Sara Dylan

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Sara Dylan (born October 28, 1939 in Wilmington , Delaware as Shirley Marlin Noznisky or Novoletsky ), Sara Lowndes first marriage , was Bob Dylan's first wife from November 1965 to June 1977 and is the mother of director Jesse and singer Jakob Dylan .

biography

Childhood and youth

Little is known about Sara Dylan's youth and family. She was born under the name Shirley Nozinsky (or after Beatty Zimmermann: Noveletsky) in Wilmington on October 28, 1939. Her Israeli parents were Bessie and Isaac Nozinsky. Her mother Bessie suffered a stroke when Shirley was a child, so her great-aunt Esther had to look after the family. Her father, a scrap metal dealer according to Al Aronowitz , was shot dead in a robbery in 1956. Her mother died five years later.

Shirley first worked as a model , actress , as a waitress in a Playboy club, in film production and for Time magazine . At the request of her first husband, the magazine photographer Hans Lowndes, she changed her first name from Shirley to Sara, as he did not want to be married to any "Shirley". According to Peter Lowndes, her future stepson, Sara met Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in late 1962 while driving around in her MG sports car . This meeting was also the reason for the separation from Hans Lowndes. She probably only had a vague idea of ​​who Dylan was at the time and was certainly not a fan of his music. Nevertheless, she introduced Bob Dylan and his manager Albert Grossman to the documentary filmmaker DA Pennebaker , who would later make the film Dont Look Back about Dylan's tour of England in 1965.

Marriage to Bob Dylan

Shortly after he met Sara, Dylan had already told Aronowitz that he was planning to marry her. The couple had several romantic rendezvous in late 1964; a short time later they rented different rooms in the Chelsea Hotel in New York to be close to each other. Dylan had at times still had romantic relationships with Joan Baez and Edie Sedgwick , while he and Lowndes were already making plans for marriage - possibly until shortly before or even until their wedding day.

The couple were married on November 22, 1965 in a secret ceremony during a break from touring. The marriage took place under an oak tree in a court yard in Long Island . The only participants besides the couple were Albert Grossmann and a bridesmaid for Sara. The couple's wedding remained a mystery to even some of Dylan's closest friends for months before the press found out.

Her marriage to Bob Dylan had three sons and a daughter: Jesse , Anna, Samuel, and Jakob , the youngest of the siblings, who became known as the lead singer of The Wallflowers . Sara's daughter Maria from her first marriage was adopted by Bob in order to give her the surname Dylan - but she was the only family member to not keep it. According to Dylan's biographer Howard Sounes, the Dylans set up a trust fund so their children would never have to work unless they wanted to. Friends and her family described Sara as a good and loving mother who avoided the limelight. Her only public appearance after marrying Dylan was in the role of Clara in his feature film Renaldo and Clara , which was shot during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour (1975/76).

The marriage of the two fell apart in April 1974 when Bob Dylan began taking art classes with Norman Raeben , a 73-year-old Russian immigrant and former boxer who, according to Dylan, was close friends with Soutine , Picasso and Modigliani . Raeben's teaching methods are said to have fundamentally changed Bob's train of thought, so that he later said in an interview: “I went home after that first day and from that day on my wife no longer understood me. It was then that our marriage began to fall apart. She never understood what I was talking about, what I was thinking about, and I couldn't even explain it. "

The divorce was finalized on June 29, 1977. Tensions between the two lingered for several years, but seemed to be changing the two. In any case, both are said to have thought of getting married again in 1983. A photo of Bob Dylan taken by Sara in Jerusalem during her son's bar mitzvah celebration around 1982 was later on the cover of his album Infidels . In his 2004 autobiography "Chronicles: Volume One", Bob Dylan remembers Sara as "one of the loveliest creatures in women."

Sara Dylan in the songs of Bob Dylan

Sara inspired Bob Dylan to write several songs, at least two apparently directly:

The latter represented an attempt at reconciliation with Sara after the two were estranged around 1975:

"I can still hear the sound of the Methodist bells, I had taken the cure and had just gotten through, staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel , writing Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands for you"

- Bob Dylan : Sara

Bob Dylan's album Blood on the Tracks (1975) is widely considered to be the most inspired by Sara, as many fans assume that the songs on this album refer to the couple. The album was recorded at the beginning of their divorce phase. Clinton Heylin, a biographer of Dylan, however, believes that Sara's influence on the lyrical content of this album has often been overestimated. Dylan himself also denied at the time the album was released that Blood on the Tracks was autobiographical. Jakob, the son of the two, said that the songs were his parents' conversations. Heylin also reports that around 1977, inspired by their final divorce, Bob Dylan wrote a whole album of songs, which he only played privately for selected friends and has not recorded or played live to this day.

Critics believe that in addition to Blonde on Blonde , Blood on the Tracks and Desire , Sara also inspired individual songs from the albums Bringing It All Back Home , Nashville Skyline , New Morning , Planet Waves and Street Legal . These tracks include Isis , We Better Talk This Over , Abandoned Love , Down Along the Cove , Wedding Song , On a Night Like This , Somethin There Is About You , I'll Be Your Baby Tonight , To Be Alone With You , If Not For You , Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) and Love Minus Zero / No Limit .

Pop Culture

A fictional representation of their marriage - as well as Dylan's relationship with Suze Rotolo - was told in the biographical film I'm Not There starring Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg .

literature

  • Howard Sounes: Down The Highway, The Life Of Bob Dylan . Doubleday, 2001, ISBN 0-552-99929-6
  • Clinton Heylin: Bob Dylan Behind The Shades - A Biography . Penguin Books Ltd., ISBN 0-14-028146-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Behind the Shades Revisited by Clinton Heylin, p. 167 ff.
  2. ↑ Sounes (p 162; 467).
  3. ^ A b Like A Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan fan page - "Sara".
  4. ↑ a b c d A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard, p. 5.
  5. ^ A b "I can't be married to a woman named Shirley." Sounes (p. 200).
  6. ^ "Her meeting with Bob was the reason (Sara left Hans) - he was famous, and she was very beautiful," said Lowndes
  7. ↑ a b A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard, p. 3.
  8. ↑ a b A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard, p. 4.
  9. ↑ Sounes, p. 232
  10. ↑ Howard Sounes: Down the Highway: The Life Of Bob Dylan. Doubleday 2001, ISBN 0-552-99929-6 , p. 461.
  11. ↑ Sara Dylan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  12. ↑ Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard: A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks. P. 37.
  13. ^ "I went home after that first day and my wife never did understand me ever since that day. That's when our marriage started breaking up. She never knew what I was talking about, what I was thinking about, and I couldn't possibly explain it. "In Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard: A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks. P. 39.
  14. ↑ a b c d Clinton Heylin: Behind the Shades Revisited. P. 710 ff.
  15. ^ Bob Dylan: Chronicles, Volume One . P. 127.
  16. ↑ The songs are my parents talking - Howard Sounes: Down the Highway: the Life of Bob Dylan. Doubleday 2001, ISBN 0-552-99929-6 , p. 333.
  17. ^ Andy Gill: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right . Thunder's Mouth Press, 1998, ISBN 1560251859 .
personal data
SURNAME Dylan, Sara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Noznisky, Shirley Marlin (maiden name); Novoletsky, Shirley Marlin (maiden name); Lowndes, Sara (first marriage)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American wife of Bob Dylan (1965–1977), mother of Jakob Dylan
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilmington (Delaware) , Delaware