Unearthed: lost 1965 Bob McAdorey interview with Bob Dylan
Interview pulled from the foggy ruins of time
This is a Bob Dylan interview we could not find catalogued in any of the Dylan interview lists, compilations, or sessionographies. We’ve had a tantalizing clue in hand for years, and recently returned to the hunt while digging into the Toronto 1965 rehearsals. It was a researcher from that same city, Jamie Bradburn, who retrieved the published interview itself and who kindly shared it when we reached out to him.
“Rock bands do my songs better than folk singers. They get more out of the words. Folk singers are too wrapped up in themselves to really dig the lyrics.”
Bob Dylan to Bob McAdorey 1965
The Clue
Billboard (Oct 2, 1965) reported a “near-exclusive” by Bob McAdorey on Dylan’s “top secret” Toronto visit to rehearse with The Hawks. But what came out of that near-exclusive?
The Rehearsal
Bob Dylan made a whirlwind visit to Toronto in September 1965 for a pair of midnight-to-6am tour rehearsals with The Hawks, as reported at the time in the Toronto Daily Star by Robert Fulford.
While Fulford’s article included his own brief interview with Dylan at the Tavern, long available to Dylan fans, this is not the subject of today’s newsletter. In preparing the following rehearsals entries for bobserve.com, we came across photo evidence of a second interview.
The Photograph
Jamie Bradburn, a researcher specializing in the heritage of Toronto wrote an article about Massey Hall (updated 2021) which contained a photo of Dylan with Bob McAdorey. He also included a quote from their discussion!
Bob McAdorey (1927-2006) was an influential TV and radio broadcaster, most notable as the DJ for Toronto station CHUM. He was known to hang out with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones when they were in town, introducing them from the stage. So it comes as no surprise to learn that he met with Bob Dylan, even if it took what he described as a “lot of badgering and begging" to make it happen.
The Portraits
Frank Lennon (1935-2005) accompanied Fulford as the Toronto Star photographer that night at the Friar’s. The first two of his pictures below were published in the Toronto Daily Star, and the third was published with McAdorey’s interview, together with one above.
The Band: Levon and the Hawks
This glorious newspaper ad reminds us why The Hawks were at Friar’s (later to become the Hard Rock Cafe) in the first place. For a flavor of the venue itself, here is David Clayton Thomas (later of Blood, Sweat and Tears) performing with the Go Go dancers.
Robbie Robertson recalls these rehearsals in his book, Testimony (2016)
On September 15, Bob Dylan came up to Toronto with his girlfriend, Sara Lownds, to hear the Hawks play live. I set them up in a discreet corner of the Friar’s to check us out. We played pretty good that night, and when we finished our last set at 1:00 a.m., Bob put Sara in a taxi to go back to the hotel.
[…]
After the club had emptied out, we got a mic for Bob and plugged in his guitar. Some of the songs on his records had particular arrangements we tried to follow, though that wasn’t necessarily our strong suit. Never playing something exactly the same way twice was more up our alley. We played a few tunes through—“I Don’t Believe You,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” then “It Ain’t Me Babe”—which he had played acoustic in the past.
As we ran through the material, it sounded a bit messy; we didn’t know the songs that well. I tried to help lead the arrangements by giving signals, waving my guitar neck and playing a little louder on the chord progressions. We played the songs with no concrete beginnings or endings. Bob would usually start strumming away to set the tempo, and we would stagger in when we got a feel for the rhythm. I suggested that when we neared the end of the song, Bob could give me a nod and I would signal the boys that we were coming in for a landing. We ran through about ten tunes before Bob put his guitar down and called it a night.
He returned to the Friar’s the next day for another session, and as we kept running through the songs, I could tell we were drawing somewhat closer as a unit. I was enjoying Bob’s singing and the level of intensity this collaboration brought to the songs. He wasn’t too fixated on details or fussy about how tight we were. Finally Bob appeared to have heard enough.
“Yeah, that sounds pretty good. So why don’t we do this first tour and see how it goes. What do you think?”
The Complete Bob McAdorey Interview
Toronto Telegram
After Four Supplement (Nov 11, 1965)
In addition to being a DJ, McAdorey was also a regular columnist for the Toronto Telegram’s teen supplement, After Four, and it is here that his interview was published. This is a complete typed copy, followed by a scan for download.
The Creative Force They Call Bob Dylan
An After Four Personality Feature
By Bob McAdorey
You are right john cohen--
quasimodo was right--
mozart was right...I
cannot say the word eye
anymore...when I speak
this word eye. it is as if I
am speaking of somebody's
eye that I faintly remember
---there is no eye--there
is only a series of mouths--
long live the mouths--your
rooftop--if you don't al-
ready know--has been de-
molished...
By Bob Dylan, from his Columbia album notes.
NO, I DON’T quite understand what he’s trying to say. I don’t think anybody understands Dylan, perhaps not even himself. But what everybody understands is that whatever it is he’s saying, he’s staying it honestly and with more power and communication than anyone before him.
At one time I had a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that maybe Bob Dylan was putting us all on. An out-and-out kook who really didn’t have anything to say, but was having a ball putting bunches of words together and wailing them out in a kind of “you’ve hurt me so forget it” voice.
A voice that I frankly didn’t dig too much on his earlier records, although I’ve always flipped for his song writing.
Then about a month ago he snuck into Toronto to rehearse with Levon and the Hawks. After a lot of badgering and begging, I was able to wangle an interview (or maybe an “audience” is a better word) with him.
In looking over the garbled notes I scratched down as we sipped coffee, smoked cigarettes and talked, there’s one word written in big caps … HONEST. And I guess that sums up my impressions of Dylan that night in a back office at the Friars.
Here are a few of his comments:
ON no longer being the darling of folkniks and social protesters: “…my ideas change and my songs change. I don’t think the way I did when I was 18 or 19, and I don’t like being quoted on things I said or did then.”
ON Folk-Rock music: “I don’t like the word folk-rock. It’s rock ‘n roll or it’s blues. Rock bands do my songs better than folk singers. They get more out of the words. Folk singers are too wrapped up in themselves to really dig the lyrics.”
ON his sympathy with college protest groups: “…sympathy is a big word. I guess if that’s what they’ve got to do I sympathize. But I have no beef, no great banner to carry.”
ON colored voter registration in the southern States: “…does it really make that much difference? The colored people may get the vote, but the politicians will be the same, won’t they? THEY won’t change.”
ON song writing: “Some of my stuff comes from personal experience. I write pretty fast. It kind of flows all at once. I guess my favorite song is It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.”
ON his favorite cities for concerts: “Yes, cities are different, and audiences are. You can play Akron or Syracuse or Pittsburgh, but it’s not the same. My favorites are Chicago, New York, of course, San Francisco and Toronto, too.”
ON some violent reaction he once got from a New York audience because of his new R and R image: “Audiences don’t bug me. It never gets across the footlights to me. I mean, they’ve paid their money to come and do their thing; clapping or booing or cheering or hissing or whatever their thing is. I’m doing MY thing too. If they don’t like it, fine. If they don’t it really doesn’t bug me.”
So much for talk. The club was by this time closed, the chairs piled up on the tables, the janitor sweeping up, and Levon and the Hawks and Bob Dylan (he took his last name from Dylan Thomas whom he admired) were all ready for an all night rehearsal.
Dylan doesn’t like anyone other than the musicians at his rehearsals. And so I felt sort of like Mack the Knife, lurking in a dark corner till they got started.
Then!
I remember when I was in high school, hitch-hiking to Crystal Beach to stand in front of Stan Kenton’s big, biting, rearing glorious band. And I would close my eyes and just be carried off right up to Cloud 9. Since then I’ve had the thrill of witnessing performances which could similarly move me, but not very often.
But that Dylan rehearsal was certainly one. (For the benefit of Phil MacKellar who at this point is probably tearing up his Telegram, may I say that we’re not comparing Kenton and Dylan here. I’m talking about that rare combination of music and emotion and audience communication that produces electricity and excitement and magic.)
NOBODY sings Dylan like the man himself. His slight body with the Dr. Zorba head sways and moves with his music. He’s not exactly the lightening-fingers of the guitar, but even the chords that he thumps out seem to mean something different. His voice is almost a yell when he sings. It exudes honesty. And the phrases of his sad, bitter songs are punctuated by a moaning wail on his harmonica.
And, of course, the accompaniment of Levon and the Hawks is better than anything you’ve heard on record.
It he a pseudo-poet? A put-on? A kook? No. A genius?
Yes.
The Players
The Download
This file contains the newspaper print versions of both interviews:
Bob McAdorey, the Telegram
Robert Fulford, the Toronto Daily Star
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