#rob stoner

[teddypng]

Joan Baez and Rob Stoner during the filming of Renaldo & Clara, 1975.

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

The Rolling Thunder Revue—Burlington, VT, November 8, 1975 © Ken Regan.

[bestfrozentreats2]

Link Wray, Robert Gordon, Rob Stoner at Pinkpop Festival, Geleen, Netherlands, 1978.

[1976desire]

bob dylan, rob stoner, and joan baez, 1975. photo by ken regan

[foggycatgarden]

Bob Dylan & Rob Stoner, Working on the set list, New Haven 1975. Photo by Ken Regan

[clownes-van-zandt]

(from left to right) Rob Stoner, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Eric Andersen performing at Gerde's Folk City in New York

photographed by Fred W. McDarrah on October 23, 1975

[guy60660]

Rob Stoner

[dollarbin]

Dollar Bin #16:

Roger McGuinn's Cardiff Rose

At some point in 1974 Roger McGuinn must have really pissed off Kris Kristofferson and Bobby Neuwirth.

The details are lost to time and alcohol, which is great because it leaves us free to fabricate the events. Maybe Roger made a pass at Rita, or praised Stephen Stills, or claimed that his Dylan ripoff Mr. Spaceman is a good song based on an original idea.

Whatever McGuinn did, it was bad, because it led to the song Rock and Roll Time.

What other explanation could there be for a song this awful? Neuwirth and Kristofferson are listed as co-writers, along with McGuinn, and even at their drunkest neither Bobby nor Kris ever even dreamt of a song this intolerable.

The thing is, Kristofferson, in my experience, is pretty incapable of open cruelty. Kris is my sixteenth cousin, or something, so I've occasionally spent time around the guy at family reunions. He's always dazed, humble and smiling, more eager to talk about the greatness that was my grandmother than his own accomplishments, which he calls meager. And his wife of 40+ years accepts no nonsense and is incredibly kind. So he's gotta be a good guy. Plus we all know that Kris was the only ethical person in the room when New Yorkers laid into Sinead O'Connor at Bobfest.

So what the hell did Roger do to Kris that made him so angry that he helped McGuinn with this intolerable anthem, which opens with Roger asking the question, "Do You Think I'm A Loser?", to which we all instantly answer with a very strong "Yes!"?

But hold on. Maybe it wasn't anger after all. Yeah! Here's what I think actually happened:

I'll bet Neuwirth was a joker. After all, Dylan, the original jokerman, loved Neuwirth until he grumped off to Woodstock in 66. So I'm guessing that in 74 Roger, Kris and Neuworth were all very, very drunk when Neuwirth decided to play a joke on good old McGuinn.

All it took was a paper napkin. McGuinn famously bugged the hell out of Dylan for a song idea in 69 until Dylan relented and scrawled the first mediocre thing that came in his mind onto the nearest napkin. The result was Ballad of Easy Rider, the last great song McGuinn ever wrote.

(Yes, I just claimed that McGuinn did not write a good song after 1969. It's true. Have you listened to Car Phone recently?)

So I'm guessing Neuwirth wrote the following on a napkin then surrepticiously left it on the bar for Roger to gobble up the moment he and Kris stumbled out into the evening:

Great song idea from me and Kris when Roger was off draining the main vein: "Rock and Roll Time." First line: Do You Think I'm a Loser?

Then McGuinn, who was forever in need of a hit song basically from the moment Gene Clark first left the Byrds, thought he still had the magic touch when it came to ideas from discarded napkins, so he hustled home, finished the song, credited it to all three of them, and then sold zero copies of his 1976 album as a result.

Smooth move Roger!

Indeed, the album, Cardiff Rose, is a collection of terrible miscalculations. Let's make a handy list that McGuinn is welcome to claim that he wrote himself for the upcoming reissue's liner notes:

Jolly Roger believed that what the world needed in 1975 was Soft Rock Pirate Music. So he wrote the title track and covered Pretty Polly as well. The world needed a lot of things in 75: for example, we needed someone to give us a firm heads up on climate change, as well as another someone to interest a young Donald Trump in a one way ticket to Uranus, and a final someone to punch Stephen Stills solidly in the nose. Soft Rock Sea Shanties were not on that list.

McGuinn failed to take advantage of a top notch band on this record. If you made it to the guitar solo, you'll have heard that Rock and Roll Time is partially salvaged by none other than Mick Ronson. You know Ronson. 75 found him in-between Bowie's Spiders and Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review. Ronson plays all over the record and gets a producer credit. Mick and everyone else was so impressed with the resulting record that Cardiff Rose is not mentioned in any way whatsoever on Ronson's Wikipedia page. I'll bet Mick's grandkids dedicate a few hours each week to hunting the web, seeking out and destroying any links they can find between grandpa Mick and this album.

Roger managed to swipe yet another Dylan masterpiece on this record, Blood on the Tracks' outtake Up To Me, which was entirely unheard by the public at that point. Score one for Roger. But he listened to Dylan's quintessential take and felt that the song needed to rock. ¡Jesus Christo Roger! Buy a frickin clue.

Ronson isn't the only Dylan regular to appear on Cardiff Rose. Our favorite bass player to name drop, Rob Stoner, is on the record as well, plus drummer Howie Wyeth and multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield, who was a teenager at this point. Stoner hopefully did not corrupt Mansfield's youth by explaining the origins of his surname.

The funny thing is that much of the iconic Rolling Thunder sound arguable comes right from these misguided sessions. That's because Neuwirth played a second joke on McGuinn immediately after this record by grabbing Ronson, Stoner, Wyeth and Mansfield and jumping off Roger's pirate ship of fools and straight into Dylan's Rolling Thunder Band. Dylan's ship had come in once again, and they were all eager to don white face and perform some far superior piracy by helping Dylan blow our minds.

If Dylan had decided to make Up To Me into a Rolling Thunder screamer we'd probably all love it.  But Dylan knew better. He'd listened to Cardiff Rose.