ON THE ROAD WITH BOB DYLAN
By Larry "Ratso" Sloman
Helter Skelter, £12.99; 480pp
ISBN 1 90092 451 X
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IN LATE 1975, after the release of his successful comeback album Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan embarked on the most ambitious tour of his career.

The Rolling Thunder Revue featured a ramshackle cast of musicians, including Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie and Joni Mitchell, as well as the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. There was little advance publicity. The caravan would simply roll into town, play a gig and move on, all along the East Coast of America.

It was like the old days in Greenwich Village. The Revue even had a cause; a black boxer who had been convicted of murder in 1967, and had written a book declaring his innocence. Dylan announced his intention of freeing Carter within 90 days. Rolling Stone magazine employed Larry Sloman to follow the tour and report back.

Before departure Dylan was as open as he had been before fame threw up a shield of paranoia. Once they boarded the buses, however, it was the usual story. Lou Kemp, an old camp buddy of Dylan’s, was the tour manager and he felt that it was his job to keep Sloman away from his charge.

After filing two florid articles Sloman was sacked by Rolling Stone, but disaster turned into triumph as the musicians adopted him as their “spiritual mascot”. It was Baez who nicknamed him “Ratso”, and he drifted in and out of Dylan’s inner circle — “part fan, part scribe, part pharmacist, part jester” — all the way back to New York. In between, he hung out with Dylan’s mother, went shopping with the singer’s wife, and spoke to everybody with whom Dylan had ever worked or met.

As for the Revue itself, there are two schools of thought. Either it is a late flowering of the spirit of the Sixties, with Baez singing The Times They Are a-Changing while Ginsberg taps his finger cymbals; or it is yesterday’s stars reliving the past. By 1975 folk music was passé. The King of Cool, Lou Reed, makes a cameo appearance, but he wanders off in disgust as a group of folkies prise the lock off a hotel drinks cabinet.

Twenty-four years after the first publication of Sloman’s account of the tour (which now appears with an introduction by Kinky Friedman) Dylan is as enigmatic as ever. Sloman was lucky — and cunning — enough to cosy up to the stars and in doing so to get as close to Dylan as anyone in print ever has been.

James Eve

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