Update…July 29, 2022
Looks like Bob’s buddy Zeus (of Zeus News fame) might have written this press release vindicating Bob…
Kind of sounds like LARS, Part Deux…
On the other hand, J.C. could really be “Johanna” (of Visions of…) and Bob owes her a fortune…
Original post follows:
It was a lovely November evening, November 9, 1965. In New York City the skies were clear and there was no wind. And so my friends from the Training Department at MONY at 1740 Broadway and I walked across 53rd street and down 7th avenue a bit and then eastward, toward a small French restaurant on Fifth Avenue at Midtown. We sipped wine, tore off pieces of baguette, shared escargot and crab amandine. We talked about our friends, and about a dreamy young exec upstairs named Richard, whose eye I had managed to catch. We may have chatted a bit about a recent trip to an art museum, and reminisced about the Mona Lisa not being in the Louvre when I visited there, as Jackie Kennedy had it brought to the US…on the same ship I had taken..the SS France…
Bob Dylan was jamming nearby at the City Squire Hotel that day with Robbie Robertson, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones of The Stones. Bob Neuwirth, his sidekick, was also there. At some point he may have left for home, the Chelsea Hotel and Sara…
The first thing we noticed was that suddenly everyone in the restaurant had stopped talking. There were only whispers. Then we noticed that we could see right through the large plate glass windows onto the street…as there were no lights. Anywhere.
This had not happened in New York before. Or anywhere else for that matter. It took everyone by surprise. We finished eating quickly, and paid our bill. We slipped out of the restaurant and onto the street, which was filled with…people. Speaking in hushed tones, most seemed to be heading downtown. I suppose we wondered for a moment if this were some sort of attack, as we were still in the Cold War, and had lost President Kennedy just two years earlier. But that concern was quickly dispelled. Nobody was telling us what to do or making orders of any sort. Everyone just seemed baffled. There was no police presence. Just a herd of people like a sloth moving south.
Fortunately, the full moon shed its light on the city that night…
Did Bob return home when the lights were out? Did he see the ladies playing blind-man’s bluff, and the all-night girls? Did he see the night watchman click his flashlight? Was Sara resting or asleep when he slipped in the door of their apartment? Had Bob smoked something, or taken something to relax? It was so quiet you could hear keys in a door downstairs. Strange shadows appeared and disappeared as flashlights popped up unexpectedly and in strange places.
Our merry band continued our walk downtown, talking with everyone around us. My roommate, Carol, and I, shared (without thinking) that we had a second floor apartment at 7 west 14th Street. Our entourage quickly increased in size. By the time we turned the corner off of Fifth Avenue we realized that we had created a kind of monster, but we decided to make the best of it. We opened up the cupboards and refrigerator and we partied. So did most of the floor. The doors stayed open. We shared food and drink, sang and danced informally and somewhat sporatically. It seemed transister radios came and went as things slowly came back to life. I contributed an acoustic guitar to the mix, and may have played a song or two…There was at one point some jamming down the hallway… Two songs were Puff the Magic Dragon, https://genius.com/Peter-paul-and-mary-puff-the-magic-dragon-lyrics
and Try to Remember https://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/thefantasticks/trytoremember.htm
And at one point I recall a refrain of Blowin in the Wind…
… It was just chaotic fun.
Here’s a good article on radio and the blackout…
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-york-city-lost-power-radio-saved-day-180957194/
Even the building manager was grudgingly gracious. Eventually some found places to curl up and sleep. That was not easy to do, as our furniture consisted of two twin beds, a marble-top table and chairs, a TV, a bureau and a couple of pole lamps…
It seems quite unbelievable now. In the morning many of our guests managed to take showers before they left. In hindsight, that meant we had hot water, which meant the lights were back on. We borrowed soap and towels from down the hall. Carol and I cleaned up a bit and went to work. I think we took a cab, as we were a bit worn out. I think we were late as well, but everybody was that morning.
It was surreal…
Bob, on the other hand, seems to have inhaled the larger ambience of the event. The quiet.
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The weird shadows.
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
The secrecy. The longing for something not there…
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
And so, with the unbridled genius of perception, did the blackout (Freeze Out) perhaps precipitate the start of perhaps his most unusual and compelling song, that became Visions of Johanna…did he write quickly by hand in that silent night? I would like to think so, rather than hearing the clatter of typewriter keys…
And yet the concept of ‘key’ is central to VOJ…
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
To Bob, it seems that a ‘key’ song may contain information hidden in it for a select few…those with occult wisdom who can comprehend a secret layer…
So what is secret in VOJ? Well, we all think we know one thing…
Just who is Johanna…
Sara was present, so it can’t be Sara…in fact, Sara may be ‘Louise’…
Johanna is someone or something once possessed, perhaps, that is no longer accessible…and may no longer care…but we don’t really know — or really want to know. Just that it is a longing that is more powerful than anything in his surroundings…enough to make his conscience explode…
And then there is the enigmatic line…
He examines the nightingale’s code…
This line appears only in some of the early versions of Freeze-Out…
What does it mean?
Who or what is the nightingale?
Is the nightingale also Johanna? Or are they two separate people…or things?
And then he takes us to the Met…to meet up with Mona Lisa
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
Did Bob perhaps visit the Met when the Mona Lisa was on loan to it?
https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/features/2013/today-in-met-history-february-4
His description of the ladies sitting around it is hilarious..and memorable…
But all that remains is the angst…
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
Bob went on to marry Sara on the second anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy..
November 22, 1965
Their first child, Jesse, was born in January, 1966…
Visions of Johanna was released on Blonde on Blonde the following summer,
and the rest is history…
Or is it?
Is there still a mystery?…
And in further irony, it looks like John Lennon and Yoko Ono met on this day the following year, at the Indica Gallery in London…
across the universe…
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/on-this-day-in-1966-john-meets-yoko
Dylagence 
https://thjkoc.net/2013/11/08/where-were-you-when-the-lights-went-out/
“The Rolling Stones were in New York that night, one week into their fourth American tour, enjoying some downtime between a two-show day in Newark on the 7th and a show in Raleigh, North Carolina, scheduled for the 10th. During their stay in the city, Brian Jones had spent some time in a recording studio with Bob Dylan and Wilson Pickett. (Jones was the only member of the Stones to hit it off with Dylan, and was allegedly offered a spot in Dylan’s band, which he turned down.) On the night of the 9th, undaunted by the blackout, Jones threw a party in a suite at the Lincoln Square Motor Inn. Dylan is said to have remarked as he arrived, “It’s an invasion from Mars! Let’s turn on. What better time? The little green men have landed.” Also on hand that night were Dylan’s friend and collaborator Bobby Neuwirth and Robbie Robertson of the Band. Before the night was over, the four musicians jammed by candlelight. Fellow Stone Bill Wyman later nicknamed it “the lost jam.'”
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