On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  “The house is 250 feet long, and 150 feet wide,” Welch drones on in her sweet rehearsed monotone, “made of Indiana limestone.” Ronee Blakley walks in, along with a three-man film crew. “There’s an open courtyard,” Welch reports, then spies the cameras. “There are no pictures allowed in the house,” smiling her saccharine smile. “Right on,” Jack Elliot mutters. “Great,” Levy laughs out loud, “the film crew is getting kicked out again.” Stoner leans over to me. “I bet we’re the rudest tourists yet,” he snickers.

  “These are pillars of Italian marble,” Welch continues. “I say gaudy,” Levy twinkles. “I say expensive,” Kemp counters. Our guide frowns. We start up the stairs. “Send a security guard up here,” McGuinn shrieks into his walkie-talkie. Upstairs, there’s a bedroom and surrounding the bed is a cage. “That was to protect the chick who lived up here,” McGuinn cracks. Welch seems a bit shaken and Kemp frowns at Roger. “McGuinn was misbehaving,” Stoner taunts. Kemp eases the tension by asking about the taxes on the mansion.

  We pass several other rooms. “Don’t rich people shit?” I inquire. “They hide it behind the door,” Stoner snaps. Finally, at the end of the hall, we reach the bathroom. It’s vast, L-shaped, and Stoner seems truly awed. “I can’t believe it,” he gasps, “it’s bigger than my pad.” “There are no closets,” Mrs. Welch demonstrates, “they’re built into the paneling.” Peter Orlovsky wanders over to the bathtub, a huge porcelain monster, complete with four faucets. Mrs. Welch smiles. “Salt water flows in,” she cheerily tells Peter. “Look at those faucets, Allen,” Peter marvels ingenuously, “you can wash your cock, pussy, and asshole in the same tub.” Mrs. Welch turns a little green. Peter, though, is enthralled and twists a faucet, resulting in a spew of water cascading into the tub. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Peter sincerely apologizes. “Dock him,” Stoner sneers. “He can’t go to the canteen tonight,” I snicker.

  We troop downstairs. By now Mrs. Welch has her composure back. “This is the largest fireplace ever built,” she notes, “and this library wall has been carved to look like books.” Rambling Jack peers at the wall. “I’d hate to be straight in this house,” he drawls. We’re in the library alcove now, the sun streaming in, as Mrs. Welch starts a detailed history of the family’s fortunes. Allen takes out a pad and starts taking notes.

  As we pass through the immense kitchen, the other group is starting their tour. “Dig the egg cups,” Ginsberg laughs, as McGuinn examines an intercom system that has fifty-four stations throughout the house so the butlers know exactly where the caller was. I linger over the cutting table, examining the utensils. Baez leans her head in. “Move along, Ratso,” she screams at me, “we’re waiting for you guys to finish.” In the corridor, Steve Soles joins our group. “Let’s go to the gentlemen’s waiting room and have an orgy,” he leers. There are no takers.

  Outside, Stoner and I are posing in front of the house. “Get Ken Regan,” Stoner instructs. “Have him take a picture. It’ll be my next album cover, ‘Rob Stoner at Home!’” “Great, maybe I can use the photo in the book,” I think and corral Regan, the official tour photographer. He mumbles that he’s out of film then lowers his eyes. “I can’t take any pictures for your book. Haven’t you heard? Kemp’s giving the book to someone else.” I fume and go searching for Kemp, but he’s already gone, so I stalk to the Granada, hit the ignition, and burn down the road to Stockbridge.

  In the lazy Berkshire town of Stockbridge, the tour is staying at the Red Lion Lodge, a quaintly beautiful inn. But I’m still in a miserable mood as I stomp up to the desk clerk and ask to speak to Mr. Kemp. No answer, so I prowl the halls, walk through the old dining rooms, finally coming upon a few people from the tour. Chris O’Dell jumps up from her plate. “What are you doing here?” She stares at me incredulously.

  “Looking for Louis.”

  “You can’t come into the hotels. Don’t you understand?” she lectures. “You’ve been pretty pushy the last few days. I’ll just have to get security to deal with you,” and as if on cue, two burly lumberjack types waddle into the room and grab an arm each. They escort me to the lobby where I go limp onto a sofa. “I’m not splitting. This is a public lobby,” I sputter in my best oppressed voice. They confer and one leaves, the other discreetly standing guard a few yards away.

  After a few minutes, Sam Shepard walks by. Shepard is a well-known Off-Broadway playwright, and he’s been hired to help write the screenplay of the movie. Only it seems that he’s been given a bit of a runaround and is seriously considering returning to his California ranch.

  “I’m pissed off,” the lean, angular writer snarls, “I’ve been lied to.”

  “You’re pissed off,” I sputter. “I get invited on this tour by Dylan, the minute we get out of New York I’m the nigger. I can’t even talk to my friends.”

  “I’m ready to quit,” Shepard sneers, “go home. They made some assurances to me in terms of money that they didn’t follow through on. There’s like this reverse Dylan generosity syndrome here. They say that because Bob is so generous and this tour is making a sort of antimoney, antiestablishment position in terms of money and large halls, therefore they can rip you off and it’s all right ’cause it’s an antimaterialist thing.”

  We commiserate a bit more and Shepard returns to his room. I burrow deeper into the couch, under the watchful eye of security. Apparently the other guard had left to get somebody to mediate because a few minutes later, Bobby Neuwirth bounces into the lobby. Neuwirth has been a quasi-legendary figure on the music scene for some time now. He’s sort of the Truman Capote of the musical counterculture, knows everybody from Kristofferson to Nicholson to Kinky Friedman. And this is his first real exposure, playing onstage with the guy that he road-managed in the mid-’60s.

  Neuwirth lopes over to an easy chair and plops down. “What do you want, Larry, what do you want?” he rasps in his machine-gun-rapid style. “I got a million things to do, man. I got three crises. I just had to fire Cindy Bullens, man, my best friend. I fired her because she made a professional error when she decided to go with the Elton John tour. She came back here and it was too late, so I had to fire her. I couldn’t even say good-bye to her, we would have broken into tears. I also got problems with the rehearsals. The band needs more rehearsal, this tour is still in a fucking rehearsal stage.”

  I manage to slip in my complaint about access. Neuwirth frowns.

  “Shit,” he growls. “You got more access than anyone so far. Maureen Orth from Newsweek, she couldn’t even get past the breakfast table. Listen, you oughta go out and write, write. You’re a creator. Create. You don’t have to be here.” Neuwirth pauses and his eyes turn softer. He hunches over closer and his voice turns gentle: “We’re dumping people. You may go. I want you to be able to handle that. There’s a question of ego versus intellect. So far a lot of people have been getting on ego trips instead of letting their intellects take precedence over their ego.” He gets even closer and stares at me in his best Southern California sensitivity-session style. “Look me in the eye. Say you’ll survive, you’ll make it, you won’t be upset. Shit, man, it’s fifteen years later and we all survived. Tell me you won’t be upset.”

  “Hey, all I want to do is do my job and do this book.”

  Neuwirth scowls. “Fuck, man, who needs another book on Bob Dylan? What are you gonna write about, what Bob Dylan eats for breakfast? Go out and write, man. There are a lot of things happening in the world, why don’t you go and write about it? Just tell me you’ll survive.”

  “I’ll make it,” I shrug and we shake hands. Neuwirth turns and heads back to his room.

  I head for my car but outside on the porch, I bump into Gary Shafner, Bob’s factotum.

  “Just cool it for a while,” Gary counsels, “Bob likes you. You don’t want tension between yourself and Louie. Lay low. Deal with me and Chris. Jesus, when you came in the hotel this evening, in one minute we had heard you were around. Keep a low profile.”

  I thank him for the advice and
drive back to my dumpy hotel in nearby Lee. The phone doesn’t work, the TV refuses to acknowledge any other program but Johnny Carson, and the stimulants are beginning to wear off, so I climb into the lumpy mattress and dream about the opulence of the Red Lion Lodge.

  But the next day, at the Springfield concert, good news comes in the form of Howard Alk. Alk is a bear of a man, huge, with a tremendous beard that covers virtually every inch of his round, warm face, and an old shopping-bag-man fedora precariously balanced on his head. He’s worked with Dylan before, editing the now legendary Eat the Document, footage of Dylan’s 1967 tour that has never been released, except for a short run at the Whitney Museum in New York. But now Howard is hard at work on Bob’s latest project, the massive film of the tour. And it’s eighteen-hour-a-day work, shooting in the morning at a moment’s notice, sometimes shooting the concert, and then viewing the daily rushes. Alk seems like he’s beginning to drag.

  “Listen, we saw the rushes of the scene you did at the party and it was fabulous,” Howard tells me. “It was one of the classic interviews in documentary film. Bob loved it. You got nothing to worry about, you’re in.” On that cryptic note, he lumbered off.

  I spot Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky up in the stands and I join them for the second half of the show, sliding in next to Peter just as Dylan and Baez start into “Never Let Me Go,” and seconds later, Allen and Peter are harmonizing along.

  “What do you think of this segment?” I lean over Peter and shout at Allen.

  “It’s just beautiful to watch them relating,” he responds.

  “Joanie told me it’s very hard to follow Bob,” I report.

  “Well,” Allen muses, “he’s being playful all the time and changing things. It keeps people on their toes. Like here when they say ‘in summer or in dream time,’ he usually might stretch it. He keeps it awake and alert and alive.”

  Down below, the two small figures start into “Any Day Now” and Allen hums along then leans toward me. “Dylan’s teaching her how to sing those songs. By over and over again looking into each other’s eyes. Now the words are giving her the timing, giving her the way of doing this accurately. He had to teach her.”

  Allen gets bored with this vantage point and suggests we move around, so we trundle all the way to the rear of the arena and stand in an entryway. From here, the performers look like ants but the sound system reaches us more than adequately. Allen and Peter start swaying to the music, prompting a young, slightly tipsy kid to do a triple take. Finally he sidles up to Ginsberg.

  “That’s Allen Ginsberg, huh,” he asserts to no one in particular, pointing at the bearded poet.

  “No,” Ginsberg replies calmly, “he’s dead.”

  “You’re Allen Ginsberg,” the kid is getting more brazen, “you wrote ‘Howl.’ Can you recite ‘Howl’?”

  “Not while Joan Baez is singing,” Ginsberg fumes.

  “She’s singing,” he notes with wonder, then turns back to the poet. “You’re Allen Ginsberg,” he shouts with finality.

  Ginsberg throws his hands in the air in a fit of exasperation. “I’m me,” he shouts almost at the top of his lungs.

  “You’re you,” the youth admits, “but who are you?”

  Ginsberg is relishing this cat-and-mouse exercise. “Nobody but me,” he responds.

  The kid lets it sink in, then raises the ante. “What is your identity?” he nonchalantly rolls back, “who is your nobody?” A smug look crosses his face. Heavy.

  “There’s no such thing as identity,” Ginsberg back. A pause. Then, “I’m as empty as you are. The ultimate identity.” The ultimate response. Game, set, match point. The kid admits defeat just as Baez breaks into the line, “Here comes your ghost again.” He draws nearer to Ginsberg and with a note of humility asks, “Can I talk to you. Is that possible in the future?”

  “I don’t know the future,” Ginsberg counters.

  “When I’m in a sober condition,” the kid pleads. “It’s a rare occasion.”

  Ginsberg relents and they move to the side and engage in a discussion about poetry. After a few minutes, Ginsberg edges toward me. “What’s your favorite songs?” he asks.

  I cite “Isis,” “One More Cup,” and “Sara.”

  “‘One More Cup of Coffee’ is to me the high point,” Allen asserts. “It’s sacred and the mode of music is Hindu-Arabic. He uses cantillation. That’s the ohohohohohohoh, the wavering note. ‘Sara’ is very beautiful, it’s personal.”

  The kid lurches toward us again. “He doesn’t have to be singing though,” Allen notes, “he can get it across just by reading it, and maybe get it across much faster ….”

  “Look what happened to Nietzsche,” the kid interrupts, “he went insane for eleven and a half years.”

  “That didn’t have anything to do with him not singing, I’m sure,” Ginsberg retorts.

  “All of Hesse though is taken from Nietzsche, it appears to me,” the kid goes blithely on.

  Ginsberg smiles. “They’re both about singing, so they should have just sang,” he pronounces with impeccable logic.

  Down below, Dylan mounts the stage for his solo spot. “Looks just like the old days with the black leather jacket. Remember Don’t Look Back, Allen?” I inquire.

  “I was in it,” he stresses.

  “He’s got so much to say with his music,” the kid chimes in.

  “He’s a good singer,” Allen agrees.

  “He’s a poet,” the kid shoots back.

  “He’s a great poet,” Ginsberg corrects, as Dylan plows into “I Don’t Believe You.”

  “He said in that People interview that he considers himself more of an artist than a musician,” the kid adds.

  “He paints, he’s serious about it,” Allen notes.

  “Think they’re any good?” I jump in.

  Ginsberg frowns. “I don’t think in those terms. Good and bad are irrelevant. The great mindfulness and mysteriousness is what’s interesting. I viewed them with great interest and curiosity.” Ginsberg turns back toward Dylan, watching the small figure below pumping his body to the beat and pushing the song along with his mournful harmonica. Ginsberg peers at the stage, then turns back to me.

  “One thing that’s really interesting is that he plays music with his whole body, foot tapping to knee to thigh to his hip, as well as his right arm and neck,” Ginsberg lectures, as his hand scans Dylan’s anatomy. “He’s like a conductor for this …”

  “Energy,” I interrupt.

  “If you say so, that’s your word,” Ginsberg allows.

  “It’s like waves, like orgone energy flowing through him,” I elaborate.

  “His movements are very simple and basic,” Ginsberg argues, “his physical involvement with the music. I think when you talk about orgones and cosmic forces it gets it away from the actual body, the stomping of the foot.” Allen smiles. “It’s just a simple foot-stomping but it’s real.”

  “You’ve all heard of Hurricane Carter,” Dylan announces from the stage.

  “Free him,” I scream.

  “Hum, Hum, Hum,” Peter issues the Buddhist cheer.

  Ginsberg leans over to me. “What did he say?” I repeat the introduction as the band kicks into “Hurricane” with a vengeance. “It’s just like the old protest songs, simple street language, accessible to the masses, no mystification about it, just a clear journalistic account,” I tell Allen.

  “I don’t know if it’s street language but it’s more direct language,” the poet responds. “The shit in ‘George Jackson’ and here ‘what kind of shit is coming down,’ he’s using it in a way that’s rhythmically very interesting.”

  “Such economy in that line about the judge making all of Rubin’s witnesses drunkards from the slums, that sums up the whole trial,” I add.

  Ginsberg leans over Peter, “He’s written the kind of song that the last rebels of the late ’60s were demanding that he write.”

  “But he’s doing it on his own terms,” I add. �
��I think the demands have slackened off, now he’s doing it ’cause he feels it. It isn’t a simple knee-jerk Skinnerian response.”

  “I didn’t mean that he was doing it ’cause they asked him to, or he was doing what he thought they wanted him to do. He’d been doing it all along actually,” Allen adds.

  We begin our way back because Allen has to go onstage for the encore, but directly stage left Peter finds three empty seats. We’re high up, but we have a good vantage point as Dylan moves to the mike. “This song is straight out of the underground,” he breathes, and the familiar murky strains of “One More Cup of Coffee” fill the civic center. Ginsberg is rocking in his seat, shout-singing along, “One more cup of coffee before I go down to the valley below!”

  “Which valley?” I joke.

  “Death!” Ginsberg notes with finality. “Or life; anything,” then he adds: “The valley below. The Biblical valley. The shadow of the valley …”

  “This song is so mysterious and murky,” I whisper, “it reminds me of a mature ‘Maggie’s Farm.’ That gypsy violin is incredible.”

  “Well it’s Moorish, gypsy, Arabic, semitic,” Ginsberg points out. “It’s a rabbinical, cantotorial thing he hasn’t done before. It’s just like a real Jewish melody. ‘Sara’ is also. Yiddish. This one’s Hebraic, though. I’m just hearing the words as they come through.”

  “It’s almost a put-down of hedonism with that line ‘your pleasure knows no limits,’ a put-down of excess,” I say.

  Dylan finishes the song. “Hum, Hum, Hum,” Ginsberg screams, causing a sea of faces in our section to investigate the source of the strange warble. “For the moment that’s my favorite song,” he bubbles, “definitely a great song. ‘Isis’ and ‘Hurricane,’ I’m in sympathy with them in historical terms but this is sort of an archetypal song and the voicing of it is the most open we have in the Hebrew, that sort of ahhh … Wait, here comes ‘Sara,’ see ‘Sara oh Sara’ that’s the Yiddish part, the refrain, ‘Sara oh Sara.’ He reminds me of some rabbi, some negun. He looks like a negun. Write that down you can use that.”