1974

Trouble in Mind

Lawrence Morrissey, 45, has been a Dylan fan since the release of Another Side in 1964. “It was the first album I ever purchased, and it’s one of my favorites to this day. I like to write songs while riding my bicycle and play guitar.”

It was at the 1974 Friends of Chile concert at New York City’s Felt Forum when I first encountered Bob Dylan. Because we’re both Dylan freaks, my girlfriend and I decided to try to catch a glimpse of him outside the stage door after the show.

While standing near the door, we noticed a commotion about a block down the street. Curiosity got the best of us, and we headed toward the source, only to find Dylan himself slouched against a concrete flowerpot and muttering to himself. After a few moments, his friends arrived, happy to have found him.

Apparently, he’d wandered away from the group, which included Dennis Hopper, Phil Ochs, and Daniel Ellsberg. Everyone was just kind of hanging around the flowerpot when someone realized that Dylan had left his guitar unattended back in the dressing room and tore off to fetch it. Bob kept saying, over and over, “My guitar. My guitar. What would I do without my guitar?” This brought laughter from his friends.

Just then Dylan dropped a vest he’d been clutching underneath his brown-leather bomber jacket. As he bent down to retrieve it, some jerk ran by and stole the cap off his head. Dylan stood straight up, grabbed his head, and began screaming, “My hat. He took my hat.”

Realizing what had happened, I dashed off after the thief. During my pursuit, I noticed Dennis Hopper running behind me. I cornered the kid in a doorway and coerced him into returning the hat. As the kid ran off into the night, Hopper approached and said, “Hey, that was pretty cool what you just did. Why don’t you come to the after-show party?”

He gave me the address of a building on Central Park West, and I agreed to join them. Then I returned to get my girlfriend and see what else was happening at the flowerpot. Dylan and Ochs had just commandeered a taxicab to take them to the party, and things got a little crazy at this point as everyone but us piled into the cab.

Somehow, they managed to get all their guitars and girlfriends inside and close the doors, but the cab just sat there. After a few seconds, the doors swung open and the cabdriver threw them all out, complaining that he couldn’t see out the back window. Dylan got violently angry and began punching the driver’s side window with all his might, screaming, “You mother———,” over and over. He was literally beating up the fellow’s cab and cursing like a streetperson, and I know what that is when I hear it.

My girl and I decided to drive uptown to the party to see what would happen next. As we entered the vestibule of a very swanky apartment complex, we were greeted by a doorman. After determining our destination, he asked if we would mind waiting until the next couple came out, due to overcrowding. We didn’t mind at all, and after 15 minutes or so, we were admitted to the apartment and led into a room with walls lined with silver foil. Surrounded by people, Dylan and his wife, Sara, stood in the center, drinking and talking.

Soon after we walked in, Sara came up to me and asked for a cigarette, the first of 10 she’d bum off me that night. In fact, she bummed so many that Bob began to look a bit embarrassed by it. He also seemed embarrassed that Sara kept jumping in front of him while he was in the midst of conversation with someone, saying things like, “Look, Bob. There’s Phil Ochs over there. He told me that he wants to talk with you.” She did it so often that Dylan began to ignore her completely and continued chatting with his friends. As the evening wore on, he appeared more relaxed and charming, and it was hard to believe that only a few hours earlier he’d beat up on a taxicab, cursed the driver, and created a scene for the whole world to see.

While wandering around, we strolled into what we later learned was the “older people’s” room. It featured an open bar and many distinguished looking men in tuxedos. Looking and feeling a bit out of place, we were directed to the “young people’s” room, where I soon found myself standing at the bar next to Dennis Hopper. We poured each other many drinks that magical night in New York City.
Later, as I wandered out of the bar area in search of my girlfriend, I spotted Dylan shouting at a young girl in one of the side rooms. He was waving his finger in her face saying, “I can tell what you want...money. That’s what you want. It’s money, right? I can see right through you.”

The girl, obviously very embarrassed, just smiled and sat down. Hours later, we were told by the organizer of the party that the girl had been ejected from the apartment for allegedly trying to walk out with someone’s purse. Apparently, Dylan somehow intuitively knew just what her game was.

As the party was breaking up, I overheard a fellow tell Bob that the car was coming around to pick him up. My girl and I ran out to our own car with the intention of intercepting the limo. We followed it to a townhouse on 64th Street, but when we tried to enter the brownstone along with the Dylan entourage, the owner stopped us at the door, saying, “You weren’t with us in the limo.”

I said, “That’s right, but we just want to hang out for a little while.”

He replied, “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in here. This is my house, so go away.”

Ah well, one can always try, right? His refusal to let us join the gathering didn’t dampen our evening one bit. We walked back to our car in a great mood. Our collective dream had more than come true: We’d hung out with Bob Dylan.

Driving through Queens on our way home at 8:00 A.M., everything had changed for us. We’d just left a world in Manhattan that dwarfed our own neighborhood’s vitality...the world of Bob Dylan. It was then I realized I’d forgotten to return the vest I’d picked up off the sidewalk.

Incredibly, a couple of months later I encountered him again, this time at a Little Feat show at the Bottom Line. After we were seated awhile, my girlfriend said, “Hey, I think that’s Bob Dylan over there.” I took a better look and discovered that, indeed, it was him. So I asked our waitress to deliver a note that read, “Bob, I’ve got your vest. Remember the vest?”

We watched him read the note, frown, and shove it in his jeans pocket. Later, as he got up to head to the men’s room, I followed him. It was a weird feeling, standing next to Bob Dylan at the urinal. So weird, in fact, that I just couldn’t speak to him like I wanted to, so I said nothing. I walked out before him and ran into Allan Pepper, the owner of the Bottom Line, standing guard outside the restroom to protect Bob’s privacy. Somehow, I’d managed to slip in below the radar, so to speak.

As we were heading home, I decided to drive down the street where I thought Dylan lived. I’d studied some of the Weberman photos and thought I could figure out the location. As we were driving down MacDougal Street, Dylan suddenly materialized in front of our car. I swear, I almost hit him. I could just visualize the headlines: “Near Miss of Premier Musical Poet.”

Gathering our wits, we pulled up next to him, where he was just standing (rather intoxicated, it seemed) in the middle of the street. Through her open window, my girlfriend said, “Hiya, Bob, we’re really big fans. Nice to see you.” He mumbled something incomprehensible in response.

Slowly, I started to drive away, still shaken by our near-miss minutes earlier. I looked in the rear-view mirror, and he was still just standing there in the middle of the road. Hell, he was going to get hurt. We backed up, and I rolled down my window and asked if he needed a ride.

Chuckling, he replied, “You know, I sure could use a ride right now.”

I told him to hop in, and he jammed himself and his guitar into the back seat, which was packed with my own guitars since we’d just that evening returned to the city from a two-week vacation. The entire scene seemed surreal. On the dashboard of my car were stacks of Dylan albums and my harmonica holder. In the back seat was Bob Dylan himself, squashed in amongst our dirty laundry bags.

My girlfriend immediately tried to sell me as a session musician, bragging about what a good guitar player and songwriter I was. Needless to say, I was mortified. I quickly turned around to shake his hand and tell him we’d seen him at the Bottom Line earlier that evening.

He seemed surprised and said, “Oh, you guys were there? What did you think of the show?”

I responded positively and told him that I thought Little Feat were great. “Yes, they certainly seem to know what they’re doing,” he agreed.

We drove a few more blocks, and he asked to be let out on Barrow Street, just past Seventh Avenue South. As he walked off into the night, he turned around and gave us a nice little wave, as if to say thanks for the ride.