Anniversary

This Friday, 50 years ago, on 28 August 1964, in a room in the Delmonico hotel at Park Avenue and 59th in New York City the Beatles encountered Bob Dylan for the first time. The rendezvous was brokered by Al Aronowitz, journalist, mutual friend and assiduous self-publicist. At this occasion, so the legend goes, the folk singer genius introduced the English band to marijuana. Ringo Starr, the first to be offered a smoke and ignorant of dope etiquette, chugged through that first joint like a stevedore attacking his first Woodbine of the morning and collapsed in a giggling mess. Brian Epstein became so stoned he could only squeak,"I'm so high I'm up on the ceiling." Paul McCartney believed he'd attained true mental clarity for the first time in his life and instructed Beatles roadie Mal Evans to write down everything he said henceforth. Dylan, meanwhile, lost his cool and began answering the hotel phone by shouting, "This is Beatlemania here!" Otherwise they drank wine and acted the goat, like bands do.