- Photo By Jason Wilson
The Adventures of Gordy McNeill
Story by Jason Wilson
In December 1964, Gordy McNeill saw Bob Dylan play at the Wilson High School auditorium. This one-and-only west coast performance on the tour lasted almost two hours (with an intermission), and consisted of a stool, guitar, and Dylan. That was it. No opening band and no nonsense. As he remembers it, tickets cost about four dollars, but that didn’t stop the show from being sold out way before he could get his hands on one.
Scott McKenzie was his surfing buddy who also happened to work at McCabe Guitar on Anaheim Street, one of three store locations in the Los Angeles area. They were the only ones selling tickets to Dylan at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. When McKenzie informed McNeill that his manager still had three tickets to the show, McNeill (13 years old at the time) immediately went down to McCabe Guitar and told the manager that he would work for him two straight weeks in exchange for the tickets and the show poster hanging on the wall. A deal was struck, and for those two weeks, McNeill mopped floors, took out trash, moved heavy boxes, and dusted the music shop. At the end of that time, he was awarded the tickets and the poster. He invited McKenzie and his other good friend Mike Smith to accompany him.
More tickets were sold than the Golden Bear could handle, so at the last minute they changed the venue to Wilson High School. As it turned out, they were great floor level tickets; the only drawback was that none of them were remotely close to each other. The boys were a tight group, so they decided to trade tickets with someone else who had three together in the front row of the balcony.
McNeill remembers the set opening with “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and being transfixed with his chin resting on his arms on the balcony ledge in front of him. He was sitting in one of only 1200 west coast seats and he soaked up every moment of it, including when Dylan played “To Ramona” for the first time live.
Supposedly, there were only three posters made for the event, one for each of the McCabe Guitar shops. McNeill recently turned down an $8000 offer for his tattered copy. He says the other two (both in mint condition) sold for around $30,000 a piece.
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