Read Online On the Road with Bob Dylan by Larry Sloman - Free Book Online
Authors: Larry Sloman
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Perhaps too full. Because the original lyrics Dylan and Levy wrote contained one major factual mistake; they confused Alfred Bradley with Albert Bello and placed Bradley in the bar at the scene of the crime. So on Friday, October 24, a series of harried phone calls were made by George Lois to Dylan at the Gramercy Park Hotel.
Lois was standing in his cavernous, immaculate Fifth Avenue office, the model of advertising chic, in his army-surplus safari jacket and kelly-green sneakers, running over the lyrics to “Hurricane” with Dylan on the other end. “Yeah, yeah, they say it’s potentially libelous the way it stands now. It was Bello who was in the bar, not Bradley. Yeah, yeah, now in stanza seven it should be Bello that says, ‘I’m really not sure!’” A puzzled look crossed Lois’ face. “Wait a minute, no, I’m sorry, that is Bradley saying that, yeah, yeah, I’m mixed up now.” And Lois handed me back the phone, with a by now thoroughly confused Dylan hanging on. “Tell Lois we’ll get right on it and rewrite it and call ya back,” Dylan decided and hung up. About two hours later the phone rang, and this time Jacques Levy was on the line, ready to read the new lyrics. Lois grabbed a pen and startedthe corrections. “And another man named Bello, right, moving kinda mysteriously, that’s great, that’s a great image, you can just see him prowling around, great correction, yeah, yeah.”
And so around 10:30 that night, Dylan strode briskly into Columbia Studio I, where a Janis Ian mixing session had been preempted, followed by Kemp, Levy, producer Don DeVito, Howie Wyeth, Scarlett, Stoner, Soles, Blakley, and percussionist Luther Rix. Dylan was wearing the same shirt he had on at Gerdes and was nervously pacing and strumming his Martin as Wyeth set up the drum kit. The engineers were setting up the soundproof baffles that absorb sound leakage between players. Scarlett, resplendent in a sleeveless
Creem
magazine T-shirt, was isolated in a booth at the left, with Wyeth and Rix set up behind her, Soles and Blakley, who were to sing backup vocals, near the center of the studio, Dylan at a stool at the right, and Stoner about five feet to Dylan’s left. As warmup, Dylan broke into “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy,” the beautiful song that Ochs performed the night before. Then they started into “Sitting On Top of the World,” followed by the Arthur Crudup song “It’s All Right Mama.” At 11:15, the studio lights were dimmed.
But there were still some technical problems, so Dylan moseyed over to the piano and started jamming with Blakley. He tired of that, picked up his guitar and started a familiar strum. “We’re gonna send this out to Larry, he’s out there somewhere,” and Dylan broke into a spirited version of Kinky Friedman’s “Ride ’Em Jewboy.” But by midnight all the technical problems had been resolved and DeVito called out for a first take. Bob kicked the song off with a bit of acoustic guitar and Scarlett’s haunting violin jumped in, but then Dylan’s harmonica slipped from his neck. “Hold it, my harp rack fell.” After that false start they started in again, but it wasn’t really cooking, and everyone felt that. During the playback Dylan came into the studio and consulted some of us. I told him it sounded muffled and he reported this to DeVito. “We all blew the phrasing,” Stoner added. “Hey Howie, can you play justas good on the next one as that one?” Scarlett seemed perturbed. “The arrangement’s not right,” she whispered to me. “It’s not the same feel we had the first time we recorded it.”
They went back into the studio and set up for another take. “Let’s get the old-time mikes,” Dylan quipped. “Hey Don, where’s the tequila.” A second take was attempted but the tempo slacked off and it was stopped. They started in again, and hit an uptempo groove. DeVito’s head started nodding, and he was shouting to no one in particular, “Not that slow
Lois was standing in his cavernous, immaculate Fifth Avenue office, the model of advertising chic, in his army-surplus safari jacket and kelly-green sneakers, running over the lyrics to “Hurricane” with Dylan on the other end. “Yeah, yeah, they say it’s potentially libelous the way it stands now. It was Bello who was in the bar, not Bradley. Yeah, yeah, now in stanza seven it should be Bello that says, ‘I’m really not sure!’” A puzzled look crossed Lois’ face. “Wait a minute, no, I’m sorry, that is Bradley saying that, yeah, yeah, I’m mixed up now.” And Lois handed me back the phone, with a by now thoroughly confused Dylan hanging on. “Tell Lois we’ll get right on it and rewrite it and call ya back,” Dylan decided and hung up. About two hours later the phone rang, and this time Jacques Levy was on the line, ready to read the new lyrics. Lois grabbed a pen and startedthe corrections. “And another man named Bello, right, moving kinda mysteriously, that’s great, that’s a great image, you can just see him prowling around, great correction, yeah, yeah.”
And so around 10:30 that night, Dylan strode briskly into Columbia Studio I, where a Janis Ian mixing session had been preempted, followed by Kemp, Levy, producer Don DeVito, Howie Wyeth, Scarlett, Stoner, Soles, Blakley, and percussionist Luther Rix. Dylan was wearing the same shirt he had on at Gerdes and was nervously pacing and strumming his Martin as Wyeth set up the drum kit. The engineers were setting up the soundproof baffles that absorb sound leakage between players. Scarlett, resplendent in a sleeveless
Creem
magazine T-shirt, was isolated in a booth at the left, with Wyeth and Rix set up behind her, Soles and Blakley, who were to sing backup vocals, near the center of the studio, Dylan at a stool at the right, and Stoner about five feet to Dylan’s left. As warmup, Dylan broke into “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy,” the beautiful song that Ochs performed the night before. Then they started into “Sitting On Top of the World,” followed by the Arthur Crudup song “It’s All Right Mama.” At 11:15, the studio lights were dimmed.
But there were still some technical problems, so Dylan moseyed over to the piano and started jamming with Blakley. He tired of that, picked up his guitar and started a familiar strum. “We’re gonna send this out to Larry, he’s out there somewhere,” and Dylan broke into a spirited version of Kinky Friedman’s “Ride ’Em Jewboy.” But by midnight all the technical problems had been resolved and DeVito called out for a first take. Bob kicked the song off with a bit of acoustic guitar and Scarlett’s haunting violin jumped in, but then Dylan’s harmonica slipped from his neck. “Hold it, my harp rack fell.” After that false start they started in again, but it wasn’t really cooking, and everyone felt that. During the playback Dylan came into the studio and consulted some of us. I told him it sounded muffled and he reported this to DeVito. “We all blew the phrasing,” Stoner added. “Hey Howie, can you play justas good on the next one as that one?” Scarlett seemed perturbed. “The arrangement’s not right,” she whispered to me. “It’s not the same feel we had the first time we recorded it.”
They went back into the studio and set up for another take. “Let’s get the old-time mikes,” Dylan quipped. “Hey Don, where’s the tequila.” A second take was attempted but the tempo slacked off and it was stopped. They started in again, and hit an uptempo groove. DeVito’s head started nodding, and he was shouting to no one in particular, “Not that slow
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