Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  Reporter: When you go onstage, how much do you know is going to happen?

  Dylan: Pretty much all of it. I usually play to the people in the back. I disregard the people in the front because usually these people have come to quite a few shows. They’re gonna be there anyway, and they’re gonna like what they hear one way or another. So we’re not trying to reach them. We’re trying to reach the people in the back who might not have been there ever before.

  Reporter: You don’t think about the people who are at each and every show?

  Dylan: No, we don’t think about those people. Because they’re always there. We think about the people we’ve never seen.

  Reporter: Do you feel annoyed by those who come for every show?

  Dylan: No, no.

  Reporter: They’re just there.

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Reporter: Bob, you play a lot of live gigs and probably a lot more than you used to. Between ’66 and ’70 you hardly played any at all. Are you happier onstage now than you were back then? Do you like the audience more now than you liked the audience back then?

  Dylan: Well, “back then” . . . I assume you’re talking about when people were either reacting in a kind of a negative way to either playing electric or—

  Reporter: No, I don’t mean that necessarily. But quite the opposite. They were acting messianic in a way. What I’m saying now is they go to see Bob and see some music and you get up there and go on the same way.

  Dylan: Oh, I wouldn’t know. People are people, really.

  Reporter: But do you prefer the audiences now to the audiences you used to play—

  Dylan: I don’t know. It’s really all the same.

  Reporter: What’s the reason why you play live so much these days?

  Dylan: I may play more than someone you’re accustomed to seeing and hearing who might release a record every certain amount of time and then do a big tour. Maybe when you add it all up we play more shows than that. But I’m sure there’s people in Europe and in England—I know there are in America—who play far more than me.

  Reporter: You wrote these liner notes in World Gone Wrong about being fooled by this never-ending tour business.

  Dylan: Oh, sure. I think titles belittle whatever it is a person is trying to do. And that kind of irritated me, hearing what I do referred to as that. I mean, of course everything’s gonna end. . . . Why would people think I’d be doing a never-ending tour? It’s undoubtedly gonna end. What ties us all together, really, the one basic characteristic of all of us, is mortality. Nothing else makes us so married to each other.

  Reporter: Do you reflect upon mortality a lot?

  Dylan: I wouldn’t say a lot, but when people close to ya get put in the ground, you kind of—

  Reporter: What about your own mortality?

  Dylan: Well, I can see myself in others, so that’s the way I would think about it. I wouldn’t think about it any more than you would think about yours. I mean, as soon as a person enters the world, they’re old enough to leave it.

  Reporter: What I mean is the fact that people you like and are friends of yours are going to die hurts you and your own mortality hurts the others.

  Dylan: Exactly.

  Reporter: I don’t mean to pry but there’s two songs in which the narrator refers to . . . there’s “Lonesome Day Blues,” when the character says, “I wish my mother was still alive” and there’s “Po’ Boy” where the character goes, “When my mother died . . .” Was that inspired by your personal—

  Dylan: Probably. I don’t see how it couldn’t be.

  Reporter: You didn’t block it or you didn’t consciously put it in—

  Dylan: Some of these lyrics are written within a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. I don’t sit there and dwell or meditate on each line.

  Reporter: Do you fear analysis from other people? Is that something that you sort of dread?

  Dylan: No. I don’t know what anybody can find in any of my stuff. Freudian analysis, you mean? Or German idealism? Or maybe a Freudian Marxist? I don’t know.

  Reporter: Portuguese implication.

  Dylan: Portuguese implication. [Laughs.] I like that.

  Reporter: When you say, “The future for me is already a thing of the past” [in Love and Theft’s “Bye and Bye”]—

  Dylan: I say that for everyone. I’m a spokesman for our generation. [Laughter.] I say that for us all.

  Reporter: Are you comfortable as a spokesmodel, which you have been in the ’60s and which you still are? When people look up to you and they want to know what you think about general topics and stuff like that?

  Dylan: Every so often.

  Reporter: When you are on the stage and play really old songs, like “Song to Woody,” is that more an abstract relationship to your own songs, like written by someone else?

  Dylan: Well, I’m glad I wrote that. I’m glad I have that song to sing because he’s still a phenomenal performer. There is some kind of movie footage of him singing and it stands up there with Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, or anybody of that high altitude.

  Reporter: Your older songs . . . it’s so far away, it’s more a playground?

  Dylan: No. My songs are all singable. They’re current. Something doesn’t have to drop out of the sky yesterday to be current. We’re living in the Iron Age. But what was the last age? The Age of Bronze or something? We can still feel that age. If you walk around in this city, people today can’t build what you see out there. But at least when you walk around a town like this, you know that people were here before you, and they were probably on a much higher, grander level than any of us are. I mean, we couldn’t conceive of building these kind of things. America doesn’t really have stuff like this.

  Reporter: Do you read books about history? Are you interested in that?

  Dylan: Not any more than would just be natural to do.

  Reporter: . . . In an old song of yours, you have a line in which you said, “Inside the museums, history goes up on trial.” [The reporter is thinking of the song “Visions of Johanna,” but the correct line is “Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial.” —Ed.] How does it feel to be here—

  Dylan: “Inside the museums . . .” Is it history?

  Reporter: History. [Laughs.] You don’t remember.

  Dylan: I sing that song. It doesn’t sound right.

  Reporter: “Inside the museums, history goes up on trial.”

  Dylan: No.

  Reporter: No? So correct me.

  Dylan: I’m trying to.

  [Laughter.]

  Reporter: It’s your song.

  Dylan: “Inside the museums—”

  Reporter: “—history goes up on trial.”

  Dylan: I don’t think that’s right.

  Reporter: So what is it?

  Dylan: I’m trying to think. “Inside the museums—”

  Reporter: It’s from—

  Dylan: Yeah, I know where it’s from. “Inside the museums . . .” No, it’s not. Is it? Well, where’s the salvation line?

  Reporter: Even if that’s not the right quotation—

  Dylan: “Inside the museums” doesn’t sound right when you say it. Is it right? It could be. But I’m not willing to say you are. [Laughter.] Not quite yet.

  Reporter: “Salvation goes up on trial,” isn’t it?

  Dylan: I think so! [Actually, the next line is, “Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while.” —Ed.]

  Reporter: “Salvation goes up on trial.”

  Dylan: No, no, no.

  Aide to Dylan: I’ll tell you what, why don’t we take a break for a few minutes? Everyone can debate.

  Dylan: And let me go look in the book. All right, gentlemen.

  [After a break, the press conference resumes. —Ed.]

  Reporter: It was “infinity goes up on trial.”

  Dylan: Yes! Yes!

  Reporter: But isn’t it the same?

  [Laughter.]

  Dylan: Similar, yeah.


  Reporter: I was wondering if in the last few years that I’ve seen you play the look of the band has evolved. I don’t know if it’s Daniel Lanois’s influence. You’ve become this sort of drifting cowboy: sort of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys outfits, the hats, and the suits and the mustaches. Was it just a gradual common choice or did you say, “Hey, boys, let’s dress up now.”

  Dylan: Well, we kinda dress like people where we’re from. It’s not a fashionable statement of any kind. I’m not aware that it is.

  Reporter: You had your sixtieth birthday recently and all the magazines celebrated it.

  Dylan: Yes!

  Reporter: Did you celebrate it?

  Dylan: Just in the usual way. Blew out some candles and that’s about it.

  Reporter: Invited some friends?

  Dylan: Yeah, mostly just family people.

  Reporter: Are you “younger than that now”?

  Dylan: Sure hope so. [Laughter.] Yeah. That’s the song. That’s correct. You got that right.

  Reporter: Does the amount of celebration around such an event bother you? Does it please you?

  Dylan: No.

  Reporter: All these prizes . . . you never win before and now—

  Dylan: I know, I’m winning a lot of stuff. Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it?

  Reporter: Are they catching up on wasted time? “We didn’t give him anything for all these years. Let’s just dump all these—”

  Dylan: Maybe there’s an element of that in it. I wouldn’t know.

  Reporter: You mentioned about being nominated for the Nobel Prize.

  Dylan: Yeah, I hear about that but who would that put me in the company of? I’m not sure.

  Reporter: Hemingway.

  Dylan: Oh, Hemingway. I think all those guys like Hemingway write for Time magazine, don’t they?

  Reporter: Steinbeck is an old favorite of yours.

  Dylan: Steinbeck? I’m not sure that I really belong in that category of people because I play—

  Reporter: Is that a question of higher or lower?

  Dylan: That’s difficult to say. It’s all really pretty relative.

  Reporter: You mentioned that the producers are kind of prisoners of Bob Dylan. How about yourself, having done so many things, being a legend, how does it affect your—

  Dylan: Well, 95 percent of the time it doesn’t affect my life whatsoever.

  Reporter: How about the other 5?

  Dylan: The other part, we who get involved in fame, we just have to learn to deal with it any kind of way we can.

  Reporter: What kind of strategies are there?

  Dylan: I don’t have any strategy for it. I usually try to be as polite as possible.

  Reporter: Do you sometimes wonder, “Why me?”

  Dylan: Not at this point. I know what it is I’ve done to be so famous so . . .

  Reporter: In one of your last conversations with Allen Ginsberg, you said fame had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. My question is, what would you substitute your fame for?

  Dylan: Huh?

  Reporter: I mean, if you weren’t that famous you couldn’t do the Never Ending Tour and do the albums you wanted to the way you wanted to. Fame must have some advantages.

  Dylan: It probably has quite a few. I really don’t travel in that world of the rich and famous, though, so I don’t really feel I’m part of that culture in any way.

  Reporter: Do you find it hard to go to places where you’re not being recognized everywhere?

  Dylan: Well, at this point I’m recognized just about everywhere.

  Reporter: When was the last time you went out unrecognized?

  Dylan: I don’t even remember.

  Reporter: Do you feel that the work you’ve done, the poetry or singing or the combination of both . . . that you’ve arrived at a certain time in American history perhaps where you’ve been allowed to achieve great fame and a certain degree of fortune? Would you consider this lucky compared to doing the same work but maybe thirty years before you’d have been an obscure artist? Do you think that the same work that you do is gaining great exposure through the time that you write in? Is it a benediction? Is it good that your work was exposed so broadly? Do you understand what I’m saying?

  Dylan: Sort of. I didn’t really choose to do what it is you see me doing. I mean, it chose me. If I had anything to do with it, I’d have been something different. A scientist or engineer or doctor. Those are the people I look up to. I don’t really look up to entertainers at all. They don’t have any meaning for me one way or another.

  Reporter: You must have had ambition in the beginning to do something. You said music chose you. You also chose music in that way.

  Dylan: Mmm . . . maybe. Yeah.

  Reporter: Saying that it chose me. That’s interesting.

  Dylan: I said it. That’s what I did.

  Reporter: In one of the lines [in Time Out of Mind’s “Mississippi”], you say, “I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down.” Is that the theme for you still?

  Dylan: That’s the only line that you remember? [Laughter.] That’s it?

  Reporter: I’m wondering—

  Dylan: Well, anybody want to know what was in the suitcase? [Laughter.] I don’t know. Or where I set it down? I don’t know.

  Reporter: Or why you did.

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Reporter: Do you feel good in the present time or you miss something from the past?

  Dylan: Oh, there must be something. I think I miss plenty, but I’m not a very nostalgic person so I don’t really yearn for things like that from the past.

  Reporter: Do you have fun?

  Dylan: Am I having fun? What is fun?

  Reporter: Enjoy life.

  Dylan: Like kick a football or . . . what is fun? Drink—

  Reporter: Do you enjoy life?

  Dylan: I’m here. I mean . . . is there any choice?

  [Laughter.]

  Reporter: People have killed themselves.

  Dylan: Sure. But not on their own accord.

  Reporter: That may be up to discussion. Did you enjoy the Oscar celebration?

  Dylan: Wasn’t that something? I wasn’t there. I don’t know.

  Reporter: Do you agree that at some point you reflected your times?

  Dylan: I think I always do. I don’t think I could reflect any other time than the time I find myself in.

  Reporter: Do you try to reflect or react upon the time that you’re in?

  Dylan: Probably the latter. Maybe a bit of both.

  Reporter: Can you imagine yourself being a newcomer nowadays? Would you have any chance in the business?

  Dylan: Me? As a newcomer? I think so, because if you have the ability and the knowledge and the strength to do it, that’s all you really need. And I think I know more about what I’m doing now. I know I could find a place if that’s what I wanted to do. But I don’t think I’d want to do it if I came out now. I’d do something else.

  Reporter: Do you keep in contact with George Harrison?

  Dylan: I do.

  Reporter: Will the [Traveling] Wilburys travel again?

  Dylan: It’s hard to say.

  Reporter: What was that period like for you?

  Dylan: The Wilburys? Well, we made a few records, didn’t we? [Laughter.] It was a time of great undertaking.

  Reporter: It was a surprise to people to see you as part of the band like that.

  Dylan: Really? It surprised me, too. [Laughs.]

  Reporter: Do you feel that you’re part of a band now, the whole crowd of guys that you play with? It seems there’s a good unity, at least when I saw you onstage. There’s a good sort of band atmosphere rather than Bob Dylan with his backup musicians.

  Dylan: Well, I always try to have current performers with the ability to play this music. You never know how long you can keep a band together or when a band will change, one individual to another. Those things are unforeseen. But this particular group is pretty competent and can go a lot of di
fferent ways musically.

  Reporter: How long can you see yourself doing this?

  Dylan: I don’t really know. Until one day I just might’ve had it. I can’t say “when the crowds dwindle down” because the crowds aren’t dwindling down but I may just one day have had enough.

  Reporter: What keeps up the energy?

  Dylan: Well, it’s fictitious, the energy. . . . There are certain strategies or stratagems, codes, techniques, that play in a certain way. So once you can set these things up and you know how to do them, then the energy and emotion and whatever it seems like is happening, it’s just a combination that happens in a kind of combustible way. But as far as energy goes, it doesn’t take the type of energy you’re talking about. It’s not that kind of energy that’s being used.

  Reporter: Do you feel like you’re still getting better?

  Dylan: I feel I could get better if I really put my mind to it.

  Reporter: Your singing on the new record might be the best I’ve heard from you.

  Dylan: Well, it may be. But I don’t think I’m singing any better on it than I have in the past. I may be perceived or recorded in a better way.

  Reporter: Bob, there’s well-documented changes in your life, perceived or otherwise. One for a lot of people was after a lot of time onstage and after Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 [Revisited] and Blonde on Blonde, you had a motorbike accident. Whether it was exaggerated or real, did that allow you to change and be different, be yourself and not be on the treadmill?

  Dylan: What was the question?

  Reporter: The question was basically, when John Wesley Harding came out a few years later, people said this is a different Dylan. It was a time of love and peace, et cetera. Did the motorbike accident allow you to change? Or did it change you? Like around the same time, George Harrison was flying back from [San Francisco’s] Candlestick Park, he said, “I’m never playing for these people again. This is just madness. You can’t hear anything onstage.” And they never did play again. Got him off the treadmill. Was that a conscious decision? You kind of used the motorbike accident and it really wasn’t as bad as—

  Dylan: Well, it’s difficult for me to pinpoint any time where I made any conscious decision to do this or that. But obviously, that period of time you’re talking about, I just didn’t feel like going out and play. I didn’t feel I was part of that culture.