Sam Shepard - The Rolling Thunder Logbook.

JOHNNY DARK IS BEHIND THE WHEEL . The white Chevy Nova is rolling down through San Anselmo, lazy, spoiled brat of a California town. Teen-age pool halls, sporting goods. Arco stations. The rear end of the car is dragging from the weight of roofing paper and galvanized nails.

Its hard to see Dylan ever hitting what he once was back in the sixties, pipes up Johnny out of nowhere. I mean I guess its not in the cards or something. He already had his day, I guess. Im daydreaming on the three-year lease weve just landed on a twenty-acre horse ranch and thinking about all the work thats left to do before we can move in. Weve got less than a week left to get it all done and the idea of Dylan seems like a distant ghost. Its a long way back to the mid-sixties and dancing naked to How DOES IT FEEL? in the bedroom of an older woman.

I mean he still writes some good songs, but its not like it was back then. I couldnt believe it the first time I saw Everybody Must Get STONED; on the jukebox. I mean there it was on the jukebox, right in front of everybody. Right there in a restaurant on Christopher Street. I couldnt believe you could play that kinda stuff in public while you were eatin your cheeseburger. Johnny keeps shifting the gears and talking to the windshield. Im filled with a mixture of the past and all this new life happening to me now. Installing wood-burning stoves, roofing, fencing, foaling corrals, getting ready for the rains.

We slide off the freeway at the Paradise Drive exit, past Big 4 Rents, Dennys, North Bay Lumber Company. Hes still going on about the life expectancy of a star and how even events have a birth, life, and death. We pull up in the suburbs. Temporary digs. An area that looks like the outcome of a recent battle between opposing bands of landscape architects, having nothing to do with the original lay of the land. Inside, on a pine table, is a green note: Dylan called - Will call back later. Im standing there staring at it, surrounded on all sides by cardboard Safeway boxes filled with books, toys, everything collected for the big move. Dylan called? I cant put it together. Something wont compute.

We were just talking about him, shouts Johnny over a stream of piss from the bathroom.

Dylan called here? Why would Dylan call? I dont even know him. Im weaving sideways through the kitchen repeating the note out loud. My eyes finally fall on an L.A. phone number at the bottom of the note. I return the call but no Dylan. Instead, I get an entangled series of secretaries, lawyers, business managers, each one with a guarded approach.

Shepard? Shepard who? Are you the one who killed his wife?

No, Im the astronaut.

Oh. Well, whats all this about? Why did Dylan call you?

Thats what Im calling you about.

Oh. Well, just a minute. Ill see if I can find somebody.

The phone goes blank and then a new voice. A man voice. Then blank again. Then a woman voice. Then back to a man.

Yes, Mr. Shepard. Let me explain. Bob is going on a secret tour in the Northeast. Hes calling it Rolling Thunder - the Rolling Thunder Revue.

Theres something about the way this chump is calling Dylan Bob that immediately pisses me off, combined with the confusion of trying to figure out where in the hell the Northeast is exactly. Before I know it, something hostile is coming out of my mouth.

If its so secret, how come youre telling me about it?

This doesnt go over so good on the other end. A long blankness. I try to soften my inflections as best I can. Well, whats he want me for? Ive got a green note here that says he called.

Yes, you see, hes doing a movie of the tour and he wants a writer.

Ahaa! Writer! Thats me. Writer. Okay, whats the scoop? (In my best Chicago-reporter style.)

Then comes a long vagueness about a projected film with me somehow providing dialogue on the spot for all the heavies.

Its going to be a high-pressure situation. Youre used to working under pressure, arent you?

Oh, yeah. Sure. I dont scare easy, if thats what you mean.

Good. When can you leave?

Thats how it works, right? Dylan calls you and you drop everything. Like the lure of the Sirens or something. Everybody dropping their hoes in 6 mid-furrow and racing off to the Northeast somewhere. Im bleating into the phone. This couldnt have come at a worse time. Im right in the middle of moving into a horse ranch. Zero on the other end. Absolute nothing. The guy mustve gone unconscious on the horse ranch part. You still there?

So when can you leave? comes the voice. Tomorrow? The pressures already on and I havent even packed my toothbrush yet. Half an hour ago everything was cool. I was inside my life. Now its like a hurricane has struck my intestines.

Look, I gotta have some time to think about this. My stomach feels like Luca Brasi has just knocked on the door to collect my debts. I dont fly either. I only take trains. Havent flown since Mexico, 1963. Loud, exasperated exhale on the other end as though the guys convinced hes got a turkey on the line.

Jesus, thats going to take you a week to get out there then. Theyre leaving New York at the end of the week. You gotta leave right away. Theres a charley horse in my left arm from the grip on the phone.

All right, all right, Ill let you know first thing in the morning. Phones go down and Im gasping for air.

THE SANTA FE IS GONE . The era of Great Train Competition has been swallowed whole by the government and spit out under the science-fiction handle of Amtrak. Same trains, different colors. Different symbols. No more beautiful orange-and-red Indian chief in flaming feathers, brown hawk-beak nose pointing down the tracks. Now its a hard-edged blue-and-red-arrow symbol. Straight business. Transportation. Same level as the subways. The government is moving your body from one place to another. No messing around. After all, the Great Plains are just a blank space to get across between East and West. Who wants to feel like theyre actually traveling across land. Once youre inside it feels the same though. Same spasm rocking motion. Same forty-year-old cars. Quick change of balance in the body so you dont go sailing into somebodys dinner. Staggering down through narrow aisles. Falling through curtained bedroom compartments. Best place to hear the tracks is when the toilet flushes and that stained aluminum pan at the bottom opens up and yawns at the bare earth.

Now Im really on it. The Iron Horse heading East. Sacramento, Cheyenne, Chicago. I used to think the only place to write was on a train. Perfect temporary environment. On the road to see the Wizard.

THE CHICAGO CONNECTIONS MADE . Im rolling again. This time the bed is placed horizontal to the train and makes for total insomnia. Black window. The union porters are all black again but this time infected with that familiar New York cynicism. The whole feeling on this train is New York. Its like a testing ground before you strike Manhattan. Just to see if you can take it. I take it lying down. I lock myself in. I go out to eat and thats it. Im seated in the dining car with a black kid from Baltimore. Shades, floppy hat, wild paranoid eyeballs, long fingers. He talks like a seasoned train rider. Im gonna bring back my lady from Japan. I married her over there and Im gonna bring her back and give her a train ride for a present. Im gonna put her on this train here. He whips out a color snapshot of his white bride and lays it down on top of the silverware, grinning at me all the time. Then he swings into chick stories. Big City chick stories. The kind only a black kid could tell. Knew this lady, man, shed eat you alive. I swear to God, man, shed tore your ass apart. She got herself in trouble, see. She run her number down and got herself knocked up every way but sideways by some dude. Then she had the kid, see. The dude, he split, but she chase him down and git married to the cat, you dig. She force him to it. Then she come back to Baltimore. He stayed down South somewhere and she come back up. And the dudes gettin some kinda government check, see, and he send some of it up to her to help out with the kid, dig. So shes collectin this mean green for a time, but then she finds out that if hes outa the picture, she get the whole trip. Can you dig it? So she get her girls together and send them down there and they off the cat. Just murder his ass like that. Then she collect the whole trip. Murder him just to get that check! Im tellin ya, man, chicks in Baltimore kill your ass for a nickel. No lie. They mean, man. She a young chick too. Maybe sixteen years old. I dont react. My stomach takes it in along with the crusty cheeseburger. He turns his face toward the window and peers out at Ohio. Vast cold fields. A crust of frost on the harvested corn stumps. He shakes his head at the window. Man, Id hate to be stuck out there. I slide back to my room and stand in the middle of it, swinging with the train.