Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  Dylan: Oh, yeah.

  Gooding: You’re absolutely right that they would have to look at it two ways at the same time. Did you manage to get both ways into the song?

  Dylan: Yeah. I lost the song.

  Gooding: I hope you find it, and when you find it, sing it for me.

  Dylan: I got a verse here. . . . You know Ian and Sylvia?

  Gooding: Sure. Ian and Sylvia are at the Bitter End club.

  Dylan: I sort of borrowed this from—

  Gooding: He’s looking for a harmonica.

  Dylan: I don’t have to take the necklace off. You might have heard them do it. This is the same song. I used to do this one.

  [Dylan performs “Makes a Long-Time Man Feel Bad.”]

  Dylan: You like that one?

  Gooding: Boy, when you—

  Dylan: That’s got them funny chords in it.

  Gooding: —really get going, there’s a tremendous sort of push that you give things that’s wild.

  Dylan: Yeah, you really think so?

  Gooding: [Laughs.] No, I was just talking.

  Dylan: I’ll take off my necklace.

  Gooding: Without taking off your hat.

  Dylan: No. I’m getting good at this.

  Gooding: Yeah. After he takes off the necklace or puts it on, he’s gotta fluff up the hat again every time.

  Dylan: Yeah. I got it cleaned and blocked last week.

  Gooding: [Laughs.] What did you wear on your head?

  Dylan: Stetson. You seen me wear that Stetson.

  Gooding: Oh, yeah, you were wearing somebody’s Stetson.

  Dylan: It was mine. I got that for a present.

  Gooding: So why don’t you wear it? ’Cause you like this one better?

  Dylan: I like this one better. It’s been with me longer.

  Gooding: What happens when you take it off for any length of time? You go to sleep?

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Gooding: I see.

  Dylan: Or else I’m in the bathroom or somethin’. Well, actually, just when I go to sleep. I wanted to sing “Baby, Please Don’t Go” because I’ve wanted to hear how that sounded.

  [Dylan performs “Baby, Please Don’t Go.”]

  Gooding: That’s a nice song, too. You said that you’ve written several new songs lately.

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Gooding: You’ve only sung one of them. You realize that? I know I’m working you very hard for this hour of the morning.

  Dylan: Yeah, this really isn’t a new one but this is one of the ones. You’ll like it. I wrote this one before I got this Columbia Records thing. Just about when I got it. I like New York, but this is a song from one person’s angle.

  [Dylan performs “Hard Times in New York Town.”]

  Gooding: That’s a very nice song, Bob Dylan. You’ve been listening to Bob Dylan playing and singing some of his songs and some of the songs that he’s learned from other people. And thank you very, very much for coming down here and working so hard.

  Dylan: It’s my pleasure to come down.

  Gooding: When you’re rich and famous, are you gonna wear the hat, too?

  Dylan: Oh, I’m never gonna become rich and famous.

  Gooding: And you’re never gonna take off the hat, either.

  Dylan: No.

  Gooding: And this has been Folksinger’s Choice, and I’m Cynthia Gooding. I’ll be here next week at the same time.

  CONVERSATION

  Izzy Young, Pete Seeger, Sis Cunningham, and Gil Turner | May 1962 (recording) | Unaired, WBAI-FM (New York)

  Sources seem to agree that this discussion—taped for Broadside magazine’s show on WBAI-FM—never aired. Like the Cynthia Gooding conversation, it took place quite early in the game. Dylan’s debut album had been released only about two months earlier; and just weeks before this conversation, on April 16, he had finished writing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” which at this point carried the title “The Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind.” Izzy Young hosted the show, which includes contributions from folksingers Pete Seeger, Sis Cunningham, and Gil Turner. —Ed.

  Pete Seeger: I’d like to hear some of the songs that Bob Dylan’s made up, because of all the people I’ve heard in America, he seems to be the most prolific. Bob, do you make the songs before breakfast every day or before supper?

  Bob Dylan: I don’t make up a song like that. Sometimes I could go about two weeks without making up a song.

  Seeger: I don’t believe it.

  Dylan: Oh, yeah. . . . I write a lotta stuff. In fact, I wrote five songs last night, but I gave all the papers away someplace. It was in a place called the Bitter End. Some were just about what was happening on the stage. And I would never sing them any place. They were just for myself and for some other people. They might say, “Write a song about that” and I’d do it, but I don’t sit around like a lot of people do, spread newspapers all around, and pick something out to write a song about it. It’s usually right there in my head before I start. That’s the way I write. I mean, it might be a bad approach but I don’t even consider that I wrote it when I got it done.

  Seeger: Put it together.

  Sis Cunningham: You made it up.

  Dylan: Yeah, yeah. I just figure that I made it up or I got it someplace. The song was there before me, before I came along. I just sorta came and took it down with a pencil but it was all there before I came around. That’s the way I feel about it.

  Izzy Young: I feel about Bob Dylan’s songs very often that Bob is actually a kind of folk mime. He represents all the people around. And all the ideas current are filtered down and they come out in poetry. For example, one song you wrote about that fellow that has to be put into an institution. What was his name . . . White?

  Dylan: Oh, yeah. He’s dead now.

  Young: He’s dead now. For example, in one line you say the institutions are overcrowded. And I just couldn’t see that appearing on a traditional ballad stanza before you sang it. And it’s actually the first modern folk song I can think of that uses the ideas of twentieth-century Freudian psychology, and the idea of people being afraid of life.

  Gil Turner: Instead of talking about it, let’s hear it. Could we hear that song?

  Cunningham: Let him get tuned up while we’re talking, anyway. We can let him give us an example of how these songs come to him and flow through him.

  Turner: Well, I think this particular song is historical in that it’s the first psychological song of the modern generation that I’ve heard.

  Dylan: I took this from Bonnie Dobson’s tune, “Peter Amberly,” I think the name of it is.

  [Dylan performs “Ballad of Donald White.”]

  Young: Thank you, Bob Dylan.

  Seeger: I’d like to hear Bob sing another one of his songs.

  Dylan: OK.

  Seeger: You’ve got a whole batch of ’em. Bob, where were you raised?

  Dylan: Gallup, New Mexico, and South Dakota.

  Seeger: Holy mackerel. That’s where you can go farther and see less than anywhere else.

  Dylan: “Emmett Till” was supposed to be here. It’s not in Broadside, though.

  Seeger: Yeah, that’s the one you’ve been promising to Broadside for a long time.

  Dylan: OK. This is Len Chandler’s tune. The funny thing about it was that Len, when he plays and sings, he uses a lot of chords, but he’s really good. He uses his fingers all over, but he’s good. And he’s always trying to tell me to use more chords, and to sing a couple of songs in minor keys. Before I met him I never sang one song in minor key. And he taught me these chords, and he was singing the song to these chords. And I saw him do the chords, and I stole it from him. And he heard me doing it like that. He didn’t care, though.

  [Dylan performs “The Death of Emmett Till.”]

  Young: Topical songs have been the topic of the program this afternoon. We’ve just about reached the end of the program. And I’d like Bob Dylan to sing the last song, called, “The Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind.”


  Dylan: Oh, “The Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind”? That one? Oh, OK.

  Young: Because I think being a topical song, it’s just filled with poetry that people of all kinds will enjoy.

  [Dylan performs “The Answer Is Blowin’ in the Wind,” with everyone joining in on the final chorus.]

  Young: Thank you, Bob Dylan, Gil Turner, Pete Seeger, Sis Cunningham, and myself, Israel Young.

  DYLAN ON

  Supposedly Running Off to Chicago at Age Ten

  “My folks didn’t seem to mind [that I ran away] because I don’t remember them saying anything. Maybe I was happy when I was little or I was unhappy, a million other kids were the same way. What difference does it make?”

  —from interview with Edwin Miller, Seventeen, September 1962

  DYLAN ON

  His Gift

  “I used to play the guitar when I was ten, so I figured, well, maybe my thing is playing the guitar . . . maybe that’s my little gift, like somebody can make a cake, or somebody can saw a tree down and . . . nobody’s really got the right to say that any of these gifts are any better than any other body’s . . . And I’d say that this is exactly what my gift is. Maybe I got a better gift but as of right now I ain’t found it.”

  —from interview with Studs Terkel, WFMT-FM (Chicago), May 1963

  DYLAN ON

  The Blues

  “What made the real blues singers so great is that they were able to state all the problems they had; but at the same time, they were standing outside of them and could look at them. And in that way, they had them beat. What’s depressing today is that many young singers are trying to get inside the blues, forgetting that those older singers used them to get outside their troubles.”

  —from liner notes to The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, released May 27, 1963

  DYLAN ON

  What He Wanted to See

  “The itch to move, to see, and hear, was always there. But I didn’t want to see the atomic bathrooms and electronic bedrooms and souped-up can-openers; I wanted to watch and feel the people and the dust and ditches and the fields and fences.”

  —from interview with Sidney Fields, New York Mirror, September 12, 1963

  DYLAN ON

  Youth

  “It’s took me a long time to get young and now I consider myself young. And I’m proud of it. I’m proud that I’m young. And I only wish that all you people who are sitting out here today or tonight weren’t here and I could see all kinds of faces with hair on their head and everything like that, everything leading to youngness. . . . It is not an old people’s world. It has nothing to do with old people. . . . And I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules and they haven’t got any hair on their head. I get very uptight about it.”

  —from speech at National Emergency Civil Rights Committee dinner,

  Americana Hotel, New York, December 13, 1963

  DYLAN ON

  Political Action

  “It ain’t nothin’ just to walk around and sing. You have to step out a little, right? Take Joanie [Baez], man, she’s still singin’ about Mary Hamilton. I mean, where’s that at? She’s walked around on picket lines, she’s got all kinds of feeling, so why ain’t she steppin’ out?”

  —from interview with Richard Farina, Mademoiselle, August 1964

  DYLAN ON

  Changes in His Music

  “These records I’ve made, I’ll stand behind them, but some of that was jumping into the scene to be heard and a lot of it was because I didn’t see anybody else doing that kind of thing. . . . You know—pointing to all the things that are wrong. Me, I don’t want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman. Like, I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write them inside me, and to do that I’m going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally.”

  —from interview with Nat Hentoff, New Yorker, October 24, 1964

  A DAY WITH BOB DYLAN

  John Cocks | November 20, 1964 | Kenyon Collegian (Ohio)

  Two and a half years separate the conversation with Izzy Young, Pete Seeger, and company from the following piece. It was a busy and productive time for Dylan.

  In May 1963, fourteen months after his debut album had appeared, Columbia released The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, a giant leap forward. Though the first LP mingles only two originals (“Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody”) with blues and folk covers, the situation reverses on Freewheelin’, which includes just two songs Dylan didn’t write: “Corrina, Corrina,” which dates from 1928, and “Honey, Just Allow Me One More Chance,” a substantially reworked version of a 1927 recording by country blues singer Henry Thomas. The rest of the LP contains such now-classic originals as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Girl from the North Country,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” “Masters of War,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

  Critics understandably raved; this was a completely fresh voice, making music that wasn’t like anything else out there. And it was no fluke: The Times They Are A-Changin’, which followed in January 1964, delivers a brilliant, all-originals mix of the political (“With God on Our Side” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” for example) and the personal (“Boots of Spanish Leather”). A mere seven months after that, in August 1964, came Another Side of Bob Dylan, containing more indelible originals, among them “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “My Back Pages,” and “Chimes of Freedom.”

  These records didn’t bring Dylan quite as much success as you might expect, given their latter-day reputations. In fact, his biggest claim to fame at this point was probably that Peter, Paul, and Mary had scored Top Ten hits with his “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” As for his own recordings, Freewheelin’ topped charts in the United Kingdom but made it to only number twenty-two in the United States. The Times They Are A-Changin’ reached number twenty, and Another Side climbed just to number forty-three.

  Three months after that last album’s release, on November 6, 1964, Dylan stepped off an airplane in Columbus, Ohio, and headed for nearby Kenyon College, where he was scheduled to perform the next day. John “Jay” Cocks, a twenty-year-old student at the school who is today a well-known Hollywood screenwriter, wrote evocatively about the visit for the Kenyon Collegian.

  As the story makes clear, these were still early days for Dylan. True, gaggles of teenage fans congregated around him after his concert. But he traveled with only one helper, who would share a room with him in a “small motel” near the college; and when this article appeared, the headline on a couple of carryover pages gave bigger billing to the student than the singer: “Jay Cocks Spends a Day with Folksinger,” it read. —Ed.

  Wearing high heel boots, a tailored pea-jacket without lapels, pegged dungarees of a kind of buffed azure, large sunglasses with squared edges, his dark, curly hair standing straight up on top and spilling over the upturned collar of his soiled white shirt, he caused a small stir when he got off the plane in Columbus. Businessmen nodded and smirked, the ground crew looked a little incredulous and a mother put a hand on her child’s head and made him turn away. Bob Dylan came into the terminal taking long strides, walking hard on his heels and swaggering just a little. He saw us, smiled a nervous but friendly smile, and came over to introduce himself and his companion, a lanky, unshaven man named Victor [Maymudes, his road manager] who looked like a hip version of Abraham Lincoln. Dave Banks, who had organized the concert and who was Dylan’s official reception committee, led Dylan and Victor to baggage claim. Along the way, Victor asked us how far we were from the school and where he and Dylan would be spending the night. Learning that Banks had reserved a room for them in a small motel seven miles from Kenyon, he smiled a little and said “Tryin’ to keep us as far away from the school as you can, huh?”

  The trip back from the airport was a quiet one. Both men seemed rather tired, Dylan especially, who was pale an
d nervous. He said he was right in the middle of a big concert tour which had been on for almost two months, and Victor reminisced about one memorable engagement in Cambridge. “They had this pep rally right before the concert,” he said, “and they all came in sweaty and yellin’. Man, the audience was full of football players—football players.” Banks mentioned that Kenyon hadn’t won a single football game all year, and both men seemed enthusiastic. “Yeah? No kidden’?,” Dylan said, and Victor flashed a gratified smile. They asked a lot of questions about the college, the Review, and girls. Victor was astonished to find the college was so small and that the girls were so far away. “Outside Cleveland?”, he commented, “man, that’s a far away to go for a chick.” Dylan nodded sympathetically.

  We talked a bit more then about Kenyon. “They really have to wear ties and stuff to the concert,” Dylan asked, “ties? Well, I’m gonna tell them they can take them off. That’s what I’m gonna do. Rules—man, that’s why I never lasted long in college. Too many rules.” He spoke quietly but with some animation, in an unmistakably mid-western accent.

  Entering Mt. Vernon, Dylan asked if there was a liquor store around. “Nothin’ strong—wine or somethin’. Beaujolais. Chianti’s good. Yeah, or Almaden or anything just so it’s red and dry.”

  Banks stopped to get some wine. Dylan was talking faster now, more excitedly, fingering his sideburns and running his hand nervously over the top of his head.

  As we came into Gambier, Dylan pressed his face up against the car window. “Wow, great place for a school! Man, if I went here I’d be out in the woods all day gettin’ drunk. Get me a chick,” (and here he again smiled his nervous smile), “settle down, raise some kids.” Banks drove the pair around the campus and stopped at Rosse Hall where the concert was to be given to show them the audio facilities. Victor didn’t like the amplifier system (“Man, it’s a phonograph”) and Dylan was worried about making his entrance from the back of the hall and walking all the way to the stage in front. It was finally decided that he would use the classrooms in the basement for a dressing room and come in through the fire exit in front, facing the small College cemetery. “Strange set-up,” he kept saying, “really strange set-up.” He was pacing up and down, taking quick drags on a Chesterfield. “Look, try and get as many people in here as you can, O.K.? Let ’em sit on the floor, just try and let everybody in, O.K.?” Victor mentioned that they were both pretty hungry, so Banks suggested driving back into Mt. Vernon where Dylan wouldn’t be recognized; even if he was noticed, Banks said, he would probably be taken for some crazy student anyway, and the worst that could happen was someone trying to pick a fight. “’S’all right, man,” Dylan said, shrugging his narrow shoulders, “I’m ready for ’em.”