by Jeff Burger
Reporter: Can you explain a little bit more how you’re gonna go about this? Will you have people reciting it all at once or what?
Dylan: Yeah. All at once everything’s gonna happen. One song’ll be playing here in one key, another song’ll be in another key. There’ll be sounds from out this way, other sounds from another track. It all depends on how many tracks I decide to use. Use ten tracks, you can use ten different things going on at the same time, which is really a symphony.
Reporter: Bob, what sort of technique do you use when you write songs? Or don’t you call it any sort of technique? How do you do it? Do you play on the piano first or write the music down first or the lyrics? What do you do?
Dylan: No, I just sit down and next thing I know, it’s there.
Reporter: How does it come there?
Dylan: I don’t know. I just sit down and I write. And the next thing I know, it’s there.
Reporter: Do you produce your own records and so forth?
Dylan: No, I don’t.
Reporter: Who’s your favorite producer? Do you have any?
Dylan: You mean an A&Rs man?
Reporter: Yeah, the one that does the whole job of background and music and instrumentation.
Dylan: I don’t know of too many people really that do that. Phil Spector.
Reporter: Who does yours?
Dylan: Oh, Columbia Records. A fellow named Bob Johnston does it.
Reporter: He’s very good.
Dylan: You know him?
Reporter: No, I don’t know him but he’s very good.
Reporter: Bob, do you have any movie plans coming up?
Dylan: Yeah.
Reporter: What would you like to do?
Dylan: [Laughs.] She’s very excited. Just make a movie.
Reporter: Would you play yourself or would you actually act?
Dylan: No, I’m gonna play my mother.
[Laughter.]
Reporter: How would you do that?
Dylan: That’s very simple, really, if you think about it.
Reporter: Would you think about it and tell us?
Dylan: No, no. I just do things. I don’t think it out.
Reporter: What would you call the movie? Any idea?
Dylan: No. Uh, Mother Revisited.
[Laughter.]
Reporter: Is there any chance that you could be drafted? Or have you already been in the service?
Dylan: I’ve already gone through that a long time ago.
Reporter: Were you in the service?
Dylan: No.
Reporter: Why were you putting us and the rest of the world on so—
Dylan: I’m just trying to answer your questions as good as you can ask them.
Reporter: How do you like being with Columbia Records?
Dylan: I like being part of Columbia Records very much.
Reporter: How many songs have you written for music publishers?
Dylan: About 125.
Reporter: I’m sure you must have been asked a thousand times, “What are you trying to say in your music?” I don’t understand one of the songs.
Dylan: Well, you shouldn’t feel offended or anything. I’m not trying to say anything to you. If you don’t get it, you don’t have to really think about it, because it’s not addressed to you.
Reporter: Whom are you addressing?
Dylan: They’re not addressed to anybody.
Reporter: Are you trying to say something when you write? Or are you just entertaining?
Dylan: I’m just an entertainer. That’s all.
Reporter: But what are you trying to say in your songs? Can you take a couple of songs—
Dylan: No, no. Obviously, I just can’t try to tell you that.
Reporter: Do you really feel the things that you write and say?
Dylan: What’s there to feel? Name me something.
Reporter: Did you feel “Mr. Jones” [“Ballad of a Thin Man”] when you wrote that?
Dylan: I guess so. I must have felt it.
Reporter: I think we’re talking about—
Dylan: We’re talking about two different things.
Reporter: No, we’re talking about standard emotions. We’re talking about pain or remorse or love or—
Dylan: I have none of those feelings at all.
Reporter: What sort of feelings do you have when you write a song?
Dylan: They’re songs. I’m showing you my feelings. They’re in the songs. I don’t have to explain my feelings. I’m not on trial.
[Laughter.]
Reporter: Bob, do you feel the popularity of the English groups has helped to boost your own popularity?
Dylan: I can’t really answer that. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t. Who am I to say?
Reporter: What are some of the groups that you think are good and have a great future? Some of the popular groups.
Dylan: The Fugs. Have you heard the Fugs?
[Laughter.]
Reporter: Is it true that you dedicated your first song to [actress] Brigitte Bardot?
Dylan: Yes, it’s true.
Reporter: Why did you do that? Are you a fan of Miss Bardot?
Dylan: Yes, of course.
Reporter: Why?
Dylan: Why? Do I have to answer that? [Laughter.] You gotta think for yourself a little bit.
Reporter: Are you here today voluntarily?
Dylan: Yes.
[Laughter.]
Reporter: Bob, a personal question here, and I hope you’ll forgive it. But you sound and you look very tired. Are you ill or is this your normal state?
[Laughter.]
Dylan: I take it as an insult. I don’t like to hear that kind of thing.
Reporter: I don’t mean to offend you but we can hardly hear you and you look very—
Dylan: Well, I’m from New York City. You’re all from California. This health thing. I feel quite embarrassed about it the same way you do probably. But I have no explanation for it.
Reporter: Bob, what about the nervous condition that you mentioned to us? Is that evident or—
Dylan: I keep that very well concealed.
[Laughter.]
Reporter: Are you taking medication for it?
Dylan: Oh, yes, medication. What do you mean—drugs? [Laughter.] What kind of questions are those? Come on.
Reporter: Bob, were you serious about the symphony?
Dylan: Yes, to some degree.
Reporter: Have you thought a lot—
Dylan: I have some ideas, yeah.
Reporter: What would be the influence of this symphony? You say you’ve heard Beethoven’s Ninth, for example?
Dylan: No, there wouldn’t be any influence by Beethoven’s Ninth. I know what he does, though. I know the forms, I know the musical—
Reporter: What about the influences as a lyric writer or poet? You mentioned the influence by Guthrie but I don’t hear the influence—
Dylan: No, that was more the voice of a romantic latter James Dean kind of thing. If I wanted influences, I would read somebody or listen to somebody because I would dig them. That would be the only reason I would.
Reporter: Who have you collected on records over the past ten years?
Dylan: That I personally like? Oh, Lotte Lenya. Ma Rainey, all those people. Modern singers. Sir Douglas Quintet. The Staple Singers. Some of the French singers.
Reporter: In the way of poetry, who have you collected?
Dylan: I haven’t collected anybody. I get books sent to me from [San Francisco’s] City Lights [bookstore]. And from New York bookstores, they send them to me. And I read those. I like a lot of the older poets, though, more than anybody around now.
Reporter: Bob, what is the reason for your visit to California?
Dylan: Oh, I’m here looking for some donkeys. [Laughter.] I’m making a movie about Jesus.
Reporter: Where are you making it?
Dylan: Back east.
Reporter: For whom or with whom?
Dylan:
It’s an independent film.
Reporter: What type of movie, Bob?
Dylan: I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m sure everybody understands. That’s why I’m here in California. Besides that, I’ll be playing a few times here and there. But I’m really here on business.
Reporter: Do you prefer to live there than here?
Dylan: Yeah.
Reporter: Are the recording facilities better here than there?
Dylan: No.
Reporter: Where do you do most of your recording?
Dylan: New York City.
Reporter: Why do you like New York better than here?
Dylan: I don’t know. I guess it’s just the closed-in feeling. You get used to being closed in after a while and you realize that it’s really true. You go other places and it’s closed in but it’s not really. There’s more to deal with.
Reporter: Have you had interviews in New York similar to this?
Dylan: Yeah. Not really, though. I know all the reporters there.
Reporter: I was wondering if you had the same questions there as here.
Dylan: No.
Reporter: What kind of friends are you attracted to? What type of people do you like the best and like to be surrounded with, if anybody?
Dylan: Horrible people. I have a lot of friends which are thieves. I have a few.
Reporter: Are you planning on visiting Joan Baez’s School of Nonviolence?
Dylan: No, no.
Reporter: What are your feelings about this kind of involvement in political activities by singers?
Dylan: You mean singers who are political?
Reporter: Mm-hmm.
Dylan: That’s fine if they want to be political. It doesn’t hurt anybody.
Reporter: Are you going to be? Many students are saying that you were far more political a few years ago.
Dylan: In the songs, you mean?
Reporter: Mm-hmm.
Dylan: Oh, if you know my history in New York City, you can see the reasons for a lot of that. It’s not really political, anyway. It was just another thing from free writing. You see, I always wrote. I was on the East Side. When I came to make money, I just went over and sent folk songs that I wrote. So it was two different things. My attraction was to writing. Only lately, in the past two years, have I discovered that I could put them both together.
Reporter: You have any intention of getting involved in protest politics, à la Joan Baez?
Dylan: No. I have too many other things to do.
Reporter: Bob, a lot of people have labeled you establishment-protesting and called you the father of the protest movement.
Dylan: Well, I guess I am.
Reporter: Do you think there’s a legitimate protest movement in music now?
Dylan: Yeah, but you know as well as anybody else what that means. Like what does it mean—protest? What are they protesting? People were protesting, writing those kind of songs, five years ago on the East Coast. Everybody out there was all about that. But I’m not really into what other people do that much.
Reporter: Why do you think kids are listening to you now? Why do you think they want to hear what you have to say?
Dylan: I really don’t know. I just heard something a couple days ago that amazed me on this tape outside a concert I played in San Jose. There’s this fifteen-year-old girl out there and she’s being interviewed and she knew of poets like William Blake. She knew his works. And she was hip to all kinds of different things which people are usually not acquainted with at that age. So maybe it’s just a new kind of person, a fifteen-year-old person. I don’t know. I do know that person was more free in the mind than a twenty-two-year-old college kid.
Reporter: Well, there’s a greater maturity among the very young nowadays. Why is that?
Dylan: I don’t know. Maturity is not what I mean at all. Maturity’s just a phony word.
Reporter: A special kind of maturity, though. A special kind of attitude is what you’re saying?
Dylan: Yeah, an attitude.
Reporter: What is the attitude today among young people?
Dylan: Oh, God. I don’t even know any young people. I don’t really know.
Reporter: Well, when you said “attitude,” what could that be?
Dylan: Well, you have a certain attitude, right? I bet you have an attitude, like you can be personally insulted, can’t you? All right, well, there’s an attitude among a certain crowd of people that can’t be personally insulted. And they know, without thinking—
Reporter: Is that how you feel?
Dylan: No, that’s just one . . . term. I’m not talking about how I feel. I’m telling you the truth. Forget it comes from me.
Reporter: Bob, I’d like to ask you about sexual freedom and so forth. This is a new bag today, and what’s the reason for it?
Dylan: [Laughs.] This guy I thought was really hip when I looked at him. I don’t know.
Reporter: You don’t know?
Dylan: No.
Reporter: Well, do you participate in the new scene?
Dylan: I don’t participate in anything. Nothing. I bet you couldn’t name one thing that I participate in. Go ahead, I dare ya.
[Laughter.]
Reporter: Well, this press conference. No, that’s what we’re trying to find out.
Dylan: Well, hope you do.
Reporter: I imagine you get a lot of letters, a lot of reactions from people near you. Do you have a feeling that they do read you?
Dylan: Yeah, yeah. Some of the younger ones, too. Yeah, they do.
Reporter: I think you’re more popular among the young crowd than you are among the older generation.
Reporter: Bob, you mentioned you sing mostly love songs. Is love important to you when you write your songs?
Dylan: No.
Reporter: Is it important to you when you sing songs?
Dylan: No.
Reporter: Do you enjoy performing as opposed to writing?
Dylan: I like to sing and play, yeah.
Reporter: I don’t know whether you want to answer this, Bob. I work for Variety and we like to have dollars and cents in the paper. Can you tell me how much you make a month from your Columbia Records alone.
Dylan: I don’t know how much I make.
Reporter: You don’t get a breakdown?
Dylan: I have no idea what I make and I don’t want to ever find out.
Reporter: You spend a lot?
Dylan: Yeah, I spend a lot, I guess.
Reporter: Maybe Billy James can answer that.
Dylan: No, he wouldn’t answer that, either.
Reporter: What do you spend your money on? You seem to live a very simple, uncomplicated life. You don’t seem to be interested in motorcars, girls, yachts . . .
Dylan: Well, that’s the way it goes.
Reporter: So I’m trying to figure out what you spend money on.
Dylan: I spend money on whatever is there to spend money on that I want to buy.
Reporter: Do you have investments? Apartment houses?
Dylan: I don’t know what happens to my money. When I want money, I go ask for it and I get it. And I spend it. And when I want more, I ask for it and I get it. That’s all. It’s very simple, really.
Reporter: On the back of one of your albums [Another Side of Bob Dylan], you said Dean Martin should apologize to the Rolling Stones. [Martin had made jokes at the Stones’ expense when they appeared on an episode of ABC-TV’s Hollywood Palace variety show that he hosted. —Ed.] Why—
Dylan: I don’t know. How long ago was that?
Reporter: I don’t know. A year ago?
Dylan: The Rolling Stones weren’t heard of here yet. They were just in England and I saw a thing, some kind of a snobby thing. I don’t know what it was. It had nothing to do with talent or anything.
Reporter: What do you think of the Byrds?
Dylan: I like the Byrds.
Reporter: The Byrds and the Fugs, your two favorites?
; Dylan: The Byrds and the Fugs; you sure boil things down to simplicity. OK.
Reporter: Your original association with Columbia—did it come about through John Hammond’s son? Or just how did you sign with Columbia?
Dylan: I made a record with Carolyn Hester who at that time was signed, about five years ago—
Reporter: Was Hammond—
Dylan: Yeah, he A&R’d it.
Reporter: And he suggested cutting an album or did you request cutting—
Dylan: No, he just heard me play the harmonica. He wanted to know if I wanted to make an album.
Reporter: Do you know Hammond Jr.?
Dylan: Yes.
Reporter: Have you ever worked with him?
Dylan: No.
Aide to Dylan: Thank you. Well, thank you very much. There’s some more press information outside for anybody that needs it.
RADIO CONVERSATION
Bob Fass | January 26, 1966 | Radio Unnameable, WBAI-FM (New York)
Dylan’s relationship with Bob Fass, host of listener-supported WBAI-FM’s long-running Radio Unnameable, dates back to before the show began in 1963, when Fass and Carla Rotolo double-dated with Carla’s sister Suze, who was then Dylan’s girlfriend. Dylan subsequently appeared several times on Fass’s all-night program, which was known for stream-of-consciousness conversation among guests and the listeners who phoned in. Not all of those listeners seemed to be playing with a full deck, and the minds of some of the rest appeared to be chemically altered.
Perhaps Dylan’s most memorable appearance on the show came in the early hours of January 26, 1966, less than four months before the release of Blonde on Blonde, his superb seventh album. Dylan spent more than an hour and a half in the studio that night, talking to listeners over the phone. Also on hand were Victor Maymudes, who had been his tour manager in the early ’60s, and Al Kooper, who had played with Dylan at Newport and on such classic tracks as “Like a Rolling Stone.”
A full transcript of the session would consume a rather large portion of this book, so I’m offering only highlights below. —Ed.
Bob Fass: This is Bob Fass. We’re back on here with Radio Unnameable. Remember I told you about ten minutes ago that we were gonna have somebody come up who wasn’t Shirley Temple? Well, it’s true. Say hello.
Bob Dylan: I . . . this is Shirley Temple?
Fass: Yeah?
Dylan: [Laughs.] No, come on, don’t do this to me.
