by Bob Dylan
The sun had set and the solemn night was establishing itself. I was asked to stay for dinner, but politely declined. He’d been patient with me. Suddenly on my way out, my mind sprang back to another time, the time I’d seen the Leopard Girl. Sometimes you just think of things you’ve seen, old memories that you’ve salvaged from the rubble of your life. The Leopard Girl. A carnie barker had explained about her, how her mother who was pregnant with her in North Carolina saw a leopard on a dark road at night and the animal had marked her unborn child. Then I saw the Leopard Girl and when I did, my emotions got weak.
I wondered, now, whether all of us—MacLeish, me and everyone else—had been inscribed and marked before birth, given a sticker, some secret sign. If that’s true, then none of us could change anything. We’re all running a wild race. We play the game the way it’s set up or we don’t play. If the secret sign thing is true, then it wouldn’t be fair to judge anybody…and I hoped MacLeish wouldn’t be judging me.
It was time to go. If I’d have stayed any longer at Archie’s I would have had to take up residence in his house. I asked him, just out of curiosity, why he didn’t want to write the songs himself. He said he wasn’t a songwriter and that his play needed another voice, another angle—that sometimes we become too content. Walking back over the small stream, it seemed like I was seeing the small ringlets of a river. Archie’s play was so heavy—so full of midnight murder. There was no way I could make its purpose mine, but it was great meeting him, a man who had reached the moon when most of us scarcely make it off the ground. In some ways, he taught me how to swim the Atlantic. I wanted to thank him but found it difficult. We waved at each other from the roadway and I knew I’d never see him again.
Bob Johnston, my record producer, was on the line. He was calling me from Nashville and had reached me in East Hampton. We were living in a rented house on a quiet street with majestic old elms—a Colonial house with plantation-shuttered windows. It was hidden from the street by elevated hedges. There was a large backyard and a key to a gated dune which led to the pristine Atlantic sandy beach. The house belonged to Henry Ford. East Hampton, which was originally settled by farmers and fishermen, was now a refuge for artists and writers and wealthy families. Not really a place but a “state of mind.” If your balance had been severely disrupted, this was a place where you could get it back. Some folks there traced their families back three hundred years and some houses dated back to 1700—there’d been witch trials there in the past. Wainscott, Springs, Amagansett—green expanses—English style windmills—year round charm and a unique kind of light approximate to the woods and oceans.
I started painting landscapes there. There was plenty to do. We had five kids and often went to the beach, boated on the bay, dug for clams, spent afternoons at a lighthouse near Montauk, went to Gardiner’s Island—hunted for Captain Kidd’s buried treasure—rode bikes, go-carts and pulled wagons—went to the movies and the outdoor markets, walked around on Division Street—drove over to Springs a lot, a painter’s paradise where De Kooning had his studio. We had rented the house under my mother’s maiden name and had no trouble getting around. My face wasn’t that well known, although the name would have made people uncomfortable.
Earlier in the week we had gotten back from Princeton, New Jersey, where I had been given a Honorary Doctorate degree. It had been a weird adventure. Somehow, I had motivated David Crosby to come along. Crosby was part of a new supergroup, but I knew him from when he was in The Byrds, part of the West Coast music scene. They’d recorded a song of mine, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and the record made it to the top of the charts. Crosby was a colorful and unpredictable character, wore a Mandrake the Magician cape, didn’t get along with too many people and had a beautiful voice—an architect of harmony. He was tottering on the brink of death even then and could freak out a whole city block all by himself, but I liked him a lot. He was out of place in The Byrds. He could be an obstreperous companion.
We pulled off of Route 80 in a ’69 Buick Electra, found the university on a hot and cloudless day. In short time the officials led me into a crowded room and put me in a robe, and soon I was looking out over a crowd of well-dressed people in the sun. There were also others on the stage getting honorary degrees and I needed mine as much as they needed theirs but for different reasons. Walter Lippmann, the liberal columnist, Coretta Scott King, some others—but all eyes were on me. I stood there in the heat staring out at the crowd, daydreaming, had attention-span disorder.
When my turn came to accept the degree, the speaker introducing me said something like how I distinguished myself in carminibus canendi and that I now would enjoy all the university’s individual rights and privileges wherever they pertain, but then he added, “Though he is known to millions, he shuns publicity and organizations preferring the solidarity of his family and isolation from the world, and though he is approaching the perilous age of thirty, he remains the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America.” Oh Sweet Jesus! It was like a jolt. I shuddered and trembled but remained expressionless. The disturbed conscience of Young America! There it was again. I couldn’t believe it! Tricked once more. The speaker could have said many things, he could have emphasized a few things about my music. When he said to the crowd that I preferred isolation from the world, it was like he told them that I preferred being in an iron tomb with my food shoved in on a tray.
The sunlight was blocking my vision, but I could still see the faces gawking at me with such strange expressions. I was so mad I wanted to bite myself. Lately the public perception of me had begun to shift and move around like a yo-yo, but this kind of thing could set it back a thousand years. Didn’t they know what was happening? Even the Russian newspaper Pravda had called me a money-hungry capitalist. Even the Weathermen, a notorious group who made homemade bombs in basements to blow up public buildings, who had taken their name from a line in one of my songs, had recently changed their name from the Weathermen to the Weather Underground. I was losing all kinds of credibility. There were all kinds of things going on. I was glad I came to get the degree, though. I could use it. Every look and touch and scent of it spelled respectability and had something of the spirit of the universe in it. After whispering and mumbling my way through the ceremony, I was handed the scroll. We piled back into the big Buick and drove away. It had been a strange day. “Bunch of dickheads on auto-stroke,” Crosby said.
Johnston asked over the phone if I was thinking about recording. Of course I was. As long as my records were still selling, why wouldn’t I be thinking about recording? I didn’t have a whole lot of songs, but what I did have were the MacLeish pieces—and I figured I could add to them—make up more in the studio if I had to and Johnston was raring to go…working with him was like a drunken joyride. Bob was an interesting cat—originally from West Texas, living in Tennessee, built like a wrestler, thick wrists and big forearms, barreled chest, short but with a personality that makes him seem bigger than he really is—a musician and songwriter who had even written a couple of songs that Elvis recorded.
Johnston was trying to get us to move to Nashville, and every time we were there he tried to sell it to us as being very laid-back and having everything you need. It’s been reformed, he told us. People do their own thing here. Nobody cares who anybody is. You can stand on the street ’til morning and no one will see you.
I’d been there a few times to make some records—first time I recorded there was in ’66. The town was like being in a soap bubble. They nearly ran Al Kooper, Robbie Robertson and me out of town for having long hair. All the songs coming out of the studios then were about slut wives cheating on their husbands or vice versa.
Slowly driving around Nashville in his red Eldorado convertible, Johnston pointed out the sights. “There’s Eddy Arnold’s house.” He’d point to another one. “That house is where Waylon lives. That one over there is Tom T. Hall’s. That’s Faron Young’s.” He’d turn the corner and then signal somewhere
else. “Porter Wagoner’s place is up that street.” I’d lean back in the big leather cushioned seat, gaze around from east to west. Johnston had fire in his eyes. He had that thing that some people call “momentum.” You could see it in his face and he shared that fire, that spirit. Columbia’s leading folk and country producer, he was born one hundred years too late. He should have been wearing a wide cape, a plumed hat and riding with his sword held high. Johnston disregarded any warning that might get in his way. His idea for producing a record was to keep the machines oiled, turn ’em on and let ’er rip…there was no telling who he’d bring to the studio and there was always heavy traffic, and yet he seemed to have a place for everybody. If a song wasn’t going right or things were fluttering, he’d come out into the studio and say stuff like, “Gentlemen, we just have too many men on the floor.” That was his way of sorting things out. Johnston lived on low country barbeque, and he was all charm—referred to one of his judge friends in Nashville as that “bob-tailed politician.” “You gotta meet him,” he said, “I gotta get you two together sometime.” Johnston was unreal. We wouldn’t be recording in Nashville this time, though. We were going to be recording in New York City and he was going to have to book the musicians and either bring them with him or else find them here.
I was wondering who he was going to bring to the sessions this time and was hoping he’d bring Charlie Daniels. He’d brought Charlie before, but he’d failed to bring him a few times, too. I felt I had a lot in common with Charlie. The kind of phrases he’d use, his sense of humor, his relationship to work, his tolerance for certain things. Felt like we had dreamed the same dream with all the same distant places. A lot of his recollections seemed to coincide with mine. Charlie would fiddle with stuff and make sense of it. I had no band at the time and relied on the A&R man or producer to throw one together. When Charlie was around, something good would usually come out of the sessions. Johnston had moved Daniels to Nashville from North Carolina to play guitar and be a side-man on other artists’ records. Charlie played fiddle, too, but Johnston didn’t allow him to play it when he was on my sessions. Years earlier Charlie had a band in his hometown called The Jaguars who had made a few surf rockabilly records, and although I hadn’t made any records in my hometown, I had a band, too, about the same time. I felt our early histories were somewhat similar. Charlie eventually struck it big. After hearing the Allman Brothers and the side-winding Lynyrd Skynyrd, he’d find his groove and prove himself with his own brand of dynamics, coming up with a new form of hillbilly boogie that was pure genius. Atomic fueled—with surrealistic double fiddle playing and great tunes like “Devil Went Down to Georgia.” For a time there, Charlie had it all.
Al Kooper, who had happened to discover Lynyrd Skynyrd, had played on some of my best records, so I asked Johnston to call him. That was my only suggestion to Johnston as to who to book. I thought Al might be in New York anyway. Kooper was from Brooklyn or Queens and had been in the teen group The Royal Teens growing up. The group had a big hit with a song called “Short Shorts.” Kooper played a variety of instruments and was good at them all. He had the right feel. He was a songwriter, too, out of the New York scene. Gene Pitney had recorded a song of his. Kooper put together groups like Blood, Sweat and Tears, The Blues Project, even a supergroup with Steven Stills and Michael Bloomfield, but he’d walked away from them all. He was a talent scout, too, he was the Ike Turner of the white world. All he needed was a dynamo chick singer. Janis Joplin would have been the perfect front singer for Al. I mentioned this once to Albert Grossman, the man who had managed me and now was managing Janis’s career. Grossman said it was the stupidest thing he ever heard. I didn’t think it was so stupid, though, I thought it was visionary. Sadly, Janis would soon breathe no more and Kooper would be in eternal musical limbo. I should have been a manager.
Within a week I was in the New York Columbia studios with Johnston at the helm, and he’s thinking that everything I’m recording is fantastic. He always does. He’s thinking that something is gonna strike pay dirt, that everything is totally together. On the contrary. Nothing was ever together. Not even after a song had been finished and recorded was it ever together. For one of these sets of lyrics, Kooper played some Teddy Wilson riffs on the piano. There were three girl singers in the room, who sounded like they’d been plucked from a choir and one of them did some improvisational scat singing. The whole thing was done in just one take and called “If Dogs Run Free.”
I recorded some of the earlier stuff from the MacLeish play that did have melodies and that seemed to go well. Whatever else fit—fragments, tunes, offbeat phrases. It didn’t matter. My reputation was firm in hand—at least these songs wouldn’t make any gory headlines. Message songs? There weren’t any. Anybody listening for them would have to be disappointed. As if I was going to make a career out of that anyway. Regardless, you could still feel the anticipation in the air. When will the old him be back? When will the door burst open and the goose appear? Not today. I felt like these songs could blow away in cigar smoke, which suited me fine. That my records were still selling surprised even me. Maybe there were good songs in the grooves and maybe there weren’t—who knows? But they weren’t the kind where you hear an awful roaring in your head. I knew what those kind of songs were like and these weren’t them. It’s not like I hadn’t any talent, I just wasn’t feeling the full force of the wind. No stellar explosions. I was leaning against the console and listening to one of the playbacks. It sounded okay.
Johnston had asked me earlier, “What do you think you’ll call this record?” Titles! Everybody likes titles. There’s a lot to be said in a title. I didn’t know, though, and hadn’t thought about it. But one thing I did know was that there’d be a photo of me and Victoria Spivey on the cover. The photo had been taken a few years earlier in a small recording studio. I knew that this photo would be on the cover even before I recorded the songs. Maybe I was even making this record because I had the cover in mind and needed something to go into the sleeve. It could be. “Down and Out on the Scene, how does that sound?” Johnston stared at me and made out of it what he would. “Oh shit, that’s gonna defang ’em all.” I didn’t know who the “them all” were that he was referring to, probably the executives at Columbia Records. He was always at war with them for some reason or another. He thought of them all as a bunch of rattlesnakes. “On what scene, where?” he asked. “It should be big.” Johnston liked places. He had produced the Johnny Cash at San Quentin record. He liked naming places, thought they created atmospheres. “Oh, I don’t know, someplace on top the world. Paris, Barcelona, Athens…one of those places.” Johnston looked up. “Oh shit man, I gotta get me a travel poster. That’s great!” But it wasn’t great. It was too soon to be talking about a title, anyway.
I gazed around the room, got up and nervously paced around a few times, watched the clock on the wall—it seemed to be running backwards. I sat back down feeling lines plowing into my face and the whites of my eyes turning yellow. Al Kooper was clowning around, telling shaggy dog stories. I was listening to Daniels practicing scales on the fiddle, thumbing through some magazines that were left on the table, Collier’s, Billboard, Look magazine. Running across an article in Male magazine about a guy, James Lally, a radio man in World War II who had crashed with his pilot in the Philippines, I got sidetracked for a second. It was a gut crunching article, unfiltered. Armstrong, the pilot, was killed in the crash, but Lally was taken prisoner by the Japanese, who took him to a camp and beheaded him with a samurai sword and then used his head for bayonet practice. I pushed the magazine away. Russ Kunkel, the drummer on the sessions, was sitting on a couch with his eyes halfway shut, tapping two sticks together—gazing through the glass darkly. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lally and felt like moaning in the wind.
Buzzy Feiten, one of the guitar players, was laying the groundwork for a tune maybe we’d cut tomorrow or the next day or maybe never get to it at all. Johnston came in, cheerful as always and he had a lot
of zest. Few people have it for long, but he’s got a never-ending supply and it’s not faked. I had just heard the song “New Morning,” on the playback and thought it had come out pretty good. New Morning might make a good title, I thought and then said it to Johnston. “Man, you were reading my mind. That’ll put ’em in the palm of your hand—they’ll have to take one of them mind-training courses that you do while you sleep to get the meaning of that.” Exactly. And I would have to take one of them mind-reading courses to know what Johnston meant by saying what he just said. It didn’t matter, I knew where Bob must have gotten that from, though. I’d brought a book, Secret of Mind Power by Harry Lorayne, to the studio and had left it laying on one of the couches. I thought that the book might help me to continue freeze-framing my image, help me in learning how to suggest only shadows of my possible self.