We went up to Watkins Glen the day before the show for the sound check. Bill Graham said that the Dead would go on first and play for three or four hours—that was part of their thing, giving the audience their money’s worth. “Until the drugs wear off,” said Bill, laughing. We’d go on in the late afternoon, and the Allmans would take over at sundown. As we were leaving the sound check, it looked like cars were heading toward the racetrack from every direction. Bill said he expected maybe a hundred thousand or more.
When we came back the next day, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Hundreds of thousands of people had showed up, and more just kept coming and coming. The crowds mowed down the high chain-link fences around the racetrack and filled the area as far as the eye could see. Bill was running around trying to make people pay admission, but the mobs were out of control.
When it came time for the Band to take the stage, it started pouring. As we waited, hoping it was going to let up, Bill came over. “They’ve determined there are 650,000 people here. It’s the biggest concert in history.” The news was somewhere between an incredible accomplishment and a huge disaster.
The rain started letting up, and Garth played some churchy, rainy-day keyboard sounds out over the crowd. When it was safe to go on, we decided to start our set with Chuck Berry’s “Back to Memphis.” And wouldn’t you know, as Levon sang that baby, the sun came out.
After our next song, I looked upward at the vanishing clouds and was surprised to see something descending from the sky. It was a skydiver parachuting into the midst of the crowd. He lit two flares in midair to really put on a show, but the wind whipped the sparks and set his clothes on fire. There was a flaming man spiraling down into the crowd, and the audience thought it was part of our show. They started cheering and applauding as we yelled over the PA system, “No, no—this is bad! Please get help!” The man on fire landed in the crowd and was taken away by paramedics. We were told that miraculously he survived the fall, though he was burned up a little, so we continued to play. (Later we heard that wasn’t true and that he had died.) Then, a few more songs into our set, some young guys decided to climb the scaffolding that the stage was built on, and this was the highest stage I’d ever seen. As they reached the top with their fingers, Bill Graham ran over and stepped on their hands, yelling at them for being such idiots as they fell back into the crowd.
I hollered at Bill for his cruel behavior. “Not during our set! Do not do that while we’re playing.”
Bill flashed a grin and adjusted his fedora. “You can’t smother them with love all the time, Robbie.”
—
Dominique and I got an offer on our place in Woodstock, and we took it. Marshall Gelfand and David Geffen found a house for us to rent in the Malibu Colony, and we moved there, sight unseen—we had a lot of faith that David wouldn’t steer us wrong. We showed up with our suitcases and the clothes on our back at 97 Malibu Colony, known as the Sam Peckinpah House. This could be good, bad, or ugly, just like “The Wild Bunch” or “Straw Dogs.” It was the end of September, and in the early evening the sky turned purple orange. The girls ran on the beach—our backyard—and dipped their toes in the Pacific. Okay, we thought, life feels pretty good here in paradise.
As evening settled in, we got the girls cleaned up and put to bed. Dominique and I were relaxing in the living room, taking in our new surroundings and smiling to ourselves. Then, out of nowhere, we heard an ungodly shrieking. It was a woman, screaming her brains out. We panicked. We ran out the front, grabbed the phone, and went out on the sundeck, confused and alarmed. Could we help? Call the police? Moments later the screaming started to sound wrong. It was too constant, almost like a vocal exercise. It turned out to be our next-door neighbor, the actress Dyan Cannon, practicing primal scream therapy. When David Geffen showed up later to check on us, I told him the story and he laughed. Maybe we should get into primal scream too, he suggested, and when Dyan started screaming, we could scream back.
David and I went out that night to grab a bite, and as we cruised down the Pacific Coast Highway, he pointed out where some of his friends and certain celebrities lived. This felt so fresh to me, and I was lapping it up. When he drove me back to the Colony, we sat in the car and chatted.
“I think, after you’re settled,” he said, “you should get the other guys to come and join you out here. We should put something together with Bob Dylan and the Band. It could be historic. It could be the biggest thing to happen to music in a long, long time. And I’ll help put it together. You guys could make a lot of money.”
David had struck me as a very open and generous person, and I appreciated that. But I also knew that Bob and the other guys in the Band could be hard-edged. I told David to be careful of getting ahead of himself, that the guys in the Band were not like these West Coast “sweetheart of the rodeo” types. “They’re different from the LA ‘put a flower in your hair and everything is brotherly and groovy’ kind of folks,” I told him. “They’re from the streets and live by the code of the road. And Bob’s a good guy, but he’s tough, man. He comes from the streets too. You might want to go slowly and be careful what you wish for.”
David stared at me through the tops of his eyes. “Robbie, please. Don’t worry, I know how to take care of myself. I’m a big boy. Go get some sleep, you’re gonna love it here. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Waking up to the roll of the ocean was a new sensation, and at first the rhythm of the crashing waves just outside our back door was slightly alarming. The next morning, I strolled out to the private road inside the Colony just to stretch my legs. As I came upon the mailbox for our house, I heard someone call out, “Top of the morning!” I looked up. It was Cary Grant, retrieving his morning newspaper. He smiled broadly and waved the paper in the air.
We already knew that Dyan Cannon lived on one side of our house; actor Bruce Dern lived on the other, and Cary was on the other side of Bruce. We heard that Cary was gay, though with the help of LSD he had tried a heterosexual relationship with Dyan. They had married and had a baby girl, but apparently it didn’t last. Now he lived close by to be near his daughter.
Dominique and I took the girls and hit the local food market to stock up. We filled two big carts, the most food we had ever bought at one time in our lives. On our drive back into the Colony, I saw a man walking briskly along the road. As we got closer, I saw that it was actor Burt Lancaster. When I let out a breath of amazement, my two little girls said, “Who’s Blurt Ranfaster?”
We heard that Bob and his family were in the area too, feeling out the Malibu vibe. It was great to know we had friends on the same wavelength here, and when we got together I didn’t feel as much like a stranger in a strange land. Bob and I were so used to living up north that we were still in the habit of wearing wintry clothes. Our wives chided us that we looked out of focus for this tropical weather. I told Bob I hoped I could convince the other guys to come west too, to transport our Woodstock clubhouse routine out here for a while and see how that shoe fit.
—
When the final artwork for Moondog Matinee was presented to me at Capitol Records in the fall of 1973, one of the execs at the company pulled me into his office and offered me a little bottle of cocaine with a tiny spoon attached. He said it was part of the celebration of launching a new album. What a pleasant surprise, I thought. We returned to the outer office area to find John Lennon there, wearing an olive green military jacket, studying the cover painting. He said he was doing an album of classic songs too with Phil Spector. We talked about all kinds of older rock ’n’ roll tunes we loved that were part of our musical background. John looked like he hadn’t been to bed, so we made plans to catch up another time. These days he seemed a little dazed and confused. He and Yoko were on the outs, and I’d heard he’d become hard to reach. When you had to go through Harry Nilsson to get to John, you knew you were in trouble.
Artie Mogull, an old friend of Albert’s from the music-publishing business, now an executive at Capitol, wa
s there too. He was a terrific character, blunt and pugnacious, and it was great to see him. He asked me if they could hang the original big painting of the cover on the wall of their conference room for a while to remind the staff that Moondog Matinee was a priority. “Sure,” I said. “If that helps, of course.”
My transportation was still a rent-a-car, so after I left the Capitol offices, I stopped into a nearby car dealership. I’d had my eye on a certain set of wheels and finally decided to take the plunge on a new, chocolate-brown 1974 Citroen Maserati. It was a strange-looking beast, with an air-ride suspension unlike anything around. It flew around those Malibu Canyon hills like a spaceship. I got a speeding ticket the first day I drove it.
When I called Levon to tell him about the wonderland out here by the Pacific Ocean, he sounded really upbeat. I missed Levon and wanted to convince him to come share in this discovery with me. I think all the guys were feeling a little staleness in the Catskills. One after the other I called them, trying to stir them up. When I told everybody that Bob was already out here, it added a layer of comfort.
Meanwhile, I told Bob about David Geffen and what an interesting and smart guy I thought he was. I mentioned that he wanted to get together with us to discuss some ideas he had. We set up a meeting, and as I expected, David made Bob feel pretty relaxed in no time, and wanted to be helpful to the Dylans and the Robertsons in any way he could while we acclimated to the Malibu setting. Obviously we knew he wasn’t going so far out of his way just to get a good seat in heaven.
He invited us to the opening of the Roxy, a club he was starting on the Sunset Strip with Lou Adler, Elmer Valentine, Peter Asher, and his ex-management partner Elliot Roberts. Bob, Sara, Dominique, David, and I got to the club about half an hour before Neil Young and his band were going on. Someone asked David if Cher could join us at our table—I think Bob had met Sonny and Cher before, but none of the rest of us knew her. She turned out to be funny, sharp, and very warm. I could tell David was fond of her right away, but since he had told me he was gay when I first met him, I didn’t think much more about it.
Then a road manager came to our table and said, “Neil Young wants to invite you guys backstage to say hello.”
Bob answered immediately: “Oh no, we can’t. We just ate.” Dominique poked me in the ribs, trying not to laugh out loud.
The Roxy was rockin’. Nils Lofgren played guitar with Neil Young, and he had a small trampoline set up onstage. Every couple of songs he would jump on the trampoline and do a backflip in the air while playing lead guitar. I had never seen that before, and I leaned over to Bob. “I’m surprised we never incorporated that into our act.”
He shrugged. “It’s never too late.”
I shrugged back. “It might be.”
Later that week, David invited Dominique and me to join him and Cher for dinner. Cher and Sonny had broken up, and when we got to her place, we found out that she was living in one wing of the house while Sonny lived in the other, with a new girl. David led us to Cher’s boudoir area where she was getting ready. A TV and videotape machine was playing the movie Deep Throat in the background, which struck Dominique and me as hilarious, but David and Cher were oblivious to it as they talked about not taking any guff from Sonny. At dinner, you could tell David was totally smitten with Cher. He kept offering helpful ideas and advice, as if he wanted to take care of her and protect her. She seemed very touched and was falling for David moment by moment. I found their relationship fascinating and very loving.
Not long after Joni Mitchell finished recording “Free Man in Paris,” she asked me to play on a song called “Raised on Robbery,” which referred to places and people from our common ground in Toronto. I wasn’t much of a “session guy” who could show up at the studio and go after some sweet little hooks for your tune. My move was more to come in the back door in search of a diamond in the rough. But I loved much of Joni’s music and wanted to bring something to the table for her, if I could.
In the studio, they played me the song over my earphones, and right away I felt an urge to toughen this track up with a rhythmic attitude and then wail a bit, but not too much. I played it two or three times and thought, There, how’s that for you? I didn’t know if Joni or her producer liked what I did, but I packed up my ax and hugged Joni good-bye. Later she told me when she properly listened to what I did, it slayed her, and that guitar rhythm had changed the whole feel of the song. She held my hand and thanked me deeply. I was moved and told her I would play guitar with her anyplace, anytime.
Then Richard Perry, whom I had worked with on the Ringo Starr song, called to ask if I would play guitar on a session with my old friend Carly Simon and her husband, the extremely talented James Taylor. When I showed up at the studio, I saw Richard had put together a terrific cast of musicians, including Dr. John on piano and Jim Keltner on drums. James and Carly were very sweet and said they wanted to cut the classic Inez & Charlie Foxx song “Mockingbird,” which sounded like a great idea. I didn’t act like Carly and I were acquaintances from the past, and she barely let on that we knew each other. This was probably best all around; different time, different place. I liked the way Richard quickly herded all of us to our positions to get an arrangement under way. We played through the tune a couple of times, trying out various structure ideas, and as Levon would say, “it was rough as a cob.” Amazing how a studio full of such talent could sound so mediocre. I could see James might be having second thoughts about cutting the tune, and Richard, who had probably chosen this song, was scrambling for suggestions. I pulled James and Richard aside in the control room and offered up some thoughts on the arrangement. I suggested a much more laid-back feel, because everybody was pushing too hard. “We should play it with more of a lope, churning instead of burning. More open and spare.” Richard gave those instructions to the musicians. Jim Keltner got it right away and we headed back into the studio for another take. I whispered something to Dr. John about trying a Huey “Piano” Smith rhythm approach. He grinned wide and nodded his head, like I was speaking his language. Everything was starting to click, and now Richard couldn’t even sit down in the control room. Carly and James sang it beautifully and I played a nice little solo. Listening to the final take, there was a lot of backslapping and hand shaking. I drove back to Malibu feeling my oats.
—
Soon I got the good news from my bandmates that they wanted to join us out west and were looking for houses to rent in the Malibu area. I couldn’t wait for them to get a taste of this vibe. It seemed the total opposite of where we had been the last seven years. The timing could be good too, as Bob and David were spending more time together and had begun to discuss the possibility of doing a Dylan/Band tour. Bob’s recording deal with Columbia was ending, and the Band had a clause in its contract with Capitol that gave us the freedom to record or play with him anytime, for any record company he was with. For David to sign Dylan and then the Band to Asylum, and to have a hand in reuniting Bob and the Band, would be a major coup.
One day, Dominique came back to the house with a distracted look on her face. She grabbed my arm and said, “I think I’m pregnant. I do, I really think I’m pregnant!” She was half laughing and half crying out of excitement. I gave her a big hug and held her for a long time, thinking this was splendid news and the right place and right time. “I’m going to see a doctor in Santa Monica to find out for sure,” she told me, “but I’ve got that feeling I get when I’m pregnant.” Later that week she came back from the doctor and said, “I was right! Isn’t that wonderful? We’re going to have another baby. And I bet it’s a boy—you’ll see.”
By the time everyone in the Band had found houses in Malibu, the plans for our tour were in full swing. David was willing to help put the tour together for free, if he thought he could get the live album or a new record on Asylum. “If you’re going to go out and play all these dates in the U.S. and Canada, you should have a new record to go with it,” he said. Bob thought he might be able to come up with s
ongs for a new album to come out on Asylum. The Band had just released Moondog Matinee, so we reckoned playing with Bob on his record would be a good solution for what to do next.
I thought a new ax for the tour might be in order. I had heard about a guy named Norman Harris who specialized in selling rare guitars. Boy—what a collection he had. He brought guitars by my house that just made me drool. I couldn’t afford to go crazy, but he had a red ’59 Stratocaster that I couldn’t resist. He also showed me a Telecaster with a V-shaped neck that I called Bob about immediately, and he ended up buying it for the tour. What a beauty.
We found an off-season camp by Mulholland Highway, north of Malibu, where we could rehearse for the tour and run over any new songs Bob had written for the album. The camp became our solitary, temporary clubhouse, even more remote than our old pink house in Saugerties. As we played through some of Bob’s classics, you couldn’t help but be reminded of the last time we had done these songs on tour and wonder if the audiences would still be unaccepting of us. Bob hadn’t toured in eight years, and it was interesting to see him start to get back in shape, physically and mentally. As we rehearsed, he poured a lot into singing these songs, like he was starting out on nine and raising the power to eleven. Amazing that his vocal cords held up, let alone his energy. I wanted to try to play some of the tunes with a less aggressive approach, but soon we were a driving wheel all over again. It was an automatic reaction. There would be no pulling back.
To cut Bob’s new album, we found the closest fully equipped recording studio to Malibu, the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, and booked some days in the first two weeks of November. The studio was founded and owned by Geordie Hormel, an eccentric, almost Howard Hughes type who turned out to be a terrific guy. He was heir to the Hormel food products company (famous for its mystery meat, Spam) and was a musician himself. The studio was run by a gentleman named Dick LaPalm, an absolute sweetheart of a guy. Dick had worked for Chess Records in Chicago and before that with the great Nat King Cole, and boy, did he know his blues and jazz.
Testimony Page 47