On the Road with Bob Dylan (24 page)

“What was his name?” Lola ad-libs.

“I have no idea.” Neuwirth shakes his head.

Dylan, standing on the side, grins.

The lights get doused, the crew starts breaking down, the clientele is buzzing about the stars and the movie, and Wally turns to Ratso. “The unrehearsed minute is the best,” he smiles sagely. “You can’t relive it.”

The concert is due to start in about an hour so the performers group to ride back to the hotel. Dylan comes over to Wally to say
good-bye. They shake hands and Wally sizes him up. “So you’re Dylan.” He smiles, peering into his face. “You look healthy enough. Pretty myopic, though.”

Ratso sits down and joins some of the film crew, who since they’re not shooting the concert have time for a leisurely dinner. He sits next to Johnson who seems to be pissed off. “That was shit,” Johnson moans, “those parts were real pretentious. They were doing schtick.”

“It was art,” Ratso mocks.

Johnson rolls his eyes. “Great, let’s see it, that’s the test. We did a great scene last night though, Joan on a bed with a picture of her kid. Joan’s a great lady.”

“Did you like this place?” Ratso modestly asks.

“Don’t worry,” Johnson semisneers, “I told Dylan you set this one up. Look Ratso, I don’t personally care whether you live or die, you’re great for the film, that’s what’s important. You’re a caricature of
Rolling Stone
, you’re where Ben Fong Wrong went right, a speed-freak fanatic, a man of the people. Look, Meyers and I have been together for eleven years, shot some of the best documentaries ever made, did Neil Young’s film, Cocker’s Mad Dogs tour. Meyers is sixty-four you know, and you brought us that kid in Springfield that sang that Rolling Thunder song and then charged right for the camera at the end. That made our top-ten list of greatest sequences we’ve ever shot. That’s why I like you.”

Around the table, Shepard, Alk, Meyers, and Howard are discussing the film. Shepard seems disturbed, claiming that making a movie isn’t like writing a song, it needs more planning and more scripting. Alk shakes his head vigorously. “Look, Dylan is a film genius. Genius. We can let Bobby go anytime as long as we prep the other people.” They continue on, discussing yesterday’s Baez scene as Ratso wolfs down a steak and then drives over to the college.

The gym is packed to overflowing as Ratso walks in and begins to make his way to the front. There are bleachers ringing the gym on three sides, chairs in the center, and bodies where the aisles
once were. Halfway to the stage, Allen Ginsberg sits with a group of Buddhists in rows, and Ratso waves, then fights his way to the backstage entrance and manages to pass the letter he wrote to Dylan to Lola, who promises swift delivery.

These are perhaps the worst conditions yet encountered on the tour, certainly rivaling Lowell’s gym, and with the crowd rocketing the temperature to close to 100 degrees it’s certainly no picnic up on stage. But onstage everybody’s pouring their guts out, Dylan sweating so hard his pancake makeup is completely washed off by his fourth number.

Outside, a bottle war is raging, the disgruntled students and hangers-on who couldn’t get in using the university police as targets for their Ripple and Thunderbird wine bottles. Ratso ventures out cautiously, hears a bottle whiz by his ear and smash up against the wall, splattering into a thousand glass fragments; he decides he likes the heat better.

A wise decision as he gets to see a compelling new version of “Simple Twist of Fate,” a scorching “Oh Sister,” a humid “Hurricane.” By now, even Scarlett looks hot in this sauna and she ain’t even human, Ratso marvels. “Bring on Roger,” someone screams for McGuinn and Dylan chuckles. “Roger’ll be right back,” he announces, “he’s gonna stay here all night.” Then “Just Like a Woman,” and a hush falls over the crowd, a hush as thick as the pea-soup atmosphere. Dylan’s picking his guitar like a machine gun, ratatating the phrases out over the mesmerized audience, a good percentage of whom are singing the words right back to him. McGuinn runs on to cheers and they shift into “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” the sweat pouring off Dylan now like a shower. Then everyone into the pool, the whole gang’s on for “This Land is Your Land,” Baez looking like some hippie beachcomber, barefoot, glitter T-shirted, and jeans rolled up, throwing Ratso a wink in the first row.

Then it’s over and they stream off the stage, with Raven like some water boy, standing, handing out towels as they flow by and
run directly to the warmed-up buses. Ratso walks around the gym a bit, checks out the now peaceful battle front, and then strolls back inside. The standing ovation is still pouring out, lasting at least ten minutes by now. Ratso walks to the backstage entrance where his car is parked.

By the stage door, Jacques Levy and his girlfriend Claudia are getting some well-deserved fresh air and Ratso stops to chat with them. Suddenly, a young kid tears around the building, stops, then stumbles the last few feet. He seems to be looking for something and lurches toward the trio.

“I can’t believe it,” he moans, “nothing, nothing.”

He looks over toward Levy.

“They’re not here, are they,” he asks rhetorically, “they left, huh?”

Levy smiles and nods.

“I can’t believe it,” the kid keeps mumbling, scanning the desolate grass field. “They’re gone.” He kicks at the dirt. “Like some goddamn dream.”

T
he tour left that night directly for Maine, but Ratso, true to his word to Louie, stayed behind and headed back to New York the next day for a breather before rejoining the troupe in Waterbury, Connecticut, on Tuesday night.

The reporter finds his way to the section stage left where guests and friends of the Revue are sitting and he plops into a seat as Neuwirth introduces a radiant Ronee Blakley, decked out in a long violet gown. Suddenly he looks up to see Ginsberg bearing down on him. “Bobby wants to see your article.” Ginsberg motions toward the advance copy of
Rolling Stone
Ratso has on his lap, “but I want to get your permission first.” Ratso shrugs and gives Allen the paper, settling back to watch Jack Elliot ramble through his set. Then Dylan strides on, without makeup tonight, but no doubt aware of the two cameras that are trained on his every gesture. He plows through his set, fairly unloquacious except for the inevitable dedication to Sam Peckinpah.

At intermission, Ratso buys some popcorn and settles down to dinner just as Lola comes out of the backstage door with Ginsberg. She looks concerned. “Listen, Bob is pissed. You shouldn’t have bad-mouthed Ronee in the article,” she sternly lectures.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ratso’s amazed.

“Why’d you call her a neurotic?” Lola demands.

Suddenly it dawns on Ratso. In his article, he had described Blakley as the
Nashville Neurotic
, referring to her movie role as Barbara Jean. Dylan must have skimmed the article, seen the phrase, and blown up. It’s nice he’s so loyal to his performers, Ratso muses.

“Look, schmuck, it’s in italics. I’m talking about the movie, not the city. She was a neurotic in the film, that was her role. I love Blakley, I’m listening to the tape of her new album every night, it’s great. Tell Bob what I meant, show him the context.” Lola agrees and scurries backstage before the Dylan-Baez segment.

Dylan and Baez start their set and Ratso settles back to listen. Until he feels this feather tickling his ear. He turns and looks at the seat next to his. Lisa again.

“Guess what?” she smiles her hapless smile, “I just got the itinerary this week and I haven’t slept with anybody.” Just then one of the security guards grabs Lisa and starts to dance with her in the aisle. After a few minutes, Lisa returns. “Barry Imhoff is hassling me to points of no end,” she moans, “’cause I’m all over. He saw me in the dressing room and really freaked out.”

Ratso settles back again, watching Baez rip through a torrid set, culminating with her doing the frug to McGuinn’s “Eight Miles High,” all captured by the omnipresent camera eye of filmmaker Meyers. Dylan returns to rip into “Hurricane,” giving it a special urgency since Rubin had been transferred that day from Trenton State to a much lower-security facility. But one that still believed in locks on the doors. Dylan is wailing, then he shifts into “One More Cup of Coffee” and is bending the words like a pretzel maker, sending sideliner Ginsberg into fits of ecstasy. Just then, Lola comes out into the hall and catches Ratso’s eye. She gives him the high sign then disappears mysteriously.

The band finishes “One More Cup” and Dylan turns his back on the audience, adjusting his guitar strap. He wheels back and leans into the mike. “We’re gonna send this next one out to Larry. He’s out there somewhere,” he peers, “he’s our favorite reporter.” A clamor arises in the audience, coming from the section where some of Ratso’s friends from New York are sitting. Weird little screams of “Larry, Larry,” reminiscent of the days of Sinatra and the Beatles, issue out. Dylan smiles, then leans back into the mike. “He tells it like it is,” he laughs, then starts into the beautiful “Sara.”

Ratso is stunned. After a few chords the dedication sinks in and he walks back out to the lobby, moved. After a minute or so, he starts back and bumps into Perry, Stoner’s girlfriend. “Good for you,” she pats his head, “you got your just reward.”

The next day, Ratso wakes early and works on his second
Rolling Stone
piece, due that Friday, and then gets a call from Tom Pacheco in New York. Pacheco is one of the new turks on the Village scene, a singer-songwriter who during the psychedelic years fronted a rock band named the Ragamuffins, and then discovered his folk and country roots, and is about to release his first solo album on RCA. It seems that Pacheco had just written a song about Dylan and he wanted Ratso to hear it. The reporter tells Pacheco to hold on, hooks up his tape recorder, and tapes the tribute, a rollicking rocker in the style of Dylan’s first single, “Mixed Up Confusion.”

That night, Ratso drives over to the tour hotel, article and tape in tow. In the lobby, Ginsberg and Orlovsky are sitting on a couch. “Wanna see my second article,” Ratso asks Allen, and the poet adjusts his glasses and scans the first page. After a minute he begins fumbling in his shoulder bag for a pen. “You should say ‘encompass’ here, not ‘engulf,’” Ginsberg notes, striking out the offending word like an English professor correcting an essay. “And ‘it was poetic justice’—that’s stronger. And change this description from ‘particularly obnoxious’ to ‘confused.’ He is confused, you don’t want to say obnoxious, someone might lay that on your karma.”

“Shit, Allen,” Ratso protests, “do I change your poetry? You look like a fucking professor.” “I am,” Ginsberg smiles, “director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters to boot.” They move into the dining room and Ginsberg spots Neuwirth eating. So they stop to chat. Neuwirth starts to scan the article. “Shit, man,” he glowers at Ratso, “don’t print that fucking shit about the bus, man. They’ll spot us everywhere we go.” He reads on and grabs a pen from his shirt, and starts inking out a word. “I’m Bob, not Bobby,” he frowns, carefully crossing out the “by.” “Man,” he shakes his head, “why do you have
to put that shit about Dylan and Baez together again.” “It’s in my contract,” Ratso says straight-faced,
“Rolling Stone
demands something in the lead about them together again.” Neuwirth just shakes his head. He tosses the manuscript across the table to Ratso, giving him a high sign. “You’re the only reporter who got Bob’s quote right at that ceremony,” Neuwirth observes, then goes back to his steak.

Ratso floats back to the lobby and bumps into Jack Elliot. Elliot sees the article and asks to read it. He slowly scans the pages, silently, with no pen, then hands the article back. “How’d you like the way I ended the story with your quote at the ceremony?” Ratso asks. “I didn’t put any words in your mouth, did I?” “No,” Jack drawls, pushing his cowboy hat off his eyes, “you just translated what I said into English.”

Just then Baez walks by and Ratso corrals her, and whips out his cassette player and the Pacheco tape. “What now, Ratso?” Joan sighs, and the reporter sits her and Jack down and plays the song. “That’s nice,” she smiles, “that is sweet.”

McGuinn falls by and shortly after that, Dylan rounds the corner. He spots Ratso’s machine. “Ratso, what’s happening. What you got there?” Ratso grabs his arm. “Sit down, sit down. I gotta play you this song. My friend wrote it, it’s about you, and he’s gonna go into the studio this week and RCA might rush to release it as a single.”

“Uhhh, I gotta go somewhere,” Dylan protests.

“Sit down, it’s only a couple of minutes long,” Ratso urges.

Dylan consents, but remains standing, his hands in his jeans pockets, his booted foot nervously tapping the carpet. Ratso rewinds, and starts the tape. Pacheco’s resonant booming voice blares out: