On June 28, 1962, 21-year-old Bob Dylan presented his first show in Montreal to ten people. On the eve of his visit on Sunday evening to the Place des Arts, one of the witnesses of this historic moment, Peter Weldon, remembers.
Published at 2:55 am. Updated at 8:00 a.m.
June 1962. A friend of Peter Weldon, recently settled in New York, calls him with an important message, almost an admonition. “You can’t miss this guy’s show,” she told him. This guy? Bob Dylan.
The 21-year-old icon-in-the-making just released a debut album in March to little response. Outside the confines of Greenwich Village, the Gaslight Cafe star is essentially unknown. Terri Van Ronk, his first manager, undertook to arrange a few visits for him to other cities, including a four-day stay at Pot Pourri, a Marxist bookstore and small event hall at 1430 rue Stanley in downtown Montreal.
In 1962, the twenty-something Peter Weldon was closely connected to the music of his time, which was rich in revolutions large and small. In their living room in Outremont, his parents often offered food and lodging to passing musicians like bluesman Big Joe Williams. In the same living room, he plays banjo and guitar with his friend Jack Nissenson. In 1963 they formed the Mountain City Four with Kate and Anna McGarrigle.
The four of them attended Dylan’s first performance at Potpourri on June 28, 1962. “There were us and about six ladies who looked like members of a bridge club,” says Peter Weldon, 85, in his apartment in Westmount where he lives with his partner Jane McGarrigle and where instruments, books and records are stacked.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Peter Weldon
But what were these ladies doing there? “It’s as if they came here and wanted to take a look at the dark underbelly of the folk scene,” explains our host, still amazed by this unlikely presence more than 60 years later.
“And the worst part was that they talked the whole beginning of the set until Dylan leaned over to them with one of those sloppy smiles and asked wryly, ‘Ladies, what high school do you go to? YOU?’” They immediately fell silent and spent the rest of the evening looking at him like a rabbit looks at a snake. »
Although he hasn’t spoken to his audience at all in several decades, Dylan was very talkative back then. “She’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever met,” recalls Peter Weldon, who spent his career as a professor in the physiology department at McGill University but in whose life music has never stopped playing a starring role.
He played with his hat, he tuned his guitar and he said the absurd phrases [non sequiturs] one after the other. That was almost half of his performance. He had a presence rarely seen. It was simply impossible to look away.
Peter Weldon
A pirated copy
According to Peter Weldon, Bob Dylan offered essentially the same repertoire that evening as at his July 2, 1962 show at the Finjan Club, including some songs that will never appear on official albums, arrangements of blues standards (Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson), folk and country (Jimmie Rodgers) as well as the classic Blowin’ in the Wind, which he released in 1963 on his legendary second album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
After his four nights at Pot Pourri, for which he was reportedly paid $125, the singer accepted Shimon Ash’s invitation to perform at his Finjan Club at 5650 Victoria Street. His stamp? $12 and the option to stay with the owner for two weeks before returning to New York. There were about fifty customers there.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Peter Weldon
Peter Weldon’s friend Jack Nissenson is present again this Monday evening. And he brings Finjan his old tape recorder, which he places directly in front of the artist. The pirated version, with exceptional sound quality, is now one of Dylan’s most famous pirated albums – you can easily find it on YouTube.
Nissenson didn’t even have to ask the young Zimmerman for permission before placing his machine in front of him. “Dylan loved being recorded. He just wanted to be heard,” explains Peter Weldon, who missed this show because he was accompanying folk singer Alan Mills and violinist Jean Carignan on banjo and guitar. Grand Falls Potato Festival, New Brunswick. “It remains one of the biggest regrets of my life. »
How did recordings spread around the world? “We never knew,” replies Mr. Weldon, whose boyfriend Jack left us in 2015. “We passed the recording between us for a long time and I can only assume that he once loaned it to someone who made a copy.” Jack was a staunch communist who believed that everyone should share everything. »
Bob Dylan will be at the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on Sunday, October 29th as part of the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour.