On the Road with Bob Dylan Read online

  Dedicated to

  my parents,

  Lynn,

  and the memory of Phil Ochs

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Thin Ice

  A Season in Hell with the New York Rangers

  Reefer Madness

  The History of Marijuana in America

  Steal this Dream

  Abbie Hoffman and the Countercultural Revolution in America

  Acknowledgments

  Literally hundreds of people helped with this book but a few must be singled out. George Lois, the Greek Godfather of this effort, can’t be thanked enough. David Blue helped to kick it off, as did Abe Peck. George Barkin made the early going less tedious. Lynn came out of nowhere. Lola Cohen did some invaluable legwork. Debbie Weiner put me up in Boston. Keefe Laundry gave me Ex-Lax when I was upset. The film crew kept me alive. Hope Antman accepted the charges. Ron Delsener offered us shelter for the storm. St. Robin fed me for three months while I was writing. Dr. David Leibling added the salt. Crazy Benny furnished me with tape. Naomi and Mildred kept the lines open. Rocky Singer, Marie Brown, Rona Wyeth, and Ciel Reisner transcribed the garbled tapes and typed the massive manuscript. John Brockman, superagent, sold it. Tobi Sanders bought it and whipped Ratso into shape. Jim Cusimano and Lou Gorfain read it through, carefully and critically. All those I left out did their bits wonderfully. You shoulda been there ….

  For the 2002 edition

  I have to thank first and foremost Mitch Blank for nudging me over the years to get this back in print. Mitch was very gracious to allow me full access to his wonderful Blank Archives—the last word in Dylan research. I’d also like to thank Bill Pagel who took time out of his busy schedule to help with the photo research. His Web site www.boblinks.com is a tremendous resource for all those interested in things Bob. Thanks also to Jeff Friedman for his cooperation.

  Thanks also to Jeff Rosen, Diane Lapson, Debbie Sweeney, Jeff Kramer, Louie Kemp, Dan Levy, the late Howard Alk, Marty Feldman, Ken Regan, David Vigliano, Mike Harriot, and Claudia Gabel.

  Special kudos to my great friend and colleague Kinky Friedman for his poignant introduction. I owe you dinner at Wing Wong’s.

  I’m always grateful to my wife Christy, who fell in love with Ratso.

  My fellow Armenians,

  The shit in this book hit the old ceiling fan twenty-seven years ago. Some of you may not even have been born then, or what is more likely, you may have been conceived on this tour. At least a dozen of the colorful players in this traveling soap opera called the Rolling Thunder Revue have now been bugled to Jesus and many others wish they were dead, including myself. It’s certainly preferable to writing this introduction for the kind of money I’m sure Ratso will give me. He’s a superb chronicler of events but he does have fishhooks in his pockets.

  The one person we know that hasn’t gone to Jesus yet is Bob Dylan. Bob may stay on the road forever. He may never be bugled to Jesus. Maybe Bob is Jesus. They’re both skinny little boogers. And they’re both Jeeeews. Today, of course, we like to refer to them as fellow Red Sea pedestrians.

  But back to whatever the hell I was writing about before I started hearing voices in my head. If you’re a young person picking up this classic manuscript for the first time, it may seem as important as stumbling across a secular version of the Dead Sea Fucking Scrolls. You know you should’ve been there but you weren’t and, like a pedigreed dog, it’s not your fault. Like a knight born out of time you realize that some of these dreamers and jet-set gypsies could’ve been your brothers and sisters and friends and lovers, kindred sprits from a different world that today seems more spiritual and also more real. On the other hand, have you explored a career at Starbucks?

  I am, for a number of reasons, very gratified to see this book of Ratso’s back in print again. For one thing, it means royalties for Ratso which, I suppose, is a good thing. Not that I expect him to ever pick up the check, of course. He never has and he never will. Some things never change. But some do. Things like culture and society and the way each generation looks at the world. Bob himself said: “Art should not reflect culture; art should subvert culture.” This, I believe, is a worthy goal. For if Ratso has captured anything in this comprehensive yet subtle book it is the casual and innermost thoughts, comments, and dreams, sometimes beautiful beyond words and music, sometimes quite prophetic, that emanated from a small band of brigands traveling across America in that year of our Lord 1975, long before, I hasten to add, the country somehow managed to transmogrify itself into a non-smoking family chain restaurant.

  Since I’ve forgotten the first half of my life, I don’t remember all that much about the 60s and 70s. For instance, I don’t recall whether I called the girl in my hotel room a “slut” or a “slit” anymore and I’m not going to argue with Ratso over which term of endearment it was. At least I had the good sense not to call her “honey” because then we might’ve possibly gotten married, had three kids, and right now I’d probably be masturbating like a monkey in the men’s room of a non-smoking family chain restaurant. The more important point here is, however, that Ratso is an unconventional journalist of uncommon integrity. His eye is a digital camera and his ear is comparable to the most high-tech DVD the Japanese can produce. Not to mention the fact that he made a major nuisance of himself on this tour as I remember, running around twenty-four hours a day like a frenetic ferret on angel dust with a tape recorder and a strangely intense yet intelligent look in his eye that, in retrospect, reminds me vaguely of Ted Bundy.

  Ratso got Bob right. Indeed, he got just about everybody right. This was not an easy feat to accomplish since many of us were so high we needed a hook and ladder truck to scratch our asses and besides it was the mid-70s and we didn’t know what we were talking about anyway. But getting Bob right—that’s the big item here. Very few people have gotten Bob Dylan right ever since the day he left Hibbing, Minnesota, with nothing but a guitar, a harmonica, and a determined little smile that, in retrospect, reminds me vaguely of Ted Bundy. Yet Ratso has succeeded where others through the years have failed. He has provided us with a highly accurate reading of one of the most incandescent and inscrutable stars in the galaxy, and I don’t mean that popular four-wheeled penis of the 60s, the Ford Galaxy. Leave it to America to name a car Galaxy. At any rate, Ratso has given the reader a rare snapshot in time of Bob Dylan, a man who can be as irretrievably anti-social (for all the right reasons) as a cat I once loved and still do. The time is the mid-70s. The snapshot will take you many pages to see in totality but it is impeccable. And I don’t know how Ratso managed to do it because Bob does not suffer gladly those who would reveal the contents of the inside pockets of his youth. He hates to be photographed, for instance, because he believes that every time a picture of him is taken, it takes away a little bit more of the chance that he might become an Indian when he grows up.

  Some years back I met an Irish singer in Norway who’d recently been performing in an underground club in Austria. He told me that a bearded guy dressed all in black walked in one night with a large sign hung around his neck. The sign read: “Allen Ginsberg is Dead.” At first the Irish singer thought that this was some kind of performance art statement. Then he realized it for what it was. Allen Ginsberg was dead. Of course, compared to fat people driving SUVs and talking on cell phones, he seems pretty much alive. Along with Allen, there are many others from the pages of this tome who’ve stepped on a rainbow. You could call it Ratso’s curse or, quite possibly, they just got tired of being on the road. A partial list includes Rick Danko, Mick Ronson, David Blue, Dave Von Ronk, Howie Wyeth, Abbie Hoffman, Larry Kegan, Richard Manuel, Phil Ochs, and Michael Bloomfield. An interesting, if somewhat macabre, sidelight upon the deaths of
Ochs and Bloomfield is that both parties slept upon Ratso’s old, decrepit, skid-marked couch immediately prior to falling through the trap door. Some people, no doubt, will do anything to avoid sleeping on Ratso’s couch.

  I’ve slept on Ratso’s couch as well, of course, and against all odds, I’m still alive but I won’t be if I don’t terminate this tissue of horseshit soon and get something to eat. I am, as it happens, a vegetarian currently because I want to be kind to animals and morally superior to other people. Ratso’s never been a vegetarian but Bob has. Bob’s also been an orthodox Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist, a charismatic atheist, a poet, a picker, a pilgrim, a biker, a boxer, a bullrider, a bullshitter, a chess player, a hermit, an animal lover, a lighthouse keeper, a bee keeper, a bullfighter, a butterfly collector, an adult stamp collector, and almost everything except a Republican that a human being can possibly be when a restless soul is forever evolving toward his childhood nightlight.

  As of this writing, Bob Dylan is still on the road, still married to the wind, and still, if the fates are with us, coming to your town soon. Speaking on behalf of all my fellow Armenians, we’re very glad that this is the case. If you see Bob, you might bring Ratso’s book along and ask him to sign it for you. On the other hand, maybe not. Personally, I think one of the main reasons Bob stays on the road is to avoid Ratso. He remembers being hounded and interrogated by him in 1975 and doesn’t want to ever experience that unpleasant situation again.

  I first met Bob and Ratso in 1973 when I was touring the country with my band, the Texas Jewboys. Ratso showed up at our first gig in New York at a place called Max’s Kansas City and proceeded to heckle me all through the performance. Bob graced our LA. debut later that year at the Troubadour. When he came upstairs to the dressing room I noticed that he was barefoot and dressed in white robes. He liked the show, which is more than I can say for Ratso, or maybe that was merely the way Ratso chose to express himself. Nevertheless, I have been deeply fond of both of them ever since.

  Bob Dylan is a rock star. A world icon. A songwriter and performer who has influenced and inspired millions and affected our music and our world in a profound way. But if someone with pawnshop balls like Ratso were to ask him how he thought of himself, I doubt if he would mention any of these things. At heart, I believe he would say that he is only a minstrel boy. And I say, long may he wander in the raw poetry of time.

  Kinky Friedman,

  Texas Hill Country, March 29, 2002

  I once asked Gurdjieff about the ballet which had been mentioned in the papers and referred to in the story “Glimpses of Truth” and whether this ballet would have the nature of a ‘mystery play.’

  “My ballet is not a ‘mystery,’” said G “The object I had in view was to produce an interesting and beautiful spectacle. Of course, there is a certain meaning hidden beneath the outward form, but I have not pursued the aim of exposing and emphasizing this meaning …”

  I understood from what he said subsequently that this would not be a ballet in the strict meaning of the word, but a series of dramatic and mimic scenes held together by a common plot, accompanied by music and intermixed with songs and dances. The most appropriate name for these scenes would be “revue,” but without any comic element. The “ballet” or “revue” was to be called “The Struggle of the Magicians.” The important scenes represented the schools of a “Black Magician” and a “White Magician,” with exercises by pupils of both schools and a struggle between the two schools. The action was to take place against the background of the life of an Eastern city, intermixed with sacred dances, Dervish dances, and various national Eastern dances, all this interwoven with a love story which itself would have an allegorical meaning.

  —P. D. OUSPENSKY

  In Search of the Miraculous

  Preface

  Minsky was my first hero. Minsky was a Jewish hood who wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, carried a greasy black comb in his back pocket, hung round the benches in Forest Park in Queens, occasionally spitting or cursing at homos or stealing weaklings’ basketballs. He was always flicking his burned-down cigarette at least fifteen feet in a marvelous blazing arc, all of which in 1958 was grounds for pariahhood.

  But I loved Minsky, I loved his mountain slope of a pompadour and his perfect Elvis sneer and the incredible knack he had of holding a can of beer in one hand and fielding a grounder with the other, dropping his glove, picking up the ball, and throwing the runner out at first with a behind-the-back fastball. And Minsky was my hero because he was going out with Kathy Muldoon, a beautiful Irish redhead who lived in my building and who escorted me home from the park every afternoon, riding me up the elevator to my floor, then giving me a sweet, mischievous smile as I gaped at her boobs.

  But then we moved to Bayside, leaving Minsky and Kathy Muldoon and Forest Park light-years behind. And I started going to high school and I cultivated a new hero, Andy Bathgate of the Rangers. But it wasn’t the same. Then, I wandered into a music store on Bell Boulevard in June of 1965 and picked up the latest Top 100 list and noticed a strange name at Number 43. The entry read “Like a Rolling Stone—B. Dylan.”

  I got furious, steaming to myself about this Dylan character trying to rip off the Stones name, riding to fame on their boot heels. In anger, I bought the single. It changed my life.

  Oh, that sound! That rapturous organ and that searing guitar and that mocking piano. And that voice, that half-sneer, half-lullabyic razor of a voice. The next day I took my father’s car for the first time since I had finished Driver’s Ed and I drove into Flushing where Gertz had a sale on Dylan’s Highway 61 LP. $1.88 in mono.

  And the album finished me off. Those incredible songs, “Tombstone Blues,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Desolation Row.” There I was, a nice Jewish boy, almost in the suburbs, with an after-school job reconciling bank statements for the accountant down the hall, ready to start Queens College and pick a nice, safe, respectable career, like accounting.

  After Highway 61, I rushed back to Flushing and, one by one, I picked up all the other albums. And listened, really listened. Then I started going to the Village, to the Paul Sergeant store that was mentioned in the liner notes to Highway 61, then to MacDougal Street, finally to the Players Theatre, where the Fugs were setting new standards for perversity and honesty.

  So when I spotted a small ad for a Bob Dylan concert in February of 1966, in White Plains, I immediately wrote for two tickets, one for me and one for my friend Fiegelberg, who had a long leg cast as a result of a skiing accident.

  The night of the concert I was on pins and needles, enthralled at the prospect of seeing Dylan live, in the flesh! My parents drove us out there, then left to take in a local movie. I walked and Fiegelberg hobbled to our seats, in the rear but at least on the floor. And, after an hour’s wait, Dylan strode onstage.

  He did a stunning solo set, the classic folk ballads, some of the middle-period love-hate songs, then the new, intense stuff, like “Freeze-Out” (later to be released as “Visions of Johanna”) and “Desolation Row.” A quick bow and he was off.

  After the intermission, the lights dimmed and five strange-looking figures wandered out onstage and plugged into amplifiers. And then Dylan was back, in an olive box-checkered suit. And I heard the most incredible rock music of my life. But all too fast, it was over, Dylan taking a final half-bow, then pausing to wave to someone in the audience. I stumbled into the lobby in a haze.

  My parents met us and we walked to the car, Fiegelberg and me climbing into the back seat. After a few minutes, my father half turned to us.

  “So how did you like it?” he asked.

  “It was incredible. I loved it!” I managed to answer over the din of all those songs still running through my head.

  “It’s funny,” my father shouted, alternately turning to us, then checking the road ahead, “when we came to pick you guys up, we got there early and two people were leaving so I got their stubs and went in to look for you. I walk
ed right up the aisle, right up to the front. That noise!” He held his head in one hand and shook it.

  “You what!” I shouted. “You walked by us? I didn’t see you. Which aisle? How far up did you go?”

  “Right up to the front. The first row. I looked up and saw Dylan from about ten feet away.” My father chuckled.

  “What! You saw him that close. What did he look like? What was he wearing? Suede boots? What kinda shirt was that? Did he see you? What did he look like?” I was starting to repeat myself.

  My father just shrugged and looked back at the road. “What are you getting so excited about?” he shouted, one hand on the wheel, the other punctuating the air. “He didn’t seem like anything special. The songs seemed nice, loud but nice. But he didn’t look so hot. What are you making such a fuss over? He was a small, ordinary guy. He looked like a shipping clerk,” the old man said with finality. With that, I slumped back down into the seat and rode the rest of the way home in silence.

  The next day I ran into someone from Kew Gardens who told me that Minsky had been busted.

  To begin at the beginning, you’d have to go back to the old folkie days of the Village or maybe just the set of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid or maybe even the old auditorium of Hibbing High. Who knows where Dylan first got the idea, really decided that he wanted to go out again and do what it was that he does so well. Namely, tell the tribe the news of the hour. Depending on who you speak to, you’ll get a hundred different versions of how the Rolling Thunder Revue idea was crystallized. Some say it was Bobby Neuwirth’s pet project, a guerrilla attack on the hamlets of Middle America. Others credit Ramblin’ Jack Elliott with the original idea. Still others believe it was Bob’s all along, that he was only waiting for the right time and people. No matter, it happened. With a vengeance. Guitar sounds filled the air, Scarlett’s haunting gypsy violin presiding over the clatter in hot, musky gyms and clean, stainless-steel auditoriums. The Rolling Thunder Revue was a caravan of gypsies, hoboes, trapeze artists, lonesome guitar stranglers, and spiritual green berets who came into your town for your daughters and left with your minds. They took to the road in the fall of ’75, a weird karass, Dylan, Baez, Mitchell, Elliott, Neuwirth, McGuinn, Ronson, Blakley, Ginsberg, it went on and on, and you’ll meet them all here, sooner or later. And they barnstormed for six weeks, shaking up the great Northeast, making a quick foray over the border into the land of snow. Then, with a bang at Madison Square Garden, playing to twenty thousand in a benefit for Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, it was over. At least, until Dylan decides to round up the troops, pack up the guitars, and head your way again.