Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

  “Yeah, but it’s a different time, man, look around,” Victor said. “Bugsy Siegel ain’t around no more. Let it grow, you’ll feel better.”

  —

  We were booked all over the Los Angeles area and down in San Diego. The concerts were going fairly smoothly with our fill-in drummer. Each night, whether the audience erupted in squalls of rejection or gave a slight sign of acceptance, we were doing our job. We showed up for every show ready for whatever the crowd’s reaction might be. Here in California, it felt like we might be getting somewhere with our fight for musical independence. It wasn’t just playing Bob Dylan’s music with electricity that caused a revolt; it was how we played it: tough, aggressive, with raging dynamics that cleared the sweetness out of everything in sight.

  While we were in LA, I met a girl through mutual friends who I thought was terrific. Her name was Ann Marshall. She was the daughter of the actor Herbert Marshall, and I think James Cagney was her uncle. We had a sweet connection, we were comfortable with each other, and she was special to me. When you’re on the road, most of the girls you meet are brief encounters. Rock ’n’ roll can callus the heart into believing shallow is less complicated and therefore better. The “code of the road” lifestyle is so nomadic that you can actually start to believe that we’re all better off letting a rolling stone roll. But Ann was like a friend, and I never thought of her that way.

  In LA people spoke of healthy food and fresh juice with an almost religious zeal. Just to counteract that, photographer Barry Feinstein took Albert Grossman and me to a killer hot dog stand. We smoked a joint on the way over, and Albert found these particular dogs heavenly. Just one completely satisfied me, but he doubled down and got one more to go.

  We took a walk to check out a couple of stores along Sunset Boulevard that sold hippie clothes and paraphernalia—floppy hats, fringe vests, American Indian jewelry, and colored lava lamps that made one want to partake in some Timothy Leary–type exploration. We laughed our way from store to store. Albert had a wicked sense of humor and was open to whatever madness might roll his way. He looked somewhere between a jolly Benjamin Franklin and an intimidating bear. On our way back to the hotel, we crossed the street, Albert walking ahead of Barry and me through a red light, in typical New York City jaywalk style. From out of nowhere a motorcycle cop pulled up fast, deliberately cutting him off. Now, you have to picture Albert: six feet tall, shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, wire-rimmed glasses, intimidating jowls, chest stuck out with arrogance. The policeman scowled at him.

  “Let me see your ID,” he ordered. “You just crossed against a red light.”

  Albert handed over his driver’s license. “I’m here from New York, where we don’t have these kind of rules.”

  The cop looked at the license and looked at Albert. “Okay, what year were you born? When’s your birth date?”

  “That was a long time ago,” Albert said. “I don’t remember.”

  The cop looked agitated. “Really now, what color are your eyes?”

  Albert shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  The cop moved a step closer. “You don’t know what color your eyes are?”

  “I don’t stand in front of the mirror studying the color of my eyes like some people,” Albert shot back. “If you need to give me a ticket for crossing the street or whatever law I’ve broken, please do. I’m a very busy person.”

  I had to turn away, laughing to myself.

  “I’ll get to that,” the cop said. “What do you do? What is your work?”

  Albert proudly answered, “I prefer not to work, but I have my own bodybuilding business.”

  The cop looked at Albert’s protruding gut and realized he was being put on. He looked at Barry and me, then looked back at Albert, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was up.

  “You broke the law,” he said, “and I’m going to write you a ticket. In this part of the country, you walk on a green light and stop on a red. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, and thank you for explaining that so profoundly.” Albert smirked.

  The cop looked at him with venom in his eyes as he wrote the ticket. Albert took it from him, and I felt a sense of relief when he simply put it in his pocket and didn’t tear it up. It was a hilarious exchange, but it reflected something that was shifting in the relationship between the counterculture and law enforcement.

  —

  We finished this leg of the tour a few days before Christmas and got back on the Lodestar, headed for New York. About an hour into the flight, Rick pulled out a perfectly rolled joint and lit up. We’d always smoked cigarettes on the plane, so no one thought anything of it. He passed me the joint, grinned, and said it was a gift from the Byrds. I took a hit and passed it around. Suddenly Tony, our chief pilot, came storming out of the cockpit waving his arms. “Put that out right now! Are you nuts? The air circulates in airplanes and goes right up front where it could affect the copilot and me. Don’t ever do that again!”

  Richard stubbed it out and apologized. Bill Avis assured Tony this would never happen again, even though Bill’s eyes were more bloodshot than any of ours.

  —

  Bob’s 1966 touring schedule gave us a few weeks over the holidays to find a new drummer, visit our families, and digest what we had learned from the Dylan experience. Our journey to the outer limits had so far been unpredictable and challenging.

  When we got back to New York, Bob was now staying at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street part-time while sorting out his next residence. I hung out with him there sometimes, watching him pound away on his typewriter into the night. Bob wasn’t someone who went off into a corner to seclude himself during his creative process. He did it right where he stood, just picked up a guitar or sat down at the typewriter right in front of you. Lyrics came flying out of that machine; it was a feat to witness. Whatever else might be going on around him didn’t matter. The radio could be playing, television on, someone on the phone—Bob never looked up, just kept typing away.

  During our break I would drag Richard or Rick to movies that sparked my curiosity. The past year, 1965, had been a boon for a movie lover like me, with the release of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville. I still hadn’t gotten over his film Contempt, where I fell madly in love with Brigitte Bardot. But now it was all about Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, and the fascinating Julie Christie in John Schlesinger’s Darling. I loved these movies. They were art films, okay, so bring on the art, but oh my soul, were these women beautiful.

  In early January, Sara gave birth to her first child with Bob, a baby boy they named Jesse. He was a cute little devil, and together with Sara’s daughter Maria they made for a real pretty family picture. Even in the context of our crazy rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, Bob seemed like a natural father. He played it quite cool but I could tell he was a proud papa.

  Meanwhile the Hawks held a meeting to discuss new drummer possibilities. We debated the merits of all kinds of candidates, from guys in bands we knew down south to people we had played with from Canada. There was a drummer we liked from Buffalo, and then when we asked ourselves who Levon would choose, we realized it was the same guy: Sandy Konikoff. So we got in touch and asked him to come try out for the job. He was astonished that Levon had left and was thrilled to be considered.

  Bob had booked Columbia Studios in New York to do some recording in January. We thought it would be a good chance to try out some drummers at the same time. When Sandy Konikoff showed up, the Hawks were a bit confused by his appearance. He looked very different from the last time we’d laid eyes on him. Sandy said he’d been “studying drums seriously” for the last year, but “studying drums seriously” meant one thing: jazz. And all that jazz had evidently rubbed off on the way Sandy carried himself, spoke, and dressed. He now wore a beret, black pants, black turtleneck, and beige overcoat. He looked like a beatnik from central casting. I introduced Sandy to Bob and could see the mismatch immediately. Sandy even tuned his small-combo drum
set in a tight, jazzy sort of style. We played through two or three songs from our tour set list and Sandy tried a couple different approaches. Trying to be helpful, I went over to him between songs and confided: “Rule number one, don’t swing. Never swing. Flighty fills and jazzy grooves don’t work here. All that you’ve been studying in your music school needs to be left at home.”

  After a couple of run-throughs, Bob was ready to record. We rambled though a song called “She’s Your Lover Now.” Then another new tune, “Tell Me, Momma,” with its salty punch line—“Baby, tell me, what’s wrong with you this time?”

  Sandy needed to quickly learn the arrangements of the songs we would play on tour. So he set up his drums in his room at the Irving Hotel and practiced around the clock. My room was two floors above Sandy’s and I could hear him pounding away day and night. The hotel manager was outraged that anyone could be so insane as to be beating on drums in a hotel room. Sandy asked the manager if it was all right to practice during the day, explaining that it was really important for him to go over the music to get the job. The hotel manager replied, “You need to leave before I call the police.”

  At the beginning of February 1966, we hit the road again with Sandy on drums, starting in Louisville, Kentucky. We started using “Tell Me, Momma” as an opener, which meant not only were we going into hostile territory for our electric part of the show, but we were also starting the set with a funky, unfamiliar, aggressive, and not particularly melodic tune. Maybe it was a touch perverse, but I enjoyed coming out with a signpost song that said, I don’t need you to love me, I’m just going to play my damn music and maybe you’ll dig it.

  Bob slipped off to Nashville for a few days at the request of his producer, Bob Johnston, and came back with a few songs that he had cut down there, beautiful new tunes that rang out with the precise arrangements and skilled musicianship of the Nashville studio cats. Bob seemed particularly proud of “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” I think it might’ve been the longest song I’d ever heard, and it reminded me of his wife, Sara, though not completely. I loved the fictional, unobvious, personal yet impersonal side of Bob’s writing.

  As the tour rolled on, Sandy played reasonably well, but his persona still wasn’t clicking for Bob. One day we were trying out some new songs at a sound check, and on the downbeat of a chorus in “One Too Many Mornings,” Sandy did a backhanded crash on a cymbal in a jazzy way. Bob stopped the song abruptly. “Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that.” The message was clear: We’re playing rock ’n’ roll here. Don’t get schmazzy on me. Sandy turned red with embarrassment, but Bob was right: the drumming had to be solid and powerful, not flighty and groovy.

  When we had a few days off, I moved from the Irving into a little suite at the Chelsea Hotel. This joint had a real aura to it, and all the legendary stories felt soaked into the wallpaper: Arthur Miller living there after he split with Marilyn Monroe; William Burroughs and Arthur C. Clarke pounding away at their respective masterpieces, Naked Lunch and 2001: A Space Odyssey; Dylan Thomas writing and dying there at the age of thirty-nine.

  Richard shared the suite with me. By this time Rick had moved in with his girlfriend, Robin, and Garth was back and forth a lot from London, Ontario, visiting old friends, which left Richard and me hanging loose. Richard was so easygoing, the perfect roommate, game for anything. Whatever I suggested we do—see a movie, catch a show—I’d ask Richard to come and the answer was always yes, and we always had a blast. Plus, I could talk to Richard about the big dream—getting a place where we could play and write, and where we could invent the sound, the music, we were meant to make. I could talk to Rick or Garth about it and they’d be excited too, but with Richard it was something more. Talking to him made the dream seem real.

  Just down the hall at the Chelsea was a girl named Edie Sedgwick, a friend of Bobby Neuwirth’s. She looked unique and gorgeous, had a starlike personality, and came from a wealthy socialite family in Santa Barbara, California. Edie and Bobby Neuwirth had some kind of a falling-out, and she came by my suite one day, ragging on him for his obnoxious behavior and asking if she could hang out for a while. I checked with Neuwirth to see if he was cool, but he acted indifferent and didn’t want to talk about it.

  Some nights I would go to Max’s Kansas City and Edie would tag along. We’d have a bite to eat and hook up with some friends. She knew the members of the Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol. Andy adored Edie and always seemed to want her around. He was filming a series he’d conceived for her. Though she loved the attention he showered upon her, she sometimes felt she needed to escape.

  Later one evening, the Velvets played a set and I couldn’t take my eyes off a stunning, ghostly singer they had performing with them. Her name was Nico and I asked Edie to introduce me. After they finished their set, Nico came to sit with us. Edie took her hand. “I want you to meet someone really special and very, very talented. This is Robbie. He has a band called the Hawks that plays with Bobby Dylan.”

  Nico shook my hand, looked me over, and then whispered in Edie’s ear. All right! I thought, This is looking good. We spoke briefly about her background in music, which struck me as minimal and a little vague. Who cares, she looks enchanting. But then Nico excused herself, got up, and went to say hello to some people at another table. “What happened to the angel in a white suit that I thought I was putting a move on?” I asked Edie.

  She laughed and put her hands over her mouth. “By the way I passionately spoke of you, she thinks I’m in love with you. Sorry.”

  The Velvets played another set while Andy stood and applauded. One of the guys in the group, by the name of Lou Reed, had a strong street attitude to his vocals. No acrobatics, just straight grit. I liked a couple of the songs, but they had a bit of that “look, we got guitars for Christmas” approach. They didn’t look new, but they sounded very new.

  Before the night had gone too far, Edie grabbed my arm. “Can we go? I have a doctor’s appointment early tomorrow,” she said. “You should come with me: this is something you’re really going to like a lot.” When we got up to leave, Andy looked very disappointed and begged her to stay. She gave everybody a La Dolce Vita kiss good-bye, and we went back to my suite at the Chelsea for a little good-night puff on the hash pipe. Then she kissed me, thanked me for a beautiful night, and went to her room.

  Ten minutes later there was a tapping on my door. I was half undressed and threw my shirt on to answer it. It was Edie in a change of clothes.

  “I forgot something,” she said.

  I looked around. “Oh, what?”

  “You. Do you want to come sleep in my room, or should I stay here? I don’t want to be alone. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “We’ll stay here. You don’t have to be alone.”

  In the morning Edie asked me again to join her at the doctor’s office. On the way there we stopped at a drug store and she cashed a check, which she told me she did every day. I assumed it was from a trust fund. We caught a cab to the doctor’s office, and as we were walking in, Robert Kennedy was walking out, his eyes pointed straight ahead like he was late and didn’t want to be talked to.

  When the nurse called Edie’s name, she took my hand and pulled me to join her in the exam room. After a moment Dr. Max Jacobson came in, overjoyed to see Edie. “This is my friend Robbie,” she told him. “He’s been working so much that he’s run down and needs some vitamins too. Please, just put it on my account.”

  “Dr. Feelgood,” as he was known in some circles, gave Edie an injection of vitamin B12. Her response was nearly instantaneous. “I feel better already.”

  Then he gave me a shot and a warm sensation ran through my body. Within moments I felt ready to take on the world. We left and I said, “I’ve never had a B12 shot before. You’re right, it’s quite a feeling.” I wondered if Bobby Kennedy had gotten the same shot.

  Edie winked at me. “They call it B12, but it’s a lot more than B12, I can tell you that.”

&n
bsp; —

  The poet Gregory Corso was staying at the Chelsea too, and one day he told me about a bookshop on 47th Street called the Gotham Book Mart. Thanks to my uncle Natie, I knew that block: it was the center of the diamond district, with wall-to-wall diamond stores on both sides of the street and black-coated Orthodox Jewish men bustling about with briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. It did seem like an unusual place for a bookshop.

  I went inside and was met by a guy who looked a bit disheveled, and you could tell by his glasses he read way too much. But he knew where to find whatever I asked for, and when he didn’t, he’d call over to an older lady named Fanny who seemed to have a sixth sense for which pile of books it was buried in. Corso had told me this was the best place to buy poetry books, but as I browsed I noticed books of scripts too—French new-wave films, Italian stuff, Bergman. It intrigued me. When you’ve seen Fellini’s 8½, you can’t help but wonder how it all came together. And now—voilà!—here was the script. I bought the Fellini, and Truffaut’s 400 Blows, and more and more each time I went back.

  Going through screenplays was a whole other kind of reading. It pulled back the curtain on how the moviemakers had made their decisions. To see what Bergman wrote, the descriptiveness in his writing, the dialogue, the difference between the page and the film, and the extraordinary contribution of the cinematography, the music, what the actors contributed—it really brought the movies to life in a new way. But what really came into focus for me was the storytelling. You didn’t have to move straight forward, A to B to C. Storytelling could be like another way of hearing music, another way of mixing characters together and looking for the unexpected. It was freeing.

  —

  The photographer Jerry Schatzberg had done a shoot with Bob and for a while became a regular part of the gang. He could take great candid pictures very discreetly or in a studio with full-on lights and production. I liked the way Jerry melted into the scene, doing his thing without too much noise. Bob and I went over to Jerry’s studio to check out some shots he’d taken for the new LP Bob was working on, which would be a double album.