On the Road with Bob Dylan (22 page)

McGuinn laughs. “It was like that scene in
Don’t Look Back,”
Ratso continues, “with Donovan. Dylan going, ‘Who’s this Donovan guy?’ But he wipes out Springsteen.”

“Of course, he does,” McGuinn shrugs.

“But he seems so insecure,” Ratso wonders.

“Is anybody not insecure,” Roger counsels. “Look, he’s just a human being …”

“But he’s the best,” Ratso protests.

“He doesn’t know that he’s the best yet. That’s the beautiful thing about him.” McGuinn smiles. “If he finds out he’s the best he might quit or something. Let’s not tell him, let’s tell him he sucks.”

“That’s Kinky’s strategy,” Ratso smirks. “Kinky shits on him every time he sees him.”

“I do too,” Roger boasts, “I treat him like he’s one of the guys. Because if you look up to him, he doesn’t like that, he won’t respect you anymore. So I kick him around a little bit. But I’m a late bloomer. I’m going to be an overnight success, one of these days.”

“You got too much too soon with the Byrds, Hillman told me that.”

“We got indigestion, man,” McGuinn plays with a half-eaten salad, “star lag. Now I’m recovering from it.”

McGuinn orders another Sprite and Ratso remembers the period when Roger was playing solo, a few years back. It was mortifying, this giant in rock ’n roll history reduced to playing acoustic guitar in small holes in the wall. Ratso recalls seeing him in Good Karma, a hippie health-food restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin. The iconographic voice was still there but it was painful to watch; McGuinn desperately namedropping between songs trying too hard to salvage a modicum of self-worth, introducing “Ballad of Easy Rider” by invoking the name of “Peter Fonda, who’s a good friend of mine.” Ratso had the feeling then that he was watching an acoustic dinosaur.

“How come you retired the Byrds?” Ratso breaks the silence.

“David Crosby got down on my case real heavy one day and he and I mutually decided that the original Byrds were the Byrds and let’s not have any more bullshit about it.”

“That’s when you were doing that hyped reunion album,” Ratso recollects. “I thought that sucked.”

“I know, I know.” McGuinn shakes his head sheepishly. “That’s because Crosby overdid it, he didn’t let me in on it. He intimidated me on purpose, he intimidated me and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

“What about Hillman?”

“He was just there, he thought it was all right. Hillman wants to do another one to save face for that last one and Crosby does too. He realizes his mistake, he does, he and I have talked about it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t let him produce it!” Ratso rails.

“No, we should get a professional producer,” Roger agrees, then leans over conspiratorially toward Ratso, his hand shielding his mouth. “The thing is Crosby didn’t produce that album,” McGuinn whispers gleefully. “We all did, and we gave him the credit.”

“And he thanked you no end, huh,” Ratso laughs out loud.

“He did. He said, Wow, wow, thanks a lot you guys that’s really great. Wow, I needed that.’ We got away with something.” Roger smiles impishly.

“That’s brilliant. Boy, did that album suck.”

“I know,” Roger laughs.

“And that was almost as bad as
Byrdmaniax
, another all-time low.”

McGuinn winces at the rattling of that old skeleton. “That was terrible. That was the all-time bottom-out. You gotta make a few bad ones.”

“Even Dylan put out stuff like
Self Portrait
and that blackmail Columbia LP, but you know, in retrospect I liked even them,” Ratso marvels, “I like almost anything he sings.”

“Yeah, me too,” Roger enthuses. “He once came over to my house and looked through my record collection. You know, he’ll
look at your books first and then your records, checking you out. He found some of his records in my collection and he said, ‘What do you listen to my records for?’ I said, ‘I like ‘em, you know.’ He said, ‘Don’t listen to my records, they’re terrible’—he was pulling a number. So I said, ‘OK,’ and I actually did stop listening to his records for a while to prove to myself that I could do it. He said, ‘I don’t listen to your records, if I want to hear rock ’n roll I listen to B. B. King or somebody.’

“Wasn’t that sunrise ceremony great,” McGuinn suddenly veers off course. “Boy, that might have saved my life or something.”

“You think so.” Ratso seems skeptical.

“I don’t know, I mean I’ve just felt spiritually OK ever since.”

“I liked what everyone said.”

“Everybody was real cool,” Roger sips his Sprite, “except a couple of people who were a little stilted.”

“Yeah, that chick from
Newsweek.”

“What she say?”

“I don’t remember, something Newsweekese,” Ratso hisses.

“Is that like Japanese? Dylan said something very nice. I sort of copied it. He said he hopes that everyone realizes that they are of the same spirit and I said I hope that everyone realizes that everything’s gonna work out all right in the end.”

“What did Neuwirth say?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember what a lot of people said. I don’t even remember what Rolling Thunder said. I thought that was very cool, though, to be involved in an Indian ceremony of that magnitude, my first one. I mean a lot of my friends go out to the desert and hang out with the Hopis and take peyote and get enlightened and stuff like that. I can see where that’s at now, I always thought it was kinda jive. You don’t have to do that, you can just take peyote.”

“Yeah, I mean Rolling Thunder was talking in English,” Ratso injects, “and afterward he came over to my photographer friend and asked her for copies of her contact sheet.”

“He lives in the real world,” McGuinn smiles, “he’s just a guy. He’s a very enlightened guy.”

“Dylan didn’t know about him before the tour,” Ratso reports. “It was just synchronicity.”

“Oh, I thought the tour was named after him.”

“No, Dylan told me he named it one day sitting in California listening to the thunder.”

“If it was Malibu,” Roger smiles slyly, “it was probably the Vanderburg Air Force Base. It’s up the street.”

“It was actually the air force, huh, not the rolling thunder?”

“It was probably sonic booms. The Sonic Boom Jet Revue. Not to be confused with Rolling Thunder.”

McGuinn picks up his napkin and wipes his mouth, signaling Ratso into a frenzy over the large uneaten chunk of hamburger. “Why don’t you eat the meat?” he shouts, pointing to the chunk of ground beef. “I got to take care of you, Roger!”

McGuinn picks up the hamburger and takes a tentative bite. “Thanks Ratso, you’re right. I need the protein.”

“I’m down to my last twenty dollars,” Ratso moans, “I’d better call the
Rolling Stone
office.”

“You know, this tour I haven’t spent a penny yet,” Roger marvels. “Everybody else is going around shopping and stuff but I haven’t spent a penny on anything. I know what’ll happen by the end of the tour. They’ll have all these suitcases full of shit and they won’t be able to walk around anymore. From experience, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t need it. I’ve got everything I need. I’m an artist and I don’t look back.”

They laugh.

“Neuwirth told me he’s got no possessions,” Ratso relates, “doesn’t even have a home. Just his guitar.”

“So what, that’s his problem,” McGuinn philosophizes. “He crashed at my house a lot. You gotta realize I like him a lot. He’s my old buddy for years.”

“He is like the glue to this thing,” Ratso admits.

“Glue? Oh, like stick together,” Roger comprehends. “You know what I think it is. Like, he’s protecting Bob like a watchdog. But that’s what it is and sometimes there’s a little overkill in that. And that’s what you’re being subjected to. The reason I’m talking to you is that I understand the situation. If I felt you were a real threat to Bob or anything …” McGuinn trails off ominously.

“The reason Dylan talks to me is because he knows that—”

“You’re not a real threat,” Roger finishes.

We pay the bill and head out to the parking lot. “The letter should help,” Ratso muses out loud. “I’m not going to hide under tables and pry.”

“No,” McGuinn climbs into the car, “you’re cool.” He puts his boot against the open door and turns to Ratso. “You know this trick, I learned this from Carlos.” And he violently kicks the door almost off its moorings, quickly bringing his legs in, and calmly waits for the door to slam itself shut. “Not bad, huh.” He smiles.

Ratso pulls into the Inn’s driveway and McGuinn gets out. “Wanna see something neat,” Roger asks. “We always used to do this with our rented cars.” Stoner and Wyeth have drifted over and McGuinn has a small audience as he circles to the front of the car, takes a deep breath, and vaults onto the hood, jumps from the hood to the roof, alights onto the trunk and gracefully plops back down to earth. To Ratso inside the car, it sounds like thudding thunder.

Just then, Louie Kemp appears on the front porch of the Inn and beckons Ratso over. “C’mon,” he grabs the writer, “I want to talk to you.” He marches Ratso over to the far end of the porch.

“You’ve been out of line,” he says.

“How?” Ratso shrugs innocently.

“Listen, shut up and listen. Then you can talk. All right, you were out of line first of all in going to the Indian thing. You were really out of line in having that chick come with the camera,” Louie lectures.

“I didn’t tell her to come,” Ratso protests.

“She found out by herself, huh?”

“I didn’t tell her to bring her equipment.”

“You think she was there for her health,” Kemp rails. “She took those pictures and she runs all around trying to sell them to everybody. She tried to. She tried
Time, Newsweek
, all those people. Anyway, if she wanted to take pictures she should have asked.”

“She did. She asked Rolling Thunder.” Ratso settles against the porch railing.

“Rolling Thunder has nothing to do with …” Kemp leaves the sentence unfinished. His eyes flare behind his dark glasses. “Then she should have just taken pictures of him, there’s pictures of Bob in there. Look, we didn’t want no photographers there. That film should have been taken out of her camera and given to me afterward. That’s the way it should have been done. Instead she runs all over New York trying to sell it.” Louie rolls his eyes.

“I screamed at her roommate over the phone,” Ratso shows good faith, “I had a long conversation with my editor at
Rolling Stone
and I told him it was private land, a private ceremony and that the pictures weren’t public domain. I told him it was a privilege for Mary to be there.”

“For you too,” Kemp shoots back acidly. “I don’t know how she got there, but she’s your fucking friend and you’re gonna be responsible for her just like I’m responsible for my friends. And, we’re not pleased with you following the bus and coming to the mansion,” he adds.

“Shit,” Ratso moans. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“You were already in there, I didn’t want to make a scene when you’re in there. I didn’t want to put you down,” Kemp gets softer, “you gotta learn to control yourself and you don’t seem capable of it. You can do it for a couple of hours and then your enthusiasm gets the best of you. I like you, but you’re out of control.”

“Have you seen me since the Breakers thing?” Ratso prods.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, I just had a talk with Gary …”

“Let me finish what I’m saying,” Kemp interrupts. “I think your intentions are good but you’re getting to be more work for me than you’re worth. So just to let you know that I’m serious and I mean business, I’m not giving you tickets for tomorrow night’s concert. And I’ll pick it up again after that if you have your shit together but if you don’t I’ll just have to cut you off.”

Ratso stays still, demonstrating to Louie that he’s letting it sink in. He knows tomorrow night’s concert is in New Hampshire, way up near the Maine border, a good eight-hour drive.

“Where’s the concert tomorrow night?” he innocently asks Kemp.

“Find out for yourself. But there won’t be tickets for you from me anyway. Because you just don’t seem to understand …” Louie says sternly.

“Why are you punishing me?” Ratso whines.

“I just want to show you that if you keep on jerking round with me I’m not going to give you any cooperation.”

“I’m not jerking around with you.”

“I’ve given you more cooperation than with any other fucking journalist,” Kemp seems to be getting mad again.

“What about the guy from
People
. You let him backstage a few times,” Ratso pouts.

“I want to state again your intentions are good—”

“Why did you call me Weberman then,” Ratso interrupts.

“I think you’re a good person,” Louie calmly asserts, “but your problem is that you’re overenthusiastic and it’s getting in my way so the only way I can deal with that is that I got to take some action with you. It’s just like a warning shot. You can go out and get tickets on your own.”

“Can I buy them?” Ratso asks out of idle curiosity.

“You can buy them on the street.”

“Can you at least tell me where it is?”

“It’s in Durham.”

“Is it far from here? Maybe I won’t even go.” Ratso looks wounded. “Can I go to tonight’s concert?”

“I’m giving you tickets for tonight.”

“OK,” Ratso jumps off the railing and leans toward Kemp, “let’s set up some boundaries. One, I’m not gonna come to the hotel. If I come it’s only to call for somebody that I set up an appointment with like I did just now. I called to say I’m waiting in front …”

Kemp frowns. “But still there are the other people who are gonna walk in and out of that door and they’re gonna see you and they’re gonna say, ‘Oh shit, here he is again.’”

“Who,” Ratso screams like an owl.

“I’m gonna say it,” Kemp shoots back.

“What should I do, wait across the street?”

“Something so the others don’t have to feel that they’re on. Minimize your presence off the concert-hall scene. In the concert hall you belong like anyone else.”

“OK,” Ratso starts to recapitulate, “so I set up appointments, obviously not stay in the same hotel, not hang around, and don’t follow the bus. Is it OK if I try to buy a ticket to the next show?”