Next on Gallery America we go inside Tulsa's Bob Dylan so which explores the musi and art of the legendary singer.

We also meet an international group of scholars and writers sometimes called Dylan Ologists, I saw it live in 64 photographer right And we returned to a gallery episode hanging out the story to come to life many rock and roll legends.

Now got behind the scenes photographs of the Beatles and used to before they laugh about.

hello, Oklahoma.

I'm Robert Rei and welcome to Gallery America.

And today we're talking about rock and roll beginning with a guy named Robert Zimmerman.

You may know him as Bob Dylan.

He sold millions of records, influenced all kinds of art.

And the newly opened center here in Tulsa is the Bob Dylan Center that tries to make sense of an artist that is sometimes difficult to peg down.

Have a look.

What is Bob Dylan?

What is Bob Dylan?

Yeah, that's not an easy question at all.

Because you ask the question again, the most important American popular artist of the 20th century.

He received the Nobel Prize in literature.

I think he's one of our great singers.

He's a jokester.

He's inscrutable.

He's an enigma.

He's weird.

I don't know.

He's a moving target.

An apparition in a lot of ways.

And every time you think you've nailed him down, you know, he wriggles free.

we are finally, at long last, opening the Bob Dylan Cente right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

When Bob Dylan started his career six decades ago, it was a time of JFK troops going to Vietnam, civil rights marches and his earliest song songs like Blowing in the Wind.

The Times They are Changin reflected the mood of his times.

Bob's voice was redefining not just what music sounded like, but the message.

It carried and how it made people feel.

But he didn't stop there.

He went on to make 39 studio albums, hundreds of classics.

He also makes movies, writes books, paints, even worlds.

I guess it's a little bit like Johnny Cash wrote about Dylan on the back of a 1969 Bob Dylan album Nashville Skyline.

Johnny wrote about Dylan.

Here in is a hell of a poet and lots of other things lots of other things Johnny says it twice.

And how to explor these other things in Bob Dylan?

Go to Tulsa (singing in cherokee) This is an archive of a hundred thousand items, give or take, all dedicated to the life and work of Bob Dylan, who I think it's safe to say has stood alone in American music and culture for the past 60 years.

(singing in Cherokee) Dylan reminded us in his poem songs that every one of us has a story together.

All right.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Let's open the Bob Dylan Center (cheering).

The idea from the get go was to build a home.

Create a home for these materials, which really provide an unprecedented deep look into Dylan's life and work for folks who are either Dylan diehards, usually self-professed the Dylan-Ologists from all around the world, and folks who maybe have a somewha more casual knowledge of Dylan.

More than half of the 29,000 square feet is given over to public exhibition space.

(indisctinct chatter) and you walk into the immersive film experience.

So you'll be immersed in this and I hope emerge about 18 minutes later, having felt like you have a good sense of Dylan's origins.

Then you walk into the Columbia Records Gallery.

This is quite a large space where you have along the perimeter walls.

The closest thing we have to a chronology of Dylan's life and career is we go deep into six songs.

So we have things lik like a Rolling Stone Tangled Up and Blue Joker Ma And the quadrants are revealed.

The writing, the recording, the producing the performing of these songs.

(singing) It's it's it's amazing.

It's the sort of stuff that, you know, as a Dylan fan, you've maybe heard whispers of rumors of.

It feels like around every corner you hear oh, look, it's the plug.

I love this.

In 1984, Bob Dylan played on David Letterman and he had this totally obscure punk band.

The plugs play with them one time only they were as surprised as anyon to be on national TV with Dylan.

Dylan always keeps you guessing.

You never know what he's going to do next.

I love it.

(singing) i Serve as the director of th Institute for Bob Dylan Studies.

So I put together this course.

It was just called Bob Dylan.

I had 26 students sign u for the course on the first day.

They learn all about the context of of America after the Second World War.

(from New York's Bob Dylan) But they also get what Dylan gives to all of us, which is this extraordinary deep dove into the history of popular song in America.

Right.

(singing) (singing) Dylan himself didn't know to save all of this stuff.

He wasn't savin ticket stubs from his concerts.

But that's what these collectors were.

They were the ones that were recording these all of these shows.

Yes.

Surreptitiously against the rules that are penned up everywhere.

And if you go to a Dylan show, no recording devices will throw you out.

You know, without question, they managed to sneak their recording devices in.

That has become an integral part of the archive.

This archive would not be a interesting or as rich as it is if we hadn't had these collectors doing this extraordinary work.

I started acquiring things early on.

You know, I haven't been listening to Bob since approximately 62, and I saw him live in 64 for the first time.

It all starts with the music.

It would include cassettes, open reel tapes, that of course, a lot of the fliers, the programs, all of the detritus, the tchotchkes of of that world collecting can be a type of a. Disease.

Compulsive obsessiveness.

I'm very proud, in fact, that my program from Newport.

65 now lives in a glass case with Bob's leather jacket.

Now in Rolling Stone.

And part of this collection is considered the Holy Grail to Dylan-Ologists.

These three little notebooks here.

Dylan worked on these scribblin lyrics to his 1975 masterpiece Blood on the tracks was one professor had been able to study one of these but never all three.

In 2018.

I was invited to come out to Tulsa and allowed to look at the other two blood on the tracks notebook which are in the Dylan archive.

Here is a phenomenal experience.

(singing) I spent a lot of time in Tulsa.

I mean I spent ten week here over four different visits doing research for the double life of Bob Dylan.

I couldn't have done.

It without the.

Tulsa archive, When I first heard that the Dylan Cente was going to be here in Tulsa.

I had the exact same reaction as everybody else.

I thought, Why is that happening?

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

But then, of course, when I thought about it perhaps being somewhere else in New York, it seemed weird I mean, for a lot of different reasons, this seemed like the perfect place there's the beautiful synchronicity of the Woody Guthrie archive already being here, and Bo Dylan himself has mentioned that that is one of the reasons why he is very happy with his material goin to Tulsa, because Woody Guthrie was such an important influence on Dylan.

There was a rich cultural ecosystem here that I'm proud to say the Dylan Center and our sister organization, the Woody Guthrie Center, I think are are part of and there's something here, you know, Dylan just characterized it recently as the hum of the heartland that I think sets us apart, say, from the coasts.

So the world capital of Dylan-ology.

The Bob Dylan Center's in Tulsa, and it's a dream for Dylan fans like me.

But there is something I think for everyone here, like this quote, life isn't about finding yourself or finding anything.

Life is about creating yourself and creating things.

That's a theme that's been true of Dylan his whole career.

And he may have been speakin about his own philosophy here, but I do think he intends it as an offering to us to and to a philosophy that looks really good on a pencil.

Thank you, Bob.

(singing) And the we asked all the writers and scholars in this story what Bob Dylan song they would send to outer space for all the university here.

Here are the results and see the video and our special Dylan, Bob O.E.T.A.

dot TV slash Bob Dylan if you want to learn more about the Bob Dylan Center go to Bob Dylan, CENTER dot COM.

If you want to study at the Dylan Institute at Tulsa University, would song Latham go to Dylan dot u Tulsa dot edu for more information.

The collector Mitch Blank has lots of links on Bob at bob links dot com.

Ray Padgett the writer has a great newsletter on favorite Dylan performances that you can access a Dylan live dot sub stack dot com.

The scholar and teacher and Margaret Daniel has a website with links to all that she's written about Dylan at and Margaret Daniel Dot com.

Music writer Alison Rapp as a website with her links and talks and podcast about Bob Dylan at Alison Rapp two peas 22 dot com and my favorite Bob Dylan podcast is definitel Dylan hosted by Laura Tension.

You can access this and learn at definitely Dylan dot com.

Next we're staying with rock and roll.

We're going to visit a legendary drummer based in Oklahoma that we first talked to a number of years ago.

He's played with the Turtles.

Crosby, Stills, Nas and Young and Jefferson Starship before they built a city on rock and roll.

Meet Johny Barbata.

Well, I firs started getting into drumming.

I went to parochial school an I was back east and I was a kid.

My family had a priest that looked like Darth Vader.

And keep everybody in line.

He hit you over the head with a ruler.

But make a long story short.

I went down to the teen canteen one night and watched the band play, and I was kind of mesmerized.

I was drawn right toward the band.

And when I got down there, I was watching a drummer, and I said, man, this is really funny.

I think I made up my mind right there in the little I wanted to be a drummer.

I think that I'm part of roc and roll history because of all the different groups that I played.

With.

I definitely have affected a lot of people.

A lot of drummers and a lot of musicians are on what I did as a drummer and how I influenced music you know, by the signature dru licks that I played on of songs that were copied by garage bands and who knows who.

And, you know, it definitely influences people you just can't get away from.

Everybody copies, records, and I've been on over 20 hit singles and made over a hundred albums, so I've been copied.

I've been sampled, I've been used now.

My name is Johnny Babita.

I was with The Turtles before four years and seven hit singles too.

But I got to get with it on my day.

And that's when you saw the Turtles.

You saw they weren't just sort of lik the records live, which a lot of groups can't even do.

We sounded like that, but we were a show group, you know, Mark and Howard weren't.

You're Skinny Rock and roll star.

They were heavy.

They were more like comedians.

And Howard was like a circus announcer.

Or maybe he was just a comedian.

And when you thought of the Turtles, you know, you thought of Mark and Howard and myself Shane Well, when I joined the Turtles, I knew I was gonna have success.

They were already established, and little did I know they were going to get much bigger when I was with them.

And they had their new writers.

It wasn't just me, although I had a large part to do with it.

And one of the first sets, of course, that we recorded was happy together.

So I'm happy to give them.

I can say I love, you know, what I do for my life.

When I heard that thing on the I'm Happy Together on the four stations, I said Man, yeah, we're really happy.

I knew it was just a magical song, was real melodic.

It was a sing along kind of song.

It was just one of those songs that just would stick in your mind.

Really easy.

So I was so happy together, you know.

I can't say enough for the.

I actually played with Crosby, Stills, Nash Young albums.

I did maybe four years wit those guys and we got stopped.

Children was that sound.

Everybody looks good.

Well, when we released Four Wa Street, which was a live album.

Yeah that was that was the number one album of the year.

Once again, it was number one outsold everything else, 5 million albums.

And that's the one where David Crosby verbally says any album well, if you don't know who this drummer is, it's playing with his name is Johnny Babita, and he plays his butt off to use another word.

And what a plug.

That was like $1,000,000 plug after that.

I mean, the phone started ringing off the hook.

Ten soldiers.

Sons, Tommy and I finally on our own last summer.

I bought them in Ohio.

Ohio was about Kent State.

Neil recorded that on Think.

He wrote it on Monday.

We recorded a record playing o Wednesday, got it in one take, and on Friday it was on the airwaves.

Now, that's all it's we playing a lot for a drummer.

And Crosby told me, Look, man they need a drummer really bad and you might be able to really help them out.

And he said, They make a lot of money.

I said, Well, OK, let me go see what happens.

I sat in with them play that night and they all loved my playing.

And then that night they said, Yeah, you're in.

And we want you back in the group.

If you like, I'm leaving that crowd we get by.

And I made the transition from the Jefferson Airplane to the Jefferson Starship.

And of course, the starship had much more success than the airplane did.

It was it was a different bands.

There were some different members in it.

It was the biggest album, Starshi or the Airplane ever played on or I've ever recorded.

And this was a huge album.

This album was so big.

We outsold the Doobie Brothers that year was the number one album of the year, and yeah, it was a great success.

For us.

I mean, we were just we were happening we actually were on the cover of the Rolling Ston that year too, with this album.

So I was in three groups that had their biggest albums of the year when I was with them, and some guy in Modern Drummer wrote, What was it just it was it it just a coincidence or was it his infectious drumming?

You know, And las we meet a British photographer who got behind the scenes with bands like The Beatles before they made a big meet.

ian right name is Ian, right?

I was born in the north east of England.

1945, and I'm in my 58 year as a photojournalist.

The mentor that I had was Arthur Sokol, my form teacher.

He actually put himself forward with his knowledge of photography and said, Is there anybody in the class that would like me to teach them photography?

And I put my hand up and I was the only one.

It was the best decision I ever made in my whole life because he took this young 14 year old kid and showed him all the tricks of the trade.

And I started work the last week of December of 1960 and they decided a the Northern Echo in Darlington they were going to have a new editor who was coming in to revamp the paper, Sir Harold Evans, who is voted the greatest editor of the last century.

He was my second mentor.

Harry said to me later in the years, he said to me, you know, right, he oh by the way, John Lennon gave me that nickname.

He said, you know, writing, I heard it coming.

So what did you hear?

He said, The Sixties Revolution I heard it coming.

The baby boomers had boomed and there were 25 million, 20 million in America, 5 million in Great Britain.

And he realized they had to have a voice.

And his first ever supplement was the Teenage Special.

He wanted coverage of everythin that was happening in our area.

And so he was the chronicler and he asked me to be the illustrator at 16.

I got the job at that newspaper as a junior darkroom boy.

My duties were to wash the floor, make the chemicals, make the tea, file the negatives.

Literally, I was a runner.

I'd go with senior photographers on assignments and run back with the plate developed and print and so on.

So that's how it all began.

All the other photographers tha Harry had acquired in Heritage and the Northern Echo were all World War Two Age.

They had no idea who the Beatles were.

And so he said, If you want t do it, I always put my hand up.

You know, I've never put my hand down.

Always say yes.

He said that I can't give you any extra money.

You can't give me overtime.

You won't get any time off and you can't have any expenses.

Do you still want to do it?

Yes.

So that was how I started.

But the thing was, I was far too young to drive, so I had to go on my bike.

You know, I had a huge plate camera and inside the bag weighed probably about £35 and inside of there were 14 plate glass negatives that's what I had to carry.

And also inside of the bag was a flash was as big as a Bentley headlight so I had to strap that all to the frame of my bike.

And I was out in all weather photographing this revolution, the sixties revolution we were there at the beginning, my first ever portrait for the Teenage Special.

I went and photographed this Ella Fitzgerald.

Over the years, I've just been so lucky with the assignments of being given.

I went and photographed every celebrity.

I've done them all I learn never be in awe of any of them because they are looking at you as a professional and they expect you to be professional.

And if you are, they will sit down, buy a drink, and they'll talk your hind legs off because they love it.

But if you go in with an LP cover and say, Oh, could I have your autograph, please?

I think your last LP was absolutely fantastic.

You've had it, you've lost so I met the Beatles for the first time, February the nine, 1963.

That couldn't have been mor than 200 people in that theater that night.

It was just snowstorm in Sunderland County, Durham, England.

I heard this sound.

It went wah wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, boom.

Love, love me Do you know I love you?

So I pulled everything off the bike run round the front into th auditorium, took this picture, and that was the beginning of the revolution.

And according to the National Portrait Gallery in London, the picture I took of them on stage is the earliest known photograph of the Beatles live on stage.

Many of the Beatles pictures.

I have never saw the light of day because the world famous, which is quite remarkable, I had a whole series of photographs portraits of them, their reactions backstage the night that JFK was assassinated.

Again, the early photographer there November 22nd 1963 that one of those photographs never saw the light of day until they were published in my book which came out in 2008 in all of those assignments fo whatever you want to call them.

I never went to work.

I never worked a day in my life for me was it was just absolute passion.

I look upon the fact that my still photographs are a historical record of things that happened during all of those decades that I worked.

I never saw it as art.

I saw it as a craft, as always, as a profession.

And I realized what you had to do to beat all the others sometimes was 20 other photographers.

You had to get something different.

It was all about decision making.

It's all about being imaginative.

I never went out as, say, a graphic art photographer would do and go out and creat something like a Picasso would.

I never did that.

I was I was a boots on the ground photographer and always have been.

And I wouldn't have changed anything for Golden Cal.

No, never enjoyed every minute of it.

And still in.

It.

Well, that's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Remember, as always, you can visit past episodes of Gallery America by visiting our archives at our E.T.A.

TV slash Gallery America.

And don't forget about our bonus Bob Dylan content you can see it at E.T.A.

TV slash Bob Dylan.

As always, follow Galler America Online for daily updates of our news around Oklahoma.

And Art profiles.

You can follow it on Faceboo and Instagram at Otay Gallery.

Thanks again for joining us.

We'll see you next time.

Until then, stay Arty, Oklahoma.

You know, always start.

I know I've never heard a song like.

That before.

And everything I did up to that point that led up to writing a song like that just effortlessly One thing just led to the other to the next song.

Standing on the side of the living room, Hot Shots ring out for his curls no breaks.

Who's not to the level of.

Analysis of your song over the years?

Does it bother you when people try to pick apart your lyrics, or should they be satisfied with it meaning to them?

Whatever they would like it t mean to them in some places of.