Three of my favorite twentieth century characters were all New Yorkers. Two were Jewish. Two were gay or bisexual; the third was determinedly straight. They were, in birth order, Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Bob Dylan (b. 1941).
Interestingly, none of the three was a native New Yorker. Dylan didn’t get there until 1961, when he was twenty. But thereafter he is indelibly identified as a New Yorker even though he has now lived most of his life in Southern California. Certainly Dylan’s magnificent golden era of recordings, in the Nineteen-Sixties, was anchored in New York’s and specifically Lower Manhattan’s culture of that time.
Nor was Warhol a native of the Big Apple. He was born and reared near Pittsburgh and didn’t get to New York until 1949, when he was twenty-one. Bernstein, so identified with New York because of his leadership of the Philharmonic and co-creation of West Side Story, finally moved to New York in 1942. He lived in Greenwich Village and was a sort of Bohemian, although it would be a stretch to make too much of this.
What all three had in common was how quickly they adapted to their new town. New York, then as now, can be maddeningly unwelcoming to newcomers, who can find it difficult to find their place in the maelstrom. But Bernstein, Warhol and Dylan quickly settled in, not only finding their places but creating entirely new spaces and identities that were totally their own creations. To a Baby Boomer kid growing up when each was at his prime, they represented everything I wasn’t, but inwardly yearned to be: insanely creative, determinedly independent and glamorous, making their own rules, and masters of their respective universes. They had taken the mediocrity of the Eisenhower years and created in its wasteland something incredible, beautiful, lustrous.
When I was in high school, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I’d go to see Bernstein conduct in the old Lewisohn Stadium, on the City College Campus, just a few blocks from where I went to high school. But I wasn’t yet a fan of classical music. That didn’t happen until later, when Ravel’s Bolero and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony opened my eyes. (Bernstein was, interestingly, a master conductor of both.) I’d watched his Young People’s Concerts on T.V. and still remember how fascinating Bernstein’s portrayal of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was; I call it a “portrayal” because it wasn’t just a performance; the symphony—its notes, and even Beethoven himself—became players that Bernstein made come alive.
I never met Warhol, although in 1966 I was invited to a party at The Factory. I regret to this day not going, and now I can’t even remember why I didn’t. Nor did I ever meet Dylan. But with respect to the two of them—Warhol and Dylan—I felt as though I knew them. They both lived very public lives, Dylan not so obviously, Warhol transcendentally; the man who invented “15 minutes of fame” himself meticulously cultivated his time in the spotlight. Warhol was famously queer, perhaps the most eminent homosexual of his time. Dylan, who was in and out of Warhol’s circuit (or was it the other way around?), was straight, and had, maybe, a bit of hostility for gay people, at least for flamboyants like Warhol. Consider the lyrics of “Ballad of a Thin Man” with their not-so-thinly-veiled contempt for Mr. Jones.
All three were public figures, aware of their images, always anxious to control the way they were portrayed. This did not, however, make them superficial. All were smug, in the sense of being aware of their superior talents and not bothering to hide their lights. All three rose to the pinnacle of their respective arts: classical music and Broadway (Bernstein), pop music (Dylan), the visual arts (Warhol). Bernstein was clearly the most famous American conductor of the twentieth century. Warhol may well have been the greatest fine artist of the century, notwithstanding Picasso. Dylan’s influence of the music of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s—including on The Beatles--is without parallel. He’ll be remembered in the future alongside the likes of George Gershwin and Cole Porter as a supreme musician and lyricist and characterizer of the culture. Even though his music, in a way, has become less relevant over the last few decades, he remains an American treasure.
In celebrating these three geniuses, one has also to celebrate New York City, without whose shelter and guidance none of them would have become great. New York has been by far the prime cultural influence in America for at least a century—and I say that with all due respect to Hollywood. Hollywood is too transient, too receptive to fad and surface beauty. New York City is so vast and layered, so impenetrably rich in tradition and reality, that it transcends any fad. Hollywood needs fads in order to capture and exploit them. New York needs nothing but itself. There’s a reason why Bernstein, Warhol and Dylan all relocated there. Can you imagine any of them making his career anyplace else?
Steve Heimoff