Dylanology - Public Controversies

Public Controversies

In 1958 A.J. Weberman was President of the Haystacks Calhoun Fan Club. Calhoun was a 601 pound wrestler. In 1964 while a student at Michigan State University, Weberman was arrested for sale and possession of marijuana. Weberman has written on the life and works of Bob Dylan, leaving CCNY to focus on creating what he calls a word concordance of Dylan's lyrics. Although a strong advocate of Dylan's importance as an artist, he is less supportive of Dylan the man. Weberman expressed his unhappiness with Bob Dylan in a telephone conversation he recorded that was made into a 33 rpm LP by Folkways Records.

Weberman's literary analysis of Dylan's work, which he has termed "Dylanology," is centered around Weberman's assertion that, to Dylan, many words have lesser-used meanings differing, sometimes greatly, from their common definitions. According to Weberman, "Rain", for instance, often means "hatred" in a Dylan song. Dylan wrote, "Father of love / Father of rain" in a song where opposites are contrasted.

Rolling Stone magazine has called Weberman "the king of all Dylan nuts." The New York Times reported an incident where Dylan, annoyed by Weberman who was constantly digging through his garbage, assaulted Weberman on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan. In another article, Rolling Stone reported that Weberman, "a man that terrorized Bob Dylan during the '60s," had now "returned to hassle his son," Jakob Dylan. Weberman claimed that the younger Dylan was a heroin addict. The BBC has broadcast Bob Dylan speaking of his heroin use, so that is now on the public record.

Weberman later applied his unusual research methods to Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew Norman Mailer, and other celebrities, coining the term "garbology" to describe his methods and writing the book My Life in Garbology. Cultural anthropologists such as the late Dr. William A. Rathje of the University of Arizonaconduct expeditions analyzing garbage to understand culture.

Weberman attempted to expand his "Dylan Liberation Front" into a "Rock Liberation Front", intended to pressure pop musicians into greater political activity.

Weberman, along with the Jewish Defense Organization, and JDO chief Mordechai Levy, were successfully sued for libel to the tune of $850,000 by Steven Paul Rombom, a PI arrested for impersonating an FBI Agent.

Weberman has also studied the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy and was employed by the late Congressman Henry Gonzalez of Texas and Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. Weberman and Michael Canfield's book on the subject, Coup D’Etat In America, postulates the assassination as part of a coup d'etat led by rogue CIA agents Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis (a contract agent) and David Christ, Head of the CIA's TSD's ELSUR section, angered by Kennedy's failure to remove Fidel Castro from power. The book includes transparent overlays, as in an anatomy textbook, so that the reader can compare the faces of the tramps briefly arrested in Dallas with photos of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis and David Christ. Weberman's assertion that Hunt was involved in this action led Hunt to initiate a lawsuit, later dropped. Before his death in 2005, Hunt told his son that he had been involved in the JFK assassination. In September 1978 Weberman was arrested for throwing at tomato at former President Richard Nixon when Nixon visited the Elmer Bobst Library at New York University. In 2005, Weberman and other well-known Yippies, including Dana Beal and Pie Man Aron Kay, joined forces to turn the long-time Yippie headquarters at 9 Bleecker Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side into a counterculture museum. As of 2006, renovation of the building was partially completed, and a charter from the New York State Board of Regents was granted. Weberman, who is a member of the Yippie Museum's board of trustees, facetiously announced in early 2006 that the museum would house the remains of Jerry Rubin's roadkill. By 2011, the Museum is fully operational and features a regular schedule of musical entertainment in its coffee shop. Website: http://yippiemuseum.org/

A film about Weberman, entitled The Ballad of AJ Weberman won the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs). He also did research for a book by Peter Lance entitled Triple Cross on an al-Qaeda triple agent who penetrated the FBI and CIA. In 2011 the Jewish Defense Organization Press published Weberman's A History of Islamist Terrorism in America. In 2011 the Yippie Museum Press published The Devil and Bob Dylan, a book that postulates Dylan sold his soul to the devil in return for fame and fortune.