editors: tony schwartz marty porter contributing editors: laura berman howie brick sundaiy inside: mctgcizine page 4-books page 5-wystan stevens page 6-looking back Number 16 Page Three FEA February 10, 1974 TURES Backstage with Dylan: A 1o underbelly of the rock and By DAN BIDDLE Throw my ticket out the window. -Bob Dylan ON THE AFTERNOON of Febru- ary 2, 1974, a carpet of light snow covers the great flat industrial reaches of Southeastern Michigan. The mercury at Willow Run Airport registers an abusive 22 degrees, and the Huron River heaves gently under a new ice layer and quads of tem- pestuous children on skates. As Bob Dylan and his glittering en- tourage fly over foam-flecked Lake Erie, the world's first dead lake, the well-fed young people- of Southfield and Ann Arbor struggle out of bed and face the afternoon sun. Crisler Arena sits on Stadium Boulevard in Ann Arbor, like a giant stomach waiting to digest Dylan, the Band, and 13,800 other people. The concert's advance publicity has not been excellent. In a Friday morn- ing story, The Daily reported that the concert's Detroit promoters were involved in a massive scalping ring that violated the show contract and effectively prevented the best tick- ets from reaching bona fide ticket buyers. The promoters denied the charges; whichrwere based on sever- al near-identical accounts from tic- ket scalpers. Dylan himself, recluse minstrel of the previous decade, is not yet in the stomach, but he is in the throat. He sits in a dressing room, protected from his vehement fans by three thickly - muscled gentlement who wear blue "Tour '74" buttons. And what is Mr. Dylan doing is his dressing room? Dressing, we are told. Hours later we will learn that he was "dressing" in a dull brown suit and a white shirt buttoned to the neck without a tie.' THE REAL ACTION, however, is in the room next door. In the mind's eye, Dylan can be seen put- ting on his pants and deodorizing his armpits as several uneasy people en- ter the adjacent conference room. Assorted UAC-Daystar officials and a pair of reporters follow the notor- ious Peter Andrews, who is not real- ly such a bad guy but has the look of a sleepless rat. People in Ann Arbor know of An- drews as a heavy in the local rock music business, but those who fol- He looks nervous, probably because Graham has spent the last two hours questioning him about the matter of large-scale ticket-scalping. Graham, dressed to kill in penny loafers and a decrepit windbreaker, listens to the allegations. Graham softens and launches into a vignette of the "dirty but honest" music business. "We are like honest Mafiosi," he says. "We all have our own areas, you know what I mean?" His wash- cloth face convulses in a fresco of "Maybe I misjudged Bageris," says Graham. I gotta say it, there's a little hanky-panky going on here. No, no, I better say it right: Somebody's fuckin' around with this concert." vv,:> -"r:" ". :r:,::"::};Am va v:"vY"a--".A"Y:.-A^".":.".x: vvf.nswamie mem s ok at the olworld from the chair. "Sure! I think we're in the dirtiest business there is! But Bob is my man." Bageris sits spider-like, limbs folded, saying nothing. He glares at the reporters. They glare back. As Easthope, Andrews, and Graham battle over the ethics of rock and roll promotion, a long-haired fellow with another "Tour '74" button cross- es the back of the room and enters Dylan's dressing room with a huge acrylic portrait of the man who is known backstage as Him. This provokes laughter among some of the assembled conferees, but soon it is realized that this is a pa- rade route. The hairy gentleman is followed by handmaidens. The handmaidens are young wo- men with sculpted hips and breasts falling out of silk blouses. Noses held high, they pass into His dressing room carrying gifts: plates of cut fruit, bottles of champagne and bas- kets of mixed nuts. Graham explains: "We gotta run a tight show. This guy won't go on stage unless he's got fresh-cut lem- ons for his lemonade. Gotta keep him happy . . . Annie, where are 'da Slemons?" Annie, who wears glitter-crusted eyelids and no shirt to speak of, tosses a wink at Bageris and runs out into the hallway. THE JAWS OF the men in the room continue to pump, until finally Graham agrees to make a plea to the audience for help in handling "ticket discrepancies" at the end of the show. Easthope and the rest of the Ann Arbor contingent demand a thorough questioning of Bamboo em- ployes. Graham reiterates his faith: "On my son--" he raises his right hand-"on the tlife of my son, I swear to you that I trust this man." low him into the room make Pete look like a flyweight in a greasy leather jacket. The legendary Bill Graham, a man with a voice like a Bronx butcher and a face like a washcloth, erupts through the door. "I don't know who you are, motherfuckers," Graham hollers, pointing a menacing finger at the re- porters. "But you're saying some bad shit about my man, and I'm gonna throw you out of this building be- fore you can turn your head around." His "man" is Robert "Bob" Bager- is, Detroit's number one rock pro- moter. It is said that Bageris, presi- dent of Bamboo Enterprises, is to De- troit rock as Graham is to the na- tion's rock: the boss. Bageris looks like an aging Rick Nelson. Like many other young peo- ple of Southfield, Bageris wears styled hair and a Miami Beach cop- pertone tan worn atop third degree acne burns. implicit trust. "I got me a man in Philly, a man in Montreal, a man in St. Louis. My man in Detroit is this man right here, Bob is my Detroit man, I trust him. He's never done me wrong." ENTER THOMAS EASTIOPE, the feisty assistant vice president for student services at the University, and a slayer of the dragons who would control the student dollar. "Mr. Graham," Easthope begins. "Please, BILL is my name. Call me Bill." Easthope clearly has not arrived to exchange cordialities. "Mr. Graham," he repeats, "the kids here aren't go- ing to take this kind of thing much longer. You know what I'm talking about. If you really believe in this business, you better clean it up if you ever want to come back to this town, 'cause your people are runnin' a dirty business." Graham sticks out his arms and legs simultaneously, almost falling He points to Bageris. Easthope, now up on his hind legs, counterattacks: "On my SIX chil- dren, I swear to you that this guy's lettin' these kids get ripped off!" Two hours later, halfway through the concert, Graham is a changed man. "I didn't believe you guys at first," he says. "But you're right, something funny is goin' on here. I looked out there at the kids during the first set, and I saw 'dis big hole, like 80 seats, nobody sittin' in 'em. I thought, this is a sellout, some- thing's gotta be wrong." "Maybe I misjudged this guy (Ba- geris) ", says Graham. "I gotta say it, there's a little hanky-panky goin' on here. No, no, I better say it right: Somebody's fuckin' around with this concert. It's like you eat a good meal, but there's one little fishbone caught in your mouth." Backstage, Bageris repeats his de- nials of any wrongdoing: "Sure, there's problems with ticket-scalp- Doily Photo by TOM GOTTLIEB ers everywhere, but I resent you try- ing to fix that at the expense of my name. I had nothing to do with it." When Dylan emerges from his dressing room for the final set, the thickly-muscled guards form a pha- lanx and bulldoze people out of the way as he walks toward the stage. As he mounts the stairs, he appears to smile. This is some comfort, as he does not smile once on the stage during the entire show. AFTER THE ENCORE, Bill Graham walks acros3 the stage, takes off his fedora and asks for attention as the applause fades: "I have one announcement to make. Will everyone who had any problems getting the right tickets please come to either side of the stage? We've had some ticket dis- crepancies. This is the first of 16 cities in which we've had a heavy amount of ticket scalping, and with everybody's help, we can find the people who know how it was done." Drivin' hard, ivin' fast and workin' the ine at Ford By JON CRANE = WAS LUCKY. I didn't see the fac- tories when I first came to town. I didn't see the paper mills and the warehouses. I didn't see much of anything when I first came to Mon- roe. We came late at night and we came fast. We drove up in a 1970 Camaro with a two-barrel 350 V8, a respectable car by Monroe factory-worker stan- dards. Driving was a friend of mine from school named Patrick Murphy. Pat was born in Monroe and grew up alongside most of the guys I had come out here to study. He was for- tunate enough, however, to attend a. college-preparatory Catholic high school instead of the factory-prepar- atory public high school that most Monroe boys go to. Anyway, he knows the town and its people and was a great help in establishing contacts. "I'm taking you over to Sally's", said Pat as we pulled into town, "It's the, only place that's open this late on a Thursday night." Sally's is a dim-lit topless bar and grill on the West side of Monroe. Its five high-school age waitresses take turns dancing to a jukebox, cheered on by the moans and yells of the all- male clientele. Sally, a tough old dame, in leather and high heels, keeps order and tends bar. The loudest and most raucous cheerers that night were very drunk, very muscular, blue-denimed, young factory workers. I nudged Pat, then pointed to the blue-denims. Pat looked over at them then turn- ed back and whispered, "Yeah, those are the'guys you're looking for. The blond, on the far right, 'drives the 'vette, we saw out front. One of the other guys has a nice 'vette too. We'll probably see them later on tonight at Monroe, but these men also possess an overpowering tendency for escap- ism. They drink and drive with'com- plete abandonment. They sincerely believe that they will indeed split for the coast as soon as they get the bread together or the next time the boss tells them off. And their whole after hours existence is led with a ferocious nihilistic-speedway Inten- sity. Obviously, these overpowering and opposing forces result in fierce in- ner conflict. The battlegrounds and weapons in these conflicts are the massive roaring, chunks of die-cast, v8 steel, the 'hot cars.' Both master and slave, the car could take its driver far away with a squeal of rub- ber and a puff of noxious fumes, but instead it usually takes him to work. This is how most young Monroe factory workers resolve the conflict, by trying to play both games at once. The country roads leading out to the Ford factories are the most popular racing strips, not because they are the most challenging stretches of asphalt but because they lead to a paycheck. The Monroe fac- tory worker needs the exhiliration of a high-speed brush with death be- fore and after facing the reality of earning a living, in much the same way that office workers need a cup of coffee, every morning. Eventually this suicidal work-all- day and drink-all-night schedule is too much for them to take. So like their fathers before them they trade in their "wheels" for a down pay- ment on a station wagon, and be- come a responsible hardworking member of the silent majority. And on those rare occasions when that desire to escape cannot be suppres- sed, the old Monroe factory worker Daily Photo by TOM GOTTLIEB r I told the girl that we were in a hurry but that I would like to talk to her for an hour or so about Mon- roe and the factories some other time. WE TOOK OFF again, screaming through town in Pat's Camaro. In no time at all we came upon a supermarket with a huge parking lot. Sitting in the parking lot, their engines growling, were the two Cor- vettes we had seen at Sally's. They were kept company by other vehicles, parked like the Corvettes or cruising around the lot at five miles per hour. Occasionally, one of the cruisers would bull uDnex.t. to a nairked crr Ford tomorrow night." And then, vrooooom, the Trans- Am cruiser was gone, lost in the night. Perhaps he'd take a few prac- tice runs at tomorrow's race track. Maybe he'd just head home. It was three o'clock. Work starts at eight. THE YOUNG MONROE factory worker is the child of an old Monroe factory worker. He makes $9,000 a year to his father's $15,000. He is high school educated or at least he has a diploma stating that he is high school educated. He often has had some sort of run in with laxed is when I'm driving in my Mustang." I was back in Sally's talk- ing to a factory worker. He'd had a fight with his girlfriend and was go- ing to pick up one of the dancers for concilation. "And I'm gonna spend a lot of time driving that baby real soon. I'm splitting for the coast next month as soon as I get the bread together." The waitress with the loose bikini- bottom latch was standing nearby, picking up snatches of our conversa- tion. She was on her break and she signalled for me to come over. "Aren't you the dude that just wants telling me about going to California for a couple years now. He'll never go. And when you see a Mustang parked out front with 351 written on the side, you know the dude is driving a 302." She thought for a second then added, "Oh yeah, and sometimes they stop talking about cars long enough to complain about work." Yet most of these men are bound by an overpowering sense of respon- sibility to their jobs. Missing work for anything less severe than a bro- ken limb was cause for self-hatred. "I felt like such a pussy," one guy