Dylan is returning to his home state of Minnesota for a show in April. It’s not in his native Duluth, not in the Minneapolis St Paul Twin Cities area, but here in little old Mankato.
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Michal @Carreta, thank you for sharing your experience with the movie!
I don’t see anything hateful in your comment, in fact I’ve wondered about this as well! While the stories may be generally true (we’ve all experienced romance issues, some that had significant impact on our lives) I suspect the movie makers sometimes exaggerate reality because, well, romance sells. That and artists often do express personal emotions and experience in their art…making those events somehow more permanent. Of course, I could be wrong - I’m not an art critic!
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Ya think? Yes, Bob Dylan is a pretty unusual character, I think most people would say. That might be putting it kindly 
After the movie my kids (in their early 20’s) asked me: Jeez, was Dylan really such an a$$hole? (sorry mods). I had to confess to them, that, yeah, he pretty much was.
Anyway, if you are interested in learning about Dylan, many, many books have been written about him. One I really liked and deals with the same time period as the movie is “Positively 4th Street” by David Hajdu.
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I haven’t seen 'A Complete Unknown" yet - waiting to stream it instead of going to a theatre…
This is relevant -----
I was reading about the Travelling Wilburys - the article quoted several of the artists in the group & while none of them out & out stated that Dylan was extremely difficult to work with - they all hinted that he was ‘stubborn’ or ‘heavy-handed’ or ‘superior’… I mean, what an ego! You’ve got George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison & Jeff Lynne - how could one guy feel better or superior to the rest of these musical superstars? When asked who the best one in the group was, Dylan should have gone off by himself & played ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’!!!
On a separate note - as a car guy I find it amusing to see a movie set in, say, 1963 & see a '65 Vette rolling down a street! Or maybe a Camaro - they weren’t introduced till '67! The cars are always fun to see though… one of my buddies tells a story about how his Dad owned a '56 Thunderbird. He’d taken it to Southern California for a car show & ended up getting it repainted for free + $$$ because it was spotted by a movie producer & they wanted a Racing Green '56 T-Bird in a movie! He’d been saving for a repaint anyway!
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@Richard_close2u Thank you very much for writing that their names. I am gonna dig more about them and their music. 
Maybe… you wont believe… but few months ago I did not know who is Tommy Emmanuel. 
Now he is really my favourite musician, love watching him play and teaching anything.
@markr31 Honestly… I think he was in Czech Republic last year in 2024 and there are many people saying he is not who he used to be. Even in his electric era and many people are disgusted by wasting time like this… I cant give my own opinion, this is just what I saw in many comments. Do you plan to go on his concert or have you been in recent time?
@judi I think you are right… in the end it is the movie and some romance parts are adding more “beef” to the atmosphere even when in reality it should not be like that.
@jjw Man… this is really sharp word that I did not want to use here, but this is exactly how he looked in many ways to me. I just did not want to “touch” anyone here, because he is still music legend. I am gonna check first some YouTube tutorials and I will see…
There is so much I would love to learn play. Much more than my life length is.
I am still advanced beginner, but some songs seemed “pretty easy” to me, because he was just alternating in one position with hammer ons, I guess it will be much harder if I will start learn it, but right now it seems it is pretty “reachable” to learn something.
@CATMAN62 Yeah… in the movie he is pretty good portrayed like that. You wont be disappointed,
it is a good movie, with great music.
That car fact is interesting, thanks for share. Thanks god I dont have in my head so much car history, so it dont “trigger me”.
By the way… before movie I had really great idea, to take by myself extra thigth version of BM thumbpick and trying to get used to it while watching movie. That thumb did not like that I can see. Today it is okay, now I just know this is not the way.
No, I was never a huge Dylan fan, and I know he has pretty much no voice left. And while the tickets aren’t as expensive as I expected they’d be, they’re still more than I’m willing to pay. I just thought it was interesting that he’s going to smaller towns instead of big arenas.
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Cool info about the cars …
The film takes ‘artistic licence’ with several crucial and well-documented ‘facts’.
Suze Rotolo was not at Newport 1965.
Nor was Johnny Cash.
The Newport 1965 crowd were not as universally hostile as shown, though there was booing and unhappiness among them.
Pete Seeger did not go to find an axe - he spoke about one in an abstract sense when asked about the volume of the sound system.
Nobody at Newport 1965 shouted Judas - that happened at a concert in Manchester, England.
There are others.
But what the heck - it is a film and filmic story-telling casts its sweep in different ways to historical accuracy.
If it had adopted 100% true events it would still have been a good narrative.
No doubt many of the romantic scenes with various women were fictionalised too. But relationships can be intense and not always smooth, especially at a young, coming-of-age moment in life. So I don’t allow those scenes too much credence as truth bombs about the nature of Bob’s romantic relationships nor his character.
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Also, there are several movies actually featuring Dylan. They are worth checking out:
Dont Look Back by D. A. Pennebaker - shot during Dylan’s Tour of England in 1965, released in 1967. Highly recommended.
Eat the Document - shot by Pennebaker under Dylan’s guidance during his Tour of Europe in 1966. It was released in 1972 but screened only very rarely. It can be found on the Internet.
Renaldo and Clara - filmed in 1975, partly during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour, and released in 1978. Directed by Dylan. Part concert footage, part documentary, part fiction. I’ve never seen it but I’m curious.
No Direction Home - Martin Scorsese’s first documentary about Dylan, focusing on his career up to his motorcycle accident in 1966. Highly recommended along with its soundtrack album.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese - features mostly outtakes of Renaldo and Clara.
And there’s also his autobio Chronicles: Volume One. The title may be misleading as no Vol. 2 has been released (yet).
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Just following up here: I came across the following from Justin on one of his lesson notes:
… or a tune like Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”. I love that song, one of my all time faves but I dare not teach it because Dylan is a not a nice fella when it comes to teaching his songs, so much so that I removed all his songs from my songbooks! Such a shame, love his music, but he really don’t seem a nice human.
Haha! So, that was Justin’s impression, too, coming from a different angle. Btw, something changed, maybe because Dylan sold his song catalog, but Justin has added a few of Dylan tunes to his song tutorials in the last year or two.
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@jjw Interesting.
On the other hand I saw Tim Van Roy talking about learning Tommy Emmanuel songs and he did not want to have problems… so he contacted TE team and somehow they figured it out. Also based on this TE know about Tim and they did meeting then, he was so happy about meeting Tim.
There you can see just two faces of this business… like I am not saying everyone should share someones work for free, but there is always a way than just putting someone down.
Btw: I hope Bob wont find this topic so he wont take it down.
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hahaha!
Dylan has sold his catalog a few years ago, so I don’t think it’s necessarily him personally who decides on these matters.
Saw the Bob Dylan film at the cinema tonight. I thought it was great as I’ve always been a fan of his music.
I’m not a Bob Dylan life history expert so any historical inaccuracies in the film highlighted by previous posters went unnoticed by me. It was a terrific snapshot in time back to the USA in the early to mid sixties. The clothes, the cars, the guitars, the recording equipment in the studios and of course the rise of a talented young man singing ‘folk’ songs.
I knew Dylan was romantically involved with Joan Baez but I hadn’t realised he collaborated and played so many concerts with her.
I thought the actor playing Dylan was excellent and, dare I say it, his singing was better than a lot of the original versions.
Interesting to remember Pete Seeger and the protest movement at that time and the US fear of ‘reds under the bed’ even when it came to folk song lyrics.
The answers are, unfortunately, still blowin’ in the wind.
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Being 75 years old, closing in on 76, I can tell you that no one at the time thought Dylan was a good singer. It was the songs themselves, not his singing, that his fans liked.
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Haha yes. I’m 71 and well remember listening to my Dylan records and my Dad’s comments about his voice.
I also remember the lyric in the Times They Are a Changing. “Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command’”. My Dad looked up from behind his newspaper. “Oh do you think so!”. 
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This might be over-generalizing a bit.
There is a scene in Scorsese’s documentary “No Direction Home”, where a Columbia record exec (Mitch Miller) describes how he didn’t think they should sign Dylan, that he didn’t have a pleasing voice like other Columbia artists like Johnny Mathis and Perry Como. Miller relates: “I just didn’t see it.” (Dylan’s greatness).
In that sense, Dylan didn’t have a great voice. But, there were many people who loved Dylan’s voice, most famously the critics Paul Williams and Ralph Gleason. I think they both said that Dylan had a "great rock and roll voice. " (As did Bruce Springsteen, much later, though.)
Yes, the songs are key, but the voice matches those songs perfectly, imo. The Byrds recorded many Dylan songs (including the first recording of Mr. Tambourine Man). I am a huge Byrds fan, but I generally prefer the Dylan originals, despite the wonderful singing by Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn and David Crosby. Same for Joan Baez: I love Joanie, she has a voice that seems from another world. But her many Dylan covers (some of them lovely) cannot compete (imo) with the originals.
Whew, these Dylan discussions always perk me up.
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Hi guys,
I saw the movie last weekend and loved. Crazy to imagine that Chalamet learned to play guitar from scratch for that movie, and all the playing was done by him.
One of things I mostly enjoy is getting a diff angle on Dylan’s personality. Being honest to yourself, your creativity and deciding where you want to go, can indeed make people that look up (or try) to you like an idol get quite a bad image about you. I can relate a bit to that.
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Well I eventually got around to watching this, it was a film choice on a Trans Atlantic flight.
Not sure what to expect but I thought it was interesting and entertaining how close to the truth I am unsure, also as said above emotional in places.
I started to listen to music in the early 60’s when I was 7or 8 and very much in tune with the swinging sixties, not sure Bob Dylan made much impression on me at the time. Did I know at the time he went electric in 65, definitely not. I have never been one for wanting to know the back story of bands, in fact I can count on one hand the number of groups that I can name all the band members.
Having said that I obviously know Dylan’s most well known songs in fact I have two of them in my repertoire and the outcome of all of this I am going to have to add some more.
Michael
PS if you are interested they are Beatles, Stones, Monkees and Cream - shows my age.
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