by Jeff Burger
Caller: I didn’t put down rock and roll but, like, take March 17—
Dylan: Oh, where, this march—
Caller: Yeah, in Washington, this—
Dylan: Come on, I ain’t going to march anywhere. I got things to do.
Caller: But hell. I mean . . . I’m sorry.
Dylan: Hey, listen, do you see me in politics? Or am I anybody’s parents? Am I any mother or father to anybody? Who do you think I’m supposed to be responsible for? I didn’t create any living person that walks around.
Caller: No, no . . . I’m not asking you to live like that. But if you felt enough about it two or three years ago, why not now? Or have you just changed?
Dylan: Well, I don’t know what I was thinking about two or three years ago. I don’t have to explain it to you. It’s not so complicated, man. You don’t even have to ask why. It’s very simple, but I just don’t feel like sitting here talking about it right now.
Caller: Oh, OK. I’m sorry.
Dylan: No, I’ll talk to you some other time.
DYLAN ON
His Pastimes
“I have no pastimes. I have none at all. . . . I would love to say bowling or sailing or roller-skating or painting. I’d love to give you a hobby . . . but I can’t really tell you anything. What I do is write and sing. I’d do it whether I’m getting paid for it or whether or not. I mean, that’s all I do.”
—from interview with Martin Bronstein,
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, February 20, 1966
DYLAN ON
His Audience
“Playing on the stage is a kick for me now. It wasn’t before, because I knew what I was doing then was just too empty. . . . It was just dead ambassadors who would come and see me and clap and say: ‘Oh, groovy, I would like to meet him and have a cocktail. Perhaps I’ll bring my son, Joseph, with me.’ And the first thing you know, you’ve got about five or six little boys and girls hanging around with Coke bottles and ginger-ale bottles . . . and you’re confronted by some ambassador who’s got his hand in your pocket trying to shake your spine and give you compliments. I won’t let anybody backstage anymore. Even to give me a compliment. I just don’t care.”
—from interview with Robert Shelton, March 1966, for No Direction Home,
PBS-TV (US) and BBC Two (UK), September 26–27, 2005
RADIO INTERVIEW
Klas Burling | May 1, 1966 | Radio 3 (Sweden)
Bob Dylan was moving at a manic drug- and fame-fueled pace by the time he began the European leg of a world tour on April 29, 1966, at Stockholm, Sweden’s Concert Hall—the very place where his Nobel Prize speech would be read half a century later. The day before the gig, he had an appointment to record an interview for Klas Burling’s Pop 66 radio program.
Burling told me that he waited a long time outside Dylan’s large suite at the Flamingo hotel in Solna Municipality, near Stockholm. Finally, manager Albert Grossman opened the door to a darkened room with all curtains closed. There stood Dylan, dressed mostly in black and wearing sunglasses.
“He shook hands and said hello, but there was clearly something wrong with him,” Burling recalled. “He was eight miles high, on another planet. Considering his state, I tried to keep my questions simple and be patient. Despite his arrogance, I felt sorry for him.
“Halfway through the interview,” continued Burling, “Dylan took off his dark glasses. A scary sight. His eyes looked like small, dark, dried raisins. One question was replied to about two questions later.”
Dylan became friendlier after the interview. “He had a record player in the suite and took out a test pressing of his forthcoming double LP, Blonde on Blonde,” Burling said, “and he asked me to listen to the eleven-minute ‘Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.’
“Dylan turned to me when it ended and said, ‘Now, tell me, in one word only, what you think about it.’ He looked proud and obviously wanted to hear something like ‘fantastic.’ My patience had run dry. I felt like kicking back, so I said, ‘Long!’
“What to do with this disastrous interview? Back in the studio, I decided to make a few edits, to make Dylan seem less stupid and more comprehensible.”
Added Burling: “This is in fact the only interview I have ever edited.” —Ed.
Klas Burling: Very nice to see you in Stockholm, Bob Dylan. And I wonder . . . if you could explain a bit more about yourself and your kind of songs. What do you think of the protest-song tag?
Bob Dylan: I don’t . . . oh, God. [Laughs.] No, no. I’m not gonna sit here and do that. I’ve been up all night, I’ve taken some pills, and I’ve eaten bad food and I’ve read the wrong things and I’ve been out for hundred-mile-an-hour car rides, and I’m just not gonna sit here and talk about myself as a protest singer or anything like that.
Burling: But the first things you did which got really famous on singles and things like that—for example, in England they released “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” That was supposed to be a protest song, no?
Dylan: Oh, my God! How long ago was that?
Burling: A year ago.
Dylan: Yeah, well, come on, a year ago! [Pauses.] I’m not trying to be a bad fellow or anything, but I’d just be a liar or a fool to go on with all this business. I mean, I just can’t help it if you’re a year behind.
Burling: No, but that’s the style—
Dylan: You don’t expect me to be a year behind.
Burling: But that’s the style you had then and then suddenly you changed to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with the electric guitar and those things. Is there any special reason? I mean, the way you would tell about it yourself?
Dylan: No.
Burling: What would you call yourself, a poet or a singer? Or do you think that you write poems and then you put music to it?
Dylan: No . . . I don’t know. It’s so silly! I mean, you wouldn’t ask these questions of a carpenter, would you? Or a plumber?
Burling: It would not be interesting in the same way, would it?
Dylan: I guess it would be. I mean, if it’s interesting to me, it should be just as interesting to you.
Burling: Well, not as being a disc jockey, anyhow.
Dylan: What do you think Mozart would say to you if you ever come up to him and ask him these questions that you’ve been asking? What kind of questions would you ask him? “Tell me, Mr. Mozart . . .”
Burling: First of all, I wouldn’t do it.
Dylan: How come you do it to me?
Burling: Well, because I’m interested in your records, and I think the Swedish audience is as well.
Dylan: I’m interested in the Swedish audiences, too, and Swedish people and all that kind of stuff, but I’m sure they don’t wanna know all these dumb things.
Burling: No, well, they’ve read a lot of dumb things about you in the papers, I suppose, and I thought you could straighten them out yourself.
Dylan: I can’t straighten them out. I don’t think they have to be straightened out. I believe that they know. They know. Don’t you know the Swedish people? I mean, they don’t have to be told, they don’t have to be explained to. You should know that. You can’t tell Swedish people something which is self-explanatory. Swedish people are smarter than that.
Burling: Do you think so?
Dylan: Oh, of course.
Burling: Do you know many Swedes?
Dylan: I know plenty.
Burling: Yeah?
Dylan: I happen to be a Swede myself.
Burling: Oh, yeah, certainly.
Dylan: I happen to come from not too far away from here, my friend.
Burling: Should we try to listen to a song instead?
Dylan: We can try.
Burling: Yeah? Which one would you suggest then?
Dylan: You pick one out, any one you say. You realize I’m not trying to be a bad fellow. I’m just trying to make it along and get everything to be straight. You realize that?
Burling: Yeah, and that’s why I asked you, and you had a cha
nce to do it yourself.
Dylan: No, I don’t want the chance to do it myself.
Burling: OK.
Dylan: I don’t wanna do anything by myself . . . for what?
Burling: Or against what?
Dylan: Well, you know what it’s against and what it’s for. I don’t need to tell you that. My songs are all mathematical songs. You know what that means, so I’m not gonna have to go into that. So this specific one here happens to be a protest song and it borders on the mathematical idea of things, and this specific one, “Rainy Day Women,” happens to deal with a minority of cripples and Orientals, and the world in which they live. It’s sort of a north Mexican kind of a thing, very protesty. Very, very protesty. And one of the protestiest of all things I’ve ever protested against in my protest years.
Burling: Do you really believe it?
Dylan: I don’t have to believe it, I know it. I wrote it! I mean, I’m telling you I wrote it! I should know!
Burling: Yeah. Why that title? It’s never mentioned in the song.
Dylan: Well, we never mention things that we love. Where I come from that’s blasphemy. Blas-per-for-me, you know that word? Blas-per-for-me?
Burling: Yeah.
Dylan: It has to do with God.
Burling: Shall we have a listen to the song?
Dylan: OK.
Burling: Which is selling quite well in the States. And how do you feel about that?
Dylan: It’s horrible.
Burling: It is?
Dylan: Yeah, because it is a protest song. We shouldn’t really listen to protest songs.
Burling: Well, I see it in the way that a lot of people buy the record to listen to it, these radio stations and so on. So a lot of people could get the message in that case.
Dylan: Yeah. They do get the message. I’m glad they’re getting the message.
Burling: How do you feel about earning a lot of money then, if you’re not really concerned about it all?
Dylan: I like earning a lot of money.
Burling: From the start you didn’t have much, but now you got a lot. What do you do with it?
Dylan: Nothing.
Burling: Not concerned?
Dylan: No. Somebody else handles it for me. I just do the same old things.
Burling: When you write a song, do you write the melody or the words first?
Dylan: I write it all, the melody and the words.
Burling: At the same time?
Dylan: Yeah. The melody is sort of unimportant, really. It comes natural.
Burling: Other artists used your songs and recorded them and got hits and things like that. How did you feel about that?
Dylan: Well, I didn’t feel anything really. I felt happy.
Burling: Do you like to suddenly get famous then, first as a songwriter, and then also as a singer?
Dylan: Yeah, it’s sort of all over, though. I don’t have any interest anymore. I did have interest when I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen to be a famous star and all that kind of stuff, but I been playing on the stage, following tent shows around, ever since I’ve been ten years old. That’s fifteen years I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing. I mean, I know I’m doing better than anybody else does.
Burling: And nowadays, what is it you want to do?
Dylan: Nothing.
Burling: Nothing?
Dylan: No.
Burling: Do you enjoy traveling? Performing?
Dylan: Yeah, I like performing. I don’t care to travel, though.
Burling: What about recordings?
Dylan: I like to record.
Burling: You got a group now, which I suppose you didn’t have at the very start.
Dylan: Yes, I had a group at the very start. You must realize, I come from the United States. I don’t know if you know what the United States is like. It’s not like England at all. The people at my age now, twenty-five, twenty-six, everybody has grown up playing rock ’n’ roll music.
Burling: You did it?
Dylan: Yes, ’cause it’s the only kind of music you heard. I mean, everybody has done it, ’cause all you heard was rock ’n’ roll and country and western and rhythm and blues music. Now at a certain time the whole field got taken over into some milk, and to Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and this kind of thing. That’s not bad or anything, but there was nobody that you could look at and really want anything that they had or wanna be like them. So everybody got out of it. But nobody really lost that whole thing. And then folk music came in and was some kind of a substitute for a while, but it was only a substitute, don’t you understand? That’s all it was. Now it’s different again, because of the English thing. And what the English thing did was, they just proved that you could make money playing the same old kind of music that you used to play.
Burling: Yeah, yeah.
Dylan: And that’s the truth. That’s not a lie. And it’s not a come on or anything. But the English people can’t play rock ’n’ roll music.
Burling: How do you feel about the Beatles then?
Dylan: Oh, the Beatles are great, but they don’t play rock ’n’ roll.
Burling: You met them quite a few times as well in the States and in England.
Dylan: Yeah, I know the Beatles, they’re not playing—
Burling: You don’t think they play rock ’n’ roll?
Dylan: No. Rock ’n’ roll is just four beats . . . an extension of twelve-bar blues. And rock ’n’ roll is a white, seventeen-year-old-kid music. That’s all it is. Rock ’n’ roll is a fake kind of attempt at sex.
Burling: But what would you call your style then? The music you sing?
Dylan: I don’t know. I’ve never heard anybody that plays or sings like me, so I don’t know.
Burling: There’s no name for it that you would try to put on it yourself?
Dylan: Mathematical music.
Burling: Yeah? [Laughs.] OK, if you would like to choose a final song for this interview—
Dylan: You choose it.
Burling: There’s no one particular that you would like more than another one?
Dylan: No. Well, I’d rather have you play “Tombstone Blues” than “Pretty Peggy-O.” [Laughs.] But other than that, I’ll let you make your own choice.
Burling: OK. Thanks a lot then.
DYLAN ON
What He’d Been Doing Since His July 29, 1966,
Motorcycle Accident
“What I’ve been doin’ mostly is seein’ only a few close friends, readin’ little ’bout the outside world. Porin’ over books by people you never heard of. Thinkin’ about where I’m goin’ and why am I runnin’ and am I mixed up too much and what am I knowin’ and what am I givin’ and what am I takin’. And mainly what I’ve been doin’ is workin’ on gettin’ better and makin’ better music, which is what my life is all about.”
—from interview with Michael Iachetta,
New York Daily News, May 8, 1967
CONVERSATIONS WITH BOB DYLAN
John Cohen and Happy Traum | October/November 1968 | Sing Out!
Bob Dylan’s life on the road, which appeared to be spinning out of control when he talked with Klas Burling on April 28, 1966, in Stockholm, came crashing to a halt—literally—three months later, on July 29. That’s when he suffered his serious motorcycle accident.
As he explained in an interview for the New York Daily News (see previous page), everything changed in the wake of that crackup. Instead of putting out three albums of fresh and important material in little more than a year, as he had recently done, he spent a lot of time thinking about his life and goals and released nothing but a hits compilation for more than eighteen months. When he did reemerge with John Wesley Harding at the end of 1967, his voice had changed, his music had simplified, and his chief lyrical influences seemed to have shifted from drugs, musicians, and contemporary poets to Biblical parables. No longer touring, he was living a quiet life in Woodstock, New York.
That’s where he met in June and July of 1968 with fe
llow musicians John Cohen and Happy Traum for three taped conversations. The transcripts, which the folk magazine Sing Out! published in its October/November issue, covered such subjects as politics, Dylan’s new and old music, and the “unhealthy situations” that had preceded his accident.
By this time, he had perhaps realized that he couldn’t afford to be reckless. He had responsibility for a two-year-old son and a baby daughter; and he also had an adopted six-year-old daughter from his wife’s first marriage (to whom he briefly speaks during these conversations). Another child, Samuel, would arrive on July 30, 1968, right after the last of the talks with Traum and Cohen. —Ed.
JOHN: I didn’t realize how good that film [Eat the Document, D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary about Dylan’s 1966 tour] was when I saw it last.
BOB: You thought it was good?
J: It wasn’t finished—I liked it because of that. But I didn’t see [Pennebaker’s] “Don’t Look Back.”
B: It’s just as well. The difference between the two would be in the editing . . . the eye. Mr. Pennebaker’s eye put together “Don’t Look Back,” whereas someone else’s eye put together this film which you saw.
J: Wasn’t one of the “eyes” involved yours?
B: Not entirely. Don’t forget, Mr. Pennebaker shot all the film, and Mr. [Jones] Alk was under direction from him. The (edited) cut was under the direction of, well . . . I was one of them. What we had to work with was not what you would conceive of if you were going shooting a film. What we were trying to do is to make a logical story out of this newsreel-type footage . . . to make a story which consisted of stars and starlets who were taking the roles of other people, just like a normal movie would do. We were trying to do the same thing with this footage. That’s not what anyone else had in mind, but that is what myself and Mr. Alk had in mind. And we were very limited because the film was not shot by us, but by the eye, and we had come upon this decision to do this only after everything else failed. And in everything else failing, the film had been cut just to nothing. So we took it and tried to do it this way because it was a new method and it was new to us, and we were hoping to discover something. And we did. People might see it and say it’s just a big mess. Well, it might seem like a mess, but it’s not. It starts with a half hour of footage there, that is clean: the film is sloppy and it looks like a lot of cutting in it, thirty second cuts to ten second cuts. But what we tried to do was to construct a stage and an environment, taking it out and putting it together like a puzzle. And we did, that’s the strange part about it. Now if we had the opportunity to re-shoot the camera under this procedure, we could really make a wonderful film.
