Watch the earliest known footage of Bob Dylan, 1961
If you’re a fan of Bob Dylan, Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home is well worth your time. Combining in-depth interviews with archival footage, the documentary provides a fascinating insight onto one of America’s most mythologised musicians. In the process of making the film, Scorsese managed to get his hands on the earliest known footage of Dylan.
Taken in 1961 in New York, the 30-second clip shows the young musician dropping down from a wall and pulling a series of hats from his guitar case, which he then proceeds to try on clownishly. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we’ve been able to bring you an isolated version of that footage.
So what were things like for Dylan in 1961? Well, it was a pretty big year for the singer-songwriter, who had relocated to New York from Minnesota just in time to experience his first city winter. Determined to fulfil his ambition of becoming Woody Guthrie’s greatest disciple and sporting a look somewhere between Jack Kerouac and James Dean, Dylan began performing in the cafes and bars around Greenwich Village, picking up songs and friends along the way.
By the spring of 1961, he’d accumulated a substantial repertoire and bagged his first major concert at Gerde’s Folk City, where he was opening for John Lee Hooker. He’s only been in town for a few months, but he was already well on his way to becoming one of the city’s most prominent folk artists. As John Hammond, who signed Dylan to Columbia after reading a rave review of the concert in the paper, would later write in the liner notes to the singer’s debut album: “The young man from the provinces began to make friends very quickly in New York, all the while continuing, as he has since he was ten, to assimilate musical ideas from everyone he met, every record he heard.”
1961 also saw Dylan befriend his idol Woody Guthrie, who was then being treated in a hospital in New Jersey. Indeed, it was Guthrie’s failing health that had convinced Dylan to make the trip east in the first place. He also made good friends with members of the blossoming downtown folk scene, including Dave Van Ronk and Jack Elliot.
Dylan must be around 19 in this footage, as that’s how old he was when he performed at Gerde’s. We know his age because he was deemed too young to obtain the union card and cabaret license he needed to perform at the venue. Thankfully, Marc Porco had enough faith in the young singer that he pretended to be Dylan’s guardian and signed the necessary documentation. Dylan would later call Porco “the Sicilian father I never knew I had”.
See the footage, below.
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