Tickets

• General Ticket: $25

• Member Ticket: $22

We all know The Beatles and Bob Dylan influenced the course of popular music, changing our social landscape along the way. But did they also influence and change each other? Acclaimed New York Times journalist and widely recognized Beatles expert Jim Windolf offers a definitive “yes,” with proof! Join us for an incredible and fun evening of stories, music, and a little bit of history.

Part dual biography, part cultural history, Windolf’s book Where the Music Had to Go (April 2026, Scribner) presents a portrait of how two beloved musical luminaries actively shaped one another’s work. Windolf is joined in conversation by Susan Morrison, New York Times bestselling author of Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. The two are also joined for a special performance by singer songwriter Nellie McKay.

Packed with little-known anecdotes and revelations, including an account of every documented interaction between Dylan and the Beatles, and an exclusive interview with Paul McCartney, Where the Music Had to Go offers a critical framework for understanding the relationship between the two. Offering a fresh critical framework of that complicated relationship, Windolf reveals a story of rivalry, generosity, and creative exchange that reshaped the direction of modern popular music.

This event has been programmed in tandem with our Summer Exhibition THIS LAND: Considering the American Landscape, which can be viewed June 21 – September 6 during our exhibition hours 11 AM – 5 PM, Thursday-Monday.

JIM WINDOLF

photo by Susan Rushing

• ABOUT JIM

  Jim Windolf is a features editor at The New York Times. He has written profiles of musicians, filmmakers, actors and writers for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, New York, and Rolling Stone. His short fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals. He lives in New York.

SUSAN MORRISON

photo by, Taylor Jewell

• ABOUT SUSAN

  Susan Morrison is the author of the New York Times best-selling biography Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, which was longlisted for the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. For the past thirty years she has been the Articles Editor of The New Yorker. Formerly, she was the editor-in-chief of the New York Observer and an original editor of SPY magazine.

NELLIE MCKAY

photo by Robin Pappas

• ABOUT NELLIE

  NELLIE MCKAY emerged on the music scene with Get Away From Me to great critical acclaim and has since released an eclectic bunch of diverse albums, her songs and sound ranging from jazz to pop to indefinable.  

  She’s won a Broadway Theater World Award for Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera, starred in off-Broadway’s Old Hats, created musical biographies of Barbara Graham, Rachel Carson, Joan Rivers & Billy Tipton (‘Best Concerts of the Year’ – The New York Times).

  As well as acting in the films PS I Love You, Downtown Express, and Widowbird, Nellie provided music for Rumor Has It, Monster-in-law, Last Holiday, Gasland, Private Life, and PS I Love You.

  TV appearances include David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Craig Ferguson, The View, and Jimmy Dore, and her music has been heard on Mad Men, Weeds, Boardwalk Empire, Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, and Nurse Jackie.

  Nellie was nominated for an Ovation Award for her performance in Ehtan Coen’s A Play is a Poem at the Mark Taper Forum and recently finished a run of Coen’s Lets Love with the Atlantic Theater Company.

  McKay is a recipient of PETA’s Humanitarian Award for her dedication to animal rights, and she is a vocal critic of war, capitalism, and the two-party system that helps sustain them.