Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  Finally it became clear why I was here. He told me he had two concerts booked in a few weeks, with possibly a whole tour to follow. Some of the musicians who played on his record had agreed to be part of his live band, but he needed a lead guitarist.

  I didn’t know how to say that I wasn’t here auditioning for a job. I asked why Mike Bloomfield wasn’t joining him for these dates, and he said Mike had a full-time gig with the Butterfield Blues Band. “I do too,” I responded, explaining that the Hawks had a solid bond, and that we were together through hell or high water. Bob said he was playing Forest Hills Stadium in New York and then the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. He asked if I could at least see my way to join him on those two jobs.

  The offer presented me with a dilemma. I could immediately see the appeal of playing with Bob. I really enjoyed our musical connection. But I couldn’t conceive of doing anything that would jeopardize the Hawks.

  I told Bob I might be able to do it if Levon played drums with us for the two gigs.

  “Is he as good as Bobby Gregg?” Bob asked, smiling.

  I smiled back. “Oh yeah, and better.”

  I only knew of Bobby Gregg from a cool instrumental record he had put out a couple of years earlier called “The Jam,” featuring Roy Buchanan on guitar. Bobby was a known New York City session drummer and surely had great chops. But this wasn’t about who played better; it was about my not wanting Levon to think I would abandon ship. Bob said he thought they already had Bobby Gregg booked.

  “Well, let me know if we can do it with Levon,” I said, “and I think we might be able to work something out.”

  Back at Somers Point I described Bob’s offer to my bandmates. I could see different levels of concern on their faces. The idea of somebody making one of us an outside offer to play live had never entered the picture before. I made it clear that we were a unit, and nothing was going to change that.

  When I explained that I wouldn’t do the shows with Bob unless Levon could be a part of it, Lee still didn’t embrace the idea. “We got our own thing,” he said, “and we don’t need no distractions.” My personal curiosity and sense of adventure were the only things that made him give the experiment even the slightest consideration. As for the rest of the guys, Richard was the only one who showed any interest in exploring what might be stirring on the Bob Dylan front. Not even excitement and encouragement from Mary Martin made much of an impression on the Hawks.

  To some extent, I could completely understand. We had left Ronnie to get out of this kind of situation, and now someone was coming along to suggest another backing opportunity, and even then, possibly just for two of us. And with a record contract under our belts and a great summer at Tony Mart’s behind us, it felt like we were getting somewhere. But to me, what Bob was doing was strong and fascinating, and I thought there could be something in the discovery process that would be valuable to all of us.

  After we talked as a group, Levon and I spoke about it one on one. “We have to see what’s behind this door,” I told him. “It’s too interesting. Plus, these two jobs are bigger than anything we’ve ever been a part of. We’ve gotta feel it out.”

  Soon word came down from Bob’s camp that they’d be happy to have Levon play drums for the gigs. I couldn’t wait for Bob to meet Levon, and vice versa. They asked if I could come to the city for another get-together to iron out more details in preparation for the shows.

  We drove up to the city to meet Bob at Albert Grossman’s office. This time Albert came in to say hello and expressed his enthusiasm that Levon and I had agreed to do the shows. While we chatted, I tried out a couple of newly arrived guitars and plugged into one of the Fender amps in the room. It was a bit loud for the office, but Albert smiled wide when I ripped off a couple runs. I handed a new Telecaster to Bob when he came in the room. He just strapped it right on and raked out a few chords approvingly. We jammed back and forth for a few minutes, sending ripples down the hallways of Gross Court Management. Workers peeked out of their offices to check us out like a parade had come to town. You could tell there hadn’t been much electric music bouncing off these walls before.

  For the two upcoming gigs, Bob had enlisted Harvey Brooks to play bass and Al Kooper on keyboards. He stressed how well they played on his new record, and how easy they were to work with. “They’ll fit in so smoothly that after a while you won’t even know they’re there.” I assumed that was a good thing, and asked when we’d start to run over the songs together. In a cryptic way, Bob answered that it would all be worked out soon. He laid his guitar on the amp, which immediately started to feed back and roar through the office walls. We had a laugh as I scrambled to hit the standby switch and realized that Bob might find that this electric thing took some getting used to.

  I wanted to make Levon more comfortable with this venture if I could, and commented that besides Bob being a unique talent, I thought he seemed like a great guy.

  “I wanna get in the studio and do some recording,” Levon said. “That’s all I care about.”

  Eddie Heller, Aaron Schroeder’s persistent talent scout, had brought some demos of songs for us to consider recording. He had set up some time for us to get into the studio. We listened and listened but couldn’t get behind any of the material. Here we go again, I thought, all dressed up and no songs to record. So I grabbed whatever time I could and tried to come up with some tunes we could cut. That night I locked myself away with an acoustic guitar between Tony Mart’s 2:00 a.m. closing time and dawn, and wrote a gospel-flavored tune called “The Stones I Throw.” It reminded me of Pops Staples and the Staple Singers, who at that time sang mostly gospel music. For a B-side I found a riff that I turned into a song called “He Don’t Love You.”

  Our first recording experiences all seemed to follow the same pattern. On a Wednesday someone would sign us to a deal, and Wednesday night I’d have to try to come up with something to record on Thursday. I could have called my music-publishing company “Eleventh Hour.” Sure, I enjoyed throwing together a couple of songs for the occasion, but I had tremendous respect for songwriters and wanted to do better than what these circumstances would allow.

  —

  As soon as Levon got behind the drums for our first Dylan rehearsal, Bob could tell he was the real deal. We met Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks, and everybody wanted to find our groove, looking to make some honest and good music. We tried and tumbled through the tunes with the best of intentions, but for Levon and me the music felt somewhat disorganized. We rolled with the punches as best we could. Al and Harvey were terrific guys and recognized that we were on a free-floating raft. The saving grace was that Bob didn’t seem to be bothered by any of this. It could be that he played so much as a one-man band—just his voice, acoustic guitar, and harmonica—and slayed audiences everywhere, so why would he look at it differently with a few musicians?

  On August 28, at Forest Hills Stadium in New York, we took the stage for our afternoon sound check. It was a huge tennis stadium that had been reconfigured for live events. It held maybe twelve or fifteen thousand people, a far cry from the clubs we’d grown so accustomed to on our circuit. Our sound echoed loudly through the empty stadium, and I asked Bob if he could hear himself well enough. “Nah, but that’s okay. Just remember, tonight, don’t stop playing, no matter what.” He said it like we were going into battle.

  As the hours passed, you could feel the scale of the event building. Albert Grossman seemed to be everywhere at once, checking last-minute details. The other Hawks showed up to see what Levon and I had gotten ourselves into; they too seemed awed by the size of the stadium. But I was worried less about the big crowd than about how we’d play, and how they’d react. We had heard what had happened at the Newport Festival with Bob and the Butterfield Blues Band: Bobby Neuwirth, Dylan’s road manager, said Pete Seeger had wanted to pull the plug on them—but that was at a folk-music show. Not knowing what would happen tonight made for a tense backstage vibe that felt exciting and unnerving at the same ti
me.

  Bob went out and played the first half of the show doing his acoustic set, and it sounded real good. It gave us some confidence that the show was going well; all we had to do in the second half was follow through.

  As soon as we hit the stage and plugged in, the audience unleashed its fury. From the first notes of the first song, “Tombstone Blues,” people started booing viciously. I looked at Bob, but he just shrugged. People charged toward us, like they were staging a massive coup in an imaginary war. We followed Bob’s advice and didn’t stop playing “no matter what.” Some people busted through the barricades and got on the stage, knocking Al Kooper over. Albert was directing security to help hold the crowds back. Bobby Neuwirth was waving frantically, like we might have to make a run for it. I looked over at Levon, who just shook his head. Harvey saw this and started laughing, and I couldn’t help but laugh too. Soon even Bob joined in, because this whole thing was too far gone to comprehend. I thought, What’s the big deal? Let the man play his music how he wants. This was such a strange situation, and Levon and I had nothing to compare it to; these folk traditionalists were rabid. We felt like we were on a desolate island where cannibalism hadn’t been outlawed yet.

  Afterward, Bob assured us our next gig at the Hollywood Bowl in a few days should be a lot better: people out there in Los Angeles, he said, would be more open-minded. The Los Angeles band the Byrds had released a cover of Bob’s song “Mr. Tambourine Man” a couple months earlier, paving the way for what some were calling the “folk-rock movement.” Perhaps this was a sign we were just a little too soon with our “electric” current.

  When we landed in Los Angeles, it did feel more welcoming. I’d never been there before, and I happily found the Sunset Strip alive with hundreds of people gathering in the name of a new day and dancing in a potion of love, peace, music, drugs, and sex. What truly blew my mind was the sheer number of kids: the Strip was overflowing with them, some smoking weed, some heading to the Whisky a Go Go, some with no money to be doing anything except hanging out. Los Angeles was open and spacious. A youthful, hopeful, almost dreamlike feeling was in the air.

  Musicians, actors, hipsters, and more came by to see Bob, with his friend Victor Maymudes sometimes leading the charge. The photographer Barry Feinstein, who was married to Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, brought the best reefer I’d ever had. The Hollywood Bowl was big, beautiful, and of course legendary. It felt like an honor just to be performing in this world-famous venue.

  We arrived that night knowing that Bob would sing and play his heart out in the acoustic first half of the show and the audience would love it. Then he would sing and play his heart out in the electric second half, and the audience might hate it.

  “This is so strange,” I said to Levon before we went on.

  “Never felt anything like this, man,” he responded. I had never seen my friend look more unsure of the ground he was standing on.

  As we walked out onstage for the second half, the audience seemed to be waiting for a cue. A murmur ran through the crowd, cresting in a couple of shouts: “Go home!” “No rock ’n’ roll!” After we played the first song, I looked out at the crowd and noticed something odd. People would look around and try to boo louder than one another, laughing and screaming with anger like this was a game or part of the show. Individually they didn’t seem offended by the music; it was more of a mob mentality—“When Dylan goes electric, you boo.” Jeering was just a thing to do. I saw it, and I got it. From that moment the cheers and jeers no longer affected me. I pushed it all aside and got lost in the music.

  After the show, Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks seemed to think it had gone better than in New York. Bob and his team and various friends felt reasonably good about it. All the talk rolled off me. What did bother me was I knew we could play this music better, and I could tell Levon felt the same, though it probably wouldn’t have made that big of a difference to an audience distracted by its own agenda. Bob had done his best, pounding those amazing songs out with all the firepower he could, but as a band we didn’t have it yet.

  I didn’t say much at the time because we had only signed on for these two gigs. But when Levon and I returned to New York, I got a message. I told Levon, “Bob called and said they’re booking an additional fifteen dates, and they want us to do the tour.”

  Levon laughed. “I would have thought he’d learned his lesson by now.”

  “Yeah, I told Bob we couldn’t do it. We have our own band, and that’s what we’re all about. But he says he wants to meet me tonight at a bar in the Village. I’ll see what’s up.”

  I had walked by the Kettle of Fish on Macdougal Street before but had never been inside. It was known as a gathering place for members of the beat generation as well as musicians. By the time I got there, the place was hoppin’. Dylan was with his road manager, Bobby Neuwirth, and they had a table staked out near the back. Bob was in good spirits and very funny, pointing out characters in the bar and making up elaborate backstories about them. Neuwirth jumped right in. They made cutting, sharp jabs, and the whole thing seemed like a routine between them.

  Neuwirth ordered some wine and Bob asked me straight out if I could do his upcoming tour. I told him again that the Hawks were a close unit and we were on our own mission; I would never do anything to get in the way of that. Neuwirth interjected that I could come back to “the Hawks thing” later; playing with Bob was a big deal, and the Hawks’ future was a big “maybe” at best.

  “That’s not the way I look at it,” I said. “We’ve been through so much together, and we’re gonna see it through. I’m sure you’ll find some guys that will play well with Al and Harvey.” Bob said that he didn’t think he’d use those fellows on the tour, that they seemed more suited for the studio. (I heard a couple of days later that Al Kooper didn’t want to do the tour. He thought playing music under these circumstances could be dangerous and took a pass.)

  Without having really discussed it with the guys, I took the liberty of saying the only way I could consider doing the tour would be if the Hawks were the backing band. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing situation,” I told Bob.

  “Whoa, how do we know that these guys could even cut it?” Neuwirth said.

  “You don’t. Bob would have to come hear us play.”

  “Where?” Bob asked.

  “In Toronto next week. We’re playing a club there.”

  “Really? Yeah, maybe I could do that.”

  “Well, we’re going into the studio tomorrow to record some new songs. I’ll talk to the boys and see what they think,” I responded.

  “Did you write the songs?” Bob asked.

  “Yeah, I do most of the writing, although I’ve been a little strapped for time with all that’s going on. Richard, Rick, and Levon do the vocals. They’re all really good singers. Garth and I take the solos.”

  “I’d like to check this out.” Bob nodded. “Yeah, I’m going to try to come up to Toronto.”

  Neuwirth paid the check, and on the way out we ran into Phil Ochs, a popular folk singer at the time. Neuwirth and Bob verbally tore into him on the spot, laughing the whole time. You could tell there was some history between them, but I didn’t know a thing about it. Neuwirth and Bob seemed pretty harsh with Phil Ochs, but I guessed Bob had his reasons. I was just glad that it wasn’t me stranded on that firing line.

  The following day, as we headed to our recording session, I told the boys about my conversation with Bob. Nobody seemed to have any real objection to our checking out the possibility of a tour. It was an intriguing opportunity and it was only for fifteen dates.

  Aaron Schroeder and Eddie Heller had booked us in a studio called Mira Sound, conveniently located downstairs from our hotel in the city. A girl group called the Crystals was working on a session at Mira too. We decided to collaborate—though not so much on the music.

  Eddie liked an up-tempo version we did of the traditional song “Little Liza Jane,” so we decided to cut that along with the n
ew tunes to satisfy the production company. Our recording engineer, Brooks Arthur, knew what he was doing, which gave us a chance to rehearse the new material while he worked on the sound. We had a vibe going on “He Don’t Love You,” and I thought we were off and running. We cut “Go Go Liza Jane” in two takes, and though it felt like a novelty rendition to me, Eddie liked it. Garth played a nice melody on “The Stones I Throw,” with his own hint of gospel. I felt somewhat satisfied with the session but knew we hadn’t gotten to the real magic I imagined we could produce. I longed for a situation where I could have a little break, some space, so I could concentrate on songwriting.

  Aaron Schroeder informed us that Atlantic Records was going to release our tracks on their Atco label. The Drifters, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Darin, Ray Charles, and so many other greats were on Atlantic, so this came as superb news.

  —

  Arriving back in Toronto in mid-September for a stand at the Friar’s, we were forced to deal with the reality we’d been pushing away for months: our marijuana bust and the upcoming trial. A strategy meeting with our elderly attorney and Jack Fisher made plain our situation: we could do serious prison time if convicted. Ten years, maybe seven for good behavior—these were the numbers thrown around the room. Ontario, Canada, was a conservative place in 1965 with extreme views on drugs. Not quite as extreme as Texas, where a stripper called Candy Barr (coincidentally a friend of Jack Ruby’s) had been sentenced to fifteen years for a couple of joints. The idea sounded horrific. I was twenty-two. I tried to hold it together on the surface, but inside I was freaked out.

  But we weren’t beaten yet. When we’d played the Friar’s Tavern in the spring, some of the arresting policemen had begun stopping by the club after work to hear us play. Sometimes a couple of the officers would come by together; other times Don Docker, the Mountie, Garth’s old schoolmate, would drop by on his own. On occasion they would bring their wives for a night out, and soon their presence became a regular occurrence. We were working overtime to give the strong impression that we weren’t in any way bad people or common criminals.