Speechifyin’ — Bob Dylan Meets Tom Paine at the ECLC Civil Rights Dinner

Myth has it that in 1963 a drunk Bob Dylan ad-libbed a speech at the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) “Bill of Rights” fund-raising dinner that didn’t mean much of anything except maybe as one of Dylan’s first steps in distancing himself from the progressive Left and finger-pointin’ songs. Even then, insulting his audience for their age, baldness, and patronization of “Negroes” would probably have been forgotten as a minor pothole on the road of Bob Dylan’s journey through life if not for Lee Harvey Oswald.