Dylan, the Beatles and a ‘blacklisted journalist’,
by curt schleier, Jewish News Weekly, September 10, 2004
"The son of a kosher butcher from New Jersey, Al Aronowitz, 76, is the last of the angry formerly young men. He covered the pop culture beat for the New York Post and Saturday Evening Post in the late 1950s and ’60s. He was one of the first people to take contemporary music seriously, and in the process became friends with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He introduced Ginsberg to Bob Dylan and Dylan to the Beatles and the Beatles to marijuana. The details are all in his self-published book, “Bob Dylan and the Beatles.” Kerouac, he said, became a “drunk and anti-Semitic.” Ginsberg made a pass at Dylan when they first met. “Allen had a certain great charm. Even when he came on sexually, he made it funny. And Dylan just laughed.” It was a pivotal time in cultural history, and not only was Aronowitz there, he knew all the players. “I considered Ginsberg and Kerouac to be immortals. When I say immortal, I mean their work will live forever, like Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart. When I met Dylan I considered him to be an immortal, too' ... Aug. 28, 1964, was the fateful day when, as he writes in his book, he became “a proud and happy shadchen, a Jewish matchmaker, dancing at the princely wedding.” He brought a reluctant Dylan — he thought the Beatles played bubble-gum music — to the Beatles’ suite at the Hotel Delmonico, a move that Aronowitz believes changed music history."