Bob Dylan "knew what he was doing" from the very start of his career, according to the man who played a key role in the singer's musical education.
Israel "Izzy" Young was running the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s when a young Jewish musician called Robert Zimmerman walked in. The two, who are still in touch today, became good friends, with Mr Young later organising Dylan's first concert in Manhattan and Dylan writing a song about the centre.
Fifty years later Mr Young is selling a rare piece of music memorabilia - the typewritten lyrics of a Dylan anti-nuclear song that was never released.
Go Away you Bomb, which is being auctioned by Christie's in London next month and is expected to fetch up to £35,000, was written in 1963 while Dylan was working on his second album. "Why didn't it come out? I've never found out - I've only asked him about 50 times," said Mr Young.
He recalled how Dylan started making friends with the musicians who gathered at the centre. "I didn't know him from anybody but the next thing you know he was playing with everybody and not trying to show how much better he was," said Mr Young, who now lives in Stockholm. "He was collaborative, not at all about showing off. After a month or so he came to me with some songs. I flipped, and I don't flip very often. I said this is really terrific."
Mr Young said from the outset it was clear that the young musician was "a terrific talent. He listened and he picked things up, got ideas for songs all over the place. He didn't miss a trick."
He said he had no idea how much the lyrics were worth. "Here's a song with the original corrections in," he added. "Nobody else has got anything like that."
