On the Road with Bob Dylan (7 page)

“So even when Bob was here I was telling him, ‘My Lord, you are a sixteen-cylinder man operating on four cylinders,’ because black people don’t even know who he is and that is a sin. They’d rather listen to somebody talk than listen to the truth. If this man could
get to all people, if people would be educated to this man, whew—if he could travel on sixteen cylinders, whew. I told Bob he was a sixteen-cylinder man operating on four cylinders and he laughed, he laughed, but it’s true. If his audience included blue, black, green people, because his songs are about people, and there’s no division in his songs, in his messages, that’s why I dug him coming from where he’s coming from.”

“What was your reaction to Bob’s song about you?”

“I ain’t got no reaction. I never react to anything, that’s negative. A reaction is like when all these people are shooting at the President, then everybody steps up and says we need stricter gun control, that’s a reaction because it’s not there to solve the problem, just to give a cosmetic solution to a very serious problem. An action would be why are these people so frustrated that they got to shoot at the President. It’s because of the economic and political system that’s forcing people to become powerless. These aren’t paid assassins, they’re little housewives, little mixed-up children, feeling helpless. That’s the most predominant social emotion out in society today. Everybody feels so powerless to influence anybody to change anybody, to direct their own lives and destinies. So when you look at powerlessness by its more personal names, helplessness and weakness, that brings that sense of powerlessness all the more down on people.

“But I feel good about the song. Bob sent me a demo of it and I sat down and listened to it first and—eeehhh, it was a song to me, but the more I sat there and listened to it and really understood what he was saying, I said, ‘Wow man, this cat’s a genius, this guy is a genius.’ It was just totally fantastic. So the more I listened to it the more incredulous I became. It’s more inspiring to me to know that Rubin, man, keep on pushing, ’cause you got to be doing something right you got all these good people coming to try and help you.”

Rubin’s plight became of such paramount importance to Dylan that at first it seemed that Bob was having difficulty writing the song about Hurricane because he was too emotionally involved in the
situation. Jacques Levy, who cowrote most of the
Desire
LP, told me about Dylan’s difficulty:

“When the Hurricane thing started, Bob wasn’t sure that he could write a song at that point. He was just filled with all these feelings about Hurricane. He couldn’t make the first step. I think the first step was putting the song in a total storytelling mode. I don’t remember whose idea it was to do that. But really, the beginning of the song is like stage directions, like what you would read in a script, ‘Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night/Enter Patty Valentine from the outer hall/She sees the bartender in a pool of blood/Cries out My God they killed them all/Here comes the story of the Hurricane/’ Boom, titles. You know, Bob loves movies, and he can write these movies that take place in eight-to-ten minutes yet seem as full or fuller than regular movies.”

“Hurricane” was certainly full, eleven one-two punch stanzas to the body of New Jersey Injustice. Perhaps too full. Because the original lyrics Dylan and Levy wrote contained one major factual mistake; they confused Alfred Bradley with Albert Bello and placed Bradley in the bar at the scene of the crime. So on Friday, October 24, a series of harried phone calls were made by George Lois to Dylan at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

Lois was standing in his cavernous, immaculate Fifth Avenue office, the model of advertising chic, in his army-surplus safari jacket and kelly-green sneakers, running over the lyrics to “Hurricane” with Dylan on the other end. “Yeah, yeah, they say it’s potentially libelous the way it stands now. It was Bello who was in the bar, not Bradley. Yeah, yeah, now in stanza seven it should be Bello that says, ‘I’m really not sure!’” A puzzled look crossed Lois’ face. “Wait a minute, no, I’m sorry, that is Bradley saying that, yeah, yeah, I’m mixed up now.” And Lois handed me back the phone, with a by now thoroughly confused Dylan hanging on. “Tell Lois we’ll get right on it and rewrite it and call ya back,” Dylan decided and hung up. About two hours later the phone rang, and this time Jacques Levy was on the line, ready to read the new lyrics. Lois grabbed a pen and started
the corrections. “And another man named Bello, right, moving kinda mysteriously, that’s great, that’s a great image, you can just see him prowling around, great correction, yeah, yeah.”

And so around 10:30 that night, Dylan strode briskly into Columbia Studio I, where a Janis Ian mixing session had been preempted, followed by Kemp, Levy, producer Don DeVito, Howie Wyeth, Scarlett, Stoner, Soles, Blakley, and percussionist Luther Rix. Dylan was wearing the same shirt he had on at Gerdes and was nervously pacing and strumming his Martin as Wyeth set up the drum kit. The engineers were setting up the soundproof baffles that absorb sound leakage between players. Scarlett, resplendent in a sleeveless
Creem
magazine T-shirt, was isolated in a booth at the left, with Wyeth and Rix set up behind her, Soles and Blakley, who were to sing backup vocals, near the center of the studio, Dylan at a stool at the right, and Stoner about five feet to Dylan’s left. As warmup, Dylan broke into “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy,” the beautiful song that Ochs performed the night before. Then they started into “Sitting On Top of the World,” followed by the Arthur Crudup song “It’s All Right Mama.” At 11:15, the studio lights were dimmed.

But there were still some technical problems, so Dylan moseyed over to the piano and started jamming with Blakley. He tired of that, picked up his guitar and started a familiar strum. “We’re gonna send this out to Larry, he’s out there somewhere,” and Dylan broke into a spirited version of Kinky Friedman’s “Ride ’Em Jewboy.” But by midnight all the technical problems had been resolved and DeVito called out for a first take. Bob kicked the song off with a bit of acoustic guitar and Scarlett’s haunting violin jumped in, but then Dylan’s harmonica slipped from his neck. “Hold it, my harp rack fell.” After that false start they started in again, but it wasn’t really cooking, and everyone felt that. During the playback Dylan came into the studio and consulted some of us. I told him it sounded muffled and he reported this to DeVito. “We all blew the phrasing,” Stoner added. “Hey Howie, can you play just
as good on the next one as that one?” Scarlett seemed perturbed. “The arrangement’s not right,” she whispered to me. “It’s not the same feel we had the first time we recorded it.”

They went back into the studio and set up for another take. “Let’s get the old-time mikes,” Dylan quipped. “Hey Don, where’s the tequila.” A second take was attempted but the tempo slacked off and it was stopped. They started in again, and hit an uptempo groove. DeVito’s head started nodding, and he was shouting to no one in particular, “Not that slow waltz, that’s it, that’s it! All right!” There was a pause between takes and Dylan and Stoner broke into some old country tunes like “I’m Dreaming Tonight of My Blues Eyes.” “Let’s sing this one for Johnny,” Dylan announced. “Send it out to everyone who loves Johnny Cash,” and they broke into “I Still Miss Someone.” Take three began at 1:25, slow at first, then building up in intensity, until the tempo fell off. DeVito clicked on his mike and announced into the studio, “Hold that tempo, Bob, that was starting to smoke.” On the next take, everything jelled; Wyeth did some ethereal drumming, and Dylan seemed satisfied. Kemp leaned over to DeVito and smiled. “He knows it’s good.”

They began take five, Blakley doing some sort of pagan dance, waving her hands in the air, and at the end, Dylan blew some harp, weaving it in with Scarlett’s violin, a weird interplay. They faded out slowly, and DeVito announced, “A good rehearsal.” It was clear that Dylan was getting restless. “Hey Don, it’s past rehearsal time,” he moaned. “What was the matter with that one besides fucking up the lyrics?” DeVito ordered another take and Dylan kids, “But Don, we all got dates tonight.” DeVito pointed to Lou Waxman, the middle-aged engineer. “Keep ’Em here with Lou, they don’t call him Lou the Tongue for nothing.”

The sixth take was incredible, the band really smoked, and Dylan rode that energy, straining, punching out the words as Blakley did some cheerleader moves, and Bob screamed. “But one time he coulda been the champion of the woorrlllldddd.” DeVito nonchalantly
called them in for the playback. “I think we got it covered, let’s do just one more for insurance.” It was close to 2
A.M.
and Dylan lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. He obviously needed prodding. Levy took up the battle: “I think the next one might be great.” But Dylan was stubborn: “C’mon, we want to get this out, time is of the essence, Don. Maybe you ought to decide which take by a roll of the dice. I mean, we can always do it better. What does everybody think, let’s vote.” So a straw poll was taken with Dylan polling the band. “Scarlett says no,” DeVito looks at Steve and Howie who seem dissatisfied, “Steve and Howie vote yes,” DeVito added. “They do?” Bob blurted, “OK, let’s do just one more. I might just fade away. I mean we can do it seventy-five times but I just want to get it out on the streets.”

Everyone went back into the studio, but Dylan lingered in the control room. Some cheese and wine had been brought in and I was nibbling on the Brie. “Hey Larry, did you hear the song I dedicated to you before.” I nodded, “Yeah, it was great, you even got some of the words right; I’ll tell Kinky.”

Dylan smiled. “Hey, Kinky doesn’t understand me. He’s been in Texas too long. I told him that he ought to live with Allen Ginsberg for a year, that’ll straighten him out.” Stoner joined us and started discussing the takes with Dylan. “We can do it better, we’re pros.” Dylan looked at me. “We got either pros or cons on this tour and you can quote me.” We drifted back into the studio and Dylan pulled me over to the piano.

“Hey, I rewrote ‘Simple Twist of Fate.’ Wanna hear it?” And he began a stunning solo recitation. The lyrics were changed a bit, to give the song a more cohesive narrative, and by the third verse, Stoner and Wyeth joined in, kicking the piano along with some fine rhythm. Jacques came into the room and called for some order, and Dylan dutifully returned to his setup. “Hey, I also rewrote ‘If You See Her Say Hello,’” he shouted as I turned to head back to the control room. “It goes, ‘If you see her say hello/she
might be in Babylon/she left here last early spring/it took me a long time to learn that she was gone.’”

Dylan then signaled DeVito. “Hey Don, do we have to use the Dolbys?” DeVito went through a patient explanation of the sound leakage and tape hiss using sixteen-track tape but Dylan was in a playful mood.

“How about cutting it in mono, man, or 78? When was Dolby invented anyway?”

“We worked on it all last week,” DeVito explained, straight-faced.

“Let’s do it un-Dolbied,” Bob decided.

Take seven was called and Blakley kicked it off with some exotic, almost Middle Eastern chanting, but Dylan came in sloppily, like a drunken chorus. DeVito and Levy weren’t pleased.

“We ain’t gonna do it anymore,” Dylan said. “We’re gonna go.”

“C’mon, just do it once more with just Bob singing,” Levy suggested. “You’re getting too far away from it.”

Stoner came in in defense of Levy, reminding everyone that in Chicago at the PBS-TV taping Dylan sang it solo.

Dylan, pressured back into the studio, slowly pulled his guitar on. “How about doing ‘Who Killed Davey Moore,’” he quipped. “I need Albert Grossman. Send for Albert immediately, he’ll straighten this out. He’s a bulldozer. I want Ronee to sing again. Everybody wants Bob Dylan alone.” He frowned. He started up take eight, but midway, he blew the lines, singing the old version.

“Shit,” Dylan cursed, “I’m used to singing it that way. I like ‘bodies’ much better than ‘registers.’”

“Yeah,” DeVito cautioned, “but bodies are libelous, registers aren’t.”

The ninth take is called for and Blakley, dancing like a dervish, was in front of Bob as he worked into the cut, but there was no magic, and Dylan even forgot to do a harp break. Everyone looked wasted as they trudged into the control room for the playbacks. “In my humble opinion, this is nowhere, man,” Stoner groaned and
sank onto the couch. Levy and DeVito were conferring over the tapes. “Don’t play back the one where she goes crazy,” Levy whispered to DeVito, and DeVito went right to take six, the most dynamic version. “We got to mix this song and press it tomorrow,” Dylan said. Levy asked Stoner for an opinion. “I don’t know, it’s too late,” Stoner moaned again. “I can’t tell. But I can’t hear the famous magic of the August take.” Dylan, meanwhile, was small-talking about his diet. “I always eat hot peppers the first thing when I wake up,” he smiled at Ronee, “it sets my day off, it’s fantastic.”

“Yeah,” DeVito chuckled, “Ol’ Red Eyes is back.”

It was 4
A.M.
and DeVito cued up the sixth take again. “I like this one,” Bob said, “but I like the intro to seven better. Where’s John Hammond? He’d know.” Levy meanwhile was still pressing for one more take. Dylan demurred. “But we promised the record would go right out. What’s with these guys,” he moaned to Louie, “one more, one more. I feel like Robert Johnson. But if it’s a test to see who can outlast who, we’ll stay till the end.”

The talk turned to food, a favorite topic in the encapsulated world of recording studios. “Hey, did ya hear about the time T-Bone went down to Umberto’s?” Dylan asked. “He was just sitting there when he felt something strange about his seat, and it turned out to be a bullet hole. They sat him at the chair where Joey got shot.”

“Did you know his bodyguard, Pete the Greek, got shot in the ass?” Levy added. “They found twelve hundred dollars in cash in the Greek’s pocket, too.” Kemp jumped in then and told a story about a cop who shot someone up the rectum. “C’mon,” Levy nudged Bob, “go to work before you pass out.”

So, for the last time, Dylan walked back into the studio. Luther had already left, everyone else looked wiped. It was 4:20 when the tenth take started, and everything was fine until Dylan hit the line about robbing the “bodies.” The music came to an abrupt halt.