I’m talkin’, of course, ‘bout the sing-off scene in the hotel room in Don’t Look Back, D.A. Pennebakers classic documentary of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England (I’m talkin’ ‘bout the ’60s man, therefore I’m goin’ to have to apostrophize to excess, ya dig).
The two men, who the film has done a bit to set up as possible rivals, finally meet each other, and Dylan, in a gesture of graciousness and thinly veiled competitiveness, invites Donovan up to his hotel room.
They’re sittin’ around, drinkin’smokin’, havin’ a good time, and then at some point Donovan takes a guitar and plays some song, beautifully but unremarkably. Then Dylan, who to this point in the movie has seemed mostly unwilling to be so common as to just play songs for his friends in private, takes the guitar and sings “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
And of course it’s just about the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard in the world, and you can almost imagine yourself, in this hotel room in London, just the right amount of stoned or drunk, listening to fucking Bob Dylan at the height of his genius play for just you and your friends and it’s so amazing it’s almost painful (because of course you never will, actually, witness such beauty; you’re not friends with Bob Dylan).
And what’s doubly awesome and awful about it is that we get to watch as Donovan is just destroyed. You can see in his eyes that right at that moment he knows that he’ll never be even in the same class as Dylan. He might be very good, but he’s in the presence of someone who’s immeasurably greater. He can’t escape the absolute limit of his talent. It’s a wonder he didn’t go out and throw himself off a bridge.
BONUS TRACK UPDATE: I just found this clip on Youtube, of Dylan playing "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" during the same sing-off (though it never made it into the movie; it’s on the bonus materials for Scorcese’s Dylan documentary No Direction Home); if anything, it’s even worse. There’s visible existential terror on Donovan’s face.
