From the Archives: The Long, Lost Bob Johnston
When I count the years back in my mind, this must have been about three years ago — probably spring 2007.
I was finishing my journalism degree at TCU and I was freelancing regularly for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. My editor, Malcolm, had also helped me get my foot in the door at a little magazine called Texas Music. I wrote one article for them — a “bands to watch” feature on Green River Ordinance, who are a local pop/rock band in the vein of Matchbox 20 or Goo Goo Dolls. It was good money and it felt nice to have my name in print like that. I felt like a real rock journalist.
So, I was kicking around freelance story ideas with my friend Dave, a really good journalist and music critic— he’s the kind of guy that breathes the world in and breathes out story ideas — and somewhere in the midst of our conversation one of us mentions that there had been an article on the Arcade Fire in the most recent issue of Mojo that said they had been holed up in some Canadian cathedral with Bob Johnston, former head of Columbia Records, producer of Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen and most famously, several of Bob Dylan’s best records — including Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.
Johnston is something of a legendary figure in the music industry. His mother, Diane, was a songwriter who wrote “Miles and Miles of Texas,” which Asleep at the Wheel turned into a signature song in the ‘70s. He’s in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and lots of folks saw him exclaim with eyes wide open that Dylan had “The Holy Spirit in him!” in the documentary No Direction Home. In his book, Chronicles, Dylan said that Johnston “lived on low country barbecue and he was all charm … Johnston was unreal..”
So the article said that Win Butler, the lead singer of the Arcade Fire, had summoned for Johnston to join them in the church they were recording Neon Bible in.
"He did Blonde on Blonde and Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison and the first Leonard Cohen records, and he has this pretty absurd resume," says Butler. "We just wanted to meet him and soak up the information."
Dave doesn’t just have conversations. Conversations are just brainstorming sessions for articles, and now, since he’s left journalism to finish up his Ph.D., academic papers. Some people are just tuned in like that – they are so aware of the world around them, and what they see and hear and say, that they can synthesize all that information into something creative on the spot. This could be a good story for you, he says. Isn’t Win Butler from The Woodlands, just outside of Houston? Why, you could sell that to Texas Music.
So I did a little digging, and Dave was right, Win was from Texas, and what’s more, so was Bob Johnston — he was originally from Hillsboro, and he had lived in Fort Worth after he returned from the military. This is great; this is a big get.
A lot of being a local feature writer is working the angles, finding a fresh take on a story. The story for local writers is always the city. Fort Worth is the story. So, you have to find new angles on Fort Worth. Who is from here? Who passed through? Do you remember that time Dylan came into the little pizza joint/bar across from TCU and played some songs? Do you think you could find someone who was there? Doesn’t one of Buddy Holly’s Crickets live here? Does T-Bone Burnett’s mom still live over on Modlin Ave.? You spend most of your time working these angles, and then you spend the rest of the time following the fishing line you’ve strung out until it doesn’t go any farther.
A digression: This is why blog culture doesn’t do it for me. Sitting in front of a computer, giving an opinion on a set of MP3s, maybe going out to catch a show every once in a while? Screw that. I’m a reader. I like to sit down and actually read an article. All the way through, and I like to hear a story, and hopefully one I haven’t already heard.
The best work I’ve ever done has been good, ol’ fashioned reporting. It’s not going anywhere, and if the newspaper industry ever wants to stop fishing coins out of the sofa to try to make a profit again, this is the way to do it — write things that are detailed, rich and interesting.
So, I started to string out my line on Bob Johnston. Where could I find this guy? I vaguely knew he was living around Nashville, but no phone numbers were easily available, so I tried a different angle. BMI or ASCAP were dry wells, but one of them forwarded me to The Recording Academy — the people who give out The Grammy Awards. Johnston was a ghost to these people. I think I could have gotten Bob Dylan’s cell phone number a hell of a lot quicker than I got someone to remember the last time they heard from Bob Johnston.
The notebook with his name is probably long gone, but I remember the guy at The Recording Academy being pretty helpful. He said he didn’t know too much about where Bob Johnston was, but he would ask around and get back to me with an answer. I didn’t expect much out of him, to be honest. It seemed like a dead end.
It was a gray day in Fort Worth, and I remember heading home, all hope of finding Johnston pretty much lost when the Grammy guy called me.
He said, with a resoluteness that denoted he had spent most of the afternoon chasing the same dead ends. “I found him. I talked to him. He’s going to call you.”
Phone number. Address. Obtained.
“So, he’ll give you a call sometime today. And, uh, he’s … interesting. He’s a talker.” The guy said.
He doesn’t call for at least a day if my memory serves me well.
“Hello, this is Bob Johnston. They told me you were looking for me. Who are you?”
“Hi, Mr. Johnston. This is Darren White. I’m a reporter from Fort Worth.”
“Fort Worth — well how do you know Bob?”
“Bob? I’m sorry?”
“Bob Dylan. I got a call from [Bob’s manager] saying that you were looking for me.”
“I don’t know Bob Dylan. I called the Recording Academy, and maybe that’s how they tracked you down.”
For the record. I do not know Bob Dylan. One time we were both in Zilker Park in Austin at the same time, but come to think of it, he was on stage and I was about two football fields away from him.
So Johnston and I talk, and it’s great, he’s warm and genial and very, very candid. I explain to him that article hasn’t even been scheduled yet, but I wanted to get in touch with him now so I could be sure I had something in hand before I pitched it. We discussed the Arcade Fire — he called them “good kids” and said that they didn’t really need his help on Neon Bible, they had it all figured out on their own, but that he really enjoyed his time with them.
Now would be a good time for an article, he said, because he was starting his own record label. He told me that the motto would be something to the effect of “give us your tired, your poor and keep your hands off our fucking royalties.”
So here was Bob Johnston, fully alive on the other end of the phone. He called record executives — by name — motherfuckers, he talked about how he felt like he had been forced out at Columbia and how he lived in the country now, borrowing from one budget envelope to pay another, and describing the idea behind his new label in great detail. He described it as a ship, sailing out in a harbor, headed for the open sea, and the ship was picking musicians out of the water — here’s a musician here, and here’s a musician there, and we’re all getting in the boat, he says, and we’re all heading toward the Promised Land.
The thing is, when he got down to the specifics of his operation, it made a lot of sense. Musicians would be signed on one-album contracts, at which point they would retain their master copies of their work. The return on sales would be split between label and artist, making the two more partners and less of the current master/slave position.
So we talk for a little while more, and I hang up the phone, but before I do, Bob asks me to send him a copy of the Mojo article, which I do.
The article on Bob Johnston never made, and I don’t know why.
I know that the editors at Texas Music changed and after that I never really had a foot in the door, and I know that somewhere along the way, I got hired at Parker County Today in Weatherford. Consequently, the publisher of that magazine was the most rabid Bob Dylan fan I have ever met, and he encouraged me to write the story. But I never did.
I called Bob one more time to make sure he got the Mojo article, and to tell him that it didn’t look like the article was going to make, and that I didn’t want to waste his time. He was once again in upbeat form, telling me about Dylan, and how he just let the tapes roll whenever he recorded him, and how he wasn’t the one that put drums on “The Sounds of Silence.” We may have talked about Charlie Daniels. Sadly, I can’t remember.
He did tell me that New Morning was probably his favorite Dylan album, and that he thought it was underrated. Actually, I would agree. I listen to New Morning more than any other record now. I read some folksinger say one time that listening to Highway 61 Revisited was like getting struck by lightning, but he didn’t know anyone who would want to be struck by lightning every day. That’s a weak simile, but I get it.
I called Johnston one more time, but his number was disconnected. He’s had money issues off and on throughout his life — including a rift with the I.R.S. that ended up in concert with Willie Nelson on the I.R.S. Tapes — so maybe he cut his phone off, or maybe the phone company cut it off.
I look back now and I think about my two phone calls with Bob Johnston — a man who made Dylan sound his best, and who recorded some of the most timeless American music ever put to tape, and I think about how effortless the conversations were. Johnston talked to me — 21 years old and I would modestly say not a good interviewer — with the same forceful effusiveness that Dylan described in his book. He was completely charming and likable, even as he described some of the times in his life he felt he had been wronged.
He’s a more of a paradox than even Dylan, really. Here is this guy, firmly an old country hell raiser, and yet completely hip to the world of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Here’s a guy that is a musician and producer, but also a part of the music industry — a guy who doesn’t sound, in the timbre of his voice — like he’s ever left Hillsboro. Who is Bob Johnston? I’m not really the one to say that, but I hope he’s doing well, and I hope we hear more from him, either as a producer or businessman.
