Standards and rules were dandy said God but they should never interfere with the
Posted in General on 26. Sep, 2010
Standards and rules were dandy, said “God”, but they should never interfere with the evolution of an artist.The release memo came shortly thereafter. The next morning both called Columbia Records and demanded to know where their copy of the new Bob Dylan record was Staff meetings were hastily called. Goddard Lieberson was brought into the dispute over the length of the song. One was a DJ at WABC, then the leading Top 40 radio station in Manhattan. The other was a music programmer at the equally powerful WMCA. The name spread through the room, which only encouraged the sceptics to insist that it be played again, straight through.
Sometime past midnight, as the grooves on the temporary dub wore out, the needle began to skip.But not before the song had been heard by two important guests. Deliberately neglecting to mention the name of the singer, I did say that the song was rather long and that he should feel free to stop it if the dancers got bored or tired.At around 11pm, after a break, he played the acetate The effect was seismic. People jumped to their feet and took to the floor, dancing the entire six minutes Those who were seated stopped talking and began to listen “Who is it?” the DJ yelled at one point, running toward me “Bob Dylan!” I shouted back. Some of Arthur’s owners were famous – Mike Nichols, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein – and some weren’t (me). When it opened in May, no one except the fabulous Sybil expected that Arthur would cause such a sensation, and that everyone would want to go there – including Bob Dylan.
Late in June, dressed in wine-stained Army-Navy store couture, he and some of his rowdy male friends had tried to get in They were turned away.His rejected single had better luck. Perhaps because I was a “club member”, the DJ was very polite when asked if he would kindly play the acetate during a free moment. Sybil Burton, whose husband had run off with Elizabeth Taylor a few years before, was the creator of the uniquely egalitarian club, which was on the site of the old El Morocco. Ben Kay, semi-forgotten as a World Cup-winning lock since finding himself out of favour with the England coaching hierarchy following a flaccid 2004 Six Nations Championship campaign, will have an opportunity to remind Andy Robinson and company of his considerable gifts when Leicester and Wasps resume their Heineken Cup rivalry at Welford Road on Sunday.
Kay has been recalled to the Midlanders’ starting formation in preference to Louis Deacon, who drops to the bench – the only change to the side that won last weekend’s marvellous opening skirmish at High Wycombe.
John Wells, the Leicester coach, stressed yesterday that Deacon, almost five years Kay’s junior and a grafter of the Martin Johnson breed, had done nothing wrong at Wasps. “It’s largely a question of fresh legs,” he said, adding that the first match between the former and reigning European champions had been so ridiculously physical. “If every game was like that, we would have a 10-week season,” he said.Another of England’s band of brothers on World Cup final night, some character by the name of Jonny Wilkinson, is also back in circulation, although the celebrated outside-half will not start Newcastle’s important Pool Five match with Edinburgh at Murrayfield tomorrow evening. The effect was the same as it had been the first time I had experienced it Exhilaration Heart pounding Body rolling Then, on Sunday evening, it came to me.
I knew exactly where the song could be fully appreciated.At the time, the hottest new disco in Manhattan was a place called Arthur, on East 54th Street. Carefully packing it into an empty LP jacket, I carried it home and that weekend played it more than once in my apartment. Among them I discovered a gem: a studio-cut acetate of “Like a Rolling Stone”. Decades of memorabilia from 799 had to be discarded because the welcoming notice from CBS clearly stated that clutter would not be allowed in the new building.During my last trek through what remained of the A&R department, I was invited to sort through a stack of records and demos that were to be junked. Translated, it was in limbo, soon to be dropped, no doubt, into the graveyard of cancelled releases.After that, the tumult of the move to Black Rock filled our days. With all the distraction over the move to CBS headquarters and the intrigue of the executive power play, the matter of Mr Dylan’s epic rock song was quickly taken care of.