attitude of incredible naivety when dealing with the practicalities of life, like he had just stepped into the twentieth century was much in evidence during the subsequent times I saw him in New York. Once I introduced him to Rivka, an Israeli friend of mine. They hit it off immediately. He said he’d never eaten Israeli food and she invited him to dinner. He was delighted by the invitation and was in the process of noting her address. “Eighty-eighth street,” she told him. He stopped writing, returned the pencil and paper to his pocket and looked at her with a sad apologetic smile.
“I can’t come.”
“Why?” she asked confused, things had been going so well.
“I don’t go above forty-second street.” He paused, then as if in explanation added, “there’s some real weird people up there. Forty-second street, that’s as far as I go.” And that was final.
Another time, inspired by my passion for travel, he said, “Yeah, I’d like to travel.… I’d like to see Israel… what d’ye have to do to get there?”
“Well first you have to get a passport.”
“How d’ye do that?”
I couldn’t tell if he really didn’t know, but went along for the ride. “You go to the passport office, fill out a form, take some photos, pay some money and apply for a passport.”
He looked disheartened. “Y’got to do all that?”
“It’s not that much.”
“I ain’t going nowhere if I gotta do all that.”
Israel was dropped.
Bob Dylan played at The Finjan and shared Ronit’s room. He was the only performer we ever had who people walked out on. (Later, young musicians like Toronto’s Murray McLaughlan, who was to became famous himself, vied to sleep in the bed he had slept in.) His rough, gravelly voice with its nasal twang didn’t appeal to Finjan audiences and, not knowing what to make of him, they walked out. One night, discouraged by the lack of appreciation, he said to Shimon, “this is the last time I play clubs, from now on I only do concerts. I’m going to play Carnegie Hall. I’m going to make it big.” Shimon laughed at the absurdity of the idea.
“Yeah, you and who else?” he teased. Shimon wasn’t particularly impressed by Bob Dylan’s non-melodic songs, and by his tuneless, often off-key voice. But I was mesmerised by his songs, by his performance style, by the combination of his dishevelled appearance and the careless informality of his music, juxtaposed with the precision of his poetry, the startling bite of his layered imagery, by his raw vital energy. For me the growling monotone voice people objected to was a third instrument interwoven with his guitar and harmonica, producing a tortured sound, counterpointing, complementing, adding a new dimension to his powerful lyrics. I thought he was unique, great. I loved his imagination, his original way of seeing things, his off-beat humour, and I loved what he was singing about, his challenge to authority, to “the masters of war,” his celebration of the young, the powerless, the outcasts.
After one discouraging Finjan performance, when he was hurt by the audience’s insensitive behaviour and, pretending it didn’t matter, he confessed to me that he was feeling down, achy, depleted. “I’m all twisted up” he said, “I need to untwist real bad.” I offered him a massage. He abandoned himself to that massage with the intensity he devoted to his song writing. As my thumbs circled and coaxed the small knots and ridges imbedded in his flesh and my palms pressed and kneaded his pale buttery skin, my fingers reaching into his pain, I could feel his body sigh as it surrendered to my hands. He wouldn’t allow the massage to stop; he needed it, he said, to level his head. He kept me at it all night long. When I protested and wanted to stop, he sang me snatches of songs he kept in his head, and told me sad, funny, mad stories. Soon the bed became a tiny island adrift in a surreal stream of consciousness, brilliant flashes suddenly illuminating the dark.
I was enthralled by his stunning connections, the electric leaps from sense to nonsense, the unpredictable twists and spirals of his imagination, as he related the unrelatable. His mind became a collage of images overlapping into new meanings as he laid down layer upon layer of madness and sanity which entwined and interlaced, forming some kind of subliminal sense, moving in and out of my comprehension. It was astonishing — strange, wonderful, exceptional. Soon he didn’t have to urge me to continue massaging, because just as he couldn’t stop talking it was more than just talking — ideas seemed to be pouring out of him — I couldn’t stop massaging — it was more than just massaging, energy seemed to be flowing from my hands, shaping, creating, releasing the wild images trapped inside him. I had the sense that if he didn’t expel those images battling in his head they would explode into madness and that my hands were somehow maintaining sanity. I was compelled to continue. It was an extraordinary duet. I massaged him until morning came and he was asleep.
That massage cemented our friendship. (Later he confided that if he ever got rich the first thing he would get was a full—time massage person. I should have applied for the job.) I saw him whenever I went to New York and our times together were a treat. He had an unexpected side to him, which I adored. He liked being the jester, leaping into impromptu capsules of off-beat acting out, tiny improvised performances where he plunged in and out of other realities. He often shared these morsels of fantasy theatre with Rambling Jack Elliott, a musician friend who greatly influenced his music, his style and his behaviour. They were very funny together, breaking into incongruous scenarios of whatever took their fancy.
One summer night when I was in New York, the three of us were tripping through the streets feeling great. Bob and Jack looked like a pair of adopted cowboys, in cowboy hats, boots, worn jeans, guitars and dark glasses. (It was unseemly for cowboys to wear glasses but dark glasses, “shades” were acceptable.) I was the invisible cowgirl. They were at their playful, fun-loving best, laughing, joking, bouncing off each other. Suddenly we came to a wide square with an illuminated fountain in its centre rising and falling in bursts of colour. The setting was irresistible. They climbed the fountain wall, pulling me after them.
We sat on the wall, our legs dangling over the side, the fountain at our backs, looking down on the passers—by, like kings of the castle. Bob raised his guitar to toast the occasion and began strumming and picking, Country style. Jack joined him. A crowd gathered beneath us. Bob looked down into the raised faces and burst into Shakespeare. “I’m Ham-let,” he drawled, cowboy style, with more twangs and licks, “and this here’s Or-feel-ye-ah”. He pointed his guitar toward Jack who nodded and tipped his hat to accompanying strums and riffs. “Far out,” someone yelled. And they launched into a personalised rendition of Hamlet, narrated by two laid-back cowboys sitting around a camp fire and accompanied by Country and Western guitar picking. It was hilarious. A gem. We found the wall strewn with coins.
I was with Bob Dylan, walking down a Greenwich Village street, the first time he was followed by two teeny-boppers. He couldn’t be convinced they were following him and kept stopping abruptly to see if they too would stop. When they did, shyly and at a safe distance, he was ecstatic. “I’m being followed,” he whooped with joy, “can you believe it, I’m being followed!”
The incident inspired a confession. “I once followed Woody Guthrie … right here in the Village,” I said, aware I was unleashing a boomerang.
“Y’mean you followed Woody Guthrie?” He was as stunned as if I had just revealed that I was the Virgin Mary. He idolised Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie was his hero, his guru, the formative influence in his life. He modelled himself on Woody Guthrie, he talked like him, sang like him, wrote talking blues like him and his main reason for coming to New York was in the hope of meeting Woody Guthrie, and with luck, to sing him one of his first songs, “A Song
