What follows is below is the 'missing' chapter from CP Lee's excellent book 'Like the night - Bob Dylan and the road to the Manchester Free Trade Hall'. The chapter concerns Dylan's second visit to Manchester in 1965 and was generously donated by CP Lee on his recent trip to Dublin. The text below is copyright material and cannot be used without prior permission of the author C.P.Lee@edlis.org.

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Second Time Around – Walter’s Tale

At first glance the dolly Tub Launderette in the Manchester inner city suburb of Hulme seems an unlikely place for a Dylan contact. On the ground floor of a newly gentrified block, even on a chilly Sunday Morning the place is humming with kids, couples and a handful of Irish women cloaked in cigarette smoke. The man we’re looking for is Walter, because Walter has a story to tell.

Walter’s an affable middle aged man who runs the Dolly Tub, and he stands behind the counter doling out change, soap powder and advice in equal measure. In between dealing with his customers he tells us of his encounter with Bob Dylan one Spring morning on May 8^th 1965. Walter, who was 17, was a trainee manager at The Midland Hotel in the centre of town where he worked from 1964 till 1966. Then he went to work in Germany, did quite well until he broke his leg skiing and had to come back to England. Now he owns the launderette and is happy with his life.

Now back to 1965, when he came to work on the early shift that morning the duty manager told him that there’d been a problem the night before. It seems that one of the guests, an American singer, had held a party in his suite. The singer, who had a large entourage with him, had let things get out of hand and the duty manager had been called by other guests to ask them to make less noise.

Walter was used to this kind of thing off Rock bands and such like. Earlier he’d had to ask the Rolling Stones to leave the hotel’s Trafford Restaurant because they’d refused to wear jackets.

‘Times were different then. You know what it was like. There was nothing to do after a show. You just came back to the hotel and that was that. No TV. Nothing. So it wasn’t all that odd to want to party.’

It was now 7:30 in the morning. Dylan and his people were leaving straight for London, but first they wanted breakfast. They’d be down shortly. Walter had to make rush arrangements. The usual guests at the hotel who were crowding into the grill room would be less than thrilled to have their coffee and kippers disturbed by a group of brash Americans. The Midland was the top hotel in Manchester and had its reputation to keep up.

Walter knew who Dylan was and was aware that he’d played the Free Trade Hall the night before.

‘A friend of mine was completely besotted by him and played me all his records and stuff. Subterranean Homesick Blues was in the charts and I’d heard that because it was on the radio all the time. I really liked it’.

But personal preferences couldn’t be allowed to stand in the way of the hotel’s good name and Walter had to ensure the comfort of other diners.

‘We had to move three tables together over into an alcove in the corner of the room to accommodate them, and the waitresses laid out the breakfast service on them, and then Dylan came down with his entourage. There must have been fifteen to twenty of them.’

Dylan, twirling his cane, was followed by DA Pennebaker, Howard Alk, Albert Grossman and Bobby Neuwirth, and, Walter is certain, down came Donovan too, plus a host of others. They were laughing and joking, not the least bit like the other guests who were sitting quietly, prim and English, alone with their Daily telegraphs and Cornflakes. Dylan’s entourage began by ordering full breakfasts, bacon, eggs, toast, orange juices.’

Walter was quite relieved that he’d corralled them into the corner. They were much less bother to the others that way and they could get on with their eccentric, ritualistic eating patterns.

‘It was a typical no expense spared sort of thing…You can imagine what it was like…He wanted fresh orange juice. Not the kind you got from cans, but freshly squeezed. We had to get all these crates of oranges in. Then they’d take a sip and leave it! And they were smoking and eating all the time. The ashtrays were always filling up and we had to keep emptying them. There was a big cloud of smoke hanging over the table. It was beginning to disturb the other people. Then, suddenly, they all got up and left.’

An exhausted Walter began to help clear the mess left on the tables when he noticed a small, child’s exercise book where Dylan had been sat.

‘I started flipping through it and it was full of these drawings and poems, lyrics I suppose – It was completely full – One liners, two liners – Complete verses – Scribbled stuff – Ideas and what not. Well, I grabbed hold of it.’

Aware that it was Dylan’s, Walter thought for a moment what to do, but he knew his job was to return it. They’d been gone for about ten minutes by then, but there was still a chance that he could catch them so he ran from the Grill Room into the lobby. Too late! They’d already checked out. Walter ran through the main doors and down the marble steps of The Midland’s entrance just in time to see Dylan walking across the pavement accompanied by Albert Grossman to the open doors of a limousine.

‘I grabbed him by the elbow and said, ‘Mr. Dylan"

Dylan turned and looked at him.

‘Mr. Dylan. You left this!’

‘And he looked at me and he took it. And he never said thank you or anything. Just took it.’

While Walter stood speechless on the pavement Dylan climbed into the Limousine and drove away. The book, even then, Walter realised was priceless. And Dylan had just looked straight through him and said nothing!

‘Well I suppose if you’re going to be insulted’, mused Walter in the launderette all those years later, ‘You may as well be insulted by the best. It just wouldn’t have been the same if it had been Donovan!’