* Note: The photo to your left is NOT Joel Gilbert, no matter how much he may wish it were, it is, remains, Bob Dylan. It's Bob Dylan as was recording Blonde on Blonde - or that's my understanding anyway - my backstory. In any event, the salient factor here, it ain't Joel.

Joel Gilbert is a one man show –sort of, or certainly in this video he is for the most part, but read on. Okay, he has his back-up band for Highway 61 Revisited which may or may not be endorsed by Dylan (I couldn’t get any official word on this, though it seems unlikely after watching Gilbert in action in this video that Dylan would lend his name, but then…. remember we’re talking about a man who lent hours of his time to A.J. Weberman, but that’s a whole other story for another time). Besides, Weberman is at least smart and entertaining and a real Dylanologist (a phrase he claims to have invented, by-the-by, and perhaps he did) – either way, Gilbert’s own video and subsequent interview with Weberman only proves my point, but read on.

Back to Gilbert and his video (Directed by him anyway, by Joel Gilbert) and entitled Bob Dylan World Tours 1966 – 1974, which tells the tale of Highway 61 Revisited (in Gilbert’s words, paraphrase, the world’s only look alike Dylan band, but more on that later), Gilbert may strike you initially as a fan with a lot of facts at his hands but that’s it, but even as his own film goes on, it seems clearer and clearer and Gilbert is more of a fan than a true expert, or to coin A.J. Weberman’s term, Dylanologist.

Yes, he did agree to get important people to sit down and interview with him (or perhaps that was with the help of Barry Feinstein, photographer), people such as Mickey Jones, D.A. Pennebaker, and the talkative and friendly Barry Feinstein (photographer), but anyone who has ever worked as a journalist knows that this, in the final account, doesn’t take that much effort; It’s a few phone calls, it means sounding convincing, it means having just enough authority, and that’s it.

Highway 61 Revisited is, as Gilbert tells us, the only band that “looks like, and sounds like” Dylan band in the whole world, believing himself, of all, to be the Dylan look alike, which is clear from the very beginning when he shows up dressed as the Dylan of ’78 or so in his black Western shirt and his low-hung jeans that slip just below the waist and with his mop of wavy hair and with his slight hook at the nose (note: much more than Dylan’s Romanesque and slightly tipped nose), but this, kids, is where the similarities end.

Gilbert, no matter how much he may want to look like Dylan, (and he does ask people, a thing he feels compelled to do with virtually everyone whom he encounters almost immediately), such as when he arrives on the (Barry) Feinstein property in Woodstock, Vermont, “Do I look like him” (Dylan) to which, of course, the Feinstein’s are then in the uncomfortable and awkward position of having to say only a requisite “Yes” or a “No” would be considered by most to be rude.

It’s a form of blackmail that re-enforces what Gilbert wants to hear; that he is the living, walking, talking embodiment of Dylan; never mind that Dylan is Dylan and is alive in the world and not dead (at least not that we’ve heard or that Dylan would be surprised to hear – hey, perhaps he could announce his own death on XM radio announcing the Joel Gilbert is the real Dylan.

But wait, there’s more! After getting upstairs into Feinstein’s studio, Gilbert spots a harmonica that can only belong to Dylan to Dylan himself (duh) and to which he immediately gravitates and asks if he can play it. (The viewer assumes, perhaps, that Dylan was the last person to play this harmonica), and here is Gilbert asking permission to play it – again, putting Feinstein in an awkward position. Feinstein graciously says yes, and the awkward Gilbert plays some nothing of a ditty (not a song, not even a ditty but rather, just moves his mouth across the chords, playing nothing) and then says, trying to be cool and putting it down, “Wow, that was fun. Thanks for letting me play it.” (said deadpan).

The interview with Feinstein works only because Feinstein himself carries it. There can be no question as to Feinstein’s amazing photographs of Dylan mostly from the ’66 tour (though there are more here,) Feinstein is a born story teller. The only credit then, we can give Gilbert is knowing to pick Feinstein and having the good sense not to leave the footage of all of these photographs on the cutting room floor. Most if not all it would seem, Gilbert had the good sense to leave in leaving the viewer with a montage of various Dylan photographs – Dylan huddled in a chair in a large auditorium, curled up in chair with his coat wrapped around him, Dylan with his finger pressed against the window of the car while the rain beads on the window, Dylan reading a magazine with his own face on the cover, Dylan on Dylan, Dylan goofing around.

Feinstein has always managed to get such great shots without the subject being aware of the fact that they are being photographed – mostly by not using a flash he tells us, because he “never liked the effect” that they were “over-lit” and so on and we know exactly what he means. But make no mistake, it is clearly Feinstein who is carrying this whole section of the film if not most of Gilbert’s film (we’ll come back that and to Feinstein later).

The decision to shoot the tour in black and white was also Feinstein’s because, he tells us, it was more journalistic this way, more “reportage” and that’s really what this was – reportage – It was “verité” and a method that gave or gives us access to people we otherwise did and do not have access to.

Yes, Gilbert tosses in a good question here and there to keep things moving along, but Feinstein is also a natural talker (perhaps living in Woodstock does this to you, or maybe he always has been a talker and Woodstock isn’t the quiet, sleepy town we imagine it to be, who knows), but regardless, Gilbert tosses in a few but for the most part the questions seem just silly to any Dylan-ite such as “Were Albert Grossman and Bob Dylan alike?”

One wants to shout, Are you effing kidding me? They couldn’t be yet more different which, for a time, made them a good team – for a time anyway. Feinstein’s only answer, “Well, they were both Jewish.”

Anyone who has seen Grossman in action with Dylan in documentaries knows that Grossman was Dylan’s bulldog and at the same time, his fall guy. He bore the brunt because he could. Because, as I said, he was the bulldog and Dylan was the reed thin rock star poet and this act worked for seven years or so, and when it worked it seemed to work pretty well for the most part.

The issue here is not Gilbert’s ability to get Feinstein talking or showing his images (after all, the film was shot by Feinstein who did all of the still and had thus signed on, so to speak) but more that no matter what, you just can’t get beyond the fact that there is this guy here who is dressed up like a bad Bob Dylan impersonator (or is a bad Bob Dylan impersonator) and who wants the lens pointed squarely not at Bob, but at himself, the other Bob…. you know, the other ‘real’ Bob. Even the background music for the documentary is Highway 61 Revisited, Gilbert’s band, just strummin’ away.

As a footnote, and I’ll add this in here because it will immediately prompt a mental picture for you if you’re a die-hard, Feinstein took one of the Top 25 Pictures of Rock ‘n Roll of all time as it was voted which has Dylan in the foreground and Howard Alk in the background and is now the cover for “No Direction Home” and is on the home page of www.bobdylan.com after you click on the cover for the new album that is due – “Modern Times.”

Pennebaker seems a lot less forthcoming and, it would so seem anyway, a lot less amused with Gilbert’s dog and pony show and the whole Dylan costume. In fact, he seems a little weirded out by it and when the phone rings he says to someone on the other end, “Okay, just give me ten minutes here” (meaning, ten minutes of his time to spare with Gilbert where Feinstein and others will offer up a great deal more.) Pennebaker is just either too important for this shit, or truly is, or is this just a bad day. To be fair to Gilbert, Pennebaker does offer up a few gems, but that’s Pennebaker’s doing more than Gilbert’s, at least, in this reviewer’s opinion.

Pennebaker does note a difference between photography and stills (photographs) noting that photography is like “opening up a door fast” and catching something at exactly the right moment; he has a respect and reverence for anyone who could do that because what Pennebaker is known for is his documentary style filmography - shooting everything, and as it pertains to Dylan here – Don’t Look Back and parts of Eat the Document (note: Pennebaker has shot so much in his career that to list here would be far too numerous so we’ll stick with Dylan.)

To photograph, to shoot, he tells us, is to understand the ‘aesthetic condition.’ Don’t Look Back was Pennebaker’s first feature film and he wanted people to take the film seriously. It was to set the tone of his whole career at that moment, he says.

The fact remains however, that Gilbert and Pennebaker do not interact as well as Feinstein and Gilbert have, and so within the proscribed ten minutes or so, the interview is over. Or perhaps there was more and it was cut? Either way, the scene is brief and we do not come back to it.

Hey, this is the Metropolis kids, the big city – people are rockin’ and rollin’ not just taking their time here like they are in laid back Woodstock where you can fool some stoned (is she?) or not hippie chicks into thinking you are the real Bob Dylan.

Perhaps this is one of the more stomach-churning points of the film when Gilbert signs the jeans of a young girl, signing scrawling Bob Dylan (as though it were his name) all along her right leg –- which, if he had gained anything from the sale thereof would amount to fraud – but doesn’t it amount to fraud simply by virtue of its being in the documentary and Gilbert’s profit thereof? Perhaps not.

Either way, if I were Dylan, I’d hunt Gilbert down and shoot him. Okay, well, not shoot perhaps, but I’d be pretty pissed off if someone were impersonating me, Woodstock or elsewhere. It seems wherever he goes though, Gilbert will accept others believing he is Bob Dylan or will happily pass himself as Dylan if he can get away with it (note: with this author, he wouldn’t stand a chance and probably not with you, dear reader either.).

But the best part of Gilbert’s documentary or perhaps the silliest part anyway, and most amusing for those watching, the real tour de force that you just can’t miss, is the re-enactment of the motorcycle accident. Even an old Triumph is used for this effort.

First we see Gilbert (poorly and slowly) riding a motorcycle down a country road (presumably Woodstock) and then suddenly a cheap special effect of the lens sends Gilbert and the bike into a swirl and two are suddenly, swoosh, on the ground. The accident now complete – we now know with certainty what it was like, or must have been like for our Dylan. If we didn’t get the heavy-handed message, the next shot shows a toppled cycle with a pair of Dylan’s trademark RayBans pointing out at us (looking at us googly-eyed like a Sesame Street Muppet lacking the furry body). Then CUT. End of scene. The re-enactment is complete. Gilbert’s trump is Mickey Jones on the phone quoting Dylan and the whole disputed thing, accident, not accident, time off, time of respite, real, unreal, ,as Mickey Jones quotes Dylan during a phone call, Dylan said, “I broke my neck.”

Just in-case we didn’t hear the sound of the hand falling, we then see through a blue-filter Dylan’s soul (we are to imagine) walking into a graveyard (note, this is Gilbert, not the real Dylan – just in case you had any doubt as to this – I know, I know, it’s so easy to get the two confused, yes?). The whole thing reads like a Where’s Bob or a Where’s Waldo in this case; cheap and cheesy, but then, this is Gilbert’s video and he directed it, so the whole affair was his choice, his masterpiece.

After much walking around Woodstock aimlessly (why we are back in Woodstock I don’t’ know, but we are, possibly because there is nobody else to talk to?) Gilbert spots Dylan’s old house, but alas, there is no “For Sale” sign on the house (yeah, as if he could afford it, a friend jokes.) He tells us, “I’m sure Bob was comfortable living here.” Well, isn’t that just a relief. Gilbert has spoken. Won’t Bob be relieved to know that Gilbert has said as much. It is, again, this sort of behavior that makes Gilbert an amateur and will forever keep him within that realm.

Look, one may not claim to be more than this – an amateur or a really big fan and there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t claim to be more if you’re not – don’t dress up like Dylan, claim to be Dylan, don’t essentially try to absorb the man’s past and present life when you never had it and never will. It is an absurd construct.

But what would any Dylan video be without the infamous (or famous) A.J. Weberman. And although Weberman is no doubt a publicity hound, I’ll give Gilbert his due credit for getting Weberman on camera, even if Gilbert keeps looking at the camera as if this guy is nuts. Besides which, here again, how hard would it be to get Weberman talking – all know how much Weberman likes to talk.

Maybe Weberman is nuts but he certainly knows more about Dylanology (a term he claims to have coined and shit, maybe he did, I certainly don’t know who coined it but I’m willing to bite, for sure, I know Gilbert did not.) Weberman is most famous as we know, for his study of Garbology – the study of Dylan’s trash. For knocking on Dylan’s front door and not getting anywhere in the front and so then going around the back and taking home the trash as it were and sifting through it. You can find out a lot about a person from their garbage and apparently

Weberman found out enough and started a movement that became influential enough that Dylan eventually had no choice but to take him seriously. Weberman is also famous for his long phone conversations with Dylan, which, if you haven’t heard, find yourself a good source and listen because they are hilarious with Dylan at once getting into a snit about the whole thing, and then being drawn into the conversation as if speaking to an old friend. It’s an interesting dynamic.

Of all the interviews in Gilbert’s documentary, this is one of the best. Feinstein is great because he talks and for the images we see – and who can get enough of those – and more, for his stories. Pennebaker is amusing, but not for his time, simply because he is so quippish with his time and although he may not realize it nor mean to be, it seems that Pennebaker gives Gilbert the fish-eye. Perhaps this reviewer is wrong – and lord knows I’ve been wrong in the past – but that’s just my take. Anyone who’ll take a call during and interview and says, “give me ten minutes” (to call the party back) doesn’t plan on spending a lot of time with the director of said video, as noted earlier.

To wrap it up, Big Pink is visited, for which Gilbert says he feels a “certain nostalgia” which makes me want to scream, “Yes, but you were never there!!! You were never part of it, you dink, so how could you feel any ‘nostalgia for a time you were not part of, or a scene you were never a part of!!” But perhaps he means nostalgia for a certain time in his own life, as a friend pointed out in Gilbert’s defense, although that is not how it sounded to me. But you be the judge of that. Given the rest of the video, I can only read it as I see or how I hear it and that’s how it read to this reviewer.

Would I watch this video and buy it: Yes, as a true die-hard Dylan fan, I own it (God help me, but then, what don’t we own?) (rhetorical, don’t answer), but if you are not a die-hard, then skip it – unless you want to watch for the Feinstein pictures which are, frankly, pretty amazing and that right there may just be the one saving grace and reason to buy.