I'm not surprised Jeri doesn't know me; musically I wasn't much. It wasn't so much the gross thing Zimmerman did to me that bothered me, it was the way he treated everybody. During the time I saw him around I never remember him doing anything nice for anyone. He struck me as using people to get ahead, then dropping them.

As for some of Bob Dylan's music, heck, I used to do some of it myself, so I have respect for his talent. In fact I think the song he based on some lines from a Medieval poem, "If Today Was Not and Endless Highway," is one of the best songs to come out of that period.

As Little Hawk noted, Phil's popular stuff was topical, but some of it has aged better than other of it. The stuff of Phil's I really used to like, however, was not well known. He put three poems to music that I used to love doing: 1) "The Men Behind the Guns," 2) Poe's "the Bells," and 3) Noyes' "The Highwayman."

I guess one of the things that probably prejudiced me toward Dylan was that I thought Richard Farina's work was much better. When Dick was killed in that motorcycle accident I thought we lost the best man we had in The Village. Considering the way Dylan treated Joan and the rather callous way he took Dick's death and stiffed Mimi, my distaste for him turned to dislike.

Little Hawk was right. Phil did stand up for Dylan when the acoustic purists were all over him. And I never thought Dylan was disrespecting Phil until I saw this thread. I'm still not convinced.

PS: Phil wasn't always so easy to get along with either, but neither was I. He used me to type up his stuff on my old Royal Portable, and I still have a number of early drafts on newsprint typewriter paper.

If Dylan has repented his early behavior I'm glad to hear it. More power to him. It's a shame Phil isn't around to know about it.

I guess I should have kept my mouth shut about Zimmerman, but the thought he might have been putting down Phil just got me to remembering.