The Obsessive Fan Who Made Trash a Gold Mine

At a recent showing of “A Complete Unknown,” the new Bob Dylan biopic, a cheerful group of young women settled in to watch the delicately handsome Timothée Chalamet impersonate the singer. They barely noticed the 80-year-old man sitting next to them, armored in a winter coat and hat that he never removed. Then, the film began.

“This is all made up,” the man brayed at the screen. “It’s not what you think it is.” “You’re scum!” And so A.J. Weberman’s full-throated annotation of the film continued for 2 hours and 20 minutes, replete with dark interpretations of lyrics and references to how Dylan and the film intersected with such things as communism, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the C.I.A. and Barry Goldwater. The group of women exchanged confused glances but said nothing.

The Rise of A.J. Weberman

He began as one of Dylan’s keenest observers and fans, so intent on digging into the singer’s life that he sifted through trash cans outside 94 MacDougal Street, where the singer once lived. But he became Dylan’s nemesis, calling him a hoaxer and sellout, attacking him with an obsession bordering on madness. Now that Dylan is getting a Hollywood moment, Weberman sees a renewed opportunity to advance the anti-Dylan agenda that has sustained him for decades. He is writing a new book interpreting Dylan’s lyrics, and answering a cascade of emails and calls asking for his take on the film. Though his garbage-sifting has waned, his vendetta is as strong as ever.

Weberman’s Long-Standing Obsession

For more than half a century, the lives of Weberman and Dylan have been intertwined — though it is Weberman who has done most of the intertwining. Weberman, who has supported himself since his teens by selling weed, grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Riverdale. He briefly attended Michigan State University before being kicked out after a pot arrest, and then settled in the East Village and eventually fell in with countercultural Yippie figures like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

The Deeper Dive into Dylan’s Lyrics

While listening to Dylan songs on acid, Weberman became convinced that Dylan’s cryptic lyrics masked dark meanings. He heard references to himself. He played Dylan’s records backward and claimed to hear certain messages, like “Don’t expose me” concealed in the obscure song “Time Passes Slowly.” Richard F. Thomas, who teaches a class on Dylan at Harvard University, said Weberman’s belief that certain lyrics refer to him are “pretty much fantasy and beyond self-obsession.”

The Dylan Liberation Front

Weberman took issue with albums like Dylan’s 1969 country offering “Nashville Skyline.” The record’s cover showed the smiling singer benignly tipping his hat, and its songs lacked overt political and social commentary. He began claiming publicly that Dylan had become strung out on drugs — which Dylan denied — and had “sold out the left” by abandoning the political music that had defined his rise. He helped found the Dylan Liberation Front to re-radicalize Dylan and “free Bob Dylan from himself.”

The Confrontation

“It’s hard to know how serious or grounded he is at times,” the professor said of Weberman, adding, “To be fair, he was always after what makes the songs tick — not that he was going to find the answers in the trash.” Dylan scoffed at Weberman’s claims about his lyrics, including in a contentious phone conversation that Weberman recorded in the early 1970s that was released by Folkways Records as “Bob Dylan vs. A.J. Weberman — The Historic Confrontation.”

Weberman’s Continued Obsession

These days, Weberman is finishing his latest book, “The Dylan Heresy,” which offers still more exegesis. In the movie theater recently, Weberman alone applauded after Chalamet’s performances of the songs but joined in when folk fans in the film booed Dylan’s electrified performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. On Tuesday, Weberman stopped by Dylan’s old MacDougal Street building and, feeling sentimental, lifted a lid on one of the old trash cans and peered inside.

The Legacy of A.J. Weberman

He walked around the corner onto Houston Street and stood in front of Dylan’s former music studio, where he wrote his 1975 song “Idiot Wind.” “That song’s about me,” he said. “Look at how it starts: ‘Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press.’”