On the Road with Bob Dylan Read Online Free PDF Page B

’cause it was just madness in there.”
    Mad enough to cut a long, nearly
disco
version of “Hurricane,” Bob’s song about boxer Rubin Carter, complete with backup singers chanting, “Hurricane, Hurricane.” And Tuesday wasn’t much better. Clapton and his entourage had gone but the elements were still too disparate and the session petered out to an early end. Afterward, Stoner, who as bassist had become the de facto bandleader by watching Dylan’s fingers and communicating the changes to the rest of the musicians, met with Dylan and DeVito and they decided to try to record with a smaller group. Since Kokomo was departing, a drummer was needed and franticcalls were put in to Jim Gordon and Kenny Buttrey, two studio musicians who had previously worked with Dylan. No luck. Then Stoner suggested his drummer, Howie Wyeth, and on Wednesday night, it was a skeletal crew that tromped into the studios.
    Emmylou Harris was still around to sing backup, Stoner and Wyeth would function as the rhythm section, Scarlett would play the lead instrument, violin, and Sheena could kick in on whatever percussive instrument she could fathom. Dylan himself alternated between piano and guitar. And it worked. By now Stoner and Scarlett were semifamiliar with the chord changes, Wyeth fit right in, and the atmosphere was no longer like a rock ’n roll circus. Dylan started by warming up with some Little Richard tunes, then Emmylou got loose with some country standards. Then Dylan went straight into a slow version of “Isis” and the magic began.
    Sheena remembered that day: “Wednesday night, that was the album. I thought it was very special, like when those who were really chosen to come will be there to make the candle shine. Dylan had called me that afternoon and he told me that he couldn’t sleep much because the energy was so high, so intense, all this commotion, and magic, and trying to do this art form. Like you get all these vibrations. But it all sifted out. By Wednesday, he felt very comfortable and very relaxed, it was three women, and three men, that was number six, a good number. It was very balanced.”
    For journeyman bassist Stoner the explanation was a bit less mystical: “Right away that version of ‘Isis’ was a take because it was a small group, there was no confusion, and the first time that Bob got through a tune, it was a take, it was right there. That’s the way he likes it and that’s the way the whole album ended up. Right after we finished ‘Isis’ Bob came over to me and said, ‘Your drummer’s great, it sounds great,’ and we all felt great because it was intimate. It had the sound that you can hear on
Desire
, just a bunch of people playing in a room with no overdubs, all live, happening right before your ears, and we could get that first-take spontaneity because wedidn’t have to keep going over and over things to show them to all these musicians who were faking it. Because nobody was faking it, except Scarlett and myself who were good at that sort of thing.
    “So after we listened to that take of ‘Isis,’ we just went back into the studio and started running through tunes, bam, bam, bam, just getting every complete take, every complete tune was a take. If we got through it all the way, it was a record. Just like that. We were so hot we did ‘Rita Mae,’ which wasn’t on the record, ‘One More Cup of Coffee,’ ‘Joey,’ ‘Mozambique,’ ‘Hurricane,’ ‘Oh Sister,’ ‘Black Diamond Bay,’ we did them all that night. We were just going bam, bam, bam. I think we were still doing takes as late as 5 and 6 A.M. that morning, and we hung out listening to the playbacks until we had to go out to the street to move our cars at 8 so they wouldn’t get towed away. Otherwise, we might have stayed there for another twelve hours.”
    The atmosphere was electric that morning, everyone high on the knowledge that the bulk of the album had been completed, after so many false starts. And already