by Bob Dylan
Besides playing music, I liked doing those kinds of things. I purchased a used TV, stuck it on top of one of the cabinets, bought a mattress and got a rug that I spread across the hard-wood floor. I got a record player at Woolworth’s and put it on one of the tables. The small room seemed immaculate to me and I felt that for the first time I had a place of my own.
Suze and I were spending more and more time together, and I began to broaden my horizons, see a lot of what her world was like, especially the Off-Broadway scene…a lot of LeRoi Jones’s stuff, Dutchman, The Baptism. I also saw Gelber’s junkie play, The Connection, the Living Theater’s The Brig, and other remarkable plays. I went with her to where the artists and painters hung out, like Caffe Cino, Camino Gallery, Aegis Gallery. We went to see Comedia Del’Arte, a storefront on the Lower East Side that was built into a small theater with enormous puppets as big as people that jiggled and swung. I saw a couple of plays, one where a soldier, a prostitute, a judge and a lawyer were all the same puppet. The puppets, because of their size and the small, confining space, were odd, unsettling and confronting…nothing like the funny wooden dummy, the tuxedoed Charlie McCarthy, the Edgar Bergen puppet who we all knew and loved so well.
A new world of art was opening up my mind. Sometimes early in the day we’d go uptown to the city museums, see giant oil-painted canvases by artists like Velázquez, Goya, Delacroix, Rubens, El Greco. Also twentieth-century stuff—Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, Rouault, Bonnard. Suze’s favorite current modernist artist was Red Grooms, and he became mine, too. I loved the way everything he did crushed itself into some fragile world, the rickety clusters of parts all packed together and then, standing back, you could see the complex whole of it all. Grooms’s stuff spoke volumes to me. He was the artist I checked out most. Red’s stuff was extravagant, his work cut like it was done by acid. All of his mediums—crayon, water-color, gouache, sculpture or mixed media—collage tableaus—I liked the way he put the stuff together. It was bold, announced its presence in glaring details. There was a connection in Red’s work to a lot of the folk songs I sang. It seemed to be on the same stage. What the folk songs were lyrically, Red’s songs were visually—all the bums and cops, the lunatic bustle, the claustrophobic alleys—all the carnie vitality. Red was the Uncle Dave Macon of the art world. He incorporated every living thing into something and made it scream—everything side by side created equal—old tennis shoes, vending machines, alligators that crawled through sewers, dueling pistols, the Staten Island Ferry and Trinity Church, 42nd Street, profiles of skyscrapers. Brahman bulls, cowgirls, rodeo queens and Mickey Mouse heads, castle turrets and Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, creeps and greasers and weirdos and grinning, bejeweled nude models, faces with melancholy looks, blurs of sorrow—everything hilarious but not jokey. Familiar figures from history, too—Lincoln, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rembrandt—all done with graphic finesse, burned out as powerful as possible. I loved the way Grooms used laughter as a diabolical weapon. Subconsciously, I was wondering if it was possible to write songs like that.
About that time I began to make some of my own drawings. I actually picked up the habit from Suze, who drew a lot. What would I draw? Well, I guess I would start with whatever was at hand. I sat at the table, took out a pencil and paper and drew the typewriter, a crucifix, a rose, pencils and knives and pins, empty cigarette boxes. I’d lose track of time completely. An hour or two could go by and it would seem like only a minute. Not that I thought that I was any great drawer, but I did feel like I was putting an orderliness to the chaos around—something like Red did, but he did it on a much grander level. In a strange way I noticed that it purified the experience of my eye and I would make drawings of my own for years to come.
This was the same table that I’d sit at and compose songs. Not quite yet, though. You have to take the lead from somewhere, and there were only a few performers around who wrote songs and of them, my favorite was Len Chandler. But I just thought that was his own personal thing and it wasn’t enough to inspire me to do it myself. As far as I was concerned, Woody Guthrie had written the greatest songs and there was no way to top that. Eventually, though, while not trying to reweave the world, I did compose a slightly ironic song called “Let Me Die in My Footsteps.” I based it on an old Roy Acuff ballad. The song I wrote was inspired by the fallout shelter craze that had blossomed out of the Cold War. I suppose some considered it radical to come up with a song like that, but to me it wasn’t radical at all. In Northern Minnesota fallout shelters didn’t catch on, had no effect whatsoever on the Iron Range. As far as communists went, there wasn’t any paranoia about them. People weren’t scared of them, seemed to be a big to-do over nothing. Commies were symbolic of travelers from outer space. Mine owners were more to be feared, more of an enemy, anyway. Salesmen peddling fallout shelters had been turned away. Stores didn’t sell them and nobody built them. Houses had thick-walled basements, anyway. Besides no one liked thinking that someone else might have one and you didn’t. Or if you had one and someone else didn’t, that might not be too good, either. It could turn neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend. You couldn’t imagine having to confront some neighbor banging on your door saying something like, “Hey, look. It’s a matter of life and death and our friendship ain’t worth a bo diddley. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” How you could respond to a friend who was acting like a tyrant trying to force his way in, saying, “Listen I have young kids. My daughter’s only three and my son is two. Before I let you close them out, I’ll come to you with a gun. Now, quit the scam.” There wasn’t any honorable way out. Bomb shelters divided families and could create mutiny. Not that people weren’t concerned about the mushroom cloud—they were. But salesmen hawking the bomb shelters were met with expressionless faces.
Besides that, the general opinion was, in case of nuclear attack all you really needed was a surplus Geiger counter. It might become your most prized possession, would tell you what’s safe to eat and what’s dangerous. Geiger counters were easy to get. In fact, I even had one in my New York apartment, so writing the song about the futility of fallout shelters was not that radical. It’s not like I had to conform to any doctrine to do it. The song was personal and social at the same time, though. That was different. Even so, this song didn’t break down any barriers for me or perform any miracle. Most everything I wanted to say I could usually find in an old folk song or in one of Woody’s songs. When I began performing “Let Me Die in My Footsteps,” I didn’t even say I wrote it. I just slipped it in somewhere, said it was a Weavers song.
My perspective on all that was about to change. The air would soon shoot up in intensity and become more potent. My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms. Suze had been working behind the scenes in a musical production at the Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street. It was a presentation of songs written by Bertolt Brecht, the antifascist Marxist German poet-playwright whose works were banned in Germany, and Kurt Weill, whose melodies were like a combination of both opera and jazz. Previously they had had a big hit with a ballad called “Mack the Knife” that Bobby Darin had made popular. You couldn’t call this a play, it was more like a stream of songs by actors who sang. I went there to wait for Suze and was aroused straight away by the raw intensity of the songs…“Morning Anthem,” “Wedding Song,” “The World Is Mean,” “Polly’s Song,” “Tango Ballad,” “Ballad of the Easy Life.” Songs with tough language. They were erratic, un-rhythmical and herky-jerky—weird visions. The singers were thieves, scavengers or scallywags and they all roared and snarled. The entire world was narrowly confined between four streets. On the small stage, objects were barely discern-able—lampposts, tables, stoops, windows, corners of buildings, moon shining through roofed-in courtyards—grim surroundings, creepy sensations. Every song seemed to come from some obscure tradition, seemed to have a pistol in its hip pocket, a club or a brickbat and they came at you in crutches, braces and wheelchairs. They w
ere like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated.
Within a few minutes I felt like I hadn’t slept or tasted food for about thirty hours, I was so into it. The song that made the strongest impression was a show-stopping ballad, “A Ship the Black Freighter.” Its real title was “Pirate Jenny,” but I didn’t hear that in the song so I didn’t know what the real title was. It was sung by some vaguely masculine woman, dressed up like a scrubbing lady who performs petty tasks, goes about making up beds in a ratty waterfront hotel. What drew me into the song at first was the line about the ship the black freighter, that comes after every verse. That particular line took me back to the foghorns of ships that I’d heard in my youth and the grandiosity of the sounds had stuck in my mind. Seemed like they were right on top of us.
Duluth, even though it’s two thousand miles from the nearest ocean, was an international seaport. Ships from South America, Asia and Europe came and went all the time, and the heavy rumble of the foghorns dragged you out of your senses by your neck. Even though you couldn’t see the ships through the fog, you knew they were there by the heavy outbursts of thunder that blasted like Beethoven’s Fifth—two low notes, the first one long and deep like a bassoon. Foghorns sounded like great announcements. The big boats came and went, iron monsters from the deep—ships to wipe out all spectacles. As a child, slight, introverted and asthma stricken, the sound was so loud, so enveloping, I could feel it in my whole body and it made me feel hollow. Something out there could swallow me up.
After I heard the song maybe a couple of times, I kind of forgot about the foghorns and got tuned in to the point of view of the maid, where she’s coming from, and it’s the driest, coldest place. Her attitude is so strong and burning. “The gentlemen” who she is making up beds for have no idea of the hostility inside of her and the ship, the black freighter, seems to be a symbol for some messianic thing. It’s always getting closer and closer and maybe now it’s even got its damn foot in the door. The scrubbing lady is powerful and she’s masquerading as a nobody—she’s counting heads. The song takes place in a hideous netherworld where soon, “every building…a flat one, the whole stinking place will be down to the ground.” All except hers. Her building will be okay and she’ll be safe and sound. Later in the song the gentlemen begin to wonder who lives there. They’re in trouble, but they don’t know it. They were always in trouble, but never knew it. People are swarming near the docks and the gentlemen are chained up and brought to her and she’s asked if they should be killed now or later. It’s up to her. The old scrubbing lady’s eyes light up at the end of the song. The ship is shooting guns from its bow and the gentlemen are wiping the laughs off their faces. The ship is still turning around in the harbor. The old lady says, “Kill ’em right now, that’ll learn ’em.” What did the gentlemen do to deserve such a fate? The song doesn’t say.
This is a wild song. Big medicine in the lyrics. Heavy action spread out. Each phrase comes at you from a ten-foot drop, scuttles across the road and then another one comes like a punch on the chin. And then there’s always that ghost chorus about the black ship that steps in, fences it all off and locks it up tighter than a drum. It’s a nasty song, sung by an evil fiend, and when she’s done singing, there’s not a word to say. It leaves you breathless. In the small theater when the performance reached its climactic end the entire audience was stunned, sat back and clutched their collective solar plexus. I knew why it did, too. The audience was the “gentlemen” in the song. It was their beds that she was making up. It was their post office that she was sorting mail in, and it was their school she was teaching in. This piece left you flat on your back and it demanded to be taken seriously. It lingered. Woody had never written a song like that. It wasn’t a protest or topical song and there was no love for people in it.
Later, I found myself taking the song apart, trying to find out what made it tick, why it was so effective. I could see that everything in it was apparent and visible but you didn’t notice it too much. Everything was fastened to the wall with a heavy bracket, but you couldn’t see what the sum total of all the parts were, not unless you stood way back and waited ’til the end. It was like the Picasso painting Guernica. This heavy song was a new stimulant for my senses, indeed very much like a folk song but a folk song from a different gallon jug in a different backyard. I felt like I wanted to snatch up a bunch of keys and go see about that place, see what else was there. I took the song apart and unzipped it—it was the form, the free verse association, the structure and disregard for the known certainty of melodic patterns to make it seriously matter, give it its cutting edge. It also had the ideal chorus for the lyrics. I wanted to figure out how to manipulate and control this particular structure and form which I knew was the key that gave “Pirate Jenny” its resilience and outrageous power.
I’d think about this later in my dumpy apartment. I hadn’t done anything yet, wasn’t any kind of songwriter but I’d become rightly impressed by the physical and ideological possibilities within the confines of the lyric and melody. I could see that the type of songs I was leaning towards singing didn’t exist and I began playing with the form, trying to grasp it—trying to make a song that transcended the information in it, the character and plot.
Totally influenced by “Pirate Jenny,” though staying far away from its ideological heart, I began fooling around with things—took a story out of the Police Gazette, a tawdry incident about a hooker in Cleveland, a minister’s daughter called Snow White, who killed one of her customers in a grotesque and ugly way. I started with that using the other song as a prototype and piled lines on, short bursts of lines…five or six freeform verses and used the first two lines of the “Frankie & Albert” ballad as the chorus. The lines that say, “Frankie was a good girl. Everybody knows. Paid a hundred dollars for Albert’s new suit of clothes.” I liked the idea of doing it, but the song didn’t come off. I was missing something.
The alliance between Suze and me didn’t turn out exactly to be a holiday in the woods. Eventually fate flagged it down and it came to a full stop. It had to end. She took one turn in the road and I took another. We just passed out of each others’ lives, but before that, before the fire went out, we stayed together a lot at the West 4th Street apartment. During the summers there was more than enough stifling heat. The small place was like an oven full of suffocating air that you could just about chew and swallow. In the winter, there was no heat. It was biting cold and we kept each other warm snuggled under blankets.
Suze was there by my side when I began recording for Columbia Records. The events which led up to it were very unexpected, and I had never really fixed my gaze on any big recording company. I would have been the last one to believe it if you’d have told me I’d be recording for Columbia Records, one of the top labels in the country and one with big name mainstream artists like Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett and Mitch Miller. What put me there amongst that crowd came about because of John Hammond. John had first seen and heard me at Carolyn Hester’s apartment. Carolyn was a Texan guitar-playing singer who I knew and played with around town. She was going places and it didn’t surprise me. Carolyn was eye catching, down-home and double barrel beautiful. That she had known and worked with Buddy Holly left no small impression on me and I liked being around her. Buddy was royalty, and I felt like she was my connection to it, to the rock-and-roll music that I’d played earlier, to that spirit.
Carolyn was married to Richard Fariña, a part-time novelist and adventurer who people said was with Castro in the Sierra Madre Mountains and had fought with the IRA. Whatever that was about, I thought he was the luckiest guy in the world to be married to Carolyn. We met over there at her apartment, me and guitarist Bruce Langhorne and stand-up bass player Bill Lee, whose four-year-old son would become the filmmaker Spike Lee. Eventually, Bruce and Bill would play on my records. They’d played with Odetta and could play everything from melodic jazz to rockin’ blues. If you had them playing with you, that�
��s pretty much all you would need to do just about anything.
Carolyn had asked me to play harmonica on some songs for her debut record on Columbia and to teach her a couple of other things that she had heard me do. I was happy to do that. Hammond had wanted to meet us and get everything in running order, to hear the songs Carolyn was thinking about recording. That’s what the meeting was all about. That’s where he first heard me. He heard my harp playing and guitar strumming, even heard me singing a few things in harmony with Carolyn, but I didn’t notice him noticing me. I wouldn’t have done that. I was just there for her and that was all. Before leaving he asked me if I recorded for anybody. He was the first authoritative figure who ever asked me that. He just kind of said it in passing. I shook my head, didn’t hold my breath to hear him respond and he didn’t and that was that.
Between that time and the next time I met him, it seemed like a tidal wave had happened, in my world anyway. I’d been playing at the most prominent folk club in America, the one called Gerde’s Folk City, and was on the bill with a bluegrass band, The Greenbriar Boys, and had been given a rave review in the folk and jazz section of the New York Times. It was unusual because I was the second act on the bill and The Greenbriar Boys were hardly mentioned. I had played there once before and had gotten no review. This article appeared the night before Carolyn’s recording session and the next day Hammond saw the newspaper. The sessions went well and as everyone was packing up and leaving, Hammond asked me to come into the control booth and told me that he’d like me to record for Columbia Records. I said that, yeah, I would like to do that. It felt like my heart leaped up to the sky, to some intergalactic star. Inside I was in a state of unstable equilibrium, but you wouldn’t have known it. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed too good to be true.