Free On the Road with Bob Dylan by Larry Sloman Page A

way out. He spotted me slouched on the bed and scurried over.
    “Hey Larry, you’ll never guess what happened to me. I was over taking a break from rehearsal the other night and we went to the Cosell show and Cosell came over to where we were sitting during a break and wanted me to do a song.” His eyes widened with mock amazement. “But I didn’t have my guitar with me and so he goes into this long rap about how he’s helping Rubin and how he’s gonna get him out of jail single-handedly.” We both scoffed at Cosell’s rhetoric, especially since I knew that the sportscaster had done nothing to aid Rubin outside of showing up at a fund-raising party a few months earlier after George Lois virtually twisted his arm off in an attempt to gain his support. But it was clear Dylan was just biding time, idle chatting in an attempt to escape the succession of partygoers who had one reason or another to hit on him.
    But, there was a film to be made, so Dylan got up from the bed and warily made his way downstairs. Ginsberg immediately suggested a shot. He’d go out across the street and hang out in front of the Orange Julius stand on Eighth Street so the camera could pan slowly over the lush apartment, over to the window, then zoom in on Allen, standing there like some aging hawk, doing the street scene. “Sure, Allen,” Dylan answered with a preoccupied glaze across his eyes. “We can try that.”
    But then Bob was distracted by this curvaceous platinum blonde, an uptown-looking ingénue decked out in satin pants and a clinging silk shirt, one or two buttons open and exposing the top of a magnificent chest. She was coming on to him and Dylan cued the camera crew and they rushed over as he began to engage her in a long dialogue about marriage, centering on a concept he tells her he’s been toying with, mental marriage. But after a few minutes, he seemed restless and Phil Ochs buttonholed him and began an inebriated rap about a Charles Bronson detective movie he’d just seen, describing detail after detail. Again, Dylan cued the camera crew and turned to Eric Frandsen who’d been sitting on the bed, strumming an acoustic guitar. “Play some slow slide stuff,” Bobwhispered, and suddenly the encounter was turned into another possible scene for the movie.
    The party dragged on and Dylan seemed bored, having exhausted all the possibilities for good footage. He couldn’t move without getting hit on, by friends, strangers, and even a reporter from
People
magazine, who was relentlessly stalking his prey, the subject of
People’
s next cover.
    Just then the
People
magazine reporter sidled up, attempting to catch Dylan’s ear. He mumbled a few phrases, and Dylan listened politely, but at the first opportunity the singer scooted away. “I’m getting bummed out, man,” he said, “I can’t believe that guy from
People
. He keeps asking me all these questions. I mean, I gave him an hour, isn’t that enough?” Then Eric Anderson pushed his way up past the reporter to present Dylan with a sketch of the songwriter that Eric had just done at the party. It’s labeled “The Hurricane” and signed at the bottom. Dylan awkwardly grabbed it and turned to me. “Here, take this.” “Don’t you want it?” “Naw, you keep it.” He seemed edgy and was looking for a way out, so I spirited him away from the crowd over to the door, grabbed the elevator, pushed him in, and closed the iron cage doors. A great party exit.
    Later on, I bumped into Blue near the kitchen and he began to reminisce about Dylan, trying to make sense out of the impending tour. “He’s just an ordinary fucking guy,” Blue growled. “Great songwriter. He got swept up in the fame thing and he knew how to control it, he rode with it. He’s real shrewd. He’s paying everyone back now, you know, it’s like a family thing.” And Blue was right, just a quick glance around the room could confirm that. Besides Blue, there was Neuwirth, Dylan’s old road