-TV film, and then talked about rock and being on the road in the old days when he had to deliver the goods. Now the audience was different. He expected to keep playing and touring so the time off was not bad for him. Looking back, he said his early career was involved with capturing things in the wind; music was how he made his living. Now he wasn't sure where he was, or where he was going, and he didn't give it much thought.