While Joe Gallo was in prison, he read extensively, becoming a sort of jailhouse intellectual, and when he was finally released in 1970 he began to cultivate contacts in the literary and show business worlds, who welcomed him to their parties and obviously considered him an exotic amusement indeed. Jimmy Breslin's book The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight had been inspired by the legendary ineptitude of the Gallo family in their early-Sixties bids for power, and Joey developed close contacts with Jerry Orbach, who played a character corresponding to him in the movie based on the book, and his wife Marta, with whom, in the last months of his life, Joey began collaborating on various autobiographical literary projects. Out of Radical Chich bloomed Mafia Chic; he became something of an aboveground social figure, and told columnist Earl Wilson that he was "going straight".Mainlines,Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - A Lester Bangs Reader By Lester Bangs, edited by John NorthlandApparently that was a lie, however. While Joey was in prison, his gang languisehing and awaiting his reutrn, a new figure had arisen from the Profaci ranks to bring New York mob power to a whole new, all but avant-garde level; Joe Columbo. Columbo founded the Italian-American Civil Rights League, an organization ostensibly devoted to deploring an d"legitimately" opposing the "prejudice" which caused most Americans to link mob activities with citizens of Italian descent. Between 150,000 and 250,000 Italian-Americans joined the League, and the impact on politicians was considerable, which was how Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay ended up having their pictures taken with underworld toughs. Joey Gallo returned from prison with his power on his own turf intact, but of course completely cut out of the Columbo empire. On Jun 28, 1971, Joe Columbo was gunned down by a supposedly lone and uncontracted black man in front of thousands of his horrified followers at a rally in Columbus Circle. The consensus was that Crazy Joe was behind it, especially since he'd perplexed other Mafiosos by hanging out with black prisonsers during his stay in the joint, and ostensibly amined to start a black mob, under his control when he got out. According to many inside sources, there was a contract out on Joey Gallo from the day Columbo died, and on April 7, 1972, as he celebrated his 43rd birthday in Umberto's Clam House on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, an anonymous hit man walked in off the street and shot Crazy Joey to death much as Joey had murdered Albert Anastasia. It was the end of a gang war that had lasted almost a decade and a half - a few more of their henchmen were disposed of, and Gallo family was decimated, their power gone. Mobsters in general breathed a collective sigh of relief - the Gallos had always been hungry troublemakers - and went back to business as usual.
It is out of this faily typical tale of mob power-jostlings that Dylan has, unaccountably, woven "Joey," which paints a picture of Joey Gallo as alienated antihero reminiscent of West Side Story's "Gee, Officer Krupke" lyrics "He ain't no delinquent, he's misunderstood."
In the same essay, he also tears apart Dylan's Hurricane.
Terrorist Chic is what permits a songwriter like Steve Earle to pick up this same torch singing a song about the American Taliban, "Johnny Walker" and then get signed by Chevy to sell their trucks using his song "The Revolution Starts Now".
Very interesting. Some things never change.