Biography
Larry “Ratso” Sloman has worked across numerous fields as a writer, reporter, editor, composer, scriptwriter, performer, uncredited collaborator, and musician, yet his most enduring contribution remains that of an observer who has tracked Manhattan’s artistic life from the 1970s onward. Joni Mitchell supplied the nickname during a hung-over dawn in 1975 while he was reporting on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Tour for Rolling Stone; after Dylan personally invited him along, Sloman emerged from his vehicle in rumpled condition, prompting Mitchell to call out, “Look everybody, it’s Ratso,” referencing Ratzo Rizzo, the character Dustin Hoffman played in Midnight Cowboy. The moniker endured, reshaping both the tour and his own path: previously viewed as peripheral, he was thereafter placed on the tour’s per-diem roster, served as its unofficial diarist, helped shape and shoot the four-hour cinematic record Renaldo and Clara, and produced the volume Dylan himself labeled “the War and Peace of rock and roll,” On the Road with Bob Dylan. That debut publication established his reputation. Subsequent projects include the best-selling memoirs he shaped with Howard Stern (Miss America and Private Parts), Anthony Kiedis, David Blaine, Mike Tyson, and Abbie Hoffman, as well as Reefer Madness: The History of Marijuana in America and Thin Ice: A Season in Hell with the New York Rangers. With magic historian William Kalush he authored the biography The Secret Life of Harry Houdini, which was adapted into a feature film for which Sloman supplied the screenplay. He has also written songs, among them “Dying on the Vine” with John Cale and Rick Derringer, and co-directed the award-winning video for Dylan’s “Jokerman” alongside art director George Lois. He additionally supplied the model for the recurring Ratso figure in longtime friend Kinky Friedman’s detective series; Friedman’s novel God Bless John Wayne centers on Sloman’s own search for his birth mother. At seventy Sloman finally stepped forward as a recording artist, issuing Stubborn Heart on London’s Lucky Number imprint.
Born in Queens in 1950 to American-born Ashkenazic Jewish parents—his father a garment-district salesman, his mother a bookkeeper—Sloman earned a B.A. in Sociology from Queens College, graduating Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. After completing a VISTA year instead of military service in Vietnam, he received a National Institute for Mental Health fellowship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he obtained a master’s degree in Deviance and Criminology, fields that have continued to color his writing. During high school and college he maintained strong grades while immersing himself in the counterculture, frequenting Ed Sanders’s Peace Eye Bookstore and the offices of the East Village Other; one early article recounted Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies showering dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Sloman met Friedman after attending a Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys performance at Max’s Kansas City on a recommendation from guitarist Mike Bloomfield; he already knew Dylan from the city’s folk circuit. Commissioned by Rolling Stone, he chronicled the 1975 Rolling Thunder Tour, resulting in On the Road with Bob Dylan, published in 1978 and still regarded as a benchmark of gonzo rock journalism. Reefer Madness originated when Tuli Kupferberg declined Bobbs-Merrill’s offer and recommended Sloman instead. Thin Ice appeared in 1982. Sloman held editorial posts at both High Times and National Lampoon and composed songs with Cale and Derringer. In the late 1980s he and Hoffman completed Steal This Dream, a history of New York counterculture and the Yippie movement. The Stern memoirs arose when Sloman, working in an office near Stern’s studio, heard the host express interest in a book; their agents were introduced, yielding two number-one best-sellers, and Sloman drafted an early screenplay for Private Parts. Chosen from fifteen candidates to collaborate on Tyson’s Unfinished Life, he secured the assignment by mailing the boxer a copy of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo during Tyson’s imprisonment; when Tyson asked whether the gift implied he was Superman, Sloman answered that he believed the justice system had wronged Tyson and hoped the volume would provide encouragement.
In 2006 Sloman and Kalush produced the Houdini study The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero. Leonard Cohen, for whom Sloman wrote the preface to On Tour with Leonard Cohen, cautioned him against criticizing the magician. Sloman has also appeared in the award-winning short The Black Balloon, the horror feature Satan’s Little Helper, and a substantial role in Martin Scorsese’s Netflix documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.
During the 1980s, while writing songs with Cale, Sloman set aside many of his own compositions. In 2013 he began co-hosting an Internet radio program with Mark Jacobson; after a guest author on Gram Parsons was joined by musicians Tim Bracy and Elizabeth Nelson, the three began writing together. The following year Sloman met producer Vin Cacchione and, revisiting earlier lyrics, proposed recording a demo at Duct Tape Studios. Their version of “Dying on the Vine” prompted Cacchione to urge Sloman to sing the entire project. After Hal Willner similarly encouraged him, Sloman and Cacchione assembled Stubborn Heart, enlisting Warren Ellis, Sharon Robinson, and Nick Cave—who duets on “Our Lady of Light”—alongside other Brooklyn musicians and a cover of Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Finished in 2014, the album appeared on Lucky Number in 2019.
Born in Queens in 1950 to American-born Ashkenazic Jewish parents—his father a garment-district salesman, his mother a bookkeeper—Sloman earned a B.A. in Sociology from Queens College, graduating Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. After completing a VISTA year instead of military service in Vietnam, he received a National Institute for Mental Health fellowship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he obtained a master’s degree in Deviance and Criminology, fields that have continued to color his writing. During high school and college he maintained strong grades while immersing himself in the counterculture, frequenting Ed Sanders’s Peace Eye Bookstore and the offices of the East Village Other; one early article recounted Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies showering dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Sloman met Friedman after attending a Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys performance at Max’s Kansas City on a recommendation from guitarist Mike Bloomfield; he already knew Dylan from the city’s folk circuit. Commissioned by Rolling Stone, he chronicled the 1975 Rolling Thunder Tour, resulting in On the Road with Bob Dylan, published in 1978 and still regarded as a benchmark of gonzo rock journalism. Reefer Madness originated when Tuli Kupferberg declined Bobbs-Merrill’s offer and recommended Sloman instead. Thin Ice appeared in 1982. Sloman held editorial posts at both High Times and National Lampoon and composed songs with Cale and Derringer. In the late 1980s he and Hoffman completed Steal This Dream, a history of New York counterculture and the Yippie movement. The Stern memoirs arose when Sloman, working in an office near Stern’s studio, heard the host express interest in a book; their agents were introduced, yielding two number-one best-sellers, and Sloman drafted an early screenplay for Private Parts. Chosen from fifteen candidates to collaborate on Tyson’s Unfinished Life, he secured the assignment by mailing the boxer a copy of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo during Tyson’s imprisonment; when Tyson asked whether the gift implied he was Superman, Sloman answered that he believed the justice system had wronged Tyson and hoped the volume would provide encouragement.
In 2006 Sloman and Kalush produced the Houdini study The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero. Leonard Cohen, for whom Sloman wrote the preface to On Tour with Leonard Cohen, cautioned him against criticizing the magician. Sloman has also appeared in the award-winning short The Black Balloon, the horror feature Satan’s Little Helper, and a substantial role in Martin Scorsese’s Netflix documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.
During the 1980s, while writing songs with Cale, Sloman set aside many of his own compositions. In 2013 he began co-hosting an Internet radio program with Mark Jacobson; after a guest author on Gram Parsons was joined by musicians Tim Bracy and Elizabeth Nelson, the three began writing together. The following year Sloman met producer Vin Cacchione and, revisiting earlier lyrics, proposed recording a demo at Duct Tape Studios. Their version of “Dying on the Vine” prompted Cacchione to urge Sloman to sing the entire project. After Hal Willner similarly encouraged him, Sloman and Cacchione assembled Stubborn Heart, enlisting Warren Ellis, Sharon Robinson, and Nick Cave—who duets on “Our Lady of Light”—alongside other Brooklyn musicians and a cover of Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Finished in 2014, the album appeared on Lucky Number in 2019.
Albums
Singles
