On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  Love and knowledge are the tickets

  So won’t you come aboard

  On the Rolling Thunder Revue

  Rolling Thunder Revue

  Rolling Thunder Revue

  Eyahhhhhhhhh ….

  He’s moaning now, rolling his eyes, and then he goes into this talking section, the voice cracking every so often. “This is my home town, and I traveled here from New York City to play for Bob Dylan right in my home town and may this be dedicated to him, God Bless You all on the Rolling Thunder Revue, Rolling Thunder Revue, Rolling Thunder Revue, how about you?”

  We are all instruments

  And love is our song

  Everybody has a part to play

  So won’t you sing along

  On the Rolling Thunder Revue

  Rolling Thunder Revue

  Rolling Thunder Revue

  When he reaches this last chorus Meyers begins to fade back, widening the frame, showing this little folksinger lost in the ever-increasing vastness of empty space around him. Meyers is propelling himself backward, shooting all the time, until he’s about fifty feet from the kid. In the background you can hear the muffled sounds of the destruction of the stage. But life doesn’t always acquiesce to art. Cowen’ll have none of this poetic cinéma-vérité slow fade to tactfulness. This is real life! He’s got a goddamn message to get across. This Rolling Thunder Revue, it’s serious stuff, it’s fucking spiritual. And this is the big break, this is what made those fourteen-, fifteen-hour days of hacking a cab around Manhattan worth anything.

  Roger finishes the chorus, pauses after the last “Rolling Thunder Revue” and then suddenly, puts down his head, then lifts up an accusatory finger, aiming it right at Meyers’ fat lens, and makes a headlong charge across the bare wood floor. “How about youuuuuuuu,” this little bull is screaming at the top of his lungs, charging straight into Meyers’ lens. He gets to within a foot of the camera, stops, leers at it and moans, “You.”

  Meyers turns to us, and rolls his eyes. “In-fucking-credible,” smiling. But Johnson wants more dialogue so Meyers starts the camera again and Roger breaks into his singsong voice: “I was sitting in my apartment in New York City, picked up a copy of the New York Times, saw a picture of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue on the cover. Oh Lord, you know my heart started to beat so fast, I started breathing heavy, the Rolling Thunder Revue, I couldn’t describe my feelings, so I traveled home to my home town which is Springfield, Massachusetts, the first time I heard a Bob Dylan record was here, oh Lord. Now I just came here to see my folks, I’d been reading about the Rolling Thunder Revue but I didn’t know if he was actually gonna be playing here and when I got here I found he was playing here and I dedicate this song to him and I thank God and bless him and everyone else who’s on the Rolling Thunder Revue. On the Rolling Thunder Thunder Revue.”

  Dan joins in now, both of them chanting the chorus “Rolling Thunder Revue” until Roger stops playing, looks at the mike and moans, “How about you? Bob?”

  “OK, we got it,” Meyers exults and winks at us. “Another score, Larry.” I walk with him and Johnson to load the equipment in their van.

  “You’re in now,” Johnson tells me, “you don’t have to worry. We’ve been putting in good words for you to Dylan. We had a meeting to view the rushes the other night and Dylan asked if we really needed you and Meyers gave a five-minute speech on your behalf. He said that you were a better straight man than Kemp and that you brought in our best interview so far, that girl Priscilla in Newport.”

  “What did Dylan say?” I ask.

  “Nothing. He never says anything,” Johnson chuckles, “he just takes it all in.”

  After getting a bite at a bizarre all-night deli that serves as the watering hole for Springfield’s drag queens and general underlife, I drive through a heavy fog back to Lenox, and get to bed around 6. Only to be awakened at 9 A.M. by the jangling phone.

  “Eiiiiiiii,” a familiar voice is screaming, “how you doin’, boy-chick. It’s Kinky.” I fill him in on the latest developments, my running disputes with Kemp, Dylan’s vague authorization to do a book, Kemp’s counterploy in planning to give the official book to another writer, Meyers’ defense of me. Kinky advises me to bide my time. “What should I do,” he wonders, “do you think it would be profitable to come up?”

  “Sure, you definitely should come up, even if you don’t perform,” I urge. “I broached the idea to Dylan the other day and he acted real coy. He said to me, ‘Do we have room for Kinky?’ and I said, ‘Listen, man, if Kinky can’t come why the fuck don’t you sing “Ride ’Em Jewboy”?’ and he says, You gave me the words to that didn’t you? I got the words to that,’ and I said, ‘Why the fuck don’t you sing it?’ So he thought for a second, then said, ‘I’ll tell ya what, I’ll sing one of Kinky’s songs if he sings one of mine.’”

  “Fuck, I’ll sing anything,” Kinky burps.

  “Look, the worst thing that can happen if you came out for a few days, is you’ll get in the movie. The fucking film crew is primed for you. I got them so excited they can’t wait.”

  “Yeah, but Dylan might edit it out,” Kinky worries.

  “No, man,” I reassure him, “he likes you. You’re Jewish.”

  After the call, I grab a quick bite to eat and drive around Lenox for a few hours before starting off for Vermont. It’s a beautiful Indian-summer day, almost in the 70s, as I slowly drive through Pittsfield. And right in front of me is Phydeaux. Phydeaux is a specially built Greyhound, owned by Frank Zappa who lent it to Barry Imhoff at the last minute for this tour. It’s got a drawing of a slightly anemic dog, barking “ARF” in a comic balloon, two fangs protruding from its jaws, and a Band-Aid on its ass. The bus is customized for rock star travel, the windows all tinted so gawkers can’t see in, and the interior arranged complete with bunk beds, comfortable lounge seats, and TV and stereo systems.

  There’s an informal caste system developing, with the “stars,” the musicians, getting to ride on Phydeaux, and the “lesser lights,” Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Denise (who help out with the baggage), Raven, Chris O’Dell, Jacques Levy, Sam Shepard, the guests, and the occasional security man riding on the backup bus, an old Delmonico. They’ve named the second bus too. Ghetteaux.

  It’s a long ride to Vermont, and it’s late afternoon by the time the buses pull up to the Shelbourne Inn, where the tour is staying. I drive on a few miles further to Burlington and check into the Holiday Inn, just about peaking on the excitement and the drugs of the last few days as I sit down in front of the typewriter, feed in a sheet of South Burlington Holiday Inn stationery, and start a letter to Phil Bender, Dylan’s nom de registration.

  DEAR MR. BENDER,

  This letter comes to you from a state of confusion, ennui, and overbearing mania. I was tremendously turned on by your warm response to my request to do a book about the tour since my Rolling Stoned articles hardly do justice to my personal feelings about the revue, namely that it’s the fucking musical event of the last 200 years, next to Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” at Flyer games. However, in my rush of elation at your approval of my plan, I forgot to mention the “practical” aspects as Allen counseled me, to get down once and for all. I really appreciated your offer to help me in any way possible and I guess this letter is my attempt to delineate the things I need to do justice to this tour in book form.

  But before we get into that, a real distressing thing happened to me on Wed. After being high on the book idea since our Monday chance meeting (we really can’t go on meeting like that), Wednesday at the Breakers after a great afternoon of hanging out and being foolish with Stoner, McGuinn, and Elliot (for the first fucking time since we left Manhattan I was able to relate to them as the friends they are), I asked Regan to take a shot of Stoner posed à la Elvis in front of the mansion for my book. Regan first said he was out of film, then sheepishly said he wouldn’t be able to give me any pictures for my book since “Lou and Bob decided on Tuesday to give t
he official tour book” to a reporter from People magazine. Needless to say, I was crestfallen, world of illusion suddenly at my feet. Then fucking Meyers and Johnson rush over and start filming me at the height of my anguish. However, I did manage some good lines. At any rate, I felt double-crossed, that my book was being aborted, since a book without pictures and access to the people on the tour (most of whom I count as my friends) wouldn’t stand a chance against a book with fab pix.

  I really don’t understand why Louie seems to hate me, he even had the gall to call me Weberman at one point. [Lou’s animosity seems to transcend our normal press/manager adversary roles and the only explanation I have is what McGuinn warned me about at the Gramercy, that anyone new who Dylan seems to dig is fair game for the wrath of some of your close friends.] I ain’t trying to compete with them, just write about some of the most exciting times I’ve had. So here’s my book outline:

  Tentative Title: THE MILLION DOLLAR BASH

  On the Road with Bob Dylan and Friends

  It’ll be a diary form, relating the events on the road intercut with profiles and interviews of each of the major participants, performers, Levy, Kemp, etc.

  Also, it won’t be limited to the tour party. I’ve been sleeping about three hours a night and have been scouting out the streetscene in each city we hit. So far I got real good shit in Lowell, a forty-five-minute interview with Nick, Kerouac’s brother-in-law, at the end of which he breaks down in tears, moaning that Jack wouldn’t have died if he stayed in Lowell. Also plan a complete chapter on the “Hurricane” session then a flashback to Rubin in jail and my interview with him. In other words, Dylan is just the searchlight, the catalyst for this book that’ll touch on the people that Rolling Thunder comes in contact with.

  OK, now as Allen says on to the practicalities. What I need for the book is:

  Access to the performers—either in the form of backstage passes, a tour badge, anything so I’m not hassled by the big po-leece of Barry Imhoff

  Photos—Regan has the monopoly and gave shit photos to Rolling Stoned and great ones to Peephole. All I want is equal access.

  A chance to ride the bus. I want to maintain my financial independence and my own car, etc., but I’d like to get some color every once in a while and experience life from the bowels of Phydeaux and Ghetteaux. This is a minor point.

  That’s about it, I don’t want to suck your soul, or hit on you unnecessarily, and I’m sorry this letter is so long but I want to impress on you the spirit in which I’m doing this shit. This is the stuff I was pointing toward all my fucking life. I was going to be a goddamn accountant until I heard Highway 61, then started hanging out in the Village at Paul Sargeant’s, listening to the Fugs, reading EVO. I owe you a cultural debt, and I think I can pay some of it back via my coverage. Fuck the Johnny Come Latelys, you were always there, even when I was sitting in the administration building in Queens College and Nashville Skyline came out of nowhere.

  Your criticism of my first Rolling Stone piece was that it wasn’t personal enough. Naturally, since Stone is the People of the lumpens. Anyway, give me a chance to express my feelings about this surreal circus troupe. Let me write my song. And let me keep listening to yours.

  Best,

  Larry

  The next morning the jarring phone shocks me out of slumber. It’s my wake-up call, Saturday noon, time to throw on some clothes and meet Roger McGuinn for lunch. According to Kemp’s ground rules, it’s OK for me to drive up to their motel and wait in the car for whoever was foolish enough to want to leave their asylum and risk spending some time with a heathen like me. But, I thought to myself, maybe he was right. I sneak a look into the rearview mirror. Not quite natty. I haven’t shaved since the tour began, haven’t found a place to wash my clothes, even missed a shower or two. My vitamin C intake was down but was more than made up for by a surplus of vitamin M—Methedrine.

  Lately, I had noticed myself doing strange things, like lecturing the Holiday Inn housekeepers about ethnomethodology as they made up the room, inviting strange secretaries on the street to view my famed collection of sea sponges, and on occasion watching The Tonight Show. The signs seem unmistakably the dread effects of Road Fever. I think about Kinky, one of the more tragic victims of this malady. A bright boy, a fine person, a credit to his religion. But after two years of touring with the Texas Jewboys, playing Godforsaken places, Kinky was just the shell of the man he used to be. I remember the last time I had seen him, he was staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York and we went down to Chinatown about 2 A.M. Kinky was wearing his satin Menorah shirt, gaudy blue and yellow, and his alligator cowboy boots with steel toeguards. He had a red, white, and blue sport coat, a sequined cowboy hat, and a glittering silver mesh bandanna. And those strange chirping sounds he was making as the waiter brought the menu, the highpitched “Hi, hi, hi.” And then when the beef chow fun finally came and it tasted as if it had been simmering for three weeks just waiting for us to arrive, and when everyone in the place was staring at us, with the same looks usually reserved for out-of-town zoos or female derelicts, a fusion of awe, compassion, and scorn, then Kinky leapt up, grabbed a handful of burnt noodles and hurled them to the floor, narrowly missing a horrified housewife from Forest Hills who was coming in, and then a strange low guttural sound issued from his lips, a slightly familiar sound, yes, it was unmistakably the sounds I once heard years ago at summer camp in the Catskills, the strange sound of a loud, long resonant belch that was somehow in perfectly comprehensible English, the burpwords drifting up past the startled diners and wafting into the kitchen loud and clear, scattering the three small cooks out into the room. “I DON’T LIKE IT HERE,” Kinky burped, ground his cigar into his white rice, and vaulted up the stairs and out into the street.

  I was still shaking my head, mourning Kinky’s fate, when I pull up to the Shelbourne Inn to pick up McGuinn. Roger hops into the Granada and we start pulling out of the driveway but suddenly the car is surrounded. Meyers and Johnson and a few others from the film crew are lolling about, and directly in front of us, Baez and her road manager, Carlos, engage in horseplay.

  Baez skips over to the car, and leaps up on the front hood. “It’s Ratso,” she laughs. And, of course, she was right. Meyers wipes the sweat off his brow. “Ratso, huh,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “He is Ratso,” Johnson shouts, leering at me. “Yeah, he is,” Meyers agrees.

  “Why do you call me Ratso, because I remind you of Dustin Hoffman?” I ask Baez.

  “No,” she leans her head into the car, “because you remind me of Ratso.”

  “Ha,” McGuinn chuckles, “it’s Ratso!”

  I smile wanly, far too fragile at that point to argue with a rock star. And besides, there was little to argue about. I was Ratso, I realized, rolling with the punches, licking my wounds in auxilliary highway hotels, stuffing my frayed dreams into a tattered suitcase, limping along the highway in search of that warm sun that always follows the Thunder. And why not, if I couldn’t cover the tour in the more prescribed fashion, why not become a sort of spiritual mascot, part fan, part scribe, part pharmacist, part jester? Ratso would be the perfect counterpoint to Kemp’s Broderick Crawford, the victim of the overzealous trespasses of the highway patrol. It was an ideal role, one which didn’t require a hell of a lot of Method preparation, and one that just might get me to that Miami sun after all. Ratso chuckled to himself at that.

  “Where are you guys going?” Meyers peers in.

  “I’m going to eat and get McGuinn some heroin,” Ratso jokingly leers.

  Baez starts bouncing up and down on the front fender. “Let’s rock his car off,” she shouts impishly. “Yeah,” Carlos and Johnson join in, bouncing up and down until it feels like the inside of a boat. “Go ahead,” McGuinn issues a challenge. “It’s a Hertz, you can do anything you want to it.” He turns to Ratso. “You have full coverage, don’t you?”

  They soon tire, and Baez walks over to the driver’s window again. “You’re gonna be lead weight
forever, Ratso, unless you clean up that fucking hair,” she warns, as she gingerly fingers a few strands of Ratso’s mane.

  “Get out of here,” he slaps at her, then smiles sheepishly. “I gotta get some shaving cream.”

  “Wow, I’ll get it for you,” Baez quickly offers.

  “Would you?” Ratso laughs.

  “Honey,” Baez rolls her eyes, “I would do anything.” She pokes her hand in the car again. “Let me see,” she narrows her eyes, her fingers groping for Ratso’s hair again, “do you wash that?”

  “I wash it every fucking day,” Ratso lies indignantly, “I use Ogilvie.”

  Baez laughs. “I was wondering what you used, I thought it was toothpaste.”

  “Why, you got something better,” Ratso pouts. “It’s thin, that’s all. You gonna make something of my genes?”

  “No,” Baez smiles maternally, “you’re a good egg.”

  “I know it,” Ratso softens. “Everybody knows it except Kemp. He thinks I’m a schmuck.”

  “Just clean up your act, Ratso.” Baez starts off with Carlos.

  “OK, Madonna,” Ratso screams after her, as he screeches the Granada out onto the highway.

  “Whaddya want, breakfast or lunch? Want eggs?” Ratso asks McGuinn.

  “I never eat eggs,” McGuinn yawns, wiping the sleep out of his eyes, “I always eat lunch for breakfast.” Roger moans and holds his stomach. “I got drunk again last night. I gotta watch that. I poured a bottle of vodka down the toilet today and—”

  “And you drank it,” Ratso laughs.

  “No, I’m not gonna drink no more.” Roger stares out the window. “You know, we were only a quarter of a mile from Alice’s Restaurant but I didn’t go there. I missed the filming too and the bus. It took off exactly on time. I didn’t really want to go to the filming though, if I really wanted to go I would have made it. My attitude about it was I can always be in the film.” McGuinn looks at Ratso for approval. “This thing’s gonna keep shooting and shooting and like I’d rather be in the film by rolling into it as opposed to panting into it. I don’t want to go ‘huhuhuhuhuh,’” McGuinn pants, his tongue dangling down like a St. Bernard’s.