The time Bob Dylan doodled a yarmulkaed man waiting for a 1 train
Is that a yarmulke on the guy Bob Dylan drew waiting for the IRT? Is the propeller he drew on the man’s beanie to be taken seriously, or is it a typically Dylanesque deflection?
After all, with both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Yeshiva University on the 1 train, 20-year-old Bob Dylan might have noted more young men with yarmulkes waiting for the uptown train than he ever saw back home in Minnesota.
This doodle from the summer of 1961 came to light earlier this month, when it was auctioned off by its owner, Terri Thal. She had asked Dylan to draw on a page of a coloring book she bought to collect drawings from her friends as mementos on the eve of her marriage to folk singer Dave Van Ronk. According to the auction catalog, “Dylan embellished this page during a typical afternoon visit with then-girlfriend Suze Rotolo — leisurely time spent at the Thal-Van Ronk apartment, listening to records, playing penny-ante poker, eating dinner, and socializing.”
Dylan was a friend, but also a client: He had asked her to be his manager, to book him performance jobs, as she had been doing with Van Ronk. She said yes. (“I was able to get him gigs in a couple of bars in New Jersey,” Thal told an interviewer recently. “I haven’t a clue how I did that.”)
This coloring book page sold at auction for $6,550.
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