Testimony

by Robbie Robertson

After “Tomorrow Never Knows,” with all of its backward tapes and unusual effects, Bob said, “What’s that? What’s that supposed to be?”

  “Something new, Bobby,” John responded. “Gotta give the folks something new.”

  I could tell George hoped for a sign of approval for the record from Bob. He said they were calling it Revolver. John asked Bob if he was familiar with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

  “Sure,” Bob replied. “Hey—I got an idea. Why don’t you guys write a song and I’ll record it, and I’ll write a song for you to do? But I’ll write a real good song, so don’t write me no “Please Please Me” kind of thing,” he said, laughing.

  “Wait a minute, now. That was a long time ago,” Paul said. “We’ve all grown since then.”

  John smiled. “Yes, that was back in our folk-music days.”

  “I’ll be waiting for that song,” Bob said as the guys got up to leave.

  I asked John on their way out how they got that sound on the vocal for “Tomorrow Never Knows.” George answered, “We put the vocal through a Hammond organ Leslie speaker. Love that effect. We’re coming to the show tomorrow night, so play real good.”

  “We’ll try,” I said.

  That evening, John Lennon and Mal Evans came back to the hotel for a little hang. Pennebaker wanted to get something with John on film. While filming in a limo, Neuwirth kept telling the driver to go slow because Bob was getting nauseous. As much as he wanted to engage in an interesting interplay between himself and John, Bob could hardly speak. This would become a scene in the documentary where John is shown razzing Bob, saying, “Pull yourself together. Another few dollars, eh? That’ll get your head up. Come on, come on, money, money.”

  Back at the hotel, I dialed Paris, and Dominique’s rich-toned voice came on the line. I told her that London was really happening—“but it would be much better if you guys were here too.” She now sounded a bit more swayed by the idea of coming, and thought she and Chantal could get their air travel covered. I assured her that everything else would be taken care of, and that we’d have a wonderful time. I heard a hint of glee in her voice as she talked about when they might arrive in London the following day. I couldn’t imagine a better way to end this tour than hanging out with her.

  —

  The finale of the European tour was upon us, and the promoters said they had saved the best for last. The crowd at our first night at the spectacular Royal Albert Hall was like a who’s who of musicians and even included some royalty. And yet here, in the biggest venue we’d played on this tour, in the biggest city, we faced the harshest reaction to our music. On this night the hostility truly spewed toward the stage. We stood our ground and played with a “here it is, take it or leave it” attitude. Bob poured his soul out in those songs. A couple of times his balance wavered a bit. I didn’t know where he was pulling the energy from, and I kept a watchful eye in his direction during the show. As thick as our skins had become throughout the tour, the negative reaction at the Albert Hall made us angry. Sometimes we’d been able to let it roll off our backs like a joke, but it wasn’t funny anymore.

  The following day, Bob gave another surreal press conference. The reporters and critics tried so hard to get under his skin, but he never took the bait. He left them with more questions than answers. I tried to follow suit whenever one of them came my way. A reporter from Melody Maker asked me to describe the mystery men playing in Bob Dylan’s band. I told him we were just passing through and had no bones to pick with his people.

  “My people?” he said.

  “Yes, aren’t these your people? They look like you.”

  He said, “What about the Hawks?”

  “What about the doves?” I answered.

  For the second night at Albert Hall, rock stars once again filled the balcony boxes, including the Beatles. We had made it to the last show of the tour and were feeling a sense of relief and survival.

  “The last blast,” I said to Bob. “You got one more show left in you?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “I’m just getting warmed up.” His eyes looked dark and hollow, but his spirit was still rising.

  As I watched the acoustic set from the wings, I thought of the several times on the tour that I’d overheard people preaching to Bob and Albert that they should fire the Hawks. “You gotta get rid of these guys. They’re ruining the music. This band is not right. You hear the audience booing night after night? It’s their fault.” But Bob never budged. I knew Albert was on the fence sometimes, but some of the shows left him feeling elated too, full of praise for how we had played. Commendable, I thought, that Bob stood by us in the face of all these naysayers.

  “Okay, fellas, it’s showtime,” Victor called out. “Let’s hear some rock ’n’ roll.” For the final time we walked out on the stage to catcalls, hooting, cheering, and booing. Fire and ice, that’s what it felt like as we charged into “Tell Me, Momma.” The tempo and attitude were aggressive. We had nothing left to give back but a cold shoulder. It struck me as odd, playing in front of all these famous musicians from the British Isles—our peers, our brethren—Bet you guys have never been through anything like this, I thought.

  During a barrage of hooting and hollering between songs, someone yelled to Bob that he should go back to playing only acoustic. “That was then, this is now,” Bob shouted into the mic. For the final performance of the tour, we all stabbed away at the songs like there was no tomorrow. The amount of energy released into the air that night was somehow more than we had left. By the time we hit “Like a Rolling Stone,” our final number, Bob looked like Jake LaMotta: he’d gone fifteen hard rounds, but he never went down.

  As we jumped into the car after the show to escape back to the hotel, someone announced that the Beatles were coming over to Bob’s suite. They’d said the show was really good and wanted to drop by with a message: “The booing didn’t matter, the music did.” Bob nodded his head slowly, tiredly, taking in the encouragement.

  Rick and I were in our room changing clothes and freshening up when the phone rang. It was Albert, asking me to come to Bob’s suite—“quickly, please.” I had barely knocked on Bob’s door when Albert yanked it open and waved me in. I went into the bedroom, and it seemed that Bob had fainted or was deliriously exhausted. I helped him loosen his collar. Albert reminded us that some people were coming by, but Bob could hardly react—he looked like he was passed out sitting up. I kept saying to him, “You okay? You okay, man?” He couldn’t answer. Albert asked me to run a bath—maybe that would make him feel better—so I went and turned on the taps in the large English bathtub.

  Just then, someone knocked on the door of the suite. As Albert started to help Bob take off his stage clothes I ran to answer the door. It was the Beatles with some friends and family.

  “Bob’s just freshening up,” I told them. “He’ll be out shortly.”

  I went into the bathroom to shut off the bathwater before it overflowed.

  “Help me get him into the tub,” Albert said. “I think that’ll bring him around.” We helped Bob into the bath and Albert went out and ordered tea for the guests. The whole situation seemed surreal, insane. The Beatles were outside, casually waiting to chat with Bob, and here in his room he was practically unconscious in the tub.

  I tried talking to him. He answered me but sounded delirious, muttering about some stuff back home. Somebody knocked on the bedroom door, and I went out to see if perhaps room service had come for our guests.

  “Sorry for the holdup,” I said, trying to keep the worry from my face. “Bob’s just pulling himself together.”

  I hurried back into the bathroom, only to find that Bob had sunk down into the water and was starting to bubble. My heart stopped for a moment. Damn, I thought, he could really drown here. I pulled him back up in the tub. There was a tapping again on the bedroom door. It was Albert.

  “He’s still in the bath, half passed out,” I whispered, and sprinted back into the bathroom. Bob was again sinking down
in the water. “Look,” I told Albert, “you’ve got to go out there and explain that Bob is too tired to get it together right now. He needs to get some sleep.”

  Albert nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

  I wrapped a big towel around Bob, and when Albert came back, he and I helped him into his bed. So strange, but now I saw a slight smile of contentment on his face. He slept peacefully, like he’d been though purgatory and back: safe at last…

  This was rock ’n’ roll, after all, and the show must go on. Relieved that Bob was now sleeping quietly, I went back to my room, where Rick, unaware of the drama that had taken place, had quite the party going. Some of our crew was there with a variety of libations and a promise of more in the pipeline. We had a long, wonderful night, and then Dominique and I and Chantal and Rick melted away and fell asleep.

  The next day everybody was making plans to return to New York. To my surprise, Bob appeared, looking somewhat revived. I was relieved but mainly impressed.

  “I’ll see you in New York,” he said. “Are you going to the Chelsea?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a couple days.” I felt as if we had been through a war together, and now I knew we had won the battle.

  True to character, Garth and Mickey decided to take an ocean liner back to the U.S. I stayed on an extra day to spend more time with Dominique. Various friends and associates kept showing up at the hotel, bringing more goodies to experiment with. One of the guys came in with a bag of heroin, in case anybody needed some. “And here’s another treat,” he said, holding up a packet full of powder. “I think it’s cocaine.” Somebody else showed up with LSD, saying this particular form was really mellow and wouldn’t keep you up for days. London was out of control. It seemed even crazier than New York, if that was possible.

  Dominique and I tripped the light fantastic, and I told her how wonderful I thought our time together had been—she too seemed delighted about our adventure and my affection for her. I said I’d call her when I got settled in New York and hoped she’d come visit me at the Chelsea Hotel.

  The phone rang in my room at the Chelsea. It was Brian Jones, calling to say the Rolling Stones were in New York for a few days. “What are you guys up to? Is Bob around?” I told him I didn’t know what Bob was doing, but that we could hook up a little later if he wanted. He said he’d come down to the Chelsea around nine that night.

  Returning to New York and the Chelsea felt comforting, almost like going home. The manager of the hotel, Stanley Bard, had held my favorite little suite for me, room 410. It was a bedroom, a bathroom, and a good-sized living room with a small fridge area near the entrance, and that extra space kept me from feeling boxed in. Stanley—who was known to accept art pieces, which he displayed in the lobby, in lieu of rent—was kind enough to give me a break on occasion when money was tight.

  The phone rang again a few minutes later, and it was John Hammond. He was playing that night at the Café Au Go Go and told me I needed to come check out his new band, which featured an incredible guitar player who’d played with Little Richard.

  When Brian Jones got to the hotel that night, I told him I was going to the Village to catch John Hammond’s set, and he decided to check it out with me. We got there as John was going on and snagged great seats just to the right of the stage. John wasn’t kidding: his new band was hot. He sounded more powerful than I’d ever heard him before.

  Then he introduced his new guitar player to do a song. “Please give a nice hand to an amazing guitarist, folks. This is Jimmy James.” Jimmy played left-handed and his lanky body snaked around the instrument, like he was born with the guitar strapped on. He was young and good-looking, with hands and arms thrashing around like lightning. A bit of a show-off in the best sense. Holy smokes—this guy could wail! He sang, played the guitar behind his back, behind his head, with one hand. He ended the song playing with his teeth, which made me stand up and holler.

  Brian Jones looked like a ray of light had just blinded him. “This chap should come to England,” he said. “He would blow people’s minds.”

  After the set, we said hello to John and his guitar man. “I gotta go crash,” Brian whispered to me a few minutes later. “So jet-lagged, I can’t hold my head up. Thanks, man. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.” He jumped in a cab while Jimmy James and I talked about our big dreams and the songs that changed our lives, like Howlin’ Wolf’s “Forty Four.”

  The following week Jimmy and I grabbed a bite and talked a lot about songwriting. “Writing songs is a mysterious thing to me, man,” he confessed. “I get an idea but I don’t know where to go with it. I haven’t cracked that yet.”

  “I wrote the original songs the Hawks have recorded,” I told him, “and I love the songwriting process, but we’re always on the road. I’m hoping to just concentrate on writing at some point.”

  “How does Dylan write?” Jimmy asked.

  I smiled. “On a typewriter.”

  “What? No shit, on a typewriter? That’s weird, man. I gotta try that someday.”

  As we wandered by Washington Square, we heard street musicians in the park, somebody preaching about the world coming to an end. “That cat you brought to the gig the other night, Brian Jones?” said Jimmy. “Well, he told somebody who must have told somebody and they want to bring me over to England, to London. Isn’t that some wild shit?” He laughed. “Can’t wait to check that out!”

  “That’s fantastic,” I responded. “Brian seems to know everybody. He’s like a goodwill ambassador. Hey, at the show last week you did some extreme bends on that tremolo bar. How in the world does your Strat not go way out of tune? That’s one of the reasons I play a Telecaster—no tremolo bar to make it go out.”

  “Oh, man, I got to show you,” said Jimmy. “I’m crashing over here at the Albert Hotel. Come on up and I’ll show you my method.”

  We went up to his room and Jimmy took his Strat out of its case. “I need to change strings anyway. These are getting pretty rusted out.” He knelt on the bed and put the headstock of the guitar between his legs. He replaced the big E string with a new one. But before he wound it into the tuning peg, he began massaging the string toward himself, giving it long slow pulls with both hands until it had no more give, then winding it into the peg. He did this with each string, like a ritual. A guitar always falls out of tune when you first change the strings as they adjust to being stretched but this was a solution.

  After he tuned the guitar, Jimmy pushed the tremolo bar down, playing some crazy lick, then pulled it up. He played an A chord and it sat solidly in tune.

  “See, it takes more time, but it’s worth it,” he said. “Then the only problem on a Strat is when you break a string, the springs in the tremolo bar throw the guitar way out of tune. You gotta change the string immediately while you tell the audience a joke, right?”

  “I had a Strat when I was sixteen,” I said, “but had to pawn it to get the money to go join Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in Arkansas.”

  “Ow! that’s a shame,” said Jimmy. “Did you ever get it back?”

  I just shook my head.

  Jimmy offered me a smoke and said, “Your first name is Jaime. I saw that in the credits for Blonde on Blonde.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They started calling me Robbie as a kid, you know, like if your last name is Smith, people would call you Smitty. What about you? Your parents called you Jimmy when your last name is James?”

  He grinned as he lit my cigarette. “No, my last name is Hendrix and my first name is actually Johnny. Kind of crazy, right?” We both laughed at our evolving names and the idea that you could change them like you changed your clothes.

  —

  Soon Rick had to return to Canada under the terms of his probation from our pot bust. Richard, Garth, and I didn’t want him to go back on his own, and besides that I had lost my wallet and needed to go back to get a new driver’s license. I was frustrated because Dominique’s number had also been in my wallet, and now I had no idea how
to reach her. At first I was slightly apprehensive about going back to Toronto; I was still carrying around a bitter taste in my mouth from those two rough nights at Massey Hall. But it felt good to catch my breath for a minute at my mother’s house. No matter what, Mama Kosh still made it feel like home. Old pals came by to say hello, and I made friends again with my hometown.

  A few days in, a package arrived for me: it was my wallet. Someone had found it and sent it to the home address on my driver’s license. Dominique’s Paris number was still in it. I tried calling her a few times and finally reached her. She sounded genuinely happy to hear my voice, and I was thrilled to hear hers. I asked when she would be returning to Montreal. “In a few weeks,” she told me in her beautiful broken English. I suggested she come through New York on her way back and visit me at the Chelsea. She seemed to like the idea but wasn’t sure just yet if she could do it. I wondered if she was sizing up whether she felt comfortable joining forces with a bloody English-speaking Canadian. How would she explain that to her revolutionary, separatist, Québécois friends?

  The next morning Albert Grossman called: Columbia Records wanted a stereo mix of Blonde on Blonde. Bob recognized that I cared a lot about the sound of records and asked if I would oversee the mixing. I had never mixed an album before, but I liked the idea of trying to make it shine in stereo. So I flew back to New York and the Chelsea. Bob came down from Woodstock, where he and Sara were now living, and told me I’d be working with an engineer at Columbia Studios. I asked if he was going to be there. He smiled and said, “Nah, I’ll listen to it when it’s done.” Nobody was overthinking it. Everything was off the cuff, instinctual.

  At Columbia I studied the track sheets to see how they had separated the instruments and vocal. There wasn’t a lot of flexibility; back then there were only four-track machines. They would put the vocal and Bob’s harmonica on one track, usually with the echo already printed. Bob’s guitar, my guitar for the songs I played on, and all the other instruments with effects and echo were scattered over the other tracks. The mixing engineer assigned to work with me had pushed up the four tracks on the mixing console faders. There it was, take it or leave it.