by Bob Dylan
Eventually, we tried moving West—tried a few different places, but in short time reporters would come sniffing around in hopes to gain some secret—maybe I’d confess some sin. Our address would be printed in the local press and then the same thing would start up. Even if these reporters had been allowed in the house, what would they find? A whole lotta stuff—stacking toys, push and pull toys, child-sized tables and chairs—big empty cardboard boxes—science kits, puzzles and toy drums…I wasn’t going to let anybody in the house. As for house rules, we didn’t have many. If the kids wanted to play basketball in the kitchen, they played basketball in the kitchen. If they got into the pots and pans, we put all the pots and pans out on the floor. My house was chaotic inside as well as out.
Joan Baez recorded a protest song about me that was getting big play, challenging me to get with it—come out and take charge, lead the masses—be an advocate, lead the crusade. The song called out to me from the radio like a public service announcement. The press never let up. Once in a while I would have to rise up and offer myself for an interview so they wouldn’t beat down the door. Usually the questions would start out with something like, “Can we talk further upon things that are happening?” “Sure, like what?” Reporters would shoot questions at me and I would tell them repeatedly that I was not a spokesman for anything or anybody and that I was only a musician. They’d look into my eyes as if to find some evidence of bourbon and handfuls of amphetamines. I had no idea what they were thinking. Later an article would hit the streets with the headline “Spokesman Denies That He’s a Spokesman.” I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs. The New York Times printed quacky interpretations of my songs. Esquire magazine put a four-faced monster on their cover, my face along with Malcolm X’s, Kennedy’s and Castro’s. What the hell was that supposed to mean? It was like I was on the edge of the earth. If anybody had any sound guidance or advice to offer, it wasn’t forthcoming. My wife, when she married me, had no idea of what she was getting into. Me neither, actually, and now we were in a no win situation.
For sure my lyrics had struck nerves that had never been struck before, but if my songs were just about the words, then what was Duane Eddy, the great rock-and-roll guitarist, doing recording an album full of instrumental melodies of my songs? Musicians have always known that my songs were about more than just words, but most people are not musicians. What I had to do was recondition my mind and stop putting the blame on external forces. I had to educate myself, get rid of some baggage. The solitude of time was what I didn’t have. Whatever the counterculture was, I’d seen enough of it. I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. What the hell are we talking about? Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw.
It was tough moving around—like the Merle Haggard song, “…I’m on the run, the highway is my home.” I don’t know if Haggard ever had to get his family out with him, but I know I did. It’s a little different when you have to do that. The landscape burned behind us. The press was in no hurry to retract their judgment and I couldn’t just lie there, had to take the bull by the horns myself and remodel the image of me, change the perception of it anyway. There aren’t any rules to cover an emergency of this kind. This was a new thing for me and I wasn’t used to thinking this way. I’d have to send out deviating signals, crank up the wrecking train—create some different impressions.
At first I was only able to do little things, local things. Tactics, really. Unexpected things like pouring a bottle of whiskey over my head and walking into a department store and act pie-eyed, knowing that everyone would be talking amongst themselves when I left. I was hoping that the news would spread. What mattered to me most was getting breathing room for my family. The whole spectral world could go to hell. My outer image would have to be something a bit more confusing, a bit more humdrum. It’s hard to live like this. It takes all your effort. The first thing that has to go is any form of artistic self-expression that’s dear to you. Art is unimportant next to life, and you have no choice. I had no hunger for it anymore, anyway. Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn’t work. It was impossible now for me to observe anything without being observed. Even when I walked to the corner store someone would spot me and sneak away to find a phone. In Woodstock I’d be out in the yard and a car would come rolling up, some guy would jump out of the passenger side, point in my direction and then walk away—and a bunch of sightseers would then come down the hill. Citizens would see me coming down the street and cross it, didn’t want to get caught—guilt by association. Sometimes in a restaurant (my name was widely known but my face not so at the time) one of the eaters who recognized me would go up to the cashier, point in my direction and whisper, “That’s him over there.” The cashier would tell someone and the news would go from table to table. It was like lightning struck the place. Necks would stretch. Folks chewing their food would spit it out, look at one another and say, “That him?” “You mean that guy that was sitting over there at that table with the bunch of kids?” It was like moving a mountain. My house was being battered, ravens constantly croaking ill omens at our door. What kind of alchemy, I wondered, could create a perfume that would make reaction to a person lukewarm, indifferent and apathetic? I wanted to get some. I had never intended to be on the road of heavy consequences and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t the toastmaster of any generation, and that notion needed to be pulled up by its roots. Liberty for myself and my loved ones had to be secured. I had no time to kill and I didn’t like what was being thrown at me. This main meal of garbage had to be mixed up with some butter and mushrooms and I’d have to go great lengths to do it. You gotta start somewhere.
I went to Jerusalem, got myself photographed at the Western Wall wearing a skullcap. The image was transmitted worldwide instantly and quickly all the great rags changed me overnight into a Zionist. This helped a little. Coming back I quickly recorded what appeared to be a country-western record and made sure it sounded pretty bridled and housebroken. The music press didn’t know what to make of it. I used a different voice, too. People scratched their heads. I started a rumor with my record company that I would be quitting music and going to college, the Rhode Island School of Design—which eventually leaked out to the columnists. “He won’t last a month,” some people said. Journalists began asking in print, “Whatever happened to the old him?” They could go to hell, too. Stories were printed about me trying to find myself, that I was on some eternal search, that I was suffering some kind of internal torment. It all sounded good to me. I released one album (a double one) where I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it, and then went back and scooped up everything that didn’t stick and released that, too. I missed out on Woodstock—just wasn’t there. Altamont—sympathy for the devil—missed that, too. Eventually I would even record an entire album based on Chekhov short stories—critics thought it was autobiographical—that was fine. I played a part in a movie, wore cowboy duds and galloped down the road. Not much required there. I guess I was naïve.
The novelist Herman Melville’s work went largely unnoticed after Moby-Dick. Critics thought that he crossed the literary line and recommended burning Moby-Dick. By the time of his death he was largely forgotten.
I had assumed that when critics dismissed my work, the same thing would happen to me, that the public would forget about me. How mad is that? Eventually, I would have to face the music—go back to performing—the long-awaited ballyhooed reunion tour—gypsy tours—changing ideologies like tires, like shoes, like guitar strings. What’s the difference? As long as my own form of certainty stayed intact, I owed nobody nothing. I wasn’t going to g
o deeper into the darkness for anybody. I was already living in the darkness. My family was my light and I was going to protect that light at all cost. That was where my dedication was, first, last and everything in-between. What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The press? I figured you lie to it. For the public eye, I went into the bucolic and mundane as far as possible. In my real life I got to do the things that I loved the best and that was all that mattered—the Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing…I was living on record royalties. In reality I was imperceptible, my image, that is. Sometime in the past I had written and performed songs that were most original and most influential, and I didn’t know if I ever would again and I didn’t care.
The actor Tony Curtis once told me that fame is an occupation in itself, that it is a separate thing. And Tony couldn’t be more right. The old image slowly faded and in time I found myself no longer under the canopy of some malignant influence. Eventually different anachronisms were thrust upon me—anachronisms of lesser dilemma—though they might seem bigger. Legend, Icon, Enigma (Buddha in European Clothes was my favorite)—stuff like that, but that was all right. These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around with them. Prophet, Messiah, Savior—those are tough ones.
Archibald MacLeish’s play Scratch had a couple of characters, one of them whose name was the title of the play. Scratch utters the lines “I know there is evil in the world—essential evil, not the opposite of good or the defective of good but something to which good itself is an irrelevance—a fantasy. No one can live as long as I have, hear what I have heard and not know that. I know too—more precisely—I am ready to believe that there may be something in the world—someone, if you prefer—that purposes evil, that intends it…powerful nations suddenly, without occasion, without apparent cause…decay. Their children turn against them. Their women lose their sense of being women. Their families disintegrate.” From there on, it only gets better. Writing songs for a play wouldn’t have been far-fetched for me and I had already composed a couple of things for him just to see if I could do it. I’d always liked the stage and even more so, the theater. It seemed like the most supreme craft of all craft. Whatever the environment, a ballroom or a sidewalk, the dirt of a country road, the action always took place in the eternal “now.”
My first appearances in a public spectacle had been on my hometown school auditorium stage, no small music box theater but a professional concert hall like Carnegie Hall built with East Coast mining money, with curtains and props, trapdoors and orchestra pit. My first performances were seen in the Black Hills Passion Play of South Dakota, a religious drama depicting the last days of Christ. This play always came to town during the Christmas season with professional actors in the leading roles, cages of pigeons, a donkey, a camel and a truck full of props. There were always parts that called for extras. One year I played a Roman soldier with a spear and helmet—breastplate, the works—a nonspeaking role, but it didn’t matter. I felt like a star. I liked the costume. It felt like a nerve tonic…as a Roman soldier I felt like a part of everything, in the center of the planet, invincible. That seemed a million years ago now, a million private struggles and difficulties ago.
I wasn’t feeling so invincible at the moment. Defiant, maybe. Anything but content. Surrounded on all sides. As far as I could see, nothing was visible. Nothing but my own kitchen. Nothing but the hot dogs with English muffins and noodles, the Cheerios and cornflakes with heavy cream—stirring flour into a large bowl for corn pudding and beating eggs, changing diapers and making bottles. Somehow between all that and maneuvering unmolested through the neighborhood and taking the dog for a walk, I’d gone to the piano, composed a few things for the play bearing in mind the titles that were given to me. The play itself was conveying some devastating truth, but I was going to stay far away from that. Truth was the last thing on my mind, and even if there was such a thing, I didn’t want it in my house. Oedipus went looking for the truth and when he found it, it ruined him. It was a cruel horror of a joke. So much for the truth. I was gonna talk out of both sides of my mouth and what you heard depended on which side you were standing. If I ever did stumble on any truth, I was gonna sit on it and keep it down. I had gone to New York earlier in the week and met with the play’s producer, Stewart Ostrow. I’d taken the songs up to his office in the Brill Building in New York and recorded them. He then sent the acetates to Archie.
While in New York, my wife and I went to the Rainbow Room on top of Rockefeller Center to see Frank Sinatra Jr., who was singing with a full orchestra. Why him and not somebody on the hip circuit? No hassles and nobody chasing me, that’s why…that and maybe because I felt a connection—I reckoned that we were about near the same age and that he was a contemporary of mine. Anyway Frank was a fine singer. I didn’t care if he was as good as his old man or not—he sounded fine, and I liked his big blasting band. Afterwards he came by and sat with us at our table. Obviously it had surprised him that someone like me would come see him, but when he saw that I genuinely liked show tunes, he eased up and relaxed, said he liked a few of my songs, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice,” asked me questions about what kind of places I played (I was retired and lived like a hermit but didn’t say that). He talked about the civil rights movement, said his father had been active in civil rights and had always fought for the underdog—that his father felt like he was one himself. Frank Jr. seemed pretty smart, nothing faked or put-on or ritzy about him. There was a legitimacy about what he did, and he knew who he was. The conversation rolled along.
“How do you think it would make you feel,” he said, “to find out that the underdog had turned out to be a son of a bitch?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “probably not so good.”
Gazing out through the wall of windows, you could see the spectacular city view. From sixty floors up, it was a different world.
After a while, I bought a red flower for my wife, one of the loveliest creatures in the world of women, and we got up on our feet and left, said good-bye to Frank.
A reply from MacLeish eventually arrived and he had some questions. I knew he would. He invited me to come back up to his place—we could tune up the compositions, integrate them and talk about them further. With little hesitation, I jumped behind the wheel of our long, four-door Ford station wagon sedan and headed up again across the New England countryside. Even behind the wheel with my eyes on the open road, I couldn’t keep the clanging reverberations out of my mind. I felt like a caged bird—like a refugee—zigzagging up the winding highways—felt like someone who was transporting a corpse across state lines and could be pulled over at any time.
I clicked on the radio. Johnny Cash was singing “Boy Named Sue.” Once upon a time Johnny had shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Now he was saying that he was stuck with a girl’s name that his father had given him. Johnny was trying to change his image, too. Aside from that, I didn’t see much similarity between my situation and anybody else’s—felt pretty isolated with just myself and my small but growing family facing a fantastic world of sorcery.
One intriguing thing that caught my eye was that in the boxing world Jerry Quarry had fought Jimmy Ellis in Oakland and it was a fired up affair. Jimmy Ellis was a “take the money and go home” kind of guy—boxing was a job to him, no more no less. He had a family to feed and didn’t care about becoming a legend or breaking any records. Jerry Quarry, a white boxer, was being touted as the new Great White Hope—an odious designation. Jerry, whose father had come to California on a boxcar, wanted no part of it. The white vigilante groups who came to cheer him didn’t move Quarry. Nor did the intense atmosphere—he wouldn’t accept their bigoted allegiance and resisted the dementia swirling around him. He didn’t need any gimmicks. I identified with both Ellis and Quarry and drew an analogy between our situations and responses to it. Like Quarry, I wasn’t going to acknowledge
being an emblem, symbol or spokesman either, and like Ellis, I too had a family to feed.
Rolling through the bright autumn day, the scenery had become a pale blur. For a minute I’d felt like I’d been moving around in circles. After a while, I cruised into Massachusetts and arrived again at Archie’s. Same thing as before—I was escorted in across the wooden bridge—up the path—in the distance a long dead tree, branches shooting off from the main trunk—all very serene, very picturesque. I crossed over the eroded gully full of rotting leaves with distilled beams of light coming off of rock fragments, walked up the dry, rocky ridge that led to his door. I went past a sign leaning up against the building, a wooden Masonite board with a base coat of outdoor paint and auto enamel and plastic letters. Once again I waited and looked back out the window to a cool ravine and clear running brook and wildflowers. A lot of flowers were still arranged in the room—flowers of deep purple, fernlike flowers rough to the touch, blue flowers with white centers—buds coiled at the tip and looking like a fiddle…Archie walked into the room and greeted me warmly—it was like seeing an old friend, and I wondered if he was going to touch on serious topics again, but he didn’t want to make chitchat.
He wondered why the songs weren’t darker than they were, and he made suggestions…he revisited and explained certain characters, said the main character was, among other things, envious, slanderous and baiting and that should be brought out more. I felt myself sitting there and degenerating into boorishness, felt like two parts of my self were beginning to battle. MacLeish wanted clear answers. He looked at me with his wise eyes. He possessed more knowledge of mankind and its vagaries than most men acquire in a lifetime. I wanted to tell him things were muddled, that a mob had been surrounding our house with bullhorns and calling on me to come out into the streets and lead a march on city hall, on Wall Street, on the Capitol…that mythological figures of the fates have been weaving and now cutting my thread of life…that there were a hundred thousand demonstrators in Washington and the police have surrounded the White House with transport busses bumper to bumper to protect the executive mansion. The president was inside watching a football game. People I’ve never heard of were calling for me to be there and take command. It was all making me want to throw up. In my dreams crowds were chanting, challenging me, shouting, “Follow us and fit in.” I wanted to tell him that life itself has turned into a prowling lion. I wanted to tell him that that I needed to escape the blaze of bullshit. I glanced around the room. The bookshelves were full of books and I noticed the novel Ulysses. Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records, had given me this as a gift, a first-edition copy of the book and I couldn’t make hide nor hair of it. James Joyce seemed like the most arrogant man who ever lived, had both his eyes wide open and great faculty of speech, but what he say, I knew not what. I wanted to ask MacLeish to explain James Joyce to me, to make sense of something that seemed so out of control, and I knew that he would have, but I didn’t. Deep down, I knew that I couldn’t have anything to add to the message of his play. He didn’t need my help anyway. He wanted only to talk about the songs for his play and that’s why I was here, but there was no hope and there was nothing to be done and soon that became obvious.