Now, the tape, described by RR Auction in Boston as “Dylan’s earliest demo recording,” is being offered for sale along with other Dylan-related ephemera, including a sequined suit from his 1975 Rolling Thunder tour and a Martin D-41 acoustic guitar he gave to Bob Neuwirth, a musician who was instrumental in assembling the band for that tour. The recording is significant, said Mark Davidson, the senior director of archives and exhibitions at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Okla., because it documents a performance by someone on the cusp of fame and before he fully developed his own inimitable style. He’s still sort of in that Woody Guthrie jukebox phase, Davidson said. Richard F. Thomas, a classics professor at Harvard University and the author of “Why Bob Dylan Matters,” said that at the time of the Gaslight show, Dylan was a “young genius committed to his art and his performance” but who was “still trying to make it.” It was indeed a seminal time for Dylan.
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