On the Road with Bob Dylan (25 page)

Dylan listens attentively throughout, tapping his foot, suppressing a smile, even giggling at the line “took long walks at night” and wondering out loud, “How’d he know that?” When it was over, there was a second of embarrassed silence, then Dylan smiles. “Maybe Neuwirth ought to sing this before I go on,” he smiles at Jack, a reference to Neuwirth’s tribute song to Elliot. A second later, Dylan is loping down the hall.

The next day, Thursday, the rain is teeming down as Ratso pulls the Granada out of the driveway and scoots off toward New Haven. It’s to be another doubleheader, two shows at the large Coliseum, a building that looks like it was designed to serve as a set for
2001
. Ratso parks in the nearby lot and joins the young crowd bustling for the entrance. This is the most cosmopolitan date yet, New Haven, home of Yale, and the audience is the freakiest Ratso’s encountered this tour.

The first show goes without a hitch, but the second brings out all the stars. Ratso notes Bruce Springsteen, Bill Graham, Patti Smith, even a silver-ponytailed Albert Grossman in the audience. But he’s more concerned with finding his own guests, Tom
Pacheco, who’s coming up from the Village with a tape of the song for Dylan that Kemp requested, and George Lois, up to represent Rubin Carter and negotiate a possible benefit for the boxer’s defense fund.

“Motherfucker!” a friendly voice booms out as Ratso wanders near the stage. It’s Lois, sitting in the third row with Paul Sapounakis, the owner of the New York nightclub the Blue Angel, and a member of the Hurricane Fund. Ratso sits down just as Ronee Blakley steps to the mike. “I’d like to bring on a special friend,” she says huskily, and a radiant Joni Mitchell walks on to a thunderous standing ovation. She looks Parisian in a beret, black shirt, and violet pants, and they both share a piano stool for Blakley’s “Dues.” Joni then picks up an acoustic guitar and does two new ballads, both haunting and beautiful, and leaves to another standing ovation. Lois and Sapounakis talk through Elliot’s set but fall quiet when Dylan struts on. But the tour is taking its toll on Dylan’s voice, as it has on Neuwirth’s and Blakley’s. His stage presence is as great as ever but the songs seem to suffer a bit and he appears to be rushing through them.

At intermission Lois turns to Ratso, “You should see the
Newark Star Journal
. They printed all the fucking lyrics to ‘Hurricane.’” They slap hands. “I was talking to Ali the other day, trying to get him to emcee the benefit,” Lois enthuses, “and a few months ago I had mentioned that Dylan might play and Ali said, ‘Who he? Who he?’ but now after the single when I told him it looks like we got Dylan for the show, Ali says, ‘Oh, you mean the big white singer.’ I like that,” Lois laughs, “‘big white singer.’”

The curtain rises to “Blowing in the Wind” and Ratso spies Albert Grossman in the third row center, munching on popcorn. “We’re gonna do this next one for Gertrude Stein,” Dylan announces. Lois spots Ginsberg walking to a seat. “What’s he doing on the tour?” he asks Ratso. “Is he getting paid?”

Dylan leaves and Baez commands the stage, following “Diamonds and Rust” with the
a cappella
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” which has
been getting a marvelous reception so far. Lois and Sapounakis are attentive, and when Baez breaks into “Joe Hill,” Lois’ face lights up. “I used to sing this in Music and Art when I was a commie.” He nudges Ratso. “You ever hear Robeson sing it? It’ll knock you on your ass.”

After the song, Baez brings on Mimi Fariña, her younger sister, and they harmonize together beautifully. After a few numbers, Sapounakis leans over Lois to Ratso. “I don’t understand something,” he puzzles. “If they’re sisters how come they have different last names?” Ratso looks incredulous and leans over to George. “That guy own a nightclub?” Just then, Patti Smith walks by and Ratso points out the new sensation to George. “Can you imagine living with that all your life?” Lois marvels.

“Please come to Boston,” Baez is crooning the Kenny Loggins hit that Ratso loathes so much. “What do you think of this song?” he asks Lois. George listens to a bar or two, then turns back. “It sucks,” he sneers, “it’s like a McDonald’s hamburger.” “You been a lot of fun, thank you,” Baez trills as she prepares to exit. “She doesn’t know what fun is,” the adman snorts, “she should put her head between my legs.”

Dylan stalks on, trailing a long Tibetan scarf from his black leather jacket. The makeup is caked now, and his eyes are searingly intense, giving him the look of a maniacal character in a Fritz Lang movie. He sits down on the stool and plows right into “I Don’t Believe You,” a gem from the past. The band strolls on and “One More Cup” is next, with a completely new, slower arrangement than the one used when the tour opened. Dylan is on this show, his phrasing as precise and stunning as karate chops. Then they start into “Hurricane.” “This is it.” Lois jabs Paul and Ratso. “Do it good, Bobby,” he screams toward the stage. They bounce along to the song, slapping hands every so often, jumping to a standing ovation at the conclusion. “All right, motherfucker,” Lois exults.

After that, the rest of the set seems anticlimactic, and Ratso follows George and Paul to the stage door. Lois and Sapounakis enter,
but Ratso gets stopped. “He’s with us,” Lois tells the security guard, “he works for Rubin.” Kemp hurries over. “Look George, it’s fine for you to come backstage, but we can’t let Ratso.”

“But Lou, Ratso works for Rubin. He’s on the defense committee.”

“He’s a reporter. We can’t have reporters backstage,” Kemp snaps.

“Look, I know I’m a guest of yours, but Ratso is a very important part of our committee. Rubin would be upset if he gets hassled.”

“He’s still a reporter,” Kemp argues, “he might hear or see something he shouldn’t.”

Lois apologizes to the reporter-defender and goes back, as Ratso watches Patti Smith and her entourage, Grossman and his wife, Springsteen, his girlfriend, and about fifteen Columbia Records executives pass by and head backstage. Just then, Pacheco and his girlfriend Melissa walk up. Pacheco is wearing his standard Australian cowboy hat and he’s carrying a beautiful hand-painted wine bottle, a gift for Dylan. Ratso knows he’s too shy to push his way back, so he hollers for Kemp and introduces the folksinger to the manager. Kemp gets the tape and escorts Pacheco back.

But Ratso isn’t really missing much. It’s a mob scene backstage, almost fifty people, few of whom know each other, few of whom even have much in common, so little enclaves form, with the hurried glances and suspicious whispers that are so endemic to the rock ’n roll business.

Dylan is sitting in the corner of a small room, surrounded by a mob, makeup smeared by his sweat, fatigue etched into his face, absentmindedly playing with a rose. He gets introduced to Springsteen and they exchange a few taciturn sentences, Dylan shyly glancing to the floor, swinging the rose back and forth until suddenly the flower flies off, leaving him holding the stem. The awkward silence is broken by Springsteen’s red-haired girlfriend Karen, who asks Dylan why he wears makeup. “I saw it once in a movie,” he mumbles.

After a while Pacheco and Melissa come back out, bottle still in tow, and Ratso joins them as they head for the cars. “We couldn’t get near Dylan, too many people.” Pacheco sadly tucks the wine bottle under his arm. “I’ll send it to him for Christmas.” On the way to the garage, they pass a wiped-out Springsteen, in a dirty mechanic’s jumpsuit, draped around his girlfriend who’s supporting him on their way to the waiting limo. “Hey,” Ratso points, “he looked so fine at first and left looking just like a ghost.”

They arrive at Ratso’s car only to find more sabotage. The distributor cap has nearly been pulled out of the engine and the car refuses to start. Ratso curses, hops into Pacheco’s car, and they go to search for an open gas station.

Instead they find a diner and two hours later it’s 5
A.M.
, Melissa is almost sleeping, Pacheco’s got a long drive back to the Village, so they head back to the Coliseum. The Hertz office opens around 7:30 and Ratso opts to kill a couple of hours at the downtown Dunkin’ Donuts, so he parts company with his friends, walks over to an all-night newsstand, snatches up a copy of
Hustler
magazine, and settles into a rear stool at the donut shop. Later, he walks over to the Hertz office, picks out a new bright-red Monte Carlo, and slides in next to the Hertz mechanic who’s gonna go check out the Granada.

The old black man floors the car and they speed past the lovely ivy-covered walls of Yale. “Fucking whorehouse,” the mechanic spits, eyes scanning the virginal 7
A.M.
campus, “bunch of junkies go here.” His bony finger points toward Yale’s green. “They always catch them down there on the green with no pants on, fucking chicks.”

The Hertz man expertly wheels the car around a corner and heads up toward the Coliseum. “What do you do?” he asks Ratso. The reporter explains about the tour, Dylan, Baez, etc. The old man’s eyes light up. “I used to sing. I was in showbiz, still do it part-time. It’s a dog, though.” They fall silent. The Hertz man shakes his head, moans, “I’ll tell ya, those fucking one-night stands kill ya, most
of us old-timers are getting out. We don’t play that shit for young folks. We work gigs for the fur-and-diamond set.” He swings the car up the long circular ramp of the parking facility. “Where the fuck does this thing end?” he wonders halfway up. “Where you from? New York? Yeah, I wouldn’t live in that motherfucker for anything. I live here now. I’ve had it with the fucking road. You know how most entertainers are, make it and fuck it up. They think it’ll last forever. Well I got a fucking house out of it. You want some advice?” The Hertz man pauses and stares at Ratso. Ratso nods. “Save it.” He floors the Monte Carlo through the deserted parking level.

“What’s your name?” Ratso finally asks.

“Ray Reid.”

“What group did you work with?”

“The Inkspots, joined in I forget the fucking year, but I been with ’em for fourteen years. I’m sixty-two now. It’s a rough fucking life, man. Living out of a suitcase. It’s lots of fun now when we still do it. It’s in our blood. Just shuck it and fuck it. We had a chance to go on the road and do one-nighters last winter but we said fuck it. I don’t want it no more. We were out with Andy Kirk and the Clouds of Joy last time. Your parents heard of him. We went out for ten weeks, one-nighters.” He spots the Granada and stops on a dime. “Yup, you’ve got a car here.” Ray hops out and quickly looks over the Granada engine. “Shit, we gotta leave this motherfucker here and get a tow truck.”

On the way back, Ratso fills Ray in on some of his experiences with this tour. Ray’s soaking in the road stories, his eyes wide, his cracked face breaking into a grin. “Shit, when I get off if I want I go out on a gig,” he sighs, “but through the week I gotta go and make that dollar shit. Why not? It’s not a bad job. They may give you shit about getting this Monte Carlo for that Granada though.”

“Fuck ’em,” Ratso fumes expansively, “I’ll tell ’em they fucked me out of a four-thousand-dollar gig because the car wouldn’t start.” Ratso smiles and pulls into the Hertz garage. “All right my man, take care,” Ray waves to Ratso. “Hey Ray, if you can still sing
what the fuck are you doing working in a garage?” Ratso shouts. Ray makes a face. “Fuck that shit. I’m through with these one-nighters. I’m semi-retired.” He turns to enter the office. “But if you get me with a group,” he smiles, “I can still swing a bit.”

Ratso gets back to his hotel in Danbury around 9
A.M.
and settles down for a few hours of much-needed sleep. But once again, the jarring phone interrupts at noon.
Rolling Stone
this time. The urgent tones of his New York editor jump out of the receiver and jolt the reporter awake like tiny splashes of ice water. Flippo, the editor, is enraged over the piece.

“It just is not a good piece,” he flatly declares in his Southern twang. “It doesn’t reflect two weeks of traveling. You seem like an adman, like you’re too close to get some perspective. Details, you need details. How much are people making?”

“You want me to ask Baez to say how much she’s making?” Ratso barks incredulously. “I wouldn’t tell her how much I’m making. How much do you make?”

“You’re not doing a story on me,” Flippo says flippantly.

The conversation goes on a bit and Ratso promises to try to get some additional quotes and information on the business aspects of the tour. But first a trip to the Pathmark and some vitamin C, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12, Expectorate, Robitussin, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and cough drops for the miserable cold he’s been carrying around since Vermont. By the afternoon, the room looks like a hospital ward, the juices stored in an ice-filled garbage can, the medicines and vitamin bottles strewn around the various dresser- and tabletops. And the sick reporter lying in the middle of all this with the phone permanently attached to his left ear. He’s been trying the Niagara Hilton all day, to no avail. Finally, around 6, he reaches Kemp’s room.

“Louie, this is Ratso, I’m still in Connecticut. My fucking car was broken into last night and I got beat up.”

“Who broke into it?”

“I don’t know. Some hoods probably tried to steal it.”

“Yeah, who beat you up?”

“The fucking bikers that work for the local promoter,” Ratso moans.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t have a badge.”

“Well, where were you that you weren’t supposed to be that they beat you up?” Kemp sounds like a stern parent.

“I was in a seat that wasn’t occupied. The guy says let me see your stub, and I said, ‘I don’t have a ticket for this seat,’ and the guy says, ‘Get up,’ and he pulls me like I’m a kid trying to crash a seat and I said, ‘Listen man, I’m with
Rolling Stone
,’ and he says, Yeah, the fuck you are.’ He was one of those biker types, Gestapo mentality, and he starts pulling me by—”

“Hey Larry,” Kemp interrupts, “what can I do for you?”

“All right, what I need now is
Rolling Stone
called and they need fifteen hundred more words. I need some quotes by tonight.”

“What do you mean you need quotes?”

“They want reactions to the tour so far.”