"TO A LONGTIME FRIEND—BOB DYLAN 6-28-06": DYLAN IN WOODSTOCK, LIMITED EDITION SIGNED BY PHOTOGRAPHER ELLIOTT LANDY, THIS COPY ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED BY DYLAN
LANDY, Elliott. Dylan in Woodstock. Surrey: Genesis Publications Ltd., 2000. Folio (9-3/4 by 13-3/4 inches), original publisher's half brown suede and pictorial cloth boards, pictorial endpapers, original tan cardboard pictorial slipcase with suede-edged head- and tail-caps. $7800.
Number 1612 of only 1750 copies signed by famed Woodstock and rock musician photographer Elliott Landy, this copy with additional bold inscription by Bob Dylan in gold marker. Lavishly illustrated with more than 180 color and black-and-white photos, both iconic and candid, mostly of Dylan and The Band.
Dylan in Woodstock is an intimate extended photo essay, focused on the period 1968-1970: part biography of Dylan's years living in the artist's colony of Woodstock, New York; part group biography of Dylan's original back-up musicians, who became The Band; part autobiography of the photographer himself, Landy, who was "always shy about sticking a camera in someone's face when they don't really like it" and who worked through that constraint to "capture who they really were."
Bob Dylan was among the first singer-songwriters to discover the sleepy Catskills town of Woodstock, a name later synonymous with the most famous rock festival ever (which was held 90 miles away in Bethel, and at which Dylan did not perform). Dylan first visited Woodstock in 1963, and it was after his 1966 motorcycle crash that he retreated to this upstate New York hideaway. Here, newly married and freed from the demands of touring, he settled into a more relaxed pace, enjoying family life and making startling music. So began an extraordinary phase of his career, one whose astonishing creativity and air of mystery has always intrigued his fans, the period that spawned the legendary Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline albums. Elliott Landy was there to capture probably the most striking and intimate photographs of Bob Dylan ever taken, including the iconic cover shot for Nashville Skyline and numerous out-takes from that session, featuring shoots at several different locations including the local Woodstock bakery. Elliott was invited to photograph Dylan at his home, and created unique informal images of his subject—seated at the piano, bouncing on a trampoline, playing guitar on a garden bench, sitting out on the porch, or just throwing out the trash in the back yard. Dylan's Woodstock musical partners The Band were also the subject of many photo sessions with Elliott, whose remarkable images graced their ground-breaking albums Music From Big Pink and The Band. Elliott's best shots of The Band complement the legendary photographs of Dylan, which form the main content of the volume. Also included are photos of Sara Dylan, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Albert Grossman (Dylan's manager), and the photographer/author Landry.
An about-fine inscribed copy of this splendid production.