Bob Dylan in the Big Apple: Troubadour Tales of New York

by K G Miles

The room where Leonard Cohen had an affair with Janis Joplin, as well as Joni Mitchell (different time), went for $85,000. Jimi Hendrix’s door went for $13,000. The door to the room shared by Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick, a couple described in Vanity Fair as ‘Romeo and Juliet with kink’, went for $52,500. The door to the room where Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road sold for $30,000. The biggest prize was the Dylan room, Room 211, which sold for a remarkable $100,000. All the more remarkable since Dylan led a very quiet life there. As biographer Howard Sounes commented, ‘he had a piano in his room and he composed songs but few people knew he was there.’ 55

Singer Tom Russell recalled: ‘Pete was one of the first of the new folk circle to be signed to a major label and the first to die and be forgotten.’

Keith Richards once said, ‘the title of World’s Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band doesn’t belong to a single 127act, it tends to move from band to band on any given night’.