On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  After that, the rest of the set seems anticlimactic, and Ratso follows George and Paul to the stage door. Lois and Sapounakis enter, but Ratso gets stopped. “He’s with us,” Lois tells the security guard, “he works for Rubin.” Kemp hurries over. “Look George, it’s fine for you to come backstage, but we can’t let Ratso.”

  “But Lou, Ratso works for Rubin. He’s on the defense committee.”

  “He’s a reporter. We can’t have reporters backstage,” Kemp snaps.

  “Look, I know I’m a guest of yours, but Ratso is a very important part of our committee. Rubin would be upset if he gets hassled.”

  “He’s still a reporter,” Kemp argues, “he might hear or see something he shouldn’t.”

  Lois apologizes to the reporter-defender and goes back, as Ratso watches Patti Smith and her entourage, Grossman and his wife, Springsteen, his girlfriend, and about fifteen Columbia Records executives pass by and head backstage. Just then, Pacheco and his girlfriend Melissa walk up. Pacheco is wearing his standard Australian cowboy hat and he’s carrying a beautiful hand-painted wine bottle, a gift for Dylan. Ratso knows he’s too shy to push his way back, so he hollers for Kemp and introduces the folksinger to the manager. Kemp gets the tape and escorts Pacheco back.

  But Ratso isn’t really missing much. It’s a mob scene backstage, almost fifty people, few of whom know each other, few of whom even have much in common, so little enclaves form, with the hurried glances and suspicious whispers that are so endemic to the rock ’n roll business.

  Dylan is sitting in the corner of a small room, surrounded by a mob, makeup smeared by his sweat, fatigue etched into his face, absentmindedly playing with a rose. He gets introduced to Springsteen and they exchange a few taciturn sentences, Dylan shyly glancing to the floor, swinging the rose back and forth until suddenly the flower flies off, leaving him holding the stem. The awkward silence is broken by Springsteen’s red-haired girlfriend Karen, who asks Dylan why he wears makeup. “I saw it once in a movie,” he mumbles.

  After a while Pacheco and Melissa come back out, bottle still in tow, and Ratso joins them as they head for the cars. “We couldn’t get near Dylan, too many people.” Pacheco sadly tucks the wine bottle under his arm. “I’ll send it to him for Christmas.” On the way to the garage, they pass a wiped-out Springsteen, in a dirty mechanic’s jumpsuit, draped around his girlfriend who’s supporting him on their way to the waiting limo. “Hey,” Ratso points, “he looked so fine at first and left looking just like a ghost.”

  They arrive at Ratso’s car only to find more sabotage. The distributor cap has nearly been pulled out of the engine and the car refuses to start. Ratso curses, hops into Pacheco’s car, and they go to search for an open gas station.

  Instead they find a diner and two hours later it’s 5 A.M., Melissa is almost sleeping, Pacheco’s got a long drive back to the Village, so they head back to the Coliseum. The Hertz office opens around 7:30 and Ratso opts to kill a couple of hours at the downtown Dunkin’ Donuts, so he parts company with his friends, walks over to an all-night newsstand, snatches up a copy of Hustler magazine, and settles into a rear stool at the donut shop. Later, he walks over to the Hertz office, picks out a new bright-red Monte Carlo, and slides in next to the Hertz mechanic who’s gonna go check out the Granada.

  The old black man floors the car and they speed past the lovely ivy-covered walls of Yale. “Fucking whorehouse,” the mechanic spits, eyes scanning the virginal 7 A.M. campus, “bunch of junkies go here.” His bony finger points toward Yale’s green. “They always catch them down there on the green with no pants on, fucking chicks.”

  The Hertz man expertly wheels the car around a corner and heads up toward the Coliseum. “What do you do?” he asks Ratso. The reporter explains about the tour, Dylan, Baez, etc. The old man’s eyes light up. “I used to sing. I was in showbiz, still do it part-time. It’s a dog, though.” They fall silent. The Hertz man shakes his head, moans, “I’ll tell ya, those fucking one-night stands kill ya, most of us old-timers are getting out. We don’t play that shit for young folks. We work gigs for the fur-and-diamond set.” He swings the car up the long circular ramp of the parking facility. “Where the fuck does this thing end?” he wonders halfway up. “Where you from? New York? Yeah, I wouldn’t live in that motherfucker for anything. I live here now. I’ve had it with the fucking road. You know how most entertainers are, make it and fuck it up. They think it’ll last forever. Well I got a fucking house out of it. You want some advice?” The Hertz man pauses and stares at Ratso. Ratso nods. “Save it.” He floors the Monte Carlo through the deserted parking level.

  “What’s your name?” Ratso finally asks.

  “Ray Reid.”

  “What group did you work with?”

  “The Inkspots, joined in I forget the fucking year, but I been with ’em for fourteen years. I’m sixty-two now. It’s a rough fucking life, man. Living out of a suitcase. It’s lots of fun now when we still do it. It’s in our blood. Just shuck it and fuck it. We had a chance to go on the road and do one-nighters last winter but we said fuck it. I don’t want it no more. We were out with Andy Kirk and the Clouds of Joy last time. Your parents heard of him. We went out for ten weeks, one-nighters.” He spots the Granada and stops on a dime. “Yup, you’ve got a car here.” Ray hops out and quickly looks over the Granada engine. “Shit, we gotta leave this motherfucker here and get a tow truck.”

  On the way back, Ratso fills Ray in on some of his experiences with this tour. Ray’s soaking in the road stories, his eyes wide, his cracked face breaking into a grin. “Shit, when I get off if I want I go out on a gig,” he sighs, “but through the week I gotta go and make that dollar shit. Why not? It’s not a bad job. They may give you shit about getting this Monte Carlo for that Granada though.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Ratso fumes expansively, “I’ll tell ’em they fucked me out of a four-thousand-dollar gig because the car wouldn’t start.” Ratso smiles and pulls into the Hertz garage. “All right my man, take care,” Ray waves to Ratso. “Hey Ray, if you can still sing what the fuck are you doing working in a garage?” Ratso shouts. Ray makes a face. “Fuck that shit. I’m through with these one-nighters. I’m semi-retired.” He turns to enter the office. “But if you get me with a group,” he smiles, “I can still swing a bit.”

  Ratso gets back to his hotel in Danbury around 9 A.M. and settles down for a few hours of much-needed sleep. But once again, the jarring phone interrupts at noon. Rolling Stone this time. The urgent tones of his New York editor jump out of the receiver and jolt the reporter awake like tiny splashes of ice water. Flippo, the editor, is enraged over the piece.

  “It just is not a good piece,” he flatly declares in his Southern twang. “It doesn’t reflect two weeks of traveling. You seem like an adman, like you’re too close to get some perspective. Details, you need details. How much are people making?”

  “You want me to ask Baez to say how much she’s making?” Ratso barks incredulously. “I wouldn’t tell her how much I’m making. How much do you make?”

  “You’re not doing a story on me,” Flippo says flippantly.

  The conversation goes on a bit and Ratso promises to try to get some additional quotes and information on the business aspects of the tour. But first a trip to the Pathmark and some vitamin C, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12, Expectorate, Robitussin, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and cough drops for the miserable cold he’s been carrying around since Vermont. By the afternoon, the room looks like a hospital ward, the juices stored in an ice-filled garbage can, the medicines and vitamin bottles strewn around the various dresser- and tabletops. And the sick reporter lying in the middle of all this with the phone permanently attached to his left ear. He’s been trying the Niagara Hilton all day, to no avail. Finally, around 6, he reaches Kemp’s room.

  “Louie, this is Ratso, I’m still in Connecticut. My fucking car was broken into last night and I got beat up.”

  “Who broke into it?”

  “I do
n’t know. Some hoods probably tried to steal it.”

  “Yeah, who beat you up?”

  “The fucking bikers that work for the local promoter,” Ratso moans.

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t have a badge.”

  “Well, where were you that you weren’t supposed to be that they beat you up?” Kemp sounds like a stern parent.

  “I was in a seat that wasn’t occupied. The guy says let me see your stub, and I said, ‘I don’t have a ticket for this seat,’ and the guy says, ‘Get up,’ and he pulls me like I’m a kid trying to crash a seat and I said, ‘Listen man, I’m with Rolling Stone,’ and he says, Yeah, the fuck you are.’ He was one of those biker types, Gestapo mentality, and he starts pulling me by—”

  “Hey Larry,” Kemp interrupts, “what can I do for you?”

  “All right, what I need now is Rolling Stone called and they need fifteen hundred more words. I need some quotes by tonight.”

  “What do you mean you need quotes?”

  “They want reactions to the tour so far.”

  “From who?” Kemp says suspiciously.

  “Blakley, Elliot, Ronson,” Ratso pauses, “and Dylan.”

  “Well you can get the first ones for sure,” Kemp assures.

  “Well, what about Dylan!” Ratso urges.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not trying to sweat on you,” the reporter screams, “you know that.”

  “Well,” Kemp softens, “what’s the question?”

  “How the tour has been,” Ratso improvises, “you know, his reaction to the tour so far, just the general kind of thing …”

  “That’s bullshit!” Kemp screams.

  “I know it’s bullshit but it’s what they want. Do me a favor. Ask Dylan. I really need two paragraphs from him, you know, something like that saying why he’s the loosest he’s ever been ….”

  “We’ll see,” Kemp says ominously. “Call me back later.”

  Ratso hangs up and paces the floor. He’s got a deadline coming up in about twelve hours, he’s hundreds of miles away from the people that he’s got to interview, relying on that goddamn phone. As if by magic, it rings.

  But it’s only Rolling Stone again, this time Abe Peck, the San Francisco-based editor of the music section. Ratso and Peck are old friends, in fact, Ratso introduced Abe to the Rolling Stone people and in some way feels responsible for his getting his present position. Of course, it was Abe that assigned Ratso to the Rubin Carter story.

  “What you filed is kind of rambling, really,” Peck pronounces. “It doesn’t report on the evolution of the tour. If you read that piece you have no idea what the dates are. Look, here’s the situation. We have a tour here that has turned from a tour where Dylan says, We’re gonna play for the people,’ only doing small halls, to a tour where they’re knocking off $150,000 a night. The major unanswered question that has nothing to do with color or Rolling Thunder or a student that runs away from home like you have in your piece. You should be more factual. The news of this tour is the change from what their story was—”

  “Levy told me it was never intended to be small clubs,” Ratso protests. “That was the rumor, from Columbia.”

  “Your job is to cut through the gossip. Why were Kemp and Imhoff being so reluctant, because of the mysterious nature of the tour or to create hype? Did you see the new Variety? There’s an article here about the tour that seems to be the right question to ask. The headline says, ‘Is Dylan Interested in Money? Small Clubs Give Way to Arenas.’”

  “Read it,” Ratso yells.

  “OK” Peck plows in:

  Providence, Nov. 11

  Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue drew 20,878 customers who paid $158,000 for two performances at the 12,500 seat Providence Civic Center last week but it was virtually a textbook example of how a show should not be promoted.

  Center general manager Charles J. Toomey was telephoned October 6 by promoters Shelly Finkel and Barry Imhoff who wanted to book a “dynamic show” into the building. They said Dylan would come to town with a complement of singers and musicians, but Toomey was to tell no one, least of all the press.

  They reportedly were acting on Dylan’s dictates in all matters.

  Toomey kept the information under his bonnet to the extent none of the Civic Center personnel had any inkling who the “mystery” performer would be. Rumors circulated it might be Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Neil Diamond or Elton John, but checks indicated these talents would be otherwise occupied Nov. 4.

  Toomey admits some folks correctly guessed it would be Dylan but he remained mum. The promoters had threatened to yank the shows if the word was leaked.

  Tickets went on sale Saturday morning Oct. 25, at 10 o’clock, and some 200 people were queued up outside. At the same time announcements were made over radio stations WRBU and WPRO.

  The tickets said “Rolling Thunder Revue” but gave no suggestion as to what a Rolling Thunder Revue is. There were youngsters—tickets in hand—asking “Who is it? What is it?” They were visibly relieved when told it was Dylan and not perhaps a kettle drum recital or religious crusade.

  Imhoff, meanwhile, said there would be no press accommodations because “We don’t need any publicity.” Promoters said they wanted to give “the people an equal chance to see Bob.” One scribe noted this is referred to in business school as “maximizing profit.”

  “All right, stop, I’ll get the article,” Ratso yells.

  “Look, someone created the hype, the illusion. Even Variety said they were gonna play small halls. The point is they’re doubling up, playing two concerts a night, doing $100,000 nights. You’re lacking hard info on the mechanics of the tour, on the success or failure of the original concept of this tour. The central theme of the piece should be, it seems to me, that two weeks into this tour it became clear that the concept had changed. Look, the first eleven shows of the tour in seven cities brought an estimated 75,000 customers between $7.50 and $8.50 so the grosses are almost $600,000. That’s not intimate clubs. Why the change? Who changed? Who started the myth of small clubs? What does Dylan feel about the myth? That’s one theme.

  “The other theme is the continuation of the music. Has the music changed? Was it good in the beginning? Are they growing as an aggregate? Rumors of superstars coming? How’s Ginsberg? How did Joni get there? We have to be finished by Tuesday afternoon, starting inquiries at this point is very late. Then we need much more stuff from Dylan. You’ve been saying to me and Chet that you have great access. Then why the fuck doesn’t he talk to you? What have you been doing for two weeks with Dylan?”

  “I had great access in the city,” Ratso rails, “we hung out nearly every night. But we got on the road and Kemp starts treating me like a nigger.”

  “So write about that if you can’t get the interview.”

  “Kemp’s job is to keep me away,” Ratso’s voice is a shrug.

  “Who says it? All those good parts of your first piece are missing in this second one. I think right now it is just a collection of anecdotes.”

  “I dug that second piece more than anything I’ve written.”

  “That’s not my feeling. I’m not saying only to do a business piece. Look, these guys went out on tour and told everyone, whoever, they told, blah, I love Rubin Carter, I’m busting my ass to get this guy out of jail. Suddenly they’re playing two shows in big fucking halls. How’s this happen? Look we need about a thousand more words. OK?”

  Ratso assents, slams down the phone, and picks it right back up. The phone in Kemp’s room in Niagara Falls rings twice.

  “Hello,” a soft feminine voice answers. It’s Susan, Louie’s girlfriend from Minnesota. Ratso starts babbling to her about the crisis, the deadline, the needed quotes, the car being broken into, and his fight with security.

  “Would you like to speak to Louie,” she suggests, and passes the phone.

  “You got a problem out there, huh?” the familiar fish peddler’s voic
e booms across the miles.

  “Louie, they just called me,” Ratso tries to sound frantic, “they said they don’t like the piece. Doesn’t have any detail and they said that I told them I have access to him, that I’m holding stuff back from them, read me a piece in Variety putting down the way the tour’s been promoted, shit like that. They’re really sweating on me.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Kemp finally responds.

  “Help me out a little,” Ratso squeaks.

  “I helped you out plenty. You talked to all those other people, you got quotes, use them.”

  “I didn’t talk to anybody,” Ratso whines. “Would you give me a quote, at least?”

  “No,” Kemp thunders. “On what?”

  “I’ll ask you some questions,” Ratso senses an opening.

  “No, call those other entertainers.”

  “They can’t help. They want to know why it was changed from small halls to large arenas.”

  “That’s all they’re concerned about,” Kemp says contemptuously.

  “Yeah, isn’t that stupid,” Ratso laughs. “Who changed it? How is Dylan responding to the changes?” Ratso mocks the list of questions.

  “They’re not large arenas. They’re medium-sized halls.”

  “Yeah, Lou, but if you do two shows a night in 12,000-seat arenas that’s 24,000 seats at $8.50 a seat. That’s money, not small clubs.”

  “So what’s the question?” Lou sounds impatient.

  “They said the original theme was to play for the people. I had a quote from Bob saying that small halls are more conducive to my kind of music so the question is, has the concept of the tour changed? Now Levy told me some shit about that.”