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If TMZ had been around in the 1960s, you can bet that D.A. Pennebaker’s infamous film of John Lennon and Bob Dylan “clearly fucked up on junk” in the back of Dylan’s limo would have made it to their blog and been blasted all over the Internet. But it wasn’t until the mid-80s when the videotape trading underground really took off, that copies made their way into collectors eager hands (I had a copy). Now it’s easy to see, of course, on YouTube.

I’d always just assumed that Dylan and Lennon were both just extremely hungover, but maybe they were on something stronger. Lennon himself would know, right? It would explain all that vomit talk, wouldn’t it? (See below).

This event occurred in May of 1966 at the time of Dylan’s first “electric” tour of Great Britain, during a year that he admittedly had a $25 a day heroin addicition. The encounter was captured by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and shows how nervous they were around each other. In his famous 1971 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon remarked about the awkward limo ride:

“I just remember we were both in shades and both on fucking junk. … I was nervous as shit. I was on his territory, that’s why I was so nervous.”

Lennon told Jann Wenner that has was “frightened as hell” that Dylan invited him to be in the film to put him down.

Dylan is obviously out of his mind on something and makes little, if any sense. Lennon seems a little embarrassed but still willing to play along. Whatever surreal flights of rock god verbal fantasy they had planned for this filming, the results were something rather less than coherent.

This is history baby. Not like great history or anything, but history nonetheless… It’s assumed by most people that they only spent a few minutes in the lino together. Not true, it was closer to a 30 minutes. Although it’s fairly excruciating

The John Lennon Bit (scroll down)