Chronicles - Bob Dylan [11]
Across the street from where I stood looking out the window was a church with a bell tower. The ringing of bells made me feel at home, too. I’d always heard and listened to the bells. Iron, brass, silver bells — the bells sang. On Sunday, for services, on holidays. They clanged when somebody important died, when people were getting married. Any special occasion would make the bells ring. You had a pleasant feeling when you heard the bells. I even liked doorbells and the NBC chimes on the radio. I looked out through the leaded glass window across to the church. The bells were silent now and snow swirled off the rooftops. A blizzard was kidnapping the city, life spinning around on a drab canvas. Icy and cold.
Across the way a guy in a leather jacket scooped frost off the windshield of a snow-packed black Mercury Montclair. Behind him, a priest in a purple cloak was slipping through the courtyard of the church through an opened gate on his way to perform some sacred duty. Nearby, a bareheaded woman in boots tried to manage a laundry bag up the street. There were a million stories, just everyday New York things if you wanted to focus in on them. It was always right out in front of you, blended together, but you’d have to pull it apart to make any sense of it. St. Valentine’s Day, lovers’ day, had come and gone and I hadn’t noticed. I had no time for romance. I turned away from the window, from the wintry sun, crossed through the room, went to the stove and made and poured myself a cup of hot chocolate and then clicked on the radio.
I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison’s voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, “Running Scared,” exploded into the room. Lately I’d been listening for songs with folk connotations. There had been some in the past: “Big Bad John,” “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” “A Hundred Pounds of Clay.” Brook Benton had made “Boll Weevil” a contemporary hit. The Kingston Trio and Brothers Four were getting radio play. I liked The Kingston Trio. Even though their style was polished and collegiate, I liked most of their stuff anyway. Songs like “Getaway John,” “Remember the Alamo,” “Long Black Rifle.” There was always some kind of folk type song breaking through. “Endless Sleep,” the Jodie Reynolds song that had been popular years before, had even been folk in character. Orbison, though, transcended all the genres — folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn’t even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn’t know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his early songs, “Ooby Dooby,” had been popular way previously, but this new song of his was nothing like that. “Ooby Dooby” was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he’d start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttering to yourself something like, “Man, I don’t believe it.” His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious — no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn’t anything else on the radio like him. I’d listen and wait for another song, but next to Roy the playlist was strictly dullsville…gutless and flabby. It all came at you like you didn