On the Road with Bob Dylan (17 page)

Next to me Priscilla is glowing. “Incredible,” she shakes her head, “what an up.” We make our way to the side of the stage and meet Johnson, who takes us backstage. In the hall, Meyers comes up with a camera and they shoot Priscilla and Jenny, leaning against the wall, reminiscing about Dylan, who himself is about twenty yards down the hall, talking animatedly with Chief Rolling Thunder. Kemp stands next to Dylan keeping a watchful eye on me. After the interview, I say good-bye to Priscilla, who’s taking a bus back to Newport. Meyers comes rushing up with, “Sloman, that was a great scene, she was the most articulate person we’ve interviewed so far. Don’t worry, we’ll tell Dylan what you’re bringing in.” I smile, as Meyers leaves to join the others who are eating a catered supper between shows, a supper that Chris O’Dell has warned me not to try to attend.

The second show is fairly routine until the finale. The old chief had made his way to the front of the stage, cutting a striking figure in his Indian boots, rolled-up white pants, striped Cherokee shirt, and fedora-style hat, but he looked natural up there as he coolly surveyed the scene, glancing from the stage out to the vast audience, mysteriously stroking a long feather, exuding that Don Juanish prairie power, seeming to know that more than anyone else onstage or out in that sea of faces, this land was his land.

Back in Newport later, I was restless and made the rounds of some of the bars. I had called Stoner to see if he wanted to check out the local action but he declined, preferring to stay in the hospitality suite set up next to Chris O’Dell’s room. The hospitality suite, an institution borrowed from the world of corporate socializing, functions on a rock tour as a means to program the performers into a self-contained world. In one of the rooms rented by the entourage, liquor and food are provided (until a reasonable hour, then suddenly strategically withdrawn), a context is provided so performers can let off steam (short of destroying furniture which went out with Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper tours), and security is provided in the form of several imposing-looking ex-football players who screen the outside inputs. Attractive women usually pass through this filter. Ragged journalists don’t.

“C’mon, Stoner,” I rant over the phone from my motel down the road, “let’s go out barhopping, I found some great places. You gonna just be a zombie, letting them load you on the bus to the gig, load you back, throw you into a hotel room, get you shit-faced, then safely take you to bed? That’s a real antitour, huh, really getting out and meeting the people. You wouldn’t even know if there was Rolling Thunder, you’re always indoors.”

To no avail. So I make the rounds and by four I drift over to the troupe’s hotel. And surprisingly enough, there seems to be a flurry of activity in the lobby. Rolling Thunder and Spotted Fawn and their brave friend are in one corner. Mel Howard is running around frantically. Ginsberg and Orlovsky and Denise Mercedes, hard-rock guitarist
and Peter’s girlfriend, are milling about. “Stick around,” Mel shouts to me as he scurries by, “we may be doing a scene with Rolling Thunder. I think Bob wants to do a sunrise ceremony.” As the time passes, more and more people filter into the lobby, McGuinn, then Blakley, Neuwirth, Blue, Jack Elliot, a few girlfriends, even a female correspondent from
Newsweek
, who’s just flown in to do a story and hasn’t succeeded in getting near Dylan yet.

In the lobby, I run into my friend Mary, a photographer from the Village, who gets permission from Rolling Thunder to photograph the ceremony. By now about twenty people have amassed, and Spotted Fawn has pulled all the females in one corner for a huddle, making sure that no one was currently in the midst of her period (Tampax is taboo at these affairs). It’s almost light by now, and finally Dylan steps off the elevator and we fill three cars and follow Bob’s camper to the grounds of someone’s friend, who lives in an old restored mansion off Rhode Island Sound.

It turns out to be an old stone building, currently an artist’s coop. We trudge through the grounds to a beautiful isolated spot on the edge of the sound. The sky is beginning to lighten so Rolling Thunder and the brave set out at once to build a campfire. That done, Rolling Thunder has us form a huge circle around the fire and I find myself between Roger McGuinn and Lola. The brave passes around a tobacco pouch from which each of us is instructed to take a pinch of tobacco to be thrown into the fire as we make our own individual prayers. Then Rolling Thunder sternly warns us of the seriousness and sanctity of the ceremony and he bans all cameras and tape recorders.

Rolling Thunder begins the ceremony by explaining the meaning that sunrise has to the Indians, the affirmation, the renewal, the generosity of the Great Spirit. When he concludes his talk, he asks us to make our own prayers starting clockwise. Peter Orlovsky steps to the fire with, “I pray that we should all eat well and stop smoking cigarettes that are bad for us.” “May the spirit of this tour extend to everyone we meet along the road,” Ramblin’ Jack notes
poignantly. Then all eyes shift to Dylan, who’s been standing with his head shyly burrowed into his chest, his Tibetan scarf flowing in the wind. He rocks back and forth on his boot heels, nervously kneading the tobacco in his fist. “I pray that man will soon realize that we are all of one soul,” he says gently, then strides to the fire and tosses the tobacco into the flames. Ronee Blakley shyly monotones a message that nobody can really hear and then Roger McGuinn vaults to the fire. “I pray that we’ll realize that everything’s gonna be all right,” he enthuses. It’s my turn. I step to the fire, “For life … and love.”

After the circle is completed, Rolling Thunder invites Allen Ginsberg to recite a poem. Ginsberg, in jean jacket, scarf, and red bandanna tied around his balding pate, pulls some Australian aborigine song sticks from his shoulder bag and begins to improvise a poem-chant to the accompaniment of the sticks.

The recitation over, Rolling Thunder addressed the circle again: “There was a girl who wanted to take photographs. It is permissible now.” Mary whips out her Nikon and starts to circle the circle, trying to line up Dylan, who begins a cat-and-mouse game with her. She darts discreetly behind McGuinn and snaps just as Dylan notices something interesting on his shoe. She retreats and peeks
around Blakley; Dylan suddenly has an impulse to stare at the tree behind him. The game goes on as Neuwirth helps the brave to put out the fire.

The rest of us huddle together, warding off the cold, as the sun rises magnificently over the Sound. Everybody seems a little dewy-eyed, moved by the experience. We start back to the mansion, our host promising us a glimpse at some of the art work there.

I’m walking with Mary when someone calls to us from the rear. We look back and it’s Rolling Thunder, deftly hopping over the rocks, scampering toward us. He pulls alongside and begins to talk to Mary about photography and mentions the book that was written about him. “Listen,” he smiles, “do you think you could send me a copy of your contact sheets?” And as I walk on toward the house, the medicine man is scribbling his post-office-box address on a piece of paper.

W
e march single file into the house, proceed up a narrow flight of stairs, and are led down a long corridor, peeking into room after room filled with oil paintings, watercolors, and some sculpture. I linger in one room, presently joined by David Blue, Mary, and a few others. Suddenly Dylan storms in. He stops about three feet from Mary and casts a penetrating glare. “Who are you?” he spits out. Mary blanches and finally manages to stammer her name. “Well, what are you doing here? Who invited you?” Dylan snarls, rocking back and forth on his heels. Mary looks like she’s about to faint and finally she weakly points to me and David Blue. “I know them,” she whispers.

Dylan rolls his eyes. “Oh great, Larry. She’s your photographer, huh,” he snaps, then turns back to her. “I bet you got some great pictures.” Mary smiles faintly. “Well, I’d like to see ‘em,” he adds. With the change in tone Mary blurts out, “Where can I get in touch with you?” Dylan smiles sarcastically: “Ask Larry, he seems to know where we are.” With that, he turns on his heel and walks out of the room.

After a few more minutes of house-seeing, we file back down to the cars. Dylan, Neuwirth, and McGuinn pile into the singer’s camper, which leads the caravan back to the hotel. It’s almost 10
A.M.
now, time for breakfast, so a few of us grab seats in the coffee shop. Blakley, Soles, McGuinn, Blue, and I cram into a booth as Ramblin’ Jack just sort of wanders around. Roger, an electronics freak, has brought his walkie-talkies with him and hands one to Jack and they start a conversation across the room. Blue relieves
Elliot and starts to wander outside, broadcasting his whereabouts every few seconds in a fuzzy garbled tone.

Blakley cracks up. “I never saw two kids with a couple of tin cans crazier than you guys are.” Roger just smiles and goes back to his unit. “Come back, David,” he screams into the walkie-talkie, “where are you going? Over and out.” After a few more minutes of this the food arrives, signaling a suspension of communications.

McGuinn and I begin to discuss our present relationships with women, both of us being in the throes of some difficult times. “My old lady’s upset about me being on the road,” Roger notes somberly, “about balling other women, and all that. I told her to go out and get laid, it wouldn’t bother me. I could’ve brought her on the road but I didn’t want to, even though the newsletter said it was all right.”

I commiserate. “My problem is that my girlfriend makes me feel like I’m a sexual monster, that I’m totally oversexed if I want to get laid once a night.”

“Once a night, that’s not unreasonable,” McGuinn sympathizes with a smile.

Suddenly Blakley looks up from stirring her coffee. She leans over toward us and smiles conspiratorially. “I’d like to get laid at least three times a day,” she leers, pausing for effect. She leans back, nonchalantly, then chuckles, “Depending on how long each one is.”

After breakfast, I return to my motel, partake of some artificial stimulation, and begin to pack for the trip to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, our next stop. Finally, an hour or so later, I pull out in the Granada, feeling grubby, weary, and glum at the prospect of driving alone for hours, but incredibly enough, there right ahead of me are the two tour buses. Aha, a convoy, I smile to myself, as I scoot in line and guard the rear.

We drive on for ten minutes, winding through magnificently scenic streets of Newport until the buses pull into a parking lot on a narrow tree-lined road. Everyone’s filing off the buses and crossing
the street where Chris O’Dell is standing in front of the archway to a cobblestoned road that leads to an incredible mansion. It’s like a scene out of summer camp, O’Dell standing there with clipboard, checking off each body, then reciting their name out loud. I sneak into line behind the film crew and blithely smile as I scurry under the archway. O’Dell shrugs.

We assemble at the foot of the stairs leading to the house, and since we’re too numerous to go through at one time, O’Dell divides us into groups. I’m thrust with Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Levy, McGuinn, Stoner, Elliot, and Kemp, who’s doing a slow burn staring at me. “Good afternoon, I’m Mrs. Welch,” a matronly red-jacketed woman announces. “Welcome to the Breakers, the Vanderbilt mansion.” We step in to a massive lobby, replete with antiques, portraits, and exquisite fixtures. “This is nice,” Mel Howard scans the room, “but it’s nothing like our place.” “This is the Old Commodore, Cornelius Vanderbilt,” our guide points to a portrait, “and this is his grandson. This is the countess.” They all look rich. Kemp keeps asking Mrs. Welch financial questions, how much the mansion’s worth, how much the upkeep is. Ginsberg plops into a chair. “This is where you had to wait around if they didn’t want to see you,” he gleefully reports.

“The house is 250 feet long, and 150 feet wide,” Welch drones on in her sweet rehearsed monotone, “made of Indiana limestone.” Ronee Blakley walks in, along with a three-man film crew. “There’s an open courtyard,” Welch reports, then spies the cameras. “There are no pictures allowed in the house,” smiling her saccharine smile. “Right on,” Jack Elliot mutters. “Great,” Levy laughs out loud, “the film crew is getting kicked out again.” Stoner leans over to me. “I bet we’re the rudest tourists yet,” he snickers.

“These are pillars of Italian marble,” Welch continues. “I say gaudy,” Levy twinkles. “I say expensive,” Kemp counters. Our guide frowns. We start up the stairs. “Send a security guard up here,” McGuinn shrieks into his walkie-talkie. Upstairs, there’s a bedroom and surrounding the bed is a cage. “That was to protect the chick
who lived up here,” McGuinn cracks. Welch seems a bit shaken and Kemp frowns at Roger. “McGuinn was misbehaving,” Stoner taunts. Kemp eases the tension by asking about the taxes on the mansion.