LOOKING FOR THE SUM OF DYLAN'S MYSTERIOUS PARTS.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

While on tour in England in 1966, two young fans holding scraps of paper thrust their hands into the half-opened window of Bob Dylan's limo and implore him to give them an autograph.

``You don't need my autograph,'' Dylan slightly snarls in almost the same tone he sings ``Like a Rolling Stone,'' the song he performs at the beginning of ``No Direction Home: Bob Dylan,'' the Martin Scorsese documentary about the music icon.

``If you needed my autograph, I'd give it to you,'' Dylan continues as the car pulls away, leaving one of the fans to whine, ``What's wrong with him?''

The scene is shown in the second half of the PBS documentary being released on DVD today (Paramount; $29.99) and airing Monday and Sept. 27 on KCET.

While limited in intent - ``No Direction'' covers Dylan's rise to his self-imposed exile after his motorcycle accident in '66 - it is a compelling look at a man whose songs and persona impacted an era and continue to loom large. However, it's that question - ``What's wrong with him?'' - that echoes in one form or another throughout the documentary.

Dylan at that time was the golden idol, the man with the answers. Fans - even friends - wanted him to be the ``voice of a generation,'' the ``voice of protest,'' a pure, nonelectric folk singer. People wanted to be touched by his wisdom. But Dylan - who wrote ``don't follow leaders'' - would have none of it. And when he went his own way, they would yell ``Judas.''

In 3 1/2 hours, the documentary covers Dylan's life from growing up in the mining community of Hibbing, Minn. - where, in his words, it was too cold to protest anything - to a written reference to his motorcycle accident on July 29, 1966, after returning from his European tour, noting that he didn't tour again for eight years.

Much of ``No Direction'' is composed of interviews with the singer-songwriter himself and those who knew him in those days - from a candid Joan Baez, who does very funny Dylan impressions, to others like Dave Van Ronk, Pete Seeger, Liam Clancy, Maria Muldaur, Al Kooper, Bruce Langhorne, Tony Glover and the late poet Allen Ginsberg. And although one of the interviews is with Suze Rotolo, who like Baez was one of Dylan's ex-lovers, Scorsese eschews the personal aspects of the musician's life - no sex and drugs, just rock 'n' roll - instead concentrating on Dylan's artistic growth as a ``musical expeditionary,'' as he calls himself.

(You have to wonder, though, why Scorsese didn't approach guitarist Robbie Robertson, who was on Dylan's tour in '66 and who the filmmaker has worked with closely.)

The documentary is rich in fascinating material, whether you're a Dylan fan or not, and Scorsese assembles it seamlessly and dreamily. To tell the story, the filmmaker also uses archival footage, such as Dr. Martin Luther King's historic ``I Have a Dream'' speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, at which Dylan performed, as well as photos and clips from other films. Dylan even opened up his personal archives to Scorsese, and there are many moments that stick with you.

There's a brief scene of Dylan sitting at a piano with Johnny Cash, performing an impromptu version of Hank Williams' ``I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,'' and there's one of him playing ``Mr. Tambourine Man'' during a song workshop at the Newport Folk Festival. All the musical performances are wonderful but, unfortunately, complete versions of them are not on the DVD.

The interview with Dylan was taken from some 10 hours of video shot by archivist-manager Jeff Rosen - not by Scorsese. While the musician is relaxed and seemingly open, Rosen rarely gets him to reach to that level of keen observation evident in ``Chronicle, Volume One,'' the autobiography Dylan published last year. True, Dylan is a master at parrying questions - ``Asking me why I write surreal songs. That's surreal!'' he says in the new interview. But since less than an hour of the material is on the documentary, it's hard to know what was left out.

In clips of press conferences from the '60s, Dylan would volley back such silly questions, giving him a reputation of being difficult. But it's refreshing to see. People wanted him to tell them what he was all about so they could put him neatly in a box. But he'd turn around and ask, why is it important to you?

Oddly, ``No Direction Home'' - as fascinating as it is - waltzes around the subject. Only Baez touches on it when she describes how by '66 she felt hurt when Dylan didn't invite her to sing with him; how, like everyone else, she wanted to be around him; how she, too, didn't understand the direction his music had taken.

But she admits time has given her a different perspective, though you wonder if the hurt ever went away. Baez now sees it as something Dylan needed to do and, probably because of that, his songs shine as brightly today as they did when they were written.

Back then, Dylan was following his own muse. The songs he wrote aren't stuck in time; they have a universality to them. At one point, he notes in the documentary that people thought ``A Hard Rain Is Going to Fall'' was about atomic war. I don't know where they got that idea, he says, ``it's about a hard rain.'' And if you listen to the song today, you might never think about the bomb. (Time can change meaning, Dylan notes.)

Like a painting on the wall, his songs viewed from different perspectives yield different insights and meanings.

While ``No Direction Home'' beautifully charts Dylan's journey as an artist - no doubt delighting Dylan-philes - what you want to do after watching it is listen to his songs as if for the first time.

So now that I've added a thousand or so words to the Dylan-analysis pollution, here's a thought.

``It didn't matter what I said,'' Dylan acknowledges about why he popped off about anything that came into his head back in the '60s. ``It still doesn't, really.''

Rob Lowman, [phone]

robert.lowman(at)dailynews.com

NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN - Three and one half stars

What: The ``American Masters'' documentary by Martin Scorsese about the musical legend that is also coming out today on DVD.

Where: KCET.

When: Part 1 - 9 p.m. Monday. Part 2 - 9 p.m. Sept. 27. Both parts repeat starting at 8 p.m. Oct. 1.

In a nutshell: Fascinating - if somewhat facile.