Bob Dylan 1966

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    Motorcycle accident and reclusion
    After his European tour, Dylan returned to New York, but the pressures on him continued to increase. ABC Television had paid an advance for a TV show they could screen. His publisher, Macmillan, was demanding a finished manuscript of the poem/novel Tarantula. Manager Albert Grossman had already scheduled an extensive concert tour for that summer and fall. On July 29, 1966, the brakes on Dylan’s Triumph 500 motorcycle locked on a road near his home in Woodstock, New York, throwing him to the ground. Though the extent of his injuries was never fully disclosed, Dylan said that he broke several vertebrae in his neck. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of the accident since no ambulance was called to the scene and Dylan was not hospitalized.
    Commenting on the significance of the crash, Dylan expressed some bitterness at the way he had been treated: “When I had that motorcycle accident … I woke up and caught my senses, I realized that I was just workin’ for all these leeches. And I didn’t want to do that. Plus, I had a family and I just wanted to see my kids.”[83] Howard Sounes’ Dylan biography, Down The Highway, concludes that the crash offered Dylan the much-needed chance to escape from the pressures that had built up around him. In the wake of his accident, Dylan withdrew from the public and, apart from a few select appearances, did not tour again for eight years.

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