Knockin' On Dylan's Door excerpts

Date:    Tue, 21 Nov 1995 00:58:17 GMT
From:    "Carole C. Klinger" (klinger@ABQCVB.ORG)
Subject: Knockin' On Dylan's Door excerpts (Ch 2, Part 1 of 4)

John Howells requested that I crosspost information from
alt.music.the-band. (I hereby publicly forgive him for the
high-handed typical-Dylan-fan tone of his first communiqui.)

 >What I probably meant was "please? remember us poor
 >Band-deprived Dylan fans on rec.music.dylan". :-)
 >
 >John Howells (howells@sgi.com)

Okay, John, since you put it that way--you know, toadying and
all--here's Chapter 2 of Knockin' on Dylan's Door. If anyone has
negative comments on these postings, please direct them to John
(howells@sgi.com).

Chapter 1 of this book can be found at Jan Hxiberg's swell site
for The Band, http://www-ia.hiof.no/~janh/TheBand.html.  (As most
admirers of The Band know, The Band was very influential on
Dylan's music, but their overwhelming modesty prevents them
from making such claims.  In fact, I believe it was Robbie
Robertson who told Bob, "Even the President of the United States
must put his pants on one leg at a time--when he's tired of
standing naked, that is.")

Carole "The-Band-is-the-best-but-that-Dylan-guy's-okay-too" K

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Knockin' on Dylan's Door
By Ben Fong-Torres

   We are in Toronto, the third stop of the Bob Dylan tour. Locked
in by snow and still locked out, so far, from the inner circles of
Dylan and the Band, I'm reduced to television in my hotel room. I
choose Channel 6 and get 79, where a newsy-talk program called The
CITY Show, named after the station's call letters, is on. For some
reason, the moderator, a sporty-looking fellow, 50 or so, looks
familiar, but the camera cuts to the program's "youth reporter,"
whose report this evening is an earnest attack on Dylan, the tour
and tour producer Bill Graham. He is asking where all the money is
going; he is characterizing Dylan as a "manipulator" of his fans
and the press, secreting himself from the public after that
convenient little bike spill and, now, exploiting his absence from
the scene. He also has heard that Dylan's show is comprised mostly
of older songs, and this, too, is a pisser for him.

   The moderator, the man with those penetrating, close-set eyes
I've seen before, comes to Dylan's defense: "I believe there's a
freedom to just sit down if you want to," he tells the kid. "The
public doesn't own Dylan; that's why he appealed to you in the
first place.

   "There's something sad about it: It's like Hemingway writing one
book and the audience reading it over and over again and wanting
nothing else."

   As for Dylan's manipulation of the media, he continues, "You
know I don't like to talk about my son too much on the air, but
Neil has found that he's not dependent on all this damned media
coverage." (Now I recognized the gentleman: Scott Young, Neil's
father and a newspaper columnist in Toronto.) He goes on: "Just a
line in the papers is enough. I've seen in Neil two different
aspects. One is the concert, where he doesn't have to do
anything--show up and they're pleased. The other is, he has a film
out now, and it's not a successful one. Warner Bros decided not to
release it, and now he owns it. We talked about it; he talked about
bringing it to Toronto. I told him, if you've got something to
sell, and people are clamoring for it, sell it.

   "Dylan is trying," he concludes, "to reestablish that there
still is a Dylan around."

   The next night, I met Dylan, bumping into him in the hallway up
on his floor, and he agreed to talk--later, in Montreal. Three days
later, in Montreal, 33 floors up at the Chateau Champlain, Bob
Dylan sat across the table, at ease, in white western shirt and
jeans, still sleepy at 3 PM, but willing to talk.

   He's always interested in what his audience is thinking, so I
told him about the impression his new love songs seemed to be
making. Critics--from Chicago through Philadelphia and Canada--were
saying he'd mellowed out, "blunted his image," "drained the venom
from his voice." He'd moved from urgent, surging metaphorical
poetry to clinch-cliches, stereotyped images, and an emphatically
stated need for his loved one, a complete turnaway from his
previous posture of independence, individualism and defiance.

   Of course, he's played with such talk before. In "I'll Be Your
Baby Tonight," he rhymed "moon" and "spoon." In Montreal, just last
night between "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Gates of
Eden," he told the audience: "That was a love song, and this one's
another love song."

   With a wife and five children, Dylan is being called a family
man, or, as Jonathan Takiff, pop critic for the Philadelphia Daily
News put it, "a dutch uncle."

   "Yeah," said Dylan. "But those things don't make a person settle
down. A family brings the world together. You can see it's all one.
It paints a better picture than being with a chick and traveling
all over the world or hanging out all night.

   "But," he maintained, "I still get that spark. I'm still out
there. In no way am I not. I don't live on a pedestal.

   "Fame threw me for a loop at first," Dylan continued.

   "I learned how to swim with it and turn it around--so you can
just throw it in the closet and pick it up when you need it."

   The turning point, he said, was in Woodstock, "a little after
the accident. There I was, sitting one night under a full moon, I
looked out into the bleak woods and said, 'Something's gotta
change.' There was some business that had to be taken care of, that
we don't have to go into."

   I nodded, not mentioning the breakup with manager Albert
Grossman, but reminding him of the problems he'd had fulfilling
contracts for a book and a TV special.

   "It was too much," he said. "It finally broke the camel's back.
Now it's the same old me again."

   Whatever that may be.

   One of the reasons for following Dylan around, even if
ultimately you learn that he's just the same old him, is that so
many people are looking for so much from the drifter's return--for
some kind of statement, either from the mere act of his reemergence
or from something that a "new" Dylan may have to say. But too many
of those that are filling up the papers and the airwaves with their
Dylanalyses never heard, really heard, the man in the first place,
or refused to accept what they were told: "It's not to stand naked
under unknowing eyes/It's for myself and my friends my stories are
sung," he sang, in "Restless Farewell," even before "My Back
Pages."

   Dylan says he's touring only because he wants to play his music
for the people. But the people, the papers say, want more than
music. They want The Word.

   "I don't understand that attitude,"' says Robbie Robertson of
the Band. "I don't ever remember him ever delivering what they
believed he delivered, or what they think he's going to deliver
now. I mean, I heard a lot of terrific lines and songs. He
certainly had a way of saying something that everybody felt, a way
of phrasing it and condensing it down. But people have a fictitious
past in mind about him."

   I agreed. But even if I, for one, never saw Dylan as a messiah,
idol, prophet, leader, or even a particularly great singer, I must
admit, as have other journalists (whose style it is to not confess
such things) that Dylan has touched me. And the nerve that was hit
ties somehow back to the Sixties. During the second show in the
Chicago Stadium, near the end of "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only
Bleeding)," it hit. It wasn't the song, a simple enough affair over
an even simpler acoustic guitar run, that did it. For me, Dylan
made a statement through a tone he was painting with his
bitter-truth voice, a feeling of knowing resignation, the uplift
deriving from the knowledge that here was a guy who'd seen it all,
saw through it all, and... well, had a `way of phrasing it, of
condensing it down.'

   I watched this still-small, still-vulnerable figure, behind his
guitar, looking up and bawling, 'I got nothing, Ma, to live up to,"
and I shivered and thought of my older brother Barry, a probation
officer and community worker murdered in the summer of 1972, in the
midst of the gang wars of Chinatown. He left a mother and father
who cannot stop mourning, and when "It's Alright, Ma" pulsed
through the verse:

   While them that defend what they cannot see
   With a killer's pride, security
   It blows the mind most bitterly
   For them that think death's honesty
   Won't fall upon them naturally
   Life sometimes must get lonely

   I found myself wiping away tears with an index finger and
thinking something toward Barry, something excusably maudlin like:
"Can you see? Bob Dylan, someone you heard and liked a lot, is
here."

   Later, talking with reporters from The New York Times and the
Los Angeles Times, I learned that they, too, had had the chills.
And in the next city, Jon Takiff--"Philadelphia's Mr. Cynical," the
publicist for the Spectrum rock auditorium called him--would walk
away from the press box, and tell me that "Like a Rolling Stone"
had made him cry. And all the lofty articles I'd read about Dylan,
all the burdensome books, suddenly meant very little. I'd have to
meet the guy for myself.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Nov 1995 01:02:53 GMT
From:    "Carole C. Klinger" 
Subject: Knockin' On Dylan's Door (Ch 2, Part 2 of 4)

   Phil Ochs was in Philadelphia the day Dylan arrived. Ochs had a
gig at the Main Point, a small club in suburban Bryn Mawr. Ochs
used to hang out with Dylan, wanted to be as big as Dylan, admired
Dylan's successful switch to rock, and served as a target for
Dylan's celebrated personal attacks on Village friends. The most
popular of the incidents had Ochs getting thrown out of Dylan's
limousine one day, for not thinking "Can You Please Crawl Out Your
Window" would be a smash.

   The Main Point had no one answering its phone when I called, but
a Dylan tour spokesman assured me that Phil and Bob had made up;
that Ochs had even been invited to one of the concerts.

   And scheduled to follow Ochs: John Hammond, Jr., who almost
exactly ten years ago had found the Hawks in Toronto and brought
them to the attention of Dylan. And opening for Hammond would be
Leon Redbone, a mysterious folk and blues figure rd be hearing
about in Toronto, and from a Redbone fan named Dylan.

   By Philadelphia, Dylan and the Band had their show pretty well
set. The cluttered-attic look of the Chicago shows had been
modified; Dylan and the Band came out strong, with six straight
Dylan songs, concluding with Dylan cool-jerking the piano for
"Ballad of a Thin Man," followed by six Band tunes. Dylan returned
for three more, finished up with "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." An
intermission of exactly 15 minutes was broken by Dylan's return as
a solo acoustic artist for about five numbers, ending with "It's
Alright, Ma." The Band came back for three or four more, finishing
up with "The Weight" from Big Pink, and Dylan returned with a
couple of newer songs, from Planet Waves, and the finale, "Like a
Rolling Stone." And the encore was "Most Likely You Go Your Way
(I'll Go Mine)."

   In Toronto, Dylan began to open and close the shows with "You Go
Your Way." Dylan explained, simply: "It completes a circle in some
way."

   By Philadelphia, the sound and light crews were in control of
each show. Eighteen men were on the road for this one, under
employment by Bill Graham's FM Productions. It was Graham and tour
coordinator Barry Imhoff who came up with the living-room furniture
for the stage; it was Graham ordering the house lights up on "Like,
a Rolling Stone." Now, he's huddling with lighting manager Bruce
Byall, while the third-show crowd is still clearing the Spectrum.

   Byall sits behind a board, 22 rows back on the main floor, and
directs the constantly changing, carefully choreographed lighting.

   Graham has by now heard "It's Alright, Ma" five times, and each
time "Even the President of the United States sometimes must have
to stand naked" gets the biggest reaction of any line in the
concert.

   "Tell you what I'd like to try," says Graham. "When Bob hits
that line, how about switching to reds from overhead"--Graham
sweeps a huge left arm out and down--"blues from the sides, and
white spotlights directly onto him." Bruce agrees to give it a try.
And as corny as the idea may sound, it'll work, the colors spread
out far enough apart to be subtle. It is not, to be sure, a United
States flag lit up by a thousand light bulbs.

   But Toronto, the next stop, greets the effect, and the line,
even, with more detached amusement than determined agreement.
Michael McClure has joined the tour now; together we will go after
his old friend Bob Dylan. McClure is uncomfortable; in the
snow-sludge-slop-shuffle outside, he has lost his scarf, without
which his neck is incomplete; he is seated just below the bank of
speakers perched atop a tower at one corner of the stage, and he's
got his ears finger-plugged to balance out the insistent highs. But
he can still smell--"They're smoking rubber marijuana here," he
says--and he can see. "You see how much cleaner these kids are?"
No, I don't. The poet/playwright picks out a row of three boys in
Pendleton shirts. They are indeed clean shirts. "See? Canada hasn't
been fucked over by the War Machine."

   McClure asks me to ask three young men, in the row in front of
us, why they've got their yarmulkes bobbypinned on--"Ask them if
they always wear them to rock concerts." I do, and get a glare.
"It's personal," said one of them. "Ask them if they always smoke
dope in their yarmulkes," said McClure, but I was busy
concentrating on the music.

   The Toronto audience is as respectful of Dylan as the States
crowds, but even more attentive. There's less of the screaming for
requests during pauses between numbers; less of the demands for
Dylan while the Band is doing one of their own sets. But of course,
this is Band territory. CHUM, the FM rock station, even embraces
Dylan, referring to him as being "from Hibbing, Minnesota, very
close to the Canadian border." Dylan himself, later, will admit a
special feeling for Canada that gets him smiling a crack more
onstage, gets him saying, twice in one show, "Great to be back in
Montreal!" and singing a particularly strong and croony version of
"Girl From the North Country." Dylan, later, will explain, looking
out the wall-wide arched window in his hotel room, out beyond the
office buildings, into the bleak woods: "Canada seems to bridge a
gap between the United States and Europe. It's a certain flair. And
this is where I come from, this kind of setting--lakes, and boats
and bridges."

   In Toronto, before the first of the two shows there, I call on
CHUM and find a Dylan freak named John Donebie, who remembers that
Dylan's been in town three times before, twice as a solo artist,
around '62 and '63, and, in 1966, with the Hawks, who got huffily
dismissed by one local critic as "a third-rate Toronto rock & roll
band." In fact, the Hawks--and it's well-known--came up as the
backup band for Ronnie Hawkins, the Arkansas rockabilly singer
who'd moved to Canada in 1960. (His hits were in '59--"Forty Days"
and "Mary Lou.") The Hawks, all from Canada, except
drummer/Arkansas native Levon Helm, got tired of the roads they
traveled, mostly in Southern states and along a short stretch of
drink joints on Yonge Street in Toronto. Away from Hawkins, they
continued to work Canada, were found by Hammond, sat in with him on
a couple of albums, and met Dylan.

   "You know," said Donebie, "Hawkins is still playing at the
Nickelodeon down on Yonge Street. He's always there--or whenever he
wants to play there, anyway. Just about owns the place. You ought
to check him out." I make a note, and, after the first show (My
notes remind me: "Overall feel of concert is LAZY"), I call the
club. Ronnie is right by the phone and will be happy to see ROLLING
STONE, spill some beer and stories, and, "Hey, Levon said he might
come down tonight."

   The Nickelodeon is an eat-drink-and-dance place, with pizza
tablecloths, red flowery paper lamps, and a required coat check,
just like in all the fancy restaurants in town. It feels like a
hustlers' hall, a singles spot where, if you don't score, there's
always Jingles upstairs, where you can take pictures of guaranteed
naked ladies.

   At the club, in a cluttered storage room full of discarded
chairs, Hawkins was as hearty and jovial as ever. He's still
cutting records, he said, two a year for Monument, but he hasn't
had a record big enough to pay for a tour. He mostly stays fixed
here, six nights a week, five sets a night--except when his boys
are in town.

   "I was over at the hotel last night and we brought back memories
for seven hours," he said. And he saw the show tonight--"first time
I've seen 'em play since they left 'in 1965"--and paid due
compliments.

   "They were always two years ahead of their time. Robbie was the
first guy to get into white funk, in Canada or anywhere." Hawkins
urged me to stay, see if Levon shows up.

   Minutes later, at 12:30, an hour and a half since the end of the
Dylan concert, the Nickelodeon broke into applause and cheers.
Levon, and Robbie Robertson, and Rick Danko, and Bob Dylan, and
friends, had passed the checkroom, all their coats, fur caps and
mufflers intact. It was a nice little 39th-birthday present for
Hawkins, and he leapt through the crowd to exchange warm greetings
with Dylan, who wore shades and would stay mostly quiet through the
night.

   Hawkins jumped onto the stage with his latest congregation--a
six-piece outfit that had Bill Graham nodding favorably--and told
the buzzing crowd: "They came all the way from L.A. to hear me sing
'Forty Days!'" One of the waiters slapped his open hand, softly,
repeatedly, against a counter. "Goddamn," he said to
another-worker. "Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan."

   Hawkins introduced a special number. "I remember Robbie called
it one of Bob's best songs at one time," he said, and moved into a
mellow country version of "One Too Many Mornings," one of Dylan's
earlier true-love songs, from 1964. A couple of birthday
dedications later, Hawkins was rolling through "Bo Diddley" and
worked in a couple of verses of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown." Dylan
nodded and smiled.

   After Hawkins' set, the crowd was quiet, a nickelodeon full of
Dylan-watchers, picture-snappers. I got a good close-up look at
him, for the first time, and he looked tired, in no shape to be
club-nobbing, but not unapproachable. Later, at two o'clock, while
the club tried to kick everybody out, Graham looked to be trying to
set up a private jam session, talking soothingly to the people in
charge. But they didn't go for it, and Graham resigned himself to
the usual: a spread of food and wine on the artists' floor at the
hotel.
Date:    Tue, 21 Nov 1995 01:05:31 GMT
From:    "Carole C. Klinger" 
Subject: Knockin' On Dylan's Door (Ch 2, Part 3 of 4)

   Bob Dylan has had reason to avoid ROLLING STONE; we'd been among
the most critical about his recent albums; the most cynical about
his motives for the tour, launched in combination with a new label
deal and a new album. He didn't need the media, didn't want to do
interviews, all reporters were told. And that word seemed to have
spread effectively around the tour. In Toronto, one writer spent 18
column-inches describing how he chased the Band's equipment van
from the Malton Airport halfway across town, at a sometimes
furious, speed-of-Bullitt pace before giving up. And at the Inn on
the Park, before the first concert, another reporter spotted Dylan,
in shades, at the hotel newsstand, leafing through a pube magazine
called Success. Dylan denied that he was Dylan, but let a
photographer take pictures. The reporter hit him up again, and
Dylan, exasperated, told him; "Look, man, I'm not him." Finally, a
friend came and helped him escape.

   Still, his most intimate protectors insisted, Dylan would be
happy to have a chat--if you happened to nm into him. Now, Graham
invited us to join the post-concert nibbling and
listening-to-the-new-album gathering, and at 2:30 AM, I entered the
most boring hotel suite I'd seen since my own Holiday Inn room back
in Philadelphia. McClure and Byall were having a chat on one couch;
Betty Imboff was eating a plateful of snacks, and a lone teenaged
girl wandered around wondering what she was doing.

   But soon enough, there was a burst of noise from the hallway and
a gang of Band members and buddies were scurrying past, followed by
Bob Dylan, still in shades. He made a turn toward the party room,
stopped in front of me, and continued to yell, half-puzzled,
half-joking, after the little mob.

   My moment had come. I introduced myself, and he kept his smile
on as we shook hands. His was cold, offered downward, with not much
of a grip. Then he excused himself, but promised, without my
asking, "I'll be right back and we'll talk." Ten minutes later, at
3 AM, we sat side-by-side on couches and talked; he'd read some of
my stories; I'd heard some of his songs.

   We chatted, in idle, for maybe ten minutes... "How'd you like
the show?"... "Well, you see, I wasn't feeling that great, I just
had a flu shot today"... "No, 18,000 people yelling isn't that much
of a thing. It's nothing new"...  "See, I used to sit in the dark
and dream about it, you know. It's all happened before" ... and
then I suddenly felt nervous, without a notebook and not quite sure
what to say. I suggested an interview--say, maybe in Montreal, when
he felt better. He agreed, and I made my escape.

   The next night, still in Toronto, Dylan looked better onstage,
sporting a hat for the first time along with his by-now regulation
black suit, twisting his left heel in time with "Just Like Tom
Thumb's Blues," working with organist Garth Hudson through "Ballad
of a Thin Man," and leaving the stage with a spread-armed curtsy.
The Band seemed inspired, especially with a near-perfect reading of
"I Shall Be Released" by Richard Manuel. As before, Dylan fluffed
the second and third lines of "The Times They Are A-Changin'," but
the audience waited and roared for the main lines. On "Like a
Rolling Stone," the audience, in perfect unison, fast-clapped along
with the song. This is the one song no one listens to, the Dylan
anthem, the cause for celebration. The concert is marked down as
the best since the second show in Philly.

   And Toronto, for many of the Band, is home--or, at least, home
enough so that the party after the show reminds one of Big Pink. In
one room is a gathering of the next of kin, folks, stepfolks and
friends. Full of etiquette--it is after midnight, after all--they
are chatting and listening to Planet Waves on a cheap "compact"
hi-fi borrowed from the hotel; "Tough Mama" is playing, and on the
television (TV sets in touring rock stars' hotel rooms are always
on, no matter what's happening in the room) is a movie starring
Jimmy Stewart and some tough mama, a red fright-wigged woman
wielding a shotgun, and as Dylan begins the final chorus, the woman
blows up a houseboat, and Levon Helm and Rick Danko enter the room,
listening to the music again, still loving it. Once again, Ronnie
Hawkins and wife are part of the party; Gordon Lightfoot will drop
in, too, and, out in the hallway, I run into Dylan again. I tell
him I was thrilled, chilled again by his show; he mentions, again,
how he'd had a flu shot and that's why the previous night wasn't so
hot, and we affirm our plans to meet in Montreal.

   The gathering is dissipating, and in another room, a drunken
would-be groupie demands Dylan's presence. She staggers around,
going nowhere slow, until Dylan shows up, asking for a blanket. She
shouts at him, and Dylan goes into his I-don't-understand routine,
slips into the bathroom and out again, before she notices. Later,
Renee, a tall, blonde beauty, is talking with Robbie Robertson.
Robbie, who looks years younger than he did in the Big Pink days,
when his chin-thin beard, glasses and dark clothing gave him the
look of a devout Russian Orthodox Jew, is listening attentively,
like a priest. He seems to be humoring her, but no one can tell.

   I'm writing songs and I play guitar," she tells him.

   Robbie, in a light fauntleroy hat, reddish-plaid shirt and
bell-bottomed overalls, lets his sleepy eyes widen and his mouth
open, as if the news may yet bowl him over.

   "Really?" he says. "Gee, you and I do the same things. What a
coincidence."

   The woman has to leave. She has to go to work tomorrow morning.
"But I don't want to be a secretary all my life," she tells Robbie.
Robbie nods. He probably felt the same way 15 years ago, when he
left school in Toronto to take up the guitar with the Robots.

   I had met Robbie at the Nickelodeon; the next day, we met in his
room and talked about the tour--how it started, exactly, how the
Band felt being largely considered a backup, despite their
co-billing and no matter how strong the applause at the end of each
Band-number and segment.

   "We expected it," he said, "because we know who Bob is, right?
And because we also knew that it had been eight years since he had
ever done a tour, and we knew it was going to be an incredible
level of anticipation for his music. We just can't...we have a job
to do. You can't say to yourself, 'Oh, my god. Call Bob. Tell Bob
he's got to get back out here.' The first time we played with him,
when we walked out there, people would actually start booing and
throwing things, so this is actually like a big, big departure.
This is nothing, to have a couple of people yell, 'Dylan!'"

The Band and Dylan, said Robertson, have always thought about
touring since the last tour, in 1966. "We were going to do another
one, and Bob had the motorcycle wreck. And for a long time it
didn't seem like a good idea to us at all. All of a sudden it
started to become clear. There was a space, an opening, a
necessity, almost, that just pulled you into it. It was no clever
maneuver on anybody's behalf to put the thing together, to expand
our audience or get a few extra albums. Everybody just felt the
same way at the same time."

   The impetus was a rock concert--the all-time biggest festival
gathering, the 600,000-populated Watkins Glen festival.

   "There was something different about it," he said. "At Watkins
Glen we were playing, and we would do little things, intricate,
subtle things that the audience would react to that I'd never seen
them react to before. There was an alertness to the audience that
I could not believe. And it was also, by far, the nicest of those
festivals that we've played."

   The whole thing is especially ironic because the Band is almost
as reclusive as Dylan, having not played any dates for a year and
a half before Watkins Glen, choosing to spend their time with
families, working on albums, and playing with Dylan.

   "We didn't want to play Watkins Glen at all. We were in a mood;
we thought tours, those things...it's only the money, that's the
only reason that you do it. But we were talked into it. You know
the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, really terrific people, and
it was just one of those [Robbie puts on a painful, friendly,
urging voice], 'Oh, come on... it's just up the road. You don't
have to really go out of your way.' You know. 'Don't be a spoil
sport.' That's what happened."

   After the festival, an enthusiastic Robertson told Dylan about
the new sensations he'd received. "And he went for it all the way.
He asked me more questions. And then for a year or two I was
planning on going to Malibu; I was ready to leave Woodstock. When
I went out there we picked up on our talks and at this point it was
more advanced, and we were coming out with a more positive
attitude."

   Now, on tour, did the Band and Dylan find confirmation far his
feelings after Watkins Glen? "I don't think it's a similar
situation," said Robbie. "I don't think it's necessarily the same
audience. I also think that the audiences on this tour are not
quite able to relax either. I think they're a little confused, a
little nervous. I think they're waiting so much for something in
there that it really distracts from that other thing that was in
Watkins Glen."

   But the Band and Dylan are nervous, too, said Robertson, and
that partly explains the lack of communication from the artists to
the audience, beyond the music and a wave, a peace sign or a
clenched fist here, a nod from Robbie's guitar there. First,
Robertson maintains, there's no need to talk. You say hello by
showing up onstage; you play familiar music and don't need to
introduce numbers. A new number from Dylan is obviously new. "So
you're kind of...it's meaningless talk."

   "Just remember, when Bob first started to play, he used to do
more talking than music. He used to just talk and talk and tell
stories, jokes and carrying on, you know. It's a different thing.
And also, I think in his case, everybody takes it to such a degree
that it's embarrassing, almost, to say anything. I mean, they
start, you know..."

   To analyze what he meant by "We'll be back in 15 minutes"?

   "Right, they start counting to fifteen backwards...they just
take it and they get silly."

   One critic in Chicago, a man with a background in theater,
accused Dylan of holding back and concluded: "Maybe Dylan just
isn't a performer."

   Dylan, in Montreal, responded: "They just don't understand." He
shrugged his shoulders. "It's got nothing to do With that kind of
atmosphere. What the critics expect is what they expect. It
concerns me more with getting it to the people.

   "It's basically music, not a music-hall routine."

   Another reason for the silence between numbers, said Robertson,
is the group's required concentration on the music at hand. A song
changes from one night to another, said Robertson, and Dylan loves
to pull surprises.

   "He pulled one out of the hat last night, that we had never
played, or ran over, or even considered: 'It Takes a Lot to
Laugh.'"

   The Band and Dylan went through some 80 numbers in one four-hour
session, said Robertson, so that the show can change every night.
But rehearsals, he said, were impossible. "For our situation and
our mentality, it seemed so absurd to get into a room and run over
'Positively Fourth Street.' We'd go, 'What is this? Remember the
kickoff? Who cares what the kickoff was?' You know. We just can't
approach it like that."

   Rehearsals began three months before the tour. "We sat down and
played for four hours and ran over an incredible number of tunes.
Just instantly. We would request tunes. Bob would ask us to play
certain tunes of ours, and then we would do the same, then we'd
think of some that we would particularly like to do. And then it
was over, we said, 'That's it.'"

   So, onstage, oftentimes a song will end quite abruptly; another
may wheeze and fizzle to a tardy conclusion; Dylan will stop a
number to change the beat.

   Even while planning the tour, Dylan and the Band were nervous,
said Robertson. "Not a real emotional nervousness, but also a
physical endurance nervousness. Like Bob was saying, 'Shit, I
haven't done nothing in eight years, all of a sudden I m going to
go out there and hit it for 40 concerts?' We're not really outgoing
people," Robbie said again, "we're just not the kind of people that
can--'Sure, turn us loose!'"

   Once the tour was certain, the Band would call Bill Graham, whom
they had worked with, doing concerts, and David Geffen, chairman of
Elektra/Asylum Records, now Dylan's label.

   When asked about how he got to know Robbie, Geffen replied:
"He's just my friend." Robbie's version had less of the hangout
aura to it: "He called me up once, about nine or ten months ago.
Just out of the blue, he said he wanted to see me. I talked to him
and found him interesting. I thought he was in tune with today,
now. He wasn't relying on what it was, or he didn't have ridiculous
theories on what it should be or will be." What triggered the call?
Was it just to get to know you?

   "No, it was a business move."

   Robertson told Dylan about Graham and Geffen, Dylan approved,
and the two went to work, convincing the group that if they were to
avoid box office riots, they had to play more than ten dates, and
in larger-than-theater halls. It was also Graham who proposed the
ticket prices (criticized in some cities as too high, averaging $8
and reaching a top of $9.50), and the Band and Dylan--who left all
money matters to their various attorneys and to Geffen and
Graham--agreed.

   "The decision," said Robbie, "was made by Bill and David, and
they put their logic together and explained it to us. We left it up
to them because they could be a little bit more objective than us.
They would say, 'Listen, Joe Blow gets $7.50. Just Joe Blow, so I
would think you guys should charge that, and if there's two of you,
then yon should charge'... and they had all kinds of reasons. 'If
you don't, then people are going to think that something is wrong.'
Me? I just said, 'You know better than we do.' You have to give
people room to move around in and do things. If you do it all
yourself you go crazy."

   And when the Band and Dylan were informed that the tour would
gross $5 million and net at least half that, no one felt that it
was a bit much? Or asked ff it was really needed or deserved?

   'No way do we feel we deserve it," Robertson replied calmly. "I
think the whole thing is so out of proportion it doesn't make any
sense at all. But I don't think a gallon of gas is worth a dollar,
either. I think that the whole thing is so out of proportion, you
couldn't just step in and say, 'Wait a minute, everybody.' That's
not our job. Yon can't go around deciding for the world what the
price for everything should be. We could have charged $2. That
could have been a good move or a bad move. Who knows?"

   Dylan echoed Robbie: "I put it in Bill Graham's hands," he said.
"I just let people know I was ready." He added: "Originally, I
wanted to play small halls, but I was just talked out of that."

   Graham himself said that he could have suggested a high of $20,
and still sell out the tour, just to prove the point "that the
market will bear it. But that's not what I was trying to prove. I
tried to make it a decent price that I didn't think there'd be
complaints on."

   Each show in the first four cities was sold out; but in Chicago
and Philadelphia, concerts were not sold out until nearly the last
minute. In Chicago, last-minute shuffling of sound and lighting
equipment made 1000 seats available for two shows, and they were
sold on the days of the shows. In Philadelphia, at the time of the
first show, at 2 PM, there were still tickets for the third show,
the next night, available at the box office.

   Graham maintained that it was an immediate sellout, dating back
to the December 2nd-placement of ads in every city on the tour.
Thousands of ticket requests had been returned then, he said. But
99% of requests had been for the night shows, leaving day-show
tickets unsold. Also, he said, just two weeks before (that would be
around Christmas), it was discovered that some side seats, with
"obstructed views," could be sold, and ads were placed announcing
"obstructed" tickets. for $8. But, according to a Spectrum
employee, the 19,000-seat auditorium sold some 16,000 seats for
each show in the first rush, and placed ads on WMMR-FM by December
8th.

   Later, we learned that Madison Square Garden, on January 17th,
announced more tickets available for the New York shows. Graham and
Geffen had previously reported an estimated 1.2 million ticket
requests in the New York area; now, for some last-minute reason,
the Garden, which can hold 58,500 people for three shows had seats
to spare.

   Every show ends up sold out, of course. And in Philadelphia, the
only city outside New York to have Dylan and the Band for more than
two shows, writer Jon Takiff remarked: "It's pretty phenomenal to
sell out three shows at the Spectrum."

   Still, the facts seemed to make so much hype-confetti of Graham
and Geffen's pre-tour claims of a nationwide, overnight, mail-order
sellout.

------------------------------

Date:    Tue, 21 Nov 1995 01:07:38 GMT
From:    "Carole C. Klinger" 
Subject: Knockin' On Dylan's Door (Ch 2, Part 4 of 4)


   Bill Graham, the man who has an answer for just about anything,
was even equipped with the proper languages anything, was even
equipped with the proper languages for this tour. In Montreal, at
the end of the first concert at the Forum, after the encore, he
told the crowd, in fluid French, that Dylan had gone and would not
be back. The next night, the voice that has sent countless
antagonists up against countess walls was again soothing and
Frenchy, telling the people to please not smoke and crowd into the
center aisle. Both Montreal audiences would proceed to smoke, the
smell coming out like a mixture of rubber and Baco-Bits; they would
crowd into the aisles--because, said Graham, fearful auditorium
guards refused to try and block the aisles by themselves; and they
would drink, sneaking in bottles Of Rouge Sec wine, a product of
Quebec.

   The Forum is used by all the big rock acts, a student from
Quebec City told me. Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, the Moody Blues.
What about, er, French groups? "They play the small place--the
Sports Centre at the University of Montreal."

   It is a bilingual crowd, you can tell by the chatter around you.
But, the student said, "I read there are 6000 Americans here
tonight." Because of the language situation, said Graham, Montreal
was the only city to sell tickets through box offices, and
thousands of people had crossed the border to get tickets and, a
month later, to attend the show.

   One woman, who came to Montreal from Plattsburgh, New York,
seemed disappointed with Dylan, after "Lay Lady Lay." It was the
new way he had of singing it, no longer country-comfy and inviting,
but snarl-joking, stretching last words and snapping them off with
a grit of his teeth.

   "I liked the old Dylan," said the woman, an employee at the
state college in Plattsburgh. "Here, on this song, I felt he was
ripping me off, just singing a song to get through it. He's not
sharing a part of himself with us."

   She broke into applause, minutes later, when Dylan went into
"The Times They Are A-Changin'," and joined the ovation while Dylan
offered two bows and a clenched left fist. She nodded her approval
again as the solo Dylan worked his way through "Gates of Eden." And
when "Rolling Stone" came around, she was on top of her chair,
standing atop her cotton coat and clapping along. (Dylan: "'Like a
Rolling Stone' is just as real today as it was then. The audience
is reacting the same as back then. It was always the one that got
the best reaction.") And here, when Dylan returned for the encore,
the ovation continued on, and did not die, the way it had in the
other cities.

   "Always love to come back to Montreal."

   While friends of Dylan said he had stayed off the road mostly
because his family came first, he left his wife and children
behind. With him on the first few stops of the tour was Louie Kemp,
a friend of Bob's since the days in Hibbing when they went to camp
together. Louie stuck close to Dylan, from hotel to hotel, and
accompanied him wherever he went. In Chicago, they checked out a
show at the Earl of Old Town. In Philadelphia, Dylan spent
off-hours ice-skating. In Toronto, he planned to see The Exorcist
at a local university movie house, then canceled out. He visited
with a friend, a talent agent named Roberta Richards, and they
talked about an artist Ms. Richards had handled: Leon Redbone.
Later, she would bring John Donebie backstage at the Maple Leaf
Gardens, and Donebie would have the usual: He thanked Dylan for 12
years of music, and Dylan told him, "It's all right."

   In Montreal, Dylan also took it easy, staying on a diet of
vegetables, fruits, herb tea and distilled water. His one known
foray into the streets--aside from shopping trips--was to pick up
a loose No PARKING sign to take back home. I remember a Rodney
Bingenheimer story about him and Dylan driving around Hollywood one
night in search of signs; now, propped up against a couch in his
suite, there was the evidence of such a hobby.

   On the scheduled day of the interview, I waited through the
morning and early afternoon. When Dylan's supposed to call, you
don't go running down to the newsstand to leaf through pube
magazines. I decided to busy myself by going over my notes from the
seven shows I'd seen and compiling a list that would tell me, in
case I ever got interested, just which songs Dylan was doing most
often, and how many different numbers he had done in his concerts
so far, at an average of 18 songs per night, with the Band adding
another nine or ten.

   It turned out that Dylan indeed had--and played--favorites. Of
32 songs he had tried thus far, 12 numbers had appeared in, at
least, six of seven concerts. In every show, he had performed "Lay
Lady Lay," "Ballad of a Thin Man," "All Along the Watchtower,"
"It's Alright, Ma," "Like a Rolling Stone," and two from Planet
Waves, "Forever Young" and "Something There Is About You."

   "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," "It Ain't Me Babe," "Knockin' on
Heaven's Door," and a new number, "Except You," had been done in
every show but one, and "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go
Mine)" had been sung seven times in five concerts.

   "I Don't Believe You" had been done five times, scattered out
evenly, and "Ballad of Hollis Brown" was also a five-timer. "Times
They Are A-Changin'" had been done twice in Chicago, and 'once each
in Toronto and Montreal. (Having stumbled through lines each time
he tried the song, Dylan got a present from Bill Graham at
intermission of the second show in Montreal: a set of cue cards,
the lyrics to this, one of his best-known--if not by
him--compositions written out in two-inch-high letters. Dylan
laughed, then marched out and substituted "Blowin' in the Wind" in
the "Times" slot.)

   The rest of the list included one-time acoustic shots of "To
Ramona," "Mama, You've Been on My Mind," "Song to Woody," "Maggie's
Farm," "As I Went Out One Morning," and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh
(It Takes a Train to Cry)." Twice each, he had done "Rainy Day
Women (Nos. 12 & 35)," "Just Like a Woman," "Hero Blues," "Love
Minus Zero (No Limit)," "Gates of Eden,"  "Girl From the North
Country," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," and the new "Wedding
Song."

   Three times each, he had performed "Tough Mama" (another new,
gritty love song), "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat," and one of his own
stated favorites from the protest days, "The Lonesome Death of
Hattie Carroll."

   "It's more interesting for me to be able to move things around,"
said Dylan. "These are the songs that were important for us, for
me, for people we knew. They're mostly songs that've been recorded
through the years."

   I hadn't heard any songs from New Morning or Self-Portrait yet,
I said.

   "Well, we'll do some from New Morning. We've got three or four
numbers. But Self-Portrait, I didn't live with those songs for too
long. Those were just scraped together." To, say, pay some sort of
tribute to the songwriters you liked? Dylan smiled and nodded.

   Dylan and I exchanged admissions of nervousness; soon enough, we
were comfortable. He's been well-known to be antagonistic during
interviews, challenging the wording of questions, offering totally
evasive or fabricated responses. He does, in fact, give mostly
half-answers, and one is not encouraged to pursue his replies. His
face says to take a second to let it soak in, see the self-evidence
for yourself. If he was putting me on with any of his
responses--say, in his promotion man's dream of an answer about
doing his old songs--then he was a good actor. And, as he said
during our hour session, he's not a movie star.

   The first time we'd talked, Dylan had mentioned a special
enthusiasm for doing the Texas dates, in Fort Worth and in Houston
January 25th and 26th, just before the five New York shows.

   "Maybe it's just the Mexican influence," he said. "They're more
receptive to my kind of music, my kind of style," said Dylan. "In
the old days..." he paused. "I hate to call them the 'old days,'"
he thought out loud, and laughed. "Anyway, I did New York, San
Francisco and Austin. The rest were hard in coming."

   The tour, he said, wasn't planned to take advantage of a lull in
the music business, or to make a statement in a time of national
crisis. "I saw daylight," he said. "I just took off."

   Did he miss being onstage?

   "Sure," he replied. "There's always those butterflies at a
certain point, but then there's the realization that the songs I'm
singing mean as much to the people as to me; so it's just up to me
to perform the best I can."

   What kind of feeling did he get, singing the "protest" and
"message" songs again, especially considering what people might
read in his decision to revive those songs?

   "For me, it's just reinforcing those images in my head that were
there, that don't die, that will be there tomorrow. And in doing so
for myself, hopefully also for those people who also had those
images."

   In an earlier chat, Dylan had implied that it was a "new time,"
in which people were united in their political thinking. I
mentioned a comment by a member of the Committee, that much of the
country still needed turning around, as evidenced by the
overwhelming reelection of Richard Nixon, after four years of
fairly obvious nonsense, and by the underwhelming call, at this
point, for his removal.

   "Sure," Dylan agreed, "there's still a message. But the same
electric spark that went off back then could still go off
again--the spark that led to nothing. Our kids will probably
protest, too. Protest is an old thing. Sometimes protest is deeper,
or different--the Haymarket Riot, the Russian Revolution, the Civil
War--that's protest.

   "There's always a need for protest songs. You just gotta tap
it."

   What, I asked Dylan, had he been doing to keep his vocal cords
in shape? Had he been singing regularly, at home, through the years
off the stage? He said he hadn't. "We've been through the big tours
before," he said. "Actually, I'd like to have a little club where
I could sing when I felt like it."

   What about the changes his voice and vocal style have gone
through over the past few albums? Dylan looked past me, then out
the window again. "That's a good question. I don't know. I could
only guess--if it has changed. I've never gone for having a great
voice, for cultivating one. I'm still not doing it now."

   As for the rearrangements of songs, the harder, snappier way
he's singing some of the older songs: "You'll always stretch things
out or cut it up, just to keep interested. If you can't stay
interested that way, you'll have to lose track. But I'm me now,
that's the way it comes out."

   What? You're meaner now?

   "What? Oh, no. I'm me now." Dylan laughed. He could just see the
headline.

   Is Dylan planning to stay in Malibu?

   "No," he said, "we're just there temporarily. It was cold in New
York and we didn't want to go back there after Mexico [and the
shooting of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid]. I can't stay away from
New York!"

   How did he get the role of Alias in the Sam Peckinpah film?

   "Just one thing into another. [Pause] They took me on because I
was a big name. I've seen myself on screen; movies don't impress
me. That part didn't scare me off at all. I just hoped I didn't get
shot during the movie.

   "I don't know who I played. I tried to play whoever it was in
the story, but I guess it's a known fact in history that there was
nobody who was the character I played in the story.

   "No, I don't want to be a movie star," he continued, "but I've
got a vision to put up on the screen. Someday we'll get around to
doing it. The Peckinpah experience was valuable, in terms of
getting near the big action."

   Would Dylan do more films before tackling his "vision"?

   "The Peckinpah movie brought me as close as I'll get," he said.
"I've been on sets of movies and TV shows, but they were small-time
compared. They spent $4.5 million on Billy the Kid, had all the top
people. So that was really heavy, gave me that vibration. When I
finally do mine, it'll have that vibration."

   What about his latest business moves?

   "I don't think about it," said Dylan. "Just had to get out of
some legal hassles from back in the old days."

   Dylan, in earlier announcements, had planned to have his own
label, ironically named Ashes & Sand, the name of the holding
company he'd set up back in the old, Albert Grossman days. Dylan
smiled, laughing at himself: "That only lasted a quick few
minutes," he agreed.

   What were the advantages to having his own label? Was Dylan
advised by an outside party to form his own company? "I advised
myself it was a good thing, and then I advised myself that it
wasn't. I just didn't need it."

   Dylan does, however, maintain an interest in spotting--and
helping--new talent. If Ashes & Sand were a reality, Dylan said,
he'd want Leon Redbone.

   "Leon interests me," he said. "I've heard he's anywhere from 25
to 60. I've been this close"--Dylan held his hands out, a foot and
a half apart--"and I can't tell. But you gotta see him. He does old
Jimmie Rodgers, then turns around and does a Robert Johnson."

   Redbone has surfaced at various folk festivals in the past few
years and is every bit the mystery that Dylan indicates.

   And what about the other Leon, Leon Russell, who produced only
a couple of cuts with Dylan?

   "Leon and I, we didn't do that much." Dylan couldn't remember
exactly what they'd done, beyond "Watching the River Flow" and
"When I Paint My Masterpiece."

   "It went fine, it was as good as it could've been expected to
be. But the producers that have meant the most to me are Tom
Wilson, John Hammond and Bob Johnston. They were there. They were
there when...well, it's like a small group of friends."

   What about the Dylan album, the collection of Self-Portrait
outtakes Columbia had released on the eve of the Dylan tour, after
Dylan split from the label to go with Ashes & Sand, and then
Asylum? Dave Geffen had charged Columbia with holding the album
over Dylan's head, threatening to release it unless he re-signed
his contract. "That's when they sealed their doom," Geffen said.
Speaking on Dylan's behalf earlier in the tour, Geffen had
characterized Dylan's response to the album as utter repudiation.
"He disclaims it," Geffen said. "He doesn't know that Dylan."

   (Columbia's vice president of A&R, Charles Koppelman, denied
Geffen's allegations. The album was delayed at Dylan's request,
during contract talks, he said, but Dylan had never expressed
disapproval with the album itself. "He called Goddard [Lieberson,
president of Columbia] and said he didn't mind us at all putting
out the album," Koppelman said. The executive couldn't offer much.
explanation for the sloppiness of the album: the lack of
information on dates of recording, backup musicians and even
composers' credits. "We had a lack of information ourselves," he
said. Columbia, Koppelman said, will continue to release Dylan
material. "We have a fairly good amount of tape," including live
concerts and "a group of tapes where he performed with other well-
known performers. We have a good few albums," said Koppelman.)

   Dylan described the material on Dylan as outtakes sung "just to
warm up," he said. "They were just not to be used. I thought it was
well understood." But, he said he couldn't understand all the
critical downgrading of the album.

   "I didn't think it was that bad, really!" he said.

   Dylan said he thought Clive Davis, the president of Columbia
Records, fired last May for alleged "financial malfeasance," was "a
scapegoat." But even if Davis was still at Columbia, he said, he
would've left the label. "It was long overdue," he said. "Just a
gut feeling it was time to go on. I suspected they were doing more
talk than action. Just released 'em and that's all. I got a feeling
they didn't care whether I stayed there or not."

   As for David Geffen: "He's there." What does "there" mean?

   "Whatever it takes to be there."

   Has he signed a contract with Asylum, as Geffen said?

   "I'm not so sure we signed one. I don't sign anything these
days."

   It's been a tour of luck and coincidences, running into Neil
Young's father, Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan himself. But there was
also the leaflet I picked up outside the Nickelodeon, blood-red
headlined: 40 DAYS! AND NINEVEH SHALL BE DESTROYED. It was dated
November 12th and distributed by the Children of God, a local
religion franchise. "Forty Days," of course, was Ronnie Hawkins'
first major hit.

   Here, sitting with Dylan, I also thought about the headlines
that had surfaced upon his arrival in Philadelphia and Toronto. In
Philly, the Evening Bulletin carried a story: "Fewer Jews Reported
in Philadelphia Area" (population decreased 7% in the last year).
In Toronto, Dylan was greeted with this headline in the Globe and
Mail: "Apathy, Alienation Reported Rampant Among Young Jews."

   "It is not the slightest bit surprising (but nonetheless
shocking and depressing) that no less than 88% [of converts to
Christianity] consider the Jewish religion 'valueless,'" said the
report issued by P'eylim of Canada, a Toronto Jewish organization.

   Religious images have long been part of Bob Dylan's music. In
1971, he visited the Wailing Wall in Israel. Now, on tour, it was
rumored that he was planning on handing over his cut of the profits
to the Israeli cause; that he was an "ultra-Zionist."

   "I'm not sure what a Zionist really is," he said, putting down
the rumors as "just gossip." As for the religious images that
surface regularly in his music, he commented, after a good pause:
"Religion to me is a fleeting thing. Can't nail it down. It's in me
and out of me. It does give me, on the surface, some images, but I
don't know to what degree.

   "Like da Vinci going in to paint the Last Supper. Until he
finishes it, no one knows what the Last Supper is. He goes out and
finds 12 guys, puts them around this table, and there's your Last
Supper. Or Moses. He found a guy and painted him, and, forever,
that guy will be Moses. But why Moses or the Last Supper? Why not
a flower? Or a tree?"

   Dylan had earlier mentioned an astrological influence on his
return to active performance, the removal of an obstacle, Saturn,
in his planetary system. I asked him to elaborate.

   "I can't read anybody's chart," he said, "but the thing about
Saturn is, I didn't know what it was at the time, or I would've
gone somewhere away. It's a big, heavy obstacle that comes into
your chain of events that fucks you up in a big way. It came into
my chart a few years ago and just flew off again a couple of months
ago."

   Who'd clued him in on Saturn?

   "Someone very dear to me."

                          - 30 -