Bob Neuwirth, born June 20th, 1939; died May 18th, 2022

May 20, 2022 8:18 AM

Bob (Robert) Neuwirth, born June 20th, 1939; died May 18th, 2022

See also

Friend and confidant of Bob Dylan in the 1960s and Janis Joplin in the 1970s, he appeared in both Don't Look Back and Eat the Document as well as on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. He was the OG hipster.
posted by y2karl (12 comments total)

.
posted by Splunge at 8:24 AM on May 20, 2022

.
posted by Kattullus at 8:33 AM on May 20, 2022

.

Anyone else scan it as Bebe Neuwirth?
posted by leotrotsky at 8:35 AM on May 20, 2022 [9 favorites]

Yes, I read it as Bebe Neuwirth, too, and audibly gasped.
posted by briank at 8:59 AM on May 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

I happen to know Bebe Neuwirth's family (and her). She is doing well. That is, she is not dead.

I always wondered who the two people in the background of Subterranean Blues video were. I cannot belief I did not recognize Allan Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth.

.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:32 AM on May 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

I did not know much about Bob Neuwirth, but his rendition of "Rock Salt and Nails" really got me. Thank you.
posted by swift at 9:33 AM on May 20, 2022

I find this bit from the movie I'm Not There (all about Bob Dylan but his name is never spoken) to be a rather incise look at the Dylan/Neuwirth "friendship"

Jude Quinn party ,Coco Revington visit ( scene )

Quotes on "friendship" because it seems to be ending here with the famously troubled Edie Sedgwick at the heart of it. As the story goes, she had a crush on Dylan but he was already (secretly) married, so at some point, Bob Neuwirth got involved ... and it did not go well, she could not be saved.

It ain't easy being cool.
posted by philip-random at 10:05 AM on May 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

One day in 1970, a young Patti Smith was sitting in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel in New York, working on her poetry, when a familiar-looking figure approached her. “He came up to me and asked me if I was a poet,” she tells Rolling Stone of the figure in trademark dark glasses she immediately recognized from a Bob Dylan documentary. “I knew exactly who he was. He looked like he’d stepped out of Don’t Look Back, which I’d seen about 100 times. He said, ‘Let me see what you’re writing.’ He started reading and he was one of the first people who looked at my work and took it seriously. He said, ‘You should be writing songs.’”

...For Smith, the cover of Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited— which shows Neuwirth, but only as a pants-wearer standing behind Dylan — spoke to his understated but important role in the culture. “That’s him in a nutshell,” she says. “He stays in the background. But he’s there, and his presence is always strong.”

Edit: Well, dang, philip-random, you beat me to it...
posted by y2karl at 10:11 AM on May 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

.
posted by The_Auditor at 10:17 AM on May 20, 2022

.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 10:39 AM on May 20, 2022

And here is a bit more from Music Masters: A Conversation with Bob Neuwirth -- of which the complete version is sadly no longer available at the Country Music Hall of Fame -- wherein he talks about meeting David Mansfield (also onstage with with him), among other guitar players and musicians he recruited for the Rolling Thunder Revue of 1975-1976.
posted by y2karl at 1:49 PM on May 20, 2022

.
posted by riverlife at 6:32 PM on May 20, 2022