Our December 2025 Bob Dylan Club Book-of-the-Month is Terri Thal’s My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob, and Me, published in 2023. Our discussion will be hosted by Bob Dylan Book Club Member Karen Lievense. Karen appreciates Bob Dylan for the way his music makes her feel, and, in Pete Hammill’s words, for “his more fugitive song : allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and ellipses, and by leaving things out, he allows us the grand privilege of creating along with him.” She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, not too far away from Gallup, where Dylan grew up (editor’s note: indeed!).
We are so lucky to have Terri Thal’s first hand account of a formative time in American music, the arts, politics, civil rights, women’s rights, idealism, and the stretching and redefinition of social norms. Terri Thal’s lively book describes her involvement and unique observations with insight and humor. To slip in a reference to Bob Dylan song: “No one else could play that tune”—you know it was up to her. Terri Thal’s book joins memoirs by Peter McKenzie (Bob Dylan on a Couch and Fifty Cents a Day, 2021), Suze Rotolo (A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, 2016), Dave Van Ronk (The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir, 2012—a book brought to publication after Van Ronk’s death in 2002 by Elijah Wald), and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Volume One (2004) as books that tell not only the core of Bob Dylan’s world from the day he arrived in Greenwich Village (January 24, 1961) but also the Greenwich Village scene more generally. In fact, you can’t get any closer to the center of Bob Dylan’s Greenwich Village world than the these five memoirs! There are a number of other books that are important, too. See: the Bob Dylan Book Club’s Recommended Curriculum on Greenwich Village, the Folk Scene, & the Rise of Bob Dylan.
One of Terri’s rols was to help folk singers get performance gigs and to promote their performances—and many fans know that she was Dylan’s first manager, serving in that role until Bob announced that, as his fame grew and he recorded his first album, he had signed with Albert Grossman in 1962. Terri helped other musicians as well, including Dave Van Ronk (whom she married), Maggie and Terre Roche, and others.
One feature in the book that I want to call special attention to: Pages 189-193 present an alphabetical list titled "Folk Singers and Related People in New York City, Mid-late 50s Through Mid-late 60s. I found this list an astounding—and even moving—homage to the folk scene. A middle section of the book presents amazing pictures from Terri’s own collections.
We are excited and honored to have Terri Thal join us at the December meeting.

Terri Thal is also renown for having recorded Dylan’s very first demo tape (also known as The First Gaslight Tape). The recording took place at the Gaslight Cafe in September, 1961. Songs included Old Man, Friend of Mine, Talkin’s Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues, Song to Woody, Car Car, and “most of” Pretty Polly.
Thal commented: “I didn’t have video—I didn’t have a record,. I needed something to show, to play for people to give them an idea of what the guy sounded like.” In another interveiw she said that “I took it to Philadelphia and I took it to Boston and I took it to Saratoga Springs. Everybody said “go way””.

Links
Terri Thal has attracted an enormous amount of attention for her book—and she has been very generous with her time in telling her story. I think this attention reflects an honesty, warmth, and independence that can be found in her book.
Flagging Down the Double Es
Princess Wow! (not to be missed!)
The Bitter End
Bob Porco’s Substack, here and here.
Marc Percansky
Meet the Author
UCR Classic Rock and Culture
Rock and Beat Generation, PART 1, PART 2, PART3
The Dylan Review

—Peter White, November 2025