On the Road with Bob Dylan (27 page)

“I can’t speak for him on that,” Kemp hurries. “Call me back later.”

Ratso walks to the restaurant and grabs a fast bite. Back in the room, he grabs his copy of
Hustler
and starts to read when the phone rings again. Flippo this time.

“I just spoke to Kemp,” Ratso reassures, “I got ten minutes on the phone with me asking questions and charges about the expenses and shit.”

“Great.”

“I also told him I need a quote from Dylan. My fucking phone bill’s gonna be astronomical. There’s no paging system in the Hilton, every time I have to get transferred I get disconnected. Kemp told me everyone on the tour is on salary. The film crew is fifteen people alone. One of the reasons they play large halls is to pay for the film that’s getting made. They see daily rushes, big sessions where they all sit around. I play a
Rolling Stone
reporter in the movie.”

“That’s secondary,” the editor snaps, “get the fucking story.”

“I can’t control it,” Ratso shrugs, “they just come in, barge in, I was interviewing someone on the street and they come up and start filming the interview.”

“Well, manipulate them, man. All I care about is the story, Larry.
Dylan’s the key. You got to have Dylan. Are you aware that Blakley’s sleeping with Dylan?” Flippo says tongue-in-cheek.

“No,” Ratso scoffs.

“That’s a fact.”

“What do you mean that’s a fact.”

“I know it from somebody on the tour. Now look, I’m not totally stupid, Larry.”

“I hear she’s a dyke,” Ratso lies.

“I don’t know about that now. I heard this from a fairly good authority. That’s the only reason Bob took her along.”

“That’s not true,” Ratso protests.

“She ain’t the greatest singer in the world,” Flippo smirks. “Got to admit that.”

“I love her, I think she’s a great songwriter.”

“But she can’t sing. She’s a fair songwriter. No one can tell you she can sing. She’s not an Emmylou Harris by any means. So what’s her charm then. I’ll tell you what her charm is. Round heels.”

“What’s that?” Ratso asks.

“That means she bends over backward. You touch her and she falls over backward, that’s Southern. Dig it.”

“That means she fucks?” Ratso plays dumb.

“Round heels,” Flippo’s screaming, “she can’t stand up straight. She falls over.”

“And what happens when she falls over?”

“What do you think happens when she falls over?” Flippo fumes. “Jesus Christ.”

“You think I can fuck her?” Ratso asks innocently.

“Well if she has round heels …”

“Wouldn’t that be a great story,” Ratso gushes.

“Yeah, but you ain’t Dylan, that’s the problem.”

“Yeah, too bad, just think I could wire myself for sound and get an interview in bed.”

“Let’s not worry about that now,” Flippo cautions.

“What a good concept though,” Ratso continues. “Somebody really told you that about her and Dylan, huh, somebody on the tour. A performer?”

“Let’s not play twenty questions here.”

“Give me a hint,” Ratso begs.

“I can’t tell you …. Well, have you seen any indications of that?”

“No,” Ratso emphasizes, “I thought he was sleeping with Neuwirth.”

“Look,” Flippo gets serious, “the hours are creeping down. You had two fucking weeks. That story had a lot of holes.”

Ratso yawns. “What’s going on in the real world?”

“I want to know what’s going on in the tour,” Flippo yells. “He ain’t playing small halls, he’s grossed almost $600,000 in less than two weeks ….”

“He hasn’t made any money,” Ratso reports.

“C’mon.”

“Look, there are seventy people on the road all being paid salary.”

“How much?” Flippo snaps.

“They won’t tell me that.”

“Ask them. Ask Baez. She might tell you. It’s worth the fucking chance, man.”

“Well, seventy people on the road,” Ratso calculates, “let’s say the average salary is …”

“Two hundred a week,” Flippo butts in.

“No, more than that. The fucking stagehands make more than $200 a week. They couldn’t get anybody for $200 a week. Maybe $350 a week plus everyone gets $20 a day per diem.”

“OK, seventy people at $300 a week, that’s $21,000 a week. So how does $100,000 a night, c’mon, he’s grossed about $600,000. Twenty grand a week, that’s peanuts.”

“Wait a minute. Staying at hotels costs at least $30 a night for rooms. That’s $2,100 a night. Times seven. They have to pay every
night even if they don’t play. That’s $14,700 a week for rooms,” Ratso figures.

“And the gross so far is almost $600,000,” Flippo reminds.

“Wait, we ain’t done yet …”

“Look man, he ain’t playing to save the whales, we know that. I mean this is not a benefit tour. How do you take $596,000 for two weeks and justify that for expenses. C’mon, really.”

“I got $10,000 a week in per diems,” Ratso’s still figuring.

“Ain’t much.”

“Equipment, buses, and stuff costs.”

“Not much, minimal.”

“OK, what’s he paying the musicians, we don’t know that.”

“OK, that’s what we need to know,” Flippo stresses, “where is this fucking money going. He’s making it hand over fist, now why is he doubling up? In these big halls, man. Why is he playing for 25,000 a day?”

Ratso yawns.

“Man, you were too easy on Kemp in this story,” Flippo continues. “You were apologizing for him. You were kind to him, said he was a valuable friend to Dylan. You back off when Dylan and Neuwirth both say, Well man, this is what Lou has to do.’ That’s bullshit, he doesn’t have to do that. That’s crap, there’s no fucking excuse for doing what Kemp is doing to the press.”

“Can I quote you?” Ratso asks.

“Kemp is just on a fucking ego ride, that’s what it is. What else, if you’re Dylan’s right-hand man, what’s going to happen to your mind. You get sucked into his orbit if he needs to deal with you by being halfway friendly here and there. It gets you in fairly close then he just kind of gets you to do what he wants to do, man. That’s obvious, I’ve seen that for years.”

“Who?” Ratso challenges.

“From Bill Graham to Imhoff. I don’t have time to go into it now.”

“I’m sleeping only three hours a night, man,” Ratso boasts.

“What are you doing all that time that you’re not reporting?”

“I’m trying, I’m getting beat up, my car’s been broken into …”

“Who beat you up?”

“I wasn’t beat up but I was roughly escorted out by the security guards at one concert.”

“Put all this in the story,” Flippo stresses. “Obviously Kemp and Imhoff are not your typical sterling Walt Disney characters and that needs to be brought out. What you filed here was not reporting.”

“It was feature stuff.”

“Yeah, feature material that is not long enough to sustain as a feature. But we have to think about this issue, like what cities have they played, that kind of crap. That should have been in the goddamn story. What I want is fucking news.”

“Last time you said you wanted more color. You wanted what the buses looked like. I have that.”

“You still have not said how many goddamn buses there are.”

“There are two buses,” Ratso screams, “I had that in the goddamn article.”

“You had one, Phydeaux.”

“I said a caravan of two buses and a mobile home.”

“What kind of buses are they? Greyhound? Detail, detail.”

“One is a regular fucking Delmonico bus, should I say that?” Ratso can’t believe this.

“Details, yeah, this is the news section. Don’t worry about the length, if it’s good we can make it go as long as it needs to.”

Ratso hangs up and starts pacing the room, stopping for a shot of Expectorate. Time is wasting, he thinks, I gotta get to Dylan. He picks up the phone again.

“What do you want to know? Have you written the article yet?” Kemp growls.

“I spoke to Flippo, they want a quote from Dylan.”

“I gave you information. Yeah, well what they want and what they get may be two different things,” Kemp growls.

“I’d like it too, personally.”

“Saying what? What would you like the guy to say?” Kemp challenges.

“I don’t want to put words in his mouth.”

“Well, what is it you want to know from him?”

“I told you what I want to know. I want to know what he thinks about the tour so far, playing large halls—”

“I told you,” Kemp interrupts.

“But that’s not him.”

“That’s it, you know. The guy’s not accessible to everyone that wants to talk to him. You know that, that’s the facts of life.”

“I know he’s accessible to me.”

“Not whenever you want to talk to him.”

“Well, I’ve laid low for two weeks,” Ratso points out.

“I don’t want Bob bugged about these things. These are questions that fall in my area and I’ve answered them. I told you what he likes, what his preferences were and I told you what I was doing on the basis of what had to be done in order to—”

“What do you mean? Like, he likes to play small halls.”

“He likes to play small halls,” Louie repeats, “that’s his preference.”

“I’d like to ask him what he thinks about the show so far, if he thinks it’s good, why he feels so comfortable.”

“I think those are dumb questions, why does he feel so comfortable?”

“Why is he so animated?” Ratso rewords it.

“Those are bullshit questions,” Lou scoffs.

“I don’t think it’s bullshit,” Ratso raises his voice, “I’ve never seen him so comfortable on stage before.”

“I don’t think Bob should have to be subjected to questions like that.”

“Hey, did you tell the
People
guy what questions to ask him?” Ratso wonders.

“If you had an interview you could ask what you feel but you don’t have an interview so you’ll just have to settle—”

“When can I have an interview?” Ratso interrupts shrilly.

“When can you have an interview? I’ll put your name on the list.”

“What list?”

“The list of the other ten thousand people that requested it before you. You’re constantly badgering me for the same shtick.”

“I’m just trying to do my job,” Ratso repeats.

“Do it then, you can see the guy’s loose, that’s the important thing.”

“You know as well as I do that I can say it but if he says the same thing it means more than if I say it.”

“OK, well,” Lou concedes, “but the facts are what they are.”

“Do you think he’d feel I was intruding if I asked him questions like that?”

“I don’t want to subject him to questions,” Lou decides. “If he wants to do an interview with you, he’ll call you, OK.”

“Could you ask him,” Ratso pleads. “I don’t want an interview, give him the message. I just need about two paragraphs now, I don’t need an hour.”

“Another thing you haven’t put in your articles that I think you should put in is the low-keyed way the tickets are being sold for the benefit of the people in the street. So it’s a nonhype easygoing type of thing.”

“Tell me the way it’s done,” Ratso reluctantly gets out a pen.

“Jerry Seltzer’s the guy that runs ticket sales. He goes into a town approximately five, six days ahead of time, with the tickets already printed up. For example, Worcester went on sale today for a Tuesday show. We put them on sale with handbills, just handbills and follow it up on a couple of stations once in a while with a couple of short radio spots in outlying areas, where we want people to have a chance to get tickets also.”

“Do you have to pay for the ads?”

“In some cases we have bought a few spots, but in most cases the radio stations pick it up off the handbills or word-of-mouth. We’re not hyping anybody, we’re putting the tickets out there and anybody
wants to buy them they’re welcome. If they don’t this ain’t no big rock ’n roll hype.”

“The
Variety
article talked about the way you booked the Springfield date.”

“Yeah, how’d we do that,” Kemp says sarcastically.

“It said Imhoff called up and said we have name talent, wouldn’t say who it was, and speculation ranged from Anne Murray to Elton John. I also talked to a kid promoter in Southeast Massachusetts, that was pissed off ’cause Imhoff bought all the T-shirts he had printed up with the Rolling Thunder logo ….”

Just then the phone buzzes, signaling another call coming into Kemp’s line. “Go write your story,” he chides the reporter. “Excuse me, sir,” the operator’s voice chimes in, “Carlos Santana is on the line waiting.”

It’s midnight and still no quotes and Ratso is restless. Danbury ain’t exactly Marina Del Rey but there must be some hip bars, the reporter prays. He hops into the Monte Carlo, stops at the first gas station, and gets directions to a nearby music club. Five minutes later, Ratso locks the car, hops over some puddles, opens the door and gets bathed in the warm sounds of rock ’n roll. The band ain’t bad, the beer is cold and cheap, and there’s this one blonde that keeps eyeing him. They talk for a while, drink a few beers, and it’s two, bartime. Ratso speeds back to the motel and parades the blonde past the awed young night clerk.

In the room, she settles gingerly down onto the bed, making some space between the sheafs of copy paper, the tape recorder, the strewn cassettes, the bottles of vitamins, the iced juice, and begins to leaf through
Hustler
. Ratso seizes the opportunity to size her up. Nice tits, bulging out at him from behind the cashmere sweater, but the rest of the body is on the pudgy side. And those tacky white platform shoes, and all that sleazy makeup, and those black patterned stockings, he’d only seen that shit on aging bohemians. Oh well, it’ll have to do, Ratso thinks, after all this is Danbury. He moved onto the bed next to her. “Oh,” she says coyly,
“I forgot to tell you what happened after I broke up with my boyfriend. I had an operation last week.” She pauses, dramatically, and looks at the ceiling. “An abortion.” Ratso just moans and sinks back into the bed.

He finally gets to sleep close to four, his only companion the tape recorder lying on the other twin bed. And once again, after about a half hour of REM bliss, the jangling phone rips him back to reality. It’s Jacques Levy in New York, returning his earlier call.

“Rolling Stone
wants to know details,” he mumbles. “What happened to the concept of small clubs, now it’s big arenas.”