On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  Ratso starts for the door and then pauses, “Hey, did you ever get a telegram from Kinky?”

  “No.” Bob looks puzzled.

  “You did get a telegram from Kinky, love,” Sara, who had just come down from changing, reports.

  “I did?” Bob stammers. “What did it say?”

  “I know,” Ratso smiles. “It says, ‘Made Hartford, Missed Montreal, Move Over Malibu. Stop.’”

  “Move over Malibu?” Dylan’s really puzzled now. “He’s moving to Malibu?”

  “Maybe,” Ratso shrugs, “he’s in L.A. now.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dylan stops, “how did you know what it said?”

  “We wrote it together on the phone,” Ratso chuckles.

  “Which part did you write?” Dylan’s curious. “Move over Malibu?”

  “No, actually he just read it to me.” The reporter heads for the door.

  “OK, you’ll get Gary to get that stuff, right Ratso,” Bob reaffirms.

  “Sure.” The reporter heads out.

  Dylan leans back, and taps out a rhythm on the wood floor with his boot heel. “Man, I love this place,” he gushes.

  “Robbie told me he wanted to come up here and spend a year,” Louise reports.

  “I can dig it,” Bob smiles.

  “Most Americans say that after a while if you hang around here, the people start asking you what you do.” Emmett smiles mischievously.

  “They ask you that here?” Bob seems crestfallen.

  “They say that everywhere.” Louise shrugs.

  “They don’t ask it in Brooklyn or Chicago,” Emmett growls.

  “Well, I like the vibes in this place.” Dylan peers around the house again, and gets up and restlessly starts pacing the dining room. “You could just come up here and disappear,” he says longingly, and sits back down, patiently, to await Gary and the stuff and the camper and the kids and the long drive back down across the border.

  Ratso went back to the hotel, alerted Gary, and then had a great idea. He dumped the Hertz Granada, left the keys with the manager, loaded all his stuff into Bob’s red Eldorado and drove over the border with Andy, one of the security guys, and Jesse, Bob’s oldest son, who slept through most of the late-night drive in the rear seat.

  They drove straight to the Hotel Westbury, on Manhattan’s fashionable upper East Side, a good hideaway to sequester the troops till Monday’s show in the Garden. But even as Ratso perused the room list as soon as they pulled in that early Sunday morning, he could sense that the magic had been left north of the border.

  For one thing, a lot of the musicians lived in New York, so, as an economy move, Imhoff had decreed that they should stay at home, resulting in an instantaneous division in the esprit de corps that the assemblage had generated.

  Furthermore, this was the Apple, and everyone but everyone, down to the last equipment man, knows people in New York, and even if you don’t, there’s always the instant camaraderie of the Village, the amusing tackiness of Times Square, the all-night gastronomical lures of Chinatown. Whereas on the road, the troupe had played, for the most part, relatively small towns, towns and cities where the encapsulated world of hotel to gig to hotel to hospitality suite to room was an attractive option. So after ten minutes in the stately shabbiness of the Westbury lobby, Ratso could feel that the vibe was dissipating.

  And those feelings were intensified four hours later, when the buses were loading for the trip out to New Jersey and the special concert for Rubin and his friends in the slammer. It started when Ratso was thrown off the performers’ bus by Louie, apparently because Bob had decided to ride with his fellow Thunderers rather than take the camper out. The reporter was shuffled over to the other camper, which was being driven out by Mike Evans and Andy Bielanski. And the feeling grew stronger yet when Chesley was told by Imhoff that there was no room at the prison and he would be better off staying back.

  So when the camper finally rolled out behind the rented Greyhound, Slocum was seething.

  Evans pilots the vehicle through the heavy Sunday Ninth Avenue traffic. “Breaker one, breaker one,” a voice crackles over the CB. “Does anybody know what the score is at Shea Stadium?”

  “Six-nothing,” Evans barks into the mike.

  “The only way the Giants could win that game,” the disembodied voice groans, “is if the other team doesn’t show up.”

  “Turn that shit off,” Andy grimaces, just as Evans slams on the brakes, hurtling Ratso against the front seat. “Jesus,” Evans shakes his head, “that poor dog.”

  “You’re a real humanitarian,” Ratso smirks, dusting himself off.

  “I could easily kill you before I kill the dog.” Evans half-smiles. “I’m one of those crazy people that if someone said to me that the city of Paris would be leveled to the ground and everyone killed and I could stop it by sacrificing my dog, I’d go out and buy my dog another can of Alpo. My dog is my best friend.” Evans swerves around a corner almost swiping two shoppers. “I don’t generally like people. They’re too materialistic, they lose a brush and they go crazy. They’re ruled by their possessions.”

  “Look at Dylan,” Andy looks up from his paperback, “he’s got two pairs of pants, four shirts, a leather coat, and a hat, but if he ever lost one of those, watch out! I wouldn’t want to be around.” The bodyguard shudders.

  Evans pulls into the tunnel to Jersey. “Bob doesn’t read, does he?”

  The bodyguard laughs. “Are you shitting me? He reads tons. You ought to see the camper in the back there, he’s got bookmarks in about ten books. He reads mythology, poetry. When he writes he doesn’t have that much time but when he doesn’t, he reads everything.”

  Ratso has been taking this all in, but the wear and tear of the all-night drive is getting to him, so he stretches out on one of the couches in the rear. When he wakes up, the security is gone, the camper is parked in a parking lot, and the beautiful wintry day has turned pitch black.

  “Those fuckers,” the scribe screams to himself, “they left me behind.” He curses and runs through the frigid evening air to the cold brick building. A guard opens the door and he scurries into what seems to be a gym, outfitted with folding chairs facing the stage, and bleachers on the side. Complete with about a hundred humans with tape recorders, cameras, Portapacks, notebooks, all roaming around this chilly gym, so hungry for copy that it seems likely that if the concert, which has been delayed already for over an hour, doesn’t start soon, they’ll set on each other.

  In fact, the only person really available for interviews is Bob’s nine-year-old son Jesse, who’s roaming unaccompanied through the milling reporters and entourage. And one sharp young blond reporter is snuggling over to the youngster, patting him on the head, smiling her sweet copy-crazed smile. Ratso spies this and rushes over. “What’s your name?” the girl is asking, pen poised over pad, as Slocum swoops in. “Hey Freddy,” he grabs Jesse’s hand, “your mother was looking for you.” He drags the youngster about forty yards, out of ear range. “Jesse, why the hell were you talking to that reporter?”

  “Reporter?” the kid squeezes the word out, just like his old man, “I didn’t know she was a reporter, I thought she was a woman.” He’s still scratching his head as Ratso deposits him with Sara. But the few hours’ sleep coupled with the excitement of being in this setting, added on to the adrenalin rush New York City invariably gives, is propelling Ratso all over the gym. He’s instructing reporters and cameramen and herding them to one side, talking to the guards, jiving with the convicts, who are slowly streaming in and filling the folding chairs, generally scurrying around like a furry ball of white heat, heat a bit too hot for the tastes of Imhoff.

  With a straight face, the fat mandarin calmly points out the reporter to a prison security guard. “He’s not with us,” Imhoff decrees, and seconds later Ratso finds himself, shivering and banging on the locked gym door, shades of Maple Leaf Gardens.

  “You cocksucker, let me in, this is my turf,” Ratso rants, and th
en has a brilliant idea. He runs around the building to the far wing, stopping under the last window. With a Herculean effort, he leaps into the air and smashes his fist against the pane.

  “What the fuck is that?” Lois yells, as he and Hurricane and the others rush to the window. “It’s Ratso, you crazy motherfucker!” Lois grins broadly.

  “Ratso, what you doin’ out there?” Hurricane laughs.

  “That prick Imhoff had me kicked out,” the reporter’s voice seeps through the thick glass pane. “Get me in, you schmucks, I’m gonna get double pneumonia.”

  Lois grabs a chair and fakes throwing it through the window, and Hurricane laughs some more. “C’mon you smuck, come around to the door on the other side, they’ll let you in.”

  Ratso gains entry there and joins them in the library. “I can’t believe this place,” Lois is looking around the building, “I didn’t know it was this open. I can’t find any fucking bars? Where are the bars, Rubin?”

  “There ain’t none,” Carter shrugs.

  “What a fucking image,” the adman shakes his head, “this joint looks like a country club.”

  They start to stroll down the lobby when Lois suddenly stops short. “What’s that?” he points to a grill hanging out of the ceiling.

  “It’s a gate, sir,” one of the unctuous guards smiles.

  “What does it look like when it’s down? Does it look like bars?” Lois screams.

  “I suppose,” the guard agrees.

  “Pull it down, pull it down,” Lois is screaming and the guard complies, separating Ratso from the rest of the party, by the steel grill gate that looks fairly ominous. “We got our bars,” Lois shouts. “Hey Ratso, go get Dylan. Tell him Rubin wants to talk to him.”

  The reporter rushes down the hall and returns with Bob. In the meantime Regan has been sent for, and he arrives with his ever-present Nikon. “Hey Rube, how you doing man,” a hatted, multiscarfed Dylan pokes his fingers through the grill to meet the boxer’s. Lois whispers to Regan and points to the pair, and Regan fires away, capturing the singer on one side of the gate and the boxer on the other, huge stubby fingers curled around steel latticework, a picture that a few weeks later will grace two full pages of People magazine, with a caption that reads, “Bridging a prison gate in New Jersey, Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, inside, and Bob Dylan, out, rap before showtime.” Ratso laughs to himself as Regan shoots away and a few feet out of the frame Lois just smiles like a Cheshire cat.

  Back in the gym, the inmates have crowded into the floor chairs, most dressed much classier than the mediaoids who have been herded into one corner and are bleating to each other about their misfortune and the delay and their deadlines and their drinking problems. Ratso wanders around and finally spots Robbie Robertson, the guitar player from the Band and longtime friend of Bob’s and Sally Grossman. A few seconds later, Joni Mitchell ambles up.

  “Joni, you made it.” Ratso feared that she might be talked into honoring her quasi-commitment to play at a fund-raising Jerry Brown-William Buckley debate that night in California.

  “I got a replacement,” Joni beams, “James Taylor. James is like a really good cover. I couldn’t be happier. I tried to get some different people to do it but nobody would. Bobby was talking about that today, like he tried to get Aretha to come today and they talked to different people and they hemmed and hawed and Roberta Flack just said ‘Yes,’ and you don’t forget that.”

  “She’s gonna play, great,” Ratso enthuses, remembering Dylan’s wish that it didn’t look like only a white boy was supporting Rubin.

  “I was interested in the debate though,” Joni continues. “I like Jerry. I’m not political myself and I don’t like to get involved …”

  “Especially since you’re a foreigner,” Robbie, who’s also a Canuck expatriate, reminds her.

  “That’s true,” Joni nods, “the choosing of the flag and the changing of the money, that was all I ever remembered about politics.”

  “People have been trying to get me together with Tom Hayden, man,” Robbie marvels, and straightens the sleeve of his impeccably tailored dark-blue suit. “It’s incredible, for the last couple of months they’ve been trying that, and I’m a foreigner.”

  “I don’t like the guy.” Joni frowns. “I say that because in a comparative way, which I shouldn’t do, I like Jerry Brown because he admits he’s in a power game and he’s curious to play with it and Hayden won’t cop to it. He’s too self-righteous and he’s also very condescending to the artist. Where with Jerry, he’ll like call me up and he puts it on the line, like if I’m gonna be working for someone and they’re gonna be using me, I like them to know that I know that they know and it’s all on that level. That’s what I like about Jerry Brown, he understands that ’cause he allows his people to manipulate him. He goes to parties and shakes hands and does that whole thing and is aware of what he’s doing. He’s very intelligent.”

  “Yeah, and he’s said right-wing things,” Ratso the eternal cynic spits.

  “Hasn’t everyone though?” Joni shrugs. “So does Trudeau. I think Trudeau would be a very good dictator. The best moves he did politically were dictatorial.”

  “It’s incredible how much more well appreciated he is outside of Canada than inside.” Robbie shakes his head.

  “Well, he’s got a pretty wife,” Ratso notes.

  “That’s right,” Robbie smiles his rare toothy grin, “his wife is pretty, that’s his biggest problem. His old lady is young and says ‘What’s this shit?’”

  Neuwirth kicks off the set by introducing Stevie Soles to do “Don’t Blame Me” and from the outset, Ratso gets a strange vibe. First of all, the acoustics are horrid, making everything sound like musical mush. But more important, the audience is about 95 percent black and they really don’t seem to be spoken to by these first few opening numbers. Even Stoner’s funky “Catfish” fails to elicit a good response.

  And when the quintessential honky, blond, blue-eyed Joni steps up, Ratso cringes in anticipation. “I wanted to be a painter,” she starts out by way of introduction, “and I was told this was the age of the camera so I put it into songs. Some of these are of me, of those on the tour, maybe some of you can relate to them.” But halfway through “Coyote” it’s clear these ain’t no Court and Spark fans, and some people in the front row start screaming for Joni to sit down. “Wait,” she yells over the music, “I got one more verse, it’s the best one too!”

  After Joni, Elliot rambles on, remarkably composed despite the fact that his mother had died just the day before and he had arrived at the prison in a limousine provided by George Lois, the same limousine that had taken him to his mother’s funeral earlier that morning. And, in an odd way, the audience relates to this bizarre-looking Brooklyn cowboy playing a funky ’50s rock ’n roll song. Ratso leans over and looks at Rubin who’s yacking away into Lois’ ear. “Hey George,” Ratso screams, “tell him to relax and dig the music.” But the boxer goes right on ignoring the performances, a move that does not go unnoticed by Ratso and some of the singers. Even as Dylan starts into an incredibly moving version of “Hattie Carroll,” singing the tale of racial and legal injustice to an audience of blacks who one way or another got screwed and are sitting in this audience tonight as proof, Rubin chats on. And the moment reaches Dylan, he’s straining, squeezing out the words like some kind of Turkish taffy, with Ronson wailing a chorus of sighs in the background. Ratso is stunned, he’s never seen a more moving performance, the chills are cascading down his back like water over a fall, and at the conclusion, the reporter leaps up in his chair for a standing ovation of one.

  However, the gesture isn’t lost on Dylan. “We play for all kinds of different people,” the dark-glassed singer leans into the mike, “and if we can get through to just one person out there we feel our mission is accomplished.” Incredible, Ratso laughs, Kinky’s old line, and marvels at Bob’s laser-quick wit as Dylan plows into “Hard Rain.” And everyone seems to be getting off on this one, even
the all-night girls from the D train, encamped in the first few rows.

  Then a surprise, as Dylan yields the stage to “Mr. Allen Ginsberg, an American poet from Paterson, New Jersey.” And Ginsberg is great here, sing-screaming his poems of rebellion, getting a huge rise out of the convict section with a line about butt-fucking. Then Baez races on, joining Dylan for two duets and inheriting the stage from the singer.

  “We’d like to thank the authorities for making it so easy for us to get in,” Baez grimaces sarcastically, no stranger to these places, “I wish they’d make it easier for you to get out.” The crowd goes wild, and the fever pitch grows with a soulful a cappella rendition of “Do Right Woman.”

  Roberta Flack is up next and the place goes bonkers, cons start dancing in the aisles, standing on their chairs, whooping and clapping along. After the commotion dies down, Joan grabs the mike. “We’re gonna end this more or less like we’ve been ending this. Bob Dylan is gonna sing a song which he’ll just say a couple of words about and I think you’ll relate to it.” A bit of scattered applause and Dylan steps to the mike. And without any words of introduction the band kicks into “Hurricane,” and in the audience, the bald former boxer shakes his head to the beat, a sly smile slowly creeping across his face as CBS, NBC, ABC get the shots they’ve been waiting for all night.

  After the inmates are shepherded back to their cells, a makeshift press conference starts. Ratso elbows his way into the crowd of about seventy journalists and winds up at the lip of the stage, right below Rubin.

  “How can you say that the current Congressional investigation that Gov. Byrne’s empaneled is trying to reframe you?” one journalist asks.

  “Now they’re saying that John Artis and I, who were convicted in 1967 of being the actual gunmen in the tavern, the only two ones, now Hawkins and his agents or his masters are saying that we didn’t kill the people but we were outside.” Hurricane pauses and fiddles with his sport coat button. “What they’re trying to say is that we were innocent but they want to prove us half guilty.”