According to today's Daily Beast the legendary and, yes, old, Bob Dylan was questioned by a twenty-something police officer in New Jersey when someone reported “a scruffy old man acting suspiciously.” The twenty-something cop had no idea who Dylan was and made him prove his identification back at his hotel, then called the precinct because the cop still had no idea who Dylan was.
(full story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/bigbrother/article-1206617/Like-complete-unknown-Bob-Dylan-frogmarched-collect-ID-rookie-policewoman-fails-recognise-scruffy-music-legend.html )
This on the “anniversary” of Woodstock, celebrated meanly in a recent essay on NPR by a scathing commentary suggesting that those same participants in the festival were now the sixtieth men and women breaking up town halls by screaming against the so-called death squads.
I suppose that is not impossible to believe as some wannabe hippies must have turned from sex and pot to sex and cocaine and investment banking and selling insurance. Who know where the rest of the “half-a-million strong” are now? There was a story on NBC news the other night about the iconic couple embracing under the blanket which graced the album cover. Lord, they looked like granny and gramps.
So we are all old and scruffy, despite our attempts at staying young? I dunno. I don’t want to believe it.
I am in my fifth decade which I like to consider my fifth inning. That theory posits that at this point I can still win the game. I have been thinking a lot about that lately: life as baseball (but not on steroids). If I am in my fifth inning I have a few good years late to bring this thing home.
But what happens after that? Will we all, famous or not, be harassed on the street for being old and scruffy, no matter our accomplishments? Would Philip Roth suffer the same fate—after all he is over 70 and not in the best of health. What about all the other artists and writers and thinkers and do-ers who are still re-inventing their lives, falling in love, changing careers, making things better or just making them work?
Surely there are enough of the Boomers left to fight the stereotype that it is time for us to move along and just shut up.
If Dylan isn’t there, where are you?
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Beth A.
Writer to the Stars
Douglas Moran
Sparking
Susan Mihalic
Steve Klingaman
Salon.com
Comments
I don't think police take the time to google before they slap on the cuffs.... Look at what happened to Henry Gates.
I do not believe I gave up my values. I am still anti corporate, avoid any products tested on animals, lobby for what I think is important, do not trust congress, believe in peace and love and mankind, and truly wish I did not look old but I do so what!
Bob Dylan is a kind of strange guy but I would not give the cops too many A's either.
I may be wrong but the Sixties weren't really about looks.
Fifth inning, sixth inning, or even seventh inning, if these musicians and artists want to play and create, they will continue to play and create.
And Marcia, I like to think I haven't sold out, either, but when I see Boomers protesting health care reform, I want to scream.
I love this sentence; I'm up to bat. I've been reinventing my life happily.
Dylan is whacked. And why do the cops need to know who is anyhow? Isn't this a classless society?
Those guys screaming at the townhall meetings PROBABLY got that way after too many drugs, but I don't think those guys are Woodstock Nation. A lot of us are still out here trying to save the planet. We read actual books & support music & small farms & peace & we're not all materialistic, & as shocking as the aging process is in the mirror, it was never about looking perfect anyway. Adornment -- fine. Breast implants -- You've got to be kidding. We wanted to look natural & be natural. Synthetic was a bad word & truthfully, you didn't really need a shitload of money to live.
Yeah, yeah, the good old days, and every successive generation probably feels the same about THEIR youth, but a lot of our heroes weren't pretty at all, instead they were just -- like Dylan -- brilliant & gifted & even when they were screwed-up it was a cooler screwed-up, maybe because there was no US magazine or Oprah to chart & analyze-into-the-ground their decline into addiction or whatever & they were allowed to grow & change & screw-up without paparazzi & cellphone cameras & tearful televised confessions. (Lisa, I sound like Dana Carvey's grumpy old man, but gleefully join you in your early morning rant!)
I hitched a ride to see Dylan in the 60's, saw most everyone at woodstock several times. Stones in 64, man... yeah some of that living left me scruffy, but I'm still here, involved in all the glory of this spinning ball, fighting the "stereotype" with my voice! Thanx
Patrick
Make sure you copyright "the fifth inning." That baby's got legs.
Rated.
Fifth inning? I guess that puts me in the fourth? Since I was barely alive during the year of Woodstock?
I see the pics of the scruffy kids from the event and wish that scruffy was still cool. I like the anti-fashion. It's too bad that consumerism won that battle.
Makes me think of something I'd like to post...
And then there are people like my parents who were always paranoid of hippies anyway.
For anyone who wants to remember what a rock 'n' roll idol like Dylan should look like, check out his performance of "Idiot Wind" recorded during the Hard Rain tour back in the '70s. He's scruffy there, too, got bad teeth, a blows a lyric or two but I don't know if I've ever seen a more passionate, thrilling performance. He takes a a song that was originally tinged with acoustic regret and transforms it into a raging indictment of loss and regret and anger and murderous blame that eventually -- miraculously -- finds its way to something like forgiveness.
Dylans's every inch the guitar hero here, reed-thin, looks like he's been cinched into his jeans, but my oh my, it's what he says and how he says it that makes this such an unforgettable performance -- something that every one of us here who writes from the heart or wants to can take endless inspiration from.
Here's the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDZvP7T3B30
11. Time is a great healer but a lousy beautician.
Badda-bump.
Scruffy rocks!
I don't deny the element of truth in what they're saying but still it saddens me a little.