Generation Gap Closes for Concert

The times may be a-changin’, but Bob Dylan, 20 years later, still fills the house. Even his Uncle Max showed up Monday night.

“I’m very proud of him,” said Max Zimmerman, 72, of Tarzana, who along with several family members and 18,000 other concertgoers poured into Costa Mesa’s Pacific Amphitheatre to hear the legendary folk-rock hero play and sing.

“I only wish my brother was here to see,” added Zimmerman, speaking of Dylan’s father, who died almost 20 years ago. Scanning the crowd as it filed into the amphitheater, he said, “I’m glad they are all here to appreciate him like we do.”

Others were equally in awe of what they were about to see.

“Bob Dylan is like one of the Beatles,” observed Jay Sills, 35, a Riverside attorney, whose wavy brown hair was starting to gray. “He is obviously very important.” True, there were fewer beards, beads and vans than in the ‘60s, and the once-familiar scents of incense and pungent weed floating through the summer night were missing.

But Monday night’s sellout crowd blended the ‘60s and the ‘80s, a schizophrenic assembly in which teen-agers came to rock ‘n’ roll with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who backed Dylan, and the older crowd--that is, in their late 20s and up--gathered to hear Dylan’s legendary poetry and music.

“I’ve followed Dylan ever since I was his age,” said Joel Gittleman, 51, nodding toward his college-age son, Barry, and putting in a plug for his favorite Dylan ballad, “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Asked his impressions of the mostly jeans-and-T-shirt-clad crowd, Gittleman added, “A lot of purple. All these people dress alike. . . . I’m the only one dressed in a jacket and tie.” Nearby, Erin Kelly, an Irvine high school student, said she was hoping Dylan would play her favorite song, the love odyssey “Tangled Up in Blue.”

“He’s a living legend and I wanted to check him out,” said Erin, dressed in a long yellow sweater, tight green pants and swinging a blue telephone wire key chain as she spoke. “I grew up on Dylan,” said Coralyn Hill, 25, of Long Beach, who was dressed in pink satin jacket, black lace tights and black velvet boots. “My parents are Woodstock people.”

Behind the T-shirt counter outside the amphitheater gates, vendor Tom Sizlo expressed surprise at how peaceful the crowd seemed to be.

“Usually, when you have a concert sell out real quick, the crowd is really rowdy,” said Sizlo, who noted that he had sold $2,000 worth of Dylan and Petty T-shirts and buttons in the 90 minutes before the concert started.

“I don’t know much about Bob Dylan, so I can’t explain this,” said Sizlo, 18, of Huntington Beach. “Usually like when you have a group like Rush it’s pretty rowdy. This has been pretty nice.”

Sizlo politely explained: “They’re a heavy-metal band.”

Some of the last people to straggle in included Gil Darves and his friends from Redondo Beach, who were no doubt caught in a line of cars that snaked its way down Fairview Road two miles from the gate.

“Don’t forget Tom Petty,” warned Darves, shaking the hand that was without a beer can at a reporter. “He shouldn’t be thought of as second billing. Dylan is a has-been.”

But that was hardly the prevailing view.

Mike Harges, 44, wearing a diamond stud earring on one ear, said he drove down from Los Angeles for the memories.

“I’m here trying to recapture my youth,” he said.