Dylan Review: Your book began as an email newsletter, Flagging Down The Double Es, that reviewed bootlegged shows. Why did you start interviewing band members?
Ray Padgett: I sort of stumbled into it. The goal of the newsletter was not to interview anyone. I just wrote about tapes that I listened to and liked. One was a tape from a concert in 2003, in New Orleans. As I was listening, I noticed a prominent saxophone playing on every track.
I know enough to know Dylan did not have a saxophone player in the band in 2003. So I go to Olaf’s files [of concert setlists], I look it up, and I see a guy named Dickie Landry, who I’ve never heard of. I google him, and his website pops up with a contact form. So I shot the guy an email – “What’s the story?”
We get on the phone, and he tells me this amazing story. He’s not a band member. He literally met Bob the first time the night before and never spoke to him again after they got on stage, which is as far from a band member as you can get. But it was an amazing story that I don’t think he’d ever told before.
And so that was the first one, and I enjoyed it so much I did one or two more. Then I got a little more ambitious and, instead of one-off random people, I thought I could talk to someone who actually was in the band. As it turned out, it proved a lot harder to get them to agree.
DR: You’d think that Dylan makes everyone sign non-disclosure agreements. Was it difficult to get people to talk on record?
RP: It is difficult, but not for the reasons I would have thought. I also thought they were signing NDAs. The first couple of interviews I asked point blank and the answer is no, they don’t sign NDAs, but they are reticent to talk. A lot of these musicians haven’t done many interviews. They haven’t signed anything – it’s not an explicit instruction – it’s just that everybody knows Bob Dylan is a private person.
No one wants to seem like they’re violating his privacy. No one wants to have something they say get taken out of context or put in a splash headline that makes them, or Dylan, look bad. So, it was very difficult to convince people. In many cases, it took me months or more than a year.
I did it by showing my work. Having my Substack [newsletter] was essential because I could go to Benmont Tench, for example, and say, “Look, here’s my interview with Larry Campbell.” And a lot of these people read the interviews I sent them and would reference them. They’d say, “Okay, it’s very in-depth. The guy knows his stuff.” It’s not salacious or gossipy, or “what’s Bob Dylan really like?” – you know, it’s not dumb.
I think that’s how I started to crack open the door. But it was a slow process.
DR: Many of the musicians you interviewed are quite obscure. There are lots of characters like Dickie Landry who only played with Dylan once or twice. How did you track them down?
RP: Even the ones who played with him for ten or fifteen years are often obscure. They’re not household names. Even someone like Jim Keltner, who is fairly famous as far as I can remember, doesn’t have a website or a Facebook page. And he’s, like, known in the biz’. But outside of the biz’, it’s very hard to reach these people.
A lot of it was, honestly, one person connecting me to another. I’d interview someone, and they’d say, “Hey, that was good. You should talk to… I’m going to put in a good word.” I think Benmont might have connected with Keltner, actually. “Hey, are you talking to this guy? Here’s his email.”
There were a few exceptions. Larry Campbell does have a public presence, he puts out his own records, but most of these people don’t.
DR: You interviewed Soy Bomb, who infamously interrupted Dylan’s performance of “Love Sick” at the 1997 Grammys. How did you find him?
RP: He was one of the easier ones to find, believe it or not. I didn’t know who he was beyond being Soy Bomb, but he’s kind of a big deal in the performance art world. So once I figured out his real name, I found his website. There was an email address on it. It turned out he was actually fairly easy.
DR: Is there a band member who isn’t in Pledging My Time that you’d love to have interviewed?
RP: There’s a lot of people, frankly. I’m not that old, but to some degree, I wish I’d been able to start this thirty years ago because there’s a long list of people that I’m like, “Oh, this player is great. Are they still around?” You look them up, and sadly they aren’t.
I would love to have talked to Robbie Robertson. I emailed his manager maybe a year before he died. Bucky Baxter, too. I think he’s great. He passed before I even started the newsletter.
I don’t think any musician currently with Dylan will ever talk. Nor should they. There is a code of silence. I hope to talk to Tony Garnier one day, but I wouldn’t even try until, hopefully decades from now, when the band is no longer going. Another is George Receli. Again not a big name, but he was the drummer when I first saw Dylan. He was there for many years. I think he’s a fascinating player among bigger names.
It’s a long list. But, of the ones that are still with us, I’m still hammering away at them.
DR: It’s important for the Dylan community to record these stories as Dylan’s generation moves on.
RP: Yes, I wanted to. Even though the subtitle is “band members,” I wanted some stories from the early days when he didn’t have any band members. So I was privileged to get people like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who’s in his nineties, and Martin Carthy, who’s got to be close to that age. I felt privileged that I was able to record these stories.
DR: Pledging My Time reads like a coherent biography of Dylan, as much as it is an anthology of interviews. It reminded me of Jean Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgewick, Edie: American Girl, which is also constructed from interviews. Did you set out to write that sort of book?
RP: It started with these one-offs for the newsletter. I did those for maybe a year or so, and at some point, I started to think, “These are interesting enough, I’m getting enough of them. There could be a book here if I compile them all together.” I kept doing interviews, and I started to put them in two piles. Half of them I ran in the newsletter, and half of them I squirreled away quietly for this eventual book.
I’m glad to hear that comparison to the biography because it wasn’t exactly that I was trying to write a biography, but I was hoping that they would build on each other. As I say in the intro, you can absolutely do what a lot of readers do, and what I would probably do as a reader, and just jump around and pick whatever. And that’s great. You don’t even need to read all of the interviews, but I was hoping if anyone did want to read all of them, that they would add up to a little bit greater than the sum of their parts. There are through-lines, there are threads. You can follow Dylan’s career, his work, his performance through all these different voices.
DR: Pledging My Time has been well-received by the Dylan community. Are casual fans picking it up and discovering more about his music, like they would with a conventional biography?
RP: Yeah. It’s been gratifying. Not to sound pompous or pretentious, but I sort of knew that people like me were really going to dig the book to some degree. It’s written for people like you and me, right? It’s a superfans book. And I geared it that way. There’s a lot of detail, a lo of nitty-gritty nuance. It’s not really aimed at the casual reader. So the fact that I’ve heard from people who have said that someone gave it to them – people who have never heard of my Substack [newsletter] – and they really enjoyed it because there’s enough amusing or fascinating anecdotes, even if they’ve never heard of any of the people I interviewed, or any of the ones who aren’t famous, which is most of them. I’m glad that it’s getting out there because, like I say, I sort of wrote it for us nerds. So for the people with other things in their life, it’s nice that they’re enjoying it, too.
DR: A large part of the book is devoted to the Rolling Thunder Revue, which is significant as Dylan’s first tour with his own band. Why are you so interested in this period?
RP: If there was a bucket list concert I could go to, it would probably be a show on the Rolling Thunder Revue. It’s one of those tours that got me into Dylan more than just casually. When I was first into Dylan, the most recent bootleg series was Live 1975, and I was just blown away by the energy, by the joy, by the passion, by the ramshackle nature of the whole thing.
As you say, it’s the first band he put together. It’s the first time he’s rearranging almost every song. Previously with The Band, some songs were rearranged dramatically. But a lot of the songs they played sort of like the record. Whereas on Rolling Thunder, it seems like every single song is rearranged. He’s drawing from all over his catalog and doing them entirely differently. And this is what I’m looking for as an interviewer.
There are a lot of good stories from the Rolling Thunder Revue. It’s a period in Dylan’s career where he’s very accessible. He’s hanging out with people a whole lot. They’re going on all these adventures and hijinks. A number of people in the book from other eras, they may be fascinating interviews, but you’ll say, “What was hanging out with Dylan backstage like” and they’ll say, “I never hung out with him backstage.” Rolling Thunder is the polar opposite of that. There are a million anecdotes.
You can watch the recent Scorsese movie and say, “What was it like when you went to the Plymouth Rock boat museum,” and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott will have a story about that, or “What was it like when you went to the [Tuscarora] Native American reservation,” and Rob Stoner will have a story about that, you know. I love the music, but it’s also just really fascinating and fun to hear stories.
DR: The other period that you cover in depth is the Heartbreakers tour in ‘86 and ‘87, which is often overlooked by fans. Why do you think it’s so under-loved?
RP: In a way, it’s the opposite of the Rolling Thunder Revue. First, it’s an established band. Second, they’re playing big markets, they’re playing the greatest hits. It’s not that sort of anything-can-happen vibe. But you watch the videos, and Dylan is just grinning. He’s having the time of his life. The energy is through the roof, particularly in ‘86. They did that second tour in ‘87, and I remember Benmont Tench talking about how the bloom was sort of off the rose. Dylan was not happy. He wasn’t hanging out, the shows were a lot shorter. But that ‘86 tour is just a blast, and it is due for a fan reassessment at some point.
DR: I listened to the version of “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” from the Heartbreakers tour that Benmont Tench mentions in the book, and it’s beautiful.
RP: I’ve been listening to that, too, because I’m putting together a playlist for the newsletter. It’s something I meant to do to promote the book when it came out, but I got busy with other stuff. I’m taking excerpts from the book, like [drummer] Stan Lynch talking about playing “Lay Lady Lay” unrehearsed. I’ll have that paragraph, and then you can play the recording. “Tomorrow is A Long Time,” for Benmont, is one of those. It’s fun.
DR: Pledging My Time also focuses heavily on The Never Ending Tour. Do you have a favorite Never Ending Tour lineup?
RP: It’s probably the one I just missed: the Larry Campbell, Charlie Sexton, David Kemper lineup. I got into Dylan in high school in 2004. Larry was still there, and the other two had just left. But watching videos of Larry and Charlie and Dylan singing the harmonies together, and doing this sort of three-guitar attack, that’s probably my favorite. At least of the ones I haven’t seen.
I saw Charlie Sexton [after he rejoined the band in 2009], but it was a totally different Sexton. It was in this later period, and the band was fairly restrained. As Dylan said in a New York Times interview, Charlie’s very good at that. He’s extremely talented, but I sort of wish I’d been able to see him just let loose and do shreddy guitar solos and backing vocals.
DR: What do you think of the current Rough and Rowdy Ways tour band?
RP: I think they’re really good. They’re extremely good players. They are not let off the leash as much as most other bands. You can go see a show and barely notice either of the guitar players. Or Donnie Heron, who’s been with him for almost 20 years now. And that’s not because they aren’t skilled players. It’s just the current band is not one that Dylan wants to do solos or big flashy parts, which in a way is a testament to them that they’re egoless enough. They serve the music without needing to really stand out in any way.
DR: Before Pledging My Time, you wrote a book about Leonard Cohen covers. So you must have been excited to see the setlist from Montreal last October. What did you think of Bob’s surprise cover of “Dance Me to the End of Love?”
RP: I didn’t just see the setlist, I was at the show. Fantastic. I was blown away. Leading up to it, he had been doing a lot of location-specific covers, but he stopped like a week before. For three or four shows, he hadn’t done any. And I was thinking, “Nah, too bad. I thought maybe we’d get Leonard Cohen”. So I was absolutely floored.
It was funny. When he first started playing it, before he started singing, I immediately recognized it as a Leonard Cohen song. But I know so many of them. During the opening chords, I’m rifling through them in my brain. Is it “Everybody Knows?” No. It’s too slow. Is it… No. And it wasn’t until he started singing. I thought he did it beautifully.
It was so moving in the room I was almost apprehensive to listen to the recording. I thought it wouldn’t live up to my memory, and it sort of doesn’t, but he did a really good job. I was worried he’d screw up all the lyrics or he’d mumble. No, even on the recording, it sounds good.
DR: Such live improvisation is a constant theme in Pledging My Time. The word “jazz” comes up in nearly every interview – they all say that playing with Dylan is like playing jazz. Is Dylan underappreciated as a jazz bandleader ?
RP: I’ve been convinced by all these people I’ve spoken to. The first couple of times people mentioned it, I sort of quietly rolled my eyes. Bob Dylan is obviously not John Coltrane or Miles Davis, right? He’s not literally a jazz musician. But the comparison all these people make is to the freeform nature.
A story from one of my very early interviews really jumped out at me. Chris Parker was the first drummer of The Never Ending Tour. He had this little anecdote that I thought was really meaningful. One day Dylan was playing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” during the acoustic set, so Chris was just sitting on the side of the stage waiting for his cue to come back on. As he’s listening to it, he thinks there should be a big drum fill. So he sneaks on stage, quietly in the dark behind the drums, and does this big fill. Dylan turns around to him and smiles. So during the interview, I then say something like, “Oh, so I bet that became part of the song,” and Chris goes, “No, I never did it again.” I was kind of like, “What?” But Chris says, “I knew that as much as Bob liked it that night, if I did it again the next night he was going to be pissed.”
That was maybe the first conversation where that had come up. But, as you say, in almost every interview, whether they use the word “jazz” or not, is this idea that it has to be live, it has to be changing, it has to be different every night, even if it’s the one hundredth time they’ve played “Like a Rolling Stone.” That’s the comparison to jazz, and I think it’s really true.
DR: Some of the anecdotes in Pledging My Time make being in Dylan’s band sound like the hardest gig ever.
RP: That’s the thing. You have people like Duke Robillard, who had a bad experience, right? But what’s even more interesting is the people who had a good experience talk about it being invigorating – they talk about it being musically one of the most creative periods of their careers. But even then, it sounds exhausting. I mean, it sounds hard. This idea of doing a different thing every night.
Jim Keltner played with Dylan in 2002, right after he had done a Simon and Garfunkel reunion tour, and he compared the two. He said nice things about the Simon and Garfunkel tour – he said it was enjoyable – but he’s playing “The Boxer” and every other song just like the recording every single night. The Dylan thing is so much the opposite that, for all the pluses, it sounds very stressful and very tiring.
DR: You mention in the book that you play guitar. If Dylan were to phone up and ask, “Do you want to audition for the band?” would you say, “Yes?”
RP: I might – just to get in the room – and then try to pivot to ask him some questions. I certainly would not play a note of guitar in Bob Dylan’s presence. I’m an extremely amateur player and would be way too intimidated. I can’t imagine doing it. And I wouldn’t want to try. I might say yes just to show up. If nothing else, I’d probably get a good story that someone else could interview me about!
