Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  Q: Your renditions and these arrangements are very respectful. The arrangements are almost austere, but your renditions are very respectful of these melodies—more than you are of your own songs when you perform.

  A: Well, I love these songs, and I’m not going to bring any disrespect to them or treat them irreverently. To trash those songs would be sacrilegious. We’ve all heard those songs being trashed, and we’re used to it. They go by without even being heard. In some kind of ways you want to right the wrong, maybe unconsciously. But I’m not on a crusade. I think if others want to pick it up, they can and should. But if not, that’s OK, too. I don’t think of these songs as covers. I think of them as songs that have all been done before in many ways. The word “covers” has crept into the musical vernacular. Nobody would have understood it in the ’50s or ’60s. It’s kind of a belittling term. What does it mean when you cover something up? You hide it. I’ve never understood that term. Am I doing a bunch of covers? Well, yeah, if you say so.

  Q: So you’re really uncovering.

  A: Exactly. That’s a good point.

  The Fans

  Q: These songs will have a different audience than they originally had. Do you feel like a musical archaeologist?

  A: No. I just like these songs and feel I can connect with them. I would hope people will connect with them the same way that I do. I have no idea what people like or don’t like. It would be presumptuous to think these songs are going to find some new audience as if they’re going to appear out of nowhere. Certainly, the people who first heard these songs, like my parents and people like that, they’re not with us anymore. I can’t generalize who these songs are going to appeal to. Besides, when I look out from the stage, I see something different than maybe other performers do.

  Q: What are you seeing from the stage?

  A: Definitely not a sea of conformity. People I cannot categorize easily. I wouldn’t say there is one type of fan. I see a guy dressed up in a suit and tie next to a guy in blue jeans. I see another guy in a sport coat next to another guy wearing a T-shirt and cowboy boots. I see women sometimes in evening gowns and I see punky-looking girls. Just all kinds of people. I can see that there’s a difference in character, and it has nothing to do with age. I went to an Elton John show, and it was interesting. There must have been at least three generations of people there. But they were all the same. Even the little kids. They looked just like their grandparents. It was strange. People make a fuss about how many generations follow a certain type of performer. But what does it matter if all the generations are the same? I’m content to not see a certain type of person that could be easily tracked. I don’t care about age, but the adolescent youth market, I think it goes without saying, might not have the experience it takes to understand these songs and appreciate them.

  Q: So we at AARP represent people who are 50 and older. The magazine reaches 35 million readers.

  A: Well, a lot of those readers are going to like this record. If it were up to me, I’d give you the records for nothing, and you give them to every [reader of your] magazine. I think a lot of your readers will identify with these songs.

  Q: The songs on this album conjure a kind of romantic love that is nearly antique, because there’s no longer much resistance in romance. People date and they climb into bed. That sweet, painful pining of the ’40s and ’50s doesn’t exist anymore. Do you think these songs will fall on younger ears as corny?

  A: You tell me. I mean, I don’t know why they would, but what’s the word “corny” mean exactly? I’ve heard it but don’t use it much. It’s like “tacky.” I don’t say that word either. There’s just no power in those words. These songs, take ’em or leave ’em, if nothing else, are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are. If they sound trite and corny to somebody, well so much for that. But people’s lives today are filled on so many levels with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it on a daily basis—everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life and the mockery of it, everywhere we look. These songs are anything but that. Romance never does go out of fashion. It’s radical. Maybe it’s out of step with the current media culture. If it is, it is.

  Q: What is the best song you’ve ever written about heartbreak and loss?

  A: I think “Love Sick” [from 1997’s Time Out of Mind].

  Q: A fellow Minnesotan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, said famously, “There are no second acts in American life.” You are a man who has probably had four or five second acts. Poet, Voice of a Generation, troubadour, rocker and now crooner!

  A: Yeah [Laughs]. I know. Right. Well, look, he said that in a day and age where he was probably speaking the truth.

  Q: You once said that as a folk artist you came into the music business through the side door.

  A: I did?

  Q: You did. And I think I know what you meant, because nobody thought folk music was going to amount to anything in the music business at the time. Now here you are with this grand parade of iconic American songs. Are you finally coming in through the front door?

  A: I would say that’s pretty right on. You just have to keep going to find that thing that lets you in the door, if you actually want to get in the door. Sometimes in life when that day comes and you’re given the key, you throw it away. You find that whatever you were looking for your entire life isn’t where you thought it was. Folk music came at exactly the right time in my life. It wouldn’t have happened 10 years later, and 10 years earlier I wouldn’t have known what kind of songs those were. They were just so different than popular music. But it came at the right time, so I went that way. Then folk music became relegated to the sidelines. It either became commercial or the Beatles killed it. Maybe it couldn’t have gone on anyway. But actually, in this day and age, it still is a vibrant form of music, and many people sing and play it much better than we ever did. It’s just not what you would call part of the pop realm. I had gotten in there at a time when nobody else was there or knew it even existed, so I had the whole landscape to myself. I went into songwriting. I figured I had to—I couldn’t be that hellfire rock ’n’ roller. But I could write hellfire lyrics.

  When I was growing up, Billy Graham was very popular. He was the greatest preacher and evangelist of my time—that guy could save souls and did. I went to two or three of his rallies in the ’50s or ’60s. This guy was like rock ’n’ roll personified—volatile, explosive. He had the hair, the tone, the elocution—when he spoke, he brought the storm down. Clouds parted. Souls got saved, sometimes 30- or 40,000 of them. If you ever went to a Billy Graham rally back then, you were changed forever. There’s never been a preacher like him. He could fill football stadiums before anybody. He could fill Giants Stadium more than even the Giants football team. Seems like a long time ago. Long before Mick Jagger sang his first note or Bruce strapped on his first guitar—that’s some of the part of rock ’n’ roll that I retained. I had to. I saw Billy Graham in the flesh and heard him loud and clear.

  The Process

  Q: A lot of your newer songs deal with aging. You once said that people don’t retire, they fade away, they run out of steam. And now you’re 73, you’re a great-grandfather.

  A: Look, you get older. Passion is a young man’s game, OK? Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise. I mean, you’re around awhile, you leave certain things to the young and you don’t try to act like you’re young. You could really hurt yourself.

  Q: In a period around 1966, you went into seclusion for more than a year, and there was much speculation about your motives. But it was to protect your family, wasn’t it?

  A: Totally. That’s right.

  Q: And I think that people didn’t quite want to understand that, because your idiosyncratic view of the world as an artist made them
think you were an idiosyncratic person, but in reality you were a typical dad who was trying to protect his kids.

  A: Totally. I gave up my art to do that.

  Q: And was that painful?

  A: Totally frustrating and painful, of course, because that intuitive gift—which for me went musically—had carried me so far. I did do that, yeah, and it hurt to have to do it. But I didn’t have a choice.

  Q: Now your life is largely spent on the road: a hundred nights a year. I read that your grandmother once told you that happiness is not the road to anything. She said it is the road.

  A: My grandmother was a wonderful lady.

  Q: You obviously get great joy and connection from the people who come to see you.

  A: It’s not unlike a sportsman who’s on the road a lot. Roger Federer, the tennis player, I mean, you know, he’s working most of the year. Like maybe 250 days a year, every year, year in and year out. I mean, I think that’s more than B.B. King does. So it’s relative. I mean, yeah, you must go where the people are. You can’t bring them to where you are unless you have a contract to play in Vegas. But happiness—are we talking about happiness?

  Q: Yeah.

  A: OK, a lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there’s no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Actually, it never crosses my mind. Just because you’re satisfied one moment—saying yes, it’s a good meal, makes me happy—well, that’s not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner, you know? Really, time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven’t really experienced ups and downs yet. I’m not exactly sure what happiness even means, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if I personally could define it.

  Q: Have you touched it?

  A: Well, we all do.

  Q: Held it?

  A: We all do at certain points, but it’s like water—it slips through your hands. As long as there’s suffering, you can only be so happy. How can a person be happy if he has misfortune? Does money make a person happy? Some wealthy billionaire who can buy 30 cars and maybe buy a sports team, is that guy happy? What then would make him happier? Does it make him happy giving his money away to foreign countries? Is there more contentment in that than giving it here to the inner cities and creating jobs? Nowhere does it say that one of the government’s responsibilities is to create jobs. That is a false premise. But if you like lies, go ahead and believe it. The government’s not going to create jobs. It doesn’t have to. People have to create jobs, and these big billionaires are the ones who can do it. We don’t see that happening. We see crime and inner cities exploding, with people who have nothing to do but meander around, turning to drink and drugs, into killers and jailbirds. They could all have work created for them by all these hotshot billionaires. For sure, that would create a lot of happiness. Now, I’m not saying they have to—I’m not talking about communism—but what do they do with their money? Do they use it in virtuous ways? If you have no idea what virtue is all about, look it up in a Greek dictionary. There’s nothing namby-pamby about it.

  Q: So they should be moving their focus?

  A: Well, I think they should, yeah, because there are a lot of things that are wrong in America and especially in the inner cities that they could solve. Those are dangerous grounds, and they don’t have to be. There are good people there, but they’ve been oppressed by lack of work. Those people can all be working at something. These multibillionaires, and there seem to be more of them every day, can create industries right here in the inner cities of America. But no one can tell them what to do. God’s got to lead them.

  Q: And productive work is a kind of salvation in your view? To feel worth and pride in what you do?

  A: Absolutely.

  Q: Let me talk to you for a minute about your gift. There are artists like George Balanchine, the choreographer, who felt that he was a servant to his muse. Somebody else like Picasso felt that he was the boss in the creative process. How have you dealt with your own gift over the years? I mean your songwriting, your inspiration, your creativity.

  A: [Laughter]

  Q: That makes you laugh?

  A: Well, I might trade places with Picasso if I could, creatively speaking. I’d like to think I was the boss of my creative process, too, and I could just do anything I wanted whenever I wanted and it would all be on a grand scale. But of course, that’s not true. Like Sinatra, there was only one Picasso. As far as George the choreographer, I’m more inclined to feel the same way that he does about what I do. It’s not easy to pin down the creative process.

  Q: Is it elusive?

  A: It totally is. It totally is. It’s uncontrollable. It makes no sense in literal terms. I wish I could enlighten you, but I can’t—just sound stupid trying. But I’ll try. It starts like this. What kind of song do I need to play in my show? What don’t I have? It always starts with what I don’t have instead of doing more of the same. I need all kinds of songs—fast ones, slow ones, minor key, ballads, rumbas—and they all get juggled around during a live show. I’ve been trying for years to come up with songs that have the feeling of a Shakespearean drama, so I’m always starting with that. Once I can focus in on something, I just play it in my mind until an idea comes from out of nowhere, and it’s usually the key to the whole song. It’s the idea that matters. The idea is floating around long before me. It’s like electricity was around long before Edison harnessed it. Communism was around before Lenin took over. Pete Townshend thought about Tommy for years before he actually wrote any songs for it. So creativity has a lot to do with the main idea. Inspiration is what comes when you are dealing with the idea. But inspiration won’t invite what’s not there to begin with.

  Q: You’ve been generous to take up all of these questions.

  A: I found the questions really interesting. The last time I did an interview, the guy wanted to know about everything except the music. Man, I’m just a musician, you know? People have been doing that to me since the ’60s—they ask questions like they would ask a medical doctor or a psychiatrist or a professor or a politician. Why? Why are you asking me these things?

  Q: What do you ask a musician about?

  A: Music! Exactly.

  DYLAN ON

  Critics’ Reaction to His Vocals

  “Some of the music critics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t these same critics say similar things about Tom Waits? They say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. Why don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get special treatment? Critics say I can’t carry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Really? I’ve never heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? What have I done to deserve this special treatment? Why me, Lord? No vocal range? When’s the last time you’ve read that about Dr. John? Why don’t they say that about him? Slur my words, got no diction. You have to wonder if these critics have ever heard Charley Patton or Son House or [Howlin’] Wolf. Talk about slurred words and no diction. Why don’t they say those same things about them? Why me, Lord?”

  —from Musicares Person of the Year acceptance speech,

  Los Angeles, February 6, 2015

  DYLAN ON

  His Limitations

  “There’s a lot of things I’d like to do. I’d like to drive a race car on the Indianapolis track. I’d like to kick a field goal in an NFL football game. I’d like to be able to hit a hundred-mile-an-hour baseball. But you have to know your place. There might be some things that are beyond your talents. . . . Everything worth doing takes time. You have to write a hundred bad songs before you write one good one. And you have to sacrifice a lot of things that you might not be prepared for. Like it or not, you are in this alone and have to follow your own star.”

  —from interview with Edna Gundersen, Telegraph (UK), October 29, 2016

  NOBEL PRIZE BANQUET SPEECH

  Bob Dylan (presented by Azita Raji) | Dece
mber 10, 2016 | Stockholm, Sweden

  On October 13, 2016, word came that Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Around the world, critics and columnists weighed in on the news about the award, which had been given only once before to a songwriter (Rabindranath Tagore, who won in 1913). Some said the prize should have gone to a novelist, but many others—particularly fans and fellow musicians—asked the same question as New York Times critic Jon Pareles: “What took them so long?”

  Dylan himself responded at first with silence. Someone posted an announcement of the award on his website, but the notice was deleted within a day. For weeks, meanwhile, Dylan issued no public statement and failed to respond to messages from the Nobel Committee regarding his possible attendance at the prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.

  This prompted criticism, but some observers pointed out that Dylan’s nonresponse was not exactly out of the ordinary. “He’s behaved so strangely for so many years that if he would show up now and be cheerful and pleased, you’d be surprised,” said Daniel Sandstrom, the literary director at the publisher Albert Bonniers.

  Finally, in an October 29 interview for the UK newspaper the Telegraph, he did comment, telling journalist Edna Gundersen that the award was “amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?”

  Would he attend the Nobel Prize banquet? “Absolutely,” he said. “If it’s at all possible.”

  In the end, though, it apparently wasn’t. Dylan—who had clearly been uncomfortable receiving such earlier recognition as an honorary degree from Princeton University and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award—said he wouldn’t be able to make it to the Nobel Prize banquet due to unspecified “pre-existing commitments.” However, he did ultimately accept his award in a small private ceremony on April 1, 2017, in Stockholm. As for the banquet the previous December, he sent the following gracious speech, which US ambassador to Sweden Azita Raji delivered on his behalf. —Ed.