Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics

by Ronald Brownstein

Geffen’s great professional cause in 1973 and 1974 was luring Bob Dylan to Elektra/Asylum, away from his longtime home at Columbia Records. “The legend was he could sign anybody,” remembered Jon Landau. “If he focused on somebody, he would go after them and communicate this tremendous intensity.”53 Dylan was to be the capstone of the Geffen legend. Geffen, as always, plotted his campaign methodically. He first targeted Jonathan Taplin, the former road manager for Dylan and the Band, as his conduit to meet Robbie Robertson, the Band’s leading figure. He courted Robertson to get closer to Dylan. Geffen convinced Robertson to move to Malibu and then wooed him and his wife by taking them on a trip to Paris with him and Joni Mitchell, who memorialized the experience in her classic song about Geffen, “Free Man in Paris.”