The documentary, Down In The Flood,” tells the story of Bob Dylan and The Band (AKA The Hawks), covering the years 1965 – 1968. Includes interviews with Garth Hudson; the Hawks’ mentor, Ronnie Hawkins; tour drummer Mickey Jones; producer John Simon; Dylan guitarist Charlie McCoy and others.
Watch the entire film (does include ads):
If you’re not in the U.S., you can watch a lot of the documentary via these Youtube clips:
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
Part Four is missing.
Part Five:
Part Six:
Part Seven:
[I just published my rock ‘n’ roll novel, True Love Scars.” There’s info about it here.]
— A Days Of The Crazy-Wild blog post —
Highlight of the doc isn’t here, it’s in the extra interviews section of the DVD where drummer Mickey Jones, who was on stage at the time, refutes the myth that Bob ever said “Play fucking loud” during the infamous Judas moment before ‘LARS’ in 1966 at Manchester. Here’s his quote:
In Scorsese’s documentary ‘No Direction Home,’ he tries to sync up the words “Play…fucking…loud” to Bob, and that didn’t happen. That’s a mistake, and I will say it to my grave that he manipulated that, and if you look at that footage 10 times, you’re gonna see two things: the lip does not match up to Bob. Whoever said “Play fucking loud!” said it…was almost yelling…and when he manipulated those words into Bob’s mouth, his mouth is right in Robbie’s ear. He wouldn’t be yelling in Robbie’s ear. The other thing is, there’s a bit of a British accent there, ’cause you can hear the guy say “Play fucking loud!”(faux British accent). It’s not Bob Dylan. For 35 years, everybody thought it was me, because I was the guy who played loud and kicked it off loud. It wasn’t me. We don’t know who it is. Nobody knows who it is. But here’s my theory: I believe it was one of our stage crew. We had a stage crew of 4/5 guys that went with us on the whole tour, and they would be right on the stage if anything went wrong. I believe it was one of our stage crew, who were English, standing up for us in the moment, because they had seen this booing the whole tour, and when that guy yelled “Judas,” this guy got sick of hearing it and he said “Play fucking loud!”(faux British accent), and that’s when I hit my largest, loudest flam on my snare drum I ever hit…not only on that tour, but maybe in my career…I don’t know…and, uh, Scorsese got it wrong.
Thanks, man!