On the Road with Bob Dylan by Larry Sloman Read Free Book Online Page B

tavern shootout. From the start, anyone familiar with the facts could smell a frame. As described by two wounded victims, the suspected killer was a light-skinned black, about six feet tall, with a pencil-thin moustache. Hardly Hurricane. In fact, police were forced to release Rubin and Artis that night, and it wasn’t until four months later that the pair were arrested for the murders, due to the testimony of two habitual criminals who “positively identified” Carter in return for lighter sentences for their own misdeeds, which in one case included robbing the cash register of the freshly shot-up tavern. At any rate, the case got more and more Byzantine and it is fully documented in Carter’s book,
The Sixteenth Round
.
    So on June 29, 1967, Carter and Artis went to jail. And waited. And waited. The luster of Hurricane’s fame began to wear off, and soon he was a forgotten man, rotting in Rahway State Prison. And it wasn’t until eight long years later that some support for Rubin was generated. Some reporters in New Jersey and New York began digging for the facts. A defense committee was put together by a young independent screenwriter, Richard Solomon. Hopefully sympathetic celebrities were contacted. Two of those men were George Lois and Bob Dylan.
    Lois is one crazy motherfucker. A Greek florist’s son who cajoled, screamed, ranted, and generally loudly displayed his amazing creative talents and pushed his way into the Madison Avenue Advertising Pantheon. He had just finished reading Rubin’s book when Solomon chanced up to his office one day. It seems that Rubin was convinced that the only people who could promote his innocence were admen, a shrewd decision in a consumer society. Repackage this nigger, sell him to the suburbs, and get his ass out of stir. So Solomon began making the rounds of advertising agencies.Fat chance. The liberals of Madison Avenue didn’t want to know from a nigger with a shaved head who beat the shit out of white boys in the ring and allegedly shot the shit out of white adults in the bars. Hardly the stuff that would go over big in Scarsdale. They all turned Solomon down, but they all agreed on one thing. George Lois was the only lunatic that would take on a cause like that.
    So Solomon approached George that day. “Mr. Lois, I’m here to ask you to support Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, a boxer—” Lois, having just finished the book, almost jumped for joy. “Sure, kid, listen, well …” And he began plotting out a campaign. “But Mr. Lois, you may scare off some of your advertisers by supporting Rubin,” Solomon was so amazed that he was actually hedging, warning Lois, based on his experience with the other admen. Lois laughed, “Hey schmuck, you working for or against this nigger? I’ll do it.” And a few days later, Lois went out to visit Rubin, armed with a full campaign that included a large celebrity drive (which ultimately netted people like Muhammed Ali, who chaired the committee, Walt Frazier, Billy Friedkin, Dyan Cannon, Johnny Cash, etc.), fund-raising activity, and a “The Only Innocent Hurricane” T-shirt. The ball was rolling.
    And then it rolled out to California. Solomon sent Dylan a copy of Rubin’s book, Dylan began it and couldn’t put it down. He decided that as soon as he came east, he’d go out and meet the man. And he did.
    One of the first things that Dylan did when he arrived in New York that summer was to take a ride with Richard out to Trenton State Prison, Rubin’s latest home. I went out there too, a few months later, and talked with Hurricane. We spent about three hours together that day, holed up in the back of the prison library, Rubin nattily dressed in brown boots, pressed slacks, and turtle-neck, sipping coffee from a plastic container. Carter had been rotting in this shithole, refusing to eat convict food, refusing to dress in convict garb, refusing to be fucked in his convict asshole. Just obsessed with one thing, devoting all his