By 1967, Bob Dylan, the lyrical genius whose early protest song oeuvre had gradually expanded into decade defining music awash with recreational substances and solipsistic reverie, had it all. Artistic achievement, wealth and the double-edged sword of fame; however, Dylan, the sainted hero of every teahead fabulist from Bremen to Baltimore, the wailing Jewish boy with the afro, who inspired the biggest bands in the world to write adult songs, the perceived font of countercultural mystic knowledge was sick of being famous. Sick of the hundreds of journalists who’d cross-questioned him about his authenticity and obscure lyrics; sick of a fan base that could might boo him if he made a musical change they didn’t appreciate; disgusted with America and its excesses and corruption’s and heartily fed up with the multi million dollar medicine show that was the music industry.
     The previous year, after injuring himself in a motorcycle accident- which some claimed was faked in order to duck out of extensive touring and publicity commitments- Dylan decamped to Woodstock and began to make music with The Band, a bunch of mandolin strumming, be-whiskered, brown Derby wearing musicians who’d been backing Dylan live since his fateful conversion to electricity.
   Bearded and long of hair, Dylan spent a great deal of time immersed in books, smoking and staring out of windows. He was moving away from the whey-faced troubadour of angst and abstraction and taking on the mantle of a kind of cosmic country balladeer; a countercultural seer, positioned high up in the crow’s nest of American music, looking out on Fitzgerald’s dark rolling fields of the republic, which still bristled with Whitman’s leaves of grass.
     Despite his immense fame, Dylan’s record sales, though large and consistent, were not as massive as his reputation. It was this fact that had recently scared off Allen Klein, the shark lawyer who eventually took both the Beatles and the Stones to the cleaners. Dylan wasn’t keeping up with the latest musical trends; vague reports reached him of the freaky deaky west coast: of crazy figures like Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa; of wild bands like Love and of a strange leather bound ‘shamanic poet’ called Jim Morrison, who fronted a band called the Doors.
 
 

In the fall of ’67 Dylan troubled James Douglas Morrison, who was in the middle of his acid visionary, full leather/leonine plumage period. In public and around friends his cited Rimbaud, Baudelaire and the neurotic grandeur of Greek tragedy as his artistic totems, indeed he saw himself in a similar vein: tragic, romantic, intoxicated and doomed. However, Dylan wasn’t a long deceased French poet; he was very much alive, resident in the same country and far more artistically accomplished than the west coast front man. Dylan’s knack for the perfect symbiosis between tone, lyric and music disturbed him mightily. Morrison’s attempts were clumsy by comparison; bombastic and lacking wit, he desperately craved that certain je ne sais quoi that was the hallmark of the Minnesotan songwriter’s work.
     Tripping on LSD- 25 he would play Dylan’s records and voyage into them, poring over the symbolism analysing meaning and marvelling at these songs which were like fragile visions or strange stories, all conjured from the mind of another American, practically the same age. Morrison believed his power lay in his mastery and control over words; he relied on other members of the band for the music, and yet here was Dylan, master lyric writer and an ace constructor of winning chord sequences. Morrison was beguiled and oppressed at the same time.
   One evening after a show at the whiskey, he lay back in groupie’s bed, basking in post coital languor and sipping a vodka Collins, whilst the young lady spat his semen into a waste basket and busied herself putting on a record. As the vinyl revolved and the speakers hissed, she leapt back onto the bed; Jim turned to her.
“What did you put on?”
“My favourite.”
Morrison smiled and waited to hear one of his songs. Suddenly the organ blast of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ flanged out at him, followed by Dylan’s withering invective; the Lizard King scowled.
“Goddamn it! I don’t need this honey!”
The song reminded him of him-self somehow. He slammed his drink down, got up and went over to the record player, knocking the needle off with a loud scratch. The young groupie was outraged.
“Hey man! That’s my favourite record! Fuck are you doing?”
Morrison waved his hand at her.
“Listen baby, I don’t fucking need this tonight okay? I’ll buy you a new record okay?”
The young groupie, an intellectual manque studying political science and having some sympathy with the ideas of Valerie Solanis was not to be placated.
“I like that. ‘Honey I’ll buy you another one’ and ‘I don’t need this tonight’ Jeeeezus, what are you? A fucking business man breadhead who’s just got home from the office?”
Morrison picked his drink up and had a swig.
“Now look, you invited me back here, you wanted to fuck remember? So I scratched your Dylan record. Soooory.”
“Give me the money now,” she said.
Morrison was putting his clothes on, unsteadily.
“What?”
“I want the money, for the record, before you leave.”
“Jeez.”
Morrison dug into the pockets of his trousers and got out some crumple notes, which he threw on the bed. The groupie looked up at him; they locked eyes and he smiled.
“You know what this situation looks like.”
The groupie snatched up the dollars.
“Well, you treated me like a whore… I wish it’d been Bob Dylan’s cock I was sucking.”
Morrison threw his drink over her.
“Hey fuck you!”
“Fuck you too and get out of my room.”
As Morrison staggered through the door, the groupie hurled a glass at him, which bounced off the back of his head and shattered on the floor. He turned and spoke in a hillbilly accent.
“Well Miss, thank you kindly and let me say that if ah ever run into Mr Dylan I’ll be sure to mention your name.”
He slammed the door and staggered down the stairs and out onto the street. He lit a cigarette and sniffed the sultry night air. Dylan. Dylan, Dylan Dylan. He walked off, humming. At some point during the night he conceived a plan to meet Dylan; within ten hours, he was on a plane east.

Morrison stood outside Dylan’s massive retreat and listened to the hired limo drive away. He lit a cigarette and looked up at the well-appointed house. Inside his head, anxiety was growing: he was about face his demon. It was early afternoon and wind ruffled the trees; he moved towards the drive. He’d been informed, by someone at Elektra records that the word at Columbia was that Dylan was recording with a band, but was quite often to be found at home; since the crash, they said, he’d calmed down.
  The thought of Dylan making another record was bad enough for Morrison- what would it be like? Would it outstrip Morrison at his own game? Blonde on Blonde had awed most lyricists/poets in its sprawling visions and strange imagery. Like the Beatles and the Stones, any public manoevre by Dylan absolutely swamped the smaller fish in the pond, knocking them aside like flounders in the wake of a playful whale.
   He moved up the path and saw that the doors to the double fronted garage were rolled up, and parked inside was a black cadillac. He moved into the garage cautiously; Morrison noticed a door on his left, standing ajar. He began to worry; his take on reality had always been skewed but acid had revolutionised it. One side of his head thought it a perfectly normal to fly across the country and walk into Bob Dylan’s house; the other side was watching, observant and fearful.
He walked through the connecting door and found himself in a vast wood panelled hallway, his boots sinking into the heavy red carpet. It was totally quiet. He looked down at the carpet and giggled. The red carpet treatment. He wondered about LSD sometimes. He hadn’t taken any for a number of days but he still found flashbacks occurring, like as if his brain was going into spasm. He shook his head as if to free it of some unpleasant notion, and crossed into the room opposite.
  It was like a ski lodge; a gigantic ski lodge. High arched ceiling a big picture window; books ran around the walls on mahogany shelves. Morrison, still in his leathers, unwashed and unshaven from his previous night’s revels, looked completely at odds with this environment. He moved to a book covered  table in the centre of the room; his mind was racing. Would Dylan know him? Would he call the police? Morrison, like all acid-heads, had a wandering attention, and soon he was examining the books. Bob Dylan’s books. He looked at the titles and smiled at the eclectic range: The Charterhouse of Parma, On the Road, A History of Anarchy, Tender is the Night, Byron’s Poetical Works, The Naked Lunch, Brighton Rock.
       He heard footsteps and suddenly Bob Dylan walked into the room with a twelve-string guitar in his hand. Everything seemed absolutely still to Morrison; down to the very dust in the sunbeams that shot across the room. Dylan stood there, looking completely calm, unshaven with that hunted look he occasionally had. He noticed Dylan swallow.
“Who’re you?”
“My name’s Jim Morrison.”
Dylan’s eyebrow arched slightly.
“And can you explain what you’re doing here?”
Morrison took a step forward.
“I sing with a rock and roll band… the Doors… out of LA”
Dylan put the guitar down, carefully, on an armchair.
“I’ve heard of you.”
Morrison produced a pack of Luckies.
“You… wanna cigarette?”
Dylan, no stranger to altered states himself, was trying to work out whether Morrison was high, low or dangerous.
“Yes, I’ll take a cigarette.”
Morrison giggled slightly.
“Look man, I know what you’re thinking but… It was like an impulse… I get kids coming up to me…”
To Morrison, Dylan looked like a young college professor, serious, hair parted on one side; pensive.
“Don’t you knock?”
“Knock?”
“Yes, knock on the front door?”
“Oh knock right, yeah but you wouldn’t see me though would you? Some… valet would open the door…”
“I don’t have a …valet…”
Morrison smiled; it was strange hearing that low rolling, goofball voice for real; in the same room.
“Well,” said Morrison, gesturing around the room, “ you sure look like you could afford one.”
Dylan sat down on a large revolving leather chair.
“Sure I could afford one, I just don’t need one.”
Morrison laughed and spun around on his heels, “That sounds like one of your lyrics.”
“Well friend,” said Dylan dryly, “they were written by me so I guess that’d be why.”
“You got any marijuana around? Or acid?”
“I finished with acid a long time ago.”
“You did? Why?”
“…………………………..It was breaking down…..walls in my mind that I kinda liked when they were standing up…..You know?”
“Yeah, but it opens……..doors.” said Morrison earnestly.
“What’s the use of a door when there isn’t a wall?”
“…………………….Hmmmm. So, you got any grass?”
“You want a Jazz cigarette huh?”
“Hehehehe jazz cigarette”
Dylan moved over to a bookcase; lifting out Confessions of an English Opium Eater and The Three Musketeers, he retrieved an inlaid box, which he passed to Morrison, who sat down and opened the lid.
“Jeez Bob, that’s a fine stash.”
Dylan scratched his head
“……………………Haven’t you got a ……career to be organising? Housebreaking in Woodstock isn’t normally on the itinerary for aspiring performers.”
“Housebreaking? C’mon it’s not like I’m some sort of crazy person who you don’t know.”
Dylan raised his eyebrows
“Well, I don’t know you.”
“Yeah but you kind of know of me. How are you by the way, I heard you had a crash.”
“I kinda crashed alright, but I’m now…..okay.”
Dylan picked the guitar up and strummed a few chords. Morrison looked up from building a joint.
“I hear you’re making music with that band you toured with?”
“We’re fooling around”
“What are you writing about?”
Dylan put the guitar down.
“Oh dear”
“What’s the matter?”
“We’re about to get onto music and meaning aren’t we?”
“Not especially. You know something? Last night I got a blow job after the show off some girl. Afterwards she put on one of your records- ‘like a rolling stone, it was- and I kinda lost my temper…”
“Why?”
“Because….. it reminds me of me, in a way….”
“Up to a point?”
“Up to point yes. So I got annoyed and she said she’d rather have been sucking your cock anytime.”
“Heheheh….”
“So I thought- and I’d been thinking about you anyway- I’d come and see you. I do that…. I thought I’ll go and see Mr Dylan. The man. The mind.”
Morrison lit the joint, a fat two skinner.
“So,” said Dylan, “you’ve flown in from LA to take issue with me about a blow job? Are things that bad out there? I’ve heard some stories….How did you get up here?”
“Hired a car at the airport,” he dragged on the joint eyes narrowing, “…everybody must get stoned…”
He passed the thickly smoking joint to Dylan.
“Bob, what’s your music about?”
Dylan glared at him.
“See? I knew it.”
“Mine’s about pushing it, really pushing it, looking….for some kind of….catharsis…”
Dylan blew smoke.
“It’s a trip,” he said slowly, “that kind of searching.”
“Real fuckin’ trip.”
Dylan puffed on the joint, “strange stuff this, sometimes you feel like a rival for William Blake and other times you feel like a…… donut.”
“Hmmmmm….”
“You know Bob, I think I’d like to fight you.”
“What?”
Morrison looked at him blearily.
“I said, I think I’d like to fight you.”
“Fight me? Why?”
“Because,” said Morrison very slowly, “because I think Hemingway would have wanted to fight you.”
“Really?”
“Really Bob. I think I’m Hemingway to your Fitzgerald. Art aside, I think I’d like to fight you.”
Dylan cackled
“Hemingway? What’s this shit about Hemingway?”
“Well, times was, when artists fought. That’s the kind of artist I wann- I am. I mean, Chuck Berry had a fight with Jerry Lee Lewis over who was the king of rock’n roll. Chuck won.”
Dylan blew a plume of smoke, “Yes but Little Richard’s the king of rock ‘n roll.”
Morrison ran his fingers through his hair.
“Writers don’t prove themselves anymore- to each other. Are you prepared to fight me?”
“And prove what? That if I win I’m better than you? Jesus, I thought acid destroyed ego.”
Morrison shook his head again, as if to clear it.
“Okay, okay okay, you’re right. I’m a little cranky. How about we each write a song. Who writes the better song?”
“And the point being?”
“It’s duel Bob, an artistic duel.”
Dylan sighed.
“Because a groupie wanted to blow me, instead of you?”
Morrison ignored this and strode over to the window.
“It’s an experiment Bob! Or are you so up the hill now that things like this are passe?”
Dylan stroked his chin, “How long?”
“How long what?”
“To write the song”
“ I dunno… ten minutes?”
“You’re on,” said Dylan, “let me get some paper.”
 

For ten minutes they wrote; occasionally consulting the clock on the wall. Dylan smoking continuously, Morrison pacing, up and down. When the time was up the Lizard King slammed his pencil down and ran his hands through his hair.
“Right! Who’s going first?”
Dylan’s eyes flashed; he lit a cigarette.
“Why don’t we read each other’s out?”
“Good idea!” burbled Morrison. Dylan flicked his cigarette and picked up Morrison sheet. He cleared his throat.

“The big stone whale on the mountain, with the jewel eyes.
He makes his schemes, he drinks his dreams and stares into the skies
In my trip to see the mountain, see the fire and the lies
I see a man on the run from the world, the world he used to buy

The big stone whale on the mountain. See the pandemonium in his eyes
He got his lady, his children his dogs for his disguise
The flaking statue on the mountain hey perhaps the phoenix will never rise
He fears killers and watchmen and niggers because he’s spun so many lies

Night and day the whale’s on the mountain, staring far and wide
He sees braves do a ghost dance
Sees the white man run and hide
Does the whale know the secret? A he carries himself with pride?
Secrets of the moon, the sea and what’s on the other side?
“So I’m a big stone whale, huh,” Dylan smiled and locked eyes with Morrison. Morrison eagerly picked up Dylan’s sheet.
 

“You saw the river, all stained with blood, with the memories of men in grey
and sunken cannons left from that day; nine decades pass but the cannons lay and buzz from the freeway.
Angrytown boy got to get a witness, like old greasy Nellie.
It’s an ego thing so show me some evidence and maybe I’ll sing
Sing an old song down in Mexico where a sailor boy’s dance is what you expect to hear
But was he alive in a small town bedroom in fifty five?
I guess sir, that he was.
Oh the carpenter building the new jail is humming our tunes
And he can’t worry about all the blood ‘cos he got an automobile to care for
So’s I go back downtown to see

Oh Greasy Nellie, find time for my soul
Oh Greasy Nellie, I’m in hell in this hole

And the angrytown boy goes walking kinda ego thing
He knows the police chief’s daughter wants to commit a sin- with him.
He’s drinking in Greasy Nellie’s mainstreet saloon at noon
And he jangles a song and gets it all wrong abut a round of applause comes soon
Winning is bad luck, but losing is worse try my friend Henry, he might slake your thirst

Oh Greasy Nellie, find time for your soul
Oh Greasy Nellie, you see me in my hole

Its got something to do with not feeling your through
And knowing you’ve just got to pay…. To pay….

Morrison looked at Dylan.
“Well?”
Dylan stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray.
“Well what? Did I deserve the blowjob? Is that what you mean? That song is what I’m thinking about today.”
“Whose Greasy Nellie?”
“Hey,” said Dylan with a smile, “another day huh?”
Dylan looked at the clock.
“Jeez man, I was supposed to be recording this afternoon.”
Morrison stood there, looking deflated, with the lyrics in his hand. His head was quiet- nothing presented itself for speech.
“You want me to go?”
“Well,” said Dylan, shrugging a leather coat on, “I really have to go. Let’s say its been different… and next time I’m in LA..”
Morrison folded the songs up and left them on the table; he walked out into the hallway. Dylan followed. Morrison turned around.
“Look, I don’t know why I came out here today. I shouldn’t have. I think…. I came to do something that I didn’t want to do.”
“…..What?”
“Admit that you’re a better songwriter than I am. There, I’ve said it.”
“Well, thanks. Thanks a lot. I’m….honoured.”
Dylan opened the large oak front door; light flooded into the gloomy corridor.
“There’s that lucky old sun again,” said Dylan.
“That…lucky old sun…”
Dylan smiled and slapped Morrison on the back.
“Well, take it easy and if you’ll take some advice..”
Morrison looked round at him, “What?”
“Write the songs. You write ‘em.”
“Okay”
Morrison walked into the afternoon sunshine, down the drive and out of sight.
“Don’t look back.” Dylan murmured. He shut the big old front door and leant his head against the old, cool oak.
“Big stone whale on the mountain, heheheheheheeheheheh”
 

©NickGarrett00.