Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  The cops rode our tail back to the Rainbow Court. After we’d packed up our gear in record time and turned back onto the road, those high beams chased us for miles until we crossed the county line.

  —

  Our Monarch convoy cruised north toward Yankee country, where we were set to cut some tracks with Henry Glover for his new label, Ware Records. We looked forward to having a real producer/arranger/songwriter helping us make a record. In the past we’d mostly just played the songs and the producer had pressed “record.” Henry offered to write us a song too—which had us dreaming big. I couldn’t wait to hear what he had in store.

  As I pulled my Telecaster out of its case, Henry sat down at the piano and started playing some chords and singing the basic idea of a tune. It was okay, but it didn’t fully connect for us. I played him “Leave Me Alone” and “Uh, Uh, Uh,” the songs I’d been working on at the Grange in Hamilton.

  “They’re better,” said Henry. “Let’s cut those.”

  Henry wrangled us pretty well, but I also realized that for him this was the opposite of working with studio musicians, who were able to go directly to a hook that felt good and familiar. We were trying to look for the unobvious and didn’t know how to do it any other way. For a record producer like Henry, that could seem like taking the long way around. Yeah, wrangling the Hawks was probably a lot like trying to herd cats. When the record came out, Ware had changed our name from Levon and the Hawks to the Canadian Squires. Oh dear. I went along with it to be a good sport, and since it was okay with Levon, but that “square” name spoke something significant about the conceptual difference between us and Henry. We loved him for all the brilliant work he’d done, and he wanted to help us, but this was a new era.

  —

  In the summer of 1965 we had booked a gig at Tony Mart’s big dance club in Somers Point, New Jersey. Tony’s was a hot spot, a popular club that sometimes had three bands playing on separate stages over the course of the evening. A big round bar sat in the middle of the club, handy for a refill no matter where you were standing. Tony Mart himself was an unusual club owner, a real character. A bit stocky, no-nonsense, and Sicilian born, Anthony Marrota spoke broken English and hardly ever smiled. He ran his “circus” with a strong hand, wandering through the crowds while yelling orders at bartenders and bouncers. Every once in a while he’d walk by the center stage we were playing on and call out, “Hey, turna downa tha jukebox!” We took this to mean we were playing too loud for an early-evening crowd.

  On the first weekend we were there, you could tell the audience was into our type of music. Conway Twitty and some of his original band were in residence too, which was a nice surprise. When we went on, the place came alive. By Saturday night the club was so packed you couldn’t move. Tony Mart pushed his way through the crowd and called up to us, “Hey, turna upa tha jukebox!” and gave a little grin.

  After the first two weeks, Tony asked us to come back for two more weeks later in June. It was very unusual for us to play two stands so close together in one spot like that, but we were glad to plant our feet for a while. And lo and behold, our old road manager, Bill Avis, showed up in Somers Point too, managing a band of lesbians calling themselves the Female Beatles.

  In between dates in Somers Point, we would head up to New York City to meet with production companies that had seen us play and were interested in signing us. We listened to songs they thought we could record, but none of them really connected. Part of their deal would be to sign us to a song-publishing agreement, at which point they would try to push their catalog on us. The acoustic folk setting was thriving in New York. You could feel it growing in Toronto’s Yorkville district, but Greenwich Village was the epicenter of this world. John Hammond asked me to come hear him play at the Gaslight Club. He talked up Dave Van Ronk, Fred Neil, and a couple other guys he thought were very soulful folk singers. The Gaslight had a sign out front announcing the next act that would be performing there, Mississippi John Hurt. I told John about our jam with Sonny Boy Williamson, and he said, “Sonny Boy one or two?”

  I had to laugh. “Two.”

  He said, “Love his harp playing!”

  —

  One afternoon, John came by the Forest Hotel to collect me for a trip downtown to a hip record store. I threw him the keys to one of the Monarchs and he floored it, ripping down Seventh Avenue like we were in a movie car chase. Then he hit the brakes and said, “Oh, man, I forgot something. A friend of mine is recording around the corner and I promised I would stop by. Can we go in for a minute and say hello?”

  Before long we were on the elevator in the Columbia Records building heading for Studio A. In the control room people were listening to the playback of a song they had just cut. John said hello to a man in round wire-rimmed glasses with shoulder-length grayish hair.

  “Robbie, this is the great music manager Albert Grossman.” Sitting in the corner silently was Dion of Dion and the Belmonts. Then John went over and gave a big greeting to his friend who was recording. He turned to introduce me.

  “Hey, Bob, this is my guitar-player friend Robbie, from Canada. This is Bob Dylan.” You could barely see his eyes through the dark glasses he wore, but there was high voltage in the room coming from his persona.

  Bob said hello, and then to John, “You wanna hear something?”

  “Yeah, I’d love to.”

  Bob teased, “You sure you want to hear this? You never heard anything like this before.”

  Albert Grossman and the record producer nodded in serious agreement.

  “It’s called ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ ” Bob said with a little smirk. “All right, go ahead, play it back.”

  Bob was right—I’d never heard anything like this before. The studio lit up with the sound of toughness, humor, and originality. It was hard to take it all in on one listen.

  After the playback John shook Bob’s hand and showered him with compliments, and just then I noticed through the glass the studio musicians that played on the track. There was Mike Bloomfield. He waved and I stepped into the studio to say hello, but for some reason he looked a bit out of sorts. He whispered, “I’ll be off to Chicago in a couple days. This is pretty weird, but it’s all cool. There’s something I need to talk to you about.” I didn’t know what he meant, but this wasn’t the time to get into it.

  When John and I were back in the car, barreling downtown, I expected him to comment on the song or the experience we’d just had. But he didn’t say anything about it, and I got the feeling that for John it was still all about the blues.

  —

  The Hawks were finally getting closer to signing a deal with a record company in New York. The talent scout from Aaron Schroeder’s production company, Eddie Heller, had shown tremendous interest in us. Eddie had seen us during our miserable stretch at the Peppermint Lounge, and we appreciated his determination. The advantage of a production deal was that they would find material for us to cut, though at the same time we weren’t sure if we shouldn’t be signing directly with a record company. Schroeder gave us the whole music-biz sales pitch, which sounded impressive to our naive ears. They had the lawyers draw up a contract.

  “It’s a very good deal for you gentlemen,” Schroeder told us when they gave us the paperwork. “You can sign it now or, if you want to, you can have a music attorney go over it. That’s your choice. What do you think, Eddie? Should they have a lawyer take a look at it?”

  Eddie scratched his receding hairline. “Well, yeah, you can have an attorney look at it, but it’s gotta be a music guy so he understands the business. But that’s gonna cost money. And those guys don’t come cheap, if they’re half decent.”

  It felt a little like we were buying a rug or a used car. Levon had the idea to ask Henry Glover if he would take a look at the contract and let us know if it looked fair. Henry read it and said he wouldn’t sign it. It locked us up for a long time on everything from recording to publishing, with a very low royalty. We took notes on what Henry
said and asked some questions about what we should push for.

  Levon was pissed that they were trying to screw us, but I said it was only worth being angry if we had already signed the deal. “Let’s see if we can do better,” I said. When we presented our counteroffer to Schroeder and Co., they acted like we were asking to put up our own tollbooth on the Brooklyn Bridge. Levon started yelling back, but I told them, “That’s what it’s gonna take. Either you want us or you don’t.” In the end they compromised on a few things, and we made a somewhat reasonable deal. Now they would go to work finding material for us to record.

  By then we’d begun our second stand at Tony Mart’s club in New Jersey, and on our nights off we would slip over to the Wonder Garden club in Atlantic City, where we caught some of the best jazz-organ combos going. Jimmy Smith played there, and we also saw Brother Jack McDuff, whom Garth appreciated for his unusual style. Shirley Scott, “Queen of the Organ,” was a favorite of mine, with her husband, Stanley Turrentine, on sax. Most of these jazz organists played a Hammond B3 with bass pedals, which meant they could play without a bass player. It was fascinating to watch them play a lead part with their right hand on the upper keyboard and chords or counterparts (and sometimes lead) with the left hand on the lower keyboard. At the same time they’d be changing sounds and controlling the speed of the Leslie speaker, pulling and pushing buttons and stops with both hands while playing the bass part with their feet. The whole thing was a remarkable balancing act. And of course the groove and texture of the B3 was sexy cool. It made you want to order a Cutty Sark and soda. Garth played a whole other kind of organ, the incomparable Lowrey. Different sound, different touch altogether from the Hammond B3, and you could bend the notes like a horn or guitar, which completely baffled a lot of listeners. So great when Garth would kick into a free-for-all jam by himself, with those bass pedals in full effect. Gave you the shivers.

  One night after we finished playing at Tony Mart’s, Garth began telling me about some ideas and effects he was experimenting with. He was always devising new modes of “hot-rodding” the Lowrey organ and its Leslie speaker to create brilliant new sonic wonders. As he described his research-and-discovery approach, most of it went over my head, but the results were undeniable. The sounds that came out of Garth’s keyboards or wind instruments had originality stamped all over them. Garth experimented endlessly, like a Harry Partch or Les Paul. He never stopped wanting to expand on his technical abilities inside or outside the instrument. None of the rest of us Hawks was so inclined. Some people want to know how a watch works, and other people just want to know what time it is.

  Quite regularly on our off days I would head up to New York City, sometimes crashing with our Canadian pal Mary Martin, who had taken a job working for Albert Grossman’s management company. She was always so supportive and would try to turn us on to new music that was happening, like John Sebastian’s new group, the Lovin’ Spoonful. Sometimes one or two of the other Hawks would join me on these excursions into the city, but it soon became evident that I was the one most drawn to the metropolis.

  Catching up with my new friend Charles Lloyd was a must on these trips. All sorts of interesting people moved through his world. One time, when I stopped by his pad in the Village, Ornette Coleman was there. He seemed pretty reserved and mellow for a guy who played such wild, aggressive, challenging music. Charles had formed his own band and recruited pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Cecil McBee, and a fantastic guitarist named Gabor Szabo, who played with an otherworldly, gypsy jazz tone. Upstairs in Charles’s building lived a character we called Third-Floor Richard, who kept the Lebanese hashish flowing. But I would have come back to Charles Lloyd’s apartment regularly anyway, just to listen to music on his amazing hi-fi system.

  Of all the groups that played Somers Point in the summer of 1965, Tony Mart’s personal favorite was Levon and the Hawks, though it was sometimes hard to tell whether he liked the swampy sound of our music or the ringing of the cash registers. Toward the end of our stint, our relationship with Tony had grown warm, almost familial. He hired us to finish out the season, which proved ideal for future recording sessions and continued access to the city. Everyone in the band seemed to be in a good place during those days.

  The only dark cloud that passed over us that summer (other than the enduring stress of the drug bust) was when we got word that our dear Sonny Boy Williamson II had passed away from tuberculosis, and that the beautiful dream we had of recording together had died with him.

  —

  Soon after, I got a message from Albert Grossman’s office, asking me to come up to the city on our next day off to meet with Bob Dylan. I’d met him only briefly with John Hammond when they were recording “Like a Rolling Stone.” I asked the guys if they knew any of Bob’s music. I wasn’t that familiar with it myself, though I remembered a song he’d done a few years back called “Oxford Town.” It rang true, and the tone of his voice really stood out for me. Richard offered that Bob’s record “Subterranean Homesick Blues” reminded him of Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business.” “Yeah,” I said, “that staccato rhythmic phrasing is reminiscent.”

  Albert Grossman’s office set it up for me to meet with Bob the following Monday. I couldn’t help but wonder what this was all about.

  Come Monday morning, I drove solitaire from the Jersey Shore to Albert Grossman’s office on 55th Street, just west of Park Avenue. I pushed the elevator button for Gross Court Management, on the fourth and fifth floors, and a few moments later an assistant escorted me to a room stockpiled with new Fender guitars and equipment—a Precision bass, a Stratocaster with a rosewood neck, a Jaguar guitar, and some amps with separate heads and speakers. It was comforting to see our old friend from Toronto, Mary Martin, who’d been raising the Hawks’ flag around the office for a while now.

  As I made a list in my head of the stuff in this room that I considered the “crème,” a lightning bolt entered the room: Bob Dylan, puffing on a cigarette harder than Bette Davis, one knee bobbing in time to a shotgun monologue. He was dressed in a dark red polka-dot shirt and blue striped pants. Electricity seemed to be shooting up through his hair. His dark prescription sunglasses accented his nocturnally pale skin and wiry build. This wasn’t the folk traditionalist Dylan; this was the emergence of a new species.

  Bob filled me in on his recent experiment playing electric with the Butterfield Blues Band at the Newport Folk Festival, which had elicited a controversial response. He said some people didn’t like it but that those people for the most part never understood what he was doing anyway.

  Bob claimed to have considerable experience with rock ’n’ roll, mentioning by way of example that he’d played with Bobby Vee for a while. I wondered to myself if playing with the teen idol who made the rather square 1961 hit song “Take Good Care of My Baby” necessarily amounted to a real injection of rock ’n’ roll in the veins. But at least it shed light on Bob’s openness to collaborate and experiment. I confessed to my own limited experience in the acoustic, folk world.

  I still had no idea why I was here, but I tried to dole out a few insights regarding the electric guitars that surrounded us. I told him I was a maple-neck guy, that I found the rosewood a little scratchy for playing lead. “Have you ever tried a Telecaster?” I asked him. “It’s lighter on the shoulder and stays in tune easier than the Strat, or any of the Fender guitars that come with a tremolo bar.”

  Bob lit a cigarette off the one he was smoking and laughed. “Yeah, that Stratocaster I’ve been using doesn’t stay in tune for long.” He called to somebody in the next office. “Hey, can you get that Fender guy to bring over a Telecaster?” An assistant named Johanna came into the room and wrote down the request.

  “Will they know what color or any details I should ask for?”

  “They usually come in a cream color,” I answered, “but maybe you should ask for a black one with a white pick guard. That could look good.”

  Bob left the roo
m and came back a minute later carrying an acoustic guitar case. “Hey, man, you wanna go somewhere?” he asked. “There’s something I wanna play for you. Why don’t you grab that Fender acoustic guitar, and we’ll go downtown.”

  Our destination was Albert Grossman’s place in Gramercy Park, where Bob was staying while he found a place of his own. The Grossman house was stately, with high ceilings and tall windows, beautiful woodwork, and brass hardware. I had never seen this kind of New York elegance before. We took our instruments into Albert’s living room, and Bob pulled an acetate disk out of a paper slipcover and put it on a turntable. He played two or three songs from the record, giving me some background on the sessions as we went along. I couldn’t quite take it all in, with the music playing loudly and Bob talking over it, but it did feature his vocal way up front, pouring out some of the most amazing lyrical gymnastics that had ever been pressed to vinyl. His incredible feats of imagination and original vocal phrasing floored me. Where had this even come from? Rock ’n’ roll wasn’t born of a sophisticated attitude toward wordplay, but you wouldn’t know it from these songs.

  It didn’t take me long, though, after hearing several cuts from his new album that would be released as Highway 61, Revisited, to realize that Bob at times was steaming down the tracks too swiftly for the musicians to keep up with his epic poetic energy.

  I took the Fender acoustic out of its case while Bob tuned up his beautiful Nick Lucas Special. The headstock of his guitar said “The Gibson”—not just “Gibson”—which meant it had some years on it. We kicked into a rhythm, which Bob soon steered into one of the songs we had just heard. The texture of his voice and his guitar playing were as good as if not better than on the record. I watched his fingers to follow the chord progressions until I had a handle on the tune. I couldn’t help but start floating between the vocal lines, swirling and stinging with fills when necessary. Bob lit up immediately, and after running through a couple songs, it almost felt like we had done this before. We laid down our guitars and lit up some smokes. Then he offered me a job.