Bob Dylan Arrived In New York City 50 Years Ago Today By Rob Harvilla, Mon., Jan. 24 2011 @ 12:00AM Categories: Anniversaries (Pleasant), Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan in NYC, Featured Photo …

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Bob Dylan Arrived In New York City 50 Years Ago Today

By Rob Harvilla, Mon., Jan. 24 2011 @ 12:00AM

Categories: Anniversaries (Pleasant), Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan in NYC, Featured

 

Photo by the incomparable Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images

​Bob Dylan's life is short on concrete facts and figures, very much by design, but the experts seem to agree on this one: The man born Robert Zimmerman arrived in NYC on January 24, 1961, exactly a half-century ago. He immediately started showing up at the Village's Cafe Wha? (that's him on the left with Karen Dalton and Fred Neil, in a pic dated just a few weeks later, February 6) and lying about having arrived in town via freight train. As he explains in his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One:

 

When I arrived, it was dead-on winter. The cold was brutal and every artery of the city was snowpacked, but I'd started out from the frostbitten North Country, a little corner of the earth where the dark frozen woods and icy roads didn't faze me. I could transcend the limitations. It wasn't money or love that I was looking for. I had a heightened sense of awareness, was set in my ways, impractical and a visionary to boot. My mind was strong like a trap and I didn't need any guarantee of validity. I didn't know a single soul in this dark freezing metropolis but that was all about to change -- and quick.

To celebrate, this week SOTC is offering a mess of Dylan-centric content: a multi-suite video tour of Bob Dylan's Greenwich Village (which has changed ever so slightly in the past 50 years), old Dylan pieces from the Voice archives, essays from a few different Dylan scholars and high-profile admirers, and a compilation of various artists' favorite Dylan songs. All in honor of a guy who didn't waste any time once he'd landed here -- via '57 Impala, not freight train, but no man on earth is more deserving of a little poetic license. For a mere $2 back then, you could've seen it for yourself. We hope you enjoy.

See also:
Bob Dylan In NYC, Day 2: Revisiting Jones Street And 161 West 4th

Bob Dylan's New York City: Why It Never Got Better Than 1961

Dylan's Voice Archives: Mods And Rockers Face Off In An Epic Orgy O...

Bob Dylan In NYC: Revisiting Cafe Wha? And 94 MacDougal

 

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• Garby876

  The "Boss Tweed" of folk.

• Patinestero

  yes - it was sigh

• Patinestero

  think he lived on sullivan street - rents were low i lived on 21st and 3rd and paid $150 monthly for ten tears - then it was 157.50

• David

  what was his monthly rent?

• Patinestero

  I ABSOLUTELY LOVE DYLAN AND THE 60'S AND 70'S IN NEW YORK CITY - NOTHING GREATER

• Daphidyl

  ... and I'm soooo thankful that he did; otherwise, I might never have known him ... that simple twist of fate.

• Cony

  All seats $2.00.... *sigh*

• January 24th is my birthday, so knowing this about Dylan is cool news to me. His arrival to New York City came exactly 7 years before my arrival into the world. great article.

• Clare

  Bob Dylan Day love the sound of that! a celebration of Americana! Bob is loved here in Australia and is visiting again in April

• Nona

  I adore Bob. Always have, always will :-)

• I am so happy he came to NY at 48 below in Minnesota I would have left there, too. I think Bob Dylan is just amazing he always did know what he wanted and I believe he achieved it and then some. Love him.

• Elston Gunn

  "...and when I leave New York, I'll be standing on my feet..."

• wasn't there only six or seven people at his first concert and they were his local friends he had met

• Great moment in time. Cause for celebration and remembering.

• 50 years ago...

• Future national holiday, perhaps??

• Ed

  Unbeknownst to the world writ large, a seminal day in American culture.

• Everybody arrives in New York in brutal Winter & never forgets

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