On the Road with Bob Dylan

Thin Ice
A Season in Hell with the New York Rangers

Reefer Madness
The History of Marijuana in America

Steal this Dream
Abbie Hoffman and the Countercultural Revolution in America

L
iterally hundreds of people helped with this book but a few must be singled out. George Lois, the Greek Godfather of this effort, can’t be thanked enough. David Blue helped to kick it off, as did Abe Peck. George Barkin made the early going less tedious. Lynn came out of nowhere. Lola Cohen did some invaluable legwork. Debbie Weiner put me up in Boston. Keefe Laundry gave me Ex-Lax when I was upset. The film crew kept me alive. Hope Antman accepted the charges. Ron Delsener offered us shelter for the storm. St. Robin fed me for three months while I was writing. Dr. David Leibling added the salt. Crazy Benny furnished me with tape. Naomi and Mildred kept the lines open. Rocky Singer, Marie Brown, Rona Wyeth, and Ciel Reisner transcribed the garbled tapes and typed the massive manuscript. John Brockman, superagent, sold it. Tobi Sanders bought it and whipped Ratso into shape. Jim Cusimano and Lou Gorfain read it through, carefully and critically. All those I left out did their bits wonderfully. You shoulda been there ….

For the 2002 edition

I have to thank first and foremost Mitch Blank for nudging me over the years to get this back in print. Mitch was very gracious to allow me full access to his wonderful Blank Archives—the last word in Dylan research. I’d also like to thank Bill Pagel who took time out of his busy schedule to help with the photo research. His Web site
www.boblinks.com
is a tremendous resource for all those interested in things Bob. Thanks also to Jeff Friedman for his cooperation.

Thanks also to Jeff Rosen, Diane Lapson, Debbie Sweeney, Jeff Kramer, Louie Kemp, Dan Levy, the late Howard Alk, Marty Feldman, Ken Regan, David Vigliano, Mike Harriot, and Claudia Gabel.

Special kudos to my great friend and colleague Kinky Friedman for his poignant introduction. I owe you dinner at Wing Wong’s.

I’m always grateful to my wife Christy, who fell in love with Ratso.

T
he shit in this book hit the old ceiling fan twenty-seven years ago. Some of you may not even have been born then, or what is more likely, you may have been conceived on this tour. At least a dozen of the colorful players in this traveling soap opera called the Rolling Thunder Revue have now been bugled to Jesus and many others wish they were dead, including myself. It’s certainly preferable to writing this introduction for the kind of money I’m sure Ratso will give me. He’s a superb chronicler of events but he does have fishhooks in his pockets.

The one person we know that hasn’t gone to Jesus yet is Bob Dylan. Bob may stay on the road forever. He may never be bugled to Jesus. Maybe Bob
is
Jesus. They’re both skinny little boogers. And they’re both Jeeeews. Today, of course, we like to refer to them as fellow Red Sea pedestrians.

But back to whatever the hell I was writing about before I started hearing voices in my head. If you’re a young person picking up this classic manuscript for the first time, it may seem as important as stumbling across a secular version of the Dead Sea Fucking Scrolls. You know you should’ve been there but you weren’t and, like a pedigreed dog, it’s not your fault. Like a knight born out of time you realize that some of these dreamers and jet-set gypsies could’ve been your brothers and sisters and friends and lovers, kindred sprits from a different world that today seems more spiritual and also more real. On the other hand, have you explored a career at Starbucks?

I am, for a number of reasons, very gratified to see this book of Ratso’s back in print again. For one thing, it means royalties for Ratso which, I suppose, is a good thing. Not that I expect him to ever pick up the check, of course. He never has and he never will. Some things never change. But some do. Things like culture and society and the way each generation looks at the world. Bob himself said: “Art should not reflect culture; art should subvert culture.” This, I believe, is a
worthy goal. For if Ratso has captured anything in this comprehensive yet subtle book it is the casual and innermost thoughts, comments, and dreams, sometimes beautiful beyond words and music, sometimes quite prophetic, that emanated from a small band of brigands traveling across America in that year of our Lord 1975, long before, I hasten to add, the country somehow managed to transmogrify itself into a non-smoking family chain restaurant.

Since I’ve forgotten the first half of my life, I don’t remember all that much about the 60s and 70s. For instance, I don’t recall whether I called the girl in my hotel room a “slut” or a “slit” anymore and I’m not going to argue with Ratso over which term of endearment it was. At least I had the good sense not to call her “honey” because then we might’ve possibly gotten married, had three kids, and right now I’d probably be masturbating like a monkey in the men’s room of a non-smoking family chain restaurant. The more important point here is, however, that Ratso is an unconventional journalist of uncommon integrity. His eye is a digital camera and his ear is comparable to the most high-tech DVD the Japanese can produce. Not to mention the fact that he made a major nuisance of himself on this tour as I remember, running around twenty-four hours a day like a frenetic ferret on angel dust with a tape recorder and a strangely intense yet intelligent look in his eye that, in retrospect, reminds me vaguely of Ted Bundy.

Ratso got Bob right. Indeed, he got just about everybody right. This was not an easy feat to accomplish since many of us were so high we needed a hook and ladder truck to scratch our asses and besides it was the mid-70s and we didn’t know what we were talking about anyway. But getting Bob right—that’s the big item here. Very few people have gotten Bob Dylan right ever since the day he left Hibbing, Minnesota, with nothing but a guitar, a harmonica, and a determined little smile that, in retrospect, reminds me vaguely of Ted Bundy. Yet Ratso has succeeded where others through the years have failed. He has provided us with a highly accurate reading of one of the most incandescent and inscrutable stars in the galaxy, and I don’t
mean that popular four-wheeled penis of the 60s, the Ford Galaxy. Leave it to America to name a car Galaxy. At any rate, Ratso has given the reader a rare snapshot in time of Bob Dylan, a man who can be as irretrievably anti-social (for all the right reasons) as a cat I once loved and still do. The time is the mid-70s. The snapshot will take you many pages to see in totality but it is impeccable. And I don’t know how Ratso managed to do it because Bob does not suffer gladly those who would reveal the contents of the inside pockets of his youth. He hates to be photographed, for instance, because he believes that every time a picture of him is taken, it takes away a little bit more of the chance that he might become an Indian when he grows up.

Some years back I met an Irish singer in Norway who’d recently been performing in an underground club in Austria. He told me that a bearded guy dressed all in black walked in one night with a large sign hung around his neck. The sign read: “Allen Ginsberg is Dead.” At first the Irish singer thought that this was some kind of performance art statement. Then he realized it for what it was. Allen Ginsberg was dead. Of course, compared to fat people driving SUVs and talking on cell phones, he seems pretty much alive. Along with Allen, there are many others from the pages of this tome who’ve stepped on a rainbow. You could call it Ratso’s curse or, quite possibly, they just got tired of being on the road. A partial list includes Rick Danko, Mick Ronson, David Blue, Dave Von Ronk, Howie Wyeth, Abbie Hoffman, Larry Kegan, Richard Manuel, Phil Ochs, and Michael Bloomfield. An interesting, if somewhat macabre, sidelight upon the deaths of Ochs and Bloomfield is that both parties slept upon Ratso’s old, decrepit, skid-marked couch immediately prior to falling through the trap door. Some people, no doubt, will do anything to avoid sleeping on Ratso’s couch.

I’ve slept on Ratso’s couch as well, of course, and against all odds, I’m still alive but I won’t be if I don’t terminate this tissue of horseshit soon and get something to eat. I am, as it happens, a vegetarian currently because I want to be kind to animals and morally superior to other people. Ratso’s never been a vegetarian but Bob
has. Bob’s also been an orthodox Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist, a charismatic atheist, a poet, a picker, a pilgrim, a biker, a boxer, a bullrider, a bullshitter, a chess player, a hermit, an animal lover, a lighthouse keeper, a bee keeper, a bullfighter, a butterfly collector, an adult stamp collector, and almost everything except a Republican that a human being can possibly be when a restless soul is forever evolving toward his childhood nightlight.

As of this writing, Bob Dylan is still on the road, still married to the wind, and still, if the fates are with us, coming to your town soon. Speaking on behalf of all my fellow Armenians, we’re very glad that this is the case. If you see Bob, you might bring Ratso’s book along and ask him to sign it for you. On the other hand, maybe not. Personally, I think one of the main reasons Bob stays on the road is to avoid Ratso. He remembers being hounded and interrogated by him in 1975 and doesn’t want to ever experience that unpleasant situation again.

I first met Bob and Ratso in 1973 when I was touring the country with my band, the Texas Jewboys. Ratso showed up at our first gig in New York at a place called Max’s Kansas City and proceeded to heckle me all through the performance. Bob graced our LA. debut later that year at the Troubadour. When he came upstairs to the dressing room I noticed that he was barefoot and dressed in white robes. He liked the show, which is more than I can say for Ratso, or maybe that was merely the way Ratso chose to express himself. Nevertheless, I have been deeply fond of both of them ever since.

Bob Dylan is a rock star. A world icon. A songwriter and performer who has influenced and inspired millions and affected our music and our world in a profound way. But if someone with pawnshop balls like Ratso were to ask him how he thought of himself, I doubt if he would mention any of these things. At heart, I believe he would say that he is only a minstrel boy. And I say, long may he wander in the raw poetry of time.

Kinky Friedman,
Texas Hill Country, March 29, 2002

I once asked Gurdjieff about the ballet which had been mentioned in the papers and referred to in the story “Glimpses of Truth” and whether this ballet would have the nature of a ‘mystery play.’

“My ballet is not a ‘mystery,’” said G “The object I had in view was to produce an interesting and beautiful spectacle. Of course, there is a certain meaning hidden beneath the outward form, but I have not pursued the aim of exposing and emphasizing this meaning …”

I understood from what he said subsequently that this would not be a ballet in the strict meaning of the word, but a series of dramatic and mimic scenes held together by a common plot, accompanied by music and intermixed with songs and dances. The most appropriate name for these scenes would be “revue,” but without any comic element. The “ballet” or “revue” was to be called “The Struggle of the Magicians.” The important scenes represented the schools of a “Black Magician” and a “White Magician,” with exercises by pupils of both schools and a struggle between the two schools. The action was to take place against the background of the life of an Eastern city, intermixed with sacred dances, Dervish dances, and various national Eastern dances, all this interwoven with a love story which itself would have an allegorical meaning.

—P. D. O
USPENSKY
In Search of the Miraculous