On the Road with Bob Dylan (50 page)

They settle back into silence, the cab speeding up a main avenue, lined with expensive shops. Sara stares out the window.

“I’m dying to go shopping. I’m not spending a lot of money. I want to check out the antiques. Was this thing expensive, the thing I got on now?”

“For me it was,” Ratso nods, “for him it wasn’t.”

“I have no idea how much it could be. It’s French.”

“Guess” Ratso prods.

“Fifty dollars.”

“More than double that.”

“One-hundred-twenty dollars.”

“Exactly,” Ratso beams.

“I want to buy a super dress to wear in New York,” Sara salivates.

“Wait a minute,” Ratso shouts, “you gotta wear a Hurricane T-shirt. It’s a benefit.”

“Well, if there’s a party afterward, I’ll change. I want a fancy dress.”

“It’s nice for Rubin if everyone wears his shirt.” Ratso puts his feet up on the front seat.

“Yeah, but I’m not one of those T-shirt chicks. I want to get something elegant.” She peers out the window. “I’m excited, there’s a whole other world outside the hotel. Today’s the first day of my life that I woke up at six o’clock. I’m exhausted.”

“Beattie’s right,” Ratso warns. “You better get some more sleep.
Take some vitamins. Did you eat anything today? No, huh? Look at you, you’re as skinny as a rail.”

“I had eggs benedict,” Sara says feebly.

“And you ate them?” Ratso says suspiciously.

“It’s really hard, love, I’ve never been on the road before. You know, you present me with a great problem, Ratso. I don’t like reporters. I can’t believe you’re really a journalist.”

“Why don’t you say that to the film crew?” Ratso protests.

“It’s not the same. I have some kind of character in that context. But here …” The driver pulls up to the house and Ratso runs out in mid-sentence.

Cohen’s house is a tiny affair, located in the heart of old Montreal, a student, foreigner, bohemian ghetto. Ratso shivers as he walks up the block looking for the address. He finds it, and knocks on the door. Muffled sounds but no answer. A few more knocks. No response. Suddenly the reporter notices the door is slightly ajar and he throws it open.

And steps into a sea of sound, the harmonicas, spoons, kazoos, and spirited voices washing over him like a funky Jacuzzi. Cohen is ringleading, playing the harmonica, stomping his foot on a chair, leading the vocal to a French chanson. “How are you, my friend?” Leonard ushers Ratso in without interrupting the music. “This is Hazel, Suzanne, Armand, and Mort. Pull up a chair.”

“We gotta go, Leonard.” Ratso remains standing.

“C’mon,” the poet urges, “we have time for one more song.”

“But Sara’s in the cab.”

“Bring her in.” Cohen gestures expansively and alcoholically. “Here, have a quick sip of wine.”

“Leonard, we really have to go,” Ratso stresses.

“OK, troops,” Cohen calls to the others, “bring your instruments to the car.” Cohen pulls a topcoat over his charcoal gray suit, a suit that Ratso has seen him wear for four years.

“Leonard, you’re still wearing the same suit.”

“It is my suit,” he says with dignity. “It’s
my
suit.”

Suddenly the other four have revolted and start a jig around the living room, whooping and hollering and waving their hands in the air.

“Can you put your coats on while you’re dancing,” Leonard requests, and a minute later they’re all piling into the cab. Introductions are made.

“Leonard,” Sara breathes, “are you gonna sing?”

“No, are you?” Leonard shoots back.

“Me? No, they’ve been asking me to but I refuse.” Sara smiles coyly.

“Leonard, you gotta sing one for me and Sara,” Ratso implores, “that one ‘hungry as an archway.’”

“OK,” Leonard whips out his harp, “here we go. Get your spoons out, Mort.” And they break into a cheerful French folk song.

“If anyone asks you, you’re all Leonard’s backup band,” Ratso warns the others, “there’s not supposed to be anyone backstage tonight.”

“That means Leonard has to go onstage,” Sara prompts. Cohen frowns.

They go into a three-part-harmony French song. “C’mon Leonard,” Ratso whines, “you promised ‘Take This Longing’ … I’ve been so patient sitting through all these foreign songs.”

Cohen whips out his harp and blows some melancholy notes and then he starts to sing, in his low dull-razor voice, “While we’re apart, oh please remember me, soon I’ll be sailing far across the sea/While we’re apart oh please remember me, now is the hour when we must say good-bye, soon I’ll be sailing far across the sea.” Armand joins in on another harmonica and the two wail away as the cab pulls up to the Forum.

The party scurries inside from the frigid night, Ratso leading them in. Joni, who had just finished her set, comes running up and hugs the poet. “Joni,” Leonard sizes up his Canadian counterpart, “Joni, my little Joni.”

“I’m glad you’re here, I just came off, though.”

Cohen looks disappointed. “Well, we just heard the greatest music I’ve ever heard, the greatest music I ever heard we just played on the way here.” By now, Neuwirth and Ronee have come over to pay respects, and Dylan, who’s about to follow Ramblin’ Jack, trots over.

“Leonard, how you doing?” Bob warmly greets the Canadian. He points over at Ratso. “Hey, do you know this character?”

Leonard rolls his eyes. “This man has plagued me for the last three years.” They all laugh.

“Hey, Leonard, you gonna sing,” Ratso pleads.

“Let it be known that I alone disdained the obvious support,” Cohen chuckles. “I’m going to sit out there and watch.”

“Why not sing?” Joni begs.

“No, no, it’s too obvious,” Leonard brushes off the request and looks to Ratso for guidance. He leads them out to the sound board where some folding chairs have been set up, just in time to see Dylan do his first set.

And what a set. The band is blistering, Dylan has regained the momentum that began to sag during Quebec, and every song is like a sledgehammer pounding away at the overflow crowd that has filled every seat, nook, cranny, corner, penalty box, and aisle of the cavernous Forum.

By the time Stoner ends “This Land is Your Land” with a torrid bass run, everyone—fans, ushers, concessionaires, even Bob’s own security crew—is on their feet, in a screaming rollicking standing ovation. Ratso rushes back to Leonard’s party and escorts them backstage, worming their way through the crowds, stepping over the huge rolls of toilet paper that were thrown from the rafters by the enthusiastic audience.

Backstage, Leonard greets the troops, and everyone repairs to the hotel for a party in one of the downstairs banquet rooms.

At the party, Ratso is out of control. He is all over the place, introducing Jerry Rubin to Emmett Grogan, getting drinks for Sara,
bringing the head of hotel security in to meet Dylan, passing out copies of Joni’s just-released album with the singer pointing out the lucky recipients, even at one point mooching a bite out of Bob’s ham sandwich. So it was a merciful Chesley who dragged the sodden scribe to the elevator, fished his keys out of his pocket, led him into his room, and gently deposited him on his bed as the first rays of sun shimmered through the sheer Château Frontenac curtains.

Rays of sun that rudely woke Ratso at midday. And nursing an incredible hangover he stumbles downstairs to the coffee shop, peers through half-operative eyes, and makes out the figure of Ronee Blakley sitting at a table with Jeff Raven and Denise Mercedes.

“Want to see my Polaroids,” Ronee asks Ratso, “I got a great shot of you you gotta see.”

“That’s about as tempting an offer as giving Lisa a withdrawal slip in a celebrity sperm bank,” Ratso smiles and they head upstairs.

Blakley picks up her Polaroids and joins Ratso in his room. A curious affinity has grown between these two, a mutual admiration society intensified by the outcast status each enjoys. Ratso of course is the official film shittee, a part that sometimes transcends the celluloid and becomes reality like the time he returned to his car after one of the Boston area concerts and found his tires flat.

And Blakley has been the critical shittee, lambasted by most of the music critics and snickered at by some of the musicians themselves. Her intensely emotional performances are often passed off as histrionic or amateurish and when she sings backup for Dylan she sometimes leans too far into the mike, propelling her voice like a helicopter over the audience, at times drowning out Bob’s lead. But Ratso admires her resilience, her determination to push things to the limit and to accept the consequences of those actions. He remembers both of them being the last assholes left in the hospitality suites and he also recalls late-night sessions when they shone like saints.

“Blakley,” he laughs, looking through the surprisingly good Polaroids, “you never quit. That’s what I love about you.”

Blakley smiles and sips the Coke that Ratso ordered up from room service. “Ronson’s the only one who can outlast me. The only thing is that Ronson just always passes out wherever he is, he doesn’t bother to go to bed.” She cracks up. “When it’s time for him he just goes to sleep like a little angel and people just carry him to bed, you know.”

“What was it like for you playing in the same arena as Joan and Joni? You being the second wave so to speak.”

“Well, Baez is a totally professional genius vocalist. She has presence onstage and presence in her personality. She’s so smart, she’s like a whip. She’s funny, she’s nice, she’s helpful, she also has an ego. She’s very queenly and imperious; after all, she was the first, and it’s not just that she was the first, she’s still the best. I mean a lot of people said, ‘Oh well, Baez sure, but she was the first.’ Well, I don’t care if she was the first, she could start right now and she’d still be as big as she is. She’s that good. She helps people.”

“How did the three of you women relate to each other?”

“I don’t want to get too much into that,” Ronee looks coyly at Ratso’s running Sony. “I hope you don’t mind. Baez and I related very well, she was the only person, see I was kinda the outsider, the new kid on the block, and I didn’t have anybody traveling with me and being the only woman unaccompanied, I didn’t have a road manager and there were many times when I was trying to be one of the boys so I could be accepted, yet I couldn’t be one of the boys ’cause I wasn’t one of the boys. Or, I was in many ways considered a movie actress. A lot of people really didn’t know that I had been playing for six or seven years, ’cause they never heard of me because I was so underground that I was below ground.”

“You were in a kind of weird position,” Ratso sets the pictures down, “really the only girl in Guam, Scarlett was like always on with Bob only.”

“True,” Ronee nods. “Male musicians are mostly the top musicians, there aren’t very many top female lead guitarists for instance. Most of the stars are men. So then when Baez is a star and is a woman, what she gets accused of is acting like a man. It’s the masculine identity to be successful and aggressive.”

“The guys in the band musta been jealous, in a way, of you, I mean they’re onstage the whole time, and you come out and have the same shot. Was there tension?” Ratso wonders.

“Only in the fact that I was a newcomer. As I said, it’s a very tight crowd, like anything else, you have to pay your dues and you have to get your stripes. They’re not gonna be given to you. There’s very few people who will just give you your stripes. I mean, Dylan gave me my stripes. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have been on that tour for more than two days. ’cause nobody else would have wanted me around.”

“Yeah, I remember when I gave him my first article to read and he sent word out to me in the audience that he was really pissed ’cause I bad-mouthed you until someone showed him that one of the words was in italics.”

Ronee smiles. “I appreciate that. It shows the loyalty he feels for his friends, and in a way, it shows some kind of thing that he and I hit off. We hit it off like that. Well, for one thing, you don’t sit up and play piano for six hours with somebody and not have any feelings for them. We didn’t talk but we played four-handed piano for six hours one night at the Other End and, man, you know after you do that that you don’t need to ever talk to him. What have you got left to say?” She laughs heartily.

“So what do you think of him now, six weeks later?” Ratso smiles impishly.

“My impressions of Bob? Oh God, I don’t know, my impressions of him, I think he has, you know, the qualities of sainthood. I think he’s a total weirdo. I absolutely love him and adore him and I don’t care who knows it, even his wife knows it. He knows it. Everyone
knows it.” Ronee smiles again and rolls the Polaroids through her fingers. “I’d like to think that I’d do anything for him but I might not, ’cause I want to make sure he’s a person.”

“Did you get to know him?” Ratso thinks of Bloomfield’s anguish over failing to penetrate the “armor.”

“I feel that I know him a little bit. The danger is when you’re around people who are really, what can you call him, a certified genius? What can you call him? What can you say about Bob Dylan, he’s affected all of our lives, he’s affected everybody’s life for ten years. I mean what can you say about the guy, he’s not a normal guy. He can’t lead a normal life, he goes to a party, he hides in the bushes. I mean, you know, ’cause if he comes out of the bushes everybody gawks. I mean he can’t just stand around and talk to people.”

“Yeah,” Ratso cuts in excitedly, “even Ginsberg is mesmerized too …”

“Sycophancy,” Blakley finishes. “Well, I don’t think that I am and I don’t have that relationship with Bob. And because I think in a way I fight that, I think that I’ve been cruel to him on a couple of occasions and he’s never been cruel to me.”

“What kind of stuff do you do in the movie?”

“Bob’s? Once, I did a scene where I baptized myself in the sea, then another scene I played an accused witch in seventeenth-century puritanical Massachusetts, then I did a psychosexual scene with Bobby Neuwirth on the bus, then I did a razor-fight scene with Stevie Soles in the bathroom, and then I did a scene with Dylan where I was crying in the bar and he came in and acted like he’d been following us around, like a groupie, he’d been following me around and I said, Well, look, I’d do what I can ’cause you seem really nice, I’ll see if I can introduce you to Dylan but I’ll have to get through the security guards. But don’t worry, I know a few of them, I think I can do it.’ So then I introduce him to Dylan and it’s Baez dressed up as Dylan, so I bring Dylan in as this kid, just an unknown nervous kid to meet Bob Dylan, and it’s Baez dressed up
as Dylan. Ha. And I did a couple of scenes in Niagara Falls where we were dressed in black oilcloth coats. Just the usual, you know,” she shrugs ironically.