On a bright, cool afternoon in July, Jacob Maymudes sat on the deck of the small guesthouse he rents in the Los Feliz neighborhood here, reflecting on the strange journey of his first book, “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” which will be published on Sept. 9 and has already excited interest.
晴朗凉爽的七月下午,洛斯菲利兹附近一家小客栈,雅可布·梅穆迪斯(Jacob Maymudes)坐在露台上,回忆着自己第一本书的奇异旅程。这本9月9日才出版的《鲍勃·迪伦的另一面》(Another Side of Bob Dylan),已经开始引起了人们的兴趣。
“It was never my intention to write a book about Bob,” he said, summoning up the difficult period in his life when he resisted completing the memoir left unfinished by his father, Victor Maymudes (pronounced may-MOOD-es), a longtime member of Mr. Dylan’s inner circle who had bitterly fallen out with him in 1997 and died four years later, leaving behind 24 hours of taped reminiscences.
“我从来没想过写一本关于鲍勃的书,” 他的父亲维克多·梅穆迪斯(Victor Maymudes)是迪伦小圈子里的长期成员,1997年和迪伦大吵一架,四年后与世长辞,留下了24个小时的口述往事录音带,雅可布回忆,在自己人生中艰难的时刻,他拒绝写完父亲未完成的回忆录。
Now 34, Jake grew up long after the Dylan legend had been formed, but he comes honestly to his casual “Bob.” He was 7 when he first met Mr. Dylan, at the back lot of Universal Studios. Jake was with his father, who was continually on the road with Mr. Dylan, carrying out an assortment of essential backstage assignments: as tour manager, chauffeur and body man, not to mention chess-playing companion.
如今杰克(Jake,雅可布的爱称——译注)34岁了,早在他长大成人之前,迪伦的传奇就已经成型,但是关于这位亲切的“鲍勃”,杰克总是实话实说。他第一次见到迪伦是和父亲一起,在通用录音棚的后院,杰克那年七岁。父亲经常和迪伦一起巡演,担任各种幕后工作——巡演经纪人、司机和保镖,更别说还要在酒店里陪迪伦下棋。
They were roles he had been playing, off and on, since the early 1960s, when he was known as Mr. Dylan’s protective sidekick: together with him in London for Mr. Dylan’s first overseas concert; in a Manhattan hotel suite for a marijuana-infused summit with the Beatles; in Malibu, where Mr. Dylan’s first wife, Sara, is said to have poured out her marital troubles to Jake’s mother, Linda Wylie, while the unreleased “Blood on the Tracks” played on the stereo and Mr. Dylan suddenly walked in.
从20世纪60年代初,他的父亲就断断续续担任这些角色,被视为保护着迪伦的死党,迪伦去伦敦,第一次在海外举行演唱会时带他同行;迪伦在曼哈顿酒店套房里和“披头士”(Beatles)共享大麻时他也在场,据说迪伦的第一任妻子莎拉(Sara)在马里布向杰克的母亲琳达·怀利(Linda Wylie)倾吐婚姻中的烦恼,两人边说边用音响放着尚未公开发行的《音轨上的血迹》(Blood on the Tracks),这时迪伦突然走了进来。
(“He said the songs were so painful, he didn’t know how anybody listened to them,” Ms. Wylie said in a phone interview last week.)
(“他说这些歌太痛苦了,他不知道别人听了会怎么想,”怀利上周接受电话采访时说。)
Not quite six years older than Mr. Dylan, Victor, an imposing, dark-haired six-footer, was an established figure on the folk scene — a promoter, manager and club owner in Los Angeles — when he came to New York and met the singer in 1961 or 1962.
维克多比迪伦大六岁,是个仪表堂堂的黑发男人,身高六英尺,1961或1962年左右,他来到纽约,结识了迪伦,之前在洛杉矶做过歌手推广、经纪人,开过俱乐部,已经是民谣界的成名人物。
The two instantly connected, and as Mr. Dylan’s career took off, Victor moved in and out of his orbit — drifting away to pursue projects of his own, but always circling back to Mr. Dylan.
两人一见如故,迪伦的事业起飞后,维克多与他的人生轨迹一再交汇。他有时会离开一下,去实现自己的目标,但最后总会回到迪伦身边。
“He was perceived as the keeper of the secrets,” said David Hajdu, a music historian whose book “Positively 4th Street” describes the early ’60s folk scene. “His reputation was for being enigmatic, closemouthed, trustworthy, impenetrable.”
“他被视为秘密的保管者,”音乐历史学家,《肯定是四号街》(Positively 4th Street)的作者大卫·哈尔杜(David Hajdu)说,“他以神秘莫测、善于保密、值得信赖和滴水不进著称。”
Victor’s presence at the creation mattered to Mr. Dylan, said Sean Wilentz, the Princeton historian and author of “Bob Dylan in America,” a 2010 best seller. “It’s a sense of loyalty, of kinship,” he said. “You were brothers together. You were scuffling. That’s why Dylan brought him back.”
普林斯顿大学历史学家西恩·韦伦兹(Sean Wilentz)的著作《鲍勃·迪伦在美国》(Bob Dylan in America)是2010年的畅销书,他说维克多从一开始的参与就对迪伦很重要。“他对迪伦来说意味着忠诚和亲人,”他说,“兄弟俩总免不了打打闹闹,所以迪伦总是让他回来。”
Brought him back even after an episode involving a teenage girl that led to Victor’s being fired as tour manager in 1995. Another star might have banished him. Instead, Mr. Dylan had Victor scout for and look after his real estate holdings. A quarrel over one property caused the final, acrimonious break in 1997.
1995年,因为一个年轻女孩的关系,维克多从巡演经纪人的位子上被解雇,发生了这样的事,迪伦后来还是叫他回来。换了别的明星可能早就把他赶走了。可是这件事之后,迪伦还是让维克多帮自己寻找不动产。结果到1997年,因为一处地产,两人吵了起来,导致了最终的决裂。
In 2000, Victor, who was flat broke, signed a book contract with St. Martin’s Press and began speaking into a tape recorder. A year later, he died of an aneurysm, at 65. The unfinished book became another mythic item in the ever-expanding “Dylanology,” and curiosity grew.
2000年,一文不名的维克多与圣马丁出版社签约写一本书,开始对着录音机口述。一年后,他死于动脉瘤,享年65岁,这本未完成的书也成了日益庞大的“迪伦学”中的又一个神秘课题,人们对它的好奇与日俱增。
“What will he reveal?” as Mr. Hajdu put it.
正如哈尔杜所说,人们好奇“他到底披露了什么?”
It was a question Jake was in no rush to answer. He was still troubled by his father’s death and the sense that Victor had placed his needs above those of Jake and his family.
杰克并不急着回答这个问题。当时父亲的死仍旧令他困扰,眼前的局面令他觉得父亲把自己的需要置于杰克和全家人之上。
Then, in January 2013, a fire destroyed the New Mexico house where Ms. Wylie had been living. Though long estranged from Victor, she had kept his ashes in a box. It was incinerated in the blaze, and only the ashes, and the tapes, seemed to remain of Victor.
2013年1月,一场火灾烧毁了怀利女士在新墨西哥长期居住的房子。她和维克多尽管长期疏远,但还留着他的骨灰盒。那个骨灰盒也在大火中付之一炬,维克多遗下的东西似乎只有骨灰和那些磁带了。
“The whole idea was to write this homage to my father,” Jake, who has a career in visual effects in film and TV, recalled of his decision to finish his father’s work. “Everything else burned up.”
“我写这本书是想向父亲致敬,”杰克回忆自己最终决定完成父亲这本书时的情形,他的职业是做电影与电视的视觉特效,“其他的一切都已经烧光了。”
He put an hour of raw audio on YouTube, and “quickly I got 400 hits in a day,” he said. Biographers, journalists and fans got in touch, urging him to release the other 23 hours or to turn them into a book.
他在YouTube网站放出了一段一小时的原始音频,“很快就有了每天400次的点击率,”他说。传记作家、新闻记者和粉丝竞相和他联系,催促他赶快把另外23个小时的素材也放出来,或者写一本书。
Jake diligently transcribed the tapes and sent material off to his father’s publisher, but got a firm rejection. O.K., then, he would publish the book himself. But a Kickstarter campaign fell far short of the $45,000 goal, even after an article in Rolling Stone brought in fresh donations.
杰克勤奋地誊写这些磁带中的内容,把这些素材寄给父亲的出版商,但是遭到了坚定的拒绝。好吧,他决定自己出版这本书。但在Kickstarter网站上发起的众筹项目未能达到4.5万美元的目标,《滚石》(Rolling Stone)杂志报道了此事,为他带来了一些新的捐助,但最后还是没有筹到足够的钱。
With the guidance of an agent, Jake tried again, piecing together his father’s free-form tales and crosschecking the jumble of incidents against books like Clinton Heylin’s “Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995.” This time, when he tried St. Martin’s he got a contract.
在一个经纪人的帮助下,杰克再次尝试,他把父亲随意散漫的故事组织起来,把这些混乱的事件和其他书籍交叉对照,比如克林顿·赫林(Clinton Heylin)的《鲍勃·迪伦:被偷窃时刻里的人生,1941-1995的每一天》(Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)。之后他又向圣马丁出版社投稿,终于得到了合同。
“Another Side of Bob Dylan” is an unusual addition to the giant Dylan oeuvre, the quirky stepchild of Mr. Dylan’s own looping narratives. One thread explores Victor’s adventures in Sunset Strip bohemia. In the 1950s, he was a co-founder of the Unicorn, a club that attracted the likes of Lenny Bruce and Marlon Brando. In the ’60s and ’70s, Victor palled with Dennis Hopper, going to Peru to help build sets and scout locations (and ingest mountains of cocaine) for Hopper’s ill-starred 1971 epic, “The Last Movie.”
对于迪伦的全部作品来说,《鲍勃·迪伦的另一面》堪称精彩的补充,很像迪伦自己那种循环叙述的诡异继子。书中一条线索追溯了维克多在洛杉矶落日大道上的波西米亚冒险生涯。20世纪50年代,维克多是独角兽俱乐部的创始人之一,伦尼·布鲁斯(Lenny Bruce)和马龙·白兰度(Marlon Brando)等人都是那里的常客。六七十年代,维克多和丹尼斯·霍珀(Dennis Hopper)成了好朋友,他曾经到秘鲁去为霍珀1971年那部多灾多难的史诗片《最后一部电影》(The Last Movie)搭建布景,寻找外景,还吸食了巨多的可卡因。
The second narrative is an intimate, conversational account of Victor’s tempestuous friendship with Mr. Dylan. It included designing and building a house in New Mexico for Mr. Dylan in the ’70s. Later, Victor bought and fitted out the tour bus Mr. Dylan used on his “Never Ending Tour” in the 1980s and ’90s.
第二条叙事线索是亲密的对话体,讲述了维克多与迪伦狂风暴雨般的友谊。70年代,维克多曾为迪伦在新墨西哥设计并建造了一座房子。后来维克多买下并改装了一辆巡演大巴,正是迪伦在20世纪八九十年代“永不结束的巡演”中使用的那一辆。
But the most vivid passages go back further — to 1964, the pivotal year when Mr. Dylan broke out of the East Coast folkie bubble and made a cross-country journey. Victor took the wheel of a blue Ford station wagon, also joined by the folk musician Paul Clayton and the journalist Peter Karman.
但是最精彩的篇章还发生前面——1964年对于迪伦来说是关键的一年,他从东海岸的民谣泡沫中脱颖而出,做了一次全国巡演。维克多开着一辆蓝色福特旅行车,同行的还有民谣乐手保罗·克莱顿(Paul Clayton)和记者彼得·卡尔曼(Peter Karman)。
“It was a group of friends, all in the know, a nucleus of hip in America,” Mr. Wilentz said of the 1964 tour. “It was something special. The civil rights movement was going on.”
“他们是一群彼此知根知底的朋友,美国时髦人士的核心,”韦伦兹这样评价这次1964年巡演。“这是一次特别的巡演,当时民权运动也在进行中。”
The stops included a visit to the poet Carl Sandburg, in North Carolina, and a stay in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, where Mr. Dylan was denied entrance to a blacks-only bar. Back on the road, they heard early Beatles hits on the car radio, and Mr. Dylan feverishly scrawled lyrics in a spiral notebook.
巡演途中,他们到北卡罗来纳访问了诗人卡尔·桑德堡(Carl Sandburg),在新奥尔良过狂欢节,迪伦被只许黑人进入的酒吧拒之门外。回到巡演路上,他们从广播里初次听到“披头士”的金曲,迪伦疯狂地把歌词记在自己的活页笔记本上。
The first inkling of Mr. Dylan’s new fame came in London that May, when he performed at the Royal Festival Hall to an audience much larger than he normally drew in America. Victor draped his large frame over Mr. Dylan as they slipped through the ecstatic crowd.
那年5月,迪伦来到伦敦,有迹象表明他的名声又更进一步,当他在皇家节日大厅演出时,来的观众比平时在美国多得多。最后维克多用高大的身材掩护迪伦从欣喜若狂的人群中逃出去。
Fresh from this triumph, the pair vacationed in Vouliagmeni, Greece, on the Mediterranean. “I explored the coast and swam in the sea,” Victor recalls, while Mr. Dylan stayed in the hotel, “typing and handwriting between smoking cigarettes, and he can do that for longer than anybody I know.”
凯旋之后,两人去了地中海边的希腊武利亚格迈尼度假。“我在海边玩,下海游泳,”维克多回忆,迪伦则留在酒店“打字、写东西,抽烟,他干这个的时间比我认识的任何人都要长”。
Returning to New York, they rushed to a studio, and Mr. Dylan “blurted it all out,” running through 11 new songs, “one after another without rehearsing.”
回到纽约,他们一头冲进录音室,迪伦“把一切都倾吐出来”,一口气录了11首新歌,“一首接一首,连排练都用不着。”
Improbable though this account seems, it squares with the one in Howard Sounes’s book “Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan,” which describes a single six-hour session, lubricated by Beaujolais, that resulted in the album “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” Mr. Dylan’s farewell at age 23 to the blues-inflected folk idiom he had conquered. Two songs — “Chimes of Freedom” and “My Back Pages,” with its soaring refrain, “Ah, but I was so much older then/I’m younger than that now” — signaled the next, visionary phase in Mr. Dylan’s work.
尽管听上去不太可能,但这和霍华德·桑恩斯(Hoiward Sounes)的《沿着公路直行:鲍勃·迪伦传》(Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan)里的描写是吻合的,书中写到鲍勃·迪伦边喝博若莱葡萄酒边录音,一口气录了六个小时,成果就是专辑《鲍勃·迪伦的另一面》。23岁的迪伦用这张专辑向布鲁斯影响的民谣风格告别,因为他已经征服了这种风格。专辑中的《自由的钟声》(Chimes of Freedom)和《我的最后几页》(My Back Pages)是顶峰之作,“啊,我曾经如此苍老,如今却风华正茂”——这预示着迪伦作品中富于远见的新篇章。
Later that summer, he was invited to meet the Beatles at the Delmonico Hotel. The Dylan entourage brought along some marijuana. Mr. Dylan sat down to roll a joint, as Victor and others have reported, but he proved all thumbs, and Victor expertly took command.
那年夏天快结束的时候,迪伦受邀去德尔莫尼克酒店会见“披头士”。迪伦一行人随身带了大麻,根据维克多和其他人的说法,迪伦坐下卷了一支大麻烟,但是笨手笨脚的,还是维克多麻利地帮他卷好。
It was the first quality weed the Beatles had smoked, but the giddy conversation went on without Mr. Dylan. Exhausted from a string of late nights and a few drinks, “he passed out on the floor!” Victor remembers.
这是“披头士”第一次尝试高品质的大麻烟,但是迪伦没有参与之后的胡言乱语。因为之前熬了好几夜,还喝了酒,“他倒在地板上昏睡过去!”维克多回忆。
Not that the book is an exercise in skeleton rattling or score settling. On the contrary, Victor reverently speaks of Mr. Dylan’s “greatness” and “genius” and rejoices in the “magical mystery tour” Mr. Dylan opened up for him — even as he remained curiously remote. The book suggests that the closer one got to Mr. Dylan, the more unknowable he became. (Mr. Dylan’s representatives did not respond to email and phone requests for comment for this article.)
这本书并不是为了揭丑或者报复。相反,维克多恭敬地说了很多迪伦的“伟大”与“天才”之处,因为能参与迪伦“魔力般的神秘巡演”而感到高兴——尽管迪伦保持着奇异的疏远。这部书说,一个人愈是接近迪伦,就愈是觉得他难以了解(迪伦的代理人并没有回复笔者要求对本文进行评价的电话或电子邮件采访)。
Throughout, Victor is grateful for the many favors Mr. Dylan did him, like bringing him back into the fold, no questions asked, when Victor had run out of money in the ’80s and needed a paycheck. “You’re hired!” he remembers Mr. Dylan saying.
维克多始终感激迪伦为他做的许多事情,比如20世纪80年代期间,维克多身无分文,需要钱花的时候,迪伦带他回到圈子里来,什么也没多问。“你被雇用了,”他记得迪伦当时这么说。
Jake, too, reveres Mr. Dylan. When I went to see him, choice memorabilia were carefully laid out on his bed: set lists from Mr. Dylan’s tours, stray notebook jottings in Mr. Dylan’s hand, as well as a hilariously vituperative letter the singer apparently drafted, on hotel stationery in Tokyo, to a music journalist back home.
杰克也很尊敬迪伦。我去访问他的时候,看到他床头放着精心选择的旧物,其中包括迪伦巡演的曲目表、迪伦亲手写下的零散笔记,还有一封充满谩骂的信件,显然是出自迪伦之手,写在东京某家酒店抬头的信纸上,是给一个美国音乐记者的。
There was also the guest book from the memorial for Victor at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica in 2001. Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and the filmmaker Paul Mazursky all signed it. Mr. Dylan did not attend, Jake is certain, although Jake’s sister, Aerie, told me that a slight figure in a hoodie, Mr. Dylan’s usual garb, slipped into the proceedings and left just as quietly.
2001年,在圣塔莫妮卡的麦凯布吉他店举办了维克多的追思会,杰克手头的签名簿上有汤姆·佩蒂(Tom Petty)、杰克逊·布朗(Jackson Browne)和电影导演保罗·马祖斯基(Paul Mazursky)的签名。杰克记得很清楚,迪伦没来参加,但杰克的姐姐伊莉(Aerie)说,她看见一个穿着连帽衫的身影(迪伦平时的装束)走进人群,然后又悄悄离去。
Next, we climbed into Jake’s secondhand SUV, bought with a portion of his $70,000 book advance, and headed to the 18th Street Coffee House in Santa Monica. Part of a larger complex purchased by Mr. Dylan in the mid-1990s, it was designed and built by Victor.
后来我们走上杰克的二手SUV车,这是他用这本书七万美元预付款中的一部分买来的,我们驶向圣塔莫妮卡18街咖啡屋。那里是迪伦在90年代中期买下的大型地产中的一部分,是由维克多设计并建造的。
“I helped nail the roof, put up these poles, laid the brick,” Jake said. He worked there as a teenager, and Aerie briefly managed the place, until, as has been reported by Mr. Sounes and now Jake, losses in the first year totaled almost $100,000. Aerie was told she would be dismissed.
“我帮忙在屋顶钉钉子,立起柱子,添砖加瓦,”杰克说。十几岁的他当时在那里帮工,伊莉也短暂地管理过那个地方,后来,根据桑恩思和杰克的说法,这里第一年就亏损了将近10万美元。伊莉说自己即将被开除。
“I told him he needed to fire me himself,” she recalled last week, referring to Mr. Dylan. “And that’s what happened.” Mr. Dylan came by, she recalled, and brusquely let her go. Victor, who witnessed the incident, “quit that instant,” Jake writes. He sued Mr. Dylan for retirement funds, and the friendship was never repaired.
“我对他说,他得亲自解雇我才行,”上星期她回忆,“他”是指鲍勃·迪伦,“后来他就这么做了。”迪伦来到店里,粗鲁地让她走人。维克多目睹了这一幕,“当场就辞了,”杰克写道。后来杰克控告迪伦,要求迪伦付自己退休金,两人的友谊再也没能恢复。
“All he had to do was apologize to Aerie and all of this would be different,” Victor told Jake.
“他只需要向伊莉道歉,一切就都大一样了,”维克多对杰克说。
And yet Jake has fond memories of the coffeehouse: Mr. Dylan and Victor playing wordless games of chess; Ray Mancini showing up for sparring sessions with Mr. Dylan at the private boxing club in back; Jake sneaking into Mr. Dylan’s office to find fresh pages, typed on both sides, and with no margins, sitting alongside the old-fashioned typewriter.
但是对于那座咖啡屋,杰克也有着美好的回忆:迪伦和维克多曾在那里,无言地下着象棋;雷·曼西尼(Ray Mancini)来到咖啡屋后的拳击俱乐部,和迪伦练习拳击;杰克溜进迪伦的办公室,用迪伦那台老式打字机在白纸两面打字,一点不留空白。
“He was always nice to me,” Jake said of the man he grew up thinking of as his father’s boss. And except for the Merit cigarettes Jake bummed at age 15, “I never asked anything of him either.”
“他对我一直都很好,”杰克说,他从小一直把那个男人视为父亲的老板。除了15岁那年管他要过几支“荣誉”香烟,“我从没向他要求过任何东西。”