Was Subterranean Homesick Blues Written in a Laundromat?

Photo: Gary Firstenberg.
Taken at the Bob Dylan Center.

Last night I was siting in my easy chair in the living room working on a writing project. The laundry room in our house is directly below and the washing machine was going through its rinse cycle. The rhythm identically matched the rhythmic staccato of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," so much so that I began singing it. 

Johnny’s in the basement Mixing up the medicine I’m on the pavement Thinking about the government The man in the trench coat Badge out, laid off Says he’s got a bad cough Wants to get it paid off Look out kid It’s somethin’ you did God knows when But you’re doin’ it again You better duck down the alley way Lookin’ for a new friend The man in the coon-skin cap By the big pen Wants eleven dollar bills You only got ten

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Duluth Dylan Fest is comin' on fast. Here is a link to their website so you can stay abreast of what's happening. https://duluthdylanfest.com/

Some of the Northlanders who were in Tulsa last week.

There will be lots of music, naturally, and plenty of other things throughout the week. The May 24 birthday celebration at Bob's first home is always special. This year it's at noon, not mid-afternoon. Just letting you know. The Monday night Trivia Contest will be at Earth Rider in Superior this year. I had the opportunity to create the 40 questions and I tried very hard to not have them be too hard. Come over and play. There will likely be some lovely parting gifts for a few folk.

There will be two John Bushey Memorial Lectures this year. Peter McKenzie will be sharing stories from his book Bob Dylan: On a Couch and Fifty Cents a Day on May 25. Peter's event will be via Zoom, so anyone in the world can tune in. Please pre-register HERE. Paul Metsa will be presenting from 3-4:30 on Saturday afternoon at Wussow's Concert Cafe. That would be Saturday the 28th.

Duluth Dylan Fest opens next Saturday, the 21st with a new event. In the past we've had numerous art shows. This year, there will be a sculpture event. As many of you know, Bob Dylan has been getting into welding iron gates. This year the Duluth Forging Community is planning to create an iron gate throughout the week, beginning Saturday morning from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. They are asking the public to bring interesting pieces of iron to incorporate into this community project. 

The rest of the week's schedule can be found on the Duluth Dylan Fest link above.

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As for whether "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was written in a laundromat or not, it's not out of the question. The author has a famously restless mind. It's doubtful that at time in his life Dylan's mind was ever idle. Mine never was, and it seldom is to this day. Some of us are just wired that way I suspect. 

So, when the time comes, if I ever get a chance to ask, I'll share his answer here. 

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it.

Talking New York, Dylan and More with Peter McKenzie (Part II)

Includes recent Peter McKenzie interview

When I heard this spring that Peter McKenzie's book Bob Dylan: On a Couch and Fifty Cents a Day was coming out soon,  I asked for an introduction in hopes of obtaining an interview. I'd heard that it contained new insights into young Bob Dylan's first year in New York. After we'd spoken a couple times, the interview was delayed because he'd made a promise to ISIS that he would wait till they'd published an interview he'd done with them. 

By the time my turn had come I'd purchased and read the book. Ironically, all the questions I'd initially prepared to ask during the interview were answered in the book. I set about to adjust my game plan and just follow our conversation wherever it went. 

Peter was 15 when 19-year-old Bob Dylan took up a form of residence in his home. There's a sense in which they were like siblings who shared a special bond. Peter admits, "Yes, I idolized him. He was like the big brother I never had. He treated me like a kid sibling. He talked to me about a lot of stuff." 

What follows here are a few anecdotes about Peter's Harvard experience, his career, Bob's songs and insights about the choices we make. At the end there's a link to the book and the first part of this two part interview.

School Days

My senior year at Harvard I had a solo suite with my own bathroom. I was painting, and had a window overlooking the Charles River. Right next door to me were two roommates with whom I became good friends. We used to have breakfast and dinner together a lot. One was Al Gore and the other Tommy Lee Jones.

When Tommy Lee was shooting the first Men In Black, they were doing a scene right outside my now wife’s apartment. I went downstairs and they were on a shooting break. I tapped him on the shoulder and he almost choked. He turned around and said, “Hey Pete!” and I said, “Hi, Tommy, how are ya. I see how well you’re doing. I don’t want to disturb you while you’re at work.” 

Peter's Career

Illustration for Joseph Papp, NY Shakespeare
Festival; Peter McKenzie

I went to the Harvard Graduate School of Architecture. I was going to become an architect. I didn’t like it, so I left. Then I went to Europe and I wound up meeting a couple people in France who were Dutch. I had my harmonica and harmonica holder with me. We went and played on the streets of Paris. They had a guitar with them, so they gave me the guitar and it was the most money I made in an hour, playing on the streets of Paris. “Bob Dylan! Bob Dylan!” It was very funny.

They invited me to visit them when I went to the Netherlands (they lived just outside Amsterdam) and I wound up playing for a couple months in their rock and roll band. 

I came back to the states and embarked on a career as an illustrator and a graphic designer, which I did for many many many many many many years. I had my own little company. I worked for myself designing books, illustrating books and illustrating book covers. That’s what I did. 

Bob always liked to talk to me about my art. It’s the one subject he never challenged me on. You know, he’s the musician of the family; I’m the artist in the family. And I make no comment about Bob’s art other than to say I think he has a great color sense, a great sense of color. God bless him that he likes to draw and paint. 

As the musician and writer, that’s his thing, his talent.

I haven’t met half as many people as he has, and if I lived to be 200 I wouldn’t. Who hasn’t he met? He’s met everybody. That can change a person. That’s his life. As for me, I’ll always look at him different from anybody else. He used the gifts he had to get the life success he could. He had a great way with words and he was an excellent musician. And he was pretty cool at the stage that we were really close. That’s what I can say about him.

Bob’s Songs

1962. Photo credit: Ted Russell. 
Courtesy William Pagel Archives

You have all these people analyzing his songs.    I mean, I will give you two songs that I will tell you about. Obviously, most songs that a songwriter writes are going to have some kind of personal touch and say something about their life, but I will tell you two songs–and I want you to listen to them again. A lot of people know about them but they don’t understand the depth of his connection.

If you want to listen to two songs to try to understand Bob Dylan – and there’s also an earlier song – but if you really want to know the personal Bob Dylan, that’s real with no bull, (listen to) "Girl from the Red River Shore," and "When the Deal Goes Down." Listen to those two songs. You’ll understand what I mean after reading the book. That is personal. That’s feeling. 

So’s the one about Suze very personal, "Boots of Spanish Leather," but I’m talking about later on in life when he’s had all these life experiences. 

Those two songs… and they’re not angry songs, but I’m talking about when he’s sitting and reflecting about life, trying to make sense of it all. They mean a lot to me, because they really do reflect what’s going on in his head. It’s absolutely 100 per cent personal.  You don’t have to analyze every line. You just listen to the song and you get a sense of where he’s really at. They’re amazing.

Luckily, there was a tissue in my pocket the first time I heard “Girl from the Red River Shore.” It’s a knockout for me. I’m just condensing them down to a sensible core of what’s within his soul. It’s just unbelievable to me.

I’m sure there’s part of him that absolutely loves being famous, and loves to be adored the world over, but man, when he said that he walked into a diner and “everyone recognized me, that’s when it all changed.” That’s a horrible price to pay. He’s paid a big price. I couldn’t tell you, in all honesty, if he knew what was in store for him maybe he would’ve decided to just be a teacher. You know what I mean? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. 

His dream was to be as big as Harry Belafonte. That was it. He had no idea what was ahead. That’s why those two songs... that’s him away from the rest of the world. The reason he can say stuff like that is because most people don’t know the person he is. It shows what he’s gone through. And some of the longings he’s had and some of the loneliness and so forth.

We All Make Our Choices. 

I never thought of it this way, where people say he wouldn’t have made it unless he had the drive… I don’t think of it that way. I think of him as someone who had a dream, and had the guts to go out and try to fulfill it. 

The only thing I wrote about in that book were my experiences, my past experiences or maybe an experience that was told to me by somebody very close to me. For example, my friend Eric Herter went to a concert that I didn’t attend and told that funny story about the curtain almost knocking Bob over and he made that comment about leprosy. I’m sure I could read a million stories in books about Bob that I don’t know. That’s his life, not my life. There’s plenty about Bob I don’t know, but that wasn’t the point. 

Historian/author Sean (Wilentz) told Peter, “What you’ve done with your book is showed a big foundation of what made Bob who he is. Rather than trying to analyze every song or why he did this or why he did that, you’re showing a fundamental grab of the root of the person, and then the career happened." 

When I say what’s in that book is what all these people have been looking for, I meant it.

Links

BOB DYLAN: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day

A Visit with Peter McKenzie, Author of Bob Dylan: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day (Part One)

A Visit with Peter McKenzie, Author of Bob Dylan: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day (Part One)

Cover photo features young Bob
with Peter's father, Mac McKenzie

In recent years it seems like books about Bob Dylan are coming out of the woodwork. What’s intriguing is how many different approaches have been taken. Some are biographies and histories, while other volumes fill holes and spaces with new details and insights. Many of the books are about the songs, others about the concerts and still others about the segments in Bob’s life. 

Peter McKenzie’s new book, Bob Dylan: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day, is a first-hand account  of one of the most significant periods in the artist’s life, that first year when young Bob Dylan arrived in the Village. For anyone wondering how Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan, this insider accounts is for you. What occurred during his stay with the McKenzies illluminates this key period in the Dylan saga. 

The title of the book offers a glimpse of the flavor of this story. When collector Bill Pagel told me about it, he said it was going to be one of the best yet on Bob. Having just finished. it, I would assent to this endorsement. It’s fresh, heart-felt, and provides insights regarding how the young song-slinger from Minnesota was not only looked after, but mentored as he took his first fledgling steps on the road to stardom.

There’s a warmth and intimacy to the story which shines throughout the book. Peter McKenzie was 15 when his parents gave Bob an open door, a couch to crash on and 50 cents on the counter each morning to use as needed for coffee, cigarettes or subway. Bob became the big brother Peter never had. They bonded like brothers and the elder showered the younger with the kind of attention older siblings share. 

Bob showed Peter finger picking techniques and he showed him magic tricks with a standard deck of cards. One of these tricks was a mentalist memorization trick that wasn’t really a trick. It was a demonstration of Bob’s memory skills. He looked once at every card in the deck, then proceeded to name each card before turning it over on the table. (Now we know how he’s maintained the unusual acuity to recall such a breadth of lyrics in his head, not only his own catalog but an ocean of folk, ballads and blues lyrics.)

Many of the famous fledgling steps Bob took in the Big Apple are covered here, from a new perspective. He told Eve McKenzie, Peter’s mom, that he wanted to be as big as Harry Belafonte. Not long after that he would get the opportunity to blow his blues harp in a Belafonte recording session. It’s a familiar story, how he became frustrated and walked off the set after getting one song down. 

On A Couch has the rest of the story as a frustrated Bob comes home in a funk, “pacing and angry.” Mac McKenzie, Peter’s father, soothed the frustrated youth with a few wise words, but went a step further. He talked to a neighbor the next day, an old Navy buddy, who promised to smooth things over with Belafonte. Going the extra mile on Bob’s behalf would help eliminate potential stumbling stones in the young musician’s path. 

Peter’s parents were keenly aware of the possibilities that lay ahead for Bob Dylan. And Bob valued the wisdom they offered. As for Peter, he wasn’t left behind when Bob became famous. Peter’s wise parents did make sure their son stayed with his studies and kept his grades up. But when Bob headed up to New England for a concert there, he told Peter he’d check things out for his “little brother.” And when Peter was later in school there (Harvard), Bob made sure the guards let his “brother” backstage at another concert, inviting him to the afterparty as well.

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The book opens with an interesting Bob Dylan quote from a 1965 interview. “It’s Eve and Mac McKenzie. And they took me in an’ they were beautiful… I lived with them…and they fed me…and I stayed out all hours an’ came back in and went to sleep on the couch. An’ Peter was there. I was his idol…now he’s 18, 19. He’s in college. He’s a very smart kid…they know me well. Talk to them.”

Dylan was giving the interviewer a lead to follow up on. "Talk to them," he said. But the journalist missed the clue. Fortunately, Peter McKenzie took the time to put down in writing the stories which till now were only in his heart and mind. 

 

After finishing the book I spoke with Peter McKenzie in depth. This is the beginning of what will be at least two articles.  

Opening night at Gerde's Folk City
April 11, 1961

EN: When did it became apparent Bob was heading for stardom?

Peter McKenzie: The first day we met him. Feb 16, down at Gerde’s after a Jack Elliot’s concert.

EN: It’s apparent that your father is a central character in this story. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how important mentors are in various stages of our lives. Your father became that for young Bob.

PM: My father, Mac McKenzie, was one of the of the founders of the National Maritime Union and first Vice President. As first VP of the National Maritime Union, he was in charge of all of the organizing around the country to sign up people and chief negotiator for all union contracts for all the seamen. He was on the War Labor Board advising Eleanor Roosevelt and helped extensively in the Lend Lease program. He was a big deal, on a par with people like John L. Lewis and longshoreman Harry Bridges.

I didn’t discuss a lot of this with my folks because my parents tried to shield me from a lot of that. They didn’t want me going off in that direction. One of the reasons Bob showed up that night was Bound For Glory (Woody Guthrie). He wanted me to know my background. He knew he shouldn’t circumvent my parents’ authority but he thought I should know my background. He was great in that way.

Bob idolized my father. He understood things immediately. Bob knew what he stepped into and that’s why he didn’t leave. My dad was a big, big deal. He was the kind of character that Woody Guthrie sang about and John Steinbeck wrote about in many of those novels. 

If I didn’t make it clear in the book, I’ll make it clear now. When Bob Dylan showed up on our doorstep at 19 as a dropout from the University of MN saying he was from a small town in New Mexico as an orphan making his way in the world, … imagine the bond that developed and the look on his face when he found out Howard “Mac” McKenzie was indeed an orphan who dropped out of the University of Nevada at the age of 18 and rode the rails out to San Francisco and was from a small town in the far west in Nevada. When Bob found that one out he knew he’d been outmaneuvered. It was just serendipity that Bob had created this persona and he walks into the household of a guy who actually had that background, and who knew Woody Guthrie. 

EN: Impressive.

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Here is where you can find the book:

https://www.amazon.com/BOB-DYLAN-Couch-Fifty-Cents-ebook/dp/B095HYY4W2

IN PART 2 I will share more about Peter McKenzie and his “backward look” at the past 60 years through a lifetime of experience as a lens.