AJ Weberman

Alan Jules Weberman (born May 26, 1945) is an American writer, political activist, gadfly, and inventor of the terms "garbology" and "Dylanology". He is best known for his controversial opinions on, and personal interactions with, the musician Bob Dylan. Together with New York folk singer David Peel, Weberman founded the Rock Liberation Front in 1971 with the aim of "liberating" artists from bourgeois tendencies and ensuring that rock musicians continued to engage with and represent the counterculture of the 1960s.

Early life

Weberman was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. As a boy, he served as president of a local fan club dedicated to the professional wrestler Haystack Calhoun. He has recalled that his father, who was strict in his observance of their faith, regularly inspected the household garbage to ensure that Weberman's mother had not bought non-kosher food.

During the early 1960s, Weberman attended Michigan State University. While there, in 1964, he was convicted for selling marijuana and briefly served time in jail before being released on parole. He then returned to New York and worked as an interviewer for the Lawrence Employment Agency while continuing his studies, at night school, at City College of New York.

Bob Dylan

Weberman has written on the life and works of Bob Dylan, including a pamphlet titled ''Dylanology'' in 1969 and creating a word concordance of Dylan's lyrics. He also wrote the ''Dylan to English Dictionary'', published in 2005. One of Weberman's theories on Dylan's songwriting is that some of Dylan's songs are actually about, or addressed to, Weberman himself. Authors Bob Spitz and Jim Curtis have each rejected, and ridiculed, Weberman's interpretations of Dylan's work.

In 1969, Weberman founded the Dylan Liberation Front with associates such as street musician David Peel, aiming "to help save Bob Dylan from himself". Weberman was convinced that, from Dylan's docile, smiling visage on the cover of his 1969 album ''Nashville Skyline'', the singer was hiding from his social conscience and ignoring his responsibilities as a political spokesman for the counterculture. Once Dylan had moved back to Greenwich Village from Upstate New York in 1970, Weberman took to rifling through his garbage. That same year, Weberman began lecturing in Dylanology at the left-wing Alternate University of New York. At this time, the Liberation Front lamented that Dylan had become a "reactionary force in rock", a view that was echoed among the radical left.

''Rolling Stone'' magazine called Weberman "the king of all Dylan nuts"; he has also been described as obsessively stalking Dylan. In late summer 1971, Dylan – annoyed that Weberman had reneged on their agreement that he would no longer dig through his garbage – assaulted Weberman on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan. In a 1997 article, ''Rolling Stone'' reported that Weberman, "a man that terrorized Bob Dylan during the '60s", had now "returned to hassle his son", Jakob Dylan. Weberman claimed that the younger Dylan was a heroin addict. In 1977, Weberman's telephone conversations with Dylan from the early 1970s were released on the Folkways Records album ''Bob Dylan vs A.J. Weberman – The Historic Confrontation''.

Writing in 2014 about the phenomenon of "Bob Dylan obsessives", John Dickerson of ''Slate'' described Weberman as "The most famous of the Dylanologists". In December 2016, after Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature, Weberman released a video on YouTube in which he claimed credit for Dylan's achievement. Journalist John Semley, writing for ''Salon'', views Weberman's claim as far-fetched yet also identifies "a scrap of truth in it". He recognises the garbologist as furthering a "philosophical and anthropological tradition" observed by French poet Charles Baudelaire, in the latter's celebration of the city ''chiffonier'' (or rag-picker), and practiced in the work of German philosopher Walter Benjamin. Semley concludes: "Maybe an artist of Bob Dylan's magnitude requires a worthy bête noire like Alan Weberman, a guy who's equal parts pariah, arch enemy, early model internet troll, modern-day chiffonnier; a manic, moonstruck, single-minded goon who pours heart, soul, and sanity into his stupendous schemes."

Rock Liberation Front

Weberman and the Dylan Liberation Front ceased their scrutiny of Dylan, temporarily, after he performed at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh shows at Madison Square Garden on August 1, 1971. Weberman was satisfied with Dylan's reversion to his 1960s protest singer persona and his scruffy attire at the concerts. Together with Peel, he formed the Rock Liberation Front (RLF) to "establish a relationship of understanding and participation in the World of Rock", which had "been getting ripped off too long". They first targeted Paul McCartney, whose recent music showed he was "just a businessman" and "a good example of the capitalist, non-involved egotistical rock star", according to Weberman. The RLF held a mock funeral for McCartney, on August 26, outside the Park Avenue home of his lawyer and father-in-law, Lee Eastman

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