Chronicles - Bob Dylan [89]
Lanois would be moving on, too, to another pick up and move studio. Lanois was a walking concept. He slept music. He ate it. He lived it. A lot of what he did was pure genius. He steered this record with deft turns and jerks, but he did it. He stood in the bell tower, scanning the alleys and rooftops. My limited vision didn’t permit me to see all around the thing. There were a lot of records out that were padded and schmaltzy odes to flunky-ism and neither one of us wanted to add to its ranks. When we began, that’s about all we had in common. There’s something magical about this record, though, and you might say that it was in the house or the parlor room or something, but there wasn’t any magic in the house. It’s what Lanois and me and Willie Green and Daryl and Brian Stoltz brought to the place that made it what it was. You live with what life deals you. We have to make things fit. The voice on the record was never going to be the voice of the martyred man of constant sorrow, and I think in the beginning, Danny had to come to terms with that, and when he gave that notion up, that’s when things started to work. None of it was planned that way. Though I was incapable of taking a lot of his emotional trips seriously, we were kind of kindred spirits. In another millions of days, thousands of millions of days, what would it all mean? What does anything ever mean? I try to use my material in the most effective way. The songs were written to the glory of man and not to his defeat, but all of these songs added together doesn’t even come close to my whole vision of life. Sometimes the things that you liked the best and that have meant the most to you are the things that meant nothing at all to you when you first heard or saw them. Some of these songs fit into that category. I suppose all these things are simple, matter of fact enough.
On the record, I had to make spur of the moment decisions which might not have had anything to do with the real situation. That was all right, though. It would have been good to vary the rhythms. There’s all kinds of ways you can do that. Eight pulses to the measure — six — four. You could do things where in four bars you play four beats and emphasize the 1 and the 3 and obscure the 2. You can go on and on like that in endless ways, varying tempos and rhythms. It would have been good if someone was paying attention to that kind of stuff, the rhythm combinations within the song instead of the song. The song would take care of itself. That being said, I had wholehearted admiration for what Lanois did. A lot of it was unique and permanent. Danny and I would see each other again in ten years and we’d work together once more in a rootin’ tootin’ way. We’d make a record and start it all over, pick up where we left off.
5
River of Ice
THE MOON was rising behind the Chrysler Building, it was late in the day, street lighting coming on, the low rumble of heavy cars inching along in the narrow streets below — sleet tapping against the office window. Lou Levy was starting and stopping his big tape machine — diamond ring gleaming off his pinky finger — cigar smoke hanging in the blue air. The place was like a room used for interrogation, a fixture like a fruit bowl hanging overhead and a couple of lamps, some brass ones on floor stands. Below my feet a patterned wood floor. It was a drab room and cluttered with trade magazines — Cash-box, Billboard, radio survey charts — an ancient filing cabinet in the corner. Besides Lou’s old metal desk, there were a couple of wood chairs and I sat forward in one of them strumming songs off the guitar.
Recently I had called home. I did that at least a couple of