On the Road with Bob Dylan

by Larry Sloman

  “Oh really,” Bob spits. “Well I don’t understand music, you know. I understand Lightning Hopkins. I understand Leadbelly, John Lee Hooker, Woody Guthrie, Kinky Friedman. I never claimed to understand music, Ratso, if you ever heard me play the guitar you’d know that.” The singer laughs. “I’m an artist,” he adds.

  “I like your guitar playing, man,” Ratso steps to his defense. “I love your harmonica playing too. George Lois’ secretary, Blanche, says you’re the greatest harmonica player she’s ever heard.”

  “She’s probably right then,” Dylan giggles.

  “Maybe. I think you’re a great harmonica player and—”

  “You’ve seen the show, Ratso, how many times? Thirty? Forty?” Dylan interrupts. “Have I ever let you down onstage?”

  “Never, man, never,” Ratso knows without having to think.

  “OK, so why don’t you tell them that,” Dylan shouts.

  “I will man, I will,” the writer promises.

  “You saw the show,” Dylan continues. “Well, it goes without saying, we’ll follow anybody.”

  “What do you think of that charge, though, that Simon is making? That your music is boring …”

  “Well, maybe he’s just bored, you know. I really can’t tell ya, I don’t know the man.”

  “Like you’re making a new kind of music now I think …” Ratso says.

  “Well, I’m always changing, always moving around, forging new paths. I’m blazing a trail. I don’t know what Paul Simon’s doing.”

  “What are you listening to nowadays?”

  “What am I listening to?” Dylan pauses. “Uhhh, you know who’s really good? Oum Kalsoum.”

  “Who’s that?” the reporter wonders.

  “C’mon, Ratso,” Dylan mocks.

  “I’m not hip to him, man,” Ratso confesses.

  “All right,” Dylan laughs. “First of all, it’s not a him.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Well, you asked me and I told ya. Otherwise I don’t listen to nothing. I play my own music and I listen to that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I like ‘Earth Angel,’” Dylan says impishly.

  “I know you loved ‘No Woman, No Cry’ by Marley when I played it. You loved that, you asked me for the fucking lyrics.”

  “Well, I like that the same way that I like When A Man Loves a Woman.’ Same thing.”

  “Jerry Wexler says your music is—”

  “My music is pagan,” Dylan interrupts.

  “He didn’t say that at all,” Ratso resents the interruption, “he said it was cantorial.”

  “Well, I don’t know what that means but you’re getting it right here from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Cantorial means possessing the qualities of a cantor in the Jewish religion,” the scribe turns Webster.

  “No, no,” Dylan disagrees, “cantorial means that which has to do with food and banquet ceremonies.”

  “No, that’s not cantorial. That’s gustatorial. Anyway, what kind of direction is your music taking?”

  “Well, you’ll see. We’re gonna keep it a surprise and everybody’s gonna be surprised because everybody thinks the music boom is all over. They don’t know, they just don’t know where it’s gonna come from next. That’s all, they’re all looking to find somebody in some little folkie town that’s gonna bring it to ’em, be the new Paul Simon. They’re all looking for a new Paul Simon. Or a new Bruce Springsteen, you know.”

  “What do you think of Springsteen, by the way?”

  “I met him and I liked him. I played ‘Born to Run’ on a jukebox and he’s a great singer and he’s got a great band. But I haven’t heard his music so much recently.”

  “Haven’t you heard the Born to Run LP?”

  “No, but I been meaning to play the whole LP. I mean how many hours in the day is there, Ratso? There aren’t that many hours for me to sit around listening to record albums.”

  “What about when you’re home, you listen then don’t you?”

  “Nah, I don’t,” Dylan drawls.

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m working all the time, man, just doing what I’m doing. You been seeing me for the past six weeks. You know.”

  “Oh, man, I hardly see anything,” Ratso whines. “I see such a small segment of your life. I see a very public segment of your life. I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, that’s a good song by the way, and the first time I was on the camper was last night.”

  “So what?” Dylan snaps impatiently.

  “So I learned a little more about you.”

  “OK, keep going,” Dylan interrupts. “What else you got? I think we’re doing pretty good. I think it’s almost wrapped up, right?”

  “Almost,” Ratso lies, “I got a couple more. You’re doing new songs and a lot of people in the audience are expecting the old ones …” Ratso hears a muffled sound of conversation at the other end. “Is this boring you, man,” the reporter screams, annoyed, “‘cause if it is …”

  “Hey, you never get what you expect, Ratso,” Dylan is back, “ultimately you’re let down. That’s one of the first rules, basic rules, expectations you know. If you have big expectations you’re gonna be let down. You can’t have any expectations, you know. You stay on the borderline and then you move when the space unfolds.”

  “But people do have expectations …”

  “Well, that’s their problem, Ratso, that’s their own problem. We can’t account for everybody who’s walking around having expectations. I mean who gives a shit.”

  “Were you pleased with the reception to the new songs … seriously,” Ratso adds a caveat.

  “Yeah,” Dylan admits.

  “Why do you think people cheer so much at the beginning of ‘Oh, Sister’?”

  “I think, uh, Jacques Levy asked me that, too. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s ’cause it sounds like another song,” Ratso admits.

  “I think they just think it’s another song, right,” Dylan agrees. “I don’t know what song they think it is, but whatever, it’s all right.”

  “Well a lot of your songs sound alike. ‘Hurricane’ sounds like ‘All Along the Watchtower’ at the beginning, right?”

  “Right, sometimes that happens,” Dylan laughs. “Sometimes I influence myself.”

  “I wouldn’t be embarrassed in the least by that, man, I’d be proud to have written another song from one of your other songs, man.”

  “Well, you have,” Dylan chuckles, “‘Combat Zone.’”

  “C’mon,” Ratso scoffs, “what was it like playing in jail for you?”

  “Look, man, an audience is an audience …”

  “Oh come on, that wasn’t a paying audience, that was a captive audience.”

  “They were a good audience. Hey, we got it wrapped up now, right?” Dylan is itching.

  “Well, no, a couple more. I want to talk about fame now.”

  “What?” Dylan wants him to rewind.

  “Fame. F-A-M-E. I think what’s most interesting about this tour is your accessibility, you going out again and doing the things that you did when you were younger …”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dylan agrees.

  “Was ‘Idiot Wind’ like getting all those feelings about fame out, exorcising them, and now you’re able to deal with—”

  “I don’t want to answer them kinds of direct questions,” Dylan starts to bristle, “I mean what can I say? Give you an answer of yes or no?”

  “Well, then, give me an answer of what’s it like coping with being a public figure,” Ratso redirects.

  “A public figure, well, it can be something that walks on you. I just decided that it ain’t gonna walk on me. It can be the horse, riding on you, sooner or later, but you just gotta realize that you can ride it and drive it into the ground, if necessary. But either you’ve gotta use it or it’s gonna use you, one or the other.”

  “Well, for a while there, what was h
appening? You were letting it use you?”

  “For a while there, yeah, it was quite a surprise for me when it happened and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I mean who knows how to deal with that stuff.”

  “Why did you go out on tour with the Band in ’74?”

  “It seemed like the righteous thing to do.”

  “Were you happy with that tour?”

  Dylan clears his throat. “No, no man, I wasn’t happy with that tour like I was with this one.”

  “Oh man, there was such a difference,” Ratso gushes. “You looked stilted on that tour, you didn’t look comfortable, you didn’t look happy.”

  “No,” Bob admits, “I wasn’t comfortable and I wasn’t happy.”

  “And you were singing …” Ratso jumps in.

  “I wasn’t comfortable and I wasn’t happy but that’s got nothing to do with the tour. I don’t think any of the guys were comfortable and happy but that’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “Well, it does. Because people who relate to you not as a friend but as an image, a media person …”

  “Look, they can see me in person,” Dylan jumps in, “I’ll be available. People can see me in person all over the fucking world, they can see me in person. It’s just gonna take some time to get around to everybody but they can’t get it all in one shot like they think they can. They can feel it firsthand, right up close, and they’ll be given that opportunity.”

  “That’s great, you mean the tour is gonna roll all around the world,” Ratso enthuses.

  “Yeah, this tour ain’t gonna stop.”

  “That’s great, that’s really righteous. The thing with the last tour was that it was just—”

  “A timekiller,” Dylan finishes the question. “Something to do for a period of time. It was good, though. I been on tours that were worse than that.”

  “Hey man, Planet Waves had just come out then, right? Now Planet Waves is a great fucking LP, one of my favorites, but the album itself seems to be very ambivalent. That LP seems to spread the kind of feeling I got when I saw you on that tour, which was like you didn’t seem to know if you really wanted to be there or wanted to be watching the river flow.”

  “Yeah, I got kind of held up on that tour, you know. I mean, I wasn’t really in control of the situation. Nobody was in control. We were just shuffled around from airport to limo to hotel lobby to hockey rinks. I felt like Willis Reed. And in order for me to do whatever it is that I do, I have to have control and I didn’t have too much control on that specific tour. Look, that Bob Dylan and the Band tour was a valid tour, no question about that.”

  “Well, it was valid but people who saw it and listened to it on the LP musta—”

  “Well, you see, they had bad expectations. They shouldn’t have expected anything.”

  “Wait a minute, man,” Ratso yells. “I know a lot of people who paid a lotta money, and they didn’t necessarily have it, and they save up money to go to your concerts and they expect, uh, I don’t know what they expect.”

  “They expect to be turned on,” Dylan finishes it.

  “Exactly, they expect to really feel a vibe. But on that Band tour in ’74, a lot of people didn’t feel that vibe.”

  “Right, well, but that’s all in the past,” Bob says cheerfully. “People tell me who’ve seen some of these recent shows that they’ll remember them as the ultimate, whatever that means.”

  “Also what excited me about this tour was that you were doing two different things. You were singing and you were doing the film. That really excited me. I’d seen your movies but I never had seen you directing a film and that was exciting because I felt you stole the whole Pat Garrett film with that cameo role, you were like Chaplin up there on the screen. Why did you decide to direct the film?”

  “Well, after a certain period of time, somebody just had to take charge of the shooting,” Dylan laughs. “You’ll see that when the film comes out. There’s no way that I could explain that.”

  “Well, when are we gonna see the film?”

  “Uh, uh, you’re really low, Ratso,” Bob laughs. “When are we gonna see the film? Well, when do you want to see the film?”

  “Well, I haven’t even seen Eat the Fucking Document yet,” the reporter growls.

  “Eat the Fucking Document?” Dylan laughs at the added adjective. “You know it’s called Fuck the Document now.”

  “I want to see that fucking film,” Ratso rants. “Arrange a screening for me.”

  “Listen, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Dylan decides to bail out before Ratso gets too much further out of control.

  “No, wait!” he yelps. “I have two more questions only. By the way, do you have a name for the film yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “OK, Hurricane was a big influence, I mean, in prison, framed, losing an eye and all that shit. Was that a big influence on you deciding to go out on tour again?”

  “No, it was a coincidence that I met Hurricane. I wanted to go out and play again. I had already made my mind up last spring.”

  “Before France or after?” Ratso probes.

  “I was in Corsica.”

  “What made you decide it? Describe the scene, what it was like when you first said, ‘I want to do this again, it’s in my blood.’”

  “Yeah, right,” Dylan pauses, collecting his thoughts. “I was just sitting in a field overlooking some vineyards, the sky was pink, the sun was going down and the moon was sapphire, and I recall getting a ride into town with a man with a donkey cart and I was sitting on this donkey cart, bouncing around on the road there, and that’s when it flashed on me that I was gonna go back to America and get serious and do what it is that I do, because by that time people didn’t know what it was that I did. All kinds of people, most people don’t know what I do, only the people that see our show know what it is that I do, the rest of the people just have to imagine it.”

  “Well, what’s your concept of what you do, verbally?”

  “A picture’s worth a thousand words, Ratso,” Dylan smiles at his end.

  “What is it you do? Is it like psychodrama?”

  “Yeah, you could say that,” Dylan hedges.

  “How would you describe it?” Ratso presses.

  “I don’t know, it’s all I do. It drives me crazy to think about it. That’s your job, to describe it, I just do it.” Dylan turns serious: “It’s all I’ve ever done. I don’t know anything else.”

  “You know a lot, man. You know film. Howard Alk tells me you’re a natural film genius.”

  “I’m gonna know film, man,” Dylan bubbles. “We’re gonna make some movies that are gonna blow Hollywood apart. Remember how we blew the music scene apart?”

  “When was that?” Ratso plays coy.

  “Remember in the ’60s? All the music you’re listening to is a product of all that stuff that went down in the ’60s. Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, the Fugs, the Byrds, Joan Baez, Buffy, it can go on forever.”

  “I agree with you, man,” Ratso smiles.

  “There is nothing that really strikes me as being really new or really old although that’s not to say I’m bored with it, because I’m not bored with it.”

  “Well, what is in your blood, man? Making movies or touring …”

  “Making love and making music is in my blood.”

  “Which has the priority?”

  “Uhhhh, that’s hard to tell, sometimes I wonder about that myself.”

  “Well, most of the time I would much rather listen to you sing ‘Sooner or Later One of Us Must Know,’ than get a blow job.”

  “I’d rather sing it than get a blow job,” Dylan chuckles.

  “Last question. Have you been writing on this tour?”

  “I been writing some letters, that’s about all, yeah, personal letters.”

  “Any songs?” Ratso hopes.

  “I have some things on scraps of paper.”

  “Gonna put them together?”

  “I might, yeah.”
/>   “Anything you wanna—”

  “Anything I want to sing right now?” Dylan anticipates. “No.”

  “No fragments, no exclusives?”

  “No, not really, Ratso. You’ll get it though, you’ll get it.”

  Ratso hangs up and starts to work on something else when the phone rings. It’s Dylan.

  “Hey Ratso, I’ve been thinking, maybe we should take out that stuff about the blow jobs?”

  “OK man, OK, what do you want to say?”

  “What’s the question again?”

  “Uh, What’s in your blood, making music or making movies?’” Ratso repeats.

  Dylan hesitates. “Uh, uh, making music, making movies, making love, it’s all in my blood. Look, I’m just outgrowing, er, settling my old accounts but the restoration of honor is also still in my blood.”

  And that was pretty much it for Ratso and the Rolling Thunder Revue. At least the Rolling Thunder Revue, take one. Everyone had left for home, everyone except for Dylan and McGuinn, who was hanging around the city to do some writing with Jacques Levy. And, of course, the musicians like Stoner, Wyeth, Ronson, and Mansfield who call New York home.

  So that meant a generous dose of more sleepless nights, all-night jams, 4 A.M. tequila sans sunrises. More rock ’n roll time. There were things like Ronson’s demo sessions, a boring party at Norman Mailer’s flat in Brooklyn Heights, and a better party at Mel Howard’s loft where the New Yorrican poets read their insurrectionist verse and Ratso later dragged Dylan over to a phonograph and made him listen to Planet Waves.

  The reporter cues up “Tough Mama,” a pile driver of a hard rock song, the poet howling his ode to his resilient muse over the fervid torrid flagellations of the Band.

  “This is fucking brilliant,” Ratso is shouting in Dylan’s ear as the song screeches to an end.

  “Hey, that is good,” Dylan bubbles. “That is good. Play that again, play that one again, Ratso.”

  And, of course, there were those nights at the Other End, just like before the six weeks of sheer insanity. And that’s where the camper stopped that night of the Mailer party, unloading its cargo into the Bleecker Street bar.

  Dylan strode briskly if soddenly into the dimly lit club and immediately checked out the jukebox. Imhoff bounced into the kitchen, which was already closed and started cooking hamburgers for a 4 A.M. snack.