Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan
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18. See Paul B. Wice’s Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and the American Justice System (2000), p. 90.
19. ‘Algren in Exile’, Chicago magazine (February 1988). Carter appears in The Devil’s Stocking as ‘Ruby Calhoun’.
20. Artis spent 14 years in prison before his parole in 1981. He was sentenced in August of 1987 to six years by a New Jersey court for ‘conspiracy to distribute cocaine and to receiving a stolen handgun’. According to the New York Times (9 August 1987), Artis accepted one drug charge ‘in exchange for dismissal of two other drug counts’. He would later work as an articulate ‘juvenile counsellor’.
21. ‘Early in 1966 the reform mayoral candidate, Laurence “Pat” Kramer, declared, “Paterson doesn’t need a mayor, it needs a referee.”’ Wice p. 1, ‘Prologue’.
22. See ‘Hurricane Carter: The Other Side of the Story’, www.graphicwitness.com, or ‘Top Ten Myths about Rubin Hurricane Carter and the Lafayette Grill Murders’, members.shaw.ca/cartermyths.
23. ‘The Real Record on Racial Attitudes’ by Lawrence D. Bobo, Camille Z. Charles, Maria Krysan and Alicia D. Simmons. The paper appears as Chapter 3 in Social Trends in American Life: Findings from the General Social Survey (2012), ed. Peter V. Marsden.
24. See the Human Rights Watch website: www.hrw.org/reports/2000.
25. Bruce Western: ‘The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality’, American Sociological Review, August 2002.
26. 1985 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14085.
27. Wice, p. 2.
28. Later supplied as an ‘extra’ to early purchasers of The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue (2002).
29. On the Road With Bob Dylan, p.13.
30. Rockline with Bob Coburn, 17 June 1985.
31. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (abridged ed. 1922), p. 383.
32. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 1.
33. Pages 424 and 147 respectively.
34. Chapter 2.
35. Pages 186f and 175 respectively.
36. On the Road with Bob Dylan, p. 14.
37. From the Uniform Crime Reporting Program database maintained by the FBI at www.ucrdatatool.gov. Clearly, America’s population had increased greatly over the intervening years, but the trend was indisputable. In 1960, 5.1 homicides were reported per 100,000 of the population; by 1975, the figure was 9.6.
38. ‘Joey Gallo Was No Hero’, 8 March 1976. A slightly different version would appear in the April 1976 edition of the magazine Creem, for which Bangs acted as ‘senior editor’.
39. Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974–2008 (2010), p. 79. Dylan’s website disagrees with Heylin, stating that the song was performed in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 25 May 1976, during the last of all Rolling Thunder concerts. Les Kokay’s Songs of the Underground: A Collector’s Guide to the Rolling Thunder Revue 1975–1976 (privately published, 2003) notes the supposed performance but accepts that the claim is based on a single unsupported report of a show for which no bootleg tapes exist. One performance or no performance, Dylan hasn’t exactly embraced ‘Black Diamond Bay’.
40. Song & Dance Man III, p. 185.
41. Still On the Road, p. 84.
42. Song & Dance Man III, p. 83; The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 589.
43. p. 19.
44. ‘In Blonde on Blonde I wrote out all the songs in the studio. The musicians played cards, I wrote out a song …’ (Interview with Newsweek, published 26 February 1968.) ‘I just sat down at a table and started writing [‘Sad Eyed Lady’]. At the session itself.’ (Rolling Stone, November 1969.)
CHAPTER FOUR – THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN
1. Rolling Stone, 4 December 1975. Roger McGuinn would later be quoted in Sloman’s book On the Road with Bob Dylan (p. 149) stating ‘slyly’ that the noises Dylan had heard were ‘probably’ sonic booms from aircraft at Vanderburg Air Force Base near Malibu, California.
2. On the Road with Bob Dylan, p. 71.
3. Rolling Stone, 15 January 1976.
4. Down the Highway, p. 341.
5. See Clinton Heylin’s Behind the Shades Revisited, p. 394.
6. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (1st ed., 1986), p. 450.
7. Bob Dylan in America (2010), Chapter 5. The McGuinn tale can be found under the title ‘Roadie Report 31’ at http://rogermcguinn.blogspot.co.uk/2007_12_01_archive.html.
8. People, 10 November 1975.
9. Hank Reineke, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway (2010), p. 225.
10. Shelton, p.15.
11. Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet, p. 457.
12. The Rolling Thunder Logbook, p. viii.
13. Songs of the Underground, pp. 8–10.
14. Sloman, On the Road with Bob Dylan, p. 20.
15. Rolling Stone, 15 January 1976.
16. Shelter from the Storm: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Years (2010), p. 35.
17. Reineke, p. 226.
18. And a Song to Sing With, Part 5, Chapter 1.
19. The details come largely from a 1998 interview with a local witness conducted by Dave Conlin Read. See http://www.berkshirelinks.com/bob-dylans-rolling-thunder-revue-party-mama-frascas-dream-lodge/.
20. Lucian K. Truscott IV, edition of 28 August.
21. Just before he hanged himself on 9 April 1976, in Far Rockaway, in the New York borough of Queens, Phil Ochs was diagnosed finally as suffering from bipolar disorder.
22. And a Voice to Sing With, Part 5, Chapter 1.
23. Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet, p. 458. Miles also says that Dylan, playing the piano, went down very well among the mah-jong players with a version of ‘Simple Twist of Fate’.
24. On the Road with Bob Dylan, p. 70.
25. Ibid., p. 71. In July 1963, having just turned 13, Larry Sloman hadn’t yet heard – by his own admission – of Bob Dylan.
26. Ibid., pp. 117–18.
27. Rolling Stone, 18 December 1975.
28. In 1975, for the purposes of comparison, it would have cost a fan $10 to see the Rolling Stones and $8.50 to catch Led Zeppelin. The Kinks, on the other hand, were available in smaller halls for $4.50. The issue of ticket prices is complicated by the additional fees imposed by many venues.
29. Sloman, On the Road with Bob Dylan, pp. 177–8.
30. Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet, p. 469.
31. Peter Guralnick, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (1999), pp. 587–8.
32. Sloman, On the Road with Bob Dylan, p. 379.
33. New York Times, 9 December 1975.
34. Edition of 4 February 1977.
35. On the Road with Bob Dylan, p. 404.
36. Interview with Allan Jones, published in Uncut magazine, 8 January 2013. Ronson died of liver cancer on 29 April 1993, aged 46.
37. People, 10 November 1975
CHAPTER FIVE – THE PALACE OF MIRRORS
1. 22 January 1978.
2. 11 March 1976.
3. Rolling Stone, 24 February 1977. ‘Night of the Hurricane (Or Was It Just an Idiot Wind?)’ ran the magazine’s headline.
4. Issue of March 1978.
5. Issue of 26 January 1978.
6. Interview with Gregg Kilday, 22 January 1978.
7. Interview with Philip Fleishman, 20 March 1978.
8. Issue of 11 September 1976.
9. ‘The State of the Union: 1975’, first published in Esquire, May 1975, reprinted in United States: Essays 1952–1992 (1993).
10. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Why America Is Different (2004), p. 72.
11. Levon Helm and Stephen Davis, This Wheel’s On Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band (1993, 2000), p. 312. Danko had been arrested in Japan in 1996 for possession of heroin. The multi-instrumentalist Richard Manuel, co-writer with Dylan of ‘Tears of Rage’, had hanged himself in Florida in 1986. Over time, Robertson bought out the interests of each member in The Band save Helm.
12. The inc
ident is discussed in David Fricke’s sleeve notes to the 2002 reissue of The Last Waltz album, broadly confirming the account given in Helm’s book.
13. Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 April 2002.
14. See Sounes, Down the Highway, p. 360.
15. Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, p. 638.
16. Melody Maker, 29 July 1978.
17. As recalled in an article by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice, 13 November 2007.
18. As republished in the wholly self-effacing Teenage Hipster in the Modern World: From the Birth of Punk to the Land of Bush – Thirty Years of Apocalyptic Journalism (2005), pp. 132–4.
19. Issue of 13 February 1978.
20. Interview with Robert Hilburn, published 28 May 1978.
21. Masterpieces, valued by many fans thanks to the inclusion of a handful of previously unreleased tracks, would soon be imported to Britain and America at horribly inflated prices.
22. In 1999, the album would be remixed and remastered by Don DeVito, once again Dylan’s nominal producer. The result was a great improvement, but the exercise did not solve all of Street-Legal’s technical problems.
23. The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p. 643.
24. Rolling Stone, 24 August 1978.
25. Song & Dance Man III, p. 216.
26. The versions of Dylan’s lyrics preserved by bobdylan.com and by his Lyrics 1962–2001 are often unreliable guides to the words as he has performed them on the albums. To put it kindly, the process of transcription – by whose hand, we don’t know – has been erratic. It may be that Dylan himself has rewritten passages. Again, we don’t know.
Similarly, the arrangements of the words in verse form in Lyrics and at bobdylan.com are often at odds with the recordings. Sometimes, in fact, book and website disagree. All that being the case, I have used the words as they are heard on the albums and ordered the lines to reflect Dylan’s performance.
This verse is a case in point. Book and website say ‘But Eden is burning, either brace yourself for elimination …’ There is no ‘brace yourself’ on the Street-Legal album and the backing vocalists provide a clear line break after ‘burning’.
27. Melody Maker, 29 July 1978.
28. Rolling Stone, 13 July 1978.
29. Issue of 1 July 1978.
30. The monologue, as contained in ‘circulating’ bootlegs, is derived from a necessarily abysmal mono recording made by a member of the San Diego audience. Contrary to the impression given in a couple of biographies and disseminated in various reference sources, there is no extant Dylan interview in which the story is told.
CHAPTER SIX – GOD SAID TO ABRAHAM …
1. The description of a presence in the hotel room, the room moving, Dylan’s claim to have been ‘relatively content’ and the declaration that he was ‘willing to listen’ are statements taken from an interview with Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, 23 November 1980. The descriptions of an unseen hand, of trembling and of being ‘knocked down’ are from an interview conducted by Karen Hughes in Dayton, Ohio, on 21 May 1980 during Dylan’s third gospel tour. The Hughes piece was published in New Zealand’s The Star on 10 July 1980.
2. Hilburn, Los Angeles Times interview, 23 November 1980.
3. Ibid.
4. From the Dylan fan magazine On the Tracks, autumn issue, 1994.
5. Karen Hughes, The Star, 10 July 1980.
6. According to Cameron Crowe’s booklet for the 1985 Biograph compilation, Dylan devoted five months to Bible studies in the first half of 1979. The claim is nowhere corroborated.
7. Bert Cartwright, The Bible in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan (1985, rev. and expanded 1992).
8. Interview with Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, 27 September 2012.
9. On the Tracks magazine, autumn issue, 1994.
10. www.tempevineyard.com.
11. With Gulliksen no longer involved, the contemporary Vineyard Association has an interesting habit of describing Wimber as its ‘founder’.
12. Interview with Kurt Loder, Rolling Stone, 21 June 1984.
13. Interview with Dan Wooding for the ASSIST (‘Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times’) Christian news service in Anaheim, California, 25 April 1999.
14. The Right Nation: Why America Is Different (2004), p. 325.
15. Ibid., pp. 83–5.
16. ‘Satan had mobilised …’ The Reverend Jerry Falwell, Southern Baptist evangelical founder in 1979 of the Moral Majority. Mickelthwait and Wooldridge, p. 84.
17. In its issue of 14 April 1980, Time magazine reported Reagan’s declaration during a televised interview. The magazine observed, however, that he ‘seemed shaky about the evangelical concept of personal belief’. Reagan’s best guess was ‘I suppose I would qualify’.
18. The Barna Group is a self-described ‘research and media development organisation’. It has also been called ‘an evangelical Christian polling firm’. Its methods are both respectable and rigorous, however, and its findings are not always welcomed by born-again creeds.
19. Joan Acocella, ‘Seeing and Believing’, The New Yorker, 2 April 2012.
20. Interview with Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, 17 July 1986.
21. John S. Dickerson, senior pastor of the Cornerstone Church in Prescott, Arizona. The piece was published in the New York Times Sunday Review, 15 December 2012.
22. In Britain in 2010, according to a Eurobarometer poll, 37 per cent reported a belief in God; in France the figure was 27 per cent. Both countries found majority support instead for an impersonal ‘spirit’ or ‘life force’. The 2011 census in England found 59.4 per cent professing Christianity while ‘no religion’ was given as 24.7 per cent.
23. www.vineyardusa.org/site/task-forces/blessing-muslims
24. Nicholas de Lange, Judaism (1986).
25. Report by the ASSIST News Service, 10 March 2011.
26. The interview appeared via continentalnews.net, a news service specialising in Christian issues, on 1 October 2012.
27. ASSIST News Service, 10 March 2011.
28. Interview with Karen Hughes, The Star, published on 10 July 1980.
29. See Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, ed. William M. Ashcroft and Eugene V. Gallagher (2006), Vol. 2: Jewish and Christian Traditions, pp. 193–7.
30. Dylan Redeemed: From Highway 61 to Saved (2006), p. 81.
31. Ibid., p. 11 and p. 16.
32. Interview with Kurt Loder, Rolling Stone, 21 June 1984.
33. www.umjc.org.
34. Daily News, 8 June 1986.
35. 13 January 1984.
36. In a videotaped interview posted on YouTube in January 2013, Friedman cast doubt on whether sexual abuse was a significant averiah (sin). He also questioned why victims should feel damaged. The rabbi further stated that ‘there is hardly a kid who comes to a yeshiva [religious school], to a program, that hasn’t been molested’.
37. 21 June 1984.
38. Interview conducted in September of 1985 and published in the December issue of Spin.
39. ‘Don’t You Ever Pray?’, Chris Cooper interview with Helena Springs, published in Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan, ed. John Bauldie (1990), p. 125.
40. See, generally, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy and Politics in the Book of Revelation (2012) by Elaine Pagels.
41. See Adam Gopnik’s review of Pagels, ‘The Big Revival’, New Yorker, 5 March 2012.
CHAPTER SEVEN – WADE IN THE WATER
1. Interview with Bert Kleinman and Artie Mogull for the Westwood One network. First broadcast on 17 November 1984.
2. Jerry Wexler and David Ritz, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music (1993), Chapter 2.
3. Mojo magazine, January 1997.
4. See Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (1988), pp. 335–41.
5. 12 July 1979.
6. See Matthew Zuckerman’s essay, ‘If There’s an Original Thought Out There, I Could Use It Right Now: The Folk Roots of Bob Dylan’ (1997). It can be fo
und at http://www.expectingrain.com/dok/div/influences.html.
7. See Robert V. Wells, Life Flows On in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History (2009), p. 112.
8. Chris Bohn, Melody Maker, August 1979.
9. ‘Amazing Chutzpah’, New West magazine, 24 September 1979.
10. Rolling Stone, 20 September 1979.
11. Interview with Scott Cohen, September 1985, published in Spin magazine in December 1985.
12. Interview with Scott Marshall for the Dylan fan magazine On the Tracks, issue 17, autumn 1999.
13. ‘Don’t You Ever Pray?’, Chris Cooper interview with Helena Springs, published in Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan, ed. John Bauldie (1990), p. 125.
14. http://www.tonywright-art.com/Pages/AlbumDetails/Dylan-Saved.html
15. The first Dylan quotation comes from an interview with Paul Zollo published in the 1991 winter issue of SongTalk magazine. The second fragment – in which Dylan also said that ‘Every Grain of Sand’ was a ‘very painless song to write’ – comes from an interview with Robert Hilburn published in the Los Angeles Times on 9 February 1992.
16. Interview with Robert Hilburn, 23 November 1980.
CHAPTER EIGHT – JOKERMAN
1. Micklethwait and Wooldridge, The Right Nation, p. 71. The National Elections Studies database at the University of Michigan is cited.
2. New York Times, 19 April 2005.
3. Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (1994), Chapter 12.
4. Address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Washington DC, 20 March 1981.
5. Rolling Stone, 15 October 1981.
6. The last of three complete takes captured at that session according to Michael Krogsgaard’s painstaking ‘Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions (Part 5)’ published in The Bridge (Issue 1, summer 1998).
7. Still on the Road, pp. 187–95.
8. See Krogsgaard, as before.
9. See Howard Sounes, Down the Highway, pp. 394, 400–2.
10. New York Times, 9 March 2013, citing the General Social Survey.
11. From the introduction to Faye D. Ginsburg’s Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community (1989, rev. ed. 1998), pp. 1–2. As an intriguing, if inadvertent, sidelight on Dylan’s North Country upbringing, the anthropology professor at one point remarks that her Jewishness was regarded as ‘culturally strange’ in Fargo. This was in 1981, not 1941.