On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  “Take care of yourselves,” he shouts, wiping his hands on his apron, “and anytime you’re around, bring Dylan. We’ll go out fishing, that’ll kill him.”

  Back at our motel, we settle in for a few hours of restless sleep. And at ten, as we go to load the car, I discover the reason for our apprehension. The Granada had been broken into while we slept, and the ignition had been snapped off. “Jesus Christ,” George snarls, “it must have been a Kemp-Imhoff job. It looks like sabotage.” “I’m not so sure,” I moan, “it could have been those local greasers we met the other night. I told them I’m writing for Rolling Stone and to them that must mean we’re fucking pinkos.”

  At any rate, it looked hopeless. Here it was Sunday morning, no service stations would be open, the car was totally inoperable, and there was a concert that night in Lowell, over a hundred miles away. But we borrow some tools from the motel owners, hack at the ignition till the key fits into the serrated opening, and inside of an hour, we’re on the road again.

  Howard had told me that the film crew would be shooting that afternoon in Nicky’s, a bar in Lowell that was owned by Jack Kerouac’s brother-in-law. So before we even check into the Holiday Inn, we pull off the highway onto Gorham Street and park in front of Nicky’s. Lowell is a gray, grim industrial town and Nicky’s is the workingman’s favorite watering hole. It’s splendidly seedy, with a smattering of old winos, young toughs, and today, a host of local labor leaders, precinct captains, and a secretary or two, celebrating the campaign of a local politician. Standing by the front door, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky look a little out of place, a bit like Buddhists at a bar mitzvah. But in a second, Nicky himself is out to greet them.

  “Hey Allen, how you doing,” Nicky bellows lustily as his big beefy hands corral one of Ginsberg’s, threatening to pulverize it into poet-pulp. Nicky’s genuinely happy to see Kerouac’s old college chum and introductions are made all around.

  But Dylan, who was supposed to do some filming here at Nicky’s, hasn’t shown up yet, and after sampling some of the cold cuts and spread, we all head back to the Holiday Inn to prepare for the night’s show.

  At the Lowell College gym, the promoters have decided on “festival seating,” a euphemism that means they try to cram as many sweaty bodies as possible onto every available square inch of hardwood floor. Only this floor has been covered by a pale green tarp that is emitting one of the most pungent odors known to man—the smell of jocksweat. George and I wend our way over the bodies and finally find a niche near the makeshift stage-door entrance, two curtains pinned together. Ronee Blakley pops her head out of the curtain and surveys the crowd with a slight look of fear. “Where are we?” Ronee queries. “Is this a college?”

  The crowd-buzz heightens in intensity and George’s face begins to twitch. “I’ve got sick vibes,” he whispers, “this place lends itself to chaos.” But suddenly Neuwirth & Co. take the stage. “Here’s an on-the-road song for ya,” Neuwirth appropriately notes and I scamper to a balcony overhanging the side of the stage. Dylan is bouncing backstage in time to the music, his hat on, and his face swathed in whiteface makeup. Throughout the opening acts, Dylan is constantly on the prowl, watching the proceedings, playing with a basketball, tapping nervously on a tabletop, getting a cup of coffee, hugging Scarlett, smoking a cigarette, continually pacing. During the wait, he must have washed and towel-dried his hands ten times.

  Somehow, Lisa has found her way to the gym and she’s sitting like a pigeon, legs thrust through the railing, just staring woefully at Dylan.

  They’re filming tonight, and David Meyers’ crew is following Dylan, recording his preparations. On stage, Jack Elliot is about to finish so Bob grabs his guitar and starts to strum nervously. Then Ramblin’ Jack is through, jogging down the stage stairs, and it’s time. “Let’s go,” exults Ginsberg as Dylan hops the stairs two at a time and walks unannounced onto the stage. It takes a while, a few seconds, but then the reaction sweeps over the crowd, the roar bouncing like so many basketballs through this musky arena, a crescendo of arousal directed at that little guy with the funny hat.

  During the set I see Lola Cohen, a close friend and an actress in the tour film. “Do me a favor, give this note to Bob,” I whisper. She agrees and I toss down a piece of paper to her. A few songs later, she scurries back. “What is this shit? Why don’t you write something more important? What’s We can’t go on meeting like this’ supposed to mean?”

  Perhaps it’s the camera crews, filming from about the fourth row, perhaps it’s just the relief to be in an honest, unpretentious, down-home working-class environment—at any rate, everyone seems to be really on tonight. Dylan is hamming it up during the dramatic “Isis,” and Baez compliments him by putting on her own whiteface for their duet, Neuwirth keeps dedicating songs to Kerouac, the band is smoking. In fact, Dylan seems feisty enough to segue from “Just Like A Woman” to a slow, haunting version of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” for the first time. And it’s incredibly moving, Dylan so intense, knees bent as if he’s ready to lunge, making up new verses on the spot. “Oh wipe that blood away from my face, I can’t see through it anymore,” he moans. “I need to get down to a new hiding place, believe I’ll knock on heaven’s door.” Then McGuinn steps up and adds his own verse, followed by a stunning solo from Ronson. The obligatory “This Land” finale follows, climaxed by the usual pandemonium. And the thunder rolls on.

  On to Newport, Rhode Island, that night, except for, as Mel Howard had alerted me, the film crew, Ginsberg, and the elusive Mr. D. A golden opportunity to try to corral the songster and get a bit more access to the tour participants. And sure enough, the desk clerk at our Holiday Inn confirms that Mr. Dylan had indeed checked in that afternoon. In fact, just as I’m inquiring, who should walk in the door but our favorite fish peddler, Mr. Kemp.

  Louie’s face turns sour, as if he’s seen a shipload of spoiled salmon. I turn to him cheerily. “This hotel ain’t big enough for the two of us, Kemp.”

  “Get out,” Louie scowls, without a trace of irony.

  “Wait a minute,” I protest, “I was here first.”

  Kemp frowns, sensing defeat. “Then go to your room,” he sputters. “Don’t bug us. I don’t want to see you around here.” With that, he checks his messages and departs.

  We eat down the road and repair to the hotel, but by now the tour is beginning to get to us. The beige Holiday Inn walls are starting to vibrate, there’s nothing to read, no radio, and after twenty minutes, George is getting bored staring at the test pattern of Lowell’s last TV station. A gleam slowly surfaces in his eyes. “Let’s go looking for whores!” he beams.

  Five minutes later, I swing the Granada past the Greyhound Station in downtown Lowell. It’s 3:30 A.M. and the streets are deserted.

  “Where are all the whores?” George grunts, scanning the silent alleys. “How much do you think they are here, anyway? How much for a blow job?”

  We cruise slowly down the streets, obsessed with the idea of finding some action, anything.

  The silence is punctuated by George’s bloodcurdling yelp. “Stop! There’s somebody walking right up ahead.” I slow down and pull up alongside a young kid, in his teens, wearing work clothes, construction boots, a real working-class hero. George rolls down the window. “Hey, is there any action in this town?” he yells; “any action, you know, street action?”

  The kid walks up to the car. “You mean fights and shit?” he says in a strange accent, one part Boston and one part Bowery Boy.

  “No, no, whores,” George corrects.

  “You gotta go to Chanelsford to find whores,” the kid asserts, “it’s pretty fahr.”

  “Are there any funky places where like junkies hang out?” I chime in.

  “Yeah,” the kid’s face brightens, “the Owl Diner. I’m going there, want me to show you where it is?” George unlocks the door and the kid scampers into the back seat. His name is Bob, a local, Lowell’s version of a greaser. Seventeen and ready to kick
ass. Or get kicked.

  “What’s Lowell like?” I shout to the back seat.

  “It sucks,” Bob blurts succinctly.

  “Is it an industrial town?” George questions.

  “Nah,” Bob answers, “it’s not an industrial town, it’s a town for junkies and fucked-up people. But I’m no junkie, I never took dope. I don’t hang around the Owl, I just go there for coffee. It’s a tough place, though. If you fuck around there you get killed. It’s run by the Mafia.”

  We drive in silence for a minute then George asks Bob if he plans to leave Lowell. “Yeah,” the kid replies spiritedly, “I’m going to Arizona in two weeks. Shit, the Owl’s closed. Keep going straight, we can go to the Club Diner, they got a lot of fucking assholes there too. There’s no action on the street now, you’ll find it all in the restaurants at this time.”

  George is brooding now, his vision of whore-chasing fading into the reality of hash browns and coffee. We pull up to the Club and get out.

  “Where you guys from?” Bob inquires.

  “New York,” George mumbles.

  “Are there a lot of movie stars out there?” the kid questions.

  “Lots of junkies,” George spits.

  “Did you know this was Jack Kerouac’s home town?” I change the subject.

  “Who? Oh, Kerouac, yeah. I read about him. You better lock your door around here.” Bob wheels and stares at George. “You ain’t that guy that played in that fucking film Shampoo, are ya?”

  George shakes his head no.

  “I met him in Vegas,” Bob continues on blithely, “he’s a fucked-up guy.”

  We sit down at a booth. Bob turns to me. “You look like George Hamilton.” He shakes his head in wonder.

  “What do you do for excitement?” George probes.

  “Fuck around, get high.” Bob smiles impishly.

  “Go to the concert?” I ask.

  “Nah,” Bob shrugs. “I like Dylan and Baez though. He’s real talented.”

  “What do you do on the weekends around here?” George asks.

  “Go to see the strippers in Liverty.”

  Suddenly Bob’s eyes light up and the words begin spewing from his mouth like coins from a slot machine. “I put two kids in the hospital last night. One of them hit my mother. There was a little commotion going on on the street and they blamed my mother for it and the kid came over and hit my mother. They said my mother finked on them for smoking pot, so one of them come up and swinged, hit my mother and knocked her down. So man, I come down the stairs with a baseball bat and I says You, come here,’ and I hit him right in the side of the head. He went down and I took the bat and kept hitting him.” Bob pauses for effect, then lifts his hand and smashes it onto the diner table. “Boom, boom, boom, maybe ten times on the head. He’s on the critical list. I don’t got to worry about it ’cause it was self-defense, they can’t hang me for killing someone.”

  I ponder his strange notion of self-defense, but George is already lost in the menu. “Does this place have good food?” he wonders. “I’m hungry again.”

  But Bob seems lost in his reverie. “The other one was just a small kid. I just grabbed him and went boom, boom, boom, just the face. Broke his jaw, broke his nose. One of them got me back though, I got a lump on the side of my head.”

  “How’s your mother,” I inquire politely.

  “She’s all right. Sore but she’s OK When the prick comes out of the hospital, I think he’ll kill me but that’s all right. I’ll be gone in two weeks and he’ll still be in there. I hope he’s in for a year. I hope the prick dies.”

  George stirs from his menu. “What did your mother think of you bashing the guy’s head in?”

  Bob smiles. “She shook my hand. Said ‘Thank you.’ Then my older brother, stepbrother, he’s a good friend, calls my mother ‘Ma’ and shit, he said he wanted to go rip the prick out of bed and hit him some more.

  “We went down to Washington, D.C., once, my partner and me. We get off the plane, just going into the what’s-it-called, the terminal, right, and two black kids come over and say, ‘Motherfucker, I want some money.’ I says, ‘Screw you, you black prick,’ so he says, ‘I’m gonna pop you’ and I say, ‘I’m gonna pop you back, but harder, boy.’ Anyway, he swung at me, the stupidest thing he did ’cause I grab my suitcase. Whung! I hit him in the face, and he started bleeding all over the place. About fifty of them started coming down in motorcycles, and I look outside and I see a Lincoln Continental out there so I say, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ And they started chasing us, we get on the plane screaming, ‘Fuck you, niggers! We’re leaving.’” Bob’s eyes turn cold. “This town sucks, I gotta get out of here.” His face lights up. “I’m gonna go to Vegas. I love Vegas, I gambled there for two days. I saw Warren Beatty standing on the streetcorner. I knew it was him, I walked right up to him and said, ‘Didn’t you play in the picture Shampoo? and he said, ‘Yeah I was the star of the movie,’ and I goes, ‘Oh wow, how’s it going?’ and he said, ‘Not too bad, kid’ and the fucking cops go by and he sticks his middle finger up and goes, ‘That’s for you.’ He was smoking a joint, he don’t care.”

  Bob hunches forward, ready to tell us another insane lie, the once-savored sandwich now getting cold. “You should have seen the car he drives, know the thing he drove in the movie, the Honda motorcycle? That’s what he was driving that day. ‘Seventy-one chopper. I met the Fifth Dimension, too. And one of the Osmonds, Marie. What a talented, beautiful girl she is. But you can’t touch her, you can’t go near her. I tried just touching her face but she’s got these big fucking bodyguards there with silencers.”

  The waitress brings the check and I pick it up, impressing Bob. “Does Dylan pay all your expenses?” I nod no. We start toward the car.

  “Anyone else famous from this town, other than Kerouac?” George asks, suppressing a yawn.

  “Yeah, President Ford,” Bob replies.

  “Get out of here,” we scream simultaneously.

  Bob explains, “He is. He’s not from Lowell but he’s known good in Lowell. He came to the auditorium, this is how good he is in Lowell. He came out of the auditorium and this guy had a double-barreled shotgun to his head, said, ‘I’ll blow your fucking brains out,’ that’s when his fucking bodyguards grabbed the guy, threw him in the wagon.”

  George and I exchange glances. “OK,” Bob waves, “I’ll see you guys. If I go through New York, I’ll check you out.” He starts to turn and walk home but first he stares at George, his eyes narrowing.

  “Are you sure you weren’t in Shampoo?”

  The next day I wake up at noon. George is still sleeping so I walk over to the office to get a paper. And sure enough, there about five stalls down from our room is the bright shiny red Cadillac. Andy and Mooney, two of Dylan’s driver-bodyguards, are poring over some brochures. I investigate.

  “These are just different Cadillacs. Bob was so knocked out by this car that he’s thinking of buying another like it,” Andy relates cheerfully.

  I keep sneaking glances over my shoulder at the camper, trying to buy time, small-talking with Andy and Mooney. And it pays off, for in two minutes Dylan strides out the Executive’s door. And Kemp is nowhere to be seen.

  I move in for the kill. “Hey Larry, how ya doin’,” Dylan asks wearily. He’s wearing the same clothes as he does onstage, the hat, the leather jacket, the dungarees. We start walking toward the office.

  “You read my article yet, the first one for Rolling Stone?”

  “Yeah, it was all right but you didn’t say how you felt. You didn’t write how the show made you feel.”

  I frown. “That shit just gets edited right out of your copy. They’re bureaucrats there, they don’t give a shit about feeling.”

  “That’s important,” Dylan stresses, “how the show made ya feel.”

  “Well, I want to write a book about the tour. Something I’d control. Sort of like a diary. Is that all right?”

  Dylan hesitates before going i
nto the office. “Sure, you can do anything you want, Larry.”

  “So how come Kemp keeps hassling me,” I protest. “I can’t talk to my friends, I can’t get any backstage color, I can’t stay at the same hotels. I don’t think Louie likes me.”

  “Oh, come on,” Bob smiles. “Louie’s just doing his job. He’s my friend.”

  We pass the front desk and continue toward the restaurant. I can see Ginsberg and Orlovsky and a few others already seated.

  “So I can do a book, it’s all right with you?” I reaffirm.

  “You can do anything you want, Larry. Just tell me what you need.”

  At that, we enter the room and waiting there for Dylan is Mr. Kemp. He gives me a smoldering stare and I beat a hasty retreat.

  “I hear they’re filming something at Kerouac’s grave,” I tell George as we eat breakfast later.

  “Let’s go out there, I really want to see Jack’s grave,” George gushes, “that would mean a lot to me.”

  So we get the car, get directions at a gas station, and start toward the outskirts of town. It’s a beautiful autumn day, the leaves have turned, and the air is crisp as we pull into the cemetery. George takes a left and heads down a narrow dirt road. And fifty feet ahead walking toward us with a huge wood stick as a cane is Dylan, followed by two bodyguards, Ginsberg, Kemp, and Orlovsky. We drive on and spot the film crew packing up. Suddenly, Larry Johnson and Dave Meyers start running up to our car, with their cameras rolling. I start to get out.

  “What’s going on? Did they film any—” I feel a huge arm propel me back into the car and the door slams.