On the Road with Bob Dylan (8 page)

“Let ’Em sue,” Bob cursed. “CBS’ll drown him. Hey, my vision is going, I’m seeing double.”

But they prodded him into one last take, not a bad one at that, only one slight mistake in the last verse.

“Shit,” Dylan grinned, “they can splice that in. Hey, let’s go home. Don, pick a good one.” And with a cavalier grin after five hours in the studio, Dylan and entourage departed, leaving DeVito with eleven takes from which to construct the story of the Hurricane.

D
ylan’s re-emergence into the Village scene seemed a certain indication that he was looser, much more accessible. It had been years since he had actually hung out in the Village, and here he was making the music scene regularly, doing such uncharacteristic things as allowing himself to be photographed with Patti Smith, and, for the first time since 1969, consenting to do a TV show.

It was a one-day affair, Dylan, Stoner, Wyeth, and Scarlett flying out to Chicago to tape a PBS Soundstage Tribute to John Hammond, the music biz giant who had signed Dylan as a rosy-cheeked minor to his first Columbia Records contract.

The show itself was magic, Dylan appearing as some sort of psychedelic shaman, in ’60s surplus black-and-white-striped pants, ruffled white tuxedo shirt, open at the neck, and the inevitable black leather jacket. But the most compelling thing about him was those eyes, burning with passion and fire, flaming out even through the television screen, a luminous presence. It was Dylan as street punk again, the hair ragged and shockingly wild, the pose gruff and determined, the enthusiasm starkly evident.

And the enthusiasm spread like wildfire when they got back to New York, with the talk of a tour hot on the tip of every trend-maker’s tongue. Everyone in the Village music scene was ready to pack, everyone but Stoner.

“I’ve been in the music business so long,” the twenty-eight-year-old bassist sighed, “and been through so many scenes where like people seem enthusiastic and it doesn’t come off, because like I had seen it so many times before, great enthusiasm leading to nothing. Like I don’t get excited about nothing until I see my airplane
ticket. Until my fucking airplane ticket is in my hand, man, I don’t start to count on a gig.”

Well, Stoner got his plane ticket to fly back to New York after that Soundstage gig and here it was six weeks later and he found himself rehearsing every night up at Studio Instrument Rentals, with sound men conferring behind their console, equipment needs being catalogued, gofers providing a steady stream of hero sandwiches and beers. In fact, the only thing missing to convince the cynical Mr. Stoner that this wild-eyed scheme hatched over the last few weeks was actually going to happen was that prepaid TWA plane ticket in his hand. But that he’d never see. This tour would be going by bus.

But not before one more party. A pure setup, arranged to get still more footage for the documentary of the tour. The Ginsberg and Porco affairs were fortuitous bonuses, but this Saturday night bash had been planned for days. The host was MacDougal Mike, a friend of Dylan’s who once ran a camera shop opposite Bob’s MacDougal Street townhouse. Mike is sort of the Pearl Mesta of the Village folk scene, getting together a party whenever the latest lyrical luminary hits town. And his place is an ideal setting for a party scene, a duplex with lush thick shag carpeting downstairs, a vast array of tall tropical plants, soft velvet couches, and a bedroom upstairs that overlooks the scene below from a balcony.

All the regulars were there quite early, Eric Anderson, Ginsberg, Blue, Neuwirth, Patti Smith, Ochs, Ian Hunter (of Mott the Hoople fame), and Ronee Blakley. Dylan was hiding out in the bathroom upstairs with Ramblin’ Jack, as the rest of the scenemakers scurried up Eighth Street, talked their way past the uniformed rent-a-guard Mike had employed for the evening, and made their entrances. After a half-hour or so, Dylan tentatively peeked out of the bathroom and tried to brave the throngs hanging out but was immediately besieged by Allen Ginsberg and Eric Anderson and looked around for a way out. He spotted me slouched on the bed and scurried over.

“Hey Larry, you’ll never guess what happened to me. I was over taking a break from rehearsal the other night and we went to the Cosell show and Cosell came over to where we were sitting during a break and wanted me to do a song.” His eyes widened with mock amazement. “But I didn’t have my guitar with me and so he goes into this long rap about how he’s helping Rubin and how he’s gonna get him out of jail single-handedly.” We both scoffed at Cosell’s rhetoric, especially since I knew that the sportscaster had done nothing to aid Rubin outside of showing up at a fund-raising party a few months earlier after George Lois virtually twisted his arm off in an attempt to gain his support. But it was clear Dylan was just biding time, idle chatting in an attempt to escape the succession of partygoers who had one reason or another to hit on him.

But, there was a film to be made, so Dylan got up from the bed and warily made his way downstairs. Ginsberg immediately suggested a shot. He’d go out across the street and hang out in front of the Orange Julius stand on Eighth Street so the camera could pan slowly over the lush apartment, over to the window, then zoom in on Allen, standing there like some aging hawk, doing the street scene. “Sure, Allen,” Dylan answered with a preoccupied glaze across his eyes. “We can try that.”

But then Bob was distracted by this curvaceous platinum blonde, an uptown-looking ingénue decked out in satin pants and a clinging silk shirt, one or two buttons open and exposing the top of a magnificent chest. She was coming on to him and Dylan cued the camera crew and they rushed over as he began to engage her in a long dialogue about marriage, centering on a concept he tells her he’s been toying with, mental marriage. But after a few minutes, he seemed restless and Phil Ochs buttonholed him and began an inebriated rap about a Charles Bronson detective movie he’d just seen, describing detail after detail. Again, Dylan cued the camera crew and turned to Eric Frandsen who’d been sitting on the bed, strumming an acoustic guitar. “Play some slow slide stuff,” Bob
whispered, and suddenly the encounter was turned into another possible scene for the movie.

The party dragged on and Dylan seemed bored, having exhausted all the possibilities for good footage. He couldn’t move without getting hit on, by friends, strangers, and even a reporter from
People
magazine, who was relentlessly stalking his prey, the subject of
People’
s next cover.

Just then the
People
magazine reporter sidled up, attempting to catch Dylan’s ear. He mumbled a few phrases, and Dylan listened politely, but at the first opportunity the singer scooted away. “I’m getting bummed out, man,” he said, “I can’t believe that guy from
People
. He keeps asking me all these questions. I mean, I gave him an hour, isn’t that enough?” Then Eric Anderson pushed his way up past the reporter to present Dylan with a sketch of the songwriter that Eric had just done at the party. It’s labeled “The Hurricane” and signed at the bottom. Dylan awkwardly grabbed it and turned to me. “Here, take this.” “Don’t you want it?” “Naw, you keep it.” He seemed edgy and was looking for a way out, so I spirited him away from the crowd over to the door, grabbed the elevator, pushed him in, and closed the iron cage doors. A great party exit.

Later on, I bumped into Blue near the kitchen and he began to reminisce about Dylan, trying to make sense out of the impending tour. “He’s just an ordinary fucking guy,” Blue growled. “Great songwriter. He got swept up in the fame thing and he knew how to control it, he rode with it. He’s real shrewd. He’s paying everyone back now, you know, it’s like a family thing.” And Blue was right, just a quick glance around the room could confirm that. Besides Blue, there was Neuwirth, Dylan’s old road manager and confidant, shepherding T-Bone Burnett, a lanky Texan discovery of Neuwirth’s, through the crowded room. Not unusual, except T-Bone had a bag of golf clubs on his back, a driver in his hands, and Neuwirth was screaming, “Playing through, playing through.”
Then there was Eric Anderson, another of the original Villageites, and Phil Ochs, sprawled across a couch. Ramblin’ Jack was roaming around, the one who hung out with both the fathers and the sons, the real link to the Guthrie folk scene and the folk-rock set that Dylan spawned. Even Bard Ginsberg was around to offer his benediction. And the magnet luring this scene together? He had escaped hours before, riding his fame down the elevator and back onto the street.

T
he next night, Sunday, was the last rehearsal before they hit the road, so there was a sense of expectancy in the air circulating through Studio A at Studio Instrument Rentals in midtown Manhattan. The studio itself was bare and dark, a lone sofa and some chairs at the rear of the room behind an old coffee table saddled with soft drinks and beers. Imhoff had made some alterations, bringing in an electric tennis game machine to forestall the inevitable boredom. As I walked in, Ramblin’ Jack was on the makeshift stage, romping through “Me and the Devil,” an old Grateful Dead tune, with Stoner thumping along on bass. Patti Smith was wandering around the rear, directing the music with grandiose sweeps of her arms.

Dylan walked in and quickly surveyed the room, then slumped into a soft chair, the toll of the week’s activities clearly etched into his face. Onstage, Jack was improvising a song, “I’m tired, and I’m wired, I tried to wire you, I tried all I could do, on the telephone.” He chuckled and blurted out to no one in particular, “I ought to write that down, I like that.” Jack has not written a song in years, since he never does get around to writing them down.

I sat down next to Dylan and reminded him about the interview we had discussed previously. He looked wary, as if he were thinking of ways to put it off some more. Finally, he got up, sighed, and turned to me. “OK, let’s do it, but I ain’t gonna talk much.”

He led the way out through the dingy hall and into a small, poorly lit office. Mel Howard was sitting at a desk near the rear of the room talking on a phone. I was steered to a desk on the opposite side of the office, and began setting up the tape recorder as
Bob flopped down into a chair. He was edgy at first, but it soon became clear that he was actually nervous. That helped to put me at ease.

Dylan looked at his watch. “I can give you a half-hour, that’s all now.”

I started by asking about Rubin, someone we both could relate to.

“How’d you find out about Rubin, Bob?”

He thought a bit while pounding his nails against the table, and suddenly answered, with a rush of words.

“OK, from Richard. Exactly like it was in the transcript of the interview with Rubin you showed me. I got the book. I read it. I made a mental note that if I was east, I would visit him. And then I did it.”

“You drove out there. What was it like?”

“I mean, er, what was it like? What’s Trenton like? Uh …” he repeated quizzically.

“You drove out there, got to those red brick walls …”

Dylan picked it up: “… got to the brick walls. There was no problem getting in because Richard had the keys to get in. We met in the library and we were there for most of the day as far as I can remember. We got there in the morning and left when it was dark.”

“What happened in between?”

“In between what?”

“The morning and the darkness.”

“Rubin has this poem, I don’t know if he recited it for you, ask him next time you see him. A poem about a bird on the wall or a bird out the window, watching a bird on the window. I can’t quote it, I don’t remember it too well anyway, but what happened—well, we talked, different people kept passing by, we sat in the back, we weren’t interrupted at all. And I left with Richard. What did we talk about? We talked about a lot of things. I hadn’t talked with anybody for a long time and actually talking …”

“You had just come back from France, Rubin told me.”

“Yeah, I had come back from overseas and I hadn’t talked with anybody for a long time. Actually it was the first time that I had talked with anybody, really talked. One thing that he left on me was the fact that, you know, they really bummed him out with this eye trip (Rubin lost the vision in one eye during his incarceration) and so when they took him to the hospital, the nurse there asked him his name and number and all this and he just responded like he would normally respond, like he was responding how he was conditioned to respond, and he told me he felt that it was too heavy to respond that way, so he started to rethink his attitude toward people and I think at that moment—at least he conveyed to me that he was gonna try and reach people instead of retreating and not giving a shit. And so after that he expressed himself instead of keeping it all in and that made an impression on me to see this man, who—well, I have a different idea about him. I think this guy’s a natural-born leader. I mean, I’ll tell you something very strange, I went out there and I think it’s gonna happen, I saw a billboard sign on the way to the prison and the billboard sign said, ‘Wallace and Carter.’” Dylan chuckled. “I said to myself, ‘Oh yeah, that might be the next ticket.’”