dylan & warhol

The Factory
I recently viewed Factory Girl, a bioflick about Edie Sedgwick that The Village Voice quite rightly refered to as "Edie for Dummies". Sedgwick was part of artist Andy Warhol's stable at The Factory, the film delved into her relationship with Bob Dylan. He's portrayed by a thinly fictionalized character that so upset him, he'd threatened to sue the filmakers. From many accounts, Dylan tried luring Edie away from Warhol, whom at the time, he didn't think highly of, by saying he was going to make a film he wanted her to star in. Paul Morrissey:

She (Edie) said, "They're (Dylan's people) going to make a film and I'm supposed to star in it with Bobby (Dylan)." Suddenly it was Bobby this and Bobby that, and they realized that she had a crush on him. They thought he'd been leading her on, because just that day Andy had heard in his lawyer's office that Dylan had been secretly married for a few months - he married Sarah Lownds in November 1965... Andy couldn't resist asking, "Did you know Edie that Bob Dylan has gotten married?" She was trembling. They realized that she really thought of herself as entering a relationship with Dylan, that maybe he hadn't been truthful.

Andy & Edie
During this time, Dylan sat for screen test for Warhol. From The Village Voice Letters To The Editor, July 27, 1982:

Dear Editor:

I first met Edie Sedgwick in 1965 when Andy Warhol was making a film of my play - The Bed - which had been having a stage-run at Caffe Cino. After a successful screening at the Cinemateque on 41st Street, there followed a quarrel with FuFu Smith, the producer, about who owned the film. Andy put The Bed into his secret vault though he later spliced portions of it into Chelsea Girls.

During this period I conferred with Andy about writing The Death of Lupe Velez for Edie who was anxious to play the role of the "Mexican Spitfire," found dead in her Hollywood hacienda with her head in a toilet bowl. I met Edie at the Kettle of Fish on MacDougal Street to talk over the project. When I got there Edie was at a table with a fuzzy-haired blond Bob Dylan whose shiny black limousine was parked outside. I mentioned the script I was working on and Edie said innocently, "Oh, we already filmed that this afternoon. It's in the can... in Technicolor." Nothing more was said when Andy arrived, although he did astonish me that evening by asking, "When do you think Edie will commit suicide? I hope she lets me know so I can film it."

Dylan turned up at the Silver Factory that same week for a filmed portrait by Andy - a 15-minute study in stillness, silence, and emptiness. Dylan decided his payment would be a giant Warhol silk-screened canvas of Elvis Presley in cowboy attire firing a revolver. Andy was livid when he saw Dylan taking his "payment" though he opted for cool silence. Mr. Tambourine Man did not sit for nothing.

Bob Dylan: Screen Test
Apparently, Dylan gave away the Elvis Presley silkscreen. To further elucidate, some entry's from Andy Warhol's Diaries:

Oct. 77 – Albert Grossman, who used to manage Dylan, told me again that he has my silver Elvis, but I don’t understand that, because I gave it to Dylan, so how would Grossman get it?

May 11, 1978 – Robbie (Robertson) said he knew me from the Dylan days. I asked him whatever happened to the Elvis painting that I gave Dylan because every time I run into Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman he says he has it, and Robbie said that at some point Dylan traded it to Grossman for a couch! (laughs). He felt he needed a little sofa and he gave him the Elvis for it. It must have been in his drug days. So that was an expensive couch.

Andy, Elvis and Bob
More from Warhol (via Pat Hackett in Popism):

I liked Dylan, the way he created a brilliant new style... I even gave him one of my silver Elvis paintings in the days when he was first around. Later on, though, I got paranoid when I heard rumors that he had used the Elvis as a dart board up in the country. When I'd ask, "Why did he do that?" I'd invariably get hearsay answers like "I hear he feels you destroyed Edie," or "Listen to Like a Rolling Stone - I think you're the 'diplomat on the chrome horse,' man." I didn't know exactly what they meant by that - I never listened much to the words of songs - but I got the tenor of what people were saying - that Dylan didn't like me, that he blamed me for Edie's drugs.

Dylan, a few years later, in an interview to Rolling Stone magazine:

Bob: I once traded an Andy Warhol "Elvis Presley" painting for a sofa, which was a stupid thing to do. I always wanted to tell Andy what a stupid thing I done, and if he had another painting he would give me, I’d never do it again.

Patti Smith wrote a poem about Edie titled Shaking Shaking Glittering Bones, where she called her "the true heroine of Blonde On Blonde." Sedgwick was one of the women featured on the inner sleeve.

Dylan reportedly wrote Desolation Row about Warhol and The Factory - some lyrics:

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles

Here are the songs that have been associated with this saga:

Bob Dylan: Desolation Row

Bob Dylan: Like A Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan: Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat

Bob Dylan: Please Crawl Out Your Window?

Bob Dylan: Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again

When three pop superstars of the sixties collided, the outcome was great art. Sometimes a little pain can go a long way.