On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  Johnson’s face appears at the window, smiling broadly. “We just wanted to get some footage of you getting kicked out. You’re the reporter that gets shit on in the film, you know.”

  I seek out Mel to get a report on the shooting. “We did a beautiful scene,” he relates, “just Dylan and Ginsberg improvising over Kerouac’s grave. We couldn’t hear much because for discretion we used long lenses and radial mikes but it seemed to be very effective.” Bit by bit, I piece together the scene. First Ginsberg read a selection from Mexico City Blues, then both Dylan and he sat on the grave and Bob squeezed a tune on harmonium. Then he picked up his guitar and started a blues and Ginsberg improvised in an exalted manner, a poem with an image of Kerouac’s skull looking down over them. Dylan stopped playing to pick up an autumn leaf and Ginsberg went merrily on in a cappella style. In all, a very moving scene.

  George, meanwhile, has wandered away in search of the tombstone. After a few minutes, he comes across it, gives a yelp, and I rush over. The headstone is simple, just a small Indian eagle insignia and the stark lettering: JOHN KEROUAC MARCH 11, 1922 TO OCTOBER 21, 1969. HE HONORED LIFE. And there’s a provision for Stella, his wife.

  After a few silent moments, we head back to the car. “Fucking Kerouac means so much to me,” George mumbles. “How I dug The Dharma Bums, you should read that. That really psyched me up, I’d lay in bed at night and I’d just fucking hoot and howl, I’d go whoooo, whoooo. I’d always start doing weird things after I read it, really up, manic, popping my fingers all the time.” George pauses to pick up a leaf.

  “Kerouac means more to me than Dylan,” he continues. “No, I don’t know. Shakespeare means more to me than Dylan, Keats, man, even though I wasn’t around when they were creating.”

  On the way back to the Holiday Inn, we stop off at Nicky’s. Nicky gives me a big greeting, based I guess on the premise that any friend of Ginsberg’s, who was a friend of Kerouac’s, who was his brother-in-law and best friend, is a friend of his. We sit down at a table near the bar.

  “Hey, Nicky, we just got back from the cemetery,” I report. “Did you ever make it to the concert last night?”

  “I went but I walked out on it,” Nicky relates in his heavy accent, sounding a bit like a Greek Archie Bunker. “I had to sit down in the gym so I said I’ll just let it go, ya know what I mean. Hey youse guys want a drink?”

  Nicky takes our order, barks it over to the bartender, and hollers to have the jukebox turned down. He settles down with the authority that only bar owners possess.

  “How’d you like that food yesterday? I made it myself. I could have opened an Italian restaurant after the army. Jack used to call me the quartermaster sergeant in a couple of his books.”

  The mere mention of Kerouac’s name has set Nicky into a slight reverie and I take the opportunity to scan the bar. It’s afternoon and there are about fifteen locals, working-class kids playing pinball and drinking beer from the bottle. Plaques, trophies, and photos hang on the walls. The smells of sweat and urine waft in the air. Kerouac must have loved this joint.

  “How’d you feel about seeing Jack’s friends?” George breaks the silence.

  “Jack’s mother and stuff, she never liked Ginsberg and that crowd,” Nicky recalls. “She didn’t like Ginsberg for smoking pot and all that. Know what I mean? But he didn’t want to leave Lowell, you know that, when Jack got to Florida we got this friend of mine with a beach wagon to drive it down ’cause she was in a stretcher like, when he got into Florida he says, ‘Here, here’s your Florida.’” Nicky pauses, careening off on his tangent. “I tell you the God’s truth, right before he passed away he sent me a penny postcard telling me to look around for another house for him. He was gonna move back here. He always used to send me dese penny postcards, I got them up at the house you know. I got one a week before he passed away. And you know where he used to hang around. Here lemme show you …”

  And suddenly Nicky springs to his feet, grabbing one of us with each hand, leading us to a small table in the rear. Releasing us, he slaps the formica like a newborn. “He used to sit right here. He used to play all the old-time music. This is a dance area here.” One of the kids who’s been playing cards at a circular table in the rear asks Nicky if he wants someone to finish his hand.

  “Yeah, go ahead finish it,” Nicky growls impatiently. He continues the narrative: “You know she made a remark, what the hell was her name? The one that wrote Kerouac, Ann Charters, yeah. What did I think of the book? It was bullshit. Lemme tell you why, I gotta show you one very important point.” And again George and I get scooped up out of our seats and herded back over to the bar. Nicky scurries behind the counter and grabs a bottle of wine.

  “Not that I’m trying to be a wise guy,” Nicky complains, “but look at this, the cheapest wine I got. Mavrodaffi. You don’t see no bar wine or nothing. This is a high-class wine, Mavrodaffi. Jack never drank wine and she says in her book I used cheap wine in my place of business.” Nick’s getting expansive now, the pride just oozing out of him like sweat. He gestures up and down the myriad bottles behind him. “Show me one cheap wine there that I ever carried. Ask anybody. I can tell you what Jack used to drink. Johnny Walker Red or Black with a glass of beer.”

  “Was it on the house?” George asks.

  “No, he used to have a tab and every month he would send me a check. I’ll show you one of the letters I got.”

  But Nicky is still mulling over Charters’ slur and he grabs an old-timer sitting placidly at the bar.

  “Did I ever carry any cheap wine in my place?” he badgers the barfly; “I’m talking about cheap wine, the bar wine and all that.” The old-timer manages a nod. “No, right,” Nicky fumes, “always carried the Mavrodaffi, right, and that’s not a cheap wine and that’s the God’s truth, I don’t like someone who writes what’s not.”

  We return to Jack’s booth and Nicky gets called away to answer the phone. George is animated and he grabs my ear. He shouts over the din of the jukebox, “Fucking Kerouac was organic. He’s like a fucking Faulkner or a fucking Melville. Part of the tradition, man. The fucking American myth stopped with Kerouac, all that expansion west. He was crazy when he got there, driving around crazy looking for new frontiers. He was desperate, man.”

  George is getting impatient with Nicky’s small talk, he wants more Kerouac data. “Would Jack just sit by himself or would he mingle with people? Did he talk?” George asks when the bar owner comes back.

  “He wouldn’t mingle with the people. This was ’67, ’68. Billy, keep it down a little, we’re trying to have a conversation.”

  “What kind of shape was he in?” George asks.

  “He was good,” Nicky remembers, “that surprised me, you know. I tried to get him to stop his drinking but he wouldn’t stop his drinking. He used to get up in the morning, you know, lay on his head you know doing exercise. Stand on his head. He said that helped his legs.”

  George looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel. “Did you ever see him do it?”

  Nicky smiles. “Yeah, sure, I seen him do it, you know. Where was he living at the time? He was living in the Jewish ghetto of Lowell. One of the high-class places in Lowell. He bought a nice beautiful home and he was living with my sister Stella and with his mother-in-law. They used to call me up to go up there for coffee. His mother was sick. He had bought that house and he was pressed for money and that book Visions of Duluoz, he rushed that book. He used to call me up and he used to have the long typewriter and he used to type and all that and he said, ‘I gotta do this book in three weeks.’ That was the only book that he was really rushed on but he really didn’t want to do that book so fast.”

  George jumps in with, “How did he feel all of a sudden when he started getting real famous at the end and they ignored him when he was real young writing all that great stuff? Was he bitter about it, did he feel sick about it?”

  “No, never!” Nicky notes emphatically. “To him he was the same guy.”

>   “How much time did he spend here?” I ask.

  “He used to be here every day,” Nicky recollects. “When he moved here from the Cape I hadn’t seen him for about fifteen years. I was in the army and he walks in one day, he was still living at the Cape and he had one of them long hats and boots and he says, ‘Who are you?’ and I said, ‘Who are you?’ but I loved him, you know. What he used to do, he had a funny thing about him I’ll tell ya. Let’s say there was a wino or something, drinking a draft beer or something, ’cause you know this is a poor town not a rich man’s town and the guy’ll be drinking a draft beer, like this kid Chris, an old alcoholic. Jack would send him across the street for a fifteen-cent cigar and give him a five-dollar bill and he would come back and Jack would be gone. That would probably be Jack’s last five dollars in his pocket, know what I mean. And this guy who wrote Visions of Kerouac, this guy Jarvis, he wasn’t as close to Jack as people think he was. You talk to people in Lowell High School, they’ll tell you the same thing, personal friends of Jack, they all want to know who is he? I mean what the hell, the guy’s feeling good, he’s drunk, you don’t show the bad, you show the good side of him. He would always help the poor guy, in his way, like a secret. Like the guy did him an errand and he wanted to give him the five dollars so he smoked the cigar.

  “One thing about Jack, when he was feeling good he’d sit here and talk to me and he could recite poetry that was out of this world.”

  “Did he make it up spontaneously, on the spot, or was it poems …?” George interrogates.

  “I don’t know,” Nicky interrupts, “he used to recite it and then if we were having an argument or something he’d say, ‘Look, Nick, let me tell you something, the pen is mightier than the sword.’ When we went to Spain it was a funny thing, my first cousin passed away, and we went to the wake, and after the wake Jack called me on the phone to tell me that my cousin had passed away, and to me my first cousin was like my brother, so I was stunned and I flipped my lid a little. Anyway, after the wake we all decided to go to Spain, so we all went, Jack, my brother, my other cousin, and this other friend of mine. So before we all decided to go to Spain, I went to the little bank for some money and the banker was French Canadian and he says to me that Jack can have anything he wants.

  “We started from here drinking, went to Boston, we were pretty high, and we got on a DC 8 to Madrid, but first we stopped in Lisbon. It’s a funny thing, when we stopped in Lisbon, he’d go off by himself. He used to hit the dives by the waterfront and he hit the same dives, the Texas Tavern or something, that was the same one that the guy that shot Martin Luther King was in, it was the same cafe he was hiding in, and we were in the hotel, all staying at the same hotel and I get a loud knock on my door, boom, boom, boom, who the hell would it be but Jack?

  “I used to hold his money for him, I used to give him one hundred dollars, he would spend it all. Honest to God, the same night he would come back again, boom, boom, boom, I’d give him another hundred dollars. We stayed there for two days and all he drank was Scotch, where the hell he spent his money, I don’t know but he must have gone through six hundred dollars in two days in Portugal.

  To him life was a big ball, that’s all it was, just a big ball. He didn’t care about nothing. Funny thing is, the man was so important, people used to come in here looking for him, they used to come in from all over the country. You never knew who the hell was gonna walk in. For him, it was just another day. One day, I seen him all dressed up, he had a shirt and stuff on, and I said, ‘Where the hell you been?’ and he said, ‘Some millionaire from out west, some friend of mine sent a limo over for me, he wanted me to speak to his son.’ His son was going to Fawkes Academy, Landover, Mass., and Jack had to speak to the kid about life.”

  Nicky pauses for a breath, obviously moved by the flood of memories we’ve tapped. He leans over across the table to us. “What does Bobby think of Jack?” he wonders.

  “Bobby doesn’t have much time right now because he’s in the middle of the tour,” I assert, “but he scheduled a day off so they could spend a day here in Lowell. He told Ginsberg that he was really influenced by reading Mexico City Blues back in Minnesota when he was a kid. They dedicated songs to Jack a couple of times last night and the audience went wild.”

  “Guys like Bobby, they learnt from Jack,” George adds. “Allen, all them, that’s where they get all their stuff from.”

  “Even this kid we were talking to last night, this tough working-class teenager, he says his mother reads Jack’s books all the time,” I add.

  Nicky turns away for a second and when he turns back, a chill runs down my spine. Huge tears are rolling down his ruddy cheeks. He makes a couple of ineffectual stabs at them with his beefy hands then allows himself the expression of his grief.

  “I still get broken up,” he stammers, his huge body racked by sobs, “he had his happiest years when he stayed here in Lowell. The last year and a half, that was his happiest year he told me. He really enjoyed it, he didn’t want to go to Florida no way. His mother insisted on going to Florida.”

  Nicky wipes away a final tear and bangs the table for emphasis. “But he loved his mother so much, that was the whole thing. I think that’s what killed him. He was drinking but he could control it, but I guess when he went down there he really wanted to come back to Lowell. He really wanted to come back bad, believe me, he wouldn’t have died if he was here.”

  With that Nicky gets up and walks us around the bar, showing us pictures of Jack in the club, in Spain, in Monticello, in Germany.

  “OK guys, I’ll catch you,” Nicky is saying good-bye at the door. “And Larry, if you can ask Bobby for a picture and get it autographed for me. Tell him to put down ‘To Big Nick’ or something.” Nicky wipes his eyes one last time. “Take care of yourselves,” he waves.

  We walk to the car and I start to head back up Gorham Street toward the Holiday Inn. “Wait,” George yells, “let’s check out the peep shows,” pointing at a porno store up the block.

  “We have no time, we have to get on the road to Newport,” I lecture.

  George smolders. “See, this is what Kerouac’d do,” he spits. “He’d skunk around and look around the waterfronts like I like to do. You’re nowhere.”

  We get into Newport early that evening and I pull right up to check into the Sheraton, where the tour was staying. And just as I pocket the receipt, Kemp strolls into the lobby.

  He rushes up, beside himself with rage. “What the fuck are you doing here? Didn’t we go through this in Falmouth?” he rants.

  “But Lou, Dylan said it was OK to write a book and offered anything I needed. So I just assumed if it was OK to do that, it was OK to stay at the hotel.” I smile.

  “Well, you assumed wrong,” Kemp glares, “you’re just a chozzer, you want more and more. You’re like Weberman.”

  “Bullshit,” I retort. “I ain’t going through garbage or stuff like that, I’m just trying to do my job. This means a lot to me.”

  “Well,” Kemp seems to soften, “you were presumptuous. Keep cool and you’ll come out OK; don’t keep cool and you’ll have me on your throat.”

  I nod and rejoin George and once again we drive down the road, searching for the nearest motel.

  The next day, I wake up and George is already dressed, and all his clothes are packed. “I’m splitting, I can’t take this shit,” he barks. “You’re fucking losing your soul in this rock ’n roll bullshit. You’re becoming totally manic, totally insensitive. If you keep it up and get a little more outrageous, I’m sure they’ll let you on the tour. But I can’t take it anymore. Just call me a few times and let me know how the music’s going.”

  We talk a bit but he’s adamant, he doesn’t even want to stick around for tonight’s concert in Providence, the first in a large convention center. On the way to the bus station, George spies a young woman with a child, carrying laundry. She’s got close-cropped brownish hair, wears homemade clothing. “Ask her,” George points, “I’
m sure she’ll want to see Dylan.” We pull over and stop to talk. The woman is Priscilla, a Newport local, and yes, she’d be ecstatic. She wanted to see the concert but had no money.

  A few hours later, Priscilla and her daughter meet me in the lobby of the motel. Jenny, a cute little four-year-old, jumps in the back seat and Priscilla slides in the front for the drive to Providence.

  The opening segment has already begun as Priscilla, Jenny, and I trudge to our seats. Ronson has just been introduced by Neuwirth as “the man who invented David Bowie” and as we settle into our fourteenth-row seats, I see the band is all wearing T-shirts with the name “Guam” embossed across the front.

  The sound has been boosted for this big hall and by the time Dylan enters to a standing ovation, the band is primed. Dylan’s in his standard getup, same boots, jeans, black leather, and hat, only it seems that he’s taken an affinity to the whiteface that he wore for the filming in Lowell. In fact, with the hat adorned with fresh flowers, courtesy of Lola, and the clown makeup, he resembles a Pierrot figure, and in this large arena “Masterpiece” is more appropriate than ever, recalling the hours he’s spent “inside the Coliseum, dodging lions and wasting time.” Neuwirth is smiling, singing along, wearing a black T-shirt that says, “Bob Who?”

  Dylan seems in control by now, picking up more assurance with each concert. “Durango” is less static, and “Hard Rain” threatens to melt the hockey ice beneath the wood floorboards, prompting one kid in the second row to exult, “Rock ’n roll!” By now Dylan is as manically relaxed as Sinatra, he’s leaping into the air, stalking around like a grave robber, trotting back to the mike, and when he cups his hands around the lips to deliver the dramatic ending to “Isis,” it’s not Dylan up there, it’s a fucking rock ’n roll Jolson. “See ya in fifteen minutes,” he screams and runs off as the house lights come up for intermission.

  The light gives me an opportunity to check out the three Indians in full Cherokee regalia who are sitting to our left. I introduce myself. “We’re from Nevada,” the older man replies. “My name is Rolling Thunder and this is my wife Spotted Fawn.” Rolling Thunder is a medicine man of some note who was flown in by Dylan when the coincidence in names was brought to his attention. And it might be a working vacation too, Rolling Thunder hints.