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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.
晴朗涼爽的七月下午，洛斯菲利茲附近一家小客棧，雅可布·梅穆迪斯(Jacob Maymudes)坐在露臺上，回憶著自己第一本書的奇異旅程。這本9月9日才出版的《鮑勃·迪倫的另一面》(Another Side of Bob Dylan)，已經(jīng)開始引起了人們的興趣。
“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.
“我從來沒想過寫一本關于鮑勃的書，” 他的父親維克多·梅穆迪斯(Victor Maymudes)是迪倫小圈子里的長期成員，1997年和迪倫大吵一架，四年后與世長辭，留下了24個小時的口述往事錄音帶，雅可布回憶，在自己人生中艱難的時刻，他拒絕寫完父親未完成的回憶錄。
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，雅可布的愛稱——譯注）34歲了，早在他長大成人之前，迪倫的傳奇就已經(jīng)成型，但是關于這位親切的“鮑勃”，杰克總是實話實說。他第一次見到迪倫是和父親一起，在通用錄音棚的后院，杰克那年七歲。父親經(jīng)常和迪倫一起巡演，擔任各種幕后工作——巡演經(jīng)紀人、司機和保鏢，更別說還要在酒店里陪迪倫下棋。
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.
從20世紀60年代初，他的父親就斷斷續(xù)續(xù)擔任這些角色，被視為保護著迪倫的死黨，迪倫去倫敦，第一次在海外舉行演唱會時帶他同行；迪倫在曼哈頓酒店套房里和“披頭士”(Beatles)共享大麻時他也在場，據(jù)說迪倫的第一任妻子莎拉(Sara)在馬里布向杰克的母親琳達·懷利(Linda Wylie)傾吐婚姻中的煩惱，兩人邊說邊用音響放著尚未公開發(fā)行的《音軌上的血跡》(Blood on the Tracks)，這時迪倫突然走了進來。
(“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.)
（“他說這些歌太痛苦了，他不知道別人聽了會怎么想，”懷利上周接受電話采訪時說。）
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.
維克多比迪倫大六歲，是個儀表堂堂的黑發(fā)男人，身高六英尺，1961或1962年左右，他來到紐約，結識了迪倫，之前在洛杉磯做過歌手推廣、經(jīng)紀人，開過俱樂部，已經(jīng)是民謠界的成名人物。
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.
兩人一見如故，迪倫的事業(yè)起飛后，維克多與他的人生軌跡一再交匯。他有時會離開一下，去實現(xiàn)自己的目標，但最后總會回到迪倫身邊。
“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.”
“他被視為秘密的保管者，”音樂歷史學家，《肯定是四號街》(Positively 4th Street)的作者大衛(wèi)·哈爾杜(David Hajdu)說，“他以神秘莫測、善于保密、值得信賴和滴水不進著稱。”
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.”
普林斯頓大學歷史學家西恩·韋倫茲(Sean Wilentz)的著作《鮑勃·迪倫在美國》(Bob Dylan in America)是2010年的暢銷書，他說維克多從一開始的參與就對迪倫很重要。“他對迪倫來說意味著忠誠和親人，”他說，“兄弟倆總免不了打打鬧鬧，所以迪倫總是讓他回來。”
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，因為一個年輕女孩的關系，維克多從巡演經(jīng)紀人的位子上被解雇，發(fā)生了這樣的事，迪倫后來還是叫他回來。換了別的明星可能早就把他趕走了。可是這件事之后，迪倫還是讓維克多幫自己尋找不動產。結果到1997年，因為一處地產，兩人吵了起來，導致了最終的決裂。
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，一文不名的維克多與圣馬丁出版社簽約寫一本書，開始對著錄音機口述。一年后，他死于動脈瘤，享年65歲，這本未完成的書也成了日益龐大的“迪倫學”中的又一個神秘課題，人們對它的好奇與日俱增。
“What will he reveal?” as Mr. Hajdu put it.
正如哈爾杜所說，人們好奇“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.
杰克并不急著回答這個問題。當時父親的死仍舊令他困擾，眼前的局面令他覺得父親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，一場火災燒毀了懷利女士在新墨西哥長期居住的房子。她和維克多盡管長期疏遠，但還留著他的骨灰盒。那個骨灰盒也在大火中付之一炬，維克多遺下的東西似乎只有骨灰和那些磁帶了。
“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.”
“我寫這本書是想向父親致敬，”杰克回憶自己最終決定完成父親這本書時的情形，他的職業(yè)是做電影與電視的視覺特效，“其他的一切都已經(jīng)燒光了。”
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網(wǎng)站放出了一段一小時的原始音頻，“很快就有了每天400次的點擊率，”他說。傳記作家、新聞記者和粉絲競相和他聯(lián)系，催促他趕快把另外23個小時的素材也放出來，或者寫一本書。
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.
杰克勤奮地謄寫這些磁帶中的內容，把這些素材寄給父親的出版商，但是遭到了堅定的拒絕。好吧，他決定自己出版這本書。但在Kickstarter網(wǎng)站上發(fā)起的眾籌項目未能達到4.5萬美元的目標，《滾石》(Rolling Stone)雜志報道了此事，為他帶來了一些新的捐助，但最后還是沒有籌到足夠的錢。
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.
在一個經(jīng)紀人的幫助下，杰克再次嘗試，他把父親隨意散漫的故事組織起來，把這些混亂的事件和其他書籍交叉對照，比如克林頓·赫林(Clinton Heylin)的《鮑勃·迪倫：被偷竊時刻里的人生，1941-1995的每一天》(Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)。之后他又向圣馬丁出版社投稿，終于得到了合同。
“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.”
對于迪倫的全部作品來說，《鮑勃·迪倫的另一面》堪稱精彩的補充，很像迪倫自己那種循環(huán)敘述的詭異繼子。書中一條線索追溯了維克多在洛杉磯落日大道上的波西米亞冒險生涯。20世紀50年代，維克多是獨角獸俱樂部的創(chuàng)始人之一，倫尼·布魯斯(Lenny Bruce)和馬龍·白蘭度(Marlon Brando)等人都是那里的常客。六七十年代，維克多和丹尼斯·霍珀(Dennis Hopper)成了好朋友，他曾經(jīng)到秘魯去為霍珀1971年那部多災多難的史詩片《最后一部電影》(The Last Movie)搭建布景，尋找外景，還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.
第二條敘事線索是親密的對話體，講述了維克多與迪倫狂風暴雨般的友誼。70年代，維克多曾為迪倫在新墨西哥設計并建造了一座房子。后來維克多買下并改裝了一輛巡演大巴，正是迪倫在20世紀八九十年代“永不結束的巡演”中使用的那一輛。
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.
但是最精彩的篇章還發(fā)生前面——1964年對于迪倫來說是關鍵的一年，他從東海岸的民謠泡沫中脫穎而出，做了一次全國巡演。維克多開著一輛藍色福特旅行車，同行的還有民謠樂手保羅·克萊頓(Paul Clayton)和記者彼得·卡爾曼(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.”
“他們是一群彼此知根知底的朋友，美國時髦人士的核心，”韋倫茲這樣評價這次1964年巡演。“這是一次特別的巡演，當時民權運動也在進行中。”
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，他們到北卡羅來納訪問了詩人卡爾·桑德堡(Carl Sandburg)，在新奧爾良過狂歡節(jié)，迪倫被只許黑人進入的酒吧拒之門外。回到巡演路上，他們從廣播里初次聽到“披頭士”的金曲，迪倫瘋狂地把歌詞記在自己的活頁筆記本上。
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，迪倫來到倫敦，有跡象表明他的名聲又更進一步，當他在皇家節(jié)日大廳演出時，來的觀眾比平時在美國多得多。最后維克多用高大的身材掩護迪倫從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.”
凱旋之后，兩人去了地中海邊的希臘武利亞格邁尼度假。“我在海邊玩，下海游泳，”維克多回憶，迪倫則留在酒店“打字、寫東西，抽煙，他干這個的時間比我認識的任何人都要長”。
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.”
回到紐約，他們一頭沖進錄音室，迪倫“把一切都傾吐出來”，一口氣錄了11首新歌，“一首接一首，連排練都用不著。”
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.
盡管聽上去不太可能，但這和霍華德·桑恩斯(Hoiward Sounes)的《沿著公路直行：鮑勃·迪倫傳》(Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan)里的描寫是吻合的，書中寫到鮑勃·迪倫邊喝博若萊葡萄酒邊錄音，一口氣錄了六個小時，成果就是專輯《鮑勃·迪倫的另一面》。23歲的迪倫用這張專輯向布魯斯影響的民謠風格告別，因為他已經(jīng)征服了這種風格。專輯中的《自由的鐘聲》(Chimes of Freedom)和《我的最后幾頁》(My Back Pages)是頂峰之作，“啊，我曾經(jīng)如此蒼老，如今卻風華正茂”——這預示著迪倫作品中富于遠見的新篇章。
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.
那年夏天快結束的時候，迪倫受邀去德爾莫尼克酒店會見“披頭士”。迪倫一行人隨身帶了大麻，根據(jù)維克多和其他人的說法，迪倫坐下卷了一支大麻煙，但是笨手笨腳的，還是維克多麻利地幫他卷好。
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.
這是“披頭士”第一次嘗試高品質的大麻煙，但是迪倫沒有參與之后的胡言亂語。因為之前熬了好幾夜，還喝了酒，“他倒在地板上昏睡過去！”維克多回憶。
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.)
這本書并不是為了揭丑或者報復。相反，維克多恭敬地說了很多迪倫的“偉大”與“天才”之處，因為能參與迪倫“魔力般的神秘巡演”而感到高興——盡管迪倫保持著奇異的疏遠。這部書說，一個人愈是接近迪倫，就愈是覺得他難以了解（迪倫的代理人并沒有回復筆者要求對本文進行評價的電話或電子郵件采訪）。
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.
維克多始終感激迪倫為他做的許多事情，比如20世紀80年代期間，維克多身無分文，需要錢花的時候，迪倫帶他回到圈子里來，什么也沒多問。“你被雇用了，”他記得迪倫當時這么說。
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.
杰克也很尊敬迪倫。我去訪問他的時候，看到他床頭放著精心選擇的舊物，其中包括迪倫巡演的曲目表、迪倫親手寫下的零散筆記，還有一封充滿謾罵的信件，顯然是出自迪倫之手，寫在東京某家酒店抬頭的信紙上，是給一個美國音樂記者的。
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，在圣塔莫妮卡的麥凱布吉他店舉辦了維克多的追思會，杰克手頭的簽名簿上有湯姆·佩蒂(Tom Petty)、杰克遜·布朗(Jackson Browne)和電影導演保羅·馬祖斯基(Paul Mazursky)的簽名。杰克記得很清楚，迪倫沒來參加，但杰克的姐姐伊莉(Aerie)說，她看見一個穿著連帽衫的身影（迪倫平時的裝束）走進人群，然后又悄悄離去。
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.
后來我們走上杰克的二手SUV車，這是他用這本書七萬美元預付款中的一部分買來的，我們駛向圣塔莫妮卡18街咖啡屋。那里是迪倫在90年代中期買下的大型地產中的一部分，是由維克多設計并建造的。
“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?guī)兔υ谖蓓斸斸斪樱⑵鹬樱泶u加瓦，”杰克說。十幾歲的他當時在那里幫工，伊莉也短暫地管理過那個地方，后來，根據(jù)桑恩思和杰克的說法，這里第一年就虧損了將近10萬美元。伊莉說自己即將被開除。
“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.
“我對他說，他得親自解雇我才行，”上星期她回憶，“他”是指鮑勃·迪倫，“后來他就這么做了。”迪倫來到店里，粗魯?shù)刈屗呷恕＞S克多目睹了這一幕，“當場就辭了，”杰克寫道。后來杰克控告迪倫，要求迪倫付自己退休金，兩人的友誼再也沒能恢復。
“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，一切就都大一樣了，”維克多對杰克說。
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.
但是對于那座咖啡屋，杰克也有著美好的回憶：迪倫和維克多曾在那里，無言地下著象棋；雷·曼西尼(Ray Mancini)來到咖啡屋后的拳擊俱樂部，和迪倫練習拳擊；杰克溜進迪倫的辦公室，用迪倫那臺老式打字機在白紙兩面打字，一點不留空白。
“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.”
“他對我一直都很好，”杰克說，他從小一直把那個男人視為父親的老板。除了15歲那年管他要過幾支“榮譽”香煙，“我從沒向他要求過任何東西。”
