by Jeff Burger
RA: What’s next? You’re obviously going on tour, you’re rehearsing a new band—
BD: Yeah, that’s basically, that’s mainly what I do, write songs and tour and record. Making movies is somethin’ which I’ll be interested in doing and when we do it, if we can do it within the boundaries of the music . . .
RA: What do you do in your spare time?
BD: I don’t have any spare time.
RA: What about in ’72 and ’73 when you said you weren’t doin’ anything?
BD: Yeah, when I have—in my spare time I probably like to go back to Minnesota . . . and just let everything else drift away.
RA: What do you do when you go back there?
BD: Ah . . .
RA: You gotta piece of land back home don’t ya?
BD: Yeah, ah . . . (the music from upstairs is infectious)
RA: Do you just hang out, see friends and commune?
BD: Yeah, yeah. I just get to go for, you know, short periods of time.
RA: You can’t tell me specifically what you do in that spare time?
BD: Well . . .
RA: Other interests besides writing or reading or playing music?
BD: Oh! Ah . . . you just mean what do I like to do?
RA: Yeah.
BD: I like to blast sculpture out of metal.
RA: Really?
BD: Yeah, and I also like to go roller skating or ice skating or go fishing or . . .
RA: You go fishing in Minnesota?
BD: Yeah, sometimes.
RA: I get the feeling you’re ready to play.
BD: I think I am.
RA: I think you are.
BD: Yeah. Heh! heh!
RA: I really enjoyed it.
BD: OK. I hope you got somethin’ you can use.
* * *
We shake hands and say goodbye. Waiting in the lobby for Wasserman, I spy a sopping wet figure hunched over in the rain outside. He looks very European in dress and has a guitar case, a tape recorder and some books. He keeps scribbling out notes, then tapping on the locked, glass door and giving the scraps of paper to Dylan’s security man. It seems he wants to play with Dylan and has made a long pilgrimage in hopes of auditioning for his hero. The security guy tells me it happens a lot. I ask if that sort of thing depresses everybody and he says, “Yes, it does . . . if they only knew how it really is.”
The hard rain keeps falling as Wasserman and I depart. For several hours I kept thinking of that forlorn musician. It just didn’t seem fair.
DYLAN ON
Starving Artists
“The starving artist is a myth. The big bankers and prominent young ladies who buy art started it. They just want to keep the artist under their thumb. Who says an artist can’t have any money? Look at Picasso. The starving artist is usually starving for those around him to starve. You don’t have to starve to be a good artist. You just have to have love, insight, and a strong point of view. And you have to fight off depravity. Uncompromising, that’s what makes a good artist. It doesn’t matter if he has money or not. Look at Matisse; he was a banker. Anyway, there are other things that constitute wealth and poverty besides money.”
—from interview with Ron Rosenbaum, Playboy, March 1978
DYLAN ON
Women and Relationships
“Women are sentimental. They get into that romantic thing more easily. But I see that as a prelude. Women use romance and passion to sweeten you up. A man is no more than a victim of that passion. You give me a woman who can cook and sew and I’ll take that over passion any day. I’d like to find a mate. But I can’t spend any time with a woman if we’re not friends. If we’re not friends I don’t want to get involved on a personal level.”
—from interview with Barbara Kerr, Boston Herald, March 1978
DYLAN ON
Playing Roles
“In any song I write or any movie I’m in, I always become the character in it. I play the character Renaldo in the movie [Renaldo and Clara]. When I sing ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe,’ I’m another character. It’s all a play. My songs are closer to theatre than to ordinary rock and roll.”
—from interview with Philip Fleishman, Maclean’s (Canada), March 20, 1978
DYLAN ON
His Personal Life
“Being in this kind of situation you meet a lot of people that are attracted to you, and also you become attracted to quite a few people, and you can’t really be sure many times whether that’s true or not, so you just have to let the situation run its course. I just kind of stay with my old friends, and my old loves and old mates, you know, and at least that allows me to work . . . I think ultimately man is better off if he can stay in one place and see the world revolve around him rather than have to be out there revolving. I try to stay put as much as I can, but I can’t all the time, and I guess my personal life has suffered because of that.”
—from interview with Craig McGregor, New Musical Express (UK), April 22, 1978
DYLAN ON
“So-Called Leaders from the ’60s”
“What ever happened to them? There was Abbie Hoffman, who you never hear from any more. He could be sitting at the next table for all we know. There was Tom Hayden, who’s running a children’s camp. And Jerry Rubin, who is a sociologist or whatever. What did those ‘leaders’ really do? Maybe they did something then, but what are they doing now? That’s the same thing a lot of people say about me . . . Well, I’m doing what I always did: I’m still playing my guitar and singing my songs.”
—from interview with Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1978
DYLAN ON
Taking His Songs Literally
“I’ve heard it said that Dylan was never as truthful as when he wrote Blood on the Tracks, but that wasn’t necessarily truth, it was just perceptive. Or when people say ‘Sara’ was written for ‘his wife Sara’—it doesn’t necessarily have to be about her just because my wife’s name happened to be Sara. Anyway, was it the real Sara or the Sara in the dream? I still don’t know.”
—from interview with Jonathan Cott, Rolling Stone, November 16, 1978
DYLAN ON
Hippies and Drugs
“I was always more tied up with the Beat movement. I don’t know what the hippie movement was all about, that was a media thing, I think. . . . There was drugs but drugs were something that was just a playful thing or something which wasn’t that romanticized. Drugs were always in the folk clubs and in the jazz clubs, but outside of those places I never really saw too many drugs. The drugs at the end of the ’60s were artificial. They were those . . . L.S. . . . acid, all that stuff made in a laboratory. . . . I was never involved in the acid scene, either.”
—from interview with Lynne Allen, Trouser Press, June 1979
DYLAN ON
His Religious Beliefs
“My ideology now would be coming out of the Scripture. You see, I didn’t invent these things—these things have just been shown to me. I’ll stand on that faith—that they are true. I believe they’re true. I know they’re true. . . . A religion which says you have to do certain things to get to God . . . that type of religion will not get you into the kingdom, that’s true. However, there is a master creator, a supreme being in the universe.”
—from interview with Bruce Heiman, KMEX (Tucson, Arizona), December 7, 1979
DYLAN ON
The Call of Jesus
“I guess He’s always been calling me. Of course, how would I have ever known that? That it was Jesus calling me. I always thought it was some voice that would be more identifiable. But Christ is calling everybody; we just turn him off. We just don’t want to hear. We think he’s gonna make our lives miserable, you know what I mean? We think he’s gonna make us do things we don’t want to do. Or keep us from doing things we want to do. But God’s got his own purpose and time for everything. He knew when I would respond to His call.”
—from interview with Karen Hughes, New Zealand Star, July 10, 1980
RADIO INTERVI
EW
Paul Vincent | November 19, 1980 | KMEL-FM (San Francisco)
Dylan released the underrated Street-Legal in June 1978 and the live Bob Dylan at Budokan the following April. Somewhere around that time, he turned to Christianity and, in August 1979, he issued Slow Train Coming, which includes such titles as “When He Returns” and “I Believe in You.” The album was a hit, as was “Gotta Serve Somebody,” a single culled from it that has since sparked numerous cover versions.
Ten months later, in June 1980, Dylan went further down the born-again road with Saved, an album that features a gospel backup and sold somewhat less well.
Five months after the LP’s release, San Francisco radio personality and program director Paul Vincent met Dylan backstage at the Fox Warfield Theatre shortly before the artist began a show there. Vincent asked Dylan about his religious music and views, but the conversation touched on many other subjects as well. —Ed.
Paul Vincent: Over the past eighteen years or so, you’ve been written about and analyzed and criticized and second-guessed and worshipped and idolized by many. There was that fellow [A. J. Weberman —Ed.] back in Greenwich Village who went through your garbage. As time goes on, does it ever get easier being Bob Dylan?
Bob Dylan: [Laughs.] Well, it’s easy being Bob Dylan. It’s just trying to live up to what people would want Bob Dylan to do—that might be difficult, but it’s not really that difficult.
Vincent: More than once you’ve been referred to as a legend—whatever that word may mean. People say that probably because they admire what you do. Is it difficult living up to those expectations? Is it something you’ve learned to live with, or is it a burden sometimes?
Dylan: Well, the things I’ve done in the past which would lead up to that—some of those things I still do. Some things I don’t do. So as long as I keep it straight in my mind who I am and not get that confused with who I’m supposed to be, I think I’ll be all right.
Vincent: You’ve said in the past that the songs were already there. I think Woody Guthrie may have said that, too, and that your job is to put them down on paper. Is that to say that writing your songs comes easily?
Dylan: Yeah, the best ones come real easy.
Vincent: Do you ever find yourself pondering the phrasing of a line for an hour or so?
Dylan: Um-hmm.
Vincent: There’s been hundreds of analyses of your songs over the years. You’re aware of that. Do any of your songs mean something totally different now than maybe they did when you wrote them originally? Or does the meaning remain just—
Dylan: The meaning stays the same. They don’t change. Some bring out certain parts of ’em that may be not so evident years ago, and may be more evident to me now, but they don’t change.
Vincent: Last night, for example, on “Simple Twist of Fate,” you did some different lyrics. If you change lyrics in songs, is it spontaneous or is it planned out?
Dylan: Let me see. That particular song was recorded, I think, two times, and one time it had one set of lyrics, and another had another set of lyrics, but the difference wasn’t that detrimental to the meaning of the song, on that particular song. I may sing some one night and another [on another] night depending what comes to my mind at the time.
Vincent: But the gist of the song is exactly the same. Does it bother you when people try to pick apart your lyrics? Should they be satisfied with it meaning to them whatever they would like it to mean to them as opposed to what it is you mean?
Dylan: Yeah, I think so. I think some place there’s a road there that what I intend it to mean—and what they think it means—probably means something in the middle there.
Vincent: Doing the older songs that you do, do they mean something different in 1980? Does “Blowin’ in the Wind” mean something different in 1980 than it meant in 1962?
Dylan: No, it’s no different. I think it means the same thing.
[Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” plays.]
Vincent: Your career’s been marked by many changes. How much do you concern yourself about how quickly people will accept your changes?
Dylan: Well, you just hope for the best. You just hope people will come and see you, and if they don’t come and see you then I guess it’s time to stop.
Vincent: Some critics have not been kind as a result of the past two albums, because of the religious content. Does that surprise you? For example, some have said that you’re proselytizing. Is Jesus Christ the answer for all of us in your mind?
Dylan: Yeah, I would say that, uh-huh. What we’re talking about is the nature of God and I think in order to go to God you have to go through Jesus, yeah. You have to understand that. You have to have an experience with that.
Vincent: Would you like to have us come away from your shows hopefully thinking more deeply in that direction?
Dylan: Oh, boy, I don’t know. I don’t get into what people feel as they leave the shows.
Vincent: You’re not preaching to us?
Dylan: No, no. [Pause.] I could do a little bit of this and a little bit of that but right now I’m just content to play these shows. This is a stage show we’re doing, it’s not a salvation ceremony.
[Dylan’s “Saved” plays.]
Vincent: I first saw you on The Les Crane Show . . . Back in, it must have been 1964 or so. [Dylan’s Crane show appearance aired February 17, 1965. —Ed.] You did “[It’s All Over Now,] Baby Blue” and “It’s Alright, Ma [(I’m Only Bleeding)].” Since then you’ve only done TV a couple of times: Johnny Cash, the John Hammond PBS tribute, and one other. Do you have any interest in being exposed on the tube at all?
Dylan: No, I really don’t. [Laughs.] It seems funny for me to say. I don’t really care for the bright lights that much.
Vincent: As far as interviews, too, you haven’t done that many interviews over the years. Is there a reason for that?
Dylan: No. No particular reason.
Vincent: When you listen to current music, are you influenced at all by what you hear? Do current trends concern you at all?
Dylan: Current trends not so much. There’re songwriters that I admire, but . . .
Vincent: You’ve always done your own thing. Back when the Beatles did Sgt. Pepper and the Stones did Satanic Majesties you came out with John Wesley Harding, which was totally against the grain of the psychedelic—
Dylan: I wasn’t going in the direction of that type of . . . never was, either. I’ve tried to keep my music simple.
Vincent: Your albums are a little more produced these days than they used to be.
Dylan: [Laughs.] If that’s what you call it.
Vincent: Do you still use the same recording techniques?
Dylan: Oh, I’d say over the course of a year—maybe a period of six days in the studio. That’s probably it. [Laughs.] If I can’t make a record in six days I don’t—
Vincent: That’s the way it’s always been, too, basically?
Dylan: Mm-hmm.
Vincent: How involved do you get personally with the day-to-day business activities of your records and concerts?
Dylan: Not too much. Not too deep.
Vincent: Are you aware of radio stations and whether they’re playing—
Dylan: I listen to the radio, of course, and try to pick up different stations in different towns.
Vincent: We heard that you heard a cut from Saved on a Minnesota radio station and didn’t—
Dylan: A St. Paul radio station— [Laughs.]
Vincent: —and didn’t care for the mix and wanted to—
Dylan: It was mixed wrong or something. It didn’t sound right to me. I must’ve told somebody at that time who was working on the album. I know I didn’t say anything to the record company about it. But some people tell me that they saw it in the press that I’d said something about it, but I don’t recall making too much of a fuss over it.
Vincent: You realize that almost anything you say will be made a fuss over because you’re saying it.
Dylan
: If you say it to the right people it will, yeah.
Vincent: Would you like to have a hit single on Top 40 radio?
Dylan: [Laughs.] Yeah, sure.
Vincent: Why not, right?
Dylan: [Laughs.] Yeah.
Vincent: When writing your songs, does that enter your mind at all, or is it just an interesting by-product?
Dylan: No, I don’t really know what sells. Well, of course, we all do know what sells and what doesn’t sell—what you need to make a hit record. I think most people in the business know that. But, I don’t usually think of that being the end result because I’d rather keep my songs and make ’em happen so they last a while, rather than just be a hit record and gone.
Vincent: Your sets vary from night to night. How planned are your sets?
Dylan: They’re not very well planned. [Laughs.]
Vincent: For example, I understand you did “We Just Disagree” [a song recorded by English singer Dave Mason in 1977. —Ed.]. And you’ve done “Abraham, Martin, and John” [the 1968 Dion hit —Ed.] the opening night when I saw you and I guess you’ve done that since then.
Dylan: Yeah, well, we try stuff out to see what feels right and what doesn’t. It’s just trial and experiment.
Vincent: When you did “Abraham, Martin, and John” on opening night, you and Clydie [King], I believe, sat at the piano and, on the line, “Has anybody here seen our old friend, Bobby? / Do you wonder where he’s gone?,” the crowd reacted. Could they have been thinking, in this case, rather than Bobby Kennedy, could they have been thinking about where has our old Bobby Dylan gone?
Dylan: Sure, because they could think any Bobby. They don’t necessarily have to relate it to me. It’s just a name. When I first heard that song I didn’t really know who the Bobby was in it. I didn’t put that together for a while. I put together the rest of the names but for some reason I kinda was slow on that, for me.
