The Night I Met Bob Dylan

The night I met Bob Dylan was one of those typically perfect autumn nights in Tucson. The sky was clear and the air was cool at the community center as evening settled into what was left of Tucson’s downtown barrio. Vinny had guaranteed that we would be able to get in to see the show for free. A friend of his was working as a stagehand and was supposed to get us in through the back door.
The anticipation had been building all afternoon as Vinny repeatedly brought the topic up every time he bummed a cigarette from me. Vinny was a typical Tucsonan – an expatriate from back east. In his case the Bronx was the point of origin. Vinny the Mooch, as I sometimes called him, was a semi-permanent fixture at the Café. His morning rounds started early, shortly after opening time. He worked his way around to all the tables, exchanging shuck and jive as he bummed cigarettes from all the different sets of regulars. His one eyebrow was frequently mentioned during the verbal jousts that earned him his smokes. “My mama warned me not to trust a man with one eyebrow,” I heard a young fox say shortly after Vinny sat at the table where she and the other dancers were sipping cappuccinos and smoking cigarettes. In those long gone days the law books were somewhat thinner and freedom less restricted. Big Brother had not yet outlawed smoking in public places.
By the time Vinny finished his rounds and hit me up for the morning’s last cigarette, the lunch crowd had started to arrive and Larry and I girded ourselves for the full tilt boogie that kept us hopping for two or three hours. A small “hole in the wall” the Café Olé was popular with the downtown office workers and lawyers who were fascinated by the bohemian flavor that wafted like ethereal smoke around the staff and the regular clientele. With the be-bop providing the soundtrack, the boss and I swung through the orders, slapping the mustard or mayo on the bread to the crash of cymbals on the downbeat.
“Corned beef on rye with what kind of cheese? No toms! No toms! No toms!” I half sung to myself trying to remember the special request…
“Dig the drums! Danny Richmond was a madman!” The boss enthused as he hit the stainless steel lid with his fork on the same downbeat that found me slapping mayo on the next sandwich,
“Turkey on wow with provolone, mayo on meat, mustard on cheese. Some people are really specific about how they want their sandwiches put together, huh, boss?”
“Dig!” was all he said.
That one word said all he needed to say.
A jazz maniac, the boss loved to blast jazz in the kitchen at all times. It was the jazz that drove the choreography that was our lunch time boogie. Bud Powell, Bird, Monk, Ella, and Mingus; all the greats! But, most of all, there was Coltrane. Trane! Transcendence as a saxual experience! With McCoy Tyner’s piano twinkling and riffing around the surging of Trane’s alto sax, the notes fluttered and soared up in the high end of the spectrum then suddenly swooped down in vertigo inducing drops that often left me breathless. Elvin Jones pounding out the beat, incessantly pounding out the beat that held the whole thing together.
Then, like clockwork, Vinny returned half an hour before closing time to pick up any mistakes that we might have made during the lunch rush. The wrong kind of cheese on the pastrami on rye, or maybe I blew it with the dressing on a salad…
“That was supposed to be ranch dressing, not bleu cheese!”
The boss, had a heart of gold and saved those mistakes to feed the entourage of starving painters, musicians and ne’er-do-wells that drifted into the Café at closing time. Though the admission was never officially collected, many people brought joints to share after the squares had left and the “closed” sign had been hung on the door. Despite (perhaps because of) the fact that Nixon had declared war on drugs back in ’72 - when he needed a distraction from the unfolding Watergate mess - reefer was plentiful and cheap. The trend toward decriminalization was still strong.
At the Café Olé herb was a sacrament that we shared after we broke our daily bread with those who depended on our mistakes to supplement their caloric intake. Conversation was the main medium with which we drew out our personal cosmologies. Ideas bouncing back and forth like the riffs in the ever-present bebop blasting from the kitchen.
Crack was still nothing more than what dawn did every morning and, since Somoza was still in power in Nicaragua, the Republicans and the CIA had not yet found a reason for facilitating the importation of coke to help arm our mercenaries in Central America. LSD, courtesy of the CIA, was still plentiful among Dead Heads and other freaks, as we were about to enter the last decade of the cold war. Though we didn’t know it yet, we were preparing to start the last psychic roller coaster ride under Mutual Assured Destruction.
Mutual Assured Destruction! Those three words described the defense doctrine that guided the nation during the waning decades of the cold war. The meaning seems fairly self-evident; if a nuclear exchange were to start we would launch all our nuclear warheads at the Soviets and blow them to smithereens. The time lag between launch and strike provided an opportunity to respond with an all out attack. Tens of thousands of lethal missiles were aimed at every major (and some not so major) city in the Soviet Union. The Soviets knew that we would carry through on our promise to blast them back to the Stone Age. And we knew that they could do the same to us. Between them and us, we could destroy the planet, not just once or twice but four score and seven times, or more.
So, in the midst of all this MADness Dylan turned to Jesus and released an album full of songs about his conversion. I was slow to buy the record – I had not yet converted to audiocassettes at that time – but I had heard a number of the songs. I had made it a point to keep an open mind when I first listened to the songs; even though a number of the reports that I had heard were derisive of the mere idea of religiosity.
The concert was part of the tour that heralded the release of Dylan’s Slow Train Coming album. Many debates around the closing time round tables had pondered the meaning of Bobby Zimmerman’s turn to Jesus. Even though “Jews for Jesus” was not a foreign concept, Dylan was hipdom personified and fundamental Christianity was not hip. On that there was general agreement.
The boss once put it this way: “Those people actually believe that there are demons from hell walking on the streets of Tucson as we speak!” Larry’s delivery and the reefer we were smoking induced a round of laughter before I was able to put in the distinction that was becoming increasingly clear to me. There is less difference between night and day than there is between religiosity and spirituality.
If patriotism is a scoundrel’s last refuge, religion is the first. Though the concept seems like an oxymoron, “Holy Wars” have been waged since before the dawn of history. More blood has been shed for the sake of religion than love has been made in the name of god. People who stand to profit from the chaos, instability and fear that religious hatred foments have coopted the yearning to taste the divine. The love of money has replaced that yearning. How can it be that the teachings of the man who warned us about the camel and the eye of a needle have been corrupted to the point that televangelists have successfully taught their followers to count their blessings in dollars and cents?
I tried to understand Dylan’s conversion as a metaphor that reflected the spiritual evolution of humanity’s collective consciousness. “He’s searching for truth,” I said. “Anybody who is honestly seeking enlightenment has to go through all the different pit stops, dead ends and mind boggling mazes that the spiritual quest takes you through. Pantheism, spiritualism, monotheism, capitalism, all the world’s great religions have attempted to put a middleman between humans and the divine. ” “He’ll grow through it,” I assured my tablemates at the Café Olé, adding that Dylan’s songs have always been replete with religious symbolism. “God said to Abraham Kill me a son…” I quoted from the Highway 61 album. “I just hope that he gets into the real teachings of Jesus without getting distracted by all the moralistic fundamentalism that bogs down most religious thinking.” But I had much to do before my workday was over. So I gave Vinny one last cigarette and told him to meet me at the bar a couple of hours before the show then I went in the kitchen and finished my cleanup chores to the sounds of Coltrane riffing on My Favorite Things.
Happy hour found Vinny and me at the Cushing Street Bar for spirits and libations, then we smoked one of the joints that I’d brought along as we ambled toward the back door of the concert hall. Three cups of rosé wine with the Cushing St. regulars, topped off with some fine red bud helped to turn the vast expanse of parking lots between the bar and the theater into a living canvas of shadows and light. Palm trees danced with their shadows on the blacktop parking lot, silhouetted by the sky’s brilliant reds and pensive purples. The rhythms of the city provided the soundtrack as sirens screamed above the bass line that the traffic laid down.
Many years ago Mexican families sat on their porches on streets that used to crisscross the ground we walked on. Sonoran señoritas walked those streets before they became part of the USA. The people of the pueblo made the music in those days. But then the Gadsden deal made those our streets and eventually urban renewal bulldozed them to make room for our post-modern arenas. Instead of local musicians sending their music freely into the night, the night’s music was boxed into a building for a price too dear for most of the pueblo’s people.
A huge black man, arms folded across his chest, stood in the doorway at the rear of the theater, blocking most of the artificial light that rushed out to fill the void of the deepening twilight. I stood behind Vinny and let him do the talking since it was his alleged friend who was supposed to let us in; besides, the brother didn’t look too friendly. “Nobody here by that name,” was all he said after Vinny asked for his friend by name and description. “Since he’s not here,” I interjected in one last futile try, “why don’t you be a good guy and let us in? We’ll be unobtrusive.” The brother was like one of those palace guards in London; he didn’t move a muscle.
Since we didn’t have a contingency plan we had to think fast because we had a good buzz going and did not want to be denied. Circumambulating the concert hall Vinny’s face was twitching thoughtfully as he scanned the bank of glass doors on our left. A sudden sound turned both of our heads. Someone was leaving the theater. We didn’t know or care why. We both broke for the open door, driven by one thought; “gotta get in!” That door put us in the middle of the corridor that flanked the north side of the auditorium. Quick scans in either direction showed two ushers in red jackets patrolling the perimeter. Both were walking toward opposite ends of the corridor, with their backs to us. So we dashed across to the interior doors that led into the auditorium and were shocked to see that there were red jacketed ushers, armed with flashlights, in there too. A couple of them turned to look at us as we opened the door and stepped inside.
Standing there, looking for empty seats I saw another red jacket come in from the corridor and start to point at us. “We’ve been made,” Vinny muttered just before he ducked into a Groucho strut and scooted into the nearest row of seats. I saw no point in continuing what could turn into a Keystone Cops kind of farce so I just stood there and waited for the red coats to come get me.
Maybe the benevolence in the air was contagious. Maybe the ushers wanted to avoid the extra work that incident reports entailed. Maybe they just didn’t give a shit. Whatever the case, the result was that they merely escorted us outside and told us never to be seen trying to sneak in again.
After these failed attempts to get into the show we saw a small crowd gathered around a man at the foot of a tall palm tree up ahead. The lamppost beyond the small group silhouetted the gathering in the cooling desert twilight. As we drew nearer I noticed that the profile of the man around whom the handful had gathered was the famous profile from the poster that came with Dylan’s first greatest hits album, without the colors.
As I recognized the icon that I greatly admire, I impulsively rushed toward Bob as my mouth slipped into automatic pilot and I heard myself saying:
“Bob, Bob you gotta help us! We’re trying to get in the show but the Nazis in the red jackets won’t let us in.” He turned around and smiled and asked me what I was talking about. I explained that we couldn’t afford to buy tickets for the show and Vinny’s friend had failed us. I offered him a joint of some high quality herb that I pulled out of my shirt pocket…”If you still do that,” I added when I remembered his recent conversion. He assured me that he didn’t and, with a laugh told me that he would leave a ticket at the box office for me and asked me my name.
“Eddie,” I said offering my hand.
“How ‘bout me?” Vinny asked as Bobby shook my hand.
“OK,” he smiled, “Two tickets at the box office for Eddie.”
Just then a redheaded stranger rushed up and said that he wanted a ticket too. “OK, OK,” Bobby laughed benevolently, “that’ll be four tickets for Eddie. Just give me a few minutes to call the box office after I go in before you go claim them.”
After we all thanked him profusely we had a short conversation during which he said that he was spending a lot of time on a farm when he wasn’t on tour. But then he had to go get ready for the show. It is impossible to describe the excitement of that moment.
One with no money got four for the show!
Wearing a huge smile, the red headed stranger introduced himself, saying, “Eddie, I’m Dave.” Vinny responded by introducing himself to Dave. And then there were three of us.
“Let’s go smoke this joint to celebrate.” I said starting to move toward the eastern edge of the Community Center. “I’m with you.” They both chimed in, falling in beside me.
I stopped at the edge of the parking area and sat on a concrete bench to light up the fat joint that I had made extra hefty for the evening’s festivities. Dave sat on my right and Vinny squatted in front of me as we ceremoniously passed the herb in communion with the creator of the universe. Marveling in the aura of the recent events we soon found that conversation did not do the moment justice. Soon we were singing a tune from the Grateful Dead’s then recently released Shakedown Street album. “I need a miracle everyday, I need a miracle everyday!” Mostly we just sang the chorus but as I was singing some of the lyrics that I remembered…
‘…It takes dynamite to get me off
Too much of everything is just enough…’
Vinny froze as he was handing me the joint. His eyes were fixed on a spot above my head. I turned to see what had freaked him out. The man! A TPD officer was standing directly behind me, arms folded across his chest in a way that was supposed to show authority and power.
“Oh, hi officer,” I smiled up at him, innocently, as I held the roach out for him. “Do you believe in miracles?” I inquired.
I have no idea what thoughts went through his mind. He just stood there for a few seconds, smiled and said, “Get out of here.” I ate the roach as we hurried for the box office.
The lines at the box office were still long as we boisterously joined the people who were milling about in anxious expectation. Dylan hadn’t been in Tucson since the Street Legal tour. Even though many saw his turn to Jesus as totally unhip it was still Dylan – the master - who had come to town to play his music for us. Opinions bounced around like beach balls over the queues. I was struck by the vehemence with which some people criticized the conversion. Others expressed nothing but love for Dylan and humanity in general.
Eventually I found myself in front of the ticket agent and took delight in saying, “I was just talking to Bobby and he said he would leave some tickets here for me.” I noticed heads around me turning in my direction as the pretty lady behind the counter asked me my name while she grabbed the clipboard with the “comp” list. Turning to smile at Vinny, I noticed the quizzical looks on some of the faces around us.
“Yes, here it is. Four tickets for Eddie,” said the lady after a few seconds, “here you go. Enjoy the show!”
And that we did. But first there was an extra ticket to deal with. Looking around, I turned away from the lines where people were waiting to buy tickets and called out, “I’ve got an extra ticket here! Anybody want a ticket?”
Not much time passed before a small, wiry man stepped up to me and claimed the ticket. His face looked familiar as he stood there in the lamplight and introduced himself. He mentioned that he saw me regularly at the Café Olé. Then he told me that he had witnessed my meeting with Dylan, earlier in the evening, ending with “You must be living right.”
“Yeah, I guess.”