On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  It’s 5:20 A.M. but the adrenalin is still pumping as he swings the Monte Carlo down to the Howard Johnson’s and parks behind three Cadillacs in a row. He slumps onto a counter stool, next to a well-dressed man in a trench coat. Shit, he curses silently, no hookers. Only about six burnt-out night people, and a couple of pimps, looking out the window and jiving.

  A post-amphetamine gloom begins to descend on our reporter, a gloom intensified by the leering eye of a homosexual on a nearby stool. He’s about to pack it in and head back to Cambridge when one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen strolls in. She’s a silver blonde, with delicately rouged cheeks, black satin pants, and a red wool jacket. Jesus, Ratso whistles to himself, she looks just like Monroe. I wonder what she charges? Suddenly the reporter decides it’s time for some participant-observation.

  But just as suddenly she’s joined by her friend, who comes in carrying a huge Sterno log, wearing a ratty fur coat, a curly blond wig copped no doubt from an old Three Stooges movie, and red pumps. Ratso’s visions of a bacchanal dissolve like the cream in his coffee. But what a pair for the movie, the most beautiful and the tackiest transvestites ever. He picks up his cup and moves down the counter. “Can I join you?” he asks with a smile.

  The tacky one looks him over, then shrugs. “Sure,” he-she rasps in a low guttural voice. Marilyn, meanwhile, is ordering. “I’ll have a cheeseburger,” she whispers sexily, “and how much is a salad?”

  “Seventy cents,” the counterman lisps.

  Marilyn sighs the sigh of the world-weary. “All right, I’ll have a salad. With blue cheese dressing.”

  Actually, Ratso learns, Marilyn’s name is Lola and the tacky one is named Betty. The scribe mentions the film and the tour and suggests they participate. “Well,” Lola purrs hesitantly. “She’s a little paranoid,” Betty jumps in, “it’s just that so many guys hit on us.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” Lola says dreamily, staring into her compact as she fixes some makeup. “I do like Warhol movies though. I’d have to be high.”

  “I’ll get you two tickets for the concert, then after the concert, I’ll take you backstage,” Ratso suggests.

  “Give us four tickets so we can bring boyfriends,” Betty rasps. “I don’t want to go unescorted.” She rolls her eyes. “It’ll be fun,” she prods Lola, who smiles weakly. “We’ll dress up very Gatsby, dear, long cigarette holder, makeup, the whole bit. We’re not into music that much, I like Baez though, she’s about the only female singer I like.” Betty frowns. “I don’t even like Barbra Streisand.”

  Ratso points to the Sterno log, imagining new frontiers in decadence. “What’s it for?”

  “My fireplace.” Lola smiles sweetly.

  “Do you guys know Murphy, the bail bondsman?” Ratso realizes his mistake too late.

  “He bought his motorcycle off me!” Betty shouts. “I used to have a motorcycle and knee-high glitter boots.”

  “Can I have the catsup?” Lola interrupts demurely.

  “I threw the boots out, they were destroying my ankles. They were size eight and I took a ten. I like disco music though,” Betty returns to an old subject. “I love the Manhattan Transfer. But personally, I don’t like rock.”

  “We’re into R&B,” Lola purrs, then signals the counterman. “Can you put some chocolate in the milk for me? I love the Kinks, though, that’s where I took my name from.”

  “I’m the one that named her,” Betty boasts. “She won seven trophies, too. See this picture.” She fishes in her purse and pulls out an eight-by-ten of Lola. “She looks just like Monroe, doesn’t she. Show him.”

  Lola strikes an exaggerated Monroe pout, and Ratso shakes his head in wonder. “Make me a star,” Lola says through clenched teeth, “a fallen star.”

  “Is there any chance of me going out with Bob Dylan?” Betty growls. “He’s a Gemini and I’m a Gemini too. I don’t know what I’d talk to him about, though. We’re into different things. I’d love to meet him, though.”

  “Then come to the show, I’ll take you back to meet him, and you’ll be in the movie,” Ratso decides.

  “Well,” Betty hesitates, “OK, it might be fun. You can wear that queen dress, Lola.” Betty laughs and gives Ratso their number.

  It’s 6 o’clock and Ratso runs from the Howard Johnson’s to the car. All the hookers have gone home now, even the pimps are nowhere to be seen. Already, some straights are trooping into the restaurant for coffee before they hit work. Incredible, Ratso says to himself, as he heads back up toward Cambridge, Lola was so ravishing that he still entertains visions of balling her. As the wind blasts into the car, Ratso shivers, pulls up the window, and turns on the radio for company. Roy Orbison shoots out, with that 6 A.M. moan, “Oh, oh, Pretty Woman.” Ratso pulls the window tighter and laughs out loud.

  The next afternoon, Monday, he decides to drive downtown to the Boston Music Hall, where tickets are to go on sale Tuesday morning for the Friday night shows. Lines had started forming Sunday afternoon, and by the time Ratso drove up at least thirty kids were camping in front of the old ornate theater. The journalist steps over the huddled hordes and knocks on the glass door of the theater.

  Owner Al Terbin, a huge, good-natured man with a penchant for chomping on cigars almost as fat as he is, greets the reporter. “C’mon in, c’mon,” he blasts, grabbing Ratso by the arm. They walk toward his office in the lobby. “Just look at this place,” his beefy arm sweeps an arc in the air, “it’s the largest theater in New England, 4,200 seats, 40 years old, plush marble. We get the finest shows here. The Bolshoi was even here.” They enter the office and Al directs Ratso to a seat in front of his huge antique wooden desk. “I can’t believe these kids,” Terbin shakes his head, “they been here since Sunday night and I don’t even have the tickets on the premises. Jerry Seltzer is coming in tonight at 7, we’ll count the tickets, seal them, give ’em back to him and then he’ll come back tomorrow morning right before the box office opens at nine. He doesn’t even trust us with them.” He laughs, and chomps down on his cigar.

  Ratso kibbitzes a bit with Al and then heads outside to talk to some of the kids. But he no sooner gets out the door than one skinny student corrals him, pointing to a Bob Dylan button that the reporter picked up in New Haven. “Hey man, can I buy that off you? I’d really like that.” Ratso looks at this kid, who seems to be around twenty-one, well groomed, dressed fairly conservatively in sweater and slacks, but whose conservative demeanor is belied by the strange, intense stare that he’s fixing on the reporter right now. “C’mon, man, I’ll give you ten dollars for the button,” he pleads, and Ratso, down to his last five dollars, almost sticks himself taking off the pin.

  Outside it looks like some refugee camp, blankets, sleeping bags, groups of three and four huddled together, passing around bottles. The crowd has swelled to about seventy-five.

  All of whom are under the watchful eyes of Chuck Stern, one of Al’s assistants, and his elderly mother who are peering out through the glass doors. Ratso reenters and sidles up to Chuck.

  “Half these people ain’t dealing with a full deck,” Stern chuckles at the mini-Woodstock outside and fingers the gun strapped to his hip. “You got a gun?” Ratso marvels. Chuck laughs. “They call this the Combat Zone.” His arm sweeps out covering the streets. “We sit on all this money, and every degenerate and malcontent around is after it.” Mrs. Stern ambles up, a nice old Jewish mother. She looks out at the crowd and shakes her head. “I don’t care, I don’t care what happens, honey, all I want to do is get the sale over with tomorrow. My son Chuck and I stood up and sold Who tickets, we sold three shows in one day without all this baloney and rigamarole. It went easy, in eight and a half hours we sold out three shows. In and out.” She smiles and touches her hair. “See my gray hair? I got that doing rock concerts. But I love these kids though, without them where would anybody be? Some call me the Witch, they come up to the window and scream, ‘The Witch is here.’ But others,” Mrs. Stern smiles maternally,
“others call me ‘Ma.’”

  Ratso gets restless and starts on a walking tour of the Combat Zone, keeping one eye open for any potential film discoveries. He steps into a few bars, watching some tired, bored-looking dancers go through their bumps and grinds. Finally, he stumbles into the Two O’Clock, a huge, Las Vegas-style showroom that features three rooms of stripping. Ratso sits down in front of one of the circular stages just as a cute platinum blonde named Monique starts her act. She’s got an animal act, rubbing little teddy bears into her crotch, pulling dogs over her curves, culminating when she grabs a monkey with a dildo and inserts it, then pulls it out and squeezes a globe, causing rivulets of what looked to be Jergen’s Cream to spew all over her immense breasts. Ratso realizes he’s hungry and walks down to the White Tower on the corner.

  After dinner, Ratso drives back and enters the theater. In the box office, he sees Seltzer, Jacob Van Cleef, Al Terbin, and Chuck Stern huddled over the tickets. The reporter sneaks in the office then announces loudly, “Stick ’em up.”

  Chuck Stern whirls and pulls out his gun, training the .38 right at Ratso’s heart. Seltzer rolls his eyes heavenward. “Ratso, don’t ever do that, don’t even fool around when we’re counting tickets.”

  The reporter apologizes and they return to the ticket-counting. Afterward Terbin ambles over to Ratso. “That Jerry’s the greatest thing I ever saw.” He points a fat finger in Seltzer’s direction. “I was talking to him and not for one second does he take his eyes off Mrs. Stern counting the tickets.” Terbin shakes his head in awe.

  It’s about 5 A.M. now, and the Pepper Steak luncheonette across the street has remained open all night to accommodate the few hundred kids who’ve lined the sidewalk outside the Music Hall. Inside, Ratso sits down to some hot tea and throws a quarter into the jukebox. The place is occupied only by a few kids from the line and a few early-morning workers.

  Suddenly Ratso almost chokes on his tea as his eyes follow the strangest-looking person he’s ever seen. She’s in her sixties, with a weather-beaten craggy face that looks like it was lifted out of Mount Rushmore. And she’s wearing all men’s clothes, an old squashed fedora, a seedy tweed sports coat, baggy trousers, wing tips, one red and one green sock, and a floppy old white shirt that’s having a hard time keeping her pendulous tits covered. She sits down opposite Ratso and immediately goes into a strange ritual, grabbing a napkin and scrubbing the table in a frenzy. Then she starts arranging her clothes, fidgeting with the sleeve buttons, pulling the arms down, then she licks her fingers. She coughs and then repeats the ritual. Jesus, Ratso thinks, an obsessive-compulsive ambulatory schizophrenic dyke. He bolts up and calls the film crew, waking up Howard Alk but eliciting a promise to send a crew right down.

  Ratso sits down and asks her her name.

  “Amy,” she squeaks, through a puff of her cigarette, and resumes cleaning, this time working on the floor with her worn napkin. Then she bolts upright and starts waving her arm. “Get out here, leave me alone, you cocksucker,” she screams at the air.

  “What’s at the Music Hall?” she asks Ratso, then coughs tubercularly into her napkin.

  “Bob Dylan.” The name draws a blank with Amy. “Joan Baez too.”

  “In picture or in person?” Amy asks.

  “In person,” Ratso informs.

  “She’s OK. She’s with the Carpenters,” Amy decides, then points to the jukebox. “Do they have anything by the Carpenters there?”

  Ratso walks over to the jukebox and drops a quarter in. He plays Billy Swan’s “I Can Help” and “Fly Robin Fly.” Amy pulls out a wrinkled napkin from her pocket and picks out some change, attempting to pay Ratso for the music, but he refuses and she goes back to picking lint off her jacket, then violently starts wringing her hands. Ratso buys her cake and a coffee.

  “Who’s Bob Dylan?” she asks. “Who’s wonderful an hour from now?” She blows her nose loudly. “Is there a Joan Baez record on the jukebox? Who’s Bob Dylan anyway? A singer?”

  “Fly Robin Fly” comes up, and Amy starts swaying to the beat. “You got a light, mister,” she asks Ratso, then rubs her eyes and starts fixing her gray crew-cut hair. “What is this, fly what?”

  Ratso picks out a few more tunes, again declining Amy’s pennies, and sits down. “Where you from, Amy?”

  “From New York. Manhattan. I had a place in Staten Island, I lived in a church in Staten Island. I was born in England, only very little when my mother came over. My mother was married. I lived seven years in Boston. Hey, play that one again.” She likes “Fly Robin Fly.”

  Amy lights up another cigarette and Springsteen’s “Born To Run” comes on, prompting her to leap up and start a weird dance, her arms dangling from her sides like a simian, her fingers snapping, then she starts picking at her nose. Amy finally sits down and fixes her pants, then starts snapping at the air again. “You shut up. Get away from me.”

  “Relax, Amy,” Ratso urges. Amy bursts into tears. “C’mon Amy, stop crying,” Dom the owner pipes in. He comes from around the counter and brings her a glass of water. “Can’t lose the star,” he winks at Ratso, “this is your big break, darling. Fix your pants.”

  “I gotta go to the bathroom,” Amy mumbles. But Dom’s is broken so Ratso offers to escort her to the hotel next door. They step out the door, but Amy hesitates, holding the door open for her companion in spirit. At the hotel, Amy pauses a second, then chooses to go into the women’s room. Ratso waits a few minutes, then hears screams echoing through the empty bathroom.

  “Amy,” he yells inside, holding the door ajar, “what are you doing in there? Hurry up, we gotta get back. The film crew’s coming.”

  “OK, Ratso,” Amy wafts back chagrined, then orders more softly, “get out of here you cocksucker, leave me alone.” A few minutes later, she sheepishly trudges out of the john and they walk back to Dom’s.

  “All right, we got the stars, Valentino and Greta,” Dom laughs as Ratso and Amy come back in. The film crew still hasn’t arrived and when he calls Ratso finds they haven’t even left the Boxboro hotel yet, a good forty-five-minute drive. It’s almost nine now and the tickets are about to be dispensed. Ratso slams the receiver down, tells Dom to keep an eye on Amy, and rushes across the street. He’s lined up at least ten people for the shooting, Bob (a weird Jesus freak he met earlier who’s convinced the reporter is Dylan), Julien, Debbie, two emergent leaders on the line, Al, Mrs. Stern, and he’s running around the line and in and out of the theater like Peckinpah on speed, making sure the cast is prepped.

  An orderly line has been formed by now, a line that stretches up the block, around the theater, and almost to the next block. Al is standing in front of the box office, barking out orders like a general. Ratso’s watching the Matinee Fox in action when Bob the Jesus freak comes up. He’s got the weird smile again, and that hazy look. “You’re Bob, right Ratso?” he asks the reporter. “Huh?” Ratso stares. “Are you Bob? You’re playing here, aren’t you?” “I’m not Bob,” Ratso maintains. Bob just smiles. “You’re not Ratso, you’re Bob,” and he disappears back into line.

  Satisfied, Ratso marches back to Dom’s. But she’s gone. He rushes up to Dom. “Where’s Amy? Where the fuck is she?”

  Dom shrugs. “I tried to keep her in here. She kept asking where you were, kept saying that you lied to her, you weren’t coming back. Then she bolted for the door, ran out, stopped, and stuck her head back in and said, ‘But tell him, I love him.’” Dom shakes his head and smiles.

  With his star gone, Ratso was crestfallen, so when the film crew arrives he perfunctorily rounds up the kids and they shoot a half hour’s worth but his heart isn’t in it. In fact, the only thing that assuaged the pain was the tall frizzy-haired girl named Sara who went back to Cambridge with him, to help him recover.

  But the next day, another blow. Ratso calls Rolling Stone for some additional expense money and gets the word from Flippo. It is no longer desirable in their eyes to spend $250 a week to keep the reporter on the road
. What they want now is spot coverage, reporting on a few concerts, but not actually traveling with the troupe. Ratso rails at that idea, and slams down the phone in disgust. To clear his mind, he grabs Sara and they drive down to engage in his favorite pastime, scouring the Salvation Army for clothes, all the while scheming how to stay on the road.

  That afternoon they drive to Worcester and pull up in front of the Memorial Auditorium. The concert is some four hours away but already the stage door is dotted with ticket-beggars, distant friends of the performers, and various hangers-on. Lisa is back, in her floppy hat with feathers, decked out in a black “Guam” T-shirt. Ratso goes to the door and asks for someone from the film crew. A few minutes later, David Meyers comes out.

  “OK, Ratso,” he smiles, “this is your big test. Go out and find an old pool hall, we’re probably gonna do some shooting right after the concert.” Ratso salutes, grabs up Sara, picks up a local kid to act as guide, and spends the next three hours scouring the seamy area of Worcester before finally coming up with one pool hall, two whore hotels, and a great derelict bar. Satisfied, he makes it back to the Auditorium for the concert.

  Inside, it’s a gorgeous old hall very reminiscent of the first venue in Plymouth, with a beautiful wood balcony, ornate wood carvings, and a nice marble lobby. And the band seems to be up for this, the first concert in the Boston area. T-Bone is resplendent in a Merlin outfit, complete with long pointed hat, and Soles looks positively Western in his fringed buckskin jacket, matched by Ronee Blakley in her red cowgirl hat.

  In fact, the only sour note seems to be Bobby Neuwirth’s voice, which by this juncture resembles a razor blade after a Hare Krishna initiation. And what makes it worse is that the film crew is filming this concert in its entirety and Fedco has brought up a special mobile sound truck to record the affair for a possible live album.