There was an integral part of Jim that always liked fast things and things that made his heart race, whether it was cars, guns, women, music, drugs. But maybe it started innocently enough back when he discovered he was an above-average runner – he was a miler in high school and told me that, for a time, he held the record for the mile in the Air Force.
The tagline on the Jim Marshall Photography LLC website and blog is Cars, Guns and Cameras … and there is a reason Jim always listed cars first. In my opinion these fast, sleek beauties were the true love of Jim’s life. Even though he was cutting out pictures of cameras and pasting them into scrapbooks at the age of 6 or 7, I think cars – the mechanical qualities, and especially the power and simple, elegant, loud-assed danger of hot rods – blew right past cameras as an object of his obsessive affection.
Bob Dylan was born in Hibbing, MN 70 years ago today. I’m listening right now to one of Jim’s favorite Dylan album’s “Blood on the Tracks,” specifically “Tangled Up in Blue,” Jim's favorite song on the album, and now one of mine.
Perhaps it’s the unseasonable cold we’ve been having lately here in the SF Bay Area, or perhaps it’s all this talk of Dylan and Baez and love and NYC in 1963, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Jim and staying warm and new beginnings. The early ’60s was a more innocent time for Jim and Dylan. They were both full of boundless energy, promise and ambition, just beginning to do great things, dreaming of spotlights. It was the time before fame and infamy; 1963 was also the year I was born.
You can’t talk about Bob Dylan’s early career without acknowledging Joan Baez’ catalytic effect on his work, his outlook and his emotions. They met at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village in 1961 when Baez (Joanie as Jim called her) was on tour. The 20-year-old Baez was already a big star on the folk scene; Dylan, the same age, was just a compelling wannabe.
