Dylan walked out planning to quit

Planning to quit

He was on an 18-month tour with Tom Petty that he had already decided would be his last. Petty was at the top of his game, Dylan felt he was at the bottom of his, and his own songs had become strangers to him. The Dead had started rehearsing with him, and when they suggested playing some of his old songs, he said he had forgotten something at the hotel and would be right back.

The jazz bar

Four, five, or six blocks along, he heard a jazz combo in a bar that looked like the last stop on a train line in the middle of nowhere. Only a few people sat inside. He went in, got within four feet of the stage, ordered a gin and tonic, and watched an older singer work through jazz ballads. The singer was not forceful, and he did not need to be.

Suddenly the man seemed to have an open window to Dylan's soul. Dylan understood where the power came from, and it was not the singer's voice. It was a technique Dylan had once used automatically, so elemental that he had forgotten it, the way a person might forget how to button his own pants.

Trying it out

He hurried back to the rehearsal hall to try it. At first it was like drilling through a brick wall, and all he could taste was dust. Then something came unhinged, and a blood-choked, coughing grunt blasted up from the bottom of him, bypassing his brain. It burned, and he played the shows with the Dead without having to think twice.