2025 Reading - Part II

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Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan and The Night That Split The Sixties

By Elijah Wald

2015

Last December, a biopic about Dylan's earlier years came out to much fanfare (notably, it had the stamp of approval from ol' Zimmy himself). For those wondering my thoughts on it: I liked it! Thought it was quite good. Ed Norton's performance as Pete Seeger, especially, was phenomenal. The film took a few liberal departures from reality, but this is to be expected with a biopic.

What I wasn't initially aware of was that it was an adaptation of a book. I made a beeline to the library (a few months after I saw the movie, if we're being honest... not a particularly beeline-ish beeline) to get a copy. 

Honestly, I think the book surpasses the movie, as much as I did enjoy it. Like the film it spawned, Elijah Wald's book walks us through the beginning of Dylan's career up until his famous polarization of his folkie fanbase upon whence he plugged in his electric guitar and started rocking and rolling and so forth. Now, I'm no newcomer to Dylan-- a lot of the information concerning him was information that I already knew. What I didn't know, however, was all that much about the life of Pete Seeger, who this book admirably devotes about equal time to. I knew a basic outline of who the man was, but I found myself coming away from reading this feeling like I had gained a much richer understanding of him and where he had come from. A very fascinating and remarkable figure who deserves more than being relegated to the cranky-old-fogey-telling-Bob-to-turn-that-infernal-racket-down role he is often shoved into whenever people talk about The Legend of Electric Dylan. Wald evidently sought to rectify that by spilling (almost) as much ink on what Pete was up to in the mid-60s as he does Dylan's adventures. 

As it turns out, he was more open-minded about the electrified material than he is typically given credit for (Dylan wasn't even the first electric act he had at the Newport Festival!), and no, he didn't attempt to cut Bob Dylan's seismic set at Newport '65 short with an axe to his amp cables like you might have heard. People are complex, and-- brace yourself-- Seeger had a bit more going on than the conventional wisdom of music lore generally allows him whenever it recounts this tale. It was refreshing to see a take on the events that made a point of thoroughly separating fact from fiction-- as iconic a story as the fiction may be.

Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes (Especially Himself): The Story of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis

By Arthur Marx

1974

(Serendipitous? I picked up some Martin and Lewis DVDs earlier today.)

One of the greatest comedy duos who weren't named Laurel and Hardy are examined in this volume written by Arthur Marx (son of Groucho). We begin with their chaotic beginnings as a nightclub act, follow them as they ascend the mountain to superstardom, and brace ourselves as things sour and the two race towards their acrimonious breakup, largely thanks to Jerry Lewis' swollen ego (the book does not paint him very kindly, although I don't think it was too out of line in this respect. Brilliant comedian, but by all accounts a very taxing man to be around). The aftermath and the solo careers that emerged in its wake are analyzed as well.

What's especially interesting about this book is what's not in it-- being written in 1974 informs a markedly different view of Jerry Lewis' career than what we have now nearly a decade after his death. When Martin and Lewis split, just about everybody thought it would lead to the latter flying higher than ever and the former descending into obscurity. Jerry was the funny one, and under-utilized Dean just sort of stood around and looked pretty most of the time; not hard to see why this was the go-to prediction. Of course, it wasn't to be-- it took some patience, but Dean Martin became one of the most beloved singers of his day and remains a definitive crooner, having at least three or four tunes from his repertoire that are familiar to everybody on the planet.

Jerry, on the other hand, started off strong with a string of popular, crowd-pleasing movies, but ran out of gas when it became evident that he would simply be unable to reign in his infamous ego. When you have talent and enough people notice it, you tend to get surrounded by ass-kissers who will tell you your farts smell fantastic while they're down there. If this persists long enough, you may start to believe it yourself. Such was the case for Mr. Lewis upon reaching household-name status; he was seemingly convinced he was the logical heir to Chaplin, but many have gunned for such a title and none achieved it. In his bubble o' fame, he fell out of touch with what the moviegoing public wanted. As audiences consequently grew less and less interested in what JL had to offer them, the promise that was shown in his first few solo films like The Bellboy and Cinderfella seemed to evaporate, leaving the 1950s' favorite clown perennially trapped in the shadow of his ex-partner, a picture of potential left unfulfilled. 

The book's narrative ends around the time of The Day The Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis' legendarily ill-advised project that was emblematic of the gulf between what Lewis thought he should be doing and what people actually wanted to see. It would have had Jerry portraying a clown who ends up in a nazi concentration camp and becoming a sort of angel of death(?) for imprisoned Jewish children. A masturbatory warped version of The Great Dictator that, in place of Chaplin's heartfelt plea for the world to reject fascism, is a hollow vehicle for some asshole character to dance around the backdrop of the Holocaust, which is transparently his set piece for no reason other than he really, really wants an Academy Award (hey, it ended up working for Benigni! To Lewis' credit, there's no way it could have been more soulless than Life is Beautiful).

Mercifully, it was never completed, being scrapped after Jerry presumably had a moment of extreme mental clarity the likes of which Buddhists have sought out for years and asked "What the fuck am I making?" To date, it has not been released in its unfinished entirety (but every once in a while it seems like it almost comes out), although some have seen what exists of it, including Harry Shearer:

"The closest I can come to describing the effect is if you flew down to Tijuana and suddenly saw a painting on black velvet of Auschwitz. You'd just think, My God, wait a minute! It's not funny, and it's not good, and somebody's trying too hard in the wrong way to convey this strongly held feeling."

-Harry Shearer's analysis of The Day The Clown Cried for Spy Magazine, 1992

This bleak note ends Marx's story, but as you probably know did not necessarily end Martin and Lewis'. Just two years after the book's publication, the two reunited on live television courtesy of one Frank Sinatra and reportedly rekindled their friendship thereafter. In 1982, Martin Scorsese cast Jerry Lewis in what was quite a departure for the Nutty Professor, a role in The King of Comedy. Lewis got a chance to reveal a different side of his acting chops, and although the film didn't exactly set the box office ablaze, it was met with acclaim with many singling out Jerry for praise. His film career never really regained the momentum it had in the early 1960s, but he had given his public one last great performance for the books.

The Pirates & The Mouse: Disney's War Against The Underground

By Bob Levin

2003

As everybody knows, the one thing The Walt Disney Corporation loves the most is when people parody their work, making liberal use of their copyrighted characters in doing so. Unfortunately, it seems that a group of underground cartoonists from the early 1970s who did so caught them at a bad moment, igniting a lawsuit that lasted eons and a debate about Fair Use vs. plagiarism that still gets quite heated mileage a half-century later.

Bobby London's model sheet for Goofy. 
Click on the image for a better look!

The Air Pirates, ostensibly led by Odd Bodkins creator Dan O'Neill and featuring several young cartoonists who would go on to become legends of the industry shortly after (Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Ted Richards and Gary Hallgren), self-published some comic books that featured Disney characters like Mickey and Minnie Mouse smokin' dope and enjoying the free love of the times, much to the chagrin of said characters' corporate masters. (Supposedly, O'Neill actually wanted to get sued, and saw to it that copies of the book would be placed directly on a conference table at Disney's offices. Eccentric guy, as you will find out!) Disney took things to court, and the case dragged out for much longer than one would have expected, particularly due to O'Neill's repeated provocations (he kept putting out comics featuring Mickey during the whole ordeal). 

Bob Levin's book on the matter interviews just about everybody concerned with the story-- each member of the Pirates, several of the lawyers involved, and so forth. I've been weirdly fascinated by the entire caper ever since I was in middle school and I first started getting into the history of the underground movement, so a lot of the material in here was not all that new to me-- but I would have to say that it must be the definitive account of the story. It also features some cool art I hadn't seen beforehand.

Gary Hallgren's model sheets for
Horace Horsecollar and Pete. Click
on the image for a better look!

As I mentioned earlier, to this day people debate the Air Pirates case-- yes, they drew on-model versions of Disney characters in their comics, but at the same time the stories were so outlandishly raunchy that nobody in their right mind could have ever mistaken it for a genuine Mouse House product (not to mention the books were distributed in head shops and the usual hippie haunts, rather than newsstands or... basically anywhere a child/Disney's regular audience would be able to get their hands on it. In fact, I would argue the lawsuit exponentially increased the chances of the general public looking at the books, as it raised their profile quite substantially).

The Pirates' tomes are available to read on the Internet Archive as of this writing, so you can decide for yourself whether they crossed the line or not.

Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life

By Dan Nadel

2025

While we are on the topic of underground comics, let's close out this second instalment with the much-anticipated biography of Robert Crumb. Done with the participation of the man himself (as you may have intuited through the cover illustration present here), it's a highly in-depth, nothing-held-back look over his life and art. This is not particularly new territory for Crumb, as much of his work is quite famously autobiographical and willing to tell you every nasty detail in his trademark guilty-confession-esque style, but it certainly is interesting to see it written from the perspective of a third party for once (particularly one who isn't ashamed/aroused by much of the proceedings). 

I don't have much else to add, but don't get me wrong-- I highly recommend this one, it was a great read that I blazed through because it kept me hooked. I would put this up there in the upper-echelon of biographies that I've read, with the likes of Brian Jay Jones' book on Jim Henson, Peter Guralnick's two volumes on Elvis Presley and James Kaplan's also-two-volumes on Frank Sinatra. Thorough and engrossing.

Part the Third, which should close out this verbal vomit, will hopefully be up before the end of the month! Stay tuned!