Poet James Ragan Remembers Touring the Soviet Union with Bob Dylan

1985-07-25, First International Poetry Festival, Moscow, USSR

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Bob Dylan in Moscow’s Red Square with James Ragan, second from right. (L-R: Carole Childs, Dylan, Robert Bly, Seamus Heaney, Bly’s wife, Ragan, unknown)

When I first visited the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, one of the many displays that blew me away showcased photos of a performance Dylan gave in the Soviet Union on today’s date in 1985. I’d never heard of such a thing.

As I subsequently learned, while the event was not unknown, there is relatively little information out there. No audio or video recording, and only a few photos (the four Dylan Center ones had never circulated before). The setlist of his performance we know—three early songs, performed solo acoustic—but the event otherwise seemed shrouded in mystery. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the most mysterious performances of Dylan’s entire career.

Thankfully, acclaimed poet James Ragan was willing to fill in some details. Ragan was on that stage as well. The occasion was an international poetry festival that a newly-elected Mikhail Gorbachev put on to show the world the Soviet Union was opening up. The event mixed poets from all over the world, including Ragan alongside Seamus Heaney, Robert Bly, and others. They read their work—or, in Dylan’s case, sang it—to a crowd of thousands.

But there was a lot more to the trip than that one big performance. They all, Dylan included, spent several weeks touring the USSR, giving readings and visiting attractions. Dylan writes very briefly about the experience in Chronicles. It was Dylan’s only time in the Soviet Union, and one of only two performances he’s given in what is now Russia (he gave a proper concert in St. Petersburg in 2008).

Below, Ragan shares some memories of his time in the USSR with Dylan. He promises he’ll reveal even more in a book he’s working on.

The only photo I know of of Dylan’s actual performance, displayed at the Dylan Center

There were only a few Western names on the lineup, you and Dylan among them. How did you get the invitation?

Basically we were invited, through a formal invitation that I received, to come and read at the First International Poetry Festival that they were going to start in Moscow. It was actually from Gorbachev, who had started Perestroika and Glasnost. The invitation came through Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Russian poet, who was a very close friend that I’ve performed with many times. Would I be willing to be one of the Americans? Of course I said, yes, I would. I had to give a formal acceptance.

Then the question came: Can you get Bob Dylan?

Now I didn’t know Bob yet, but I had access to him through his manager that I knew. So I contacted him.

The State Department said, “Do not go.” It was 1985, the height of the Cold War. “Don’t go because they’re going to use you for propaganda.” This is how we were warned by the State Department. But both Bob and I agreed that this was a chance to be ambassadors of goodwill. A chance to go over and be American voices amid the other people in this festival, to read our poetry—[or] for him to sing, which is what he did. He played guitar and performed his poems that way.

So that’s how it began. It began with a formal invitation. It began with the State Department saying that we probably shouldn't do it. They weren’t stopping us; they were just warning us. We were the first real artists to be going over there because of the Cold War.

It was the First International Poetry Festival, so there were many great poets like Yevtushenko, [Andrei] Voznesensky, and others, who were going to be reading. We were the Americans invited: [Robert] Bly, Dylan and me. And then Seamus Heaney came aboard.

There’s that great photo of all of you right before the big event.

That photo was not supposed to be released. Seamus Heaney, he was after me for that photo, because it was taken with my camera, and I wouldn't give it to him. He was like a brother. We were such close friends. One day he showed up with about six of my books, and I knew he was bribing me for the photo. So I said, “Okay, we’ll go get it.” We went off and printed it. I said, “But you cannot share this with anybody.” I don't know how people got it.

As I said, we were all part of this Perestroika that Gorbachev was beginning. That was one of the first events that said, “Look, we have Americans, we have people from Ireland, we had people from the Caribbean, all over.” I had been used to these kinds of things. My heritage is Slovak. I was banned in Czechoslovakia because the communists took over the country and I wrote against it. So I knew why I was there. 

Dylan was great. He became my seatmate, because my wife was pregnant and couldn’t make the trip. There was a woman that he had come with [Carole Childs], but she had to return to the States. So he and I shared the bus seats when they were taking us on tours. Later on his son Jakob came over and we celebrated his birthday over there. I had written a poem that I gave to Jakob as a birthday gift. It was Bob’s idea. I said, “What can I give him?” He said, “Why don’t you give him that poem you read on stage?”

This was the one you had read at the event?

Yeah. At this wonderful dinner, he said, “Would you read that for Jakob?” It was “The Tent People of Beverly Hills,” about the homeless. I gave him the original copy, the one that I read from. I signed it and wrote "Happy Birthday.” I always know where that poem is now.

So there was a lot more to this trip than just the one big reading?

Oh God, yeah. We were there for at least, it must have been two weeks.

How many readings/performances were there in that time?

Three or four.

So what else were you doing all the time?

They were giving us nice tours. But also we had to read at several venues, like for the American Embassy and down in Tbilisi in Georgia. There was a small bus we were taking to go to places other than just the readings.

Dylan at the Tolstoy estate (as displayed at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa)

The Dylan Center has some photos of Dylan visiting the former Tolstoy estate.

Yeah, that was one of the trips we took.

Dylan writes about the tour guide letting him ride his bike.

From Chronicles: “There was a book by Count Leo Tolstoy, whose estate I’d visit more than twenty years later — his family estate, which he used to educate peasants. It was located outside of Moscow, and this was where he went later in life to reject all his writings and renounce all forms of war. One day when he was eighty-two years old he left a note for his family to leave him alone. He walked off into the snowy woods and a few days later they found him dead of pneumonia. A tour guide let me ride his bicycle.”

See, I don’t even remember that, ‘cause sometimes we were separated. But I’m sure he did.

I remember being at Voznesensky’s home. When we went to Voznesensky’s home, we had a great dinner there. That was a very common thing for Russians to do. They love to do these little dinners and have people of some consequence there and introduce you to them.

Dylan with Andrei Voznesensky at his home in Peredelkino

Somebody wrote something about how Bob was very passive and crying because he didn’t get the attention he wanted [Moscow Times: “Did Bob Dylan Shed Tears of Rage in Russia?”]. That wasn’t it at all. It’s funny how people turn those stories around. I’ve read about these things in other people’s articles and I went, “Really?” 

He got bad press in Russia and a lot of other places, I think. “He was cold.” “Detached.” No, no, no. He was not aloof. He was very warm whenever he was in private situations, but when he was out there in public, yeah, he might’ve looked that way. He wasn’t at all.

What happened was that John Lennon was assassinated not that long before we went. He was most frightened about that. Every time we came out of these readings or interviews or whatever, there was a gauntlet of young people lined up. And he would always make me go first. I would run down to the car and open the door, so he can just sort of run out and get right into the car.

So that was always on his mind, and it was on mine. I wanted to protect him. He was nervous the whole time. But that was not him being distant, like “I don’t want to get to know them.” That was him being careful.

Dylan in the car in Tbilisi, Georgia

He wasn’t unfriendly at all. It was more humility he showed. He didn’t engage because he didn’t know the language, but also he was sort of made to be a center of everything. I think he was sort of saying, “Enough.” He was just that way. I loved him.

I followed Dylan on stage. He got a very warm response because he sang three of the songs.

Three classic songs too. [“Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Hard Rain,” “It’s Alright Ma”]

Yeah. And then I had to follow him. I went, “How do I follow Dylan?” I realized at the very last second that I spoke Russian. My first language was Slovak; I didn’t learn English until grade school. Because I knew my Slovak, I ended up taking some courses in Russian, which had some close language crossovers. So I just started speaking to them in Russian. I got a rousing ovation. It was really people going, “The American, he’s speaking Russian to us.”

So anyway, that was a great thrill for me to follow Bob. And we became friends.

Were you a big Dylan fan going into this?

Oh God, yeah. I knew the songs he was singing. 

In 1977, I got a call to go to Tokyo to do a jazz album based on ten of my poems, which would have been the lyrics. I flew there with Linda Carriere, the lead singer for Dynasty, which was a big group at the time. We did the album, and Kimiko Kasai, their biggest recording star at the time, covered three of the songs. Tatsuro Yamashita, who wrote some of the music on that album, he covered three. So for about ten years or so, I was getting a lot of royalties based on their performances of my lyrics in their songs. As a result, Linda’s version was not released. Now, 47 years later, they’re releasing the album, Alfa.

In any case, Dylan knew this part of me. That was a good thing, because he knew I would understand everything he’s going through. “You’re into music? You did an album?” That was another thing that brought us together, that I had something to do with music.

A photo of the stage and audience

What was the audience like? Was it mostly young people? Was it people from the Party?

It was both. You have to understand, in Russia at that time, Yevtushenko, Voznesensky, these are major poets. When they read in Russia, they would have thousands of people coming to the halls. It was very normal for this to be happening. When a new book came out by any of the great poets, you’d have a thousand, two thousand people lined up to buy it. That’s Russia. Now whether they would get an audience for us was another matter, but it was pretty well attended. I think the hall that we read in held 8,000 people.

How did you pick which poems to do?

I wanted to pick poems that had some humor in them, but I had some crossover poems that were very humanitarian. Didn’t try to get political with them.

Yevtushenko, the great Russian poet, was my translator there. He was standing right next to me on the stage reading it in Russian after I read my poems in English. That’s what was happening with all of us; they were being translated after we did what we did.

We were only asked to do three or four, because there were other people on the stage from other countries. We were representing America, Seamus Heaney was there from Ireland, and maybe about 20 other poets from Nicaragua, from Poland, from all over. I give Yevtushenko all the credit for helping to organize it, and Dylan for being there, because that gave us another kind of an imprimatur. I read with Dylan and Seamus Heaney; they both became Nobel Prize winners. It was actually Seamus Heaney who said to me, and I’m giving you a direct quote, because I laughed him off, “Don’t worry, your turn is coming.”

Some of the poets onstage (photo via jamesragan.com)

Bob got a very good response. I read these articles written by Russians: “Nobody knew his work.” Well, they gave him a very good response. The younger people knew a little bit about Dylan. I don’t think they knew a lot about him, but they were there.

When I got into Tbilisi, Georgia, I got a little more political. I thought, “I can open up a little more down there.” But it was the same situation. We had several kinds of meetings. We had to have a meeting with their big organizers, who were like this Writers Union down there. They had us in for interviews, and then we did some readings. There were little concerts and things we were encouraged to be at. A lot of interviews, a lot of meetings with different groups. That’s really what we were there to do.

You said once “I credit the Moscow reading with placing me on the world stage.” How so?

Absolutely. I still say that. Because I didn’t know any poets who were really doing that. Even when I went to China to read in the ‘80s, they said, “Oh, there were two other poets here from America here: Allen Ginsberg and Galway Kinnell!” So I was the third one that came over to China at the time. There I was on the world stage again.

But let’s get back to this 1985 reading. I was on the stage with a lot of people that were from foreign countries. They all invited me to come to read with them in their countries. The next year, I read in 1986 for the president of Bulgaria. So many of the great poets that I studied, I was reading with them. And Dylan felt the same way.

Was Gorbachev actually at the poetry festival?

Yes, he was in the audience. He dropped in and then had to go. He listened and then he left. I don’t know who he listened to, which one [of us]. Maybe it was Dylan!

Then the next day they had the International Youth Festival. They wanted Dylan there, and so Dylan went there to do a small reading. I was in the audience for that. That was Gorbachev’s doing also.

So that was a separate thing the day after?

Yeah, after our thing.

Perestroika and Glasnost. That’s all you have to remember. This was one of his very first forays into it, this evening of poetry, bringing all these countries together. That was the whole point. I wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

Was it the same group of you those entire couple weeks? It’s almost like a concert tour of poets. The same lineup is traveling around, you read, Dylan plays, etc.

Yeah, except that Seamus and Bly didn’t make the trip to Tbilisi. The girl Bob came with had to go back. 

Bob had paternal grandparents who were born in the Odessa part of Georgia, so I was able to say, “If you go to Tbilisi, it’s not that far from Odessa. You can go and visit where your grandparents came from.” He was all for it, then at the end he did not do it. I’ll just leave it at that.

I read a quote from Yevtushenko saying he wasn’t given permission to go.

Yeah. But there were so many things. Even when we were there in Tbilisi, the hosts asked us, “Would you like to go see Stalin’s home?” We all said, emphatically, “No.” Tolstoy is one thing, but no, we’re not interested in going to see Stalin.

Draw the line.

Yeah, yeah. It got a laugh from everybody, the way we said no. We didn’t think about it.

I read in one report that Allen Ginsberg came with Dylan.

No, Ginsberg had nothing to do with this trip at all. Misinformation. I know Allen; I read with him. His mother was from here, Los Angeles, and so I would drive him around sometimes when he’d come down. We got to be good friends. But no, he wasn’t on this trip at all. I was always amazed that that got out there.

[Upon further research, it appears Ginsberg made a separate trip to read poetry in the USSR five months later. In some accounts the two events have been conflated.]

I just liked Dylan. He’s such a gracious, wonderful person. A couple years after we did the reading, I was on the corner here in Beverly Hills waiting to cross the street when a heavy hand came from behind on my shoulder. I turn around and it was Dylan. We’re commiserating on all the stuff, talking about how it was, there on the corner. People are walking around pointing. “Bob Dylan! It’s Bob Dylan!”

I was a reviewer for the LA Times. I guess around two months before that, they’d said, “Bob Dylan’s collected lyrics just came out. You’re the only one that should do the review.” I gave it a tremendous review. So here’s Bob talking to me. We’re catching up on the reading we did and all the rest. Then we say goodbye. He leaves. He goes walking halfway across the street, turned around, looked at me and said, “And thank you.”

I knew what he was talking about. The review. He didn’t bring it up there, but he reminded himself to say thank you as he was walking across.

He’s talked over the years about how he doesn’t consider himself primarily a poet in the ‘writing it down on paper to be read’ sense. He writes lyrics to be sung.

It’s true, right? That’s how I reviewed him in the LA Times. But he started out writing poetry. When you look at some of his earliest lyrics, he had the poet in him. And then he got into the music part of it. 

After our performance, when I came off stage with him, I remember him saying “Jim, I don’t belong here.” I said, “What are you talking about? You’ve played for a hundred thousand people” and the rest. “No, no, no. These are world-class poets. I’m a songwriter.” I love the humility in that line. “I’m a songwriter.”

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Thanks James! Learn more about his work and browse his poetry collections, plays, and paintings at his website. His latest collection is ‘Nothing Disappears.’ Preorder Linda Carriere’s lost album with Ragan’s lyrics at Light in the Attic.

Here’s an article from the time about the performance. Love the bit about Dylan hearing “Wigwam” on Soviet radio.

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More new interviews coming in the next few weeks from other people who played or worked with Dylan. Subscribe here to get them sent straight to your inbox.