On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  “I didn’t do so badly here in this little town either, Joni, for about three years,” Ruth bristles. “Has she ever told you her favorite song?” she giggles.

  “What? ‘Bonie Moronie’?” Joni smiles. “I was very skinny at school—when I look back at the pictures I wasn’t, but the standard was to be more zaftig then—and ‘Bonie Maronie’ was my handle. This is some old shit we’re digging out,” she mock-glares at Ruth.

  “What’s Chuck doing?” Brook interjects, “if I may ask such a blunt question.”

  “He’s working in small repertory theatrical companies,” Joni answers unabashedly. “He still plays in some coffeehouses, doing the same material that he did when we were first married.”

  “That’s ten years ago,” Ruthie marvels.

  “He hasn’t changed a song in his set. He does a lot of Brecht and show tunes. We gotta go,” she tells Ruth, “Leonard has kids and …”

  “Well before you go, finish this wine,” Ruthie instructs Ratso and Roger, “and I’ll be very selfish and ask Joan all sorts of dumb questions like, are you enjoying your house?”

  “My house is like an experiment, Ruthie. When you get the notion in your head that you’re an artist you fall subject to artist morality.”

  “Which is what?” Ruthie asks.

  “Which is individualized but there is one sort of common bohemian aspect to it. Which is like that wealth corrupts art or any manifestation of it.”

  “Say it again.” Ruthie holds her hands up. “Wealth corrupts …”

  “Well, it’s a common point of view among artists, while the artist is like struggling for success and recognition, he is also developing an attitude of contempt toward the wealthy and the expression of wealth, so when you find yourself in the position of being an artist and of being wealthy, you have like a lot of moral conflict to deal with. How to express it.”

  “Joni,” Ruth interrupts, “do you like your house or not? Are you doing what you want to do?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Joni says, distracted. “Initially your feeling is guilt and the point when you feel guilty you find you attract a lot of sycophants. There are people ready there to bleed off everything for like anything, and Picasso, he was lucky in that he was forty when he achieved major success so he had enough sensitivity and sensibility that when he made it, Picasso got little black and white maids, a chauffeur and silk suits, and he attended every social activity and all the artists in his circle said, ‘Watch his art go down the tubes.’ And for a while he did socialize out but his art never died, he just experienced that, so what I have done at this point is I have gone completely elegant. My house is like completely elegant.”

  “Like nouveau?” Ruthie asks.

  “No, it’s very tasteful. The best designers in the world did it. I worked with it like I do on my records, in partnership.”

  “That’s why you got ripped off?” Ratso deduces.

  “Well, the rip-off doesn’t matter. The only thing in that that matters is the violation of my space. I was burglarized five times in Laurel Canyon. It’s the nature of the city. I have to have electronic equipment, guitars, and all that.”

  “I just can’t stand that, Joan,” Ruthie fumes, “I can’t stand that, five times!”

  “I can empathize with Joni, it is the nature of our work,” Roger is affecting a very clipped, precise tone, the tone of a diplomat. Ratso gives him a strange stare. “It is the nature of our work to have electronic equipment and guitars and a turquoise collection which she had and I also have. It’s something to worry about, so I have a perimeter control around my house that has electronic surveillance, closed-circuit television, and dogs.”

  “I can’t live that way,” Joni barks. “I can’t stand it. So I’m experiencing …”

  “You just really want to move back to the Chelsea Hotel,” Ratso cracks.

  “I can live anywhere, Ratso,” Joni runs her hand through her long silky hair. “I like to experience everything. I have elegance in me and I have a lot of street in me, but I’m neither street nor elegant. And I’m middle class. I can live anywhere, I’ve lived in caves, I’ve lived in shacks, I’ve lived in mansions. I lived in caves on the island of Crete. I went from the caves to first-class hotels in Paris and bought myself elegant clothing. I like contrast, you know, and I like to experience everything. I’m enjoying my wealth. It’s not a symbol of any attainment to me.”

  “What’s it a symbol of?” Ruthie challenges.

  “It’s something I enjoy the expression of sometimes,” Joni seems at a loss for words.

  “What does it mean? That you’ve gotten to the top of the heap? What does the expression of elegance mean to you?”

  “I admire Coco Chanel,” Joni says by way of example. “I used to design clothes in school, I could have been a fashion designer, Ratso.”

  “Joni designed something and Judy Lamarche and I got into the worst fight about it if you can recall,” Ruthie starts giggling.

  “The culottes!” Joni cracks up. “We couldn’t wear Bermuda shorts or pants to school. We had to wear skirts, so I designed a skirt, Bermuda shorts with flaps over it. If you stood still you had a box-pleated skirt on but if you went like this,” Joni moves her torso, “you had Bermuda shorts on.”

  “And I actually got her to do one for me,” Ruthie laughs, “and wore it to school. And Judy Lamarche was the lovely in our dumb little society and I happened to get that before Judy did and she’s never forgiven me.”

  “One of my interests as a child was to draw cutouts and make clothes and I could have been a fashion designer, Ratso,” Joni continues to try to answer the reporter’s earlier question. “It’s a creative outlet for me, not an expression of status. For example, when I’m really well dressed and I go into Beverly Hills, I have a whole relationship with different shopkeepers in Beverly Hills. I always get there ten minutes before the store is closing and I usually stay an hour after closing and go out to dinner with them and I’m interested in that mercantile aspect and what I have created in L.A. is a small town where I know merchants.”

  “What you’re after is what you just left, a small city like Saskatoon,” Ruth concludes.

  “But also the larger world,” Joni protests. “These are international figures. I’m interested in not being limited by any aspect of experience. I don’t want to limit myself, because every time I make a judgment on any particular stratum of society, I find I’m totally wrong so I’ve set out to break down the barriers in my own life so I can experience people in different aspects of their experience rather than getting sucked into the rock ’n roll thing. One of the reasons my new record is coming up for criticism is because it’s a description in some ways of wealth and elegance. It’s not about rock ’n roll and Holiday Inns and that’s why it’s being so well received also. The way I have chosen through experimentation to approach my audience is to maintain the same experimental level that I did in the coffeehouses so I don’t go for the big applause.”

  “Really and truly,” Ruthie gushes and hugs her friend, “that’s fantastic.”

  “I can move through my audience, those people, and they’ll say, ‘Joni come and sit with us,’ and they won’t even talk to me. I can walk through the streets of Washington or New York and they come up and say, ‘Nice show, Joni.’ Generally, what I’ve done is create my own freedom.”

  “How?” Ratso remains skeptical.

  “Because I’ve gone through my changes publicly, like my weaknesses …”

  “So has Leonard, so has Bob,” Ratso counters.

  “Leonard has freedom of movement too,” Joni agrees and pauses to think.

  “I haven’t seen Joni for ten years but I know Joni and you’re just about the same as I am in a lot of ways,” Ruthie cuddles her friend.

  “Even though our situations are like radically different and our experience is too, we have like a lot in common in the expanse of like Ruthie’s elegance. In serving tea Ruthie can foster formality and pull it off and g
o right down to the street level at the same time.”

  “She’s done it tonight,” Ratso admires.

  “I haven’t bared my armpits yet,” Ruthie warns. “I think that something is very basic that we get from where we’re from and you’re asking why is Joni able to do what she’s doing without applause. She doesn’t need it, she has one thing going for her, and I’ve got it going for me, it’s called loving another guy and making them happy, and you don’t need,” Ruthie suddenly claps her hands, “that to make them happy, you just need a pure glow. Isn’t that fantastic?”

  “Yeah,” Joni nods thoughtfully, “there have been a couple of moments on this tour when I’ve had to confront the immaturity of my ego where all of a sudden because I’m in the position in the show of being an opening act and I’m receiving that kind of press attention, whereas in fact, I have attained a much higher …”

  Ruth waves her arms. “Brook asked me about that by the way. He said why is Joni not No. 1?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Joni shoots back. “It’s experimental. I’m having a good time. It’s like a rolling party. Only when I get weak like when Bobby Neuwirth or something … when I get a mass of underestimation all of a sudden I get professional and I start thinking career moves. See Elliot, my manager, and Geffen, everybody’s against me back there, they say that I shouldn’t be doing this being in such a submissive position. I feel that at this point that I have nothing to lose by it, to me this is the most interesting thing. I’ve felt highly productive, that’s another reason why I’ve stayed. In the slot I have, I have the option, like if I was to go out and do the most popular material the effect would be different. It’s much more interesting like winging it.”

  “You’re doing a lot similar thing to what Bob’s doing,” Ratso says.

  “No, his set is much more stable.”

  “It’s stable, but he’s doing a lot of new songs. Something that Sinatra doesn’t do, that Elton John doesn’t do.” Ratso smiles.

  The cab Roger called for pulls up and the troupe makes their way to the door, accompanied by Ruthie and Brook. Suddenly Joni pauses.

  “You know another reason why I stayed. One day I was running away, I even had a plane reservation to New York. I said good-bye to everyone in our dressing room and I went to say good-bye to Bob, rather than just sulk off, it was my intention to say good-bye but I ended up talking to Louie in the dressing room, but when I said good-bye to Wyeth, he looked at me like, I can’t describe the look he gave me. He was like hurt, like I was running out and I felt, Jesus Christ, I don’t mean to be selfish, like I just want to escape. And I suddenly realized, more than anybody Wyeth’s reaction was so heartfelt, his expression of it was so open. Like it’s just his soul is so beautiful. So I stayed.”

  Joni kisses Ruthie good-bye and they depart, piling into the cab for the short ride over to Leonard’s. On the way, Joni and Ratso get into a discussion of Castaneda, whom Joni loves and whom Ratso looks upon with disdain.

  The cab finds the address and they pile out and enter the Cohen domicile. And what a contrast. If the Mount Royal residence was subtly elegant, Cohen’s house in old Montreal is blatantly commonplace. First of all, it’s not a house, it’s a ramshackle bungalow-type structure, entered via a door that would be hard put to withstand the ravaging assault of a five-year-old. It boasts exposed beams, slanted floors and ceilings, and a collection of furniture that would do any Goodwill proud. But there’s a curious feeling of warm spirituality pervading the home, and the shelves upon shelves of books and the myriad knickknacks and the old, dusty-framed prints and paintings impart a tremendous character to the place. Ratso enters Leonard’s house for the second time and feels right at home.

  “Leonard,” he yells in greeting, smelling the savory aroma of barbequed ribs wafting into the front room, “you’re immaculate.” The reporter scurries into the back of the long room and plops down at the table. The others follow, exchanging greetings with Leonard and his lovely lady Suzanne.

  Cohen has long been a demigod to that brand of musical practitioner that label themselves sensitive singer-songwriters. A fine novelist and a best-selling poet in his native Canada, Cohen turned to the concert hall at the urging of his friends, among them Judy Collins, who put Leonard’s song “Suzanne” on the map and the charts. And of course, part of Cohen’s attractiveness and his appeal is the graphic description in his songs of the vicissitudes that befall a gentleman in a world of scoundrels. And his documentation of the doings of the scoundrel in the parlors of society. In other words, Cohen just don’t fit, he carries around his angst like other people carry chewing gum. And the songs get delivered in that lumbering, world-weary monotone that emanates from that broodingly handsome iconographic wandering Jew face. Ratso loves Leonard’s work; it never fails to make him laugh.

  “I didn’t hear you last night, Joni,” Leonard laments, “I’m really sorry. How was your friend tonight?”

  “She was my matron of honor when I was married but between that time period there was a long gap since we saw each other and that was only briefly. There must have been five years between that,” Joni holds a rib poised over her plate, “so my impressions of her have been romanticized over the years plus her circumstances have limited her experience in certain ways so that we weren’t as linked as we were as girls. Like you and Mort have carried your relationship along …”

  “Yes, Mort is one of these rare creatures,” Leonard smiles. “He’s really like a completely unrecognized genius.”

  “You know all those stories you read where the Zen master slapped someone on the back and at that moment he attained. Well, Mort did that one day in New York,” Joni says. “He took my problem and in one sentence eliminated it. That’s a rare gift, isn’t it?”

  “He says he wants to give you another lesson,” Leonard smiles slyly.

  “What was the sentence?” Ratso gets the question out between two mouthfuls of ribs.

  “‘Draw me and don’t look at the paper,’ that’s all he said to me and it changed everything, you know? So what you do is actually you trace the lines of highest emotion. It doesn’t matter if the person moves, it doesn’t matter if the eye overlaps the nose or anything, I’ve tried to pass that on to a lot of different people and Blakley is like one of the few—”

  “She’s nice, eh?” Leonard asks.

  “Well, nice I wouldn’t say,” Joni says diplomatically, “we have a relationship that isn’t defined by the word nice.”

  “I enjoyed her last night,” Leonard smiles.

  “She is like Nico, you know,” Joni offers. “She has a strange kind of madness that you would find interesting. My attraction to her is like that too ….”

  “I like it in you,” Leonard grins. “You guys have been pretty close now for how many months?”

  “Just weeks,” Roger corrects, “but I’ve been out for two months now.”

  “It’s really interesting,” Joni gushes, “’cause people are always testing each other all the time, you know, misreading you. You know you have to deal with their misreading and you have to like decide whether to allow them to misread you or to clarify it, like I’ve learned to float like coming from a position where I need always to be sincere and to be understood, I like allowed myself to float through situations, that’s what I was trying to tell you, it’s so exciting to me, it’s not giving a shit. It’s not consistent. It really is an interesting thing because it’s a traveling commune.”

  Suzanne interrupts the monologue with a soda break. Joni sips at her Coke and continues, “I’ve come to deal with my multiphrenia, they’re all realities. There are so many ways to look at the thing, you know that as a writer, cutting through the layers of personality to get to the one who is the most honest, you know.”

  “I don’t know how honest I am,” Leonard smiles sheepishly. “I’m unstable.”

  “Maybe I’m more unstable than you,” Joni boasts. “You have a more consistent character than you play out.”

 
“Oh yeah,” Cohen smiles sardonically, “I’m as constant as the North Star.”

  “But I find that different people will manifest different aspects,” Joni goes on. “You know, some people will bring out the sage, some people will bring out the child, some people will bring out the rebel, some people will bring out the conservative.”

  “I find everyone too revolutionary these days,” Leonard comments as he grabs another rib.

  “You are wearing a suit in your own funky old house,” Roger notes.

  “But that’s the only clothes he has,” Ratso explains.

  “This seeming cattiness was one aspect of tour that I had to adjust to after I came in late,” Joni picks up her thought and starts to address Leonard. “I got on the bus and I thought, God that’s cruel, they’re cruel people being cruel to each other. Next thing that I noticed was that everybody was quite strong and the manifestation of multiple personalities was almost a necessity.”

  “There’s a definite pecking order,” Ratso says, from the bottom.

  “There is a strange pecking order,” Joni agrees, near the top.

  “Baez has this amazing George Harrisonesque dressing room with rugs on the walls and incense and food spreads and you guys got this funky closet for a dressing room,” the reporter reports.

  Leonard interrupts with cups of hot sake.

  “You’re quite a host, Leonard,” Roger marvels. “I’d like to reciprocate sometime.”

  “Roger and I did a scene,” Joni remembers, “and we were great in the scene except I quoted from pure Nietzsche and Bob wouldn’t let me give him credit. I said, ‘C’mon, Bobby, I got to say like Thus Spake Zarathustra, I can’t be like an intellectual quoting from Nietzsche, with no originality, give me a break. He’s got a mean streak, he gets mean.”

  “You’re talking about Bobby Neuwirth?” Leonard misunderstands.

  “Oh Neuwirth is different,” Joni smiles. “It’s much more open, he just tells you you’re cold and you’re a cunt and you’re an asshole.” She giggles. “With Dylan, he just like strikes you out of a scene or puts you in the scene where he wants you to manifest parts of yourself, it’s different. He’s got the power, he’s got the hammer, and Neuwirth just attacks and he can really hurt. Neuwirth really hurt me and then he said, ‘There’s no fear allowed on Rolling Thunder.’ He just keeps whittling away at you and whittling away at you until he finds the place of you which you’re most afraid of and then, whew, he just like presses on it till he gets you, then he says, ‘No fear.’ It’s an excellent exercise.” She giggles again.