Books |
Dylan by Schatzberg
By
Published: Dec 03, 2018
Category:
Art and Photography
Jerry Schatzberg has been there, done all of that, but it seems the one photograph that will render him immortal is the blurry portrait of Bob Dylan he took for the record jacket of Blonde on Blonde. It’s one of a great many photographs he took of Dylan — the musician and the photojournalist were friends.
There was a book of Schatzberg’s photographs of Dylan a few years ago. “Thin Wild Mercury: Touching Dylan’s Edge” was for collectors, it was published in a limited edition, and is priced accordingly. [To buy it on Amazon for $1,500, click here.]
Now, blessedly, there is “Dylan by Schatzberg,” a 262 page, 11” by 13” book that weighs 5 pounds. It costs $50. For anyone who believes Dylan is the Shakespeare of our time and that his Nobel Prize was not only well deserved but overdue, this book is a bargain. Need I say that, for such a person, this book is a great gift? [To buy “Dylan by Schatzberg” from Amazon, click here.]
Dylan was notoriously edgy, even sarcastic, with all media folk in the ‘60s. But he and Schatzberg became friends. Collaborators, really — Schatzberg never set Dylan up, never betrayed the friendship for the sake of a photo. All these years later, he’s respectful of a man he hasn’t seen in decades: “Any time somebody wants a photograph of Dylan I have to know how it will be used. I’d hate to find one of my photographs of him selling toothpaste.”
How did Schatzberg become the photographer Dylan liked best? Relationships, of course…
“An aspiring model I knew named Sara [Lownds, who later married Dylan] kept talking about this guy named Bob Dylan she was seeing. But I didn’t get around to listening to him. Nico was also into Dylan. I remember she once called me in my hotel room in Paris and was like, ‘Jerry, have you heard Bob Dylan yet?’ I said, ‘I will!’ And I did. I was absolutely knocked out. I mentioned to [music journalist] Al Aronowitz that I’d like to photograph him. The next day I got a call from his wife, who said ‘Bobby’s here, I heard you wanted to photograph him.’”
Schatzberg met Dylan in the recording studio where he was recording “Highway 61 Revisited.”
“I don’t remember what song he was working on that day, but he just stopped playing and wanted me to hear the album. He’s usually a bit snarky with the press but was genial with me, so I started taking pictures. I arrived in the morning and was there the entire day.”
Schatzberg wasn’t with Dylan when he strapped on an electric guitar and was booed at the Newport Folk Festival. But he was at Forest Hills when that happened.
“Afterwards, we all went back to his manager Alan Grossman’s apartment and Dylan said, ‘I don’t care (what they thought). I’m gonna do what I want to do.’ And he did, and wound up being right.”
And the “Blonde on Blonde” shot?
“It was February 8, 1966. I took a few photos in his studio and there was nothing special about it so we went out. He had on a thin jacket and I didn’t want to go out with a big heavy coat so I also put on a thin jacket. The two of us got out there [about 12 blocks south of the Meatpacking District]. It was the dead of winter and it was downright cold. I was shaking. There are only about three images that are moving like that—the rest are very sharp.”
The album came out that May, and was instantly recognized as a work of genius. The cover photo — sepia-toned, in dubious focus, with Dylan’s hair mussed — enhanced the legend.
“It’s an honest photograph. He just saw that and picked it. I probably would have never sent that to Columbia. They are a record company and are not very imaginative.”
There are several texts in this book. But my favorite is a caption. One day an English journalist visited Schatzberg while he was working with Dylan. Because she seemed like the friend of a friend, Dylan answered a few questions. “Now that you’re making money, how much would you like to make?” she asked. Dylan replied: “All of it.” She asked the question again. Dylan repeated the answer.
Candid? Maybe. With Dylan, you never know. But these photographs don’t lie.
BONUS VIDEO: THE NOBEL PRIZE ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
