by Bob Dylan
There was a book by Sigmund Freud, the king of the subconscious, called Beyond the Pleasure Principle. I was thumbing through it once when Ray came in, saw the book and said, “The top guys in that field work for ad agencies. They deal in air.” I put the book back and never picked it up again. I did read a biography about Robert E. Lee, though, read about how his father had been disfigured in a riot, had lye poured into his eyes and then abandoned his family and went to the West Indies. Robert E. Lee had grown up without a father. Lee had made something out of himself, nevertheless. Not only that, but it was on his word and his word alone that America did not get into a guerrilla war that probably would have lasted ’til this day. The books were something. They were really something.
I read a lot of the pages aloud and liked the sound of the words, the language. Milton’s protest poem, “Massacre in Piedmont.” A political poem about the murder of innocents by the Duke of Savoy in Italy. It was like the folk song lyrics, even more elegant.
The Russian stuff on the shelves had an especially dark presence. There were the political poems of Pushkin, who was considered revolutionary. Pushkin was killed in a duel in 1837. There was a book by Count Leo Tolstoy, whose estate I’d visit more than twenty years later—his family estate, which he used to educate peasants. It was located outside of Moscow, and this was where he went later in life to reject all his writings and renounce all forms of war. One day when he was eighty-two years old he left a note for his family to leave him alone. He walked off into the snowy woods and a few days later they found him dead of pneumonia. A tour guide let me ride his bicycle. Dostoyevsky, too, had lived a dismal and hard life. The czar sent him to a prison camp in Siberia in 1849. Dostoyevsky was accused of writing socialist propaganda. He was eventually pardoned and wrote stories to ward off his creditors. Just like in the early ’70s I wrote albums to ward off mine.
In the past, I’d never been that keen on books and writers but I liked stories. Stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote about the mythical Africa—Luke Short, the mythical Western tales—Jules Verne—H. G. Wells. Those were my favorites but that was before I discovered the folksingers. The folksingers could sing songs like an entire book, but only in a few verses. It’s hard to describe what makes a character or an event folk song worthy. It probably has something to do with a character being fair and honest and open. Bravery in an abstract way. Al Capone had been a successful gangster and was allowed to rule the underworld in Chicago, but nobody wrote any songs about him. He’s not interesting or heroic in any kind of way. He’s frigid. A sucker fish, seems like a man who never got out alone in nature for a minute in his life. He comes across as a thug or a bully, like in the song…“looking for that bully of the town.” He’s not even worthy enough to have a name—comes across as a heartless vamp. Pretty Boy Floyd, on the other hand, stirs up an adventurous spirit. Even his name has something to say. There’s something unbound and not frozen in the muck about him. He’ll never rule over any city, can’t manipulate the machine or bend people to his will, yet he’s the stuff of real flesh and blood, represents humanity in general and gives you an impression of power. At least before they trapped him in the boonies.
There was no noise in Ray’s place, just if I’d turn the radio on or listen to records. If not, there was only a graveyard silence and I’d always return to the books…dig through them like an archeologist. I read the biography of Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican. He lived in the early part of the 1800s and was quite a character. He’s from Gettysburg and he’s got a clubfoot like Byron. He grew up poor, made a fortune and from then on championed the weak and any other group who wasn’t able to fight equally. Stevens had a grim sense of humor, a sharp tongue and a white-hot hatred for the bloated aristocrats of his day. He wanted to confiscate the land of the slaveholding elite, once referred to a colleague on the floor of the chamber as “slinking in his own slime.” Stevens was an anti-Mason and he denounced his foes as those whose mouths reeked from human blood. He got right in there, called his enemies a “feeble band of lowly reptiles who shun the light and who lurk in their own dens.” Stevens was hard to forget. He made a big impression on me, was inspiring. Him and Teddy Roosevelt, maybe the strongest U.S. president ever. I read about Teddy, too. He was a cattle rancher and a crime buster, had to be restrained from declaring war on California—had a big run in with J. P. Morgan, a deity figure who owned most of the United States at the time. Roosevelt backed him down and threatened to throw him in jail.
Either one of those guys, Stevens or Roosevelt or even Morgan could have stepped out of a folk ballad. Songs like “Walkin’ Boss,” “The Prisoner’s Song” or even one like “Ballad of Charles Guiteau.” They’re just in there somewhere, though maybe not in a specific way. They’re even in early rock-and-roll songs if you want to add electricity and drums.
There were art books, too, on the shelves, books of Motherwell and early Jasper Johns, German impressionist pamphlets, Grunwald, Adolf von Menzel stuff. “How-to” books, how to repair a man’s knee that’s been bent backwards…how to deliver a baby, how to perform an appendectomy in the bedroom. The stuff could give you real hot dreams. There were other things laying around that would catch your eye—chalk sketches of Ferraris and Ducatis, books about Amazon women, Pharaonic Egypt, photo books of circus acrobats, lovers, graveyards. There weren’t any big bookstores around, so it would have been hard to find these books in any one place. I liked the biographies a lot and read part of one about Frederick the Great, who, besides being King of Prussia, I was surprised to find out was also a composer. I also looked through Vom Kriege, the Clausewitz book. They called Clausewitz the premier philosopher of war. By the sound of his name you’d think he looked like Von Hindenburg, but he doesn’t. In the book’s portrait of him, he looks like Robert Burns, the poet, or Montgomery Clift, the actor. The book was published in 1832 and Clausewitz had been in the military since he’d been twelve. His armies were highly trained professionals, not young men who served only for a few years or more. His men were hard to replace and he talks a lot about how to maneuver into position where the other side can see there’s no fighting chance and basically lay down their arms. In his time there was little to gain and much to lose by any serious fighting. For Clausewitz, flinging stones was not war—not idealized war, anyway. He talks a lot about psychological and accidental factors on the battlefield—the weather, air currents—playing a big part.
I had a morbid fascination with this stuff. Years earlier, before I knew I was going to be a singer and my mind was in full swing, I had even wanted to go to West Point. I’d always pictured myself dying in some heroic battle rather than in bed. I wanted to be a general with my own battalion and wondered how to get the key to open this wonderland. I asked my father how to get into West Point and he seemed shocked, said that my name didn’t begin with a “De” or a “Von” and that you needed connections and proper credentials to get in there. His advice was that we should concentrate on how to acquire them. My uncle was even less forthcoming. He said to me, “You don’t want to have to work for the government. A soldier is a housewife, a guinea pig. Go to work in the mines.”
Mines or no mines, it was the connections and credentials thing that rattled me. I didn’t like the sound of it, made me feel deprived of something. It wasn’t long before I discovered what they were and how these things can sometimes interfere with your plans. When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden a
nniversaries in hotel ballrooms, Knights of Columbus functions, things like that—and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. I would always be moaning to my grandmother who lived with us, my one and only confidante, and she’d tell me not to take it personal. She’d say stuff like, “There are some people you’ll never be able to win over. Just let it go—let it wear itself out.” Sure, that’s easy to say, but it didn’t make me feel any less bad. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had family connections to someone up the ladder in the chamber of commerce or town council or merchants associations. These groups were connected to different committees throughout the counties. The family connection thing made a strong impression, left me feeling naked.
It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life, but even if it was, I wasn’t going to sulk about it or, like my grandma said, take it personal. Family connections were legitimate. You couldn’t blame anyone for having them. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. I kept forming them, though, because I was determined to play. There was a lot of halting and waiting, little acknowledgment, little affirmation, but sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.
That happened to me when Gorgeous George the great wrestler came to my hometown. In the mid-’50s I was performing in the lobby of the National Guard Armory, the Veterans Memorial Building, the site where all the big shows happened—the livestock shows and hockey games, circuses and boxing shows, traveling preacher revivals, country-and-western jamborees. I’d seen Slim Whitman, Hank Snow, Webb Pierce and a lot of others there. Once a year or so, Gorgeous George would bring his whole troupe of performers to town: Goliath, The Vampire, The Twister, The Strangler, The Bone Crusher, The Holy Terror, midget wrestlers, a couple of lady wrestlers, and a whole lot more. I was playing on a makeshift platform in the lobby of the building with the usual wild activity of people milling about, and no one was paying much attention. Suddenly, the doors burst open and in came Gorgeous George himself. He roared in like the storm, didn’t go through the backstage area, he came right through the lobby of the building and he seemed like forty men. It was Gorgeous George, in all his magnificent glory with all the lightning and vitality you’d expect. He had valets and was surrounded by women carrying roses, wore a majestic fur-lined gold cape and his long blond curls were flowing. He brushed by the makeshift stage and glanced towards the sound of the music. He didn’t break stride, but he looked at me, eyes flashing with moonshine. He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase “You’re making it come alive.”
Whether he really said it or not, it didn’t matter. It’s what I thought I heard him say that mattered, and I never forgot it. It was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come. Sometimes that’s all it takes, the kind of recognition that comes when you’re doing the thing for the thing’s sake and you’re on to something—it’s just that nobody recognizes it yet. Gorgeous George. A mighty spirit. People said that he was as great as his race. Maybe he was. Inevitably, I would soon lose the band that was playing with me in the lobby of the Veterans building. Someone else had seen them and took them. I’d have to work on my connections. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one. Connections and credentials would have to become an irrelevancy, but I did feel good for a moment. Crossing paths with Gorgeous George was really something.
Clausewitz’s book seemed outdated, but there’s a lot in it that’s real, and you can understand a lot about conventional life and the pressures of environment by reading it. When he claims that politics has taken the place of morality and politics is brute force, he’s not playing. You have to believe it. You do exactly as you’re told, whoever you are. Knuckle under or you’re dead. Don’t give me any of that jazz about hope or nonsense about righteousness. Don’t give me that dance that God is with us, or that God supports us. Let’s get down to brass tacks. There isn’t any moral order. You can forget that. Morality has nothing in common with politics. It’s not there to transgress. It’s either high ground or low ground. This is the way the world is and nothing’s gonna change it. It’s a crazy, mixed up world and you have to look it right in the eye. Clausewitz in some ways is a prophet. Without realizing it, some of the stuff in his book can shape your ideas. If you think you’re a dreamer, you can read this stuff and realize you’re not even capable of dreaming. Dreaming is dangerous. Reading Clausewitz makes you take your own thoughts a little less seriously.
I read The White Goddess by Robert Graves, too. Invoking the poetic muse was something I didn’t know about yet. Didn’t know enough to start trouble with it, anyway. In a few years’ time I would meet Robert Graves himself in London. We went out for a brisk walk around Paddington Square. I wanted to ask him about some of the things in his book, but I couldn’t remember much about it. I liked the French writer Balzac a lot, read Luck and Leather, and Le Cousin Pons. Balzac was pretty funny. His philosophy is plain and simple, says basically that pure materialism is a recipe for madness. The only true knowledge for Balzac seems to be in superstition. Everything is subject to analysis. Horde your energy. That’s the secret of life. You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It’s funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk’s robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, “What does this mean?” He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.
There was nothing upscale about the Gaslight, no ringside tables or anything, but it was always packed from start to finish—some people sitting at tables, some standing and crowded up along the walls—bare brick walls, low level lighting and pipes exposed. Even on cold winter nights there was a line to get in, clusters of people huddled in the doorway, twin entrances downstairs. There were always so many people inside, it was hard to breathe. I don’t know how many it could hold, but it always seemed like ten thousand or more. The fire marshals would always be coming in and out, always a lot of anticipation, apprehension in the air, a lot of audacity. You got the feeling that something, someone, was always coming to blow away the fog.
I played twenty minute sets. Played the folk songs that I possessed and paid attention to what was going on in the moment. It was hot in there and too claustrophobic to hang around after playing, so performers would often hang out upstairs in one of the back rooms, which you got to by going out back through the kitchen, into the small courtyard and up the icy fire escape. There’d always be a card game going on. Van Ronk, Stookey, Romney, Hal Waters, Paul Clayton, Luke Faust, Len Chandler and some others would play poker continuously through the night. You could come and go as you pleased. A small radio speaker in the room let you know who was performing downstairs so you knew when it was your turn to go back. Bets were usually nickels and dimes and quarters, although sometimes the pot could get up as high as twenty dollars. I usually folded my cards if I didn’t have a pair by the second or third draw. Chandler told me once, “You gotta learn how to bluff. You’ll never make it in this game if you don’t. Sometimes you even have to get caught bluffing. It helps later if you got a winning hand and want some other players to think you might be bluffing.”
I didn’t spend too much time downstairs because it was too crowded and stifling. I’d either be up in the card room or at the Kettle of Fish Tavern next door. That place was usually packed, too, on any given night of the week. A frantic atmosphere—all kinds of characters talking fast, moving fast—some debonair, some rakish. Literary types with black beards, grim-faced intellectuals—eclectic girls, non-homemaker types. The kind of people who come from out of nowhere and go right back into it—a pistol-packing rabbi, a
snaggle-toothed girl with a big crucifix between her breasts—all kinds of characters looking for the inner heat. I felt like I was seeing it all sitting on the crest of a cliff. Some people even had titles—“The Man Who Made History,” “The Link Between the Races”—that’s how they’d want to be referred to. Comedians from comedy shows, like Richard Pryor, used to hang around in there, too. You could sit on a bar stool and look out the windows to the snowy streets and see heavy people going by, David Amram bundled up, Gregory Corso, Ted Joans, Fred Hellerman.
One night a guy named Bobby Neuwirth came through the door with a couple of friends and caused a lot of commotion. Bobby and I would meet again sometime later at a folk festival. Right from the start, you could tell that Neuwirth had a taste for provocation and that nothing was going to restrict his freedom. He was in a mad revolt against something. You had to brace yourself when you talked to him. Neuwirth was about the same age as me, from Akron, played clawhammer banjo and knew some songs. He was going to art school in Boston and could paint, too—said he was going back to Ohio in the spring to his folks’ house to take down the storm windows and put up the screens. That was his customary thing to do and it had been mine, too. I wasn’t planning on going back, though. Later we’d become pretty tight and travel around together. Like Kerouac had immortalized Neal Cassady in On the Road, somebody should have immortalized Neuwirth. He was that kind of character. He could talk to anybody until they felt like all their intelligence was gone. With his tongue, he ripped and slashed and could make anybody uneasy, also could talk his way out of anything. Nobody knew what to make of him. If there ever was a renaissance man leaping in and out of things, he would have to be it. Neuwirth was a bulldog. He didn’t provoke me, though, not in any way. I got a kick out of everything he did and liked him. Neuwirth had talent, but he wasn’t ambitious. We liked pretty much all the same things, even the same songs on the jukebox.