What About Bob?

by Jason MacNeil

DURING THE PANDEMIC, author and Bob Dylan enthusiast, Ray Padgett created a Substack newsletter entitled Flagging Down The Double E’s. The newsletter dealt primarily with Dylan’s touring history while interviewing musicians who toured with him, ranging from his early years at the Newport Folk Festival to the Rolling Thunder Revue up to his latest studio album Rough And Rowdy Ways

“I noticed almost immediately they were the most popular thing I was doing,” Padgett says. “So fairly early on I thought, ‘Once I do enough of these there could be a book in there.’ Then once I started conceiving it as a book I started doing interviews specifically for the book.”

Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members features 48 different interviews (mainly touring musicians) ranging from different eras and treks in Dylan’s illustrious career. Drummer Jim Keltner, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Richard Thompson are just some of the interviewees, while Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ members Benmont Tench and drummer Stan Lynch are two of many others fleshing out this highly entertaining and informative read.

Padgett says the hardest thing was getting people to agree to be interviewed.

“The reason a book like this doesn’t exist is because Bob Dylan obviously is an extremely private person,” he says. “His band members and musical collaborators take the lead from that with a few exceptions. They are rarely interviewed or when they are they don’t say much about their time with Dylan beyond, ‘Oh it was such an honor blah blah blah.’

“It was one of those things where once I had done a few I could send clips to the people I was going after to show. ‘Look it’s smart, it’s about the music, it’s not gossipy, it’s not prying into (his) personal life or anything. I’ve done my research. I know my stuff.’ Those doors then started to be open. I wanted to get a balance with the core band members the main highlights in the book. But then mix it up with people with different views, maybe people who sat in just once but have an interesting story.”

One such story concerns blues guitarist Duke Robillard who performed on Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind album but had a less than ideal experience on the road with the icon.

“Dylan wanted him in the band for years and Duke kept saying no,” Padgett says. “But then 16 years later (2013) he’s there for all of about six weeks. It starts out fine and goes south really fast. He leaves after these fights on the bus and this acrimony and he never talks to the guy again. By the end he is selling all of his Dylan CDs, he’s that pissed off. Dylan is no question a hard guy to work for, a hard guy to play with.”

Another thread throughout the book is Dylan’s unpredictability. It’s something Padgett says is two-fold.

“It’s a double-edged sword because on the one hand someone of Bob Dylan’s stature should be playing bigger venues than he does,” he says. “You would think he would be playing arenas if not stadiums if he was willing to strap on an acoustic guitar and sing, ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ like it was 1962 every night. He’s never been willing to do that. So on the one hand his commercial prospects are maybe not what they could be but creatively he’s doing more interesting stuff than any of his ‘60s era peers and he has in many cases more passionate fans.”

One trend emerging in the book is how often the musicians essentially fall into two categories regarding performing with Dylan. One faction preferred no surprises on stage, sticking to what they knew and had perfected during tour rehearsals. Meanwhile the other side, exemplified by Stan Lynch, reveled in how Dylan tossed out unrehearsed songs or completely rearranged songs without his band’s knowledge.

“Stan Lynch has that great story about Dylan at one show going over to him and saying, ‘So what song do you want to play?’ and Lynch says ‘Lay Lady Lay’ which they never played or rehearsed,” Padgett says. “And sure enough they played dozens and dozens of shows and that’s the only time they ever played it unrehearsed.

“I think most of the musicians who spoke to me found that really invigorating. You can’t zone out. You really need to be on your toes. But it can be pretty exhausting because you can never get comfortable and go through the motions because you never know what he was going to do.”

“On the one hand his commercial prospects are maybe not what they could be, but creatively he’s doing more interesting stuff than any of his ‘60s era peers.”

A similar kind of dichotomy emerged when discussing Dylan offstage. Padgett says some touring musicians in the ‘70s & ‘80s felt they got to know Dylan well. However, as the years progressed, other longtime-touring band members didn’t get the same vibe.

“In the last few decades you’ll have people like (guitarist) Larry Campbell who have performed with him for years, but there was not a whole lot of offstage contact, not hanging out with the people,” Padgett says. “In some ways he’s as mysterious to them even though they’d been on the road with him for eight years or so as he is to the rest of us.”

Perhaps one of the stranger performances Dylan had was a 1984 one-off performance on Late Night with David Letterman with a supporting band known as The Plugz. Padgett spoke with The Plugz’ Tony Marsico about the rather ramshackle three-song set and was shocked to hear how much time the band spent with Dylan.

“What I was not aware of was the months of rehearsal that went into it,” Padgett says. “I thought it was some pick-up band he found the day before. Not that they’re bad, they are very good! It was amazing they had been wood-shedding in Dylan’s house in Malibu for months leading up to this. That is certainly not the energy you get at the Letterman thing, it’s not polished at all and I mean that in a good way.”

Of all the events in Dylan’s career, none were probably more bizarre than Dylan’s 1998 Grammy Awards performance of ‘Love Sick’ featuring performance artist Michael Portnoy dancing beside Dylan with ‘Soy Bomb’ written on his chest. Padgett, who interviewed Portnoy for this book, said Portnoy was the “only person in here that Bob Dylan did not want to collaborate with.”

“I think I mention in the intro to that chapter clearly Dylan himself or his organization is still not thrilled with it because it’s still scrubbed from any official version of the performance, which I think is insane,” Padgett says.

“Not only is it great on its own and it’s this unexpected burst of randomness, but if you actually watch the whole thing even after they drag him (Portnoy) off it really brings Bob and the band up to another level. Dylan does a guitar solo that seems especially fierce. I just love that.”

Padgett, who cites Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks as his favorite Dylan album and favorite album ever, is slated to appear at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma and present the book. He also plans on delivering a copy to Dylan’s people.

“His people are aware of it,” he says. “I’m sure Bob Dylan will never read it nor should he. He has better things to do with his time.”

As for the book title, Padgett says he had 30 or 40 options, but felt Pledging My Time was best.

“I liked it because it’s a Dylan reference obviously (song from 1966’s Blonde On Blonde), but it fits the theme of what these people were talking about,” he says. “Pledging their time to Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan pledging his time to the fans by being on the road all year every year practically his entire career.” •