Chronicles, Volume One

by Bob Dylan

  Later when I told Grossman what I did, he just about went berserk. “What are you talking about?” he said. It wasn’t what he expected. Grossman did get me out of my Leeds Music contract, though. I felt like that agreement didn’t really matter and that Lou Levy hadn’t really discovered me or could do anything with my songs anyway—at least not the ones I was doing then. I’d only been there as a favor to Hammond anyway. On this deal breaker, Grossman had given me $1,000, told me to go up and see Lou Levy, give the money to him and tell him that I wanted to buy my way out of the contract. I did that and Lou was only too happy to oblige. “Sure, son,” he said. He was still smoking that damn cigar. “There’s something unique about your songs, but I can’t put my finger on it.” I gave Lou the $1,000 and he gave me the contract back.

  Grossman later put me with Witmark Music, an old line–style publishing company—the epitome of Tin Pan Alley, which published the standards “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “The Very Thought of You,” “Jeepers Creepers,” countless other big songs. My destiny wouldn’t be made manifest up here at Leeds Music, but there was no way to know that in these moments while putting down my early songs into a tape recorder.

  After Lou heard my Guthrie song, he asked me if I ever wrote any songs about baseball players. I told him I hadn’t and he said that there were some players worth writing about. Lou was a baseball fanatic and could give you statistics on different players. One of the framed photos on the cabinet showed him standing shoulder to shoulder with Ford Frick, the commissioner of baseball. In another one he was at a charity function sitting at a table with Claire Ruth, the Babe’s widow. He knew a lot about the game and asked me if I ever heard of Paul Waner. Lou said Paul was a hitter who could blast a ball back at a pitcher 150 miles an hour and break his face. He was that accurate. Opposing pitchers were scared to ever dare brush him back at the plate and that Ted Williams could do that, too…that a pitcher would rather throw the ball in the stands than take a chance on hitting either of them. Lou couldn’t stand the home-run ball, thought it was the most boring aspect of the game…said that when a player hit one, he wanted his money back. He said all this while puffing away on a big stogie filling the room with formless clouds. I didn’t follow baseball that much but I did know that Roger Maris who was with the Yankees was in the process of breaking Babe Ruth’s home-run record and that meant something. Maris was from Hibbing, Minnesota, of all places. Of course, I never heard of him there, nobody did. I was hearing a lot about him now, though, and so was the rest of the land. On some level I guess I took pride in being from the same town. There were other Minnesotans, too, that I felt akin to. Charles Lindbergh, the first aviator to fly nonstop across the Atlantic in the ’20s. He was from Little Falls. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a descendant of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and who himself wrote The Great Gatsby, was from St. Paul. Fitzgerald was called “the prophet of the jazz age.” Sinclair Lewis had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first American to do so. Lewis had written Elmer Gantry and was the master of absolute realism, had invented it. He was from Sauk Center, Minnesota. And then there was Eddie Cochran, one of the early rock-and-roll geniuses who was from Albert Lee, Minnesota. Native sons—adventurers, prophets, writers and musicians. They were all from the North Country. Each one followed their own vision, didn’t care what the pictures showed. Each one of them would have understood what my inarticulate dreams were about. I felt like I was one of them or all of them put together.

  The folk music scene had been like a paradise that I had to leave, like Adam had to leave the garden. It was just too perfect. In a few years’ time a shit storm would be unleashed. Things would begin to burn. Bras, draft cards, American flags, bridges, too—everybody would be dreaming of getting it on. The national psyche would change and in a lot of ways it would resemble the Night of the Living Dead. The road out would be treacherous, and I didn’t know where it would lead but I followed it anyway. It was a strange world ahead that would unfold, a thunderhead of a world with jagged lightning edges. Many got it wrong and never did get it right. I went straight into it. It was wide open. One thing for sure, not only was it not run by God, but it wasn’t run by the devil either.

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Join our mailing list to get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.