On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  Sara seems undisturbed. “Is that Neuwirth?” she whispers, pointing to the lanky singer. “I wouldn’t mind getting into his pants.”

  “Be careful,” Ratso sneers, “you’re one step away from the gutter.”

  Everyone seems to love this smallish hall, especially Dylan, and for the first time that Ratso can recall, he inserts a rollicking version of “From a Buick Six,” introducing it as “an autobiographical song for ya.” By “Durango,” the band is really cooking, four camera crews are positioned at various angles (including the new crew, manned by Michael Wadleigh, who did Woodstock) directly in front of Dylan, shooting right up his nose.

  The second half is just as torrid as the first, Dylan loose enough to dedicate “Mama You’ve Been On My Mind” to “my mother and your mother.” By the end, he’s positively wailing, ad-libbing yet another new line to “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”: “Take these chains offa me, I can’t walk so good. An old gypsy told me to stay full length in bed, Feel like I’m looking into Heaven’s Door.” The kids lap it all up, and at the end, they stand and cheer for five minutes.

  Mel Howard has promised to meet with him back in Boxboro, so Ratso and Sara stop for a bite to eat and head straight to the hotel. But at the desk, the reporter runs into some trouble locating any of the guests.

  “Where’s Mel Howard’s room?” he demands.

  The night clerk, a young student type, is adamant. “We have orders not to give out rooms. We have to protect our customers.”

  “Look, I’m supposed to meet these people here, I know they’re staying here, I’m working with the film crew of this group. Look, give me Kemp’s room. Don’t be a fucking asshole.” The clerk shrugs and goes back to his paperback.

  Ratso fumes, the events of the day having a cumulative effect on him from the ugly phone call with Rolling Stone to the wasted effort in Worcester to this ridiculous intransigence. Cursing bureaucracies, he grabs a pen and starts scribbling a note to Kemp.

  DEAR LOU—

  It’s 2:05 and I tried to call your room and the desk told me you would be out for the evening. Mel Howard asked me to meet him at the hotel and tell him of any advance work of the past three days. I told Howard that you should be at the meeting and that’s why I called your room and wrote this note. I’m not sneaking into this fucking hotel. I wanted you to be fully aware of my location. I’ll be in Howard’s room if I can ever find out where the fucker is, they won’t give me the room number. Great security! It’s better than what Arafat got at the Waldorf.

  Love, Ratso

  Just as Ratso is completing the missive, Dylan strides into the lobby, accompanied by Joni Mitchell and Roger McGuinn. He’s wearing the same outfit as he did on stage, the ever-present hat, dark glasses, black leather jacket, Rolling Thunder Wallace Beery shirt, and worn dungarees. “Hey Ratso, how you doing?” he shouts in greeting.

  “I’m fucked,” Ratso screams, seizing the opportunity. “C’mere schmuck,” he urges Dylan over to the desk.

  “What’s the matter,” Dylan asks.

  “I’m fucked,” Ratso moans. “Rolling Stone just cut me off, they don’t want to pay for any more expenses, they only want spot coverage because I wouldn’t write that bureaucratic bullshit about how much money you were making and shit like that and I’m cool here in Boston ’cause I got friends to stay with but once we leave Boston I won’t be able to afford a hotel room and …”

  The three superstars just look in wonder at the reporter decomposing before their eyes.

  “And this whole fucking tour,” Ratso rails on, “I’ve just been get-ting jerked off. I’m the fucking nigger on this tour. Look, you fucking invited me that night at the Kettle and since then it’s like I’m a fucking groupie trying to fight my way into the rooms. I was speaking to some of the security guys and they said that you were just jerking me off, that if you really wanted me on this tour, you’d get me a room and shit. I don’t need this, man, I can write about other things, I don’t have to take this abuse and humiliation. Fuck this shit, I’m just gonna go home ….”

  “Wait a minute,” Dylan interrupts, as Joni looks on shocked.

  “Do you want a Librium?” McGuinn offers a tranquilizer and Ratso scarfs it down.

  “Well, what is it you want?” Dylan asks. “Be specific, what do you need?”

  By now, Barry Imhoff has been attracted by the racket and he hurries over to calm the reporter down.

  “C’mon Ratso, don’t take it so hard,” Imhoff soothes, “we’re only joking. We like you.”

  “Bullshit,” Ratso screams. “You fucking hate me. You make it impossible for me to do my job, every time …”

  “Hey, what do you need, man?” Dylan interrupts.

  “Well,” Ratso calms a little, “I got no money for a hotel …”

  “You need a bed, right? Give him a bed,” he orders Imhoff.

  “There are no vacancies now,” Imhoff remembers, “but he can sleep in the hospitality suite, there’s a bed there.”

  “I need a double bed,” Ratso pouts defiantly, nodding toward Sara.

  “Is this your sister?” Dylan smiles innocently. “She gonna sleep here too? OK, you got a bed, what else do you need?” His booted heel taps out a rhythm on the tiled floor. “You need per diem, right?”

  Ratso readily agrees. “Yeah, per diem. I got no more money, I got cut off from Rolling Stone …”

  “OK, you got it,” Dylan flashes. “What else? C’mon man, what else?”

  “Well, I don’t need no salary,” Ratso generously offers, “since I’ll make money from articles and stuff. But I need the data, I need the daily newsletter and stuff like that.” Ratso searches for the word. His eyes suddenly light up. “I need access” he screams at the superstar, “I need access to people on the tour.”

  Joni looks even more incredulous at this surreal sight, McGuinn is suppressing a smile, and Dylan rolls his eyes in amazement. “You need Ex-Lax?” he shakes his head, “why do you need Ex-Lax? What you been eating?” Everyone breaks up.

  “It’s not funny,” Ratso moans, “I need some credentials or something so I don’t get fucked over again.”

  “Well, we’ll get you all that stuff, OK?” Dylan reassures. “You see to it, Barry.” Imhoff nods, and Dylan lopes away to get ready for some scenes that will be shot in the lobby. Ratso retreats to a couch as the film crew sets up lights.

  Dylan meanwhile is setting up the scene, prepping Joni and Roger who are going to enter and walk over to the desk for their messages. He suddenly turns to the reporter. “Hey Ratso, ya wanna be in the scene?” The journalist jumps up and rushes to Dylan’s side. “OK, man, go behind the desk, you’re the night clerk in the motel and Roger is coming in and he’s gonna ask for his messages.”

  “What’s my motivation?” Ratso smiles.

  Dylan rolls his eyes. “I got it,” he lights up, “you’re a writer, you write songs and you wanna get some of your songs recorded and you know the Rolling Thunder Revue is staying here and you hit on McGuinn. Then after McGuinn can’t help, you get really frustrated with your job, throw a pile of papers all over the floor, and stalk out from behind the desk as if you’re quitting.”

  Ratso nods and slides behind the desk. He picks up a phone and pretends to be talking as McGuinn and Joni walk in and the cameras roll. Joni discreetly slinks off to one side of the desk as Roger approaches Ratso.

  “Any messages for 521?” he asks.

  “Er, yes,” Ratso fumbles nervously through some papers. “There’s one here from a Mr. Hirsh and one from a Mr. Crosby.” He peers over at Joni. “And the lady has a message, also from Mr. Crosby.” Ratso smiles efficiently. “Aren’t you with the Rolling Thunder Revue, I know you are, you see I’m not really a night clerk, I only do this for a living now, I really write songs, and I have a tape and …”

  Roger mumbles a short apology, grabs Joni, and retreats to his room. Ratso looks crestfallen, heaves a sigh, and then rushes out from the counter, spilling papers in his wake, al
most stumbling right into the camera as he passes Wadleigh. The small crowd that assembled claps heartily.

  “Just once more,” Dylan yells, “to cover it. We can do better.” This time Dylan decides to have Howard Alk, who played Eagle in the Curio Lounge shooting, talking at a pay phone as McGuinn and Mitchell pass by, then whisper something to Ratso, who then does his frustration exit.

  They roll and the scene goes off smoothly, Alk coming in on cue, asking Ratso for a dime for the phone, then scurrying away as the reporter makes his dramatic exit. “Bravo” Chesley Milliken, Jack Elliot’s road manager, exults, “It’s an Oscar, Ratso.”

  Ratso looks around and notices, for the first time, that Sara Dylan has slipped in and taken a seat on the couch to watch the proceedings. The reporter heard that she had joined the tour in Niagara but this was the first time he has seen Dylan’s wife. And she was all he had heard, a stunning, quietly charismatic figure, possessing a fragile beauty, a long slender graceful body, and an enigmatic air. Ratso just gapes for a while, especially when Baez joins her on the couch and starts a conversation. This is fucking history, he thinks, the Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands meets Queen Jane.

  But Ratso’s reverie is interrupted by a grinning Howard Alk. “That was a great take,” the burly filmmaker smiles, “you should have seen the look of pure terror that came into your eyes when I asked you for a dime.” “It’s just my genes,” Ratso shrugs, and runs around to the other end of the lobby where Dylan is setting up another shot with McGuinn and Mitchell.

  After the take, Mitchell starts toward the front desk but Ratso quickly intercepts the singer.

  “So you’re Joni,” he smiles, “I’ve been trying to interview you for years but your manager tells me that you hate the press.”

  “No, no,” the frail blond beauty protests, “I don’t talk to reporters but I just don’t like the interview form. It’s the form that I don’t like, not the people.”

  They chat a bit as they walk through the beautiful indoor garden that leads to the front wing. “We got a friend in common,” Ratso notes, “Leonard Cohen. Him, Dylan, and Kinky Friedman are my three favorite male songwriters.”

  “I love Leonard,” Joni purrs, “but who’s Kinky?”

  “You’ll meet him,” Ratso grins enigmatically, “you’ll meet him.”

  It’s about four now, and Ratso decides to pack it in. But when he reaches room 119, the hospitality suite, it’s alive with late-night revelers. Buoyed by his new-found status, he joins in the celebration. But things take an additional turn for the worse with the arrival of Louie Kemp, who’s not exactly thrilled seeing Ratso hanging out in the hospitality suite.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he sneers.

  “This is my room, Lou,” Ratso smiles, “let me explain.”

  “It better be a good one,” Lou fumes.

  “Look, I was writing this note to you,” Ratso produces the worn document from his back pocket, “just so you wouldn’t be pissed and thinking that I was sneaking behind your back and Dylan happened to walk by—”

  “Just happened …” Kemp mocks.

  “Yeah, and I was real upset and he asked me what I needed and I told him and he told Barry to give me a room and per diem.”

  “Per diem!” Kemp nearly explodes.

  “Ask Barry, Lou,” Ratso begs. Imhoff nods in assent.

  “You’re just a chozzer” Kemp spits, “you’re like a New York cab-driver. Push, push, push. You always want more.” Kemp wheels out of the room.

  Ratso turns and surveys the room. Ronson and Blakley seem settled in for the night, McGuinn is on the phone to his wife in California, and Neuwirth seems ready to leave. “This is your room,” Imhoff says solicitously, “so if you want us to leave …” Ratso just shrugs and walks back out to the hall. Sara, the local, has split in the confusion and the hotel is eerily quiet. He wanders into the garden and pool area, and hears the sounds of some late revelers splashing around in the water. By the time he returns to his room, everybody’s gone, the sun is almost risen, and after a half hour or so he falls into a fitful sleep.

  Interrupted by a loud knocking on the door, Ratso stares vacantly at the clock. Seven-thirty A.M. The knocking continues. He stumbles to the door in his underwear. Joni peeks in. “Hey, I left my bag and glasses in here somewhere.” Ratso retrieves them and hands them out to the singer. “Hey, they put you in here, eh. You scored, Ratso!” she smiles and scampers down the hallway. Ratso returns to bed, notes the time and dutifully calls his parents, who are about to go to work, then finally drifts off to dreamland, as the bright rays of the sun splash against the Sheraton curtain.

  The next day, Ratso stumbles into the lobby after a few hours’ sleep, just in time to catch Dylan, his wife Sara, and Scarlett about to film a scene in the beautiful country surrounding the hotel. Scarlett’s manager has pulled his shiny black Rolls in front of the hotel, and the scenario calls for Sara to play a ragamuffin hitchhiker on an old dirt country road picked up by Dylan in the luxury car. But Mel Howard needs some costumes and props.

  “I got just the shit,” Ratso volunteers and returns a few minutes later with an old beat up trunk-valise and a blue hooded French Navy coat for Sara. While the equipment gets loaded onto the two cars, Dylan strolls up to Ratso.

  “Where’d you get that?” He points at the photo button of himself that Ratso had bought outside of New Haven, one of which had netted the reporter ten dollars the other night in Boston.

  “I bought it off this kid before the New Haven concert. I got a dozen, want one?”

  “Nah,” Dylan frowns, “I don’t want it.”

  “C’mon,” Ratso smiles, “you must have rooms full of this shit.”

  “No,” Dylan protests, “are you kidding? Give it to him.” He drags Imhoff over and Ratso pins it on his corpulent body.

  After a while, they start piling into the cars, Jennings and Scarlett and some of the film crew in the Rolls, Dylan, Sara, Gary Shafner, Regan, and Howard in the Caddy. Ratso starts toward the car.

  “Eh,” Dylan surveys the room situation, “you’re not in this scene, Ratso.”

  “Can’t I come?” the reporter entreats.

  Dylan doesn’t have the heart to say no. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Just take notes. Get some color.” Dylan seems about to relent. “Shit, man, you can trust me, I ain’t gonna burn you.”

  Dylan smiles and puts his hand on Ratso’s shoulders, squeezing them playfully. “All right, c’mon.”

  They ride for about five minutes down a country lane, until they come upon a beautiful vast stretch of rolling farmland, a perfect backdrop. The cars stop and Mel and Ratso shoo the two cars full of fans that had been following the group. Dylan preps Sara, and then she walks a ways up the road, stops, puts the valise to her side, and sticks out her thumb, a forlorn little waif. They shoot a few scenes of her getting picked up, but then it gets dark and there’s a concert tonight in Cambridge, so the two cars swing back to Boxboro.

  In the parking lot, Dylan picks the valise out of the Cadillac and hands it back to Ratso. Sara pulls off the French coat. “Hey, do you know Ratso?” Dylan remembers that the reporter wasn’t in Niagara when Sara joined the tour.

  “No, I don’t,” Sara smiles wanly, and offers a delicate hand. “Thanks so much for the coat, love.”

  “Oh, you can have it. It fits you great, much better than me,” Ratso marvels at the singsong quality to her voice. Fucking Dylan was right, the reporter thinks, she does have a voice like chimes. “Keep it. I got it at a Salvation Army for fifty cents.”

  “Oh thanks, love,” Sara smiles, “that’s very nice of you.”

  That night the venue is the tiny Harvard Square Theatre, whose 1,850 seats are packed. Once again, the camera crew is shooting in earnest for the concert sequences in the film, and perhaps because of the filming, perhaps because of the cozy ambience, perhaps solely because of the chops that three weeks on the road can give, once again the music is torrid. Esp
ecially Joan Baez’s set.

  This is Baez’s turf, after all. She laid down her first musical roots in this area, playing the old Club 47 in the heyday of the folk scene, and tonight Ratso has the feeling that this audience has as much come out to see its Queen as it has to pay homage to its King. And Baez doesn’t disappoint them, rollicking through a well-paced forty-minute set, bantering wittily between songs (“I love this town, I lost my virginity on the way to the Harvard dormitory”), frugging with wild abandon during McGuinn’s “Eight Miles High,” and then delivering the audience right into Dylan’s hands with an electrifying “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

  By the finale, everyone’s standing, screaming, and hooting, there’s even a young gypsy girl in complete regalia whirling like a dervish in the orchestra pit. “We’ll be in the area a few days,” Dylan shouts over the tumult, “see ya,” and exits to a thunderous ovation.

  The next day, Ratso wakes up at 1 P.M and after breakfast, rings up Rubin. Thanks to George Lois, Carter has two phones in his cell and the reporter never fails to chuckle when Rubin shouts that there’s another call coming in and puts him on hold. He hasn’t spoken to the boxer since the transfer and there may be new developments with the Garden show. Rubin’s first line is busy, so the reporter tries the other number.

  “Is this Rubin Carter Enterprises?” Ratso asks.

  “Hey man,” the boxer screams, “whatcha doing?”

  “It’s great to hear you, man.”

  “It’s good to be back in touch. Hey man, I read your piece in Rolling Stone. I like it. It’s comprehensive and educating.”

  “You speak to Bob lately, Rubin?”

  “I called this morning, around nine.” Ratso grimaces. “I think I woke him up, he was probably out late last night.”

  “Listen, you schmuck,” Ratso laughs, “this ain’t no prison. All these guys stay up till about nine in the morning.”