Yet another reason to remain a complete unknown

You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend if you don't know that during his prime - which, although he's eight and a half years older than I am, roughly coincided with my prime (or my adolscent prime, anyway) - I was a fan of Bob Dylan.

Yes, my tastes ran more to Tom Rush and Judy Collins, but when the normies my age were swooning over the Beatles, I was making sure I knew all the lyrics on Freewheelin', Highway 61 Revisted, and Blonde on Blonde. I did, of course, come around to the Beatles. (And did, of course, pick John - the "brainy" artiste - as my fave.) But until I was in my early twenties, although we were never an exclusive item, I was pretty much a Dylan fan. 

Interesting, over the years, I stuck with Tom Rush and Judy Collins, but after John Wesley Harding, the only Dylan album I recall listening to, let alone buying, was Christmas in the Heart, Dylan's holiday compilation, which I bought as a joke when it came out in 2009. (When I listened to it for the first and only time, my reaction was "is there anything this guy won't do for a buck?")

But, yeah, once upon a time, I was a Bob Dylan fan. (In a little mashup, one of my favorite songs covered by Judy Collins is Bob Dylan's "Dark Eyes," which is also one of my favorite songs by him, even though it came out in the 1980's, well after my peak Dylan years.)

Never a superfan, however.

Then again, I was never a superobsessive of any celebrity in terms of ardent allegiance. I was never into following every utterance, appearances, and doings all that closely.

Not so A.J. Weberman, who was profiled in a recent NY Times article, who was seen - make that heard - at a recent showing in NYC of A Complete Unknown, the Dylan biopic.

Weberman spent the movie narrating:

“This is all made up,” [Weberman] brayed at the screen.

“It’s not what you think it is.”

“You’re scum!”

While I was sitting in my bedroom listening to Tom Rush while reading John Lennon's Spaniard in the Works, Weberman (now 80 years of age) was obsessing over Dylan, although mostly not in a gushy fab fan way, that's for sure.

For more than half a century, the lives of Weberman and Dylan have been intertwined — though it is Weberman who has done most of the intertwining.

He began as one of Dylan’s keenest observers and fans, so intent on digging into the singer’s life that he sifted through trash cans outside 94 MacDougal Street, where the singer once lived. But he became Dylan’s nemesis, calling him a hoaxer and sellout, attacking him with an obsession bordering on madness.

Bordering on madness, you say????

Weberman, who makes his living selling weed, was originally a fan. As a young man, he:

...eventually fell in with countercultural Yippie figures like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry RubinIt was the 1960s, and he helped organize smoke-ins, marijuana marches and pranks on establishment figures. Dylan provided much of the soundtrack.

“I said, ‘Wow, this guy’s a real revolutionary,’” he said. “I was into the civil rights movement. I fell for it.”

Speaking of real revolutionaries, Jerry Rubin became an investor, a professional business networkers, and a multi-level marketer. He was killed, hit by a car on Wilshire Boulevard in LA. Abbie Hoffman - who was born in Worcester, and for whom a college classmate of mine had been the babysitter in the 1960's; that or Abbie Hoffman was her babysitter - stayed true to his radical ways and (sadly) died a suicide in the late 1980's.    

Anyway, Weberman began studying Dylan's lyrics, and decided that they held secret meanings, including some lyrics that he became convinced referred to himself. He was also ticked off that Dylan was going off his leftist "Blowin' in the Wind"/"Masters of War" message, abandoning the political and social acuteness that had been at his core. Weberman wanted that Dylan back. 

After years of Weberman hanging out at his place, going through his trash - including diapers, as by this time, Dylan had kids - Dylan decided to get away. But before he got out of town, Dylan had a number of direct phone and in person confrontations with Weberman. (Today, cops and private security takes care of obsessive fans, who are much more common now.)

“I wasn’t stalking him,” Weberman said. “It was a relationship, like Verlaine and Rimbaud. I was interested in his poetry. It was political, not about his celebrity.”

A spokesman for Dylan declined to comment.

I'll bet. (Referebce to Dylan's decline to comment, not to the Verlaine-Rimbaud relationship.)

Over time, Weberman began to monetize his "relationship" with Dylan, teaching a class (at a "countercultural center in the Village") and taking folks on tours. He added the trashcans of other NYC celebs - Jackie O', Richard Nixon - to his portfolio. Guy's got a make a living.

But most of that living was weed, and eventually Weberman's trash-searching ways caught with him. The feds searched his. And found enough evidence of weed sales to nab him for money laundering. But he didn't give up on his Dylan dreams:

While serving a yearlong sentence, he created a 536-page “Dylan to English Dictionary,” a word-by-word analysis of Dylan’s metaphorical and allegorical language.

These days, Weberman is finishing his latest book, “The Dylan Heresy,” which offers still more exegesis.

Ah, no thanks. I think I'll take a pass on both.

And just the thought about someone obsessing about you like that. Yikes! Makes me happy that I've always been, and will always be, a complete unknown.