Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography - Part II

They all were, in fact, almost thrown in jail. Karman was behind the wheel as they drove through the mountains in western Colorado and, as they were climbing one very steep hill along a narrow two-lane road, they were caught behind a funeral procession.

"Pass the goddamn thing," Victor shouted, from the seat directly behind the driver.

"That's illegal," Karman said. "You're not supposed to pass a funeral."

They argued a bit, Victor growing more insistent, Pete standing his ground. Suddenly, Victor threw a leg between Pete's shoulder and the door, shoved Pete to the passenger side, and jumped behind the wheel. He gunned the accelerator and the car shot out of lane, on a blind curve, swinging around the last car in the procession, past one big limousine after another.

The station wagon finally pulled abreast of the hearse. "Okay, we made it..." Victor started to say and Dylan shouted: "Cops!" At the front of the procession a state police cruiser paced the way, its dome light gently revolving, and before Victor could slip back behind the hearse the trooper spotted him and waved him to pull over. The funeral procession ground to a halt.

"The stash!" Dylan shouted. "Hide the dope!" Karman grabbed the marijuana jar from the dash board, bobbled it like a nervous first-year quarterback, and passed it back. Dylan shoved it under a rear seat.

The cop walked over to the driver's side and if they were all high a moment ago, they were now as sober as they'd ever be. "The registration," the trooper said, in a soft Western drawl. Dylan pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over. Ashes & Sand was listed as the owner. The cop glared at the four freaky-looking guys in a brand new car and not one of them could safely be identified as Ashes & Sand.

"What are you people doing?" the cop asked.

"We're a group," Dylan said, holding up his guitar. "Like the Kingston Trio, but there's four of us. We sing." He couldn't say he was Bob Dylan because the cop probably had never heard of Bob Dylan, but a group like the Kingston Trio might work. Dylan strummed a few chords and sang. Clayton joined him. The other two remained silent, for fear of giving it away. And the cop finally said; "OK, get on out of here. And be careful." Victor drove off, slowly. Dylan leaned his head back. "Stop at the next gas station, Victor boy. I got something to do."

They stayed over in Reno for a couple of days, gambling. Karman losing all his money, and then they pushed on towards San Francisco. Dylan had a concert in the Berkeley Community Theater and it had been sold out for weeks in advance. The undergraduates at the university and kids from as far north as Oregon and as far south as San Diego had joined the pilgrimage.

"By this time I was disillusioned, my mind was being blown," Karman recalls. "Dylan was a very strange character. His notion of reality was like nothing else I'd ever experienced. I sort of was gettin' the idea I was crazy. I was beginning to feel crazy when they were crazy, Victor a freaky nut and Dylan very weird and Clayton always high on pills, and I just had to break away from them."

Karman had friends in San Francisco and he went to see them the night before the concert. They reinforced his feeling that some kind of insanity had struck the wandering minstrel and his entourage. But Karman was completely out of money, having dropped his last cent at the gambling tables, and he decided to stick it out to the end. A few hours before the concert he asked Victor for a pair of tickets, for his friends. "What are you talking about?" Victor demanded. "We got no tickets to spare for friends."

"For Christ sakes, they're my friends," Karman said. "Of course you've got tickets. There's always plenty of tickets for the performer to pass around to friends."

"Sure," Victor said. "But his friends. Not your friends."

Dylan came in at that point and listened to the argument for a moment. Then he broke in: "What do ya want out of me, Peter?"

"I don't want anything out of you," Karman said. "I just asked for a couple of tickets for friends and I'm getting hassled."

"You want tickets, right?" Dylan asked. "Then ya want something out of me."

"I've never asked you for any..."

"I brought ya to a party for Peter, Paul and Mary." Dylan shot back. Karman remembered it, of course. A birthday party for Peter Yarrow, a couple of months earlier, and Karman had been in a down mood and had stayed out of everyone's way and Dylan was bringing it up now for the first time: "I take ya to a party and ya act cool and ya sulk all night, in front of my friends. Ya ignored all my friends."

"What are you talking about?" Karman asked. "If it bothered you back then, why didn't you say so? Funny time to be bringing it up."

"Ya ignored my friends," Dylan insisted. "And now ya want tickets for your friends. Very strange. You trying to use me, Peter?"

Karman's brain fell like it was being wrenched around inside his skull. "I'm beginning to think I'm crazy," he shouted, "when it's really you guys who are crazy. You're all out of your minds. I'm going back to New York before I get as crazy as you guys are."