Bob Dylan

Considering his iconic stature -- as arguably not only our best songwriter but also the world's most influential living artist in any medium, a rock star's rock star rumored to be in the running for a Nobel Prize in literature -- it's surprising how little is known about Bob Dylan.

Victor Maymudes, 65, close friend, sometime tour manager and chronicler of pop musician Bob Dylan. The son of two Los Angeles Yiddishist activists, Maymudes grew up with civil rights rhetoric and music. In 1955, he opened a Los Angeles folk club, the Unicorn. He began working with Dylan in 1962, serving as a road manager particularly adept at designing tour buses, and occasionally as talent coordinator and associate producer.

Lou Levy, 84, music publisher associated with Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Henry Mancini. Levy's company, Leeds Music, published Dylan's first songbook, the Beatles' first American hit, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and Mancini's early songs. The publisher also nurtured the careers of the Ames Brothers, Bobby Darin, Eddie Fisher, Connie Francis, Woody Herman and Steve Lawrence. Levy once managed the Andrews Sisters and was briefly married to the late Maxene Andrews.

Rock legend Bob Dylan canceled a two-week European tour Wednesday after being hospitalized in New York for treatment of a respiratory infection, according to a statement released in London by the singer's representatives. The statement said that the 56-year-old singer-songwriter, who was hospitalized last weekend, is suffering from histoplasmosis, a fungal infection that creates a swelling of the sac that surrounds the heart. In severe cases that are left untreated, the disease can be fatal.

Mark Spoelstra, 66, a singer, songwriter and guitar player who migrated to New York's Greenwich Village along with other folk and blues performers of the 1960s, died of pancreatic cancer Sunday at his home in the Amador County town of Pioneer east of Sacramento. A native of Kansas City, Mo., who grew up in El Monte, Spoelstra became friends with Bob Dylan, and the two performed together at New York coffeehouses and clubs in the early '60s.

"It Ain't Me, Babe," Bob Dylan sang as his capper Wednesday at the Hollywood Palladium. "Is too," the response of the faithful would have it. Loyalists who in recent years have rarely been able to arrive at any consensus on whether a particular show of the bard's was a blast or a blowout seemed in rare unanimity that this was exactly the Dylan they were looking for--loose and playful, yet creatively alert and respectful toward his material.

Strange night. Bob Dylan comes on stage on the eve of the release of his most satisfying collection of new songs in years and he doesn't do any of them. Instead, Dylan--after years of resisting audience requests for more of his classic '60s material--is devoting so much time to songs from that era, for the second tour in a row, that fans actually began calling out the names of some of his '70s and '80s songs near the end of his concert Tuesday at the County Bowl.

"I'll be your baby tonight," Bob Dylan crooned sweetly near the start Saturday night of what observers here described as the most significant rock concert in this young country's existence. Anyone, however, who expected Dylan to live up to the obliging sentiments of that teasingly romantic song simply didn't know the acclaimed songwriter's long history of independent action.

Bob Dylan devotees listen up. Dylan purists, cover your eyes. Future film audiences will see imitators of America's rock poet performing such hybrids as a rap version of "Like a Rolling Stone" and a Dylan-Joan Baez cover of "It Ain't Me, Babe" in an upcoming documentary from director Ken Kwapis ("Vibes," "He Said, She Said."

There haven't been that many nights in rock 'n' roll when you could say after a performance that music will probably never be the same again, but two marvelous new DVDs let us revisit two such evenings. "The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965," which will be released Oct. 30, takes us back to the night in 1965 when Dylan outraged folk purists at Newport by going "electric" with a rock 'n' roll band.