Seeing the Real You at Last

Britta Lee Shain

Description

‘I’ve never seen a Bob Dylan smile, except in photos or on the stage. Not the real thing.’

Britta Lee Shain was a friend of Bob Dylan’s until he asked her to join him on the road in the mid 1980s, at which point she became more than a friend. In this intimate and elliptical memoir of their time together, at home in Los Angeles and on tour with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead, she offers a unique portrait of the romantic, earthbound, and poetic soul trapped in the role of Being Bob Dylan.

‘If you were my woman, I’d be worth four times as much.’

Entire libraries of books have been written about Dylan, but few—if any—offer any lasting insight into the man behind the shades. Until now. Written with the elegance of a poet and storytelling snap of a novelist, Seeing The Real You At Last is a poignant and tender romance that reveals Dylan’s playfulness, his dark wit, his fears and struggles, his complex relationships with the men and women in his life, and, ultimately, his genius.

Sujets

• Musique
• Culture musicale
• Music
• Rock
• Genres
• Styles

Informations

• Publié par: Jawbone Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908279958
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Jawbone book
First edition 2016
Published in the UK and the USA by
Jawbone Press
3.1D Union Court,
20–22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP,
England
www.jawbonepress.com

Volume copyright © 2016 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright © Britta Lee Shain. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

Editor Tom Seabrook
Cover design Mark Case
Contents

Prologue: If not for you …
One: Subterranean homesick blues
Two: Slow train coming
Three: New morning
Four: Tangled up in blue
Five: Gotta serve somebody
Six: I want you
Seven: You’re a big girl now
Eight: Love minus zero no limit
Nine: Seeing the real you at last
Ten: Like a rolling stone
Eleven: Knockin’ on heaven’s door
Epilogue: It’s not dark, yet …
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
About the author
I didn’t know I would fall in love with you. It never even occurred to me. The room is so empty without your music. As you lie there, I cannot look, I so respect your privacy. I appear so ‘orderly’ as I fall apart inside. I’m wiped out, starting to nod off. Is this what love is, some deep sleep that anesthetizes without healing? God help me.

—Britta Lee Shain, October 1987
PROLOGUE
If not for you …

August 7 2014. Los Angeles, California. I’m on my way to a meeting to discuss the possibility of publishing a memoir about my life in the late 80s, when I was a member of Bob Dylan’s inner circle. On the heels of Dylan’s near-lethal lung infection back in 1997, I had written an account of my travels with the legend as a way of making peace with my long-held affection for him. But over the years, in books and on the Internet, our friendship had been mischaracterized. With some distance from the subject, the thought was that now might be the right time for me to set the record straight.

I’d never seen a Bob Dylan smile, except in photos or on the stage. Flicker of teeth. Flash of blue-eyed lightening.

It’s four o’clock, 100 degrees, and I’m turning right off Laurel Canyon Boulevard when, in the crosswalk, walking spryly north on Laurel, I see Bob Dylan.

‘If you were my woman,’ Bob tells me, ‘I’d be worth four times as much.’

I watch dumbstruck as this super-charismatic guy bearing Bob’s unmistakable features, attire, and gait moves buoyantly past my slightly encroaching vehicle, only feet out of reach. My heart falls open with joy and disbelief.
Slowly I make my turn, rolling down the window, promising to speak, as he hops the curb and twirls to look at me just like Bob would have on his best days.
‘Hello …?’ he smiles, playfully, assuredly, flirtatiously.
Our eyes meet.

‘Britta, Britta, I love you, I love you.’

Without missing a step, the familiar icon ambles onward, looking back at me and grinning over his shoulder. I note the thick red-fringed headband, the earring, black leather vest, and the inconceivably hot billowing satin shirt. This can’t possibly be Bob, I realize, because there is none of Bob’s recent white-faced pallor; no sunken cheekbones, no thin Vincent Price moustache—no black cape and top hat in keeping with the current iteration of the ever-changing Bob Dylan.
No, this was the forty-five-year-old Bob Dylan I first met nearly thirty years ago, with a gleam of light shining through his soulful eyes and still emanating that spark of wit and gleeful mischievousness that mesmerized a generation.

‘All of life’s a chess game,’ Bob confides, giving me his best all-knowing look.

Now, indeed, would be the right time for me to set the record straight.
CHAPTER ONE
Subterranean homesick blues

If my mem’ry serves me well …
1966. UC Berkeley. Sex, drugs, and antiwar demonstrations. Back home in LA, my alcoholic mother is dying of cancer, while Daddy, suffering from delusions, is in the VA hospital, being force-fed Stelazine and Thorazine. A lonely only child from just this side of the wrong side of the tracks, who happens to be smart and pretty, it isn’t long before I shock my sorority sisters by bringing home a long-haired skinny guy wearing a suede fringed jacket and riding a Harley: a long-haired skinny guy who would drown in the Russian River a few years later, on an acid trip; a tortured genius who would bring over an unlikely album to neck to in the Alpha Omicron Pi sitting room. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited .
I’ll never forget getting high and listening to ‘From A Buick 6,’ ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man,’ ‘It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry,’ until Mrs. Axe—no word of a lie, that was the housemother’s name—nose pinched at the sight of him, asks my friend to leave.
After the date, a handful of us pile into the rare campus car—a flesh-colored Mustang fastback—and head down to Edie’s on Shattuck for ice cream sundaes, quick before it closes.
‘What do you see in him ?’ the girls giggle at the thought of my long-haired friend, and as I sit there gazing at all their pretty faces sucking up hot fudge and cream, snippets of Dylan’s ‘Desolation Row’ play back word for word in my head.
No use in explaining, I realize. Casanova’s just being punished for going up to sorority row.
The next day I walk to Leopold’s Records on Telegraph, and after comparing notes with the bearded guys who work there, I buy every one of Dylan’s albums, including some bootlegs. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Bob Dylan , The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan , The Times They Are A-Changin’ , Another Side Of Bob Dylan , Bringin’ It All Back Home , Highway 61 Revisited …
FM radio consists of only a single underground station, and while you might hear ‘Masters Of War’ over the AM airwaves, you’d never hear ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream,’ and it was ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’ that I really identified with, or ‘I Don’t Believe You,’ or ‘My Back Pages.’ Songs of hopelessness and heartbreak—the emotions I was the most familiar with. That isn’t to say that the politics and poetry of ‘Blowin’ In The Wind,’ ‘Chimes Of Freedom,’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ are lost on me. They most certainly are not. By Highway 61 Revisited , I’ve committed most of Dylan’s lyrics to heart. But ‘115th Dream,’ frenetic and crazy like a hallucination, rocks me to my roots because I’m positive I’m the only person in the world, besides the song’s writer, who understands every word.
Whoever this Bob Dylan cat is, he really speaks to me. Joni and Judy and Leonard speak to me, too, as do John Lennon and Tim Buckley, but it’s different with Dylan, though at the time, I couldn’t tell you how. Seventeen, blue-eyed, and Blonde On Blonde, I’m Bob Dylan’s biggest new fan.
If someone had said back then that one day I’d meet Mr. Dylan, the man, face to face, I probably would have told them, ‘I want a hit of what you’re tokin’.’

Dont Look Back , John Wesley Harding , Nashville Skyline …
August 1969. Hitchhiking across Western Europe with a girlfriend, rumors of Dylan performing at the Isle of Wight Festival abound, but despite the ready availability of marijuana, cheap wine, and Volkswagen vans, I’m unable to convince any of my drivers to take me there.

Self Portrait , New Morning …
1970. I see Carole King and James Taylor at the Troubadour. The next day I buy a guitar.

Tarantula , Eat The Document , Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid , Dylan , Planet Waves …
1974. The Los Angeles Times announces that Bob Dylan and The Band will be performing at the Forum — his first paid performance in years. I’m back in LA. Mom is indeed dead, and Daddy’s living in his ’64 Falcon in the Arizona desert. I’m alone, but I now have a master’s degree in educational psychology from UCLA, which I’m refusing to put to good use, probably because it would have made my mother happy from whatever vantage I’m convinced she still has. Instead, I’m a secretary for an entertainment accounting firm on the Sunset Strip, where the big thrills include Steve McQueen riding his motorcycle into the foyer whenever he has an appointment, and the opportunity to review Raquel Welch’s plastic surgery bills.
I call a few friends about the Dylan concert. Everyone’s a taker. After filling out the necessary forms, I naively include a comment about how I’d like the best seats available—those were the days—and mail in the check. Two weeks later, the tickets show up at my place in Santa Monica, along with a handwritten note.
Britta! Hi! Hi! Hi!
It’s from a guy I knew back when I lived in the dorms at Berkeley. He always called me Brit-ah instead of Bree-tah, the way my name is pronounced.
Processed your Dylan order this morning.
I glance into the envelope. Four seats on the floor, tenth row center.
Hope you get the tickets of your dreams …

Valentine’s Day 1974. The final dates of Dylan’s first American tour in eight years will be recorded live for an album. The crowd is on fire. The place is packed. Electricity fills the air. Dylan takes the stage. At thirty-three, Bob Dylan has matured. He’s heavier than he was in previous incarnations, and with his closely trimmed beard and mustache and thick, dark head of hair, he looks better than ever. Midway through a set that includes ‘Just Like A Woman,’ ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe,’ and ‘Most Likely You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine,’ a gigantic red heart is unscrolled on a screen on the back wall of the amphitheater.
I’m in love.
When the live album is released in June, I rush to the record store to buy it. It’s called Before The Flood .

I wish I could say the 70s were one long joyride for me—all platform shoes and striped bell-bottoms—but starting with my mother’s death in ’71, the train I was riding on just kept getting derailed. In ’72, a good male friend of mine from Berkeley is diagnosed with leukemia and dies a month after visiting me at my Santa Monica apartment. Then, in the fall of ’74, after a string of disa