Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan (90 page)

1
. According to the indefatigable fans who insist on keeping count, Dylan’s last concert of 2012 – in Brooklyn, New York, on 21 November – was performance number 2,480 in the unending tour. The first show is dated to 7 June 1988. The lives devoted to these studies are not refundable.

2
. The Hearst Greek Theatre, 19 October 2012. Madonna had just picked up $7 million for a couple of nights’ work in Las Vegas during the previous week.

3
. Edition of 27 September 2012.

4
. ‘We’re all familiar with Fitzgerald saying that there are no second acts in American lives and this clearly disproves that.’ (Greil Marcus,
nbcnews.com
, May 2011.) ‘When F. Scott Fitzgerald declared that “there are no second acts in American lives,” he obviously hadn’t envisioned the existence of Bob Dylan.’ (Douglas Heselgrave,
www.musicbox-online.com
, January 2009.) And so on.

5
. ‘Bob Dylan’s Invisible Republic: Interview with Greil Marcus’, Paolo Vites,
Jam
magazine (Italy), 1997.

6
.
Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet
(2010), p. 460.

7
. The verses come, respectively, from the songs ‘Narrow Way’, ‘Pay in Blood’ and ‘Tempest’.

8
. Edition of 27 September 2012.

1
. See Bert Cartwright’s ‘The Mysterious Norman Raeben’ in
Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan
(1990), ed. John Bauldie.

2
. That Dylan made an editorial choice is not seriously in doubt. Two or three of the notebook’s unused blues songs would have given him enough for a double album.
Blonde on Blonde
, the most famous double-disc set of them all, runs to just under 73 minutes. Clearly, the notebook overmatter was not up to scratch, or a distraction from Dylan’s purpose. In years to come he would be less scrupulous. In 1988, in arid times,
Down in the Groove
, barely 32 empty minutes long, would be deemed fit for release.

3
.
Down the Highway
(2002, paperback ed.), p. 332.

4
. Dylan’s 1964 poem acquired a curious history of its own. The actor-singer Ben (Benito) Carruthers, who had travelled with him in Europe that year, set an adapted version of the piece to music and released it as a UK single in the summer of 1965. The Dylan/Carruthers ‘song’ was in turn recorded by Fairport Convention for their eponymous first album in 1968. Richard Thompson was still performing this version in 2004.

1
. Foreword to Sam Shepard’s
The Rolling Thunder Logbook
(1977, reissued 2004), p. viii.

2
. ‘Patti Smith’ by Barry Miles, from the anthology
Wanted Man: In Search of Bob Dylan
(1990), ed. John Bauldie.

3
. The first pair of quotations appeared in the issue of 18 December 1975. Ginsberg’s remark was reported by Nat Hentoff in the issue of 15 January 1976.

4
. ‘Jacques Levy and the
Desire
collaboration’, first published in the British fan magazine
The Telegraph
in April of 1983, reprinted in
All Across the Telegraph: A Bob Dylan Handbook
(1987), edited by Michael Gray and John Bauldie.

5
.
www.reddit.com
. The exchanges, in one of the site’s regular ‘Ask Me Anything’ features devoted to almost-live exchanges between notable individuals and the public, appeared on 14 November 2012.

6
.
On the Road with Bob Dylan
(1978, reissued 2002), Chapter 1.

7
.
SongTalk
, winter issue, 1991.

8
. See, if you truly must,
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
(1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Dan Brown’s
The Da Vinci Code
(2003) takes certain of these speculations to their preposterous conclusions. An equally good Provençal fairy tale holds that the Romani are survivors of Atlantis who clambered ashore locally.

9
. See, for example, p. 247 of Tim Dunn’s daunting
The Bob Dylan Copyright Files 1962–2007
(2008) as it concerns the ownership of the song ‘Isis’. Since Dylan would surrender ‘an undivided fifty percent (50%) of his fractional interest’ in such works in January 1978 as part of the settlement made on Sara Dylan, he actually wound up making less from the writing deal than Levy. In 2012, equally, the director’s son would tell his online audience that his father had earned little for his efforts.

10
. Edition of December 1977.

11
. Sam Shepard,
The Rolling Thunder Logbook
(1977, reissued 2004).

12
. ‘Rita May’ would also turn up on the 1978 three-disc compilation
Masterpieces
, a ‘greatest-hits’ package sold to Dylan fans in Japan and Australia – and to those among us prepared to pay absurd import prices for a couple of unfamiliar tracks.

13
. See the
Desire
session notes at Olof Björner’s inestimable resource
bjorner.com
.

14
. Dr Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter LLD (with Ken Klonsky),
Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom
(2011). Klonsky’s introduction to the tale of a ‘spiritual journey’ concedes of Carter: ‘There are those who focus on his character flaws, his difficult past, his long-windedness. He owns up to it all, often good-naturedly.’

15
.
The Sixteenth Round
, p. 15.

16
.
Ibid
., p. 42.

17
. Larry Sloman,
Rolling Stone
, issue of 4 December 1975.

18
. See Paul B. Wice’s
Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and the American Justice System
(2000), p. 90.

19
. ‘Algren in Exile’,
Chicago
magazine (February 1988). Carter appears in
The Devil’s Stocking
as ‘Ruby Calhoun’.

20
. Artis spent 14 years in prison before his parole in 1981. He was sentenced in August of 1987 to six years by a New Jersey court for ‘conspiracy to distribute cocaine and to receiving a stolen handgun’. According to the
New York Times
(9 August 1987), Artis accepted one drug charge ‘in exchange for dismissal of two other drug counts’. He would later work as an articulate ‘juvenile counsellor’.

21
. ‘Early in 1966 the reform mayoral candidate, Laurence “Pat” Kramer, declared, “Paterson doesn’t need a mayor, it needs a referee.”’ Wice p. 1, ‘Prologue’.

22
. See ‘Hurricane Carter: The Other Side of the Story’,
www.graphicwitness.com
, or ‘Top Ten Myths about Rubin Hurricane Carter and the Lafayette Grill Murders’,
members.shaw.ca/cartermyths
.

23
. ‘The Real Record on Racial Attitudes’ by Lawrence D. Bobo, Camille Z. Charles, Maria Krysan and Alicia D. Simmons. The paper appears as Chapter 3 in
Social Trends in American Life: Findings from the General Social Survey
(2012), ed. Peter V. Marsden.

24
. See the Human Rights Watch website:
www.hrw.org/reports/2000
.

25
. Bruce Western: ‘The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality’,
American Sociological Review
, August 2002.

26
. 1985 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14085.

27
. Wice, p. 2.

28
. Later supplied as an ‘extra’ to early purchasers of
The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue
(2002).

29
.
On the Road With Bob Dylan
, p.13.

30
.
Rockline
with Bob Coburn, 17 June 1985.

31
.
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
(abridged ed. 1922), p. 383.

32
.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
, p. 1.

33
. Pages 424 and 147 respectively.

34
. Chapter 2.

35
. Pages 186f and 175 respectively.

36
.
On the Road with Bob Dylan
, p. 14.

37
. From the Uniform Crime Reporting Program database maintained by the FBI at
www.ucrdatatool.gov
. Clearly, America’s population had increased greatly over the intervening years, but the trend was indisputable. In 1960, 5.1 homicides were reported per 100,000 of the population; by 1975, the figure was 9.6.

38
. ‘Joey Gallo Was No Hero’, 8 March 1976. A slightly different version would appear in the April 1976 edition of the magazine
Creem
, for which Bangs acted as ‘senior editor’.

39
.
Still on the Road: The Songs of Bob Dylan Vol. 2: 1974–2008
(2010), p. 79. Dylan’s website disagrees with Heylin, stating that the song was performed in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 25 May 1976, during the last of all Rolling Thunder concerts. Les Kokay’s
Songs of the Underground: A Collector’s Guide to the Rolling Thunder Revue 1975–1976
(privately published, 2003) notes the supposed performance but accepts that the claim is based on a single unsupported report of a show for which no bootleg tapes exist. One performance or no performance, Dylan hasn’t exactly embraced ‘Black Diamond Bay’.

40
.
Song & Dance Man III
, p. 185.

41
.
Still On the Road
, p. 84.

42
.
Song & Dance Man III
, p. 83;
The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia
, p. 589.

43
. p. 19.

44
. ‘In
Blonde on Blonde
I wrote out all the songs in the studio. The musicians played cards, I wrote out a song …’ (Interview with
Newsweek
, published 26 February 1968.) ‘I just sat down at a table and started writing [‘Sad Eyed Lady’]. At the session itself.’ (
Rolling Stone
, November 1969.)

1
.
Rolling Stone
, 4 December 1975. Roger McGuinn would later be quoted in Sloman’s book
On the Road with Bob Dylan
(p. 149) stating ‘slyly’ that the noises Dylan had heard were ‘probably’ sonic booms from aircraft at Vanderburg Air Force Base near Malibu, California.

2
.
On the Road with Bob Dylan
, p. 71.

3
.
Rolling Stone
, 15 January 1976.

4
.
Down the Highway
, p. 341.

5
. See Clinton Heylin’s
Behind the Shades Revisited
, p. 394.

6
.
No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan
(1st ed., 1986), p. 450.

7
.
Bob Dylan in America
(2010), Chapter 5. The McGuinn tale can be found under the title ‘Roadie Report 31’ at
http://rogermcguinn.blogspot.co.uk/2007_12_01_archive.html
.

8
.
People
, 10 November 1975.

9
. Hank Reineke,
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway
(2010), p. 225.

10
. Shelton, p.15.

11
. Barry Miles,
Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet
, p. 457.

12
.
The Rolling Thunder Logbook
, p. viii.

13
.
Songs of the Underground
, pp. 8–10.

14
. Sloman,
On the Road with Bob Dylan
, p. 20.

15
.
Rolling Stone
, 15 January 1976.

16
.
Shelter from the Storm: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Years
(2010), p. 35.

17
. Reineke, p. 226.

18
.
And a Song to Sing With
, Part 5, Chapter 1.

19
. The details come largely from a 1998 interview with a local witness conducted by Dave Conlin Read. See
http://www.berkshirelinks.com/bob-dylans-rolling-thunder-revue-party-mama-frascas-dream-lodge/
.

20
. Lucian K. Truscott IV, edition of 28 August.

21
. Just before he hanged himself on 9 April 1976, in Far Rockaway, in the New York borough of Queens, Phil Ochs was diagnosed finally as suffering from bipolar disorder.

22
.
And a Voice to Sing With
, Part 5, Chapter 1.

23
. Barry Miles,
Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet
, p. 458. Miles also says that Dylan, playing the piano, went down very well among the mah-jong players with a version of ‘Simple Twist of Fate’.

24
.
On the Road with Bob Dylan,
p. 70.

25
.
Ibid
., p. 71. In July 1963, having just turned 13, Larry Sloman hadn’t yet heard – by his own admission – of Bob Dylan.

26
.
Ibid
., pp. 117–18.

27
.
Rolling Stone
, 18 December 1975.

28
. In 1975, for the purposes of comparison, it would have cost a fan $10 to see the Rolling Stones and $8.50 to catch Led Zeppelin. The Kinks, on the other hand, were available in smaller halls for $4.50. The issue of ticket prices is complicated by the additional fees imposed by many venues.

29
. Sloman,
On the Road with Bob Dylan
, pp. 177–8.

30
. Barry Miles,
Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet
, p. 469.

31
. Peter Guralnick,
Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley
(1999), pp. 587–8.

32
. Sloman,
On the Road with Bob Dylan
, p. 379.

33
.
New York Times
, 9 December 1975.

34
. Edition of 4 February 1977.

35
.
On the Road with Bob Dylan
, p. 404.

36
. Interview with Allan Jones, published in
Uncut
magazine, 8 January 2013. Ronson died of liver cancer on 29 April 1993, aged 46.

37
.
People
, 10 November 1975