Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography - Part II

The concert was one of those memorable events that is still talked about in the San Francisco area. Dylan was never so attuned to an audience, his kind of audience, the hippest, most radical and aware college students in the country, and he held them the way few entertainers ever hold an audience, few Holy Roller gospel preachers either, for that matter. And when he came back after intermission and introduced Joan Baez — a stunning surprise — it electrified the audience. Dick Farina, who had been divorced by Carolyn Hester and had since married Joan's sister, Mimi, wrote: "Had a literary audience been confronted by Dylan Thomas and Edna St. Vincent Millay the mood of aesthetic anxiety might have been the same."

When the concert was ended, Dylan, Clayton, Maimudes, and a new member of the group, Bob Neuwirth — a folk singer who replaced Karman — drove down to Baez's home in Carmel. Farina, who was there with Mimi later recalled that Dylan brought French fried almonds, glazed walnuts, bleached cashews, dried figs, oranges and prunes. Joan's mother, visiting from Paris, cooked a beef stew. They all sat around later talking about old friends back East, in Harvard Square and the Village, a gathering that wasn't much out of the ordinary, except that it was the King and Queen — and by now that's what the fan magazines were calling them. They played some old Everly Brothers records. Clayton sang some of the whaling and sea songs in which he specialized and a few Appalachian folk songs, and only once did anyone mention Dylan's music. "You know, Bobby," Joan said, "I'm thinking about recording a whole album of your songs." Dylan replied: "Sure thing." That's all.

Suze was very upset by the time Bob returned to New York after his six-week absence. Toward the end of his trip he hadn't bothered calling her at all. He had tried to keep her from seeing people and holding down a job, as has been pointed out, and yet he was gone for more than a month and had stopped calling her. When he returned it was as if he had slipped downstairs for a pack of cigarettes. And he seemed a lot meaner now.

Jack Elliott: "When he got famous around then, he got kinda mean. He was very quick, very sarcastic, dealt with people like a boxer, parrying blows and remarks and skipping out in a hurry. Which was good. Dylan's way was the only way not to hurt yourself. These people just hang on and bore you to smithereens. It's an energy drum. You have to shut the door on fans and groupies, even if it means running little numbers on them."

But Dylan began to run some of his numbers on friends, using them as targets. Carla Rotolo: "As things got worse and worse for him in terms of demands on him, he got tighter and nastier. He'd tell people he's got the truth, he was going to show everybody everything, tell them he had the truth about it all. That's were he started using bayonets on people. He could look at you and pick out a weakness and suddenly grab it and use it on you. Which is what he did with everybody. He'd find their vulnerable spots, and just demolish them. At that time he was vicious to everyone."

Sue Zuckerman: "Once we all went down to little Chinese restaurant near Carla's place on Avenue B. Bob, Pete, Suze and myself and a friend from college. We were talking about politics and history and Bob wouldn't let anyone get a word in edgewise. But what he was doing was just fabricating what he called facts. It was about history, and forces of history, and he was trying to talk about the things he felt emotionally but he insisted they were facts. He couldn't back anything up, but he insisted they were facts and everybody should know them. He wasn't letting anybody else speak, his whole attitude was that nobody else had anything to say on anything, and after a while Suze got up and left the restaurant kind of upset. His attitude wasn't pretty. He used to say, 'Dave Van Ronk always kids me that I never read any books but I know more than...' and that kind of thing."

Carla: "I used to stay in the Limelight till four in the morning because I didn't want to go home. I'd come in and see them sitting in the room with the TV set, or a lot of people around, and there was no privacy, absolutely none. I felt I was some kind of freak. I began to think I was crazy because he had a way of telling you, 'You're full of shit, you're this and that.' And even my head was blown. I thought I was flipping out. Once I said to him. 'Hey, man, again, let me take your place on Fourth Street and we can swap apartments and everybody'll be happy,' and he started coming on like the song he wrote about it all, 'Ballad in Plain D,' about my being lousy for this reason, and rotten for that reason. And a parasite. How could he call me a parasite when for a long time I was the only one with a job? But it was just devastating, the way he could twist somebody's words back on themselves and make them feel he was right and they were wrong."

Suze's sister and her closest friend may not be the most objective witness available (especially since Dylan used his sharpest hooks on Carla in "Plain D," getting revenge on her as he was to get revenge on so many others in his songs) but their collections of Dylan's "viciousness," are corroborated by practically everyone who had contact with him at the time: Baez, Elliott, Ochs, Van Ronk, Dave Cohen, among them. It was not constant, Bob was frequently warm and funny and almost open with his nearest friends, but on many occasions when his mood swung to a dark, savage side, he ran his numbers on everyone.

For Suze and Bob, it all came to a head in March, during an argument that was more heated than any before. Dylan's version is in "Ballad in Plain D." Suze, he writes, was caught in the middle of an argument he had with Carla, the "parasite" sister. But what actually happened was between Bob and Suze, who broke down completely. Bob left the apartment and Suze once more went to live with her mother in New Jersey. It was the final break between them, although Bob attempted to get Suze to return to marry him for almost another year.

"He took it badly, very badly," one friend recalls. "He used to come around the apartment and pound on the door and shout, 'Let me in,' but Carla wouldn't open the door. Suze came back to live with Carla in a couple of weeks and Dylan kept coming around, but she didn't want to have anything to do with him. In a couple of months, she'd see him occasionally and spend time with him and their friends, but she refused to go back to him. It was too late. It was over. He'd lost her by then, although he couldn't realize that for a long time. He kept asking her to come back, but for Suze it was all over."

[Excerpt From Issue 104 — March 16, 1972]