On the Road with Bob Dylan (30 page)

“I’m tired of fucking around with these people,” the editor scowls.

“Who?”

“That whole fucking crew. When is this gonna be ready?”

“What do you want?”

“I want Dylan. A lot of that stuff you sent in initially has got to be wiped out. It’s too general, it’s not reporting.”

“I stand behind that,” Ratso screams, “I read some of that stuff over the phone to Dylan today …”

“Don’t do that,” Flippo nearly bursts a blood vessel. “Goddamn it, I told you that before. He does not have fucking story approval. What about the other stuff Abe talked to you about, reporting on the tour itself?”

“He said he wanted this issue of small versus large halls explored.”

“Have all the shows been sold out?”

“Does the Pope shit?” Ratso answers.

“They have not all been sold out,” Flippo thunders, “the first show in New Haven wasn’t. I know that for a fact and they were still selling tickets for the second show fifteen minutes before showtime.”

“Those were obstructed seats,” Ratso scoffs. “I’ve been at the box office. I make believe I’m buying tickets and they’re stamped obstructed view.”

“But I’m not so sure every show has been a sellout.”

“What is this?” Ratso fumes,
“Rolling Stone
or the
Wall Street Journal?
”

“That’s news. Part of any tour coverage.”

“Oh by the way,” Ratso interrupts, “I asked Dylan about sleeping with Blakley.”

“What he say?” Flippo’s all ears.

“She wouldn’t let him. Actually, I’m kidding. Dylan is really sleeping with Peggy.”

“Who’s that?”

“His dog. By the way, Dylan’s not too fond of
Rolling Stone.
”

“Well, that’s his problem,” Flippo gets defensive. “Why doesn’t he like it?”

“He says they always print gossip about him.”

Flippo just laughs. They hang up and Ratso jumps back to his typewriter, the hours ebbing away. By now, the room is a shambles, two tape recorders, long extension cords, clothes strewn all over the unmade beds, the remains of three days of room service scattered all around. So when the reporter leaps up to go to the bathroom he trips over a wire, tumbles into the night table, and rips it clear out of the wall. Great, he thinks, now maybe Led Zeppelin will hire me as their road manager. Ratso slowly gets up and tries to unplug the broken lamp when the phone rings.

“Hey babes,” it’s Mel Howard in Niagara Falls, “where are you? Listen, your star is in the ascent.” Ratso smiles weakly, from the
floor. “Last night, all of us did numbers on Bob about the contribution that you’ve made and how great it was. He loved the Rolling Thunder songs.”

“You missed some great shit in New Haven, man,” Ratso moans. “I was gonna take this wino into the show and we were walking and he fell and cracked his head open and the cops came and—”

“Whenever you find something like that just bring it to us,” Howard purrs. “Listen we would love for you to work with us seriously.”

“Tell Dylan.”

“OK, we did last night.”

“Hey, Kinky’s coming next week, either in Boston or right after that,” Ratso screams.

“Great, take care of yourself, babe.”

Ratso slowly rises and drags his battered body over to the typewriter.

By five he calls Flippo and reads the inserts.

“You think he’s serious about not knowing where he’s booked?” Flippo doubts.

“Yeah, that’s why he hired people to take care of that shit.”

“I just don’t like what you filed. Abe doesn’t like it. I know Dylan would like it.”

“You don’t like the lead?” Ratso’s amazed.

“It’s overwritten, ‘lovely, radiant, rotund wife.’”

“Rolling Thunder’s wife stands out in a crowd,” Ratso defends. “I like alliteration. Don’t worry you’ll get your fucking
Wall Street Journal
information too. We oughta send you to business school, Chet. Wouldn’t you rather work for
Forbes?
”

“It’s just that money is a part of any tour,” the editor explains.

“Well, I’m an artist, you know,” Ratso sulks.

“This is all you got from Dylan?”

“It’s a page of fucking quotes, the rest is personal.”

“Oh come on, Larry. It ain’t much.”

“It’s a page.”

“I’m talking about the quality of the thing. You really haven’t asked Bob anything, he’s telling you what he wants reported.”

“If you think I’m going to ask him about who he’s sleeping with, you’re mistaken,” Ratso huffs.

“I’m not talking about that kind of crap. Business, for one thing. How much is everybody getting? How much is he gonna get out of the thing?”

“I got quotes from Kemp on that, he’s not getting a penny. It’s all going into the film.”

“The film ain’t gonna make money?” Flippo chuckles.

“Sure it will. So, he doesn’t deserve money? You don’t think he deserves money? Did you ever see him sweat onstage?” Ratso shakes his head in disgust.

“I didn’t say he doesn’t deserve money. I just said he needs to talk about it.”

“He needs to talk about his money. That’s none of your goddamn business,” Ratso shouts, finding himself very protective of Dylan.

“Well, if he’s charging the goddamn public $8.50 it is,” Flippo shoots back.

“Why? What does anyone charge? What does Elton John charge?” Ratso finds himself parroting Dylan.

“Well he should answer for it too, man. Look, if someone’s putting on a show for $8.50 and the people in the seats can’t even hear the goddamn thing. I talked to a lot of people in New Haven who couldn’t hear.”

“I was in New Haven, I didn’t hear anybody ask for their money back after the show. There was a standing ovation.”

“What I heard, the night show in New Haven there was no standing ovation,” Chet parries.

“Who told you that?”

“People who were there.”

“I was on a chair watching,” Ratso starts.

“You were the standing ovation,” Chet cracks.

“I was standing on a chair in the fourth row facing out with my back to the stage. You got jaded friends who are telling you they didn’t like it. Why don’t you just come to any one concert? I’m talking from the musician’s standpoint, the audience’s standpoint, and from other media accounts, they say it’s the greatest show they’ve ever seen. And
Rolling Stone
is getting the inside story.”

“We haven’t yet, man. I just went over this thing again with Abe and it’s not a good story by
Rolling Stone
standards.”

“What should we do?” Ratso picks up the challenge. “Forget it, I’ll just sell it somewhere else.”

“We gotta print something this time.”

“You can get something,” Ratso jeers. “You got some crack reporters, Dylan’ll love them.”

“That’s the problem. You’ve gotten too close to Dylan to report the tour.”

“So get someone who can get better stuff, more access than me,” Ratso challenges.

“Your access is not doing any good.”

“What would you have gotten that I haven’t gotten?”

“Business.”

“I can’t. They don’t want to talk about that, man. I’m getting what I possibly can get. You think anybody else could have gotten Joan Baez to say ‘shove it up their ass’?” Ratso fumes.

“No. But you wouldn’t have gotten it if I hadn’t been on your ass to get it.”

“So keep on my ass but I can’t get business shit. I’m not a fucking accountant.”

“Meanwhile you’re doing a great thing for the movie and we ain’t getting great coverage. Not what you filed with Iris today. It’s generalities.”

“You’re right, it’s not a
Wall Street Journal
piece. It’s the spirit of the tour. It covers it, the stuff about Lisa. She’s a prototype on this tour. I’m a sociologist, I’m not a fucking businessman, and that was
a sociological piece. And if it was flowery at times, it was flowery because there’s a reason to be flowery, because they’re doing something here that’s never been done before. I don’t know about finances.”

“I ain’t just talking about the finances,” Chet interrupts, “I’m talking about other things. Like what a show is really like, you never talk about the name of the halls.”

“I was just trying to get the flavor of the tour and that’s the flavor, Kemp’s role, Lisa as a fanatic fan, there are at least ten girls like that following the tour like vagabonds, the mask, Dylan on stage, that pins it down. I didn’t say he picked his nose in New Haven. How many details can you get in a two-thousand-word article. I thought you wanted to cover the press, Kemp’s role, relations with the press, the opening is the guy this tour was named after, nobody else spotted him, when he was onstage, this fucking Indian wanders onstage during the finale, stroking a fucking feather, looking self-confident like he’s inheriting the stage. That’s a perfect lead.”

“Well, there’s almost no reporting. Just general impressions. You glossed over Kemp, he’s really an asshole.”

“No, he ain’t,” Ratso decides.

“He acts like an asshole at times, locking people up.”

“He never locked me in a room. I would have locked up that guy from the
Village Voice
too.”

“Why don’t you describe some of the things he has done to you? Like kicking you out of the hotel.”

“OK, put it in,” Ratso relents. “Rough treatment, which included barring all press from hotels, confiscating cameras at doors, put it in, I’m not afraid of Kemp. Is that enough? Want to hit him some more? Say he generally made access to the performers virtually impossible.”

“Is he doing this on Dylan’s orders?”

“No, off the record, I had told Dylan some of the shit going down. He doesn’t know all that stuff. Dylan’s not like the head of the Mafia, he doesn’t direct Kemp to do shit. Dylan’s a crazy artist, like I say in
the piece, ‘more concerned about those roses shooting out of the waitress’ head than who gets backstage passes in Waterbury.’”

“Yeah, what does that mean?” Flippo wonders.

“Artists have different perceptions …”

“I know, but what does roses shooting out of a waitress’ head mean?”

“It’s like a surreal image, artists have different conceptions of reality.”

“It doesn’t come across that way in print.”

“It does to people I read it to.”

“We’re not putting out
Rolling Stone
for them,” Flippo fumes. “When you read that you say, ‘What waitress? What roses?’”

“So change it. He’s concerned about Rubin. Put that in. More concerned about Rubin in solitary than backstage passes.”

“Detail,” Chet chides.

“I’m more concerned whether people on the tour thought I captured it, than someone totally removed from it.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, being too close to it.”

“You’re too far away from it.”

“I know but the readers are far away from it too.”

“And this draws them into it,” Ratso concludes.

“I don’t think it does,” Flippo shakes his head, “it doesn’t draw me into it.”

“Well, then you’re a bureaucrat,” Ratso shrugs.

“Bullshit, where do you get that crap.”

“You’re a bureaucrat, you got a
Wall Street Journal
mentality.”

“Bullshit, everybody in the fucking country—”

“You’re asking me to ask business questions.”

“That’s part of it.”

“But that’s not what the kids want to read,” Ratso rallies.

“How do you know?”

“I know kids. I ask them. Who talks to more kids and derelicts on the street than me?” Ratso falls silent. “Oh, do you want any stuff on Sara. He’s married to her. Not Ronee Blakley, remember?”

“I understand. That was a joke when I asked you that.”

“Oh, man,” Ratso feigns concern, “I told him that. I didn’t know you were joking.”

“Oh fuck, I was joking,” Flippo’s annoyed, “from now on I’ll raise a flag.”

“I thought you were serious,” Ratso suppresses a laugh. “By the way, I got an interview with three groupies the other night, they said they wanted to
schmutz
Dylan.”

“What does
schmutz
mean?” Flippo the editor asks.

“I don’t know, I guess fuck.”

“Put it in, put it in,” Flippo yells, “how do you spell
schmutz?
”

W
hen Ratso checked out of his Danbury motel on Sunday, after what seemed like a week on the phone, he decided to forego the next night’s concerts in Rochester and instead drive straight to Boston, where his friend Pat, who wrote for the
Boston Globe
, would put him up, a timely hospitality since the journalist had already spent most of the expense money
Rolling Stone
had wired him in Danbury. The drive to Cambridge was uneventful, the lodgings there more than adequate, so after unpacking a bit, Ratso jumped back into the Monte Carlo and decided to explore Boston’s night life.

After a few hours’ sightseeing, he’s pretty wired, the few drinks interacting with the amphetamine to produce a restless gnawing angst. Well, if I can’t relax I may as well make myself useful, he thinks, and steps into a pay phone to call Mel Howard in Rochester.

“Howard, you fucker, it’s Ratso. I feel like Walter Fucking Winchell, I’m speeding, freezing my ass off, standing in a booth in Boston. You got anything for me to do?”

“Rats baby,” Howard’s soothing voice floats back, “we need a bare room, actually we need an old house, spooky, Edgar Allan Poe-ish.”