March 16, 2022 • 35 mins
When a man wears a mask, he’s gonna tell you the truth. That’s what Bob Dylan is thinking about as he continues his recovery from his motorcycle accident: being masked and not-so-anonymous on a rambling spectacle of a tour that feels more like the Greatest Show on Earth than a rock concert. Dylan’s fever dream-like state allows him to peek into the future…a future full of gypsies, boxers, sad-eyed ladies, and a homicide that would result in one of the toughest legal battles of his life.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Bob Dylan was a musical genius
and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He
didn't follow leaders. He chased that thin, wild mercury sound.
He never looked back. Even as the times changed, and
as the times changed, Bob Dylan changed. He tried on
(00:21):
and discarded identities like they were mass. He transformed. He
transfigured in somewhere along the way, the Bob Dylan that
you thought you knew died. This is his story. Day four, Yes,
(00:43):
it's day four, Monday, August first, nineteen. This is Dr
Ed Sailor. Once again, I'm reviewing the progress of the patient.
Robert Zimmerman, a k a. Bob Dylan. H. Bob is
still on a fair amount of distress. Fever, dreams and
moments of severe anxiety are not uncommon after the type
(01:05):
of distress he experienced. He has mentioned ghosts or apparitions
a few times in the last twenty four hours as well.
His physical injuries seemed to be healing just fine. There
are no problems to really speak of, but he has
taken to wearing a neck brace. Although it's my professional
opinion that that is more for mental comfort than it
is for physical support. He also, in more feverish moments,
(01:29):
has been talking about running away. I ran away from
home when I was very young. I told you that,
Yet the police picked me up. So I did it
again and again and again. I wanted to be a
(01:49):
circus hand, a carnival boy, a road bump. But I
couldn't get out. I couldn't slip the net. Eventually I did, though.
I guess that's where this need for reinvention came from,
a desire to get out and make yourself, to become
someone no one ever thought you could be that you
(02:09):
never thought you could be. When you break free from
life and go out and live, you really see what
it's all about. That's what I did in seventy five.
I got out and saw the world. Sure, I've been
to see it many times before, but this time I
really saw it. I really experienced it, and I was
the one who left so much blood on the tracks.
(02:53):
Chapter four, Bob Dylan is rolling thunder. Ye. I'm still
haunted by these people. There are people I've never even met,
(03:15):
but they haunt me. I guess I lost myself. And
what happened when writing that song. Sometimes songs can take
you over like that. I still see that man slumped
over a bar, his back all ripped up. You can
see flesh and bone and blood. This idea of transfiguration
(03:41):
that I'm always talking about, it's real, you know that, right.
The Rolling Thunder review was all about that. People ask
me why I wore masks and white makeup on that tour. Well,
when a man wears a mask, he's gonna tell you
the truth. I was living my truth, break free from life.
(04:03):
I grew up in northern Minnesota. The carnival came and
went when I was young. I was always captivated by it.
We all were. I wanted that for this tour, a
traveling show, a carnival. I wanted to do something I've
never done before. I wanted to invent for reinvention. The
(04:26):
tour I had staged the previous year had been huge.
It was all private jets, arenas and outdoor shows. I
got out and saw the world. The mid seventies was
like that. People realized music could be a global industry.
I just released an album called Blood on the Tracks,
(04:47):
and I was on a real high in my career.
But with this tour, I wanted the opposite. I wanted
to get back down to Earth. So that's what we
did when we were on the road. I even drove
the bus most of the time. I had this old
motor home i'd go around in. It was the antithesis
of a private jet. It wasn't just me, though, everyone
(05:10):
was like that. On Rolling Thunder. Roger mcgwinn from The
Birds went around in this thing called the Green Machine Man.
I don't even know how that thing started up, let
alone how it lasted. The whole run, the whole thing
really felt like I was at the start of my
career all over again, like I was a new man, reborn.
(05:30):
I was the happiest I think I've ever been. We
played all over the country, and our friends came with
us too. Joni Mitchell shown by is Rambling, Jack Elliott,
t Bone, Burnett Hell. Even a young Sharon Stone was there,
at least I like to pretend she was. There was
(05:51):
one person who summed up the whole thing. Her name
was Scarlett Rivera. I met her thanks to our old
friend Destiny. Before the tour, I was being driven around
Greenwich Village one day with no particular place to go,
and we passed a woman and I don't know. She
had a strangeness about her. I wanted to be a
circuit hint. She had long, flowing red hair, and she
(06:15):
was dressed like she had been beamed in from another time.
But I couldn't get out. You know. She was stick thin,
but she had a weight to her soul. I immediately
asked the driver to stop the car and jumped out.
I asked her if she could play the violin she
was holding, and she said she could, so I asked
her if I could hear it. The next thing, We're
(06:36):
in my apartment and she's playing man. She played her
violin sounded like an old traveler was playing it. It
was mystical. Go out and live. You really see what
it's all about. I had been writing a new album,
but it needed something, something I didn't have. I thought
(06:56):
that this, the sound of this mystical violin, might be
what is missing. But I needed to be sure, so
I tested her. I was due to go to a
Muddy Waters show at a bar in the village, so
I asked her if she would tag along. Of course,
she said, without missing a beat, so we went. I
(07:17):
took to the stage with Muddy that night. There was
always a pleasure to play with him. During the show,
I couldn't stop looking at Scarlett sitting at the bar.
She was like nothing I'd ever seen before. She didn't
just look like a normal person, she didn't act like
one either. She was kind of scary, but fiercely interesting,
(07:37):
break free from life. After a few songs, I jumped
onto the microphone and announced to the crowd, I'm going
to bring my violin player up now. Scarlet's eyes wide
until they were the size of oranges. Ladies and gentlemen,
Scarlett Rivera, I said, I didn't know how she'd act
a desire to get out and make yourself. The bar
(08:00):
fell silent slowly, everyone started to look where I was looking.
It was now or never. She jumped up from her stool.
I thought she might make a break for the exit,
but her eyes narrowed and she walked directly towards the stage.
She casually opened her violin case and said, shall we reinvention?
(08:22):
We kicked into the song with Muddy taking lead. Everybody
in the band got a solo, and so after a while,
Muddy nodded to Scarlett to take the spotlight. This is it,
I thought, let's see what she can do. Scarlett stepped
into the middle of the stage and burned the damn
place down. Her violin wasn't even miked up properly, but
(08:45):
it sounded like a fire tearing through the joint. The
crowd went crazy. Scarlett had shared the stage with the
blues legend and held her own. She had passed the test,
and thank god too. Scarlett ended up playing on that
album I was making, which turned into a record called Desire.
I co wrote that album with a friend of mine,
(09:06):
Jacques Levy. It featured great musicians like Emmy Lou Harris.
Even Eric Clapton was supposed to be on it, but Scarlett.
Scarlett made that album. During the recording, I'd already been
playing the Rolling Thunder toour, and it became obvious that
Scarlett sound her style, her soul. They were everything the
(09:26):
tour should be. She embodied its madness. Yet on the
road there were rumors she kept a snake in a
box in her dressing room. In fact, a few snakes.
I don't know about that, but I do know she
had a whole collection of swords that she carried around.
They went everywhere with her. Also, I remember one day.
(09:48):
She was on the bus. We were driving somewhere and
she was chanting a Santa Rea type verse over and over.
No one knew what the hell she was saying or
where it had come from. T Bone Burnett looked unnerved
by the whole thing, terrified even. He turned to me
and said, this is the bus to Hell. I couldn't
(10:10):
stop laughing at him. That's what I did. It turned
into the best tour we've ever done. I laughed and
smiled for that whole tour. Thirty five shows that fall
and another leg in the spring. But you know, like everything,
that stuff never lasts. And what was up next? Divorce
(10:31):
and murder? There as a woman now she floats along.
(11:03):
She's wearing a uniform, a waitress uniform. It's covered in blood.
It's soaked right through, it's everywhere. I try to tell her,
but she can't hear me. The rolling thunder of You
was so long ago. I wasn't even born yet. There
was so much drinking on that tour, A lot of
(11:25):
coke too. I remember one day rambling. Jack Elliott said
it was suspicious if you weren't on drugs. While on
that tour. He refused to carry anything in case he
got busted, so he'd have someone else carry it for him,
and he'd just before walking out on stage. One night,
Bruce Springsteen showed up, except he wasn't the Bruce we
(11:46):
all know today. Who's this guy at Springfield? I asked
my bass player Rob Stoner, Sorry, Bruce. My wife Sarah
had come on that tour too. She had come because
she was playing a role in the home we were
making on the road, my attempt at a European art
house Flip called Ronaldo and Clara. I wanted it to
(12:08):
be like Trufos, Shoot the Piano Player or Marcel Kanne's
Children of Paradise. Sam Shepard came to help too. He
met Joni Mitchell on that tour. That's when she wrote
that song Coyote. That song stopped us all dead in
our tracks. Did you know she wrote that one about
Sam to become someone no one ever thought you could be.
(12:31):
Joan Bayez was also with us, and in my film too.
I'd love Joanie. For years we had been called the
King and Queen of folk, and I guess that was true.
We've been involved too romantically, you know, back in the
early days, but it hadn't ended well. Yet one day
(12:51):
we went to a bar called Gypsy's Place. We were
all drinking hot toddies, and Joanie disappeared upstairs into an
apartment or this old traveler women lived. This woman showed
Janie a pillow that was stuffed with the ashes of
her dead husband. She said, the pillow was the best
night's sleep you ever had. She put on one of
(13:11):
the woman's old dresses and danced back into the bar.
We had a couple more and then she dragged me
outside and stood me under a huge oak tree. I
could tell something is wrong, something important. She looked me
right in the eyes and said, I've been wanting to
ask you this for a decade. Okay, before I finished
that part of the story, I have to fill you
(13:33):
in on the history between me and Janie. I remember
seeing her for the first time. She was something else.
I didn't want to blink. I was worried that if
I blinked, she wouldn't be there when I opened my eyes.
She just didn't feel real. Eventually I did. Though. She
had an unusual way of playing guitar. I could never
(13:56):
master that. And her voice, my god, what a voice,
that soprano. It was heart stopping. She did a lot
for me in those early days. She brought me on
tour with her. I ran away from home when I
was very young. Johnny was a big deal then she
still is, but she was already the queen then, you know.
(14:17):
She brought me on stage with her, calling me her
little vagabond. She was even there for me at the
Newport Folk Festival. That was the summer of sixty three,
just a few months before the whole world would grow
a little darker from a most foul murder, and two
years before Newport grew darker with all that judas nonsense.
(14:38):
We started to spend time together, and by the summer
of sixty four we were close. But the truth is
I wasn't always truthful with Joni, this need for reinvention.
We'd spent a lot of that summer at Albert Grossman's
house in Woodstock. Joan was taking a break between tours,
and I was either writing or riding around on my
three fifty Triumph, not the bike that get us into
(15:00):
this mess, but another one. I have sweet moments from
that time. We talked about our futures, our futures together.
We talked about maybe having kids one day, and we
even named one. I think I even proposed again and
again and again. I was kind of half joking, but
Joan was the sort of woman you could easily spend
(15:21):
the rest of your life with. We spent a lot
of time in a crummy hotel over in Washington Square two.
It was twelve dollars a night. I wanted to be
a circuit Hint had no room service and a regular
clientele of junkies, pushers, alcoholics, and other dubious New York
riff raff. It was like home to us, though. Joan
(15:43):
bought me a big black suit jacket with a white
shirt and crowning glory a pair of cuff links made
out of lumpy, opaque violet rocks. She wrote about that
in her song Diamonds and Rust. She wrote about it
almost word for word, no filter. I love that song
to be included in something that Joni had written. I mean,
(16:04):
to this day it still impresses me that you never
thought you could be. We did a tour together and
who played the packed houses with grave reviews. But by
the time we got to England and sixty five things
weren't so great. I had begun seeing someone else at
the same time Sarah, the woman who had become my wife.
I never wanted to hurt Jonie, so I kept the
(16:25):
two apart, couldn't slip the net. Sure that was the
wrong decision, but at the time I felt like I
was protecting the people I loved. I don't know. I
don't expect you to understand. It all came to a
head at the Royal Albert Hall, the Grandest Venues for
my betrayal. We were playing a show there at the
end of that England tour. I got out and saw
(16:47):
the world. Me and Sarah were in this little dressing
room before the show, and all of a sudden, there's
a loud rap at the door. Sarah, still jet lags,
slowly got up and opened the door with a tire yawn.
Who's standing on the other side, Joanie clutching a huge
present must have been for my birthday. I felt the
(17:09):
color drained from my face. I mean I actually felt it,
but I couldn't get out. Joanie had never seen Sarah before,
not knowing of her existence until this moment. Sarah, not
recognizing her, took the gift and politely said thanks. Joan
couldn't even bear to look at me as the door closed.
(17:30):
It's all over now, Baby Blue, was the final song
that night. I could barely get the words out. Back
to the story I was telling you under that old
oak tree with Joanie. I've been wanting to ask you
this for years, she said, and I felt the blood
drained from my face again, but this time, as I said,
(17:50):
it was a decade later, a breeze passed over us
and animated that traveler woman's dress. Why did you never
tell me about Sarah, she asked. I struggled to answer,
couldn't slip the net. She looked me dead in the eyes.
There was pain in there, deep pain. I didn't answer.
(18:11):
We just stood in silence, painful silence. It's because I'm
too political and you lied too much, she said, before
smiling one of the saddest smiles I've ever seen. I
really saw it, I really experienced it. She walked off
back to the bar, leaving me under that old oak tree.
(18:32):
No one had ever said a truer word in my life.
My marriage was falling apart at this point too, and
one night Sarah took to the stage and sang the
song I'd written for her, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
She dedicated it to Joan. By the time it came
to book the second leg of the tour, I invited
Joanie to play the entire run, but she declined my invitation.
(18:56):
I didn't try to convince her otherwise. We'll be right
back after this word, word word. There's another man now.
He's walking towards me. His right hand is covering his eye.
(19:18):
His palm is pressed right over it. Slowly he takes
it away and there's there's nothing there. It's just an
empty socket. You know. I've always loved boxing right the
beast from Hibbing Sugar, Ray Zimmerm. That's what I would
(19:39):
call myself in the ring. I've even got a gym
in Santa Monica. Not many people know that. There's pictures
of Muddy Waters and those British bad boys, the rolling
stones on the wall. Boxing has always been a passion
of mine. You give me a boxer's name, and I
can give you his record, just like that. Boom oh.
(20:00):
Mancini thirty four fights, nine wins, twenty three knockouts, five losses.
Manny Pacquiao two fights, wins, knockouts, thirty nine eight losses.
I met him once he was a great fighter. But
(20:20):
there's one boxer I'll always forever be linked with, Ruben
Carter desired. I became involved in Reuben's story ten years
after he was convicted of murder. Someone had given me
his autobiography and I was hooked on his story, hooked
on the injustice of it all. You really see what
it's all about about. I wrote the song Hurricane about
(20:41):
him and what happened. So what happened is a tale
that is a lot like a boxing match. I guess
he was knocked down time and time again, but like
all fighters, he got back up. I admired that if
you don't know the story, then allow me to be
your narrator for the evening. Are you sitting comfortably well? Good,
(21:02):
give me a bell. Round one. It's Muggie and Patterson,
New Jersey. Despite being two thirty in the morning, it's
July n s there's these two men. They enter a
place called the Lafayette Bar and grill. It's unusual because
they're black. Black folks stayed away from that bar. Hell,
(21:26):
most people stayed away from that bar. It was a dump,
but it wasn't friendly to people of color, so much
so that the bartender Jim Oliver slings a bottle at
the two men as they enter, just because they're black.
It would be the last thing he did on this earth.
A shotgun pellet severs his spinal cord moments later. Within seconds,
(21:48):
the two men are spraying bullets into the Lafayette. Some
bullets are coming from a shotgun, others from a pistol.
A woman called Hazel Tennis, who stopped into the bar
after her waitressing shift, jumps off for a stool and
tries to run, but the bullets catch her, knock her
to the floor and she starts bleeding out right away,
so much blood. Two other guys are having a conversation
(22:11):
at the bar there. Next one dies instantly. He doesn't
even have time to get off his stool. The other
turns his head at both the right and wrong moment.
A bullet passes through his eye and explodes out of
his forehead. He's not dead, but he passes out. Blood
stains the wall, the bar, the floor, and the ceiling
(22:32):
of the bar. So much blood, part of an eyeball
comes to rest on the pool table. Silence finally reigns
down on the bloody scene. Round two, Patty Valentine this
local woman who I'd go on to meet in person
in the courtroom by the way. Because a sleep on
(22:52):
her couch, her TV silent, the grainy picture dancing on
the wall of her unlit room above the Lafayette, she
as up to a loud noise gunshots possibly nothing unusual
there times. She goes to her apartment window and sees
these two men leaving the Lafayette, one holding a shotgun,
the other a pistol. They drive off into the night.
(23:15):
Valentine swiftly heads downstairs into the bar, and upon entry
she sees Hazel Tannis, her white waitress uniforms turning red.
This time I really saw it, blood soaked through the
white cotton, and Valentine screaming least she never has before
round three later, Ruben Carter, Middleweights wins nineteen knockouts, is
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lying down in the bed of his rented sixty six
white Dodge Polara. It's been a long night. We've all
been there, right. He'd been out at a night spot
and now he was heading home. John Artists, a young
athlete and Ruben sparring partner, is driving the vehicle. A
red police light flicks across his eyeline and like a
(24:02):
silent alarm. It makes him uncomfortable. The lack of an
actual siren is unnerving even to a man like Ruben Carter,
who has had more than a few brushes with the
police due to his skin color. His car has stopped
for the second time that night. On the first occasion,
they were told by the police that they were looking
for two men fitting their description. This time, the officer
(24:24):
has decided it is them. I couldn't slip the net.
Within thirty minutes, Reuben is in the hospital where that
guy who was shot through the eye tells the cops
he ain't the one. Remember that, the guy that had
just been shot is telling the cops it ain't Ruben
Carter and John artists. You really see what it's all about.
(24:45):
Still they go back to the police station, of course
they do, and after seventeen hours, both men are released.
But round four, two men, Alfred Bellow and Arthur Dexter Bradley,
had been near the Lafayette Bar that night. Bellow was
on the lookout for Bradley. Bradley was a what do
you call it, a career criminal. He was apparently trying
(25:07):
to break into a nearby metal company below grew bored
of watching Bradley and turns to walk towards the bar
in search of cigarettes. After several loud noises, he sees
two men come out of the Lafayette, one carrying a pistol,
the other a shotgun. One he said was Ruben Carter,
the other John Artists. They jumped into a white car
(25:28):
and drove away. Pretty damning testimony, right, well maybe if
it wasn't for the fact that this testimony came four
months after the shooting, when the police offered a ten
thousand dollar reward. Round five, the day after Bellow and
Bradley came out with that report, John Artist is stopped
(25:50):
while buying soda. A shotgun appears under his chin, and
he and Ruben Carter are arrested for triple murder. Do
you really see what it's all about? The trial is
a laughing stock. They both go down the final round.
Almost ten years later, there was a campaign for a retrial.
(26:12):
I was more than happy to get involved. We played
a gig at the prison where Reuben was being held.
Do you know what struck me the most when I
met him? It was only a small thing, but it
chilled me to my bones. I couldn't stop thinking about
his prison number. On his shirt, he had the number four,
five four seven two in black type. I couldn't stop
(26:33):
thinking how he had gone from the number one contender
to number four or five four seven to for reinvention.
We played another show for Reuben Madison Square Garden between
rolling thunder legs. Any day now I shall be released,
right wrong? It was all for nothing. In the retrial,
(26:54):
they found him guilty again, but I couldn't get out
of it. Wasn't until the nine teen eighties he finally
got free. Man. They took all that from him. I mean,
they literally stole his time. How do you recover from
something like that? When you leave something like that and
(27:14):
you come out of the other side, how can you
reinvent yourself from such a broken place? Someone told me.
In the mid nineties, he was arrested again when Toronto
police thought he'd sold drugs to an undercover officer. How
long have I been singing about this ship? How long
will the world be like? This makes you wonder will
(27:35):
it ever change? The Atlanta courtroom was hot. It was
(28:09):
the middle of July nine. Bob Dylan slouched in the
witness stand and watched a ceiling fans spin round and round.
Mr Dilon, the prosecuting attorney, ingrad, Pivnic asked, or should
that be Mr Zimmerman? She smiled. Dylan sat up, rubbed
his nose, and finally looked at Pivnic properly for the
(28:32):
first time. Sorry, what was the question? I was asking
about your wealth? Pivnic responded, How much money have you
made from the song Hurricane? The song from the The
attorney sentence tailed off. She checked her notes, pausing for
dramatic effect, her eyes scanning the page. In the courtroom
(28:52):
silence from the gold selling album Desire, she finally said.
Dylan took off his a v her sunglasses for the
first time and asked, you mean my treasure on Earth?
I suppose, the attorney said, but Dylan didn't continue. There
was silence. Once again. Pivnic, with growing impatience, directed her
(29:16):
next line at both Dylan and the courtroom at large.
In a case like this, defamation, invasion of privacy, unauthorized
publication of a name, it is only fair that my
client receives what is owned. She motioned to her client,
who sat behind a dark wooden table no more than
a few feet away from her. Her client was Patricia
(29:37):
and Valentine a k a. Patty Valentine, the witness to
the aftermath of the shooting at the Lafayette that landed
Reuben Carter in prison. Dylan's eyes drifted back to the ceiling.
Fan Pivnic carried on, I would assume you've made quite
a lot a big song like that, a song that's
been on the radio, one that you've played live, and
(29:58):
that was on a successful album. In the song, you
clearly imply my client has something to do with this
heinous crime, which I might add, was committed by a
man according to a court of law, by a jury
of your peers, that you yourself are defending. Dylan put
his shades back on. Why are you defending a criminal?
(30:19):
Pivnic asked, the question fell on deaf ears. She picked
up a sheet of paper from the table in front
of Patty Valentine. I was reading the lyrics to the
song Hurricane, and there's a fool mentioned. Who exactly is
the fool you speak of? Dylan sat upright in a flash,
suddenly engaged. He drew in close to the courtroom spindly
(30:42):
microphone and said, whoever Satan gave power to whoever was
blind to the truth, it was living by his own truth.
That's who the fool is. For the first time that day,
Pivnic was at a loss for words. Five days later,
the Washington Post published Bob Dylan's comments on Satan at
(31:03):
the very same time that it was revealed that he
had joined an evangelical Christian movement called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
Dylan's private embrace of Christianity had gone public. What started
that day in print would go on to give birth
to the next Bob Dylan. But while Dylan was moving
(31:23):
on and once again becoming someone knew like a slow
train coming, the same could not be said for Patty Valentine,
who was continuing her struggle to shake off the events
of nineteen sixty six, and the first thing she did
after her defamation trial against Dylan fell apart was to
drop Valentine as her last name. She moved from New
(31:46):
Jersey to Florida and sought out the quiet life. Years later,
in she met some friends for an evening out. They
were old friends she used to know from back in
her time in New Jersey. As they walk to the
Port St. Lucy Movie Theater, they passed a bar. Inside
was loud and hot. Condensation frosted the part of the
(32:08):
window not taken up by the red knee on bar sign.
She stole a glimpse inside two guys shooting pool. She
had been hiding her anxiety well, but now old memories
began to bubble to the surface. She barely talked to
her friends about the movie they were about to watch.
Inside the pitch Black Theater, Patty and her friends sat
(32:31):
waiting the moments later, the giant's screen was filled with
the image of Denzel Washington, who within the year would
win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance
as boxer Ruben Carter. Denzel's eyes dazzled as he stared
into the eyes of a young friend and asked, do
you believe I killed those people? His friend replied, I
(32:54):
know you didn't. And there was a moment of silence
in the St. Lucy Theater, and then someone in the
little row broke that silence with a steel, hard voice.
I know you did. The voice was Patty's. Sitting next
to her was James Lawless, a retired police officer who
lived less than two blocks in the Lafayette bar. He
(33:15):
was the man who spoke to Muhammad Ali when the
Greatest of All Times showed up with a quarter million
dollars in cash in a suitcase for Hurricane Carter's bail.
Also in her group was Patty's lifelong friend, her roommate,
who lived with her above the bar at the time
of the murders. Her name was not public knowledge, nor
(33:37):
will it ever be. On the night of the murders,
she was visiting her mother out of town. If she
had been home, there's a strong chance that she and
Patty would have been downstairs playing pool at the very
moment the two men entered the bar brandishing firearms. When
Patty was confronted by herself on the screen, played by
(33:57):
Pipa Pear, three, her friends broke the silence once again,
this time with laughter. The on screen version of Patty
looked gaunt and pale, like a junkie with no home.
In the theater, Patty laughed the loudest before declaring, I
hope I looked better than that. Now she was bluffing.
(34:17):
Her laughter couldn't hide the years of trauma she'd endured
since renting the room above the Lafayette. The sound of
the gunshots from under her floorboards, the bodies lying motionless,
the sleepless nights that followed, and there was so much
blood then, and every time she looked back, it was
all still there. The Blood on the Tracks. Blood on
(34:54):
the Tracks produced by Double Elvis in partnership with I
Heart Radio. It's hosted an executive producer by me Jake Brennan,
also executive produced by Brady Sather. Zeth Lundie is lead
editor and producer. This episode was written by Ben Burrow,
Story and copy editing by Pat Healy. Mixing and sound
designed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and score elements by
(35:16):
Ryan Spreaker. This episode feature Chris Anzeloni is Bob Dylan.
Sources for this episode are available at double Elvis dot
com on the Blood in the Tracks series page. Follow
Double Elvis on Instagram at double Elvis and on Twitch
at s Grace Sland Talks Need You Talk to Me
per Usual on Instagram and Twitter at Disgrace Land, Pond
(35:37):
Rock and Wood or Dad
Blood on the Tracks is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Bob Dylan was a musical genius
and one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He
didn't follow leaders. He chased that thin, wild mercury sound.
He never looked back. Even as the times changed, and
as the times changed, Bob Dylan changed. He tried on
(00:21):
and discarded identities like they were mass. He transformed. He
transfigured in somewhere along the way, the Bob Dylan that
you thought you knew died. This is his story. Day four, Yes,
(00:43):
it's day four, Monday, August first, nineteen. This is Dr
Ed Sailor. Once again, I'm reviewing the progress of the patient.
Robert Zimmerman, a k a. Bob Dylan. H. Bob is
still on a fair amount of distress. Fever, dreams and
moments of severe anxiety are not uncommon after the type
(01:05):
of distress he experienced. He has mentioned ghosts or apparitions
a few times in the last twenty four hours as well.
His physical injuries seemed to be healing just fine. There
are no problems to really speak of, but he has
taken to wearing a neck brace. Although it's my professional
opinion that that is more for mental comfort than it
is for physical support. He also, in more feverish moments,
(01:29):
has been talking about running away. I ran away from
home when I was very young. I told you that,
Yet the police picked me up. So I did it
again and again and again. I wanted to be a
(01:49):
circus hand, a carnival boy, a road bump. But I
couldn't get out. I couldn't slip the net. Eventually I did, though.
I guess that's where this need for reinvention came from,
a desire to get out and make yourself, to become
someone no one ever thought you could be that you
(02:09):
never thought you could be. When you break free from
life and go out and live, you really see what
it's all about. That's what I did in seventy five.
I got out and saw the world. Sure, I've been
to see it many times before, but this time I
really saw it. I really experienced it, and I was
the one who left so much blood on the tracks.
(02:53):
Chapter four, Bob Dylan is rolling thunder. Ye. I'm still
haunted by these people. There are people I've never even met,
(03:15):
but they haunt me. I guess I lost myself. And
what happened when writing that song. Sometimes songs can take
you over like that. I still see that man slumped
over a bar, his back all ripped up. You can
see flesh and bone and blood. This idea of transfiguration
(03:41):
that I'm always talking about, it's real, you know that, right.
The Rolling Thunder review was all about that. People ask
me why I wore masks and white makeup on that tour. Well,
when a man wears a mask, he's gonna tell you
the truth. I was living my truth, break free from life.
(04:03):
I grew up in northern Minnesota. The carnival came and
went when I was young. I was always captivated by it.
We all were. I wanted that for this tour, a
traveling show, a carnival. I wanted to do something I've
never done before. I wanted to invent for reinvention. The
(04:26):
tour I had staged the previous year had been huge.
It was all private jets, arenas and outdoor shows. I
got out and saw the world. The mid seventies was
like that. People realized music could be a global industry.
I just released an album called Blood on the Tracks,
(04:47):
and I was on a real high in my career.
But with this tour, I wanted the opposite. I wanted
to get back down to Earth. So that's what we
did when we were on the road. I even drove
the bus most of the time. I had this old
motor home i'd go around in. It was the antithesis
of a private jet. It wasn't just me, though, everyone
(05:10):
was like that. On Rolling Thunder. Roger mcgwinn from The
Birds went around in this thing called the Green Machine Man.
I don't even know how that thing started up, let
alone how it lasted. The whole run, the whole thing
really felt like I was at the start of my
career all over again, like I was a new man, reborn.
(05:30):
I was the happiest I think I've ever been. We
played all over the country, and our friends came with
us too. Joni Mitchell shown by is Rambling, Jack Elliott,
t Bone, Burnett Hell. Even a young Sharon Stone was there,
at least I like to pretend she was. There was
(05:51):
one person who summed up the whole thing. Her name
was Scarlett Rivera. I met her thanks to our old
friend Destiny. Before the tour, I was being driven around
Greenwich Village one day with no particular place to go,
and we passed a woman and I don't know. She
had a strangeness about her. I wanted to be a
circuit hint. She had long, flowing red hair, and she
(06:15):
was dressed like she had been beamed in from another time.
But I couldn't get out. You know. She was stick thin,
but she had a weight to her soul. I immediately
asked the driver to stop the car and jumped out.
I asked her if she could play the violin she
was holding, and she said she could, so I asked
her if I could hear it. The next thing, We're
(06:36):
in my apartment and she's playing man. She played her
violin sounded like an old traveler was playing it. It
was mystical. Go out and live. You really see what
it's all about. I had been writing a new album,
but it needed something, something I didn't have. I thought
(06:56):
that this, the sound of this mystical violin, might be
what is missing. But I needed to be sure, so
I tested her. I was due to go to a
Muddy Waters show at a bar in the village, so
I asked her if she would tag along. Of course,
she said, without missing a beat, so we went. I
(07:17):
took to the stage with Muddy that night. There was
always a pleasure to play with him. During the show,
I couldn't stop looking at Scarlett sitting at the bar.
She was like nothing I'd ever seen before. She didn't
just look like a normal person, she didn't act like
one either. She was kind of scary, but fiercely interesting,
(07:37):
break free from life. After a few songs, I jumped
onto the microphone and announced to the crowd, I'm going
to bring my violin player up now. Scarlet's eyes wide
until they were the size of oranges. Ladies and gentlemen,
Scarlett Rivera, I said, I didn't know how she'd act
a desire to get out and make yourself. The bar
(08:00):
fell silent slowly, everyone started to look where I was looking.
It was now or never. She jumped up from her stool.
I thought she might make a break for the exit,
but her eyes narrowed and she walked directly towards the stage.
She casually opened her violin case and said, shall we reinvention?
(08:22):
We kicked into the song with Muddy taking lead. Everybody
in the band got a solo, and so after a while,
Muddy nodded to Scarlett to take the spotlight. This is it,
I thought, let's see what she can do. Scarlett stepped
into the middle of the stage and burned the damn
place down. Her violin wasn't even miked up properly, but
(08:45):
it sounded like a fire tearing through the joint. The
crowd went crazy. Scarlett had shared the stage with the
blues legend and held her own. She had passed the test,
and thank god too. Scarlett ended up playing on that
album I was making, which turned into a record called Desire.
I co wrote that album with a friend of mine,
(09:06):
Jacques Levy. It featured great musicians like Emmy Lou Harris.
Even Eric Clapton was supposed to be on it, but Scarlett.
Scarlett made that album. During the recording, I'd already been
playing the Rolling Thunder toour, and it became obvious that
Scarlett sound her style, her soul. They were everything the
(09:26):
tour should be. She embodied its madness. Yet on the
road there were rumors she kept a snake in a
box in her dressing room. In fact, a few snakes.
I don't know about that, but I do know she
had a whole collection of swords that she carried around.
They went everywhere with her. Also, I remember one day.
(09:48):
She was on the bus. We were driving somewhere and
she was chanting a Santa Rea type verse over and over.
No one knew what the hell she was saying or
where it had come from. T Bone Burnett looked unnerved
by the whole thing, terrified even. He turned to me
and said, this is the bus to Hell. I couldn't
(10:10):
stop laughing at him. That's what I did. It turned
into the best tour we've ever done. I laughed and
smiled for that whole tour. Thirty five shows that fall
and another leg in the spring. But you know, like everything,
that stuff never lasts. And what was up next? Divorce
(10:31):
and murder? There as a woman now she floats along.
(11:03):
She's wearing a uniform, a waitress uniform. It's covered in blood.
It's soaked right through, it's everywhere. I try to tell her,
but she can't hear me. The rolling thunder of You
was so long ago. I wasn't even born yet. There
was so much drinking on that tour, A lot of
(11:25):
coke too. I remember one day rambling. Jack Elliott said
it was suspicious if you weren't on drugs. While on
that tour. He refused to carry anything in case he
got busted, so he'd have someone else carry it for him,
and he'd just before walking out on stage. One night,
Bruce Springsteen showed up, except he wasn't the Bruce we
(11:46):
all know today. Who's this guy at Springfield? I asked
my bass player Rob Stoner, Sorry, Bruce. My wife Sarah
had come on that tour too. She had come because
she was playing a role in the home we were
making on the road, my attempt at a European art
house Flip called Ronaldo and Clara. I wanted it to
(12:08):
be like Trufos, Shoot the Piano Player or Marcel Kanne's
Children of Paradise. Sam Shepard came to help too. He
met Joni Mitchell on that tour. That's when she wrote
that song Coyote. That song stopped us all dead in
our tracks. Did you know she wrote that one about
Sam to become someone no one ever thought you could be.
(12:31):
Joan Bayez was also with us, and in my film too.
I'd love Joanie. For years we had been called the
King and Queen of folk, and I guess that was true.
We've been involved too romantically, you know, back in the
early days, but it hadn't ended well. Yet one day
(12:51):
we went to a bar called Gypsy's Place. We were
all drinking hot toddies, and Joanie disappeared upstairs into an
apartment or this old traveler women lived. This woman showed
Janie a pillow that was stuffed with the ashes of
her dead husband. She said, the pillow was the best
night's sleep you ever had. She put on one of
(13:11):
the woman's old dresses and danced back into the bar.
We had a couple more and then she dragged me
outside and stood me under a huge oak tree. I
could tell something is wrong, something important. She looked me
right in the eyes and said, I've been wanting to
ask you this for a decade. Okay, before I finished
that part of the story, I have to fill you
(13:33):
in on the history between me and Janie. I remember
seeing her for the first time. She was something else.
I didn't want to blink. I was worried that if
I blinked, she wouldn't be there when I opened my eyes.
She just didn't feel real. Eventually I did. Though. She
had an unusual way of playing guitar. I could never
(13:56):
master that. And her voice, my god, what a voice,
that soprano. It was heart stopping. She did a lot
for me in those early days. She brought me on
tour with her. I ran away from home when I
was very young. Johnny was a big deal then she
still is, but she was already the queen then, you know.
(14:17):
She brought me on stage with her, calling me her
little vagabond. She was even there for me at the
Newport Folk Festival. That was the summer of sixty three,
just a few months before the whole world would grow
a little darker from a most foul murder, and two
years before Newport grew darker with all that judas nonsense.
(14:38):
We started to spend time together, and by the summer
of sixty four we were close. But the truth is
I wasn't always truthful with Joni, this need for reinvention.
We'd spent a lot of that summer at Albert Grossman's
house in Woodstock. Joan was taking a break between tours,
and I was either writing or riding around on my
three fifty Triumph, not the bike that get us into
(15:00):
this mess, but another one. I have sweet moments from
that time. We talked about our futures, our futures together.
We talked about maybe having kids one day, and we
even named one. I think I even proposed again and
again and again. I was kind of half joking, but
Joan was the sort of woman you could easily spend
(15:21):
the rest of your life with. We spent a lot
of time in a crummy hotel over in Washington Square two.
It was twelve dollars a night. I wanted to be
a circuit Hint had no room service and a regular
clientele of junkies, pushers, alcoholics, and other dubious New York
riff raff. It was like home to us, though. Joan
(15:43):
bought me a big black suit jacket with a white
shirt and crowning glory a pair of cuff links made
out of lumpy, opaque violet rocks. She wrote about that
in her song Diamonds and Rust. She wrote about it
almost word for word, no filter. I love that song
to be included in something that Joni had written. I mean,
(16:04):
to this day it still impresses me that you never
thought you could be. We did a tour together and
who played the packed houses with grave reviews. But by
the time we got to England and sixty five things
weren't so great. I had begun seeing someone else at
the same time Sarah, the woman who had become my wife.
I never wanted to hurt Jonie, so I kept the
(16:25):
two apart, couldn't slip the net. Sure that was the
wrong decision, but at the time I felt like I
was protecting the people I loved. I don't know. I
don't expect you to understand. It all came to a
head at the Royal Albert Hall, the Grandest Venues for
my betrayal. We were playing a show there at the
end of that England tour. I got out and saw
(16:47):
the world. Me and Sarah were in this little dressing
room before the show, and all of a sudden, there's
a loud rap at the door. Sarah, still jet lags,
slowly got up and opened the door with a tire yawn.
Who's standing on the other side, Joanie clutching a huge
present must have been for my birthday. I felt the
(17:09):
color drained from my face. I mean I actually felt it,
but I couldn't get out. Joanie had never seen Sarah before,
not knowing of her existence until this moment. Sarah, not
recognizing her, took the gift and politely said thanks. Joan
couldn't even bear to look at me as the door closed.
(17:30):
It's all over now, Baby Blue, was the final song
that night. I could barely get the words out. Back
to the story I was telling you under that old
oak tree with Joanie. I've been wanting to ask you
this for years, she said, and I felt the blood
drained from my face again, but this time, as I said,
(17:50):
it was a decade later, a breeze passed over us
and animated that traveler woman's dress. Why did you never
tell me about Sarah, she asked. I struggled to answer,
couldn't slip the net. She looked me dead in the eyes.
There was pain in there, deep pain. I didn't answer.
(18:11):
We just stood in silence, painful silence. It's because I'm
too political and you lied too much, she said, before
smiling one of the saddest smiles I've ever seen. I
really saw it, I really experienced it. She walked off
back to the bar, leaving me under that old oak tree.
(18:32):
No one had ever said a truer word in my life.
My marriage was falling apart at this point too, and
one night Sarah took to the stage and sang the
song I'd written for her, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.
She dedicated it to Joan. By the time it came
to book the second leg of the tour, I invited
Joanie to play the entire run, but she declined my invitation.
(18:56):
I didn't try to convince her otherwise. We'll be right
back after this word, word word. There's another man now.
He's walking towards me. His right hand is covering his eye.
(19:18):
His palm is pressed right over it. Slowly he takes
it away and there's there's nothing there. It's just an
empty socket. You know. I've always loved boxing right the
beast from Hibbing Sugar, Ray Zimmerm. That's what I would
(19:39):
call myself in the ring. I've even got a gym
in Santa Monica. Not many people know that. There's pictures
of Muddy Waters and those British bad boys, the rolling
stones on the wall. Boxing has always been a passion
of mine. You give me a boxer's name, and I
can give you his record, just like that. Boom oh.
(20:00):
Mancini thirty four fights, nine wins, twenty three knockouts, five losses.
Manny Pacquiao two fights, wins, knockouts, thirty nine eight losses.
I met him once he was a great fighter. But
(20:20):
there's one boxer I'll always forever be linked with, Ruben
Carter desired. I became involved in Reuben's story ten years
after he was convicted of murder. Someone had given me
his autobiography and I was hooked on his story, hooked
on the injustice of it all. You really see what
it's all about about. I wrote the song Hurricane about
(20:41):
him and what happened. So what happened is a tale
that is a lot like a boxing match. I guess
he was knocked down time and time again, but like
all fighters, he got back up. I admired that if
you don't know the story, then allow me to be
your narrator for the evening. Are you sitting comfortably well? Good,
(21:02):
give me a bell. Round one. It's Muggie and Patterson,
New Jersey. Despite being two thirty in the morning, it's
July n s there's these two men. They enter a
place called the Lafayette Bar and grill. It's unusual because
they're black. Black folks stayed away from that bar. Hell,
(21:26):
most people stayed away from that bar. It was a dump,
but it wasn't friendly to people of color, so much
so that the bartender Jim Oliver slings a bottle at
the two men as they enter, just because they're black.
It would be the last thing he did on this earth.
A shotgun pellet severs his spinal cord moments later. Within seconds,
(21:48):
the two men are spraying bullets into the Lafayette. Some
bullets are coming from a shotgun, others from a pistol.
A woman called Hazel Tennis, who stopped into the bar
after her waitressing shift, jumps off for a stool and
tries to run, but the bullets catch her, knock her
to the floor and she starts bleeding out right away,
so much blood. Two other guys are having a conversation
(22:11):
at the bar there. Next one dies instantly. He doesn't
even have time to get off his stool. The other
turns his head at both the right and wrong moment.
A bullet passes through his eye and explodes out of
his forehead. He's not dead, but he passes out. Blood
stains the wall, the bar, the floor, and the ceiling
(22:32):
of the bar. So much blood, part of an eyeball
comes to rest on the pool table. Silence finally reigns
down on the bloody scene. Round two, Patty Valentine this
local woman who I'd go on to meet in person
in the courtroom by the way. Because a sleep on
(22:52):
her couch, her TV silent, the grainy picture dancing on
the wall of her unlit room above the Lafayette, she
as up to a loud noise gunshots possibly nothing unusual
there times. She goes to her apartment window and sees
these two men leaving the Lafayette, one holding a shotgun,
the other a pistol. They drive off into the night.
(23:15):
Valentine swiftly heads downstairs into the bar, and upon entry
she sees Hazel Tannis, her white waitress uniforms turning red.
This time I really saw it, blood soaked through the
white cotton, and Valentine screaming least she never has before
round three later, Ruben Carter, Middleweights wins nineteen knockouts, is
(23:42):
lying down in the bed of his rented sixty six
white Dodge Polara. It's been a long night. We've all
been there, right. He'd been out at a night spot
and now he was heading home. John Artists, a young
athlete and Ruben sparring partner, is driving the vehicle. A
red police light flicks across his eyeline and like a
(24:02):
silent alarm. It makes him uncomfortable. The lack of an
actual siren is unnerving even to a man like Ruben Carter,
who has had more than a few brushes with the
police due to his skin color. His car has stopped
for the second time that night. On the first occasion,
they were told by the police that they were looking
for two men fitting their description. This time, the officer
(24:24):
has decided it is them. I couldn't slip the net.
Within thirty minutes, Reuben is in the hospital where that
guy who was shot through the eye tells the cops
he ain't the one. Remember that, the guy that had
just been shot is telling the cops it ain't Ruben
Carter and John artists. You really see what it's all about.
(24:45):
Still they go back to the police station, of course
they do, and after seventeen hours, both men are released.
But round four, two men, Alfred Bellow and Arthur Dexter Bradley,
had been near the Lafayette Bar that night. Bellow was
on the lookout for Bradley. Bradley was a what do
you call it, a career criminal. He was apparently trying
(25:07):
to break into a nearby metal company below grew bored
of watching Bradley and turns to walk towards the bar
in search of cigarettes. After several loud noises, he sees
two men come out of the Lafayette, one carrying a pistol,
the other a shotgun. One he said was Ruben Carter,
the other John Artists. They jumped into a white car
(25:28):
and drove away. Pretty damning testimony, right, well maybe if
it wasn't for the fact that this testimony came four
months after the shooting, when the police offered a ten
thousand dollar reward. Round five, the day after Bellow and
Bradley came out with that report, John Artist is stopped
(25:50):
while buying soda. A shotgun appears under his chin, and
he and Ruben Carter are arrested for triple murder. Do
you really see what it's all about? The trial is
a laughing stock. They both go down the final round.
Almost ten years later, there was a campaign for a retrial.
(26:12):
I was more than happy to get involved. We played
a gig at the prison where Reuben was being held.
Do you know what struck me the most when I
met him? It was only a small thing, but it
chilled me to my bones. I couldn't stop thinking about
his prison number. On his shirt, he had the number four,
five four seven two in black type. I couldn't stop
(26:33):
thinking how he had gone from the number one contender
to number four or five four seven to for reinvention.
We played another show for Reuben Madison Square Garden between
rolling thunder legs. Any day now I shall be released,
right wrong? It was all for nothing. In the retrial,
(26:54):
they found him guilty again, but I couldn't get out
of it. Wasn't until the nine teen eighties he finally
got free. Man. They took all that from him. I mean,
they literally stole his time. How do you recover from
something like that? When you leave something like that and
(27:14):
you come out of the other side, how can you
reinvent yourself from such a broken place? Someone told me.
In the mid nineties, he was arrested again when Toronto
police thought he'd sold drugs to an undercover officer. How
long have I been singing about this ship? How long
will the world be like? This makes you wonder will
(27:35):
it ever change? The Atlanta courtroom was hot. It was
(28:09):
the middle of July nine. Bob Dylan slouched in the
witness stand and watched a ceiling fans spin round and round.
Mr Dilon, the prosecuting attorney, ingrad, Pivnic asked, or should
that be Mr Zimmerman? She smiled. Dylan sat up, rubbed
his nose, and finally looked at Pivnic properly for the
(28:32):
first time. Sorry, what was the question? I was asking
about your wealth? Pivnic responded, How much money have you
made from the song Hurricane? The song from the The
attorney sentence tailed off. She checked her notes, pausing for
dramatic effect, her eyes scanning the page. In the courtroom
(28:52):
silence from the gold selling album Desire, she finally said.
Dylan took off his a v her sunglasses for the
first time and asked, you mean my treasure on Earth?
I suppose, the attorney said, but Dylan didn't continue. There
was silence. Once again. Pivnic, with growing impatience, directed her
(29:16):
next line at both Dylan and the courtroom at large.
In a case like this, defamation, invasion of privacy, unauthorized
publication of a name, it is only fair that my
client receives what is owned. She motioned to her client,
who sat behind a dark wooden table no more than
a few feet away from her. Her client was Patricia
(29:37):
and Valentine a k a. Patty Valentine, the witness to
the aftermath of the shooting at the Lafayette that landed
Reuben Carter in prison. Dylan's eyes drifted back to the ceiling.
Fan Pivnic carried on, I would assume you've made quite
a lot a big song like that, a song that's
been on the radio, one that you've played live, and
(29:58):
that was on a successful album. In the song, you
clearly imply my client has something to do with this
heinous crime, which I might add, was committed by a
man according to a court of law, by a jury
of your peers, that you yourself are defending. Dylan put
his shades back on. Why are you defending a criminal?
(30:19):
Pivnic asked, the question fell on deaf ears. She picked
up a sheet of paper from the table in front
of Patty Valentine. I was reading the lyrics to the
song Hurricane, and there's a fool mentioned. Who exactly is
the fool you speak of? Dylan sat upright in a flash,
suddenly engaged. He drew in close to the courtroom spindly
(30:42):
microphone and said, whoever Satan gave power to whoever was
blind to the truth, it was living by his own truth.
That's who the fool is. For the first time that day,
Pivnic was at a loss for words. Five days later,
the Washington Post published Bob Dylan's comments on Satan at
(31:03):
the very same time that it was revealed that he
had joined an evangelical Christian movement called the Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
Dylan's private embrace of Christianity had gone public. What started
that day in print would go on to give birth
to the next Bob Dylan. But while Dylan was moving
(31:23):
on and once again becoming someone knew like a slow
train coming, the same could not be said for Patty Valentine,
who was continuing her struggle to shake off the events
of nineteen sixty six, and the first thing she did
after her defamation trial against Dylan fell apart was to
drop Valentine as her last name. She moved from New
(31:46):
Jersey to Florida and sought out the quiet life. Years later,
in she met some friends for an evening out. They
were old friends she used to know from back in
her time in New Jersey. As they walk to the
Port St. Lucy Movie Theater, they passed a bar. Inside
was loud and hot. Condensation frosted the part of the
(32:08):
window not taken up by the red knee on bar sign.
She stole a glimpse inside two guys shooting pool. She
had been hiding her anxiety well, but now old memories
began to bubble to the surface. She barely talked to
her friends about the movie they were about to watch.
Inside the pitch Black Theater, Patty and her friends sat
(32:31):
waiting the moments later, the giant's screen was filled with
the image of Denzel Washington, who within the year would
win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance
as boxer Ruben Carter. Denzel's eyes dazzled as he stared
into the eyes of a young friend and asked, do
you believe I killed those people? His friend replied, I
(32:54):
know you didn't. And there was a moment of silence
in the St. Lucy Theater, and then someone in the
little row broke that silence with a steel, hard voice.
I know you did. The voice was Patty's. Sitting next
to her was James Lawless, a retired police officer who
lived less than two blocks in the Lafayette bar. He
(33:15):
was the man who spoke to Muhammad Ali when the
Greatest of All Times showed up with a quarter million
dollars in cash in a suitcase for Hurricane Carter's bail.
Also in her group was Patty's lifelong friend, her roommate,
who lived with her above the bar at the time
of the murders. Her name was not public knowledge, nor
(33:37):
will it ever be. On the night of the murders,
she was visiting her mother out of town. If she
had been home, there's a strong chance that she and
Patty would have been downstairs playing pool at the very
moment the two men entered the bar brandishing firearms. When
Patty was confronted by herself on the screen, played by
(33:57):
Pipa Pear, three, her friends broke the silence once again,
this time with laughter. The on screen version of Patty
looked gaunt and pale, like a junkie with no home.
In the theater, Patty laughed the loudest before declaring, I
hope I looked better than that. Now she was bluffing.
(34:17):
Her laughter couldn't hide the years of trauma she'd endured
since renting the room above the Lafayette. The sound of
the gunshots from under her floorboards, the bodies lying motionless,
the sleepless nights that followed, and there was so much
blood then, and every time she looked back, it was
all still there. The Blood on the Tracks. Blood on
(34:54):
the Tracks produced by Double Elvis in partnership with I
Heart Radio. It's hosted an executive producer by me Jake Brennan,
also executive produced by Brady Sather. Zeth Lundie is lead
editor and producer. This episode was written by Ben Burrow,
Story and copy editing by Pat Healy. Mixing and sound
designed by Colin Fleming. Additional music and score elements by
(35:16):
Ryan Spreaker. This episode feature Chris Anzeloni is Bob Dylan.
Sources for this episode are available at double Elvis dot
com on the Blood in the Tracks series page. Follow
Double Elvis on Instagram at double Elvis and on Twitch
at s Grace Sland Talks Need You Talk to Me
per Usual on Instagram and Twitter at Disgrace Land, Pond
(35:37):
Rock and Wood or Dad
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