The Bob Dylan Movie. Track some mud on the carpet.

In the Bob Dylan biopic, The Complete Unknown, Johnny Cash tells the young singer, song-writer to “track some mud on the carpet.”

And in the movie, and in real life, that’s what Dylan did.

Although real life and this movie were not exactly the same thing.

That seemed to bother some purists.

It didn’t bother me.

The movie created a wonderful myth. Even as myth, it captured so much of the spirit of those early years.

In 1964 my friend Danny called me on the phone and said he had this album I had to hear. It was Dylan’s first album and I immediately loved it.

Dylan is still makes up the largest section in my album collection.

So watching the myth on screen was pretty cool especially because I was an eyewitness.

As a Red Diaper Baby I heard Pete Seeger sing in person more times than I can count. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee albums were in my parent’s collection. As was The Weavers at Carnegie Hall. Joan Baez and Dave Van Ronk. I saw and heard them all.

I thought Ed Norton was great as Pete Seeger.

My friend Danny was a good guitarist and was part of the group of musicians and friends that hung out at the Ash Grove, a folk music club in West Hollywood.

My high school even had a folk music club and I remember the day Danny got up to cover a new Bob Dylan song he had heard. It was A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.

Listen again to The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.

To the degree the movie is accurate it paints Dylan as a pretty awful boyfriend.

But a great song-writer.

I remember the day Woody Guthrie died in October, 1967.

I posted an obituary to my apartment’s window in San Francisco.

I was living there organizing for Stop the Draft Week.

The movie begins and ends with Dylan and Guthrie together and I was deeply moved.

Some social media reviews have been critical of the film. The writers have complained it wasn’t truthful or political or whatever.

They almost sound like the dogmatic folkies portrayed in The Complete Unknown who were outraged at Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival. The movie isn’t pure enough for them.

Don’t listen to those critics.

I highly recommend the movie.