On the Road with Bob Dylan (11 page)

I jumped into Kinky’s recitation here. “The blood in the rhythm? I always thought it was ‘river.’”

Kinky paused. “No, ‘rhythm,’ the ‘blood in the rhythm of the soul.’ But ‘river’ would be OK too. So would ‘rivet’ Just about anything.” He moved back into his performance.

“Then we do this yodel about three times, go completely bonkers, and lately I’ve been taking up, you know, these little plastic zingers that kids swing around. I been using that at the end, all the music stops, and I’m doing this little zinger thing close to the mike, then suddenly all the music comes back in with the yodels and everything like that. It’s really a strong effect. Then I do my Jimmy Durante exit.”

“Listen, Kinky …”

“I’ll eat your dick if Dylan records the fucker or does it on the tour.”

“You got any message for Dylan, Kink?”

“I don’t know. Uh, uh,” Kinky stammered, “tell him shalom, shalom. I mean, what should I tell him?”

“He told me that he doesn’t think you understand him. I think he really likes you.”

“Tell him shalom, then. I mean tell him, ‘Are you new in town sailor?’ He is a good old boy now. Hey, keep me posted on this tour shit, niggerlips.”

“OK, I think Dylan’ll do the song.”

“I hope he does, man.”

“He said he would.”

“Well, if he does,” Kinky brightened, “then tell him I like him. Be good now boychick. Bye-bye.”

By Wednesday I was on the road to Plymouth, with a red Hertz
Granada and my friend George, an inveterate Dylan fan, along to help with the driving. It was a pleasant ride, aided by a steady stream of Dylan cassettes and an animated conversation with George about the influence Dylan had had on both our lives. “I got too jammed up on Dylan,” George moaned, “he began to influence my writing too much. I had to outgrow him in a sense. But he’s had such a weird effect on other people. I once knew a girl, she was pretty schizoid. One night she had me on the phone about four hours till sunrise, translating
Blonde on Blonde
for me. It wasn’t that she was just interpreting the words, when she ran out of words she started fucking translating the music on that album into words. A lot of people get weird behind Dylan.”

In our excitement we missed the cutoff for North Falmouth, and it wasn’t till we hit Boston that we realized we’d driven about an hour out of our way. So at 4
A.M.
we finally staggered into the Sea Crest and got a room. A room that we were forced to vacate about twelve hours later.

It all started at breakfast late Thursday morning, the beginning of the whole incredible morass.

There was a 2
P.M
soundcheck at the Armory in Plymouth so by noon all the musicians had fallen into the dining room to catch a late breakfast. David Blue and Ronson were pissed off because Stoner had been making some last-minute cuts in the songs. A bleary-eyed Bob Neuwirth joined us at the table, sharing concern over the cuts in the program. Just then, Chris O’Dell, a thin blonde, who has worked as tour coordinator for everyone from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, beckoned me out of the dining room. “You can’t hang out in there with the musicians,” she gently chided. “Louie’s freaking out. No press are allowed in the hotel. Listen, keep a low profile for the first few days and I’m sure you’ll work something out.” We walked along the hall until we got to an office that had a makeshift hand-lettered sign on the door reading
Zebra Productions
. Inside, Kemp was talking on the phone. He signaled that I should wait outside.

A few minutes later he stormed into the hall. “What are you doing here? You can’t stay at the same hotel as us.” I was flabbergasted and managed only a few hesitant stammers before Kemp was off into another tirade. “You better check out right now. There’s no press allowed to stay where we are. Those are just the rules that you’ve got to follow. If you want any cooperation from us, then you’re just gonna have to play along.” I protested a bit, but realizing that it was a futile effort, I went over to the front desk to check out. On the way I saw Stoner. “Hey, how’s it going Larry,” he smiled. “Shit,” I growled, “they’re treating me like a nigger.” Stoner rolled his eyes. “I know what you mean. I’m on the show and I’m a nigger.”

At the desk I rang up George and told him to pack the bags. He came out a few minutes later, livid and weighed down with luggage. “What is this shit?” he screamed.

“It’s the road,” I sighed. “In New York it was my turf, like I was turning them on to parties and things. But here it’s Camp Kemp. And we just flunked inspection.”

“Fuck him,” George bellowed, “you can talk to anyone you want. Write Dylan a letter, see if he knows about this.” “And what,” I fumed, “address it ‘Bob Dylan—Rolling Thunder Road?’ Or should I put it in a box and have a UPS guy deliver it to his Holiday Inn door? Look, you can throw the old rulebook right out the window. What happened in the past or future don’t mean shit. It’s all happening now. Forget about Dylan digging something I said at the party in New York or Baez smiling at you at the rehearsal, or Kemp letting me stay at that late-night jam. Right now, they are the Rolling Thunder Revue. And we’re nothing.”

And with that, we poured into the Granada and stormed down the road to another motel.

Plymouth is a quaint little town, with one main strip leading down to the water, a few decent-looking seafood restaurants, gas stations, a few banks. On the way to the first concert we stopped at the Walgreen’s and passed an older man in a lumber jacket poring
over the soft-core porn books on the rack, stuff like
Biff Bam Thank You ’Mam
.

There was a certain humility and reverence mixed with a pinch of arrogance in choosing this place to kick off the tour. This was one of the first settlements of the New World after all, the first place the Pilgrims touched down and started the great experiment that more than two hundred years later was still alive if somewhat shaky. And for Dylan and company, it was the perfect place to make their new beginning, to kick off their caravan, to bring to the people in as direct and unimpeded a manner as possible the messages that sustained and fed our culture through the ’60s and which power the sounds of the ’70s. It was to be Plymouth Rock for the bicentennial. The symbolic significance aside, a town with a population under twenty thousand ain’t a bad place to break in the act before you hit Boston and Montreal.

Down the road from Walgreen’s is the Plymouth Memorial Auditorium. An old imposing building, lots of nice woodwork, seating about 1,800 at most, including the sea of folding chairs that have been set up on the basketball court floor. The place had been rented the previous week by Barry Imhoff’s advance men, Jerry Seltzer and Jacob Van Cleef, for the staggering sum of $250 a night. At first, they told the Plymouth authorities it was to be a Joan Baez concert, but then word was leaked on some local radio stations and Seltzer and Van Cleef started distributing handbills, which featured ornate Wild West show logos and photos of Dylan, Neuwirth, Elliot, and Baez under the Rolling Thunder Revue banner. And the tickets started getting snapped up in this predominantly working-class town, even at $7.50 a shot. So as we pull up to the auditorium a good hour before showtime the handwritten sign on the red brick edifice spells it out: BAEZ-DYLAN CONCERTS BOTH PERFORMANCES SOLD OUT.

At the three doors leading into the lobby, the early-arriving ticketholders undergo a skin search, with cameras, tape recorders, and booze the taboo possessions. Kemp and Imhoff are off to one side,
supervising the opening-night proceedings in the lobby. A ticket booth has been set up and Ava Megna has the complimentary list. I ask for my two tickets. “Two tickets? I only have you down for one, Larry.” Incredible, another indignity. The sacred canon of
two
comps shamelessly violated by the brash fish merchant. I make a beeline for Kemp, followed closely by one of the camera crews. The kleigs light up the hall. “What the fuck’s going on here,” I shout, ever mindful of the camera angle. “First you kick me out of the hotel, then you give me only one ticket.” “What, do you have a date?” Kemp caustically replies. “Fuck,” I motion toward George, the cameras panning in the direction of my outstretched hand, “how’s my driver going to see it. He’s a big Dylan freak.” Louie seems taken aback. “Driver?” He peers in George’s direction. “Shit, I didn’t even know you had a car.” After a bit more hassle, Kemp promises to scrape up a ticket for George and I sidle over to Imhoff, complaining about the press arrangements. “Look, you can’t talk to the band,” Imhoff lectures. He points a beefy finger toward the incoming hordes. “Interview these people. Do it on these people, they’re the real story.”

The crowd keeps pouring in, incredibly vibrant, not as young as I had anticipated. During a lull, I walk over to Dave Meyers, who, in his denims and beat-up black cowboy hat, looks like he’s shooting a Peckinpah film. “What does Dylan mean to you?” I say solemnly, pressing a pen into his face. “That’s easy, one word,” Meyers shouts back: “Money.”

At about 8:20 the band rambles onstage to no introduction, and Neuwirth grabs center stage on an easygoing uptempo countryish tune, “Good Love Is Hard To Find.” And what a motley crew at that, Neuwirth in his Joe College tweed sport coat, Soles and Stoner in basic rockabilly denims and cowboy shirts, Ronson in butch black T-shirt and blue jeans.

T-Bone Burnett, the Fort Worth flash, follows with one of his Dadaistic originals, then Rockin’ Rob Stoner takes the spotlight, slowing the pace down with a tragic tale of the bottle and love’s disappointment,
“This Situation’s Too Good To Be Wasted, But I’m Too Wasted To Be Any Good.” Neuwirth is emceeing, introducing each soloist, and his spirit is infectious, a real revue, in fact, and Neuwirth is not far off the mark when he says at one point, “Welcome to your living room.” Stevie Soles, of the L.A. Sensitive School of Songwriting, rocks surprisingly hard with “Don’t Blame Me,” and David Mansfield, who was the musical glue of Quacky Duck, amazes everyone with his virtuosity on everything from guitar to pedal steel to violin.

Then Ronson charges into a Bowiesque “Is There Life On Mars” and all of a sudden the band is English glitter rock. “I can’t believe them,” George is screaming, nudging me with his elbow, “this fucking band’s like silly putty. They can play everything.” Ronee Blakley walks on, in stunning white suit complete with flowers in her hair, and backs Neuwirth on a shitkicking-good version of “They Say Hank Williams is Dead.” “This band’s been together eight days,” Neuwirth exults and yields the stage to Blakley for a solo spot. She seems a little nervous, moving a bit woodenly, but leaves to polite applause. “She’ll be back, everybody’ll be back,” Neuwirth teases. “It’s hot but it gets even better.”

There’s a great warmth emanating from that stage, a folksy down-home ambience that is usually missing in rock concerts. So when Ramblin’ Jack rambles onstage during a song Neuwirth was singing about him, it doesn’t seem coy or melodramatic. Jack’s the archetypical Brooklyn beat-cowboy, his sad puppy-dog face framed by wirerim glasses and the ever-present ten-gallon hat. He hoots and howls his way through four numbers, joined by an unintroduced Roger McGuinn on banjo. And the audience loves this old master, chuckling at his wry introductions (“Here’s a song Deroll Adams sang at my first wedding ever”), lapping up his lost-boy preambulations. He finishes with an old Carter family song, and Neuwirth leaps on in his best Ed Sullivan, calling him back with “Take a bow, man.”

A lull, and then a short, wiry figure emerges from the backstage darkness. And before anyone realizes it, Dylan strides onstage,
strumming an acoustic, wearing the same black leather jacket, the cherished hat, and a vest. “Here’s another old friend,” and it isn’t until Neuwirth and Dylan romp into “When I Paint My Masterpiece” that the audience recognizes Dylan and emits a long, sustained cheer. Dylan seems edgy, unsure at first, singing harmony to Neuwirth’s lead, watching his former road manager, and only midway through the song sneaking a glance at the audience. But as the song progresses, he seems to loosen up, even allowing an incredulous bug-eyed gesture at the line “big police.” And by the time they grind the song to a conclusion, the troupe has transformed Dylan’s ironic song about the limitations on artistic achievement into a heraldic triumph. Not only is Dylan about to paint that masterpiece, he’ll gladly do it in front of you.

And he proceeds. A short huddle with Neuwirth, then Ronson kicks off a bouncy, almost
bossa nova
version of “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Dylan takes the mike alone for the first time, singing more melodically than ever, smiling for the first time as the audience cheers the familiar chorus of “No, No, No.” The bitterness, the recrimination of the song is gone, and the crowd goes wild when he pulls off his guitar and leans into the mike to blow some harmonica for the first time. They rock to an end, sending most of the crowd of 1,800 to its feet in delight. Neuwirth smiles and leaps into the mike, gesturing toward his famous friend. “Bob Dylan,” he shouts.

The tempo gets picked up with a searing version of “Hard Rain,” Dylan punching out the words, Stoner strutting across the stage behind him, emitting some guttural bass. Ronson gets a chance to get looser on guitar here and he pulls out all the stops, winding up by playing a figure from “I’m a Man.” Another standing ovation. Dylan steps back from the mike, rolls up his sleeves, nervously tugs at his hair, and coughs. “We’ll play a new song for ya, this is Scarlett Rivera.” And Scarlett makes her entrance, a figure in black, looking almost like a female Peter Wolf with dark shades and black vest and pants. They start into “Durango,” a new song, Dylan’s El Paso, and he plays the role of the fated gunslinger perfectly. Then without
pause, he slips off his guitar, sips some coffee, and grabs the mike as the band rips into “Isis,” another haunting narrative written with Levy. This is naked Dylan, no guitar, no props. Just the poet, sweating from the brilliant spots, gesturing with one hand, now two, feet constantly tapping, eyes burning intensely as he tells the story of love and collaboration. The music kicks him on, Wyeth knocking out the beat with some solid drums, Scarlett flailing at the melody with her violin. Dylan’s much more confident now, playing with the narrative, delivering the punch lines flawlessly to hearty cheers from the audience. The song ends with a flourish, Dylan wailing on his harp, then a quick wave and the curtain slowly tumbles down, ending the first half of the show.