Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  Dylan: Well, we have five in the group. And we need other things. We have a lot of electronic equipment now, a lot of different things which have to be taken care of, so we need a lot of people. We have three road managers and things like that. We don’t make any big public presentations, though. Like we never come into town in limousines or anything like that. We just go from place to place and do the shows.

  Reporter: You fly in your own plane? Do you have a private plane?

  Dylan: Yes, yes.

  Reporter: Do you have to get in a certain type of mood to write your music?

  Dylan: Yeah, I guess so. A certain type of mood, if you want to call it that.

  Reporter: Do you find that you are perhaps more creative at a certain time of the day?

  Dylan: Yes, yes, I feel that way.

  Reporter: Like a night writer?

  Dylan: I wouldn’t say night has anything to do with it.

  Reporter: Have you ever sung with the Beatles?

  Dylan: No. Well, I think we may have messed around in London, but, no, I don’t think anything serious.

  Reporter: Have you ever played a dance?

  Dylan: No. It’s not that kind of music.

  Reporter: It is.

  Dylan: Well, what can I say? You must know more about the music then than I do. How long have you been playing it?

  Reporter: Do you find that when you’re writing you sort of free-associate often?

  Dylan: No, it’s all very clear and simple to me. These songs aren’t complicated to me at all. I know what they all are all about. There’s nothing hard to figure out for me. I wouldn’t write anything I can’t really see.

  Reporter: I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that when you’re creating a song, are you doing it more or less on a subliminal level where you’re letting your mind just flow? Where you’re very conscious of each step, each word?

  Dylan: No. No, that’s the difference in the songs I write now. In the past year or so—in the last year and a half, maybe two, I don’t know—but the songs before, up till one of those records . . . I wrote the fourth record in Greece, so there was a change there. But the records before that, I used to know what I wanted to say before I used to write the song, you see. All the stuff which I had written before which wasn’t song was just on a piece of toilet paper when it comes out like that. That’s the kind of stuff I never would sing because I know people just would not be ready for it. But I just went through that other thing of writing songs and I couldn’t write like it anymore. It was just too easy and it wasn’t really right. I would know what I wanted to say before I wrote the song and I would say it, and it never really would come out exactly the way I thought it would, but it came out, it touched it. But now, I just write a song, like I know that it’s just going to be all right and I don’t really know exactly what it’s all about, but I do know the minute, the layers of what it’s all about.

  Reporter: What do you think about your song “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”? It happens to be my favorite one.

  Dylan: God bless you, son. I haven’t heard it for a long time. I couldn’t even sing it for you probably.

  Reporter: How long does it take you to write a song?

  Dylan: Usually not too long a time, really. I might write all night and get one song out of a lot of different things I write.

  Reporter: How many have you written?

  Dylan: Well, there’s one publisher that’s got about a hundred. I’ve written about fifty others, I guess, so I got about 150 songs I’ve written.

  Reporter: Have they all been published?

  Dylan: Well, no. Some of the scraps haven’t been published. But I find I can’t really sing that anyway, because I forget it, so the songs I don’t publish, I usually do forget.

  Reporter: Have you ever taken these scraps, as you call them, and made them into a song?

  Dylan: No, I’ve forgotten the scraps. I have to start over all the time. I can’t really keep notes or anything like that.

  Reporter: You can’t go back to any of your earlier things and use them?

  Dylan: No, no that wouldn’t be right either.

  Reporter: Do you get any help from the group that you play with when you write the songs?

  Dylan: Robbie [Robertson], the lead guitar player, sometimes we play the guitars together, something might come up where I know it’s gonna be right. I’ll be just sitting around playing so I can write up some words. I don’t get any kind of ideas, though, of what I want to . . . what’s really going to happen here.

  Reporter: Why do you think you’re so popular?

  Dylan: I don’t know. I’m not a reporter, I’m not a newsman or anything. I’m not even a philosopher, so I have no idea. I would think other people would know, but I don’t think I know. When you get too many people talking about the same thing it tends to clutter up things. Everybody asks me that so I realize they must be talking about it, so I’d rather stay out of it and make it easier for them. Then, when they get the answer, I hope they tell me.

  [Laughter.]

  Reporter: Has there been any more booing when you’ve played electric?

  Dylan: Oh, there’s booing. You can’t tell where the booing’s going to come up. Can’t tell at all. It comes up in the weirdest, strangest places and when it comes up it’s quite a thing in itself. I figure there’s a little “boo” in all of us.

  Reporter: Bob, where is Desolation Row?

  Dylan: Where? Oh, that’s someplace in Mexico. It’s across the border. It’s noted for its Coke factory. [Laughter.] Coca-Cola machines . . . sells a lotta Coca-Cola down there.

  Reporter: Where is Highway 61?

  Dylan: Highway 61 exists. That’s out in the middle of the country. It runs down to the South, goes up north.

  Reporter: Mr. Dylan, you seem very reluctant to talk about the fact that you’re a most popular entertainer.

  Dylan: Well, what do you want me to say about it?

  Reporter: You seem almost embarrassed to admit that you’re popular.

  Dylan: Well, I’m not embarrassed. I mean, what do you want, exactly, for me to say? You want me to jump up and say “Hallelujah!” and crash the cameras or do something weird? Tell me, tell me. I’ll go along with you. If I can’t go along with you, I’ll find somebody to go along with you.

  Reporter: No, but you really have no idea as to why or no thoughts on why you are popular? That’s what interests me.

  Dylan: I just haven’t really struggled for that. It happened, you know? It happened like anything else happens. Just a happening. You don’t figure out happenings. You dig happenings. So I’m not going to even talk about it.

  Reporter: Do you feel that part of the popularity is because of an identification of your audience with you or with what you’re saying or what you’ve been writing about?

  Dylan: I have no idea. I don’t really come too much in contact.

  Reporter: Does it make life more difficult?

  Dylan: No, it certainly doesn’t.

  Reporter: Were you surprised the first time the boos came?

  Dylan: Yeah, that was at Newport [Folk Festival]. Well, I did this very crazy thing. [Laughter.] So I didn’t really know what was going to happen, but they certainly booed, I’ll tell you that. You could hear it all over the place. I don’t know who they were, though, and I’m certain whoever it was did it twice as loud as they normally would. They kind of quieted down some at Forest Hills [Tennis Stadium], although they did it there, too. They’ve done it just about all over except in Texas. They didn’t boo us in Texas or in Atlanta or in Boston or in Ohio or in Minneapolis. But they’ve done it a lot of other places. I mean, they must be pretty rich to be able to go someplace and boo. [Laughter.] I couldn’t afford it if I was in their shoes.

  Reporter: Other than the booing, have the audiences changed? Do you get screaming? Do you get people rushing the stage?

  Dylan: Oh, sometimes you get people rushing the stage, but you just turn ’em off very fast. Kick
’em in the head or something like that. [Laughter.] They get the picture.

  Graham: Going back to what you said about not really being concerned and not really knowing why you are in the midst of this popularity. That is in direct opposition to what most people who reach this level of popularity say.

  Dylan: Well, a lot of people start out and try to be stars, I would imagine. Like, however they have to be stars. I know a lot of those people. And they start out and they go into show business for many, many reasons—to be seen. This had nothing to do with it when I started. I started from New York City, and there just wasn’t any of that around. It just happened.

  Graham: Don’t misunderstand me. I agree with your right not to have to care. My point is that it would be somewhat disappointing to the many people who think that you feel towards them the way they feel towards you and that’s the reason for your popularity. That’s what they think.

  Dylan: Oh, well, I don’t want to disappoint anybody. I mean, tell me what I should say. I’ll certainly go along with anything, but I really don’t have much of an idea.

  Reporter: You have a poster there.

  Dylan: Yeah, it’s a poster somebody gave me. It looks pretty good. The Jefferson Airplane, John Handy Quintet, and Sam Thomas and the Mystery Trend and the Great Society are all playing at the Fillmore Auditorium Friday, December 10th, and I would like to go if I could. [Laughter.] But unfortunately, I won’t be here, I don’t think. But if I was here, I certainly would be there.

  Reporter: Do you tour in the South?

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Reporter: What’s more important to you—the way that your music and words sound, or the content, the message of the work?

  Dylan: The whole thing while it’s happening. It either happens or it doesn’t happen. Just the thing which is happening at the time. That is the most important thing; there really isn’t anything else. I don’t know if I answered your question.

  Reporter: Well, you mean it might happen one time, and it might not happen the next time with the same song?

  Dylan: We’ve had some bad nights, but the records are always made of good cuts and in person most of the time it does come across. Most of the time we do feel like playing. That’s important to me; the aftermath, and whatever happens before and after is not really important to me—just the time on the stage and the time that we’re singing the songs and performing them. Or not really performing them even, just letting them be there.

  Gleason: Bob, we promised to spring you at a certain time. It’s now two o’clock. Thank you very much.

  [Applause.]

  PRESS CONFERENCE

  December 16, 1965 | Los Angeles

  Dylan must not have found his San Francisco press conference to be too distasteful an experience, because less than two weeks later, he subjected himself to another session with reporters, this time in Los Angeles. Here, journalists wasted no time in hitting him with absurd questions and Dylan, in fine form, was ready with appropriate answers. —Ed.

  Aide to Dylan: I’d like to welcome everybody here this afternoon. At the far left is [publicist and talent scout] Billy James of Columbia Records. And I’m here just to sort of point fingers at people who’ve got questions. And Bob tells me that he has no formal statement. He said he would prefer not to answer any questions about science or trigonometry, which sort of blew the first ten that I had, so I would, if I may, lead it off with one question and then let you take it from there. Bob, these days, an awful lot of people are recording your songs, and I just wondered if you had any feelings of pride or horror or anything else about having your material done by other artists.

  Bob Dylan: No.

  Aide to Dylan: Anybody out there want to start off?

  Reporter: Lately, in one of the national magazines, I read something about the protest singers, and I wonder if you could tell me, among the folksingers, how many would you say could be characterized as protest singers today?

  Dylan: I don’t understand. Could you ask the question again?

  Reporter: Yeah. How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil . . . how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music and use the songs to protest the social state in which we live today—the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.

  Dylan: How many?

  Reporter: Yes, are there many who—

  Dylan: Yeah, I think there’s about 136.

  [Laughter.]

  Reporter: You say, “about 136”?

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Reporter: Or do you mean exactly 136?

  Dylan: It’s either 136 or 142.

  Reporter: Are there, seriously? Can you name a few of them for me?

  Dylan: Protest? You just want singers?

  Reporter: How about Barry McGuire? Is he one? What is he?

  Dylan: He’d be sort of a mixture of country and western and seventeenth-century literature music . . . Robert Goulet is a protest singer. All the attention has been given to everybody that that has long hair, but the truth of the matter is really that the protest singers are Eydie Gormé and Robert Goulet and Steve Lawrence. It’s very obvious if you go beyond the word “protest.”

  Reporter: What does the word “protest” mean to you?

  Dylan: It means singing when you really don’t want to sing.

  Reporter: Do you sing against your wishes?

  Dylan: No.

  Reporter: Do you sing protest songs?

  Dylan: No.

  Reporter: What do you sing?

  Dylan: I sing all love songs.

  Reporter: Is it true that you have changed your name? And if so, what was your real name?

  Dylan: My real name was Kunezevitch. I changed it to avoid all these relatives that come up to you in different parts of the country and want tickets for concerts and stuff like that.

  Reporter: Kunezevitch?

  Dylan: Kunezevitch, yes.

  Reporter: Was that your first or the last name?

  Dylan: That was the first name. [Laughter and applause.] I don’t really want to tell you what the last name was. [Laughter.]

  Reporter: I’ve heard critics say that you have no real purpose in mind when you write a song except to shock people. Is that true?

  Dylan: You know that’s not true. You’ve heard the songs, haven’t you?

  Reporter: Yes.

  Dylan: Well, you know that’s not true then.

  Reporter: I think “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “The [sic] Tambourine Man” were considered by some to be endorsements of marijuana smoking.

  Dylan: Well, I didn’t write “Puff the Magic Dragon.” That’s horrible. Whatever that is, I didn’t write that. And, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” there’s no marijuana in that song. At least I never heard it before.

  Reporter: Do you have a music background? What is your education?

  Dylan: Same as everybody’s. High school.

  Reporter: Bob, if you were to put a label upon yourself, how would you characterize yourself? What kind of a singer are you?

  Dylan: I’m more of a mathematical singer. I use words like most people use numbers. That’s about the best I can do.

  Reporter: Could you elaborate a little bit more on that? You’re losing me there.

  Dylan: Oh, I hate to do that. I can’t elaborate on it any more than that. I could at another time. You really got me at a bad moment here.

  Reporter: Bob, you and Joan Baez have become heroes of the new protest movement on college campuses.

  Dylan: Oh, Jesus.

  Reporter: I’d like to get your reaction to the student protest movement. A two-part question. The second part is whether you believe that there is a connection between the so-called New Left and the so-called new music.

  Dylan: I don’t know anything about the New Left or students very much at all. I don’t really know any college students.

  Reporter: I have a complaint against your vocals and I hear others and I read criticisms—

  Dy
lan: Sorry. [Giggles.]

  Reporter: I find it hard to get your words. You kind of mumble or you sort of slur and in the old days, you know, Sinatra on his fiftieth birthday, was complaining also about the new modern singers’ enunciation and diction—

  Dylan: Well, new modern singers are much too sick nowadays to—

  Reporter: How about yourself? Are you sick in the same way? In terms of not comprehending the words and lyrics?

  Dylan: I have a nervous disease. This keeps my words—if you want to pick on that, like you’d pick on a cripple . . .That’s all I can say.

  Reporter: You’re not the only one. It’s modern style. I’m just curious—

  Dylan: It certainly isn’t any style that’s harmful to anybody. It’s not gonna hurt anybody.

  Reporter: Well, if they don’t understand the words so easily.

  Dylan: Well, it’s not gonna hurt them not to understand the words.

  Reporter: Bob, why is there such a widespread use of drugs among singers today?

  Dylan: I don’t know. Are you a singer?

  [Laughter.]

  Reporter: Am I wrong in assuming that or saying that?

  Dylan: I don’t know many of the other singers. I really don’t know.

  Reporter: Do you take drugs yourself?

  Dylan: I don’t even know what a drug is. I’ve never even seen a drug. I wouldn’t know probably what one looked like if I saw one.

  Reporter: Real way-out music and drugs seem to go together. Have any idea why that could be?

  Dylan: I have no idea.

  Reporter: Have you any intention of appearing at a Vietnam Day Committee benefit in San Francisco in a week or so?

  Dylan: No. I’ll be busy.

  Reporter: Have you been asked?

  Dylan: No.

  Reporter: Bob, what’ll be the next vogue in your opinion in the field of music in which you work?

  Dylan: The next thing I’m gonna do?

  Reporter: Anyone. What will catch on in your opinion?

  Dylan: Gee, I don’t know.

  Reporter: What are you gonna do next? Something new and different?

  Dylan: Yeah. I’m gonna write a symphony with words. Different words and songs going at the same time. I don’t know if it’s gonna be vogue.