A. J. Weberman

Alan Jules Weberman (born May 26, 1945), better known as A. J. Weberman, is an American writer, political activist, gadfly, and popularizer of the terms garbology and "Dylanology". He is best known for his controversial personal confrontations with the musician Bob Dylan and for his 30-year involvement with the Yippies, a counterculture movement of the 1960s.[1] He was also an activist in the Jewish Defense Organization, said by the Anti-Defamation League[2] to be a militant Revisionist Zionist organization regarded as a branch of Kahanism, but which professes to be a Jabotinskyite organization.[3]

Contents

Public controversies

A.J. Weberman has written on the life and works of Bob Dylan, leaving college 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'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."[4] They report an incident where Dylan, annoyed by Weberman and his associates who were constantly digging through his garbage, assaulted Weberman outside Dylan's apartment. In a different article, Rolling Stone reports 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.[5] The BBC has broadcast Bob Dylan speaking of his heroin use, so that is now on the public record.[6]

Weberman later applied his unusual research methods to Richard Nixon, Norman Mailer, and other celebrities, coining the term "garbology" to describe his methods and writing the book My Life in Garbology. Cultural anthropology anthropologists such as Dr. William A. Rathje of the University of Arizona conduct expeditions analyzing garbage to understand culture.[7][8]

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[9] by Steven Paul Rombom, a PI arrested for impersonating an FBI Agent.[10]

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'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 TSD of the CIA, 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. 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 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 has been partially completed, and a charter from the New York State Board of Regents has been granted. Weberman, who is a member of the Yippie Museum's board of trustees, announced in early 2006, in a typical display of Yippie spoofery, that the museum would house an Institute for the Study of Advanced Political Protest.[11] 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[12] won the Raindance Award at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs).[13] He also did research for a book by Peter Lance[14] on an al-Qaeda triple agent who penetrated the FBI and CIA. In 2008 The Yippie Museum Press published HOMOTHUG, an unauthorized biography of Rudy Giuliani that was later pulled off the market by Amazon and is only available used or from A.J. Weberman directly.[15]

Reference material

Publications

Notes

  1. ^ "Officially founded by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin in January 1968, the Youth International Party, or Yippies, were a countercultural group that briefly gained fame as a part of American activism. The group’s trademark was their theatrical style; the Yippies parlayed anti-authoritative dissent and subversion into surrealism, spontaneity, mischief, and performance." Independent Lens http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chicago10/yippies.html
  2. ^ Anti-Defamation League Report, Extremism in the Name of Religion: The Violent Record of the Kahane Movement and its Offshoots, 1995
  3. ^ Jewish Defense Organization: Death To Nazi Scum
  4. ^ "Rock and Roll Daily", Rolling Stone, June 11, 2007
  5. ^ "Man no fan of Dylan family," Rolling Stone, July 4, 1997
  6. ^ "I kicked a heroin habit in New York City," he confesses. "I got very, very strung out for a while, I mean really, very strung out. And I kicked the habit. I had about a $25-a-day habit and I kicked it."
  7. ^ Severo, Richard (October 5, 1989). "Mining Trash Heap for Answers to Riddles". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/05/nyregion/mining-trash-heap-for-answers-to-riddles.html. 
  8. ^ "Garbology": as defined by The Merriam-Webster Dictionary online:
    the study of modern culture through the analysis of what is thrown away as garbage [1]
  9. ^ The Hunting of Steven J. Hatfill
  10. ^ Krebs, Brian (July 25, 2006). "Agents Arrest Background Specialist at Hackers Forum". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/24/AR2006072401196.html. Retrieved April 23, 2010. 
  11. ^ Museum will have Abbie’s trash, Rubin’s road kill
  12. ^ The Ballad of A J Weberman Documentary
  13. ^ The Ballad Of AJ Weberman - - 2006 The Raindance Award | The British Independent Film Awards
  14. ^ http://peterlance.com
  15. ^ Amazon.com: HOMOTHUG: The Secret Life of Rudy Guiliani (9781419689390): Alan J. Weberman, Yippie Museum Research Team : Books: Reviews, Prices & more

References

The Weberman tapes

Recordings of telephone conversations between Weberman and Dylan, New York City, January 6 and January 9, 1971. Originally released as Bob Dylan vs. A.J. Weberman on Folkways Records, Catalog #FB 5322, 1977, quickly deleted for legal considerations, but circulated in various bootleg pressings. Original Folkways recording also contains an otherwise unreleased version of David Peel's "The Ballad of A.J. Weberman".
  • East Village Other (periodical), January 19, 1971
  • Authors or editors unknown. The Fiddler Now Upspoke Volume 1 (Desolation Row Promotions, other publishing data unknown)

Other recordings of interest

  • Bob Fass Show With A.J. Weberman & Ellen Sanders, WBAI Radio, New York, 1968 (155 minutes)
  • Bob Fass Show, WBAI Radio, New York (Studio discussion with Bob Fass, Allen J. Weberman & Ellen Zander) (Part 1) 1970
  • Bob Fass Show, WBAI Radio, New York (Studio discussion with Bob Fass, Allen J. Weberman & Ellen Zander) (Part 2) 1970
  • Bob Fass Show WBAI Radio New York (Studio Discussion With Bob Fass, Allen J. Weberman & Ellen Zander) (Part 3) 1970
  • Alex Bennett Show, WPLJ Radio, With A.J. Weberman & Anthony Scaduto, 1974 (46 Minutes)
  • John Roberts, telephone interview with A.J. Weberman for The Telegraph, (July 20, 1994) (12 Minutes)
  • A.J. Weberman, WFMU Radio, New Jersey (18 Minutes) (no date given)
  • The Larry King Show with A.J. Weberman, Garbologist (no date given)

External links