Dylan and me - One night at the Nick

Art Usherson photo ©

On the night of January 9, 1974, my buddy Bill Gardner and I joined the flood of people pouring out of Maple Leaf Gardens, babbling with excitement over what we’d just witnessed: a two-hour-plus concert by Bob Dylan and The Band who’d stoned us with the raucous opener “Rainy Day Women” and dressed us so fine with the euphoric penultimate “Like a Rolling Stone, asking us how we felt. As if we needed to be asked.

The elation carried us along Carlton Street, undimmed despite nostril-freezing temperatures and a sudden snow squall. “Wanna go for drinks?” asked Bill. “Ronnie’s playing down at the Nick.” The thought of seeing Ronnie Hawkins on the same night and in the same building where Dylan had first scooped up the members of The Band seemed the perfect capper to the evening. So down snowy Yonge Street we shuffled, past the grindhouse movie theatres, record stores and body-rub parlours, and up the stairs at the good ol’ Nickelodeon.

The Nick was basically just a bar that featured live music. But it fancied itself a dinner club, even though it mostly catered to hungry Ryerson students like myself, with pizza and all-you-can eat spaghetti and meatballs. So the place, which had a kind of Roaring ’20s theme with waiters dressed in boaters, vests and bowties, enforced a strict coat-check policy—just like the city’s more upscale joints.

Bill and I were well aware that downstairs, in the Nick’s sister club, was where real history had been made. The Friar’s Tavern had begun as a famous jazz venue, with residencies by Dizzy Gillespie and Oscar Peterson, no less, before it changed with the times and switched to rock, pop and R&B. It was there that The Band, then known as Levon & the Hawks, established themselves as Toronto’s premier group—a reputation that one September night in 1965 brought Dylan to town to hire them as his backing band. Hawkins had groomed them, Dylan had stolen them (not really, but that’s what everybody said), and so Bill and I thought it fitting to catch the Hawk, known as the affable Mayor of Yonge Street, who’d started it all. Plus, it was the Ronnie’s birthday, so it was sure to be fun.

After checking our coats, we stood, waited to be seated and surveyed the room. It was packed, every seat taken, but for two long tables to the left of the stage. We looked at each other, shrugged, walked over and grabbed seats at the nearest one. Seconds later, the Nick’s waiters appeared and ushered in an entourage of a dozen or more people, all still dressed in their winter coats, caps and scarves, and seated them next to us and at the neighbouring table. Bill and I couldn’t believe our luck: we’d unwittingly wound up in some kind of V.I.P. section. 

Just how exclusive it was only became apparent when we clocked the famous folk around us. Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson were sitting a few feet away at the end of our table. And Rick Danko and an incognito Dylan himself, wearing shades, fur hat and coat, like he’d just come in from the Russian Front, were one table over. Bill and I kept looking at each other, grinning like mad fools, and tried our best not spend the rest of the night staring.

The presence of Dylan and The Band had the Nick quickly buzzing. Hawkins loved it, of course. “They came all the way from L.A. to hear me sing `40 Days’!” he guffawed. There was much laughter and expectation of an all-star jam, but it never materialized. In fact, Dylan sat glued to his seat the entire night, almost expressionless, even though Ronnie teased him at one point. “Now hold on, Bob,” Hawkins said. “I know you’re just itching to get up here and sing. But you can’t. This is my show!”

And it was. Ronnie held court, reminding everyone who was in charge. After the show, I got up the nerve and went over to Dylan to thank him for his concert at the Gardens and to tell him what a huge fan I was of his songwriting. I almost wish I hadn’t. He clearly didn’t want to be bothered and had heard it all before. “Thanks,” he said in a barely audible whisper. But I felt lame, like I’d just kind of wasted some of his precious time.

Anyway, with that, Bill and I ventured back out into the surreal, blizzardy night, not entirely believing what we’d just witnessed. Did it really happen? Years later, I found the proof. Art Usherson, a Toronto photographer who’d made a habit of capturing images of rock stars (including Dylan with Gordon Lightfoot at Mariposa two years earlier) had been in the Nick that night and I knew his iconic shot of Hawkins at Dylan’s table. So I asked Usherson if he had any other photos from that evening. Turned out he did and he obliged me with a wide-angle outtake, which he jokingly called “Where’s Waldo?” But even in that crowded room, I could still pick out my 20-year-old self. Thanks Art, for memorializing that special moment in time!