Reports vary, and he’s never really explained what happened, but in 1966, Bob Dylan was involved in some sort of altercation between his 1964 Triumph Tiger T100SS and Striebel Road on the outskirts of Woodstock, New York.
According to biographer Howard Sounes, Dylan and his wife, Sara, drove from Woodstock to Albert Grossman’s house (Bob’s manager) in nearby Bearsville. Dylan’s motorcycle was in Grossman’s garage, and Dylan wanted to take it to a repair shop. He set off on the bike from Grossman’s with Sara following him in their car.
A close friend of Dylan’s told Sounes that as Bob started on his way he lost his balance and fell off the bike, which landed on top of him. He himself told his biographer Robert Shelton that he hit aa patch of oil. But Dylan gave a different, longer account to the playwright Sam Shepard, saying he was blinded by the sun for a second, “kind of panicked or something” andI stomped on the brake causing the rear wheel to lock up.
It’s impossible to pinpoint Dylan’s injuries. By most accounts, including his own, he broke several vertebrae. If he had been seriously injured, an ambulance would have been called. None was, nor did Sara take her husband to the hospital. Instead, she drove him to the home office of his doctor, Ed Thaler, 50 miles away in Middletown, New York, where he stayed for 6 weeks.
One thing that did happen was that it gave Bob a chance to get out of the proverbial fast lane and take a break after an arduous few years that saw him strung out and on drugs. Although he still released albums it would be eight years before Dylan went on tour again.
