Unlike Dylan's more typically mysterious releases, there is a story behind the composition of nearly every song on Desire. According to my father in On the Road with Bob Dylan, "Romance in Durango" began with an image printed on a postcard. He once told me that a game to see who could rhyme the most words with "Mozambique" yielded the eponymous song. "Joey" was an elegy for my father's friend, mobster Joey Gallo, whom he met through Marta and Jerry Orbach."I thought it was extraordinary that Bob had collaborated like that, and collaborated with a theater director too… Then I realized as I listened to these songs: they were all little dramas, they had, in fact, written small three to five minute plays.
By the time Dylan and my father returned to the city in late July, Dylan's friend Bobby Neuwirth, a songwriter and musician, had started performing nightly at The Other End (previously and currently known as The Bitter End) in Greenwich Village. It was a sort of impromptu residency, with Neuwirth getting up on stage to workshop material and inviting friends to join him. "It started off as a lark," Neuwirth told me. "Mainly, it was beatin' the heat with cold ones." As more artists showed up to play and hang out—including Ramblin' Jack Elliot, T Bone Burnett, and, yes, Dylan—the idea of bringing a rag-tag hootenanny of folk and rock singers and songwriters on the road began to solidify. "We thought it'd be fun if we got in a station wagon and went places and did a show and got back in the station wagon and drove away," Neuwirth said. "In other words, Rolling Thunder wasn't planned as it materialized."Pistol shots ring out in a barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, ‘My God they've killed them all!'
Rolling Thunder was to be no ordinary tour, and, envisioning himself an act in the circus rather than its ringleader, Dylan turned to my father, a professional with years of experience choreographing stage productions and helping different personalities coalesce into a coherent product. Dylan asked him to direct the tour. He accepted.The tour's acts included everyone from musicians to famous poets to actors. Artists like bassist Rob Stoner, drummer Howie Wyeth, singer Ronee Blakely, and violinist Scarlet Rivera were recruited from the Desire recording sessions. Others like McGuinn, Burnett, Joan Baez, Neuwirth, Kinky Friedman, Ramblin' Jack Eliot, David Mansfield, guitarist Steven Soles, and poet Allen Ginsberg were either friends, transplanted from Neuwirth's shows, or had previously worked with Dylan on other projects.According to my mother, my father arrived at rehearsals one morning and found the entire crew sporting t-shirts with the word "BORING" printed on the front and "I HATE JACQUES LEVY FAN CLUB" on the back. My mother still has one of those shirts, and treasures it to this day.
[After intermission, the] audience are back stomping on their metal folding chairs. Suddenly the houselights dim. Audience begin to roar, but then something happens. From out of the roar acoustic guitars are heard. Where are they coming from? Then two voices come into it. A male and a female. But where's it coming from? The audience begin to listen and quiet down, but they can't see the source of this sound. They strain toward the stage but the curtain's still down. Now the voices take on characters. It's definitely Dylan, but who's the chick? […] Visions of Martin Luther King, Washington, D.C., 1964, Kennedy, Birmingham, a flood of images belonging to a whole decade come riding on the words of ‘Blowing in the Wind.' The curtain slowly rises and there they are revealed. Baez and Dylan, like the right and left hand of an American epic."
It may not be his voice singing, but in those lyrics I hear my father begging not to be spurned or taken for granted, for me to recognize what's before me and cherish it while I can. But that song doesn't belong solely to me, and that may be what I'm proudest of: I share my father with the innumerable people whose lives have been touched by his work, even if they never heard his name. Jacques could hear the crowd roar from his place backstage, but here he is now, standing for the curtain call he deserves.Oh Sister, when I come to knock on your door
Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow.