Bob Dylan at Forest Hills, 40 Years Later

2015: Inside the stadium, the stage was way out on the field, nowhere near the seats in the stands. As night fell, the air became cold, as if the stadium was a wind tunnel.

Forty-five years ago today, I got off a bus from camp at Union Square in New York City, handed my Dad my duffle bag, and with some other kids hopped on the subway out to Forest Hills in Queens for my third Bob Dylan concert and Bob Dylan’s first concert (as opposed to a set at a folk festival) with a band. For the past six weeks, “Like A Rolling Stone” had been played constantly and way up the charts on the Top 40 AM radio stations. A couple of days before the show, there had been a strange interview with Dylan by Robert Shelton in the New York Times, where Dylan had talked about understanding green clocks and purple statues.