On the Road with Bob Dylan (5 page)

The next night, Friday, was devoted to a listening party. Neuwirth dropped by, the tequila was flowing, the major work was behind. For each song, they had three basic tracks to choose from, one take of Dylan on guitar, one take on piano, and one take from the big-band sessions of Monday and Tuesday. And as they played back, Dylan was constantly badgering Neuwirth, asking how that one sounded, how this other one felt, how a third one might go over. It was as if Dylan trusted Neuwirth more than himself.

But the atmosphere was light, a solid album was under their belts, and a few of the participants decided to reconvene at producer DeVito’s West Side apartment to continue the party and talk about the possibility of a tour. So they left the studio around 6
A.M.
and headed uptown, DeVito and his date leading the way in his little sportscar, Dylan, Sara, Neuwirth, and Levy following in their giant rented Buick, and Stoner and Bouhafa picking up the rear. It was Saturday morning, the traffic was light, and Dylan was mischievously feisty, so when DeVito stopped at the first red light,
Dylan just came right onto his rear and started pushing DeVito across the intersection. And soon it became clear to DeVito that there wasn’t going to be any such thing as a red light that morning, from 52nd and Madison all the way to 79th and Riverside Drive, through the park, across Central Park West, Columbus, Amsterdam, every time DeVito slowed down, Dylan was on his ass, crashing the sportscar through every light. They finally got to Broadway and 72nd and hit traffic so DeVito relaxed, braked, and stopped at the light, knowing well that Dylan would never … thud. The Buick careened into DeVito’s rear, knocking off the license plate and slowly inching the hapless producer across Broadway.

Once at DeVito’s, the talk turned to the possibility of taking the new group out on the road. “Dylan started explaining how he wanted the tour,” Bouhafa recollected. “He was really getting indignant. He said, ‘You know that play
The Fantastiks?
It’s been running for ten years Off-Broadway, man, how come they won’t let us do that. They’d never let us get something together that would last ten years.’ He seemed to be feeling real paranoid. And he said that what he really wanted was the kind of tour that would last forever. He would start it off and then he would be able to go home and two months later, if he was bored, he could call up and find out where it was and take a plane and join it. Just join the tour for a couple of weeks and then leave. And all the other artists in the country would do the same thing. He mentioned Crosby Stills Nash and Young, McGuinn, Patti Smith, all those people, wherever they were in the country, whenever they had time off, they would always know that there was this show. It was very important to him that everybody know that there was this show going on, on an ongoing basis around the country, and all you had to do was call a number to find out where it was.

“Everyone thought that it was a great idea and someone asked what we should call the tour and Dylan said he wanted to call it the ‘Montezuma Revue.’ And then he had this idea that it should be self-contained. Our own sound system, our own crew, buses, and
we would be able to call up a school on two or three days’ notice and just say ‘Hey, do you have a stage available.’ All they have to do is provide a stage and we would come in with a sound system, lights, everything, and announce the show the day of the show on the radio station or something, pass the word, sell out, and go on to the next place. Totally unannounced. We were even thinking of having our own tickets so that no school or promoter or concert hall would have to worry about anything. We would just call up and ask if they had an empty stage. Wherever there was an empty stage, we could perform, sell our own tickets, pay for expenses, be all self-contained. Nobody had to be hassled. Just three or four buses traveling around the Northeast. Haphazardly.”

So the only problem that remained was getting the initial financing for the somewhat Utopian venture. DeVito and Bouhafa felt that Columbia would provide the backing and Bouhafa left the meeting and began to draw up a proposal to submit to his supervisors at the record company. Meanwhile, Dylan and his wife left New York for a stay in Minnesota, and the musicians returned home to await word.

That Monday, Bouhafa submitted a four-page memo to some of the CBS brass. It was a comprehensive synthesis of the early discussions translated into corporate bureaucratese, outlining the premises of the tour. It was a heady proposal, brash, confident, yet careful to point out the potential gains to the corporation. And it really wasn’t such an unreasonable idea now; in a mass society fragmented by big business and big government, certainly there should be room for that spark of individual entrepreneurship, that return to the intimacy and warmth of the extended family. Certainly Dylan could once again be in the artistic vanguard, packing up his family and friends, jumping on the bus, and rolling out to deliver his visions in the simplest, most unfettered way.

Bouhafa received Columbia’s reaction to the proposal a few days later, a simple, direct, one-word response, penciled in along the top left of the first page. It was “Bullshit!”

But that had been months before, and near the end of October, Dylan was seriously enacting the pipe dream of the summer. Independently and without assistance from giant corporations like Columbia, Dylan was surrounding himself with his own people, people like Louie Kemp, hardly your typical rock entrepreneur. An old camp buddy of Dylan’s, Louie owns three huge fish-processing plants, but Kemp’s first splash into the world of rock was on Dylan’s last outing, the 1974 tour with the Band, where Louie played companion and protector. And, after that, it was back to the salmon, until he got a call from Bob in early September.

One of the first things Kemp did was to contact Barry Imhoff, a rotund rock impresario who looks a little like a Jewish Nero. Imhoff cut his teeth in the music business apprenticing for rock’s premier producer, Bill Graham. He left Graham, under somewhat strained circumstances during 1975, and headed east to New York where he formed Zebra Productions with the financial backing of Steve Greenberg, who had made a fortune publishing a tip sheet for the Wall Street crowd. Kemp, who had met Imhoff during the Dylan/ Band tour that Graham’s organization had handled, knew little about the technical aspects of touring, so Imhoff would coordinate the sound, lighting, and security, leaving Louie free to keep a wary eye on Dylan.

And that’s exactly what Kemp was doing the night of the surprise birthday party for Gerdes Folk City owner, Mike Porco. The rumors were all over the Village that Dylan would show up at the club. So by 9
P.M
the usually sparsely populated room filled to the rafters. Mel Howard, the tour film’s producer, was hanging around outside the club, and inside the film crew was setting up, using the cover that they’re working for NET doing a documentary on the Village scene. The place was packed with celebrities, hangers-on, and the simply curious. Phil Ochs, who’d been battling his own private demons of late, was downing one Tequila Sunrise after another. Then Tom Waits wandered in, in shabby sport coat and floppy cap, looking like he walked straight out of a Kerouac novel. David Blue was talking
with Eric Anderson, and in walked Dave Van Ronk, who gave them both a big bear-hug greeting. There was a strange feeling of being in a time warp, with the Old Guard joined tonight by the new, Village stalwarts like Patti Smith and singer-songwriter Tom Pacheco. Even rockabilly stars Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen limoed down from their uptown gig to check out the scene.

Outside, the sidewalk was littered with the human refuse of the Village streets, winos, ambulatory schizophrenics, smack heads, all panhandling or hassling pedestrians or just fighting among themselves. Inside, the festivities started, with local folksinger Jack Hardy doing a tepid set to the half-attentive audience who kept eying the entrance to see when the Stars would arrive. Rosie, a short, pudgy, brassy woman who wears scarves around her head and regularly serves as the M.C. for the Tuesday night hoots, decided it was time for the cake and she dragged Mike up to the stage for the presentation, only to drop the cake just as she handed it to him.

Finally, the call came, and Mel Howard reported that Dylan and company would be down at 1:30. By that time, McGuinn, who was never one to arrive too soon and had been hanging out outside in a limo, decided to mingle inside. Finally, the cherry-red Cadillac swooped up. Kemp jumped out, followed by Neuwirth, and a wary Bob Dylan, followed by a youthful-looking Joan Baez. They zoomed in and rushed right over to the bowled-over Porco to offer birthday greetings. Mrs. Porco grabbed Dylan as he walked by. “Hey Bobby, remember me?” “It’s Mike’s wife,” he cracked into a smile. “Hey Neuwirth, remember Mrs. Porco?” They retreated to a booth in the far rear of the club, but Rosie had already seized the opportunity. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a lot of surprises for you tonight,” she gushed into the mike. “Here’s the greatest star of all, Bob Dylan.” Dylan got up from the table and grabbed Baez and they made their way onstage, joined by Rob Stoner on acoustic bass. “We’re happy to be here tonight,” Dylan announced. “Happy birthday, Mike.” “And many more,” Joan added and they broke into a slightly off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday.” The crowd seemed
stunned, not believing Dylan and Baez were actually up there in front of that tacky Spanish mural.

Dylan leaned over to Joan, conferred a minute, and then they began “One Too Many Mornings,” Dylan on acoustic, Baez harmonizing along with her arm on Dylan’s shoulder. But suddenly, Stoner snapped the bridge right off his bass and Dylan seized the moment to escape, obviously tired from a day-long rehearsal and the previous night’s activities. “Let’s turn the stage over to Ramblin’ Jack Elliot,” he grinned. But Rosie had other plans. She was entreating Eric Anderson, who had joined Dylan onstage for the last aborted attempt at “One Too Many Mornings,” to remain. “What a beautiful hunk of a man,” Rosie blurted into the mike. “Don’t cover up baby, we want to see all of you Eric.”

But Jack had already moseyed up to the stage and he soon started into “San Francisco Bay Blues,” a Jessie Fuller song that was popularized by Richie Havens. Meanwhile, back at Dylan’s table, someone introduced Tom Waits to Dylan. “How ya doing, man?” Waits growled in that unmistakable gravel-lined voice of his. Dylan broke into a wide grin. “OK man, how are you?” he growled back. They chatted on a bit, Dylan responding to each of Waits’ statements with a letter-perfect imitation.

Meanwhile, Jack finished his song. He leapt over a few tables like a cowboy Errol Flynn, and made his way back to the entourage. And Bette Midler, who had arrived a bit earlier with Atlantic Records President Ahmet Ertegun, vaulted onstage, dragging along guitarist Buzzy Linhardt. She belted out a creditable version of the oldie, “When Will I Be Loved?” Not one to be outdone, Rosie regained the stage and cracked, “Let’s hear it for the wonderful Betty Miller.” Back at Dylan’s table, Neuwirth shook his head in amazement. “I can’t believe it, she’s like the Borscht belt.”

But the crowd called Bette back for more, and she sang with Buzzy on the song he wrote that became her theme of sorts, “Friends.” And it seemed like there was no end to this surreal hoot night, with star after star inheriting the stage. Eric Anderson and
Patti Smith got up to duet on “Sweet Surprise,” and as the song concluded, Eric gave a humble bow in Dylan’s direction. Meanwhile, Neuwirth was wearing Dylan’s gaucho hat and a black mask, and with his thin moustache he resembled a ’30s Cuban porn star. Jack Hardy led the crowd in yet another rendition of “Happy Birthday” to “the father of folk music in New York, and the greatest man in New York City.” The crowd screamed for a speech and Porco was reluctantly pulled onstage.

“I gotta no words, really,” Porco stuttered, obviously moved. “Thank God we here and we hope to be here in the future.”

T-Bone Burnett, a lanky stringbean of a Texan, ambled onstage to join Neuwirth and they did a quick song. “It’s getting hard to work in this room,” Neuwirth cracked as Rosie jumped onstage trying to regain the mike, “it’s like working in Momma’s kitchen. How much you go for, Momma?” Rosie rolled her eyes and shot back, “You can’t afford me, baby.” The crowd was getting a bit restless and a few people called out for Phil Ochs, who’d been on the periphery of the scene all night just downing drink after drink.

“You can sing along on this one for someone who ain’t here,” Neuwirth said, and went into a slow, stirring version of “Mercedes-Benz,” the song that Janis Joplin made famous. “Try singing it once, you turkeys,” Neuwirth shouted, as Ochs made his way up front. Neuwirth exited and the calls for Ochs increased and despite some reluctance, since it was already 4:20, Phil lurched onstage. He was disheveled, and somehow he managed to grab Dylan’s hat and with his sunglasses and shirt hanging out, this folksinger who had always seemed to be in Dylan’s shadow, looked all the more pathetic.

He tried to tune up and made a few false starts on some songs, lapsing into mumbled apologies after each. “Roll it, Phil,” David Blue screamed encouragingly from the back, but apparently a drunk in the second row had a knife and Ochs glared at him, “You better use it or I will.” “C’mon, Phil,” Neuwirth shouted out, “we’re not making a snuff film.”

So with a strained voice, Ochs started into a medley of old folk
songs, seemingly afraid to sing the material that he himself had penned. But the songs were beautiful and the performance was stunning and sensitive, as Phil poignantly sang his way through “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy,” “There You Go,” “Too Many Parties,” and “I’ll Be a Bachelor Till I Die.” Moved by Phil’s incredible courage and spirit, everyone in the Dylan entourage was standing. “Oh man,” Dylan whistled to himself, “I haven’t heard these songs for such a long time.”

Phil went on with his trip down folkdom memory lane, singing “The Blue and the Gray” and Marty Robbins’ “Big Iron,” but Dylan began to worry about his hat and Kemp, Dylan, and Blue plotted out a strategy, covering the exits, setting up an ambush to waylay Ochs and regain the hat. Dylan started off to the bar, where Neuwirth was posted, and Ochs called out feebly, “Where you going, Bobby, c’mon onstage and sing this with me.” “I’m just going to the bar,” Dylan reassured him, and mollified, Phil said, “Well, here’s a song of yours I’ve always wanted to do.” He broke into a dirgelike “Lay Down Your Weary Tune” and then stumbled offstage into the waiting arms of David Blue, who rescued the hat and returned it to Dylan. Kemp then moved into action, rounding up the performers, hustling them out of the bar and escorting them to the proper cars for the ride back uptown. Within minutes, they vanished, leaving only the gapers, the usual Gerdes regulars, a slew of empty beer bottles to clear up, tables to wipe down, chairs to be turned over, and one more magical memory for Mike Porco.