‘A Complete Unknown’ starts and ends with Dylan & Woody Guthrie in Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in Morris Plains New Jersey. In this episode we learn more about Dylan’s time there with Guthrie from two people who were directly involved, Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie and his friend Jahanara Romney (then known as Bonnie Beecher).

Beecher’s name will be familiar to Dylan fans because The Minnesota Hotel Tape was made in her Apartment in by Tony Glover in December 1961 - so she was in fact a friend of Bob’s from the time period just before he came to New York. She is also, not incidentally, often referred to as the original Girl From The North Country (but in reality is likely just one of the characters in the composite), and the subject of an early Dylan original called “Bonnie, why'd you cut my hair.” which an be found on those Minnesota Hotel Tapes.

These interviews were done about six years ago by the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital Oral History Project by Stephanie Kipp. A second interview with Jahanara is here too - telling much the same story, but 25 years earlier. That version is from an interview originally done by Markus Wittman.

This episode is the seventh in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

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In this episode of Dylan Revisited, host Colm Larkin takes us into The Gaslight to talk about Dylan’s work and recordings there. These are visits that took place in the very early years of Dylan arriving in New York. We'll hear about two famous Dylan shows there, one from September 1961 and another from 1962 that has later been officially released.

These shows took place in the very early years of Dylan's time in New York, right in the heart of the first section of the movie 'A Complete Unknown'.

This episode is the sixth in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

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Our Not Completely Unknown series continues, with Episode 2 from A Bob Dylan Primer, this time focusing on Dylan's life and work between the release of his debut album and the release of Another Side of Bob Dylan just two years later.

Host Michael Hacker tells the story of this pivotal period when Dylan the songwriter came to the forefront. This all within the period of the A Complete Unknown Movie, during the time of Dylan’s first two visits to Newport but a year before the ’65 appearance when he went electric.

This episode is the fifth in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

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Today we hear from Elijah Wald, who wrote “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night that Split the Sixties” the book on which the movie 'A Complete Unknown' is based.

As the title suggests, the book looks at the events of this period based on Seeger and his role in the established folk Music, Dylan’s arrival and ascension, and the dramatic events that took place at Newport ’in 1965. That structure is what Mangold and Jay Cocks used to create their script - which is informed by but is not entirely faithful to many of the details as told in the books itself. But the book is more of the true story than the movie is, which is why a lot of us are picking it up to read or re-read having enjoyed the movie version.

Stu Levitan interviewed Elijah Wald when the book was new, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Newsport ’65, for his show ‘Books & Beats with Stu Levitan, which was originally broadcast on 92.1 FM - The Mic in Madison Wisconsin. He kindly gave permission to reshare that 2015 interview.

This episode is the fourth in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

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The Bob Dylan portrayed in A Complete Unknown finds those incredible songs pouring out of him—a characterization we’ve often heard about Dylan. While the blistering pace at which they emerged is astonishing, it’s important to understand the influences, borrowing, and creative remaking that played a huge role in this period of his life. Far from diminishing his achievements, understanding these factors only deepens the sense of awe.

One of the most compelling aspects of Song & Dance Man is how it illustrates Dylan’s process of learning from—and transforming—the folk traditions, rock music, literature, The Bible, and the blues that shaped him. These aren’t really revealed as the building blocks of his genius; they are more like nutrients that sustained and enriched him, or tools that he sometimes used, sometimes reshaped, and sometimes ignored to suit his unique vision. The result is utterly fascinating and endlessly instructive.

We published an excerpt from this chapter today, and in this podcast we talk with Micheal about the way folk music taught and fed Dylan and what he then did with those lessons and that fuel.

This episode is the third in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

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Just 10 months after he arrived in New York City, Bob Dylan found himself at Columbia Records recording his first record. This episode tells the story of what was then considered a rather unspectacular debut.

This is the first episode of Dylan Revisited, a new podcast by Colm Larkin that grew out of his Twitter/Bluesky thread posts.

This episode is the second in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

Dylan.FM is a proud member of The FM Podcast Network

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

Drop us a note at [email protected].

Before television, a boy was born in springtime Minnesota. 25 years later he was the most beloved, and most reviled – pop star on the planet.

A Bob Dylan Primer is a series that tells the story of the work and life of Bob Dylan. Over the course of 16 episodes it covers the time period from Dylan’s youth in Minnesota and early days in New York City up to the release of Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind in 1997.

This episode is the first in an ongoing series offering a guided tour of Bob Dylan's work to new Dylan fans and anyone interested in better understanding his music. Companion posts and bonus materials are published on our blog.

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We're kicking off a new series on Dylan.FM called “Not Completely Unknown” focused on helping new Dylan fans learn more about the guy they met in the film, or the musician that they've never taken the time to get to know well. This will be an ongoing series of podcasts, blog posts, and social media chirps (primarily on Bluesky @dylan.thefm.club).

Three sources will frame the series:

To get the posts and bonus material that accompany this series:

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This brief report is based on events on Twitter of the last few hours. Tweets from @BobDylan, @BuffaloSabres, @UnRealBluegrass, @PodDylan @NightlyMoth, @Pulmyers, @TheFM_Dylan, @Suemyassoff, and @Zimmy_TB were fed into NotebookLM which created this podcast. (Well, I made a few of them and used bits of several, but no humans wrote or recorded anything.)

We've been playing with AI on a number of Dylan projects. Watch for more.

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In 1983 Bob Dylan recorded Blind Willie McTell, but it remained unreleased until The Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3, and became one of Dylan's most revered songs. It finally appeared in concert in 1997 where it remained an occasional highlight for a long long time.

On this episode we dive into this well loved Dylan song with Michael Gray, who researched and wrote extensively about it in his book Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan.

This is the twelfth episode in our walk through The 50th Anniversary Series release - we're well into Volume 2, with this discussion covering material in Chapter 6. It's deep dive into a song Gray knows well, and a man he wrote a whole book about. As usually, we cover a bunch here but the book goes way deeper.

** There is a video version of this episode at TheFM.Club website for Premium Members.**

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EXTENDED EDITIONS

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