Chronicles - Bob Dylan [39]
One night, Albert Grossman, the manager of Odetta and Bob Gibson, came into the Gaslight to talk to Van Ronk. Whenever he came in, you couldn’t help but notice him. He looked like Sidney Greenstreet from The Maltese Falcon, had an enormous presence, dressed always in a conventional suit and tie, and he sat at a corner table. Usually when he talked, his voice was loud, like the booming of war drums. He didn’t talk so much as growl. Grossman was from Chicago, had a non–show business background but didn’t let that stand in his way. Not your usual shopkeeper, he had owned a nightclub in the Windy City and had to deal with district bosses and various fixes and ordinances and carried a .45. Grossman was no hayseed. Van Ronk told me later that Grossman had discussed with him the possibility of Dave playing in a new super folk group that he was putting together. Grossman had no illusions or doubts that the group was going to go straight to the top, be immensely popular.
Eventually, Dave passed on the opportunity. It wasn’t his cup of tea, but Noel Stookey would accept the offer. Grossman changed Stookey’s name to Paul and the group that Grossman had created was Peter, Paul and Mary. I had met Peter earlier back in Minneapolis when he was the guitarist for a dance troupe that came through town, and I’d known Mary ever since I first got into the Village.
It would have been interesting if Grossman had asked me to be in the group. I would have had to change my name to Paul, too. Grossman did hear me play from time to time, but I didn’t know what he made of me. It was premature for that anyway. I wasn’t yet the poet musician that I would become, Grossman couldn’t get behind me just yet. He would, though.
I woke up around midday to the smell of frying steak and onions on a gas burner. Chloe was standing over the stove and the pan was sizzling. She wore a Japanese kimono over a red flannel shirt, and the smell was assaulting my nostrils. I felt like I needed a face mask.
I had planned to go see Woody Guthrie earlier, but when I woke up the weather was too stormy. I had tried to visit Woody regularly, but now it was getting harder to do. Woody had been confined to Greystone Hospital in Morristown, New Jersey, and I would usually take the bus there from the Port Authority terminal, make the hour-and-a-half ride and then walk the rest of the half mile up the hill to the hospital, a gloomy and threatening granite building — looked like a medieval fortress. Woody always asked me to bring him cigarettes, Raleigh cigarettes. Usually I’d play him his songs during the afternoon. Sometimes he’d ask for specific ones — “Rangers Command,” “Do Re Me,” “Dust Bowl Blues,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “Tom Joad,” the song he’d written after seeing the movie The Grapes of Wrath. I knew all those songs and many more. Woody was not celebrated at this place, and it was a strange environment to meet anybody, least of all the true voice of the American spirit.
The place was really an asylum with no spiritual hope of any kind. Wailing could be heard in the hallways. Most of the patients wore ill-fitting striped uniforms and they would file in and out walking aimlessly about while I played Woody songs. One guy’s head would be constantly falling forward on his knees. Then he’d raise up and he would fall forward again. Another guy thought he was being chased by spiders and he twirled in circles, hands slapping his arms and