Who was Joe Gallo? The Mafia boss immortalised by Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy immortalised many a man and woman on Desire. Together, the duo produced one of Dylan’s most complicated and divisive albums, which features tracks like ‘Hurricane’, about wrongfully imprisoned boxing champion Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter. But not all the people Bob sang about on Desire were so heroic. Consider ‘Joey’, a sensationalised account of the life of one of New York’s most feared Mafia men Joe Gallo.
Much of what there is to know of Gallo is there in Levy’s lyrics. Dylan and Jacques sat down in 1975 to pen this and any other tracks from Desire, including Isis, which is similar to Joey in that it is a richly-detailed account of one man’s life. Unfolding in rhymed, faintly Homeric verse, the track recounts Gallo’s time on earth from birth to death. Between Levy’s chunks of biography, Dylan returns to the same old question, one he longs to answer: “Joey, what made them want to come and blow you away?”
As Dylan sings in the opening verse, Joe Gallo was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in 1929. Crime was there from the beginning. His father, Umberto, was a prohibition bootlegger who had invested his illegal earnings into a loan-sharking racket. He felt no obligation, therefore, to dissuade his three sons from participating in local criminal activity. At 17, Joe was arrested for robbery and handed a prison sentence. Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His unhinged nature made him the perfect enforcer for the Profaci crime family, for whom he gladly assassinated countless targets. He quickly developed a reputation as one of the most fearsome and heavily armed members of the New York underworld. It’s even said he kept a pet lion in his basement to intimate those who owed him money.
Gallo was nothing if not dutiful. In 1957, he was asked to murder Albert Anastasia, the boss of the rival Gambino crime family. He carried out the order on October 25th, shooting Anastasia in a barbershop in mid-town Manhattan. But nobody, not even the Profaci, had complete control of Joe. In 1961, the Gallo brothers turned on their employers, kidnapping four Profaci members: Joseph Magliocco, Frank Profaci (Joe Profaci’s brother), Salvatore Musacchia and John Scimone. Joe and his gang wanted more money from the Profaci, and with four of their top men in the Gallo’s hands, they had no option but to accept his demands. LoCicero made a deal with Gallo, who released the hostages — but things were far from over. In betraying the Profaci, Gallo incited the first Colombo War, a bloody conflict that left the streets of Manhatten soaked with Mafia blood.
That same year, Gallo was convicted of conspiracy and extortion and was sentenced to seven-to-fourteen years behind bars. While he was imprisoned, boss Joe Profaci died of cancer. By the time of his release, the Profaci were known as the Colombo, and a new wave of violence had been unleashed. After years of bloodshed and kidnapping, things reached a head when Joseph Colombo was shot three times by a gunman at an Italian-American Civil Rights League rally in Manhattan. He survived but was left paralyzed. The family blamed Gallo for the murder, citing a recent dispute between the two families.
On April 7th, 1972, at four in the morning, Joe Gallo was shot dead at Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. It was his 43rd birthday. To this day, nobody knows who fired the gun.
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