On the Road with Bob Dylan (55 page)

“She’s gonna play, great,” Ratso enthuses, remembering Dylan’s wish that it didn’t look like only a white boy was supporting Rubin.

“I was interested in the debate though,” Joni continues. “I like Jerry. I’m not political myself and I don’t like to get involved …”

“Especially since you’re a foreigner,” Robbie, who’s also a Canuck expatriate, reminds her.

“That’s true,” Joni nods, “the choosing of the flag and the changing of the money, that was all I ever remembered about politics.”

“People have been trying to get me together with Tom Hayden, man,” Robbie marvels, and straightens the sleeve of his impeccably tailored dark-blue suit. “It’s incredible, for the last couple of months they’ve been trying that, and I’m a foreigner.”

“I don’t like the guy.” Joni frowns. “I say that because in a comparative way, which I shouldn’t do, I like Jerry Brown because he admits he’s in a power game and he’s curious to play with it and Hayden won’t cop to it. He’s too self-righteous and he’s also very condescending to the artist. Where with Jerry, he’ll like call me up and he puts it on the line, like if I’m gonna be working for someone and they’re gonna be using me, I like them to know that I know that they know and it’s all on that level. That’s what I like about Jerry Brown, he understands that ’cause he allows his people to manipulate him. He goes to parties and shakes hands and does that whole thing and is aware of what he’s doing. He’s very intelligent.”

“Yeah, and he’s said right-wing things,” Ratso the eternal cynic spits.

“Hasn’t everyone though?” Joni shrugs. “So does Trudeau. I think Trudeau would be a very good dictator. The best moves he did politically were dictatorial.”

“It’s incredible how much more well appreciated he is outside of Canada than inside.” Robbie shakes his head.

“Well, he’s got a pretty wife,” Ratso notes.

“That’s right,” Robbie smiles his rare toothy grin, “his wife is pretty, that’s his biggest problem. His old lady is young and says ‘What’s this shit?’”

Neuwirth kicks off the set by introducing Stevie Soles to do “Don’t Blame Me” and from the outset, Ratso gets a strange vibe. First of all, the acoustics are horrid, making everything sound like musical mush. But more important, the audience is about 95 percent black and they really don’t seem to be spoken to by these first few opening numbers. Even Stoner’s funky “Catfish” fails to elicit a good response.

And when the quintessential honky, blond, blue-eyed Joni steps up, Ratso cringes in anticipation. “I wanted to be a painter,” she starts out by way of introduction, “and I was told this was the age of the camera so I put it into songs. Some of these are of me, of those on the tour, maybe some of you can relate to them.” But halfway through “Coyote” it’s clear these ain’t no
Court and Spark
fans, and some people in the front row start screaming for Joni to sit down. “Wait,” she yells over the music, “I got one more verse, it’s the best one too!”

After Joni, Elliot rambles on, remarkably composed despite the fact that his mother had died just the day before and he had arrived at the prison in a limousine provided by George Lois, the same limousine that had taken him to his mother’s funeral earlier that morning. And, in an odd way, the audience relates to this bizarre-looking Brooklyn cowboy playing a funky ’50s rock ’n roll song. Ratso leans over and looks at Rubin who’s yacking away into Lois’ ear. “Hey George,” Ratso screams, “tell him to relax and dig the music.” But the boxer goes right on ignoring the performances, a move that does not go unnoticed by Ratso and some of the singers. Even as Dylan starts into an incredibly moving version of “Hattie Carroll,” singing the tale of racial and legal injustice to an audience of blacks who one way or another got screwed and are sitting in this audience tonight as proof, Rubin chats on. And the moment reaches Dylan, he’s straining, squeezing out the words
like some kind of Turkish taffy, with Ronson wailing a chorus of sighs in the background. Ratso is stunned, he’s never seen a more moving performance, the chills are cascading down his back like water over a fall, and at the conclusion, the reporter leaps up in his chair for a standing ovation of one.

However, the gesture isn’t lost on Dylan. “We play for all kinds of different people,” the dark-glassed singer leans into the mike, “and if we can get through to just one person out there we feel our mission is accomplished.” Incredible, Ratso laughs, Kinky’s old line, and marvels at Bob’s laser-quick wit as Dylan plows into “Hard Rain.” And everyone seems to be getting off on this one, even the all-night girls from the D train, encamped in the first few rows.

Then a surprise, as Dylan yields the stage to “Mr. Allen Ginsberg, an American poet from Paterson, New Jersey.” And Ginsberg is great here, sing-screaming his poems of rebellion, getting a huge rise out of the convict section with a line about butt-fucking. Then Baez races on, joining Dylan for two duets and inheriting the stage from the singer.

“We’d like to thank the authorities for making it so easy for us to get in,” Baez grimaces sarcastically, no stranger to these places, “I wish they’d make it easier for you to get out.” The crowd goes wild, and the fever pitch grows with a soulful
a cappella
rendition of “Do Right Woman.”

Roberta Flack is up next and the place goes bonkers, cons start dancing in the aisles, standing on their chairs, whooping and clapping along. After the commotion dies down, Joan grabs the mike. “We’re gonna end this more or less like we’ve been ending this. Bob Dylan is gonna sing a song which he’ll just say a couple of words about and I think you’ll relate to it.” A bit of scattered applause and Dylan steps to the mike. And without any words of introduction the band kicks into “Hurricane,” and in the audience, the bald former boxer shakes his head to the beat, a sly smile slowly creeping across his face as CBS, NBC, ABC get the shots they’ve been waiting for all night.

After the inmates are shepherded back to their cells, a makeshift press conference starts. Ratso elbows his way into the crowd of about seventy journalists and winds up at the lip of the stage, right below Rubin.

“How can you say that the current Congressional investigation that Gov. Byrne’s empaneled is trying to reframe you?” one journalist asks.

“Now they’re saying that John Artis and I, who were convicted in 1967 of being the actual gunmen in the tavern, the only two ones, now Hawkins and his agents or his masters are saying that we didn’t kill the people but we were outside.” Hurricane pauses and fiddles with his sport coat button. “What they’re trying to say is that we were innocent but they want to prove us half guilty.”

“Has Hawkins said this to you personally?” the same reporter follows up, “has he asked you to plead to anything other than murder?”

Rubin’s face cracks into a broad grin. “No, he didn’t but he asked my co-defendant John Artis to sign a statement against me, implicating me, and then John Artis would be home by Christmas.”

“Right now you would accept clemency but not a pardon,” someone shouts.

“Absolutely,” Rubin nods.

“Rubin,” one older woman who writes for a wire service chimes in, “what’s your personal deep-down feeling about the fact that Bob Dylan and the group came down here to perform at the prison?”

Carter pauses a minute, adjusts his wire-rimmed glasses, and peers out of his one good eye. “My personal feeling?” His hands, disproportionately big for so diminutive a frame, slap against his turtleneck shirt. “My feeling is that nine years ago when the country was rampant with racism, when the country was rampant with other social ills, I knew that if I just kept myself alive, if I just kept strong, just kept well, I knew that my brothers and sisters all over, black, white, blue, green, yellow, rich, poor, I knew that if they keep thinking, they keep moving, that finally they’ll start respecting themselves and finally they’ll start loving themselves and finally
they’ll start to respect me and they’ll start to love me and I knew that was going to happen and here they come. Look at you, look at all of you, even if you’re news media you’re comin’ too.” Rubin drops his Billy Graham hands and Ratso half expects to see wheelchairs and supplicants making their way to the stage.

“If you get a new trial,” another newsperson asks, “if they declare you innocent, how then are you gonna feel about America and the American system of justice?”

“I love America, you know. It’s not a system that works, a system never works. It’s the people who are in control of those systems that make those systems what they are. So if we have people who love other people, people who help other people, people who respect other people in control of those systems, then those systems will respect other people, those systems will love other people and I think that way we’ll be able to do something.”

Ratso’s getting a little bored, both by the questions and by Rubin’s gnawing habit of repeating phrases two, three, even four times, so he waves a pen at Rubin. “You were moved from a high-security prison in Trenton to what appears to be a country club. Do you see that as a move to co-opt you?”

“No, no, no,” Rubin repeats, “I relate to being here because of the people, because of the people caring about me, other people power. Because of people loving other people power.” Ratso winces. “Because the people are coming, they can no longer do what they want to do with Rubin Carter or John Artis.”

“So this is like a halfway house, then,” Ratso chuckles.

“That’s right,” Rubin slams his fist into his palm, “the next step is out. This is just R&R, just getting me ready. And I’m ready.”

One college newspaperman raises a finger. “How did you get connected to Bob Dylan? I understand he visited you in jail?”

“The Sixteenth Round
, the book I wrote, I sent it to Bob Dylan as I sent it to many people before anyone was aware of this case, and I sent it to him hoping that he would read that and stir his emotions and stir his intellect and it did. And he came from France on
a special trip one day to visit with me. He knew and I knew that because he was white and I was black neither one of us had any choice in that but two men can always meet no matter what their political persuasion or philosophy, men always meet but that’s why Muhammad had to go to the mountain, you see, because two mountains never do and a man is a man, that’s how we met and …” Suddenly, Ratso realizes Carter’s answer is almost identical to his response to his own query three months earlier.

“Speaking of Muhammad,” Ratso mercifully cuts in and derails Rubin’s train of thought, “how did Ali get on the case?”

“Muhammad Ali has been fighting for us for two years now and he’s a champion amongst champions. People say he’s the champion of the world, no, no, no, he’s the champion of the universe ….” Ratso feels a wave of nausea.

“I heard an interesting story about how he got onto your case, though,” Ratso to the rescue once again, “how a white policeman approached him.”

“That’s right,” Rubin grabs the bait, “there was Ronald Lipkin, a white police officer who knew that this had been a frame and he went to Ali and told him that his brother was in prison and he had been framed and so when Muhammad Ali received this information from a police officer,” Rubin pauses dramatically, “and then a white police officer at that, because this is a racist-type crime, Muhammad Ali felt he would not be the man if he didn’t come here and help a black brother when there’s a white brother helping the black brother.”

Rubin finishes and for a few seconds there’s a lull in the gym, some people scribbling, some people thinking up questions, some aching to start the drive back to Manhattan, some aching to attack the boxer. Attempting to salvage the situation with humor but without really knowing why by now, Ratso leaps into the void.

“One last question, Rubin. Is there anything to the rumor that George Lois right now is working on a campaign for your gubernatorial race when you get out?”

Rubin grins briefly then turns cold-serious: “I’ll tell you one thing, some news media have attacked the people that have come together to help Rubin Carter and I think that’s diabolical, because what it shows is that the powers-that-be know that if people get together we can solve problems and in these committees, rich, poor, black, white, actor, dancer, singer, have all come together and these criminals who have covered this up, who are now cringing in their wormy corners, they know that if people stay together that means power. And they also know that as long as we stay together, they can’t outfight us. Which one of these politicians is gonna get in the ring with a Muhammad Ali or a Joe Frazier? Are you? No. Which one of these politicians can outsing a Bob Dylan or a Joan Baez or a Joni Mitchell? Or which one of these politicians can outact a Dyan Cannon or an Ellen Burstyn? You see, so the politicians can’t outfight us, they can’t outsing us, they can’t outdance us, so what makes us think they can somehow outthink us either?”

Rubin gives the media people below him a chastising smirk. “So when we start thinking and thinking very intelligently, that scares them, so that’s why they attack people like Ellen Burstyn, it’s criminal, because if the Constitution of the United States says if the people can find something wrong in the society then the people can get together and change it and that’s what the people are doing.”

“What’s the next step now?” someone yells from the rear. “We know there’s a new trial coming up, it looks that way and—”

“There is no such thing as we know that there is almost a new trial,” Rubin snaps bitterly, “there’s no such thing. We’re talking about right and wrong here. Two men in prison illegally for nine years for being framed for committing a crime that there’s no evidence anywhere that even suggests that they did anything, so we are talking about right and wrong, talking about in jail or out of jail. We’re not talking about almost in jail. So I am in jail, so until we are out of jail then we can start talking about a new trial. But
until that time there’s no such thing, because the very people who created this monster in 1966 are still in power today.”

Rubin pauses dramatically, then goes on: “Gov. Byrne, he has something to do with this crime, he went to the judge in his county to give Bello and Bradley leniency. Now we at the Chief Justice Hughes of the State Supreme Court. He was the governor of New Jersey in 1966, he appointed a lawyer, Lerner, made him a judge and shipped him to Passaic County, so all of our reviews have always been in the same hands of the people who created this ….”