Jacques Levy's Wife Explains the Late Director's Role on Rolling Thunder

1975-11-21, Music Hall, Boston, MA

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Courtesy Claudia Levy

Update June 2023: This interview is included along with 40+ others in my new book ‘Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members.’ Buy it in hardcover, paperback, or ebook here!

Like most Dylan fans, I knew Jacques Levy primarily for his role co-writing most of Desire with Bob. I hadn’t realized how involved he was with the Rolling Thunder tour until I started talking to the band members. I kept hearing, “Jacques suggested I do this” or “Jacques set up this way.” Jacques was the tour’s director, and I was curious what precisely that job entailed. So I was thrilled to get an email recently from his wife Claudia. Turns out not only was she married to him up until his death in 2004, but they had met just before Rolling Thunder - introduced by their mutual friend Bob Dylan, no less - and she accompanied Jacques on the entire tour.

Here’s my conversation with Claudia Levy:

Let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me how you met Jacques?

I first met Jacques in the grocery store. He tried to pick me up, and every line he gave me I thought was totally ridiculous. I don't know why I gave him my phone number. He called me a number of times, but I wasn't going to go out with him. It was a non-starter.

[Soon after,] I met Bob in the Dante Café, where I was working as a waitress, in late May, early June of ‘75. When he came in, I didn't recognize him. I said, “You look very familiar to me. Are you a dancer?” Because I had studied dance and I had been involved with a lot of dancers. He thought that was very funny. I could see he was writing and it looked to me like he was like writing poetry or something. My graduate degree was poetry, so I said, “Oh, are you a poet”? He said, “Well, I like to write.”

So we talked a lot about poetry. He asked me what I did, and I said I was going to go study painting at the Brooklyn Museum school. He said, “Don't do that. Don't go there. You go study with this guy, and he'll change your life.” And he sent me to Norman Raeben. He had been Bob’s teacher, and then he became my teacher.

I spoke to Bob for a couple of days. It was the afternoon, there weren’t a lot of people around. I guess it was the third day he was sitting there, the light was coming in in a certain way and you could see the light through his hair. I felt this thing like, "Oh my God. I've just been sitting here casually chatting with Bob Dylan!" I was so flustered. I said to him, “I know who you are.” And he said to me, "Does that mean you're not going to talk to me anymore?" Which was the perfect thing to say.

So we became friendly and he invited me to come to the Other End, because he thought he would be playing there. He came in with Jacques and he re-introduced me to Jacques. And that was it.

Did you recognize Jacques immediately from the grocery store?

Yes. He had said to me at the store, "Don't I know you from somewhere?," which I thought was a stupid line. So I said to him at the Other End, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" Bob told me that they'd been working together and that they were going to go out to East Hampton. I said to Bob, “You know that Jacques Levy? I really like him. Could you tell him to call me when you get back?”