Talk:Albert Grossman

Death and cleanup

Albert Bernard Grossman was born on 21st May 1926, died 25th January 1986, of a heart attack. http://shopping.yahoo.com/p:Robert%20Shelton:1927145225:page=biography — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.82.16.42 (talk) 10:27, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this article needs a cleanup. The prose is strong and colorful and that suggests it is not original work, which is a bigger problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.211.32.55 (talk) 23:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

POV

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I'm adding a POV tag to this article because the text, though very colourful and interesting to read, is not written from a neutral POV.

For example: "Grossman is to be seen in all his stealthy pomp, like the Cheshire cat without its grin, oozing in and out of the scenes of Dont Look Back as he guides Dylan through his 1965 British tour and out the other side into superstardom." This is very colourful writing, but it's hardly neutral. If you watch the recent DVD reissue of Don't Look Back, you'll see there is an added commentary of the film by D.A. Pennebaker and Bob Neuwirth. At several points in the commentary, they pay glowing tribute to Grossman, explaining how he always put his artists first and defended them from the machinations and diversions around them. Unfortunately, some of the more colourful statements need to be balanced or toned down -- just because that's Wikipedia style. 82.71.0.229 08:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Plagiarism

This article is plagiarism. The following text:

He was a pudgy man with derisive eyes, with a regular table at Gerde's Folk City from which he surveyed the scene in silence, and many people loathed him. In a milieu of New Left reformers and folkie idealists campaigning for a better world, Albert Grossman was a breadhead, seen to move serenely and with deadly purpose like a barracuda circling shoals of fish. Other people—among them Jones and Howard Alk—liked him, finding him loyal, flexible and tolerant, polite and considerate on a personal level and possessed of a dry sense of humour. Either way, he protected those whose careers he managed, building them up, gaining them far more of their dues and defending their interests more fiercely than the nicer, more amateurish managers in the Village. His clients included Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp, Odetta, Peter, Paul and Mary, John Lee Hooker, Ian and Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Richie Havens, Todd Rundgren, The Band, the Electric Flag, Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. Sometimes he advertised that he was managing an act before they knew it themselves (as for instance in the 1965 Newport Folk Festival programme, when Mimi and Richard Fariña—and their manager—were surprised to find their names on Grossman’s list of clients).

Grossman is to be seen in all his stealthy pomp, like the Cheshire cat without its grin, oozing in and out of the scenes of Dont Look Back as he guides Dylan through his 1965 British tour and out the other side into superstardom. In 1969 he built the Bearsville Recording Studio near Woodstock, and in 1970 founded Bearsville Records. He had a finger in every possible pie, taking his percentage from venues and festivals his clients played, from their fees and royalties, from their music publishing, from the studios they recorded in, from the record labels that released their work, and sometimes from the houses they rented out of town.

By this time he was coming to the end of his association with Dylan. But he guarded Dylan’s premium value to the end. At the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1969, by this time with his long hair in a ponytail (a rare sight on a man in his 40s), he was prowling around the hospitality tents ahead of Dylan’s appearance. Asked if he’d heard the rumours that various members of The Beatles were going to join him on stage, he replied, sotto voce: ‘Of course the Beatles would like to join Dylan on stage; I should like to fly to the moon.’ Bob Dylan has never been given that level of guardianship since. The contracts between them were officially dissolved on July 17, 1970.

is lifted - exactly, word for word - from page 283 of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray, Continuum, 2006. It needs to be re-written in more neutral language with a proper acknowledgement of the source whence this info has been ripped off. Perhaps an editor can do it? or I'll do it myself, when I get a few hours off work. Mick gold 10:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Re-write & NPOV

I've done a radical re-write of this article, shortening it, and attempting to remove all original research and unsourced claims. I've included as many references as I can. Hopefully, this article is no longer vulnerable to criticism on grounds of non-compliance with NPOV or to accusations of plagiarism, because of material ripped off from Michael Gray's 'Dylan Encyclopedia', as I indicated above.

Therefore I have removed "The neutrality of this article is disputed" tag. Please leave message on this Talk page if you disagree. Mick gold (talk) 09:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Paul Pena

I think it may be worth a note in the article that Paul Pena's record New Train was not released for the majority of Pena's life due to a contract dispute between he and Grossman. WesUGAdawg (talk) 03:02, 26 March 2010 (UTC)