Uncategorized
New book details the long and winding road trod by the Beatles and Bob Dylan
Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other — and the World
by Jim Windolf
Simon and Schuster, 400 pages, $30
I ran into a neighbor the other day and we got to talking and he asked me what I was working on at the moment. I told him I was reviewing a new book about the Beatles and Bob Dylan – the first full-length treatment exploring the relationships between the Fab Four and the bard from northern Minnesota and their influence upon each other. My neighbor replied, “I would never have thought to put Dylan and the Beatles together. It seems like they existed in wholly different universes.”
That’s when I realized the full extent and significance of Jim Windolf’s Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other – and the World. “Well then this book is for you – and for people like you who never made the connections between them,” I told him.
For some fans, the links between Dylan and the Beatles are and have always been readily apparent. From a young age, they all got bitten by the rock ‘n’ roll bug, particularly in the form of Little Richard. In his high school yearbook, Dylan wrote that his ambition was “to join Little Richard.” For the Beatles – and especially for Paul McCartney – Little Richard’s sound served as a template, powering “She Loves You” to the top of the UK pop charts via Paul’s version of what Windolf called Little Richard’s “vocal trademark, the rough falsetto whooooo.” When the Beatles played their final full concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966, their last song was Richard’s “Long Tall Sally.” Windolf informs us that in the 1970s, Richard’s “Lucille” was the song Paul launched into while auditioning musicians. And in 1988, when the Beatles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, George Harrison said in his acceptance speech on behalf of the group, “Thank you very much, especially all the rock ‘n’ rollers – especially Little Richard. It’s all his fault, really.”
Windolf – an editor at The New York Times who has published articles, reviews, essays and humor pieces in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, New York magazine, Rolling Stone and other publications – digs deep into the archives to come up with some new and surprising biographical facts about his subjects, as well as offering some surprising interpretations of how Dylan and the Beatles addressed each other indirectly – and sometimes quite directly – in song.
By early 1964, the Beatles had worn out the grooves on Dylan’s first two albums by listening to them repeatedly while in Paris doing a concert residency. “We all went potty on Dylan,” Lennon later said. Three years hence, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, whose cover collage was chock-full of portrayals of artists, actors, thinkers, sports figures, comedians, gurus and other pop culture notables. As Windolf notes, standing tall above all others in the topmost row was a relatively diminutive figure in real life – Bob Dylan.
Dylan could not help but hear (and enjoy) the Beatles on his car radio while driving cross-country with friends. And the years following their introduction to each other’s music saw Dylan and the Beatles meet on a number of occasions, first brought together by their mutual acquaintance, journalist Al Aronowitz, who was also responsible for supplying the marijuana that turned a summit meeting into a riotous party. Windolf quotes Aronowitz saying that he was “a proud and happy shadchen, a Jewish matchmaker, dancing at the princely wedding I’d arranged.” (Yiddish also peppered Dylan’s vocabulary. Speaking of his “Ballad in Plain D,” a nasty song about a girlfriend’s sister, Dylan said years later, “That one, I look back at and I say, ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’”)
The Beatles went on to attend two Dylan concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, and Lennon began writing songs that showed the lyrical and sonic influence of Dylan, including “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and “Norwegian Wood.”
Windolf makes a strong case that “Nowhere Man,” written by Lennon, was the first Beatles song having nothing to do with romance. “In this regard, he was catching up with Dylan, who had written and recorded dozens of songs on subjects other than love.” Windolf goes on to compare the title character of “Nowhere Man” to that of Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man,” the latter’s clueless “Mr. Jones” sensing that “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.”
This dynamic of exchange, with the Beatles responding to Dylan’s work, continued through the their final album, 1969’s Abbey Road, whose penultimate track, written by Lennon, was “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” whose key phrase, “I want you / I want you so bad…” was lifted right from Dylan’s 1966 hit, “I Want You,” in which the refrain is, “I want you, I want you, I want you so bad.”
Dylan returned the favor, alluding to the Beatles in several songs. In his 1965 song, “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” he sang, “I ran right outside and I hopped inside a cab / I went out the other door, this Englishman said, ‘Fab.’” And Dylan wrote another playful answer song called “Fourth Time Around” to the Beatles’ very Dylanesque song “Norwegian Wood” in 1966. In 2004, in concert in North Carolina, Dylan sang new lyrics to his song “Tears of Rage,” including the lines: “I’ve never been to Strawberry Fields / I’ve never been to Penny Lane,” mentioning two Beatles songs.
The relationship was not, however, perfect, and after years of seemingly drawing creative inspiration from Dylan, Lennon seemingly grew tired of or frustrated with him. In several early songs from his post-Beatles solo career, Lennon’s tone changed from respectful to dismissive. In the anti-war anthem, “Give Peace a Chance,” he referenced “Bobby Dylan” — slyly infantilizing him — in a litany of names of counterculture figures including Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg. In his song “God,” he announced that he “didn’t believe’ in “Zimmerman,” using Dylan’s birth name — a possible instance of Lennon’s lifelong case of generalized antisemitism rearing its ugly head.
Lennon explained the move thusly: “Because Dylan is bullshit. Zimmerman is his name.” (To be fair, Lennon also sang that he didn’t believe in “Beatles.”) But the possible antisemitism continued with Lennon’s response to Dylan’s gospel-era hit “Gotta Serve Somebody,” a nasty answer song called “Serve Yourself,” saying “there’s somethin’ missing in this God Almighty stew, and it’s your goddamn mother you dirty little git.”
(The greatest victim of Lennon’s antisemitism, however, was Beatles manager Brian Epstein, whom Lennon teased mercilessly for being gay and Jewish. Yet somehow, when it came time to hire a new business manager after Epstein’s death by accidental drug overdose, Lennon’s candidate was Allen Klein, who graduated from Weequahic High School in New Jersey in 1950, alongside his classmate Philip Roth.)
Despite the apparent rancor, during the lengthy January 1969 rehearsal sessions portrayed in the Peter Jackson documentary film, Get Back, the Beatles jammed on parts of many songs by other artists, none more so than the 15 by Dylan. By this time, the Dylan-Beatles center of gravity had shifted to George Harrison, who had spent the previous Thanksgiving holiday hanging out with Dylan and members of The Band in Woodstock, N.Y., where he started out co-writing songs with Dylan. (Windolf mentions an attempt by Dylan and Lennon to write a song together, but no tape or manuscript has ever surfaced.) When Harrison’s first solo album, All Things Must Pass, was released in 1971, the opening track was a Dylan-Harrison co-write, “I’d Have You Anytime.” And the album also included an early version of Dylan’s “If Not for You.”
At a press conference on the Isle of Wight, where he was to perform in August 1969, Dylan claimed that the Beatles asked him to work with them. “I love the Beatles and I think it would be a good idea to do a jam session,” he said.
While such a jam session never took place, Dylan did invite George Harrison to join him in the studio several times throughout the years. In 2021, Columbia Records released 1970, a three-disc archival set including the complete recording session from May 1, 1970, when Harrison joined Dylan at Columbia’s Studio B in New York. Dylan also famously came out of relative seclusion to take part in Harrison’s benefit concerts for Bangladesh in August 1971. And Dylan realized his lifelong dream of submersing himself in a band when he took part in the 1998-1990 recording sessions of the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup consisting of Dylan, Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. (Tom Petty once said, “George quoted Bob like people quote scripture.”)
Windolf’s book is slightly marred by a few errors and interpretative attempts that needlessly call his analytical credibility into question. He refers to the electric backing band that Dylan toured the world with in 1965-66 as a “four-piece band,” but it was, in fact, always a five-piece band, almost entirely composed of musicians who would morph into the proto-Americana group The Band. He also writes that Dylan’s song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” was “based on the true story of a Black housemaid who was killed in 1963 by her rich white employer, William Zanzinger.” In fact, the real-life guilty party was named William Zantzinger. Dylan used his poetic license to change the name to Zanziger in the lyrics for better poetic assonance (and possibly for legal reasons).
Windolf also claims that Dylan “preferred that the people he encountered not see him as a Jew, and the Dylan name helped him skirt the issue of ethnicity at a time when antisemitism was all too common.” That’s a common take, but one contradicted by the fact that one of the very first original songs Dylan sang in coffeehouses was “Talkin’ Hava Negilah Blues.” Why would someone trying to build a wall between his Jewish heritage and a made-up all-American identity choose to write and play such a song publicly? Plus, Dylan wrote several early songs that refer to Biblical stories (“When the Ship Comes In”) and the Shoah (“Masters of War”).
While changing one’s name in show business had at one time been an attempt to assimilate, simplifying an ethnic name or simply shortening it or making it catchier was a common show-business practice (and still is today). Even one of the Beatles chose to “jazz” up his name: Richard Starkey became Ringo Starr. And Richard Penniman wasn’t trying to fool anyone about being Black by calling himself Little Richard.
Nevertheless, Windolf makes a convincing case that Dylan and the Beatles played off each other in many ways, in and out of their music, such that their achievements overlapped in real time and continued to impact their lives and songs for decades to come. And, along with that, to shape and mold the very essence of popular culture for the last 60-plus years.
The post New book details the long and winding road trod by the Beatles and Bob Dylan appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto
The two young men who killed three people at a San Diego mosque on Monday published a conspiracy theory-filled manifesto whose primary focus was on Jews, calling them the “universal enemy.”
The manifesto’s contents also suggest they may have had additional plans to target Jewish institutions.
Authorities have identified Cain Lee Clark, 17, and Caleb Liam Vazquez, 18, as the shooters who killed a security guard and two members of the Islamic Center of San Diego. The two livestreamed the attack before both were found dead in a car by apparent suicide, blocks away from the mosque.
The three killed at the mosque were Amin Abdullah, 51, Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Nadir Awad, 57.
Jewish leaders across the country and in San Diego widely condemned the attack.
The 74-page manifesto, which contains a section written by each shooter, reveals a wide-ranging hatred rooted in white Christian nationalist ideas, including Great Replacement Theory, and fueled by the two teenagers’ own social alienation. Among the other groups attacked in the document are Muslims, women, Black people, gay and transgender people, and immigrants.
But the shooters’ deepest resentment seemed reserved for Jewish people.
‘The universal enemy’
The manifesto listed previous antisemitic shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue and Chabad of Poway among the teens’ many sources of inspiration, calling the assailant in the latter incident a “saint.” It called the Jews “the children of Satan.” It denied the Holocaust as a “complete fabrication.” Vazquez called Adolf Hitler his hero; in his section, Clark wrote out the Fourteen Words, a neo-Nazi declaration.
“Everyone has their own idea of who is to blame for all the wrong in the world,” Vazquez wrote in a section titled “The Universal Enemy.”
He printed his answer to the question four times in a row in all capital letters: “It’s the Jews.”
Authorities have said the shooters met online before realizing they both lived in the San Diego area, without specifying the platform where they met.
But the document’s cover pages also provided a clue to their radicalization, bearing the insignia of Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group that emerged during the first Trump administration.
Atomwaffen members are part of a network of mostly online extremist groups that subscribe to “accelerationism,” the idea that forcing societal collapse through an all-out race war is the only way to restore white supremacy and save civilization. The idea is propounded by a white nationalist named James Mason, author of a book called Siege that both shooters cited.
“Though officially I was not a part of any groups or organizations there are many I support, I would even go so far as to say I did it for Atomwaffen Division, Terrorgram, The Base, and North Korea,” Vazquez wrote.
Atomwaffen members have been convicted in previous antisemitic murders. In 2019, one named Samuel Woodward lured a gay and Jewish college student named Blaze Bernstein to an Orange County park before stabbing him to death. Woodward, who was 20 at the time, is now serving a life sentence, and Atomwaffen fractured into other groups in the years after his arrest.
Secondary targets
Whereas the shooters were unsparing toward Jews in the manifesto, with Vazquez calling them the “most evil creature in the world,” they espoused mixed feelings about Muslims in the document before they killed three. “I don’t hate Muslims, at least not really,” Vazquez wrote. “What I hate is the religion of Islam itself and them invading my country.”
He added that Islam “is completely contradictory to both Western morals and values and Christianity.”
But he wrote only three paragraphs about Islam and Muslims — about one page — before the section ends with the word “unfinished” in brackets.
Clark appeared more committed to the eradication of Islam in his writing. Muslims and Jews, he said, “must be isolated and exterminated.” Yet he, like Vazquez, wrote several pages denigrating Jewish people.
The shooters did not state why they ultimately targeted a mosque. Vazquez wrote their plan was to “cause as much death and destruction” as fast as possible with a “diverse” selection of targets. The document provides lines for listing three separate locations, but none of them are filled out.
“All locations were surveyed and mapped out to the best of our ability,” he wrote.
The post ‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism
Rep. Dan Goldman of New York and his primary challenger Brad Lander are wading into the contentious debate over a proposed boycott of Israeli products at a Brooklyn cooperative grocery store ahead of an expected vote next week.
In a statement shared exclusively with the Forward on Wednesday, Goldman urged members of the popular Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn to attend a May 26 vote and cast ballots against the boycott resolution — and condemned the measure as antisemitic.
“Everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government — which I do not hesitate to do — but joining a movement that was founded on the principle of the elimination of Israel will have no impact on the Israeli government or the Israeli economy,” Goldman said in his statement. “Instead, it only succeeds at shifting the responsibility for the Israeli government’s actions to American Jews — which is quintessential antisemitism.”
Goldman said that he is aligning himself with Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim, a progressive leader, as the debate has spilled into local politics and Jewish communal life in the progressive neighborhood.
The resolution says the boycott would persist “Until Israel complies with international law, including by ceasing unlawful discriminatory practices, in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Timoner addressed the proposal in her weekly Shabbat sermon earlier this month.
“Many simply want to see the Palestinian people be free and safe and equal, and I do too, but this is not the way,” Timoner said. “This way is wrong.
Calling it a “proxy war” to what has been dividing Americans in recent years over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one “that is laced with antisemitism, Timoner said that many members of her congregation — she and herself — would be forced to resign from their co-op membership if the resolution passes.
The rabbi’s sermon reflected the careful line she has tried to walk since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza — openly criticizing Israeli government policies while rejecting the singling out of Israel. In March 2024, Timoner attended for the first time what was then a weekly protest to call for a bilateral ceasefire and hostage deal, one that Lander attended regularly. In her remarks she said that she had held back until then from calling for a ceasefire in Gaza “because it was being used by people who celebrated Oct. 7, people who do not hold Hamas responsible, and people who want to eliminate the state of Israel — and I did not want to be associated with that.”
Timoner is a co-founder and board member of the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive advocacy group formed in 2020 to be a voice for liberal Jews in New York. Lander is a member of NYJA’s leaders network. A Goldman campaign official noted that the congressman and Timoner have met several times privately to discuss issues affecting the district and that Goldman has attended services at Beth Elohim in the past.
Goldman, the two-term incumbent, challenged his Democratic primary rival to publicly oppose the measure as well, “to stand with our neighbors, and make it clear that this dangerous bigotry has no place in our city.”
Lander, a close ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told the Forward he isn’t a member of the Coop but would vote against the resolution if he were, pointing to Timoner’s sermon. “Principled people can disagree here,” Lander said in a statement that did not take a position on the resolution. “Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are legitimate tools of advocacy campaigns. Unlike my opponent, I don’t believe all opposition to Israel is antisemitic.”
A long-running boycott fight
The proposal to boycott Israeli products has riven the Brooklyn institution’s roughly 16,000 members. It was introduced in 2024 by a local advocacy group called Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine. The resolution would require the Coop to boycott Israeli-made products “until Israel complies with international law in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Coop4Unity, opposing the resolution, is urging shoppers to “bring back cooperation” and “stop polarization.”
The measure is largely symbolic, given that the Coop only carries a handful of items imported from Israel, like EcoLove shampoo and conditioner. At least one, Al Arz tahini, is made by an Israeli Arab in Nazareth. The coop first considered a boycott resolution in 2012.
The debate has grown increasingly heated in recent months, erupting most recently publicly during a general meeting when a member made said “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country,” a remark that many attendees and Jewish organizations condemned.
The comment — which received applause at the meeting — came during a second resolution that would lower the voting threshold for boycott measures from 75% to 51%.
Goldman strongly condemned the remarks in his statement on Wednesday. “That is not a critique of Israeli policy or advocacy for Palestinian rights,” he said. “It is an old and ugly antisemitic conspiracy theory that fueled the Nazis and then was used by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.”
A heated primary over support for Israel
The boycott fight is the latest issue in an already heated primary challenge to Goldman being largely battled over Israel and antisemitism.
Last month, Lander, who has described himself as a liberal Zionist, joined some progressive House members in calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Lander — who described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” — said he would apply that as well to Israel’s defensive Iron Dome system, high-tech missile interception that protects lives, property and infrastructure against assaults from Iran and allied groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Lander said that Israel has the ability to purchase its defense with its own funds.
The 10th Congressional District, which includes Borough Park and Park Slope in Brooklyn as well as parts of lower Manhattan, voted heavily for Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. Mamdani is backing Lander in the primary.
Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and former Trump impeachment prosecutor who was elected in 2022, is aligned with the mainstream positions of national Democrats on Israel: supportive of Israel’s security while finding a pathway for a two-state solution, sharply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and opposed to settlement expansion and settler violence.
Recent polling has shown Goldman trailing Lander in the June 23 primary.
Goldman framed the Coop dispute as about something larger than electoral politics. “It’s time we unite together on this issue,” he said, “and fight for the safe, loving, inclusive community we all deserve.”
Additional reporting by Mira Fox.
The post Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Itamar Ben-Gvir draws criticism from Netanyahu for video taunting detained flotilla activists
(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined a chorus of Israelis and Jews denouncing his national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for posting a video that showed Ben-Gvir taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that had been intercepted by the Israeli navy.
“Welcome to Israel, we are the masters,” Ben-Gvir said in the video as he waved a large Israeli flag above the detained activists, who could be seen blindfolded and kneeling on the ground with their hands behind their backs.
Roughly 430 activists that took part in the Global Sumud Flotilla, which set sail from Turkey last Thursday, were brought to the city of Ashdod aboard Israeli naval ships on Wednesday, marking the latest in a long-running series of confrontations between Israel and activists seeking to break its naval blockade of Gaza.
In a second video posted on social media, Ben-Gvir said that the activists “came here all full of pride like big heroes. Look at them now,” appealing to Netanyahu to grant him permission to imprison them.
ככה אנחנו מקבלים את תומכי הטרור
Welcome to Israel 🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/7Hf8cAg7fC
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) May 20, 2026
Netanyahu said in a statement that he had instructed authorities to deport the activists “as soon as possible.” But he also offered a public rebuke of Ben-Gvir.
“Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “However, the way that Minister Ben Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”
The foreign ministers of several countries, including Canada, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Italy, also condemned the videos and summoned their Israeli diplomats to answer for the display.
But some of the sharpest criticism came from within Israel, where Ben-Gvir plays a crucial role in maintaining the governing coalition while also engaging in antics that threaten to flare tensions and undercut the country’s claims that it behaves in accordance with international law.
Ben-Gvir is “not the face of Israel,” tweeted Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in English.
“You knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display — and not for the first time,” Saar wrote. “You have undone tremendous, professional, and successful efforts made by so many people — from IDF soldiers to Foreign Ministry staff and many others.”
Ben-Gvir’s videos come as his antics and rhetoric have drawn new scrutiny in recent days. Last week, he departed from longstanding norms and waved an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount, a Muslim holy site, in a show of Jewish supremacy. His oversight of Israeli prisons, where he has said he wants to see prisoners given only the minimum of food and comfort as required by law, also drew attention because of a New York Times column alleging sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
Progressive groups heavily criticized Ben-Gvir’s video, saying that it was inappropriate for him to be part of the Israeli government.
“The disgusting images of Israel’s National Security Minister abusing detainees from the Gaza flotilla are not just bad optics,” tweeted Mickey Gitzin, the acting CEO of the New Israel Fund. “A government that gives a Kahanist this kind of power has already abandoned any notion of decency. These grotesque images are the real face of current Israeli policy.”
Ben-Gvir’s videos showing the treatment of participants in the latest flotilla offered a contrast to other recent interceptions in which Israel has released footage appearing to show activists being treated without force. When past arrestees from flotillas have alleged abusive treatment, Israel has denied it.
The organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla said all of its boats had been intercepted by Israel by Tuesday evening, accusing Israel of employing “illegal, high-seas aggression.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry said no live munition was used during the operation, which it said was necessary because it will “not permit any breach of the lawful naval blockade on Gaza.”
Among the activists aboard the more than 50 boats in the flotilla was the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly. On Tuesday, Connolly, who was elected in October and has a record of anti-Israel rhetoric, called the detention of Irish activists aboard the flotilla “unacceptable.”
The post Itamar Ben-Gvir draws criticism from Netanyahu for video taunting detained flotilla activists appeared first on The Forward.