On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  “And it changed to blue-greens and it sucked me right out through the glass of the helicopter and I was like this against the bubble and sinking into it like an ameba. I had my legs apart too and all of a sudden I thought, at first I experienced it as pleasant and then I wanted to pop it like you would a bubble, so I took my fingernail and I sliced an opening in it and it began to gush air and take off like a balloon and then it stopped and it was still hanging there and I could see the fish and the Indians down below and I was still holding on to it and it was still like a regular balloon. It was strange.” Joni shakes her head as everyone oohs and ahs.

  Joni goes back to rehearsing “Coyote” then suddenly stops mid-verse. “When am I gonna sing in the streets?” she moans.

  “Look at that,” Ratso mocks, “she made it to the top and now she wants to sing in the streets.”

  “I want to sing my new song, that’s all I care about.”

  “Wanna hear my new song, ‘Combat Zone.’ It goes:

  Rega just came in from the coast

  She had three kids and a husband that split

  She was looking for some honest work …

  “Where she didn’t have to show her tits,” Joni giggles, propelling Ratso into a fit of sulking.

  “What did Bob tell you about this scene in the street?” Larry Johnson is over, worrying about the waning available light outside.

  Just as Joni runs down her concept of the street-singing scene, Sara and Bob walk in. Sara heads for their table.

  “We just passed the Salvation Army, Ratso, and they were just closing, they just turned their lights off.”

  “Where?” the scavenger screams.

  “I don’t know, love, one of these blocks.” She sits down next to Joni.

  “We were just looking for you,” Goldsmith, one of the cine-matographers, screams at Ratso, “the scene with Bob worked out good, and he wanted you to be a photographer, a paparazzi, sliding down this huge bank.”

  “Meyers says they’re doing my Hunter Thompson flip-out scene tonight,” Ratso relishes, “they’re gonna get me wired on coke and speed and I’m supposed to do the whole Rolling Stoned reporter trip.”

  “Ratso, you’re gonna be a star,” Soles smiles, “but keep it clean. This is a family movie.”

  Dylan has moved into the center of the cafe and he’s sitting talking at a table. Meanwhile, Joni busies herself with her sign.

  “Let’s see … ‘I am often blind,’ no, ‘I am sometimes blind,’ ‘I am blinded by the truth’ …” she’s fretting, pen poised over virginal paper.

  “Too Leonardy,” Ratso criticizes.

  “I’m a prisoner of my passion. A prison of white lines.”

  “A prisoner of white crosses,” Ratso smirks.

  “Some women wait for Jesus,” Joni starts singing a Cohen song. “Some women wait for Cain …” “When I took mushrooms,” Joni suddenly starts a story, “I fell in love with Jesus, really. It was the first time that I ever understood that. I just kept saying I didn’t know he was so attractive, nobody told me that he was so attractive.”

  She smiles and starts taping the sign which finally reads “I am a Prisoner of White Lines on the Freeway.” Ratso takes a quick glance and spots Dylan, who’s filming his conversation with André.

  “I’m just a prisoner,” Joni barks in a gruff voice, “of white powder.” She goes back to tuning her guitar.

  “I’m so glad to get out of the hotel,” Sara sighs, just as Joni starts into another run-through of “Coyote.”

  Larry Johnson walks over. “We lost the lighting,” he breaks it gently, “we’ll do it in Montreal.” Joni just nods and plays on, running through all three verses. She finishes and the table applauds.

  “I’d like to do a scene in blackface with a natural and sing a sermonette,” Joni fantasizes. “Look at all the trouble I’ve seen.”

  “Yeah, the Joni Mitchell Dream sequence,” Goldsmith enthuses. “Look, we have to make sure we do this scene, we have to push to make sure we get it.”

  Joni nods, and they all get up to leave. Ratso hails a cab and Joni, Sara, and Soles hop in for a ride back to the hotel. “What am I gonna do about this cold,” Joni sniffles.

  “Take a sauna,” Ratso suggests.

  “I don’t have time for that. I can’t shake this thing.”

  “She’s got to go outside, love, she can’t take a sauna,” Sara gently chides Ratso. “Just borrow somebody’s hair dryer and take a shower.”

  “I got a hair dryer,” Ratso boasts.

  “You got one?” Joni and Sara blurt out simultaneously.

  “I bought one finally. Joan kept on making fun of my hair,” Ratso smiles.

  “What you need, Ratso, are some dreadlocks,” Sara grins. “Just don’t bother combing it.”

  They arrive at the hotel and Soles and Mitchell rush upstairs to get ready for the show, but Sara and Ratso decide to shop a bit and go down to the lower promenade.

  “So you want a ride to the show?” Ratso asks.

  “Call me, love, I got my own name now. Harriet Blaze. Like a stripper.” She smiles sweetly as they enter a tobacco shop.

  “We need cigarettes,” Sara announces, as Ratso paws through the magazine rack.

  “What shit!” he screams. “Hit Parade, Vogue, Beauty and Health Guide. No porn. Wait a minute, you used to be in Vogue, didn’t you Sara?”

  “Yeah, when I was young,” she smiles, and picks out a mild Canadian brand of cigarettes. Ratso rushes to pay. “You’re trying to buy me all these lavish gifts, Ratso.”

  They head back toward the main lobby, small-talking. Suddenly Sara grabs Ratso’s tape recorder. “You lied to me about recording my conversations,” she says shrilly.

  “I didn’t lie, I told you I record everything, like a documentarist,” the reporter sputters.

  “I’m gonna pour Listerine all over your tapes.” She feigns shock: “You’re gonna put this out as a record.”

  Ratso points to the cavernous passageway they’re walking through. “Yeah, the basement tapes. Then people will know you’re the brains behind Pa.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly the case,” Sara smiles, as they head for their rooms.

  An hour later, Ratso picks her up and after forty-five minutes and ten conversations in broken French, they finally locate the venue of tonight’s concert.

  And once again, tonight seems to be Baez’s show, mainly because of the language barrier that forces the audience to respond to timbre and melody rather than lyrical forcefulness. Dylan tries by dedicating a song to Rimbaud, prefacing the dedication by saying, “I don’t speak too much French myself.”

  Baez, though, connects from the outset with “Diamonds and Rust,” which draws lusty cheers that get matched when she plows into “I Can’t Help Falling in Love” in French, followed by “Joe Hill” dedicated “how you say, pour les pauvres du monde.” But Dylan finally scores with the familiar “Just Like a Woman” and the upbeat Guthrie ending rouses the audience into a standing ovation. One that was hard-earned.

  After the concert, Ratso gives Dave Meyers a ride back to the hotel. This is Meyers’ last concert, the old cameraman was flying back to California tomorrow to start shooting a new Altman film, and the imminent departure was leaving him with the bittersweet taste of nostalgia. “Jesus, am I tired,” Meyers slumps into the seat next to Ratso, and for the first time, pulls his black cowboy hat off his head, running a hand through his thinning silver hair.

  “We’re gonna miss you,” Ratso says softly, to the one person who championed the reporter’s cause throughout the tour, no matter what the political repercussions were. Ratso remembers Meyers’ integrity, his bluntness, his warmth, his wit, his charm, and the reporter feels a lump in his throat.

  “It’s a weird letdown actually to have to leave the tour.” Meyers shakes his head in wonder. “Last night was so great. That whorehouse scene you missed with Sara and Joan. I gotta shift gears now, I gotta do a feature with Altman, Welcome to L.A.
with Sally Kellerman, Geraldine Chaplin, Keith Carradine …”

  “It sounds like shit,” Ratso sneers.

  “No, it’s good,” Meyers says softly, and peers out of the window at the narrow streets of Quebec City.

  “Well, I really owe you a lot,” Ratso notes. “You paved the way for the acceptance I’ve gotten on the tour now. Shit, Mooney came over to me tonight and shook my hand and told me that he respected me for hanging in there. Even Louie’s calling me Ratso now, that’s a good sign. And fucking Imhoff actually lent me fifty dollars tonight so I could fly to Toronto instead of having to drive five hundred miles.”

  “Jesus,” Meyers grins. “Imhoff doing that, that’s the ultimate accolade.” They both laugh as Ratso parks. “We’ll see you sooner or later,” the reporter hugs Meyers.

  “Yeah,” the filmmaker smiles and heads toward the bar, for one solitary drink before he walks away from the Thunder.

  The next day Ratso finds himself on a plane to Toronto, seated next to Greg Mallozi, the sound man.

  “One thing I gotta say for Imhoff is this fucking thing is actually being pulled off, to a lot of people’s unhappiness, but that’s not the point, the point is it’s happening. A lot of people are pissed off,” Greg relates, “a lot of musicians are pissed off. I had been working for the newsletter but I gave it up because I found that really unpleasant things aren’t printed in the newsletter, plus the fact the crew doesn’t even get the fucking newsletters.”

  “Are you guys real niggers?” Ratso’s been wondering.

  “I get paid well. Better than some of the guys in the band. Nobody makes less than three hundred dollars a week, maybe some new guys, plus per diem. Fuck man, those fucking technicians know what they’re doing. You can pick up a bass player in any city, man. I deserve everything I make and more.”

  The No Smoking sign goes out and Greg pulls out a Marlboro. Ratso declines one. “My guys are coming in from San Francisco tonight, we’re going into such a big hall that we get supplementary sound. Eighteen thousand seats, man.”

  “What happened to the small-hall concept?” Ratso moans.

  “Look, my feeling is whatever the fuck is going on on this tour, Imhoff has to make his bread on ticket sales. He’s only contracted for the tour part of it. The movie can make lots of money but it’s not on the same budget. He’s got to make it on the tour itself and the tour was so expensive to produce. That’s my interpretation of double fucking shows. Baez is getting lots, most of the band is eating it moneywise, though.”

  “What?”

  “Dig, the whole band except for Ronson is basically unknown so they’re all doing it almost for nothing, for the shot to be with Dylan. They’re doing it for the résumé. Everybody’s eating it on this tour, man, Barry’s playing that so well. Doing it cheap, losing money on it, ’cause it’s Dylan, man. It’s Dylan. Every promoter is eating it, know how that works. Usually there’s a guarantee and after 60 percent of the house is sold then the act gets 80 percent of everything. That guarantees the promoter’ll make money and then the band gets more if they draw better. This is a flat fee, man, the promoter goes. We even sell the tickets, that’s what Seltzer’s for. He’s the best in the Bay Area, he knocked Ticketron out of the Bay Area. This tour everybody’s the best, best lighting designer, best sound man, so there’s a certain ego trip behind that. Usually we were the best person in our show, which is why we were brought in, ’cause we’re the best. But we’re not getting any kind of recognition. I’ve never seen such poor morale on a tour.”

  Ratso downs his third martini, as the stewardess announces the landing. They fasten their belts.

  “Isn’t Elliot great, man?” Greg smiles. “You know, even though we play eighteen-thousand-seat halls, man, there’s some element of the concept always there, always there somehow. It’s available if people’s heads are into it. No one is really being bummed out, on this tour they’ve created an arena or a forum in which that can happen and if it doesn’t happen it ain’t because of Barry Imhoff, man, it’s ’cause the band isn’t into it.”

  But Ratso was too preoccupied to hear Greg’s last remarks. He was leaning against the window, savoring the bright lights of Toronto, thinking about the hotel and thinking about the Gardens and thinking about a whirlpool and the world’s largest flea market.

  In fact, Ratso remembers little about Toronto. He mainly recollects the amazing Jacuzzi at the Harbour Castle Hotel, a place where he spent hours and hours and hours drying out and letting the sensuous million little jet streams massage him into bliss. And the phones, yes, he remembers the phones. The phones at the Harbour Castle ring in the bathroom, and the bathroom phones are placed so low that they’re obviously not meant to be used while one is shaving or combing one’s hair. Ratso remembers them so well because he spent almost as much time on the phone in the bathroom as he did stretched out in the whirlpool. But as for anything else, it all remains a haze. An alcohol haze. A Valium haze. A Dexamyl haze. An adrenalin haze. A Quaalude haze. And a marijuana mist. But there were some things worth remembering.

  Bobby Neuwirth’s freak-out scene wasn’t one of them. It happened that first night that Ratso picked up his keys and settled into his opulent room at the Harbour Castle, a towering beautifully modern hotel right on the water. Neuwirth had been drinking, drinking hard, and the legendary Ronnie Hawkins, a fast-talking, hard-drinking, frequently fucking hillbilly singer who had loaned his band, The Hawks, to Bob Dylan back in ’66, the rest being, of course, history as the Band established themselves as America’s premier group, the Hawk was jiving and joshing up in Neuwirth’s hall, and the film crew was sitting around, ready to shoot a few minor scenes, and it seems that Neuwirth decided it was time for some Rolling Thunder psychodrama.

  At least, that’s the way it looked when he staggers over toward Ronee Blakley’s suite, barefoot except for his chicken feet socks, clutching a Southern Comfort bottle. “C’mon Ronee,” he’s screaming in his hoarse voice, “c’mon out.” Suddenly, Neuwirth flings the bottle through the open door, shattering it into a million pieces against the wall of the suite. Blakley comes running out in her nightgown and socks. “C’mon, make your Bette Davis entrance,” Neuwirth is goading, as the cameras roll. “Lay off,” Ronson is trying to restrain Neuwirth. “Do Tennessee Williams,” the inebriated singer shouts.

  “Fuck off,” Blakley hisses.

  “You’re the only one who would fuck me,” Neuwirth laughs and then stumbles the other way. Dylan, who’s been eying this carefully, standing stonefaced in black leather and fur cap, starts to smile as Neuwirth throws his arms around Hawkins, who’s resplendent in suspenders that barely span his huge girth and cowboy hat. “Nobody can outdrink you Hawkins,” Neuwirth admires.

  “Are you kidding?” The Hawk sneers, “Johnny Cash even is afraid of me and he carries two Bibles. I’m a teenage idol, the working girl’s favorite.”

  “He’s the only one that can make Robertson play boogie guitar behind his back,” Neuwirth compliments The Hawk, “he’s the only one that can make Robbie grin.”

  Ratso sits down in the corridor next to Stoner and Muffin, and watches Neuwirth slowly pass out, sliding down the wall into a graceful semifetal position. But two minutes later, he’s up again, prancing down the hall with his arms around Ronson.

  “I see you finally found a fag,” Stoner cracks, and Neuwirth begins to summon the film crew. “C’mon you assholes,” he drops to his knees pretending to go down on Ronson, “film it.” He gets bored with that after a few seconds and tries to enter the hospitality suite, but Chuck, one of the security guys, bars him, so Neuwirth wanders over to Ratso and Stoner. “Eat Muffin,” he directs Stoner. “I can’t eat her, we’d lose our G rating,” Stoner smiles. “Then blow me while I eat her,” Neuwirth suggests and then disappears down the corridor. Stoner’s still laughing when Neuwirth rolls by, stretched out on a dolly. “Jesus,” the bass player shakes his head, “this whole scene is right out of Dali.”

  Suddenly Louie
comes down and sizes up the scene. “Where’s security?” he asks Ginsberg, who’s been fretting to everyone about Neuwirth’s behavior. “He’s not conscious,” the poet worries, “he needs a blackout scene.” Just then, Neuwirth grabs a lamp in his room and shatters it against the wall into thousands of pieces.

  Ratso also has a very vague memory of a party later that night, a party at Gordon Lightfoot’s palatial digs in a suburb of Toronto, a party where Neuwirth fought off three security guards at the hotel, commandeered a cab, stumbled in to Lightfoot’s and finding the gathering a little too staid, proceeded to throw his down jacket into the fire, sending billows of ashy smoke all over the house, and sending big Gordon into paroxysms of laughter. But it wasn’t a good party, Dylan was shooting a quiet let’s-all-sit-down-and-pick-our-favorite-folk-tunes-scene with Gordon upstairs in a sealed room that was guarded by Gary. So Ratso was reduced to nibbling cheese in the kitchen, and hustling this beautiful, dark Jamaican Jewess, who eventually accompanied him back to the hotel and performed some tricks that even in his brain-blotted state, he would never forget.

  The next day, Ratso stumbles out of bed and falls down to the lobby, where Dylan and Alk and Howard are set to do some shooting during the beautiful, crisp Toronto afternoon. The reporter follows along as Dylan and Howard do a chase scene, running onto buses, down streets, through the bustling downtown avenues, followed throughout by the persevering Paul Goldsmith, and Ken Regan. After a half hour’s worth of this zaniness, they walk back to the hotel, the chill cutting right to their bones.

  Ratso catches up to Dylan and they walk together in silence for a few minutes. Suddenly Dylan stares at the reporter. “Hey, Ratso, we’re counting on you to set the record straight in this book now.”