Go down, Moses

[khem...@gmail.com]

http://gothamist.com/2015/06/26/bob_dylan_robert_moses.php

If you actually go to the link above, you can see an original typed copy of the song in question.

Did Bob Dylan Write A Protest Song About Robert Moses?
BY BEN YAKAS IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ON JUN 26, 2015 1:40 PM

If Robert Moses had his way, Bob Dylan may have never come to New York. Moses, the so-called "power broker" who shaped NYC throughout the mid-20th century, tried to completely gut Washington Square Park in the 1930s (he wanted to place a roadway through the park to connect Fifth Avenue with lower Manhattan) when he was commissioner of the Parks Department. He instead inspired a wave of civic activism that flourished into the 1960s, when people like Dylan were moving to the city to be part of the then-vibrant folk scene emerging around the neighborhood.

Dylan and Moses never directly crossed paths--Moses was not exactly a fan of the new music scene in the 1960s, refusing to even book the Beatles at the World's Fair grounds--but it seems Dylan was roped into the fight against him in 1963, based on the incredible document below, a lyric sheet for "Listen, Robert Moses," credited to Bob Dylan. (The copy of the lyrics comes from the Tuli Kupferberg collection of the Fales Library of NYU, and was found by Tumblr user Belcimer. H/t to Jesse Jarnow as well.)

Moses was locked in a battle for the soul of Washington Square Park with Jane Jacobs at that time (you can read extensively about their feud here). Jacobs, who had just written her landmark book The Death and Life Of Great American Cities, formed the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway to prevent the West Village from being bulldozed and redeveloped in order to relieve car congestion.

The Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX) had been kicking around as far back as 1929; by the early 1960s, it had become an "obsession" for Moses, according to author Anthony Flint. "You can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra or Brasilia," Moses is quoted as saying, "but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax."

During her struggle with Moses, Jacobs may have approached Dylan to write the song, as was implied in this recent Harvard Graduate School of Design essay on the fight over LOMEX. Or Dylan, who was living amongst the activists fighting Moses at the time, may have been inspired on his own: "Popular singer-songwriter Bob Dylan even crafted a song about the anti-highway movement," Lisa Krissoff Boehm and Steven Hunt Corey wrote in their book, "America's Urban History."

Unfortunately, those are two of the only references to the song available online. Historians I spoke to were incredibly skeptical about the material: "I don't believe this for a second!" said Stephen Petrus, the curator for the "Folk City" exhibit currently showing at the Museum Of The City Of New York. "I've done extensive research and writing on both topics and have never come across this song. Maybe I'm wrong but I believe this is a hoax."

The New York Public Library has no record of any recording of the song as well. But it's entirely possible Dylan wrote the lyrics and never actually sang it--he was writing a hell of a lot of songs during that time period, many of which were getting sent around to other songwriters.

We'll update as we learn more about the song.

[chris]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 1:00:05 AM UTC-4, khem...@gmail.com wrote:
> http://gothamist.com/2015/06/26/bob_dylan_robert_moses.php
>
> If you actually go to the link above, you can see an original typed copy of the song in question.

...major cut ;-).....

> Unfortunately, those are two of the only references to the song available online. Historians I spoke to were incredibly skeptical about the material: "I don't believe this for a second!" said Stephen Petrus, the curator for the "Folk City" exhibit currently showing at the Museum Of The City Of New York. "I've done extensive research and writing on both topics and have never come across this song. Maybe I'm wrong but I believe this is a hoax."
>
> The New York Public Library has no record of any recording of the song as well. But it's entirely possible Dylan wrote the lyrics and never actually sang it--he was writing a hell of a lot of songs during that time period, many of which were getting sent around to other songwriters.
>
> We'll update as we learn more about the song.

it doesn't really flow like a Bob song...and without the music behind it, i'm not 'hearing' it. however, that was a very proliferate time for mr. song writer, so there's a chance, but you'd think it would have shown up on one of those bootleg series by now........i'm in the nah group.

[khematite]

Chris, not every song Dylan wrote in his early days was recorded, so there are definitely Dylan songs that never will (and never can) show up as recordings, regardless of how many volumes of the bootleg series are ultimately issued. In fact, we know that there are lyrics Dylan wrote as late as 1966-1967 that he never recorded, namely the songs now constituting "Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_on_the_River:_The_New_Basement_Tapes

As for the flow of the song, I'd note that not all the lyrics Dylan ever wrote worked equally well--certainly not at the outset of his career. Take a song like "Talkin' Hugh Brown" from 1960 and you certainly see some less-than-brilliant Dylan output.

I knew a boy named Hugh Brown
He's the laziest man in town
Got up this morning and combed his hair
He's so lazy, he just don't go anywhere
He just kinda opens his door and walks out
And looks around and walks away

Well, he sprained his arm combing his hair
I don't think that's quite really fair
He lays in bed all the time
I don't think that's very right
He's such a lazy bastard

You know, it was raining the other day,
I mean the other night
And Hugh Brown said
And Hugh Brown, (he's) so lazy that
He said to me, "Bob, it's raining on my bed"
And I says "Oh", and he says "Yeah", and I says "Oh"
Hugh Brown never closed the window

And, of course, we also have to consider regarding the Robert Moses song that lyrics written on request (even as a favor to Jane Jacobs) just might not match up to the products of personal inspiration.

[chris]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 12:36:31 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:

> Chris, not every song Dylan wrote in his early days was recorded, so there are definitely Dylan songs that never will (and never can) show up as recordings, regardless of how many volumes of the bootleg series are ultimately issued. In fact, we know that there are lyrics Dylan wrote as late as 1966-1967 that he never recorded, namely the songs now constituting "Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes."
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_on_the_River:_The_New_Basement_Tapes
>
> As for the flow of the song, I'd note that not all the lyrics Dylan ever wrote worked equally well--certainly not at the outset of his career. Take a song like "Talkin' Hugh Brown" from 1960 and you certainly see some less-than-brilliant Dylan output.
>
> I knew a boy named Hugh Brown
> He's the laziest man in town
> Got up this morning and combed his hair
> He's so lazy, he just don't go anywhere
> He just kinda opens his door and walks out
> And looks around and walks away
>
> Well, he sprained his arm combing his hair
> I don't think that's quite really fair
> He lays in bed all the time
> I don't think that's very right
> He's such a lazy bastard
>
> You know, it was raining the other day,
> I mean the other night
> And Hugh Brown said
> And Hugh Brown, (he's) so lazy that
> He said to me, "Bob, it's raining on my bed"
> And I says "Oh", and he says "Yeah", and I says "Oh"
> Hugh Brown never closed the window
>
> And, of course, we also have to consider regarding the Robert Moses song that lyrics written on request (even as a favor to Jane Jacobs) just might not match up to the products of personal inspiration.

lololol...you are right...i wouldn't have guessed this song to be a Bob song either. so maybe you are down the right path.....good luck on your quest.
p.s. are you sure the lyrics can't be traced to someone else (being sarcastic here).......

[Willie]

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 at 1:00:05 AM UTC-4, khem...@gmail.com wrote:

Fascinating post. I have a good friend who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Alex specializes in Housing history (and present and future). His wife Glenna wrote a book about Jane Jacobs recently, so I forwarded this to them for comments.

[M. Rick]

We tend to evaluate a road or bridge based on function, physics, aesthetics, period, etc. Whereas with Dylan songs the essential matter is authorship.

[khem...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, 27 June 2015 18:06:15 UTC-4, M. Rick wrote:
> We tend to evaluate a road or bridge based on function, physics, aesthetics, period, etc. Whereas with Dylan songs the essential matter is authorship.

But hardly just with Dylan songs. There's always some excitement associated with the discovery that a previously unattributed or misattributed piece of art or literature turns out to have been done by one or another famous artist or writer.

http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/arts/story/1.962897

And the reverse is also true when some piece of art or literature attributed to a famous artist is proven to be a forgery.

http://www.intenttodeceive.org/forger-profiles/mark-landis/

But I think this tendency says more about our culture and society in general than about Bob Dylan specifically.

[Willie]

Mr. K,

Here's how my friend at the Graduate School of Design responded:

"Thanks so much for the tantalizing item. Tantalizing, but we have serious doubts. Glenna says the Yakas article has errors. I can tell you the GSD article is loosely written by a student and the sources are not impressive. Plus it is hard to believe that the same person who was writing Blowing in the Wind, Don't Think Twice, and A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall came up with the rather unimaginative song in the typescript. What do you think? Well, I suppose anybody can have some swings and misses (Napoli [the Red Sox 1st baseman who is striking out a lot], that's too many!) I'm inclined to think the curator is right, and it's somehow been falsified. Maybe someone less gifted wrote the song and in the hope of getting more publicity attributed it to Dylan. But just the possibility that Bobby D supported the anti-highway campaign is an exciting idea."

Alex and Glenna want me to keep him informed if you make further discoveries on this.

[khematite]

Thanks for pursuing the matter with your friends, Willie. I do understand why people might be skeptical about these lyrics, but for the moment at least, I'm going to stick with my 75%-25% belief that they're genuine. As I said earlier, the fact that they're lousy lyrics does not persuade me otherwise, given that Dylan's early songs include several examples of lousy lyrics.

"This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live"

Ultimately, I don't think we'll ever get a definitive answer on this one, unless someone is in a position to ask Dylan himself and is lucky enough to get a serious answer (and assuming also that Dylan actually remembers whether or not he wrote them). I'm not holding my breath, though.

[edlis]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=881505368582837&set=oa.469491546422716

Are you discussing the Tuli Kupferberg spoof? Tuli's lampoon of Bob Dylan? I thought it was rather good and kind that he made it obvious to anyone familiar with the work of Bob Dylan that it was not really written by Bob Dylan. But as a spoof it works, using his name without his co-operation...


Soon after Tuli Kupferberg formed the satirical rock group The Fugs... The rest is history!

The image is from the Tuli Kupferberg collection of the Fales Library of NYU.

1963

www.edlis.org/dylanista

[khem...@gmail.com]

You seem to start off at the Facebook site with a fair question:

"Tuli Kupferberg, hmmm. Should we assume we have a lampoon of Bob Dylan rather than anything written by Bob Dylan?"

But soon thereafter, writing on rmd, this morphs into a very confident statement of the "obvious":

"Are you discussing the Tuli Kupferberg spoof? Tuli's lampoon of Bob Dylan? I thought it was rather good and kind that he made it obvious to anyone familiar with the work of Bob Dylan that it was not really written by Bob Dylan. But as a spoof it works, using his name without his co-operation..."

But what came in between to turn an assumption into something obvious? Is there some actual evidence that Tuli is the author of the document? If so, could you perhaps point us to it? Certainly not everything in his archive was written by Tuli. It seems, after all, also to include such things as flyers and pamphlets and other collected ephemera relating to the Lower East Side in the 1950s and 1960s, the period of the fight against the Lower Manhattan Expressway.

Bob Dylan may or may not have written "Listen, Robert Moses," but if Tuli wrote it as a spoof of Dylan, it surely falls far from the mark--as evidenced by the fact that almost everyone's immediate reaction is that it's such a poor job that Dylan couldn't possibly have written it. To me, that suggests a Dylan misfire rather than a clever spoof. A man of Tuli's talents could certainly have written a much more clever spoof than what we have here, as evidenced by his often hilarious Fugs songs just a year or so later. In a fact, as a spoof--and contrary to your statement--I'd say that this very definitely does not work.

I certainly remain open to the possibility that Dylan did not write the piece in question, but I'm going to need more than just the assertion that it's "obvious" that he didn't.

[Willie]

Good point that why would Tuli write something so bad (I don't think it's *so* bad), for those who claim Tuli wrote it? I guess you could say it's a lampoon, so intentionally bad.

I'd like to research a bit on how much interaction there was between Dylan and Tuli and Ed Sanders and the Fugs generally. Did they ever perform on the same bill? Are any Fugs mentioned in Chronicles, Volume One? Or in interviews? I'll check out that massive one file compilation of Dyoan interviews for "Fugs" and "Tuli."

[M. Rick]

I'm enjoying the gripe over city housing projects. Where was the working class supposed to live, East Orange?

[Dr_dudley]

On Sunday, June 28, 2015 at 12:00:21 PM UTC-4, Willie wrote:
>
I'll check out that massive one file compilation of Dyoan interviews for "Fugs" and "Tuli."
<

my copy of EMPW has, on pages 267-268, the transcription of the bob fass show in 65 where a caller asks about the fugs.

i can't copy nor link to it. there's a lot of uhs and likes. bob thinks he might have said hi to ed & tuli. he does know that peter is not in the fugs anymore.

then on pg 287 he does seem to know "nothing".

i don't find tuli nor kupferberg nor fugs at edlis who's who.

of course i don't have the facebook version.

(ir)regardless, to think that bob wasn't capable of typing some clinkers back in the day, wasn't there a song unearthed a few years back "go away mean old bomb" or something? less than stellar IIRC.

that's about it really.

back to you in the studio.

rdd

[khematite]

On Sunday, 28 June 2015 19:02:23 UTC-4, Dr_dudley wrote:
>
> (ir)regardless, to think that bob wasn't capable of typing some clinkers back in the day, wasn't there a song unearthed a few years back "go away mean old bomb" or something? less than stellar IIRC.
>
> that's about it really.
>
> back to you in the studio.
>
> rdd

Excellent memory, Dr. And indeed, some might call the song less than stellar. On the other hand, some might say instead that it's just another of those pesky Dylan hoaxes.

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2013/05/read-bob-dylans-go-away-you-bomb-lyrics/

[khematite]

Tying up a loose end from last year, it does now appear that (despite EDLIS' absolute certainty that it never happened) Dylan did indeed co-write a song with Jane Jacobs, protesting Robert Moses' plan to build an expressway across lower Manhattan. I do have my doubts, however, that Jacobs taught Woody Guthrie acolyte Bob Dylan how to write protest songs.

http://gothamist.com/2016/05/01/confirmed_bob_dylan_did_co-write_a.php

Confirmed: Bob Dylan Did Co-Write Protest Song About Robert Moses With Jane Jacobs
BY BEN YAKAS IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ON MAY 1, 2016 1:00 PM

Last year, we were fascinated when a lyric sheet for "Listen, Robert Moses," credited to Bob Dylan, popped up on the internet.

While Dylan and Moses never directly crossed paths--Moses was not exactly a fan of the new music scene in the 1960s, refusing even to book the Beatles at the World's Fair grounds--there was evidence to suggest Dylan could have been involved in protests against him.

But experts and Dylanologists we spoke to were incredibly skeptical about the material, the New York Public Library had no record of any recording of the song, and we could only find two references to it in books--most importantly, a Harvard Graduate School of Design essay on the fight between [Jane] Jacobs and Moses over The Lower Manhattan Expressway (LOMEX).

But now, a new interview with Jacobs' son has confirmed the authenticity of the document.

Jacobs' son Jim has helped mount Jane at Home, an exhibition in Toronto about the urban activist encompassing her Pennsylvania childhood, her activist days in New York, and decades-long life in Toronto. In an interview with Globe 2 Go, he confirmed that Jacobs did approach Dylan to pen the tune to fight LOMEX--and he also claims she helped teach him how to write protest songs!

What was the soundtrack of the household, generally? Was it television? Radio? Music?

We often had a record player playing. Jane and my father [architect Robert Jacobs] enjoyed protest songs. Lively, vigorous, angry songs. We grew up with those. In the exhibit, we'll have a soundscape that includes recordings of selections from all the old records.

Any Bob Dylan?

Actually, Jane and Bob Dylan wrote a song together. Jane needed a protest song for the fight against the Lower Manhattan Expressway in New York. A friend of ours, Harry Jackson, an artist, had a folk singer sleeping on his floor. He sent Dylan around to the house. Jane helped him, telling him how a protest song was structured and how it worked. I think it was the first protest song he ever wrote.

What was the song? Who recorded it?

Nobody recorded it. The song was "Listen, Robert Moses." A copy of the lyrics has surfaced on the Internet recently. It's not the world's greatest song. But it's an interesting piece.

So that's one mystery solved! Now if only we could figure out a few more Dylan mysteries, including what the fuck was Hearts Of Fire and what bet did he lose to end up appearing on Dharma and Greg?

[Willie]

On Monday, May 2, 2016 at 1:22:16 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:
<snip>

I've forgotten how exactly that page with the "Listen, Robert Moses" lyrics surfaced on the Internet. Where was it found?

Also, "what the fuck was Hearts Of Fire and what bet did he lose to end up appearing on Dharma and Greg?" Why is "Hearts of Fire" mysterious (not that I've seen it)? Is it just that it's terrible? I see one can watch it here:

http://www.needsomefun.net/hearts-of-fire-bob-dylan-watch-full-movie/

He was funny on that Dharma and Greg show. Was there a bet?

[Will Dockery]

Hey now, "Hearts of Fire" had some pretty good scenes in it, and the only place I've seen Dylan's version of "A Couple More Years" by Shel Silverstein appear.

https://youtu.be/m754vmL1g50

Bob Dylan also punches someone in the film, and trashes a hotel room, rock star style.

[Willie]

On Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 12:43:06 PM UTC-4, Will Dockery wrote:
> Hey now, "Hearts of Fire" had some pretty good scenes in it, and the only place I've seen Dylan's version of "A Couple More Years" by Shel Silverstein appear.

Man, Shel had beautiful feet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bsFniGU4cs

[khematite]

On Tuesday, 3 May 2016 12:11:08 UTC-4, Willie wrote:
> On Monday, May 2, 2016 at 1:22:16 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:
> <snip>
>
> I've forgotten how exactly that page with the "Listen, Robert Moses" lyrics surfaced on the Internet. Where was it found?

So far as I know, the story (including an image of those lyrics) was first published last June in The Gothamist:

http://gothamist.com/2015/06/26/bob_dylan_robert_moses.php

>
> Also, "what the fuck was Hearts Of Fire and what bet did he lose to end up appearing on Dharma and Greg?" Why is "Hearts of Fire" mysterious (not that I've seen it)? Is it just that it's terrible? I see one can watch it here:
>
> http://www.needsomefun.net/hearts-of-fire-bob-dylan-watch-full-movie/

Mysterious only in the sense of "how in hell did this thing even get made?" The reviews were, shall we say, generally unkind. The film opened in the UK to small audiences and was pulled rather quickly. It never made it to theaters in the US, instead going straight to video.

>
> He was funny on that Dharma and Greg show. Was there a bet?

Probably not. There's a long tradition (especially in comic strips) of people asking whether someone has lost a bet, when he acts in some odd or embarrassing manner. I think the author means to suggest that Dylan must have lost a bet and that this required him to appear on Greg and Dharma--an otherwise inexplicable act.

[Willie]

On Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 1:47:49 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:
> On Tuesday, 3 May 2016 12:11:08 UTC-4, Willie wrote:
> > On Monday, May 2, 2016 at 1:22:16 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > I've forgotten how exactly that page with the "Listen, Robert Moses" lyrics surfaced on the Internet. Where was it found?
>
>
> So far as I know, the story (including an image of those lyrics) was first published last June in The Gothamist:
>

Oh, right, it came "from the Tuli Kupferberg collection of the Fales Library of NYU, and was found by Tumblr user Belcimer. H/t to Jesse Jarnow as well.)"

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Tuli in 1968, because a friend of mine (a dancer) at Bennington College staged a weird kind of dance "happening" at the McCullough Mansion in North Bennington, and she convinced Tuli to declaim from the boiler room as part of the weirdness. So we drove down to the East Village and picked him up, and all drove up to Bennington together. He was a dear and very funny man, easy to be with. His apartment, which was on, I think, East 10th Street, was filled with reams of loose printed matter, though orderly.

Oh, and before we found him, Leslie suggested we stop by the East Village Other on 2nd Avenue, where Ed Sanders, who was loitering outside, asked her if she'd like to go upstairs for some quick fun. She sweetly declined, saying we were trying to find Tuli. I think that after we dropped Tuli back home a few days later, we went to the Electric Circus on St. Marks place, and had our minds blown by Sly & the Family Stone.

[khematite]

Very good fortune indeed to have spent even a little time with the legendary Kupferberg. Fifty years on, and I still find myself listening to "Morning, Morning" at least a couple times per month.

You may recall that some of the early doubters that Dylan had written "Listen, Mr. Moses" seemed quite certain that--because the lyrics sheet was found in Kupferberg's archives--it had to have been a hoax he perpetrated.

[Stephan Pickering]

I have, within the past day or so, posted here a summary of the history of the composition, repeated below. Contra EDLIS et al., who don't know what they're talking about, it is genuine, and verified as such by Jane Jacobs's family. I have personally seen the original typescript, reproduced by gothamist, and see no reason for questioning the honesty of either Ms Jacobs or the family.

Jane Jacobs and Shabtai Zisel / 'Bob Dylan' were introduced in 1962 by artist Harry Jackson, on whose floor Shabtai had been sleeping. Together, they wrote 'Listen, Robert Moses', although she is not given credit on the lyric sheet. 'Listen, Robert Moses' remains unrecorded, but was likely sung to the music of the 1946 'Listen, Mr Bilbo' by Bob and Adrienne Claiborne, whose format is similar. The lyric sheet is in the Fales Library, Tuli Kupferd Collection, New York City.

Andreas Georgoulias & Ali Khawaja, 2010. Lower Manhattan Expressway (Harvard Graduate School of Design [December]), 1-10 (the song is mentioned on page 5 without title)

N.B. I have seen mention in Alan Fraser's Searching For A Gem of a 1997 article by Roberta Grantz quoting Jane Jacobs on this, but know of no such paper.

Ben Yakas, 2015. Did Bob Dylan write a protest song about Robert Moses? gothamist.com, 26 June [first publication of lyric sheet]

Brad Wheeler, 2016. Jim Jacobs on the exhibit about his mother, the activist-author, Jane Jacobs. www.TheGlogeAndMail.com, 29 April [family confirmation that the 1962 lyric sheet is genuine]

Ben Yakas, 2016. Confirmed: Bob Dylan did co-write protest song about Robert Moses with Jane Jacobs. gothamist.com, 1 May

Roberta Brandes Gratz, 2016. Milestones: Jane Jacobs. www.ArchitecturalRecord.com, 1 May

Jane Jacobs, 2016. Jane Jacobs: the last interview & other conversations (Melville House), 1-128
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
STEPHAN PICKERING / חפץ ח"ם בן אברהם
Torah אלילה Yehu'di Apikores / Philologia Kabbalistica Speculativa Researcher
לחיות זמן רב ולשגשג

THE KABBALAH FRACTALS PROJECT

[Dr_dudley]

<nonsnip>

Just as a sidebar, in Allen's Howl:

}
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
{

that was Tuli.

This is well known i'm just pointing it out. And that Tuli was kind of embarrassed by it.

what puzzles me is the "this actually happened" as if none of the other stuff did.

well, here are the mandatory U2B links:

ciao bambini,
rdd

[Willie]

On Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 5:50:38 PM UTC-4, khematite wrote:
<snip>

> Very good fortune indeed to have spent even a little time with the legendary Kupferberg. Fifty years on, and I still find myself listening to "Morning, Morning" at least a couple times per month.
>
> You may recall that some of the early doubters that Dylan had written "Listen, Mr. Moses" seemed quite certain that--because the lyrics sheet was found in Kupferberg's archives--it had to have been a hoax he perpetrated.

I, too, need periodic purifications from "Morning, Morning."

I forwarded your post to my friends Alex and Glenna (Alex teaches at the Harvard School of Design and is a housing specialist, so I knew he'd be interested; and his wife Glenna wrote the book "Genius of Common Sense: The Story of Jane Jacobs." Alex, who had been skeptical last year, wrote (after seeing the new Gothamist article, and after seeing for himself):

"Yes, I was a doubter but no more. We were just in Toronto to celebrate Jane Jacobs 100th birthday with her family and friends up there. At a reception for the opening of an exhibit of objects from Jane's homes, Ned Jacobs, the younger brother of our friend Jim, actually sang the song, apparently only the second time it's ever been performed. He and his brother told the story, and I think also printed it in Jane at Home, a little book they put together for the occasion. They also noted that Dylan was nineteen and not yet well known at the time, which might account for the rough - shall we say - quality of the lyrics."

Do we know the first time it was performed? Did I miss that in the thread somewhere?

[Willie]

On Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 2:19:50 AM UTC-4, Dr_dudley wrote:
> what puzzles me is the "this actually happened" as if none of the other stuff did.

What? Nobody really got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York? Nobody bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication? You mean he made everything up, except for Tuli's leap? Oh, no.

[khematite]

The core story--that a leap from a bridge took place--does appear to be true. But it was the Manhattan Bridge, not the more romantic Brooklyn Bridge. And Kupferberg did not simply swim to shore and walk home, having suffered nothing more serious than a case of wet clothing. And, at least in later years, Kupferberg chose not to glorify his famous leap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuli_Kupferberg

"Kupferberg reportedly appears in Ginsberg's poem Howl as the person "who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown". The incident in question actually occurred on the Manhattan Bridge,[3] and is mentioned in the prose poem "Memorial Day 1971" written by Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman:

"I asked Tuli Kupferberg once, "Did you really jump off of The Manhattan Bridge?" "Yeah," he said, "I really did." "How come?" I said. "I thought that I had lost the ability to love," Tuli said. "So, I figured I might as well be dead. So, I went one night to the top of The Manhattan Bridge, & after a few minutes, I jumped off." "That's amazing," I said. "Yeah," Tuli said, "but nothing happened. I landed in the water, & I wasn't dead. So I swam ashore, & went home, & took a bath, & went to bed. Nobody even noticed."

"The above paragraph by Berrigan and Waldman is a poetic fiction, according to Kupferberg, and did not really occur as stated. Ginsberg's description in Howl is likewise fictional, Kupferberg told his friend Thelma Blitz and other friends such as Larry Sloman and Steve Dalachinsky in personal conversations.

"He did jump from the Manhattan Bridge in 1944, after which he was picked up by a passing tugboat and taken to Gouverneur Hospital.[4] Severely injured, he had broken the transverse process of his spine and spent time in a body cast.[5] He told Blitz he feels it's important that people don't think they can emulate this leap and walk away unscathed as the poetic accounts suggest he did."