At nearly 17 minutes, Bob Dylan’s coronavirus-timed release “Murder Most Foul” is his longest song — and it appears to be buying the 78-year-old songwriter more time in the spotlight. Despite, or perhaps because of, its formidable length, the tune has staying power. Many have taken the occasion of Dylan’s first original track in nearly…
Last week in these pages, my esteemed colleague PJ Grisar offered a devastating and at times humorous takedown of Bob Dylan’s recently released new song, “Murder Most Foul.” “[A]s with all things Dylan,” wrote Grisar, “his votaries will be paying Talmudic attention to this new text and finding a deeper meaning than I care to.”…
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the Forward on August 3, 2015. This past June, James Taylor finally achieved a feat that had eluded the folk-pop singer-songwriter for the past 45 years or so: His new album, “Before This World,” shot to No. 1 in its first week of release. The last time…
Star Wars fans have been eagerly awaiting “The Rise of Skywalker,” the final film in a nine-part saga scheduled to be released on December 20. Another set of fans — perhaps smaller in number but nothing to scoff at — have been anticipating an entirely different kind of production that pops up around this time…
I was a fifteen-year-old, not-very-hip teenager during the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, which I did not attend. I did watch the movie, though, soon afterwards, and when the fiftieth anniversary rolled around this August, I watched it again. This time, as the High Holy Days approached, I was particularly struck by the festival’s final…
Editor’s Note: On the occasion of The Who’s first new album in 13 years, we look back at the band’s secret Jewish history, which we first explored in 2015. If The Who’s visionary songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend had had his way, “Tommy” — an allegory about a traumatized messiah — would not have been…
Fifty years after her passing, Judy Garland is having a moment. Renee Zellweger portrays her in the new feature film “Judy.” A new Showtime documentary, “Sid & Judy,” examines her life and career, focusing on her relationship with Sidney Luft, who served as her husband for 13 years and her manager for even longer. And…
In a recent celebrity memoir, the author writes, “In 1933, my Jewish grandfather fled from Germany with his wife, Hedwig, to escape Hitler’s regime. He was not only a brilliant mind but also a humanitarian who helped Jews escape Germany. I’m extremely proud of my peace-loving grandfather.” The grandfather was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born,…
Since I was a boy, my musical heroes have been jazz musicians — Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, John Coltrane. My own trumpet playing was good enough to get me the solo chair in the school band, but my taste far outstripped my talent and I would never stoop to play in a band…
In the summer of 2014, on the strength of a BMI-Woody Guthrie Fellowship, I spent a glorious few weeks researching in the archives in the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The materials I found there not only fed into the writing of two books on Guthrie, but they also revealed some of the least…
There is a telling moment in “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” a new film by Martin Scorsese that played in theaters for one night only on June 11, before commencing to stream on Netflix on June 12. David Mansfield, who at age 19 played mandolin and pedal-steel guitar on the 1975 Rolling Thunder…
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