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weeks; his mother had already mortgaged her house and hocked her furniture to pay for bail bonds. Meanwhile, of course, he had begun to hang out with what Goddard calls “the showbiz, table-hopping cheek-peckers’ club”: Jerry and Marta Orbach, the Ben Gazzaras, the Bruce J. Friedmans, Neil Simon, David Steinberg, Joan Hackett and her husband—people that, as his bride Sina warned him, “might be exploiting him for the thrill of having a real live gangster empty their ashtrays and talk about life and art.” Marta Orbach told him Viking Press was interested in publishing whatever literary collaboration he could cook up with her, so they began making daily tape recordings of his reminiscences at her house. At first it was supposed to be a black comedy about prison life, but then there was talk of an outright autobiography and even a meeting with an MGM representative to discuss selling it to the movies—so there is also the remaining possibility, as a final theory, that just about anybody in the underworld, getting wind of this, might be nervous enough about possible indiscretions to want him snuffed.

The two key points here are that (a) by this time he was totally pathetic (Goddard: “He had outgrown the old life. To allow himself to be forced back into it was unthinkable—a submission to circumstance, a confession of failure. As for his new life, the prospect was hardly less humiliating. It entailed another kind of surrender—to showbiz society and public opinion. His self-esteem would depend, not on his power and sovereign will, but on how long an ex-gangster could stay in fashion. Like an ex-prizefighter, he might even be reduced someday to making yogurt commercials.”), and (b) Dylan got even the very last second of Gallo's life wrong: “He could see it comin’ through the door as he lifted up his fork.” Gallo was shot from behind.

So all that remains is the question to Bob Dylan: Why? And since that is one I doubt he is going to answer (his new collaborator, Jacques Levy already put in a defense to the effect that Dylan wrote about Billy the Kid, so why not Joey Gallo), the only thing remaining is to suggest antihero fodder for future Dylan compositional product: Elmer Wayne Henley, William Calley Arthur Bremer, and that kid who tried to rob a bank at 13th Street and Sixth Avenue and ended up drunkenly requesting replays of the Grateful Dead on the radio. Certainly they all qualify as alienated victims of our sick society, every bit as much on the outside as Joey Gallo.

One does wonder, however, what Gallo would have made of Dylan's tribute to him; and one receives a possible answer in Goddard's book, where Gallo's ex-wife describes borrowing a hundred bucks from Joey's father to buy records so that the Prince of Brooklyn, always a fan of contemporary music, could catch up on what had been happening in soundsville during that decade he’d been away reading Reich in the slams: “He got especially mad over a Byrds album called ‘Chestnut Mare’ that I wanted him to hear. ‘Listen to the lyrics,’ I said. ‘They’re so pretty, and so well done.’ ‘I don’t want to hear any fags singing about any fucking horse,’ he says—and he's really venomous. ‘It's not about a fucking horse,’ I said. ‘If you’ll listen, it's about life.’ But he doesn’t want to hear about life either…. Next thing I know, he jumps out of the bathtub, snatches the record off the machine, stomps out in the hall stark-naked and pitches it down the incinerator.’”

The Village Voice, March 8, 1976

(Reprinted in Creem, April 1976)

4J. Weberman was a self-proclaimed “Dylanologist” of the era who plundered his idol/target's garbage for clues to his life and music, and developed an elaborate and, most agreed, ludicrous interpretation of key words and phrases that explained what Dylan “really meant” with his songs.

Anne Murray:

Danny's Song

Anne Murray is the real thing when it comes to popular music of quality and enduring significance circa 1973, a hypnotically compelling interpretrix with a voice like molten high school rings and a heavy erotic vibe. What Anne Murray