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INTERVIEW
Scott Ross: On His Time with Dylan,
Hendrix, and Clapton
By Scott Marshall
The 700 Club
CBN.com
While sitting in his offices in Virginia Beach, Virginia,
I interviewed Scott Ross, who, despite jet-lag from a recent trip
to India, shared some of his thoughts on, as well as his experiences
with BobDylan.
Marshall: You first met Bob Dylan through a
mutual friend, Al Aronowitz. Was this around the time of Dylan’s
1965 concert in New York City (August 28, Forest Hills Tennis
Stadium)?
Ross: I think so, probably, at least within
a year of that concert.
Marshall: Around that same time period, what
was your recollection of all the Dylan-Goes-Electric hubbub?
Ross: It’s ridiculous. It’s difficult
for me to comprehend, not just then, but even now, at so many
different other levels. It’s amazing the things that people
deem important. Who cares, honestly, who cares? The guy plays
music. If he wants to change his sound, whom is he playing for?
If you look at it as an artist, as a person, if you write certain
kinds of music or use styles, lyrical content, rhythms, or whatever,
it’s an extension of who you are. That’s how it was
for Bob. And if any real artist, whether it’s a painter
or a writer or author, that’s who they are, that’s
what they do. Critics and the public. . . you know Scripture says,
'When all men speak well of you, beware.' I see all that fandom
and I’ve seen a lot of it, been around a lot of it. It’s
next to irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. I’m speaking
for myself, and I don’t want to project anything on to Bob,
but you write out of who you are. If people like it, fine. If
they don’t like it, fine. It doesn’t really matter.
I saw all that criticism as a lot of foolishness, and I still
do.
Marshall: In 1970, you had an interesting experience
involving Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton?
Ross: Al was a writer for New York Post,
Life magazine, Village Voice, he’s a freelancer,
a very good writer. He’s still around. He now has many of
his writings posted on the internet. He calls himself The Blacklisted
Journalist. I’ve known Al for many years, and somehow we
hooked up in New York City. This was after my conversion to Christ.
Al knew me when we did drugs together, which is not a secret,
that fact is published as well. But we hooked up to go to a Clapton
concert in New York. I’d known Eric for a short period of
time, and we went to the concert. This was at the Filmore East
in New York City, Bill Graham sponsored it. At intermission, Al
said, 'Let’s go see somebody, an old friend.' I said, 'Okay.'
So we went up the back stairwell to a box seat and walked into
this box seat area and this guy came up and said, 'Hey Al,' and
gave Al a hug, then he said, 'Hello Scott.' It was Dylan, he was
there watching Clapton. No one knew he was there, he was with
a friend or something.
After the concert we got into Al’s car, and 'we' being
Dylan, Clapton, Al and me, started riding around and talking.
And Bobby (Dylan) said to me, 'I haven’t seen you in a long
time, how are you doing?' He also said, 'Hey, Al, I haven’t
seen Scott.' And he started telling Al what I was doing, about
the 'Love Inn Ministry' in a barn in Freeville, New York, and
The Scott Ross Radio Show, which was nationally and internationally
syndicated on rock and roll radio stations. So Dylan’s reciting
a litany of things that have been going on in my life, and then,
it’s kind of funny, he said, 'Do you have any water up there,
Scott? Do you have a pond or a lake or anything to go fishing?'
I said, 'Yes, we do, actually.' We had a pond. He knew a lot about
what I’d been up to. I had no idea how he found out. Well,
some things had been published in the Village Voice and so forth,
so he probably read it or just heard it by word of mouth. And
so he talked about that. He asked me what happened, because I
had done drugs with Dylan. That’s recited in my book Scott
Free, about the first night I did marijuana, which was with
Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Robbie Robertson of The Band, the
night the lights went out in New York. This was 35 years ago.
Dylan and I had also done drugs together on several occasions,
so he knew of my drug episodes.
As a matter of fact, you mentioned earlier that Forest Hills
concert. We went back to an apartment of one of Dylan’s
friend’s in New York, it was his manager, Al Grossman. He’s
dead now. But we went back to Al Grossman’s apartment and
did dope there. So, Bob and I had experiences together. So anyway,
he asked me, 'What happened to you?' So, I started to tell him
the story about what happened with the Lord in my life. And he
was most intrigued, asked a lot of questions. It was a good conversation.
A lot of our earlier conversations in my pre-Jesus days were so
spacey. We got into some weird, esoteric, you know, ozone-level
kinds of things. Who knew what we were saying. We thought we were
intelligent and profound and deep, when actually it was lot of
gobbledygook, and there were still things we were reaching for.
So, I think what he was hearing in me was something pretty clear,
that I had come to some realization of truth that he was intrigued
by. At that point, I don’t think he called that truth, 'Jesus,'
but he was certainly interested. God certainly came into the conversation
and I was clear that my conversion was to Christ. Dylan had so
many questions. Al was driving the car, Al’s Jewish, and
Clapton was there. This was about 1970.
Subsequent to that car ride and conversation, Eric made a commitment
to the Lord. So there were things going on, and without me trying
to make something out of it that it isn’t, something in
the conversation had to plant some seeds in Eric. It’s just
very interesting. I don’t know how long we rode around and
talked, but then Dylan made mention of an album he had just completed,
which was the New Morning album, and I didn’t know
what it was (at the time). And he said, 'Well, wait a minute,'
so he told Al to drive around to his apartment in the village.
I don’t know if it was his apartment or somebody else’s
apartment, it was a townhouse or something. We drove around to
that place and sat in the car and waited while Bobby ran upstairs.
He came down with the album, which I still have, and he said,
'Listen to it. There’s a couple things on there about God.'
And sure enough, there were some things in there and they were
pretty clear, you know? So, I just kept praying for him. So, that
was pretty much the experience.
Marshall: Singer/songwriter Larry Norman is
a big Dylan fan. You mentioned that the both of you recently attended
a Dylan concert in Nashville, Tennessee (February 6, 1999). How
do you know Larry Norman?
Ross: I’m trying to remember, I don’t
know where we first hooked up. This was in the early days in the
Jesus movement, you know, in the early 1970s. I had the radio
show, I would play Larry’s records and it may be that we
just contacted him to do an interview because he was out on the
edge. A very good writer, good lyricist, you know, a good tunesmith.
I think that’s what it was, we contacted him to do an interview
for my radio show and then I believe I invited him to come to
my then-named ministry, Love Inn -- still going strong after all
these years.
Marshall: In 1970, Dylan knew about this Love
Inn ministry that you and your wife began in New York. Tell me
a little about it.
Ross: It’s now known as Covenant Love
Community Church in Freeville, New York, next to Cornell University.
That’s where we were in an old barn. And we used to do concerts
and I think I invited Larry for a concert. We talked on the phone,
did the interview thing and some other things and then we just
hit it off. Then Larry and I traveled together, we did some shows
together, and we’d go out and do concerts. We walked into
bars, cold off the street and did presentations. Of course he’d
sing and I’d do poetic dramatic presentations and talk.
We did larger concerts with thousands of people. I remember doing
something in Toronto, Canada; Rochester, New York. We’ve
been friends for a long, long time and I hadn’t seen him
in quite a number of years until that (Dylan) concert a year ago.
Marshall: I wanted to go back to something you
mentioned earlier. You said Eric Clapton had a conversion experience
some years ago. Was this something you heard through others, or
was it contact you had with him?
Ross: No, he told me personally. Nedra and I
had a call one night, completely out of the blue, and if I remember
correctly, it was from Minneapolis, Minnesota. My radio show was
on in Minneapolis, among other cities, and Eric was doing a concert.
This was early ‘70s, and I don’t know the exact date,
my wife may remember, maybe it was ’71 or ’72, somewhere
in there, and just out of the blue he called. He knew Nedra from
her Ronettes days. They had toured together, and he called to
tell us of his conversion to Christ. So we talked about it on
the phone and then he said he wanted to get together with us.
So we got together, and I spent time with him and prayed and talked
with him. His was a real conversion to Jesus. A lot of stuff happened
in years that followed, and I’m personally convinced that
the enemy has tried to kill him throughout the years. Hendrix
died, Clapton didn’t. And there’s a whole story behind
that I won’t go into, but, that was a very real conversion,
and I still pray for Eric, care about him a great deal. He’s
a really good guy and he’s been through hell, but I believe
God’s kept him. I really believe that.
Marshall: You mentioned Jimi Hendrix. His version
of Dylan’s 'All Along the Watchtower' is the one you always
hear on the radio. It’s interesting that it’s Dylan’s
most-performed song onstage. I read somewhere that you spent time
with Hendrix. Can you share your experience?
Ross: He was a backup guitarist for my wife’s
group, The Ronettes, for a period of time. The name he was using
at that time was Jimi James. I also worked at a nightclub in New
York called 'Ondine,' it was a disco, and Jimi would come in there
and hang out. Dylan came in there too. It was a well-known club,
small place, but it was an 'in' place for a while. And while I
was involved with the club, Jimi would come in and play. Dylan
would sit there and we’d talk. Hendrix was always quite
a good guitar player, obviously, and he was a great performer.
People would come to see him. I remember vividly the first time
I’d seen him play. I think it was at the Odine actually.
A small, small club of a few hundred people, and he started playing
something, picking some things with his teeth, on the guitar,
I remember that. We talked, he was just around. I was also good
friends with The Animals. One night, Charles Chandler who had
been The Animals’ bass player went down to the village to
hear Jimi play in the club and was completely blown away by what
he saw and heard. I remember Chas coming back and talking to me
about it. I wasn’t the only one he talked to, but he said
to me that he had seen Hendrix, and I probably said, 'Who’s
Hendrix?' because I was still thinking Jimi James and he was now
using the Hendrix name. Chas was completely blown out by this
guy.
Marshall: Dylan-wise, is there any question
I should have asked?
Ross: Pray for him, just keep praying for him.
You can get into a whole theological discussion about people like
Bob, Eric and others who have made commitments to the Lord over
the years, and there are others that I am well aware of, (who
do not seem to have lived up to those commitments.) Then there
are some who have made such commitments and grown and matured
in the Lord. People like, Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and
Mary, who is a close friend. Noel has called me his personal John
the Baptist. Also there’s Dion DiMucci, Roger McGuinn of
The Byrds, these guys are public people who made commitments to
the Lord from that same era and have gone on in God. All these
folks need a lot of prayer. They need that more than they need
idolization, and people hoping that they would just grow in God.
Now if the Lord Jesus, in His grace, in His sovereignty, chose
these folks and gave them new birth, and if they chose Jesus,
then you have to trust the seed that God planted no matter what
appears to be the outcome. Some fall away. When I talked to Dion
years ago when he was seeking God through drugs and various other
kinds of things, and I said, 'Dion, ask God if He has a Son.'
So when he was out running one day, he asked God that very question.
And the Lord made it very clear to him that Jesus Christ was the
son of God and Dion made a commitment. There are people who have
made commitments privately, that have not talked about it, and
in whose lives we can not yet see the fruit of this commitment,
so pray for them.
Scott Ross welcomes your feedback.
Reprinted with permission from the December 2000 issue of Isis.
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