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THE BRUCE HEIMAN INTERVIEW, TUSCON, DECEMBER 7 (8?), 1979 download this file here
TIM BLACKMORE TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE INTERVIEW JUNE 12, 1981 download this file here
THE YVES BIGOT TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE INTERVIEW JUNE 12, 1981 download this file here
THE PAUL GAMBACCINI TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE INTERVIEW JUNE 12, 1981 download this file here
THE DAVE HERMAN INTERVIEW, LONDON, JULY 2 1981 download this file here
5 August, 1981 New Musical Express pp29-31 download this file here
The ambiguous relationship between Dylan's songs, statements, and rumors of lifestyle provide grist for this concocted story by a London tabloid paper. downlod this file here
Sunday Times, July 1, 1984 download this file here
THE BRUCE HEIMAN INTERVIEW, TUSCON, DECEMBER 7 (8?), 1979
Found
on the Bill Parr's "Slow Train Coming" site
THE PAT CROSBY INTERVIEW MAY 16, 1980
Found on John Howell's "Bringin'
It All Back Home" site
link
Crosby: How and why did Bob Dylan recently stop singing the older songs and start singing gospel and about the Lord? He said he would talk to us about it ....
Dylan: I can understand why they feel rebellious about it because up until the time the Lord came into my life, I knew nothing about religion; I was just rebellious and didn't think much about it either way. I never did care much for preachers who just ask for donations all the time and talk about the world to come. I was always growing up with "it's right here and now" and until Jesus became real to me that way, I couldn't understand it.
Crosby: So you can understand people's reaction to you when you come on stage and start singing about Jesus and they want the old stuff?
Dylan: Oh, yeas, that's right, they want the old stuff. But the old stuff's not going to save them and I'm not going to save them. Neither is anybody else they follow. They can boogie all night, but it's not gonna work.
Crosby: Do you still hold the same enthusiasm for the older material or is it gone?
Dylan: Oh, yeah, I love that stuff. I look at it now and it amazes me that it was me that even wrote it or performed it.
Interview conducted at the Hilton Hotel in Pittsburgh May 15, 1980 and broadcast the same day by KDKA TV.
Reprinted in Clinton Heylin: Saved! - part 3, The Telegraph #30.
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TIM BLACKMORE TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE INTERVIEW JUNE 12, 1981
Found on John Howell's "Bringin'
It All Back Home" site
Link
Dylan: Well, We've just started playing in Chicago. We've been off the road for about six months.
Blackmore: And how's it looking?
Dylan: Basically it's about the same. Actually, the crowds are a little bigger, this time we're playing outdoors - we haven't played outdoors in a few years so that changes the atmosphere some. Summer nights just kind of hang in the air, get kind of humid much quicker than indoors.
Blackmore: Right, well it's been three years since you were here in London and you played those devastating concerts at the Earl Court and also down at Blackbushe. Are you looking forward to coming back to London?
Dylan: Oh, sure. It seems like they appreciate different things in Europe than they do here. Here they take a lot of things for granted. We've been playing some new songs that nobody has ever heard before. I think people in England react more spontaneously to the stuff that I do than then the people here, you know, you sit here so for long and they take you for granted, you know, and anyway, I've taken lot of my earlier songs from a lot of old English ballads and Irish ballads and stuff like that, so people will probably relate to that a lot more over there than they do here. Here, I'm not really sure if people are aware of where songs like 'Master Of War' or 'Girl From The North Country', where those songs originate and come from.
Blackmore: What was particularly exciting ... When you played Earl's Court last time was, I think a lot of us who followed your music and had been with you over the years, we were, perhaps, a little worried if you'd be playing the old songs when you came last time and you came in with those tremendous new arrangements. Were you at all nervous about whether people would accept the old songs and new arrangements?
Dylan: They did in Europe and in England. They accepted them, they didn't much accept them here and they called them - you know, I think they at the time were saying "Dylan's on a new wave" or "Disco Kick" or something like that, but over there they seemed to .... I didn't think of my songs as disco or they seemed to apply meaning to them which I'd never intended and I didn't find that to be true over there.
Blackmore: Does that mean when you started this tour that you're now doing in America that you've avoided doing re-arrangements of the old songs?
Dylan: Well. I wouldn't call them re-arrangements of the old songs. I think they are really more true to their character now. The band I've got with me now are I think the best band I've ever had. Everybody seems to understand my music more than any band I've ever had - usually I put together bands that wouldn't be put together otherwise, but this time it seemed like that this band is born to be, together with me.
Blackmore: Is there anybody who was in the band that you brought over last time, who'll be coming with you this time?
Dylan: Well, there's just one girl, that's Carolyn Dennis - she's a really fine singer, she's been with me about three or four years. She's the only one I think who's been with me - most everybody else is new this time over, but I'm sure that you'll like the band.
Blackmore: What's happened since you were here last is you've released the two albums, which really testified to your Christian faith. Are we going to hear more of those songs in your set now?
Dylan: No, you won't be hearing any more of those songs but what happens, you know, is over a period of time those songs become old songs. And we've just finished a new album that I think is really good. We just finished that in the last month and it's supposed to be ready for release now and we'll be playing some stuff off that album too, and then things that go back as far as 'Blowin In The Wind' - I'm trying to do as many songs as i can from just all kind of periods of time.
Blackmore: Is this album something you've done with Jerry Wexler and Barry Beckett again?
Dylan: No, I did it by myself this time. Me and a guy named Chuck Plotkin - we just - I go tired of making records that kind of didn't turn out the way that I had planned it to be, but this time, this album, it sounds pretty much the way I hear my music. I think you'll like it.
Blackmore: Well I certainly look forward to it. Did you have any nervousness about coming here after that gap the previous time?
Dylan: Hmmm. Yes, maybe so I did have a little bit of nervousness - you always do. Usually the reception makes me nervous more than the actual performances - I don't get too nervous during the performances, but all the attention and all the media, you know, all that makes me kind of nervous. When you come in at the airport and there's photographers and people ask you questions and all that kind of makes me nervous.
Blackmore: A lot of people listening to you Bob will probably be surprised to hear you say that after what is twenty years of making music before people, that you're still nervous in front of the attention the media gives you.
Dylan: (laughs) No .. I really don't - It just makes me nervous. I just feel people put me in a position that I didn't really start out to be in. I like to perform, I like to play, but the rest of it kind of confuses me sometimes. I'm kind of camera shy. Anyway, I never did like to have my picture taken.
Blackmore: You don't seem to be microphone shy though, you're talking into this telephone very freely.
Dylan: Well, that's a different thing because you can't see me. (laughs)
Blackmore: Well, I certainly look forward to seeing you. What do you think the chances would be of you coming to see us at Capital Radio when you are in London?
Dylan: Well, I don't know - it depends if we have the time, you know. Maybe you'll come backstage at one of the shows or something and I'll get the chance to meet you.
Blackmore: Well, I'd certainly like to do that very much!
Dylan: OK Tim, well listen, I got to go catch the bus.
Blackmore: OK, Well I hope you have a good bus trip and we look forward to seeing you over here in just a couple of weeks time. Good luck with the rest of the tour over your side of the pond.
Dylan: OK, thank you. Bye.
This is one of three telephone interviews that Dylan did in Chicago June 12, 1981 to promote the up coming European tour and the new album, Shot Of Love.
The interview was broadcast by Capitol Radio in London on June 15.
Sources: transcription in Fourth Time Around #1 and tape.
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THE YVES BIGOT TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE INTERVIEW JUNE 12, 1981
Found on John Howell's "Bringin'
It All Back Home" site
link
Bigot: Hello Bob!
Dylan: Yeah.
Bigot: Where are you calling me from?
Dylan: I'm calling you from Detroit.
Bigot: Yeah, you are gonna play there tonight?
Dylan: Tonight.
Bigot: Yeah, and how is the tour going?
Dylan: Oh, it's going pretty good.
Bigot: Bob, we are used to watch you perform in very different styles with every new tour, never trying to promote your next album, so what's the mood of this tour?
Dylan: Well, I usually tour, you know, between albums, and I've been touring between albums over here for the past few years. You know, we've kind of been on tour for the past two years. You'll be seeing the result of the shows from the past two years and a few new things, a bunch of other things that nobody's heard before.
Bigot: Okay, so who are your musicians? Who are with on this tour?
Dylan: Well, it's the band I've been working with in the past few years. Jim Keltner playing drums, Tim Drummond, who's playing bass, on guitars I've got Fred Tackett and Steve Ripley, and then on the keyboards a guy that goes by the name of Willie Smith. And I have four backing singers, one girl was with me last time I was there, her name is Carolyn Dennis. Then I've got some other girls you haven't seen before.
Bigot: You have written a lot of new songs lately. When can we expect a new a new album?
Dylan: Well, very very soon, in fact very soon, maybe in the next few weeks, I hope anyway.
Bigot: So you've already recorded it?
Dylan: Yes, it's already been recorded and mixed and pressed I believe and it should be out as soon as they can get it to the stores.
Bigot: And who produced it?
Dylan: A guy named Chuck Plotkin and myself.
Bigot: Blood On The Tracks was the last album you produced yourself?
Dylan: Yes, exactly. That's the last album I did produce by myself and this the next one.
Bigot: Yes and the sound was very very good on that album. What do you use producers for, when you use them?
Dylan: Well, the past two albums I used producers to organize everything in the studio for me and to come up with some ideas and hire the musicians to use. And to help me sort out the songs and make some sense out of what I do. Just when I come in with a bunch of songs - somebody who come in and oversee that and puts it together, and come out with an album. And they'll be responsible for the sound of it. And this time I wanted to do it by myself.
Bigot: You were always interested in different rhythms on your last albums and on your last tour when you came into Europe you used reggae, salsa, and even funk rhythms. Are you very interested in the last developments lately of ....
Dylan: Well, sure. I just use about any kind of rhythm that I feel, you know, that I wanna play. Mmm, yeah I use a lot of different types of rhythms. some songs are just old hill-billy kind of rhythm you know, and some songs have like, I guess a 12 bar blues type of rhythm. Between them it's just about anything that happens to find its way into the song. I kind of use all kinds of rhythms just to keep it different.
Bigot: So that means you're not especially interested in the musical form but rather in the rhythm that you feel is best related to the spirit or sensibility of a song?
Dylan: Yes. if I can feel it I'll play it. If I can feel it I'll do it that way.
Bigot: Some people who study behavior say that each of us is only expressing one unique thing through his entire life that we wanted to express when we were 17; I think you have proved them wrong over your career. so regarding yourself, what was your continuous concern during your career?
Dylan: That I stayed honest, that I tried to be true, and didn't lie to myself or nobody else.
Bigot: Do you believe in fate or in destiny?
Dylan: Mmm - I do, sure.
Bigot: Do you think all was written in advance, or are we responsible for each choice we do, even if things seem planned?
Dylan: I do believe that things are planned for everyone of us. But I also believe that we have the will to change it at one time or another, although I'm not so sure about changing the end result.
Bigot: Do you feel the same as when you were a child, or do you feel you have changed?
Dylan: Well, you know it's like the French say: Everything changes but it stays the same.
Bigot: Three years ago, you said something that touched me very deeply, you said that one has to be vulnerable in order to be able to feel reality. Did your faith change your mind about this?
Dylan: Aha - I still believe that - yes, I do that.
Bigot: You don't feel stronger now? Or do you still feel that you have to have a certain label of sensitivity?
Dylan: Well, .... [obviously not understanding this, which like the other questions, is asked in broken English with a heavy French accent on this rather noisy telephone line] .... I think that's correct, yeah.
Bigot: Bob, you are a Gemini, and I am a Gemini myself, and maybe that's one of the reasons why I was, you know, touched so much by your movie Renaldo & Clara and by the album Street Legal. And you talked very much about personality, about the difference between "that enemy within" as you call him and ... Can you tell me a little bit about that? Was it really the theme of the movie?
Dylan: I think so. I think it was like identity. I think you'd say that.
Bigot: But do you think this duality is the cause of negative things? Maybe not evil itself, but things like violence?
Dylan: I do think that, yeah. Sure, when one side takes over another side, one side is feeling stronger at that moment.
Bigot: Yes, isn't this the source of paranoia when someone isn't the one he would want to be?
Dylan: Sure, it's extremely dangerous.
Bigot: Did it ever happen to you?
Dylan: Oh sure, just about every day. (laughs)
Bigot: And wasn't Renaldo & Clara about all this?
Dylan: Yes! It was!!
Bigot: Bob, don't you feel like doing some kind of Rolling Thunder Revue again, with that incredible atmosphere?
Dylan: No, you won't see that again.
Bigot: Why? Once is enough?
Dylan: Well, yeah, I think so. You know things just couldn't go on that way.
Bigot: Maybe times have changed also?
Dylan: That's right. Well, you know, anything's possible, it could happen again. Yeah it could happen. I doubt it would, but it could.
Bigot: Are you going to do another movie someday?
Dylan: I would like to. I would really like to do that Yves. I just don't have - I haven't found, what do you call it? A script or something.
Bigot: How was the experience of doing Renaldo & Clara?
Dylan: Oh, it was invaluable, an invaluable experience.
Bigot: Tell me, in France you are going to perform in stadiums, it's not the first time is it?
Dylan: Oh, sure I've played stadiums before.
Bigot: Colombes will certainly be one of the hugest concerts for us.
Dylan: I hope so. I hope it will be that way.
Bigot: I saw you watch Bruce Springsteen perform at the L.A. Sports Arena. I think you were impressed.
Dylan: Oh sure, I was. Listen Yves, I've a show to do tonight and I've got to get on the bus, otherwise I won't have any way to get there.
Bigot: Okay, Bob. I thank you very, very much much for this interview and for your time and for everything you did. And we are looking forward to welcoming you to France.
Dylan: Alright, well maybe I'll get to see you, get to meet you.
Bigot: Okay, so do I. Thanks a lot and have a good concert. Goodbye Bob.
Dylan: Bye.
Transatlantic telephone conversation between Bob Dylan in Detroit and Yves Bigot in Paris. Broadcasted by Radio Europe 1, Paris, June 22 & June 23.
Sources: Tape.
Transcription
published in Fourth Time Around #2.
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THE PAUL GAMBACCINI TRANSATLANTIC TELEPHONE INTERVIEW JUNE 12, 1981
Found on John Howell's "Bringin'
It All Back Home" Site
Link
P.G.: Who's coming in the backing band this time? What's the music gonna be like?
Dylan: I'm bringing the same band that I have been touring with for the last two years.
P.G.: You'd be at Earl's Court, which is where you were last time. Were you surprised last time by the friendly response?
Dylan: Aaah, sometimes the response is less than friendly, and sometimes it's friendly, but over the years you just kind of get used to any kind of response.
P.G.: I know that recently in the States you've been performing a lot of your inspirational material. Will you be doing that in London?
Dylan: We'll be doing some of it. Most of the stuff comes from all the albums. And then we just finished an album, so we'll be including some new songs too. The name of the new album is Shot Of Love.
P.G.: Does that continue in the inspirational vein?
Dylan: You kind of have to decide that for yourself. It's different than the last, it's different than Saved and it's different than Slow Train, and it sounds old but it's new.
P.G.: Does it feature any of your recent players like Barry Beckett?
Dylan: No, I didn't do this one down in Muscle Shoals, I did it in California. So Barry's not on this one. I did use my usual band. Actually Ronnie Wood played on one song, so did Ringo.
P.G.: I've received some very exciting mail on the last couple of albums, because some people who shared your sense of what might be called ministry or message were very excited that you were with them on it and other people had thought, well, what is Bob doing, now?
Dylan: Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it takes ... , you know the older album don't really mean something to some people until they're hearing the new one and in retrospect they go back and hear something else from the path that'll seem like it takes the steps that leads up to the new one.
I think this new album we did, for me it is the most explosive album I've ever done. Even going back to Blonde On Blonde or Freewheelin' or any of those, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61, or whatever they were ... I think this one is, for it's time right now, will be perceived in the same way and I may be totally wrong in saying that, but I feel that same way about this album as I did when we recorded Bringing It All Back Home, that was like a break through point, it's the kind of music I've been striving to make and I believe that in time people will see that. It's hard to explain it, it's that unidentifiable thing, you know, that people can write about, but the can only write about and around it, they can't really take charge over it, because it is what it is and you can't really expound on it, it itself is the beginning and the end of what it is.
P.G.: In Blood On The Tracks, which was another of my favorite albums, you were speaking right from the heart. Is that the kind of feeling you have lyrically on this album?
Dylan: Well, that was a different sort of thing. That was a break through album for me too in another sense of lyrics. I've done things I've never done before. This is just a different sort of thing, it's the thing I've always wanted to do. And, for one reason or another, I have always been bound in certain areas where I couldn't have the right structure around some kind of things to make it come off, in a way, because mainly, when I don't do that much talking, so when I'm playing, you have to be able to communicate with the people around you in order to get your point of view across. If you have to do too much of that communication it gets confusing and something is lost along the way. And this time that didn't happen. Everybody was pretty much together.
P.G.: Do you feel then, that you now have accomplished what you want to as an artist?
Dylan: I think so. I think the next album I do I don't --- I think I will do an instrumental album now.
P.G.: [surprised] You think so??
Dylan: Yeah. I've come as far as there is to come and now I'm gonna start doing instrumentals.
P.G.: Are you finding at the moment inspiration from any other artists, as I think you probably found from Dire Straits a couple of years ago?
Dylan: Oh, yeah well, I just spoke with Mark recently ... Hmmm, I've always liked Gordon Lightfoot ...
P.G.: Recently here, Bruce Springsteen's gone down very well. Do you like him?
Dylan: Yeah, Bruce is a very talented guy.
P.G.: Did you know that Bruce has included 'This Land Is Your Land' in his concert program?
Dylan: Oh he has? That's amazing! That's good. Well maybe he'll start doing 'Blowing In The Wind'! Maybe he'll do an album with Bob Dylan songs!
P.G.: Well, funnily enough, I heard on the radio recently, Manfred Mann's version of 'With God On Our Side'. And I thought that in this current atmosphere where there is so much talk about nuclear disarmament and the missile talks, particularly in Europe, where it is a great concern at the moment, that these songs of yours from the early albums about the nuclear disarmament situation take on a new timeliness. Do you ever think about that?
Dylan: No. Not really, but it doesn't surprise me. I thought they were timely then, and just as sure they're timely now.
Transatlantic telephone conversation between Bob Dylan in Detroit and Paul Gambaccini in London. Broadcasted by Radio One, BBC June 20 in the program "Rock On".
Source: Tape.
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THE DAVE HERMAN INTERVIEW, LONDON, JULY 2 1981
Found on John Howell's "Bringin' It All Back Home" Site Link
Herman: Last night in Earl's Court, here in London, I guess there were about twenty people in there and when I kind of saw them, I guess it was when you did 'It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)' and every last one of them in the place was standing on their chair and it was a pretty special kind of a feeling. I was reminded once again, that you really do have a very .., that you play a very special part in the lives of an extraordinary amount of people all over the world and I gathered that this has always made you a bit uncomfortable, that people hold you in a very special place?
Dylan: I don't feel uneasy with the part of it, that part of it, but the other part of it, you know the part where you're expected to ... go to parties ... and ... be somebody all the time, you know. That's what makes me feel uncomfortable.
Herman: Or the part that makes people presuming you have somehow a lot of answers that they might not have to a lot of questions?
Dylan: Well, if you ... the answers to those questions, they've got to be in those songs I've written. Someplace, if you know where to look, I think you'll find the answers to those questions. It's right there in the songs. Better than I could say it.
Herman: Maybe that's why, over the years, that you have given so very few interviews, because probably people just come by and, once again, hope that you're gonna come up with some answers that are in the songs. In the lyrics and in the music. But you've given, I don't think, more than half a dozen major interviews. You've never really talk a whole lot to the press or radio people.
Dylan: No, I haven't.
Herman: The performers and artists feel that there's some kind of adversaries there, when reporters come in ...
Dylan: Well, performers feel that .., they don't feel they're adversaries, but they do feel that ... they feel a lot of times that their points are not taken the right way or they feel imposed upon to answer questions that have really little to do with why they fill halls or sell records.
Herman: I got some questions for you that I hope aren't those and I hope that they're also questions that the answers of which aren't really in your songs. For instance it seems to me that ..., we are sitting in London, and Mrs Thatcher is the prime minister here and back home it seems to be a kind of a new political wave of conservatism sweeping across the world and I wonder if that kind of concerns you at all, if you've noticed the change in the political winds?
Dylan: No. I don't know much change between conservatism or liberalism. I can't see much differences between either of those things.
Herman: But there are -irism of relative freedom and there are -irism of repression and I think that in the 1960s, where a lot of us came out of, people were much freer to create, much freer to express their ideas at least in the western world.
Dylan: You think so?
Herman: Well, I don't know, I just see ... for instance there are groups of people that are boycotting sponsors of television shows that they don't like ...
Dylan: But they don't like them for a specific reason, though. A lot of these people that are boycotting those shows they got children, they show things on those shows, they don't want their children to see. Television now is at every home, it's not much you can do about it. It's better than outlawing TV-sets.
Herman: Can't they just not have their children watch the TV, I mean ...
Dylan: Think about forty years ago, there weren't any TV-sets, so there was nothing to boycott ...
Herman: OK, well another thing is, ah, in the United States the abortion question is becoming one of the major political controversies at home.
Dylan: Well, that is just a diversion, though. Whenever you think about abortion, pro, con, you know, I think you should be thinking about those things, then they put you away with the bigger things, which you're not thinking about. So you get everybody thinking about abortion and they turn you back from it ... not to say that abortion is not important! But you can make something so ... you know cast a spell on something and make everybody look that way and then you come at them from another direction ...
Herman: But that sounds like it's conspiratorial?
Dylan: Yeah, it does, doesn't it?
Herman: Yeah, it does! I think it is, but I don't think people sit in rooms and say well, let's divert them with the abortion issue, and then we can slip this in while ...
Dylan: You actually don't think so??
Herman: That calculated? You think it is?
Dylan: I don't know ... Now abortion is important, I personally don't believe in it but ..., unless of course somebody needs to have their life saved.
Herman: Well, it's not a matter of believing in abortion ...
Dylan: Eat to much candy, and you gonna get sick!
Herman: But people should have, it seems to me, just the right to make choices about themselves ...
Dylan: (laughs) Well, everybody *does* have the choice to make about themselves ...
Herman: Would you tell me what people mean, what it really means, when people describes themselves as "born again", which is something that we hear a lot about from a lot of people, there are millions of people that say they're born again.
Dylan: Yeah. What they mean by saying that is that they're born again by the spirit from above. Born once is born with the spirit from below. Which, when you're born is the spirit that you're born with. Born again is born with the spirit from above, which is a little bit different.
Herman: Do you know how it happens to people? Is it a decision that one makes or is it an experience that just comes. Is it unconscious, is it conscious?
Dylan: Well, it happens in all kinds of ways. It's really not one way that it happens I guess. If you talk to this person that tell you that it was unconscious and then you talk to another one that say it was a conscious decision. Some people say they just heard a voice on a lonesome road, other people say they were in the middle of a football game, some people were in the men's room of a Greyhound bus station. You don't have to be in any special situation, that it might come up.
Herman: Let's talk about Shot Of Love. It's the new album.
Dylan: You don't wanna talk about Saved? (laughs) No one wants to talk about Saved! (laughs more).
Herman: I think somebody once said "Don't look back" ...
Dylan: Yeah ... (laughs) ... Well, Shot Of Love is the new record, we have coming out ...
Herman: And it's also a kind of a return, it seems to me, to an album of songs that cover a whole lot of different subjects, there are love songs in it, there's a song about Lenny Bruce. As opposed to Saved, which was really a collection of religious songs, it was one theme to that album, and Shot Of Love is a return to a more eclectic album. I am wondering whether that is something that's happening haphazardly or whether it's something that's, what do you say, "Saved maybe was too much stuff in one vein or too narrow in scope, and maybe I ought to be back to doing a whole bunch of songs" or whether those were just the songs that came out of you?
Dylan: Yeah, those were the songs that just wanted to come out. I never know from one album to the next what kind of songs I'm gonna be doing. It amazes me that I even continue to make albums.
Herman: What do you mean by that?
Dylan: It is always a miracle of some kind when I make an album, because ... Working in a studio has always been very difficult for me.
Herman: You approach making records a lot differently than a lot of people do? Some people spend a year in the studio.
Dylan: I approach record-making in the way that I learned how to to make records when I started recording, when I recorded for John Hammond. And we work the same way.
Herman: Which is?
Dylan: Which is, going into a studio and making a record. Right then and there. I know the other way and I know a lot of people do it the other way and it's successful for them, but I'm not interested in that aspect of recording. Laying down tracks and then coming back and perfecting those tracks and then perfecting lyrics, which seem to wanna go with those tracks. Songs are created in the recording studio. For me, see I'm a live performer, I have to play songs which gonna relate to the faces that I'm singing to. I can't do that if I was spending a year in the studio, working on a track. It's not that important to me. No record is that important. I mean the world is gonna go on ... who needs these records? You know what I mean?
Herman: A record is forever. This is forever too.
Dylan: It's forever, I guess ... but ... it sure is ...
Herman: You're saying that like you never thought about that before.
Dylan: No, I never did think about that before, but I see in my records ..., I mean I hear records that I made twenty years ago, and I say 'Oh man, God, did I make that record?'
Herman: Bob, long after you're gone, these records will be here and people will listen to them and think ... well one thing or another about this guy who made these records, four hundred years ago.
Dylan: Ooh, poor me! (laughs) But, they *seem* important at the time! You know, they really do. Yeah, they are important, I'm not saying that records aren't important, but ... it's also new. I mean, making records is new. Just the fact that we're doing this interview now, through this tape recorder, we couldn't have done this ...
Herman: There wasn't any radio stations playing 75 years ago. The point --- as an artist there must be some ...
[Through the entire interview Dylan has been softly doodling on an acoustic guitar]
I just hope that this guitar ... I don't know cause I can't hear it back ... I hope it isn't louder than we are, which would make it difficult for people to hear us, I'm afraid. Even though I'm enjoying it immensely ...
Dylan: Well. I'll play it softly then.
Herman: Yeah, that'd be great. It's an old guitar. It's really beat up. It's been round the world a few times I guess.
Dylan: Well, I've carried it around the world a few times and I think somebody else carried it around before that too.
Herman: Where were we? Aaah ... oh yeah, what I wanted to say about a record being forever ... There must be some concern from you as a man and artist that people will be hearing this thing and coming to conclusions about Bob Dylan long after you've gone. There must be something that you'd like to leave in the world for those people who hear these records, something that they'll get, will give meaning to your life after your life is over.
Dylan: Well, I'm not done yet! And I'm still doing it and I'm still not knowing *why* I'm doing it. Come on, I mean there's other things that I would really enjoy doing, besides playing and ...
Herman: Like what? I mean if any man can do what he wants to, *you* can!
Dylan: Like what? Well, I mean, like become a doctor, you know, yeah I think a surgeon, you know, who can save somebody's life on the highway. I mean that's a man I'm gonna look up to, as being somebody with some talent.
Herman: ????
Dylan: (laughs)
Dylan: Not to say though, that art is valueless. I think art can lead you to God.
Herman: It's that it's purpose?
Dylan: I think so. I think that's everything's purpose. I mean if it's not doing that it's leading you the other way. It's certainly not leading you nowhere. It's bringing you somewhere. It's bringing you that way or this way.
Herman: Well, if it expresses truth and beauty then it's leading you to God?
Dylan: Yeah? (laughs)
Herman: Well, wouldn't you say?
Dylan: If it's expressing truth I'd say it's leading you to God and beauty also.
Herman: I've always thought that those were the only two absolutes that there were.
Dylan: Well, beauty can be very *very* deceiving. It's not always of God.
Herman: Would you elaborate a little bit?
Dylan: Well, beauty appeals to our eyes ...
Herman: And to our hearts?
Dylan: Our hearts are not good. If your heart's not good, what good does beauty do, that comes through your eyes, going down to your heart, that isn't good anyway?
Herman: The beauty of a sunset?
Dylan: The beauty of the beast. The beauty of a sunset? Now, that's a very special kind if beauty.
Herman: Well, how about the beauty of the natural world?
Dylan: Like the flowers?
Herman: Yes, and the beasts ... and the rain ...
Dylan: All that is beautiful, That's God-given. I've spent a lot of time dealing with the man made beauty, so that sometimes the beauty of God's world has evaded me.
Herman: On Shot Of Love is a song called Lenny Bruce, which you perform just at the piano and I love the song, because I loved Lenny Bruce, I was a great admirer of him, when he was alive and working, and of course since his death. It occurred to me it's a long time since Lenny's gone, I think he went in the summer of 1967, I think it was. Why, after all these years this song about Lenny Bruce?
Dylan: You know, I have no idea!
Herman: Did that song just come to your ...
Dylan: I wrote that song in five minutes! It is true, I rode with him once in a taxi cab. I found it was a little strange after he died, that people made such a hero out of him. When he was alive he couldn't even get a break. And certainly now, comedy is rank, dirty and vulgar and very unfunny and stupid, wishy-washy and the whole thing.
Herman: Some people thought he was rank and dirty and vulgar ..
Dylan: But he was doing this same sort of thing many years ago and maybe some people aren't realizing that there was Lenny Bruce, who did this before and that is what happened to him. So these people can *do* what they're doing now. I don't know.
Herman: Lenny spent a lot of time bad mouthing the church, too. Well, from the point of view of organized churches. Is there a very big difference between the political structure of the various churches, no matter what the denomination might be and what the spirit is all about. Do you think that the Catholic Church, traditional Judaism, or any way that their religions are organized with rites and rituals ... Is that part of really of what you feel the truth of the spirit of God is all about?
Dylan: Well, that's a complicated question! I'm not an authority on Catholicism. Ritual has really nothing to do with spiritual laws. However, if you do walk according to the law, all of the law, well, you'd be a pretty pure person and on a pretty high level. A person who could no doubt move mountains. if you walk according to the law, and most people can't walk according to the law, because it's so difficult, there are so many laws, that govern absolutely every area of your life.
Herman: Maybe it takes more than one lifetime to get all of that. Is the fact that we come back again and again something that, I'm talking about reincarnation, let's say the Hindu way of believing that we get in touch with our own divinity and do walk according to the law, that it takes more than one life? Think that there's a possibility that that might be the way? And what's 60, 70, 80 years?
Dylan: It's not a whole lot of time, when you think you need another lifetime! (laughs) You want another life time? How many do you want?
Herman: Well, you have to pay not to go through this thing twice! (laughs)
Dylan: That's it.. That's right! Well I figure if you can't learn it here, you can't learn it.
Herman: Back to Lenny Bruce, and the fact that it's again yet another Bob Dylan song about, as you even say in the song, an outlaw. A lot of the stuff, a lot of the songs over the years, Lenny Bruce, Outlaw Blues, Joey Gallo, Hurricane Carter, or Absolutely Sweet Marie, "to live outside the law, you must live honest" (sic). A lot of outlaw imagery and outlaws in your work. What is it about "man as outlaw" that intrigues you so, you spend a lot of time on ...
Dylan: Well, it's not anything conscious. I guess it has to do with where I grew up, admiring those type of heroes, Robin Hood, Jesse James ... You know the person who always kicked against the oppression and was ... had high moral standards. I don't know if the people I write about have high moral standards, I don't know if Robin Hood did, but you always assumed that they did.
Herman: You assume that Joey Gallo did?
Dylan: In some kind of way you have to assume that he did, in some kind of area. It's like ... I've never written a song about some rapers, you know. I think what I intend to do is just show the individualism of that certain type of breed, or certain type of person that must do that. But there is some type of standard I have for whoever I'm writing about. I mean, it amazes me that I wrote a song about Joey Gallo.
Herman: But you did!
Dylan: Yeah!
Herman: A long one too.
Dylan: Very long one. How long was that? About a half hour?
Herman: About eleven minutes.
Dylan: Yeah, well I feel that if I didn't do it, who would? (laughs) But that's an old tradition! I think I picked that up in the folk tradition, when I was singing nothing but folk songs for years. There are many songs, a lot of Irish ballads, Roddy McCorley, names escape my mind at the moment ...
Herman: There must be a hundred songs about Jesse James?
Dylan: ... Jesse James, Cole Younger, the US bandit, Billy The Kid, ... of course the English ballads had them and the Scottish ballads had them and the Irish ballads. I used to sing a lot of those songs and that just kind of carried over with me into the ... whatever the special brand of music that I play now is ...
Herman: People who know you and work with you told me in the last few days, when I was getting ready to talk to you, that they've never seen you more relaxed and content and ...
Dylan: (laughs) People always say that!
Herman: No, no. And I have a feeling that you are experiencing that. It's a real nice place to be now on this European tour. Otherwise I don't think we would be sitting here talking. You know, if you were preoccupied with other things or felt out of synch with yourself, I think you'd probably ???? As your friends say.
Dylan: Well, I know what I have to do and I'm just trying to do it, you know.
Herman: The ego's got a pretty big part in being a performer. How do you like to go out there night after night, do what you do, and hear that applause and ... How much of a part does that play in ... I mean, do you feel a little bit like maybe you're hooked on the stage and on the celebrity ??? of it all?
Dylan: No. I don't mind the celebrity part of it.
Herman: Could you be an anonymous person?
Dylan: I try to be an anonymous person. As far as the applause goes, I get just as much .... sometimes it's applause, sometimes it's booing. You get used to it over years. I mean, I've been doing it for so long, whatever the applause is, it doesn't surprise me any more.
Herman: But isn't it nicer when it's a big applause than ...one hand clapping?
Dylan: Yeah, it's a lot more comfortable.
Herman: Isn't it nicer when the album is in the top ten than hanging around at forty-five or something?
Dylan: Well, it is and it isn't. Like Slow Train was a big album. Saved didn't have those kind of numbers but to me it was just as big an album.
Herman: So it really matters little to you, the acceptance or the rejection on the part of the record buyers?
Dylan: No, it doesn't. I'm fortunate that I'm in the position to release an album like Saved with a major record company, so it would be available to people who would like to buy it.
Herman: Was there a time in your life in the past, when you'd be on the phone: "hey, how did the album do? Did it go from 8 to 4?" Was there a time when you really got off on that kind of stuff?
Dylan: Well, you always wanna know what's happening with your record, so the first few weeks, yeah, you'll call up and find out if it's selling or if it's not selling. Sure.
Herman: Has the music business changed in the 15-20 years or so that you have been making records?
Dylan: Very much so.
Herman: ???? winds of pain shot through you!
Dylan: Yeah. Now this last record that we just did was a comfortable record for me to make, because of ... you know Chuck? Chuck Plotkin? Well, we worked together on it. OK, up until then ... Well, he made the record the way I want to make a record. He understood that. He wanted to make the record in the same way. But the record business is changed because ... see when I was in ... In the sixties *everybody* made records the way I did. No matter who you were, Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Byrds ...
Herman: Maybe we should just explain to people that that means all the people who were on the record were in the studio, in the same room at the same time, playing at the same time ...
Dylan: ... and they made the record. You were a group, you were somebody, before you went in and made the record. You were somebody.
Herman: Earned the privilege of making a record?
Dylan: Yeah, yeah, you paid enough dues to make a record. Now, people do not pay no dues no more, They expect to make a record right away without anybody even hearing them and then you'll find a producer, they have so many producers now, they didn't have so many producers back then, the producer was whet they called the A&R man. Now you have all these producers who are in themselves stars. And it's *their* record. I don't think of myself as being told what to do all the time.
Herman: Are you on one side of the gun control issue or another? Do you think this business of all the guns we have in America ... I notice here in London, the policemen don't even have guns on their hips, they don't carry weapons.
Dylan: But they have a much lower crime rate over here too. Well, you can't change the States in that kind of way. It's too many people. It didn't get off on the right start ... You know the United States is like gun crazy, always has been gun crazy. White man used to shoot the Indians with guns. Guns have been a great part of America's past. So, there's nothing you can do about it. The gun is just something which America has got, lives with. I don't think gun control is making any difference at all. Just make it harder for people who need to be protected.
Herman: And you quoted him in a Playboy interview a few years ago, ... You said Henry Miller said that the role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusion.
Dylan: Yeah.
Herman: Is that what you try to do with your work?
Dylan: No. I don't consciously try to inoculate anybody. I just have to hope there's some kind of way this music that I've always played is a healing kind of music. I mean if it isn't I don't wanna do it. Because there's enough stuff, so-called music, out there, which is sick music. It's just sick. It's made by sick people and it's played to sick people to further a whole world of sickness. Now, that's not only true of music, this is true in film industry, it's true in the magazine industry. You know it caters to people's sickness. There's a lot of that. And if I can do something that is telling people or ... hoping anyway that .. whatever their sickness is, and we're all sick, whatever it is, you can be healed and well and set straight. Well if I can't do that, I'd as soon be on a boat, you know I'd as soon be off hiking through the woods.
Herman: There's a song on Shot Of Love, Every Grain Of Sand, which is about as a healing song as I ever heard from you. It's a beautiful, beautiful song.
Dylan: Oh, yeah, I wrote that last summer.
Herman: Is that what you mean by hopefully healing music?
Dylan: I would hope so.
Herman: Well, Bob, is there anything you would like to tell the vast radio audience out there?
Dylan: I think they know just about anything that I've got to tell them.
Conducted at the White House Hotel
in London, England on July 2, 1981.
Broadcast
by WNEW-FM Radio, New York, July 27 1981.
Released
on the promotional album DYLAN LONDON INTERVIEW JULY 1981,
Columbia
AS 1259, September 1981.
Source: Tape.
Note: Since I did not have access to any printed transcription the above is bound to contain errors and mistakes. There are also several sequences, marked ???? that I just cannot make out from my tape. Suggestions for these sequences and corrections are most welcome.
download this file here or back to list
15
August, 1981 New Musical Express pp29-31
"The
diamond voice within"
Found on: rec.music.dylan
In a rare interview during his 1981 European tour, Bob Dylan talks about his music and religion to Neil Spencer.
Harmonicas play the skeleton keys of the rain that drapes Munich in grey drizzle for Bob Dylan's two day stay in the city.
Our Mercedes taxi splashes its way through sodden streets toward the muzzled grey modernist shapes of the Olympic complex built to house the '74 games and where tonight's show will be staged, in the splendid indoor sports arena, to an audience of several thousand.
Munich is the eleventh stop on a European tour that will take in eight countries and 23 shows, around a third of them in Britain. Being in the business of a ceaseless quest for a Bob Dylan interview, (one of several score, if not hundred), I get to see shows in Paris, London, and Munich where the quest will, to an extent, be realized; a brief backstage rencontre being promised by Dylan's management.
This was Dylan's sixth or seventh visit to Europe in his 20 year career, and this time round it was different. A lot has changed since Dylan last trod Albion's shores, not least the social and cultural fabric of Britain itself.
The expected media fanfare came, but it was muted in comparison to that afforded the '78 trip, when Dylan was seen as the consensus of the ongoing 'rock' tradition handed down from the 60s; still the enigmatic and unrepentant rebel carrying the standards of alienation, protest and emotional and spiritual exploration forward into the future.
This time it was Bruce Springsteen's turn to be feted as a visiting American superstar supreme, likewise set at the heart of a rock tradition whose myths are, for a growing number of young Europeans, now despoiled, overtaken by everyday reality or the new myths of punk and post-punk.
The national press, radio and tv didn't seem to know quite how to respond to the new, Christian Bob Dylan; and for them it was a case of better the cozy fantasy scenarios of last-chance power drives down endless american highways than the uncomfortable moral imperatives of Dylan's new kingdom.
Dylan's refusal to bow to the myths of rock - he'd always kept an ambiguous, open relation with 'rock' anyway, what with his folk roots, the frequent diversions into country, blues and anything else that took his fancy - and his insistence on his personal salvation had cost him heavy with critics and fans.
To some of them, any type of born-again Christianity smacked of U.S. president Ronald Reagan's 'moral majority', even though Dylan's new songs have consistently spelt out an anti-establishment stance, the protest era rekindled if anything. There again, any spiritual values smack of humbug to a sometimes insensitised youth culture, more caught up with the materialist and consumer values it professes to despise than perhaps it realizes or cares to admit.
Christian or not, in the gritty business of attracting paying customers, there are few artists able to command the allegiance that Dylan still does, and ugly rumors of unsold tickets finally gave way to near-capacity audiences. Around 120,000 saw the British shows.
As at Earl's Court a hard look at the Munich crowd reveals plenty of original Dylan fans, many contemporaries now advancing into affluent middle age. Many more, no doubt, couldn't meet the commitment of tickets, transport and baby-sitters. The younger fans that Dylan has always attracted seem more prominent at the Continental shows, where rock tradition and contemporary protest - the German peace and eco movements and their equivalents in France, Benelux and Scandinavia - have not diverged the way they have in little ol' post-industrial UK.
It hasn't all been "watching the scenery go past the windows" though, as Dylan describes the touring process. A Danish daily paper ran a front page story attacking Dylan, accusing him of paranoia and claiming he kept a veritable squad of Israeli bodyguards on hand to assuage his fear of assassination. Dylan was so incensed by the story he called an impromptu press conference in north Germany where he denied that John Lennon's slaying had provoked any panic in him.
"I might as easily be run over by a truck or something," went the tone of his reply. I never did see more than a couple of security chaps, backstage or front.
Otherwise, Dylan's European jaunt can be safely judged a success. It didn't even rain at the sometimes optimistically staged open-air shows - aides speak of the way it's, ahem, miraculously stopped raining an hour or so before show-time, recalling some of the talk I'd heard around Marley tours ("he had a voice that could really touch you," Dylan says to me later when he crops up in conversation. The two never actually met however.)
Dylan's strategy on this tour has been to present a set that straddles almost his entire career, harking back to his coffee-house days on numbers like 'Barbara Allen', 'Girl from the North Country', featuring a healthy slug of 60s hits - 'Like a Rolling Stone', 'Tambourine Man', 'It's all over now Baby Blue' - and reserving pride of place for his post-conversion songs, to which he seems to bring an extra vocal commitment.
His singing this time round was quite astonishing, clearly superior to all his many past styles, from all of which he borrows for the present. With the horn section of 78 now thankfully nudged out - the present group is more supple and understated - the harmonica has found new favour. Indeed, the acoustic and harp spots were among the most affecting of the show. You could almost hear the audience gasp unbelieving joy every time he picked up his acoustic guitar, feel them tingle whenever Bob whipped a mouth-harp from a pocket and piped that crazy, angular, plaintive harmonica music of his round the hall.
At a time when conventional rock performance is increasingly derided by many musicians and fans, to Dylan it seems that the performance is the crucible of his art, an all important testing point.
"It's so immediate it changes the whole concept of art to me," he tells me later.
Hearing him draw from that awesome vault of material he's stockpiled over the last two score years, it was impossible not to marvel at the sheer volume and quality of his writing. Never did 'Masters of War' sound more apt than in the precipitous war-mongering climate of the present. Other songs - 'Like a Rolling Stone' being the obvious one - seemed likewise to acquire a new resonance in the light of Dylan's Christian beliefs.
Dylan's new material continues to reflect his Christianity, though the songs of the new lp, 'Shot of Love' are less directly devotional in their approach, taking the Christian code as the bedrock of his observations rather than merely preaching, as 'Saved' too often did. Dylan's enthusiasm for his new record is only intermittently contagious, but certainly the album boasts some of his finest work in years, particularly the touching melancholic 'Grain of Sand' where Dylan's retrospection over his life leads him to state "no inclination to look back on any mistake/ as I hold this chain of events that I must break".
The new songs - which may or may not be called 'Angelina' (a title already fabled among fans) and 'Caribbean Wind' - he mentioned in my interview sound exciting, promising a fusion of his 60s sound of the 'Blonde on Blonde' era and his 80s sensibilities. One aide spoke of the new songs "being as prophetic in their way as the old ones... maybe their real time will be someway ahead in the future."
Whatever one may feel about Dylan's conversion - and the ridicule and depth of scorn to which he has been subjected for his beliefs is unfair - it's obvious that we will need some kind of spiritual dimension to our credo if we really are to build the New Jerusalem among the dark, satanic mills.
For all that, I was a little taken aback when the man took exception to having a 'Christian label' attached to him when he has so virulently informed everyone of his religious beliefs. People don't constantly refer to Pete Townshend as a Meher Baba follower because he's always kept his beliefs in context. End of sermon.
In the empty lot backstage in the athlete's changing area, Bert, a Dutch Dylanologist from Oor magazine, and I are lined up for our brief audience with Dylan.
"Oh God," comes the unmistakable voice through the open door of the dressing room as an aide reminds him of our impending presence and we catch a glimpse of Dylan pulling on a sock.
A minute later and we're shaking hands with the maestro, who seems as nervous as we are, with the air of a man slowly exhaling the potent adrenaline charge of two hours on-stage at the hub of 7,000 people's attention.
His stage threads - black trousers, the satin bomber jacket with its curious golden design - lie limply across a chair, Dylan now wearing a sloppy white sweatshirt, jeans and training shoes. He looks beefier and stronger than all those "wiry little cat" descriptions of history suggest, more sporty; the scene seems almost collegiate. The eyes are large, washed out electric blue, and riveting, still topped by the great burst of locks.
We chat about the show, which Dylan didn't like - "you couldn't hear anything and the audience was kinda strange, you should have been at last night's show" - and about press reaction to the show. Dylan seems to feel the papers gave him a hard time whatever he does with the old songs: "you just can't win".
I remark that "Maggie's Farm" is a popular song in Britain these days, and Dylan and the bass man, who's also present, exchange blank looks before the bassie tumbles "Maggie Thatcher" and they break into laughter, me wondering about the slow association after a week playing down on the farm itself.
He'd heard about The Specials' version but wasn't familiar with it. He mumbles something about "punk waves and new waves" as he packs his stuff, before offering "I like George's song."
"George?"
"Boy, George's song is great."
Oh, George Harrison. (It transpires the two spent some time together on Dylan's stay, inspiring him to play 'Here Comes the Sun' at one Earl's Court gig. One wonders whether they discussed Monty Python's "Life of Brian" which Harrison financed.) I mumble something about whether he thinks the old songs seem to get new meaning in the light of changing times and his new beliefs, and Dylan fixes me with a piercing look.
"I'm different," he says. "The songs are the same."
"The songs don't mean that much to me actually," he continues. "I wrote them and I sing them..."
There's nothing from 'Desire' or 'Street Legal' though.
"We could do a completely different set with completely different songs. they're all old songs, even the ones from 'Slow Train' are old now."
"I tell you though, I feel very strongly about this show. I feel it has something to offer. No one else does this show, not Bruce Springsteen or anyone."
Was he surprised at the amount of hostility the conversion to Christianity had brought?
"Not surprised at all. I'm just surprised to hear applause every time I play. I appreciate that. You can feel everything that comes off an audience... little individual things that are going on. It's a very instant thing."
Outside the tour bus is ticking over and filling up with musicians and road crew, and one of the gospel quartet is doing a soft shoe shuffle in the rain. Tomorrow, comes the word, is a proper interview, at the hotel. Maybe.
I went to see the gypsy, staying in a big hotel in the centre of the town, where the occasional appearance of a denim clad roadie provides colorful contrast to the assembled grey ranks of German businessmen.
Pre-match nerves vanish as I trot out onto the turf of Dylan's fourth floor suite. To one side, a tv flickers without sound. Dylan wanders in wearing a black leather jacket and white jeans, and we start committing words to tape. He talks slowly, his speaking voice deeper than you'd expect from his singing, and not at all like sand and glue. The replies come carefully considered and usually as evasive and non-committal as we've come to expect over the years.
NS: Someone told me you'd been working with Smokey Robinson. is that right?
BD: No... we were doing a session, along with Ringo and Willy, as he was rehearsing across the street with his new band, a new show. I'd seen him on the street going in so we went out on a break and said hello.
NS: You
didn't work with him?
BD:
No.
NS: Are
you pleased with the new album?
BD:
The last time I heard it I was. I haven't heard it since I left
for Chicago. Which was at the beginning of June. I was satisfied
enough to leave town.
NS: The
sound is a lot rawer. A much looser sound.
BD:
Well, I had more control over this record... That's the type of
record I like to make. I just haven't been able to make them.
NS: Why's
that?
BD:
Well, usually, I've been working quickly in the studio, and for
one reason or another I just get locked into whoever's producing,
their sound, and I just wanna get it over with.
NS: Who
produced this one?
BD:
Chuck (Plotkin) and myself produced it. Bumps Blackwell did 'Shot
of Love' with me, which he helped with a great deal. You remember
him?
NS: No,
who's that?
BD:
Bumps did all the early Little Richard records and Don and Dewey
records; he handled all the specialty records.
NS: That's
the rockiest track, right? The rest is bluesy, or some of it has
a reggae lilt. Do you still like reggae?
BD:
There's not much difference between country and reggae when you
take away the bass and the drums; they're very similar.
NS: You've
always seemed to have one foot in rock'n'roll, Little Richard and
all that, and the other in blues, folk, country, traditions...
BD:
Well, I love it all, whatever might be popular at the moment.
NS: Do
you still do everything in a couple of takes?
BD:
On this album we did.
NS: I'd
heard you like to work in a very spontaneous way.
BD:
With this new band we can usually work very quickly with a new
tune.
NS: Is
it nearer your 'mercurial sound' with this band?
BD:
Yeah... it's a little hard to produce that on stage of course.
The only time we were able to do that was with The Band on those
Bob Dylan and The Band tours in the 60s. Because the sound back
then was so raw and primitive the sound systems wouldn't give us
anything else. And when The Beatles played, you could never hear
The Beatles. Even The Stones' people were screaming and there
wasn't much sound. You could never hear what you were doing.
NS: I
have to ask you about the Lenny Bruce song ('Lenny Bruce is Dead').
You said it was very spontaneous.
BD:
That was a really quick song for me to write. I wrote that in
about five minutes... I didn't even know why I was writing it, it
just naturally came out. I wasn't, you know, meditating on Lenny
Bruce before I wrote it.
NS: It's
a very compassionate song.
BD:
It is.
NS: It's
in the tradition of your songs about folk heroes like 'Hurricane',
'George Jackson'...
BD:
I thought 'Joey' was a good song. I know no one said much about
it, I thought it was one of those songs that came off and you
didn't hear that much about it.
NS:
Looking at the other songs on the album there are a lot of
criticisms of people in high places. Would you say that's true?
BD:
(Laughs) Yeah, that's always true I guess... I don't really know,
y'know. I'm not sure how it hangs together as a concept because
there were some real long songs on this album that we recorded, a
couple of really long songs, like there was one we did - do you
remember 'Visions of Johanna'?
NS: Sure.
BD:
Well, there was one like that. I'd never done anything like it
before. It's got the same kind of thing to it. It seems to be
very sensitive and gentle on one level, then on another level the
lyrics aren't sensitive and gentle at all. We left that off the
album.
We left another thing off the album which is quite different to anything I wrote, that I think in just a musical kind of way you'd like to hear. And in a lyric-content way it's interesting. The way the story line changes from third person to first person and that person becomes you, then these people are there and they're not there. And then the time goes way back and then it's brought up to the present. And I thought it was really effective, but that again is a long song and when it came to putting the songs on the album we had to cut some, so we cut those. Now what we have left is an album which seems to make its kind of general statement, but it's too soon to say what that general statement is.
NS:
There's a reference to "the politics of sin" on 'Dead
Man'.
BD:
Yeah, well that's what sin is, politics. It just came to me when
I was writing that's the way it is... the diplomacy of sin. The
way they take sin, and put it in front of people... the way that
they say this is good and that's bad, you can do this and you can't
do that, the way sin is taken and split up and categorized and
put on different levels so it becomes more of a structure of sin,
or, "these sins are big ones, these are little ones, these
can hurt this person, these can hurt you, this is bad for this
reason, and that is bad for another reason." the politics of
sin; that's what I think of it.
NS: Do
you still feel politics is part of the illusion?
BD:
I've never really been into politics, mostly I guess because of
the world of politics. The people who are into politics as a
profession, you know, it's... the art of politics hasn't changed
much over the years. Were there politics in Roman times? And are
there politics in communist countries? I'm sure there are.
NS: You
feel what the world is facing is more of a spiritual crisis?
BD:
Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. People don't know who the enemy
is. They think the enemy is something they can see, and the
reality of the enemy is a spiritual being they can't see, and it
influences all they can see and they don't go to the top, the end
line of the real enemy - like the enemy who's controlling who you
think who's your enemy.
NS: Who's
that?
BD:
What, who you think your enemy is?
NS: Yes.
BD:
You would think the enemy is someone you could strike at and that
would solve the problem, but the real enemy is the devil. That's
the real enemy, but he tends to shade himself and hide himself
and put it into people's minds that he's really not there and he's
really not so bad, and that he's got a lot of good things to
offer too. So there's this conflict going, to blind the minds of
men.
NS: A
conflict in all of us?
BD:
Yeah, he puts the conflict there, without him there'd be no
conflict.
NS:
Maybe that struggle is necessary?
BD:
Well, that's a whole other subject... yes, I've heard that said
too.
NS: When
you said "strengthen the things that remain" (from 'When
You Gonna Wake Up') what were you thinking of?
BD:
Well, the things that remain would be the basic qualities that
don't change, the values that do still exist. It says in the
bible, "resist not evil, but overcome evil with good".
And the values that can overcome evil are the ones to strengthen.
NS:
People feel that fighting oppression is more important than
spiritual interests.
BD:
That's wrong. The struggle against oppression and injustice is
always going to be there, but the devil himself is the one who
creates it. You can come to know yourself, but you need help in
doing it.
The only one who can overcome all that is the great creator himself. If you can get his help you can overcome it. To do that you must know something about the nature of the creator. What Jesus does for an ignorant man like myself is to make the qualities and characteristics of God more believable to me, cos I can't beat the devil. Only God can. He already has. Satan's working everywhere. You're faced with him constantly. If you can't see him he's inside you making you feel a certain way. He's feeding you envy and jealousy, he's feeding you oppression, hatred...
NS: Do
you feel the only way to know the creator is through Christ?
BD:
I feel the only way... let me see. Of course you can look on the
desert and wake up to the sun and the sand and the beauty of the
stars and know there is a higher being, and worship that creator.
But being thrown into the cities you're faced more with man than with God. We're dealing here with man, y'know, and in order to know where man's at you have to know what God would do if he was man. I'm trying to explain to you in intellectual mental terms, when it actually is more of a spiritual understanding than something which is open to debate.
NS: You
can't teach people things they don't experience for themselves...
BD:
Most people think that if God became a man he would go up on a
mountain and raise his sword and show his anger and his wrath or
his love and compassion in one blow. And that's what people
expected the Messiah to be - someone with similar characteristics,
someone to set things straight, and here comes a Messiah who
doesn't measure up to those characteristics and causes a lot of
problems.
NS:
Someone who put the responsibility back on us?
BD:
Right.
NS: From
your songs like 'Dead Man' and 'When He Returns' it's obvious you
believe the second coming is likely in our lifetimes.
BD:
Possibly. Possibly at any moment. It could be in our lifetimes.
It could be a long time. This earth supposedly has a certain
number of years which I think is 7,000 years, 7,000 or 6,000.
We're in the last cycle of it now. Going back to the first century there's like 3000 years before that and 4000 after it, one of the two, the last thousand would be the millennium years.
I think that everything that's happened is like a preview of what's going to happen.
NS: How
strict is your interpretation of Christianity? The original
Christians seems to have a different faith and belief that got
lost.
BD:
I'm not that much of a historian about Christianity. I know it's
been changed over the years but I go strictly according to the
gospels.
NS: Have
you seen the gnostic gospels?
BD:
Some place I have. I don't recall too much about them but I've
seen them.
NS: Are
you going to make any more movies?
BD:
If we can get a story outline we will, I'd like to.
NS:
Renaldo and Clara was very symbolist, and your songs on 'Street
Legal' were full of Tarot imagery. Have those interests left you
now?
BD:
Those particular interests have, yes.
NS: Do
you think that 'occult' interests like the Tarot are misleading?
BD:
I don't know. I didn't get into the Tarot cards all that deeply.
I do think they're misleading for people though. You're fixed on
something which keeps a hold on you. If you can't or don't
understand why you're feeling this way at that moment, with those
cards you come up with a comfortable feeling that doesn't have
any necessary value.
NS: You
were also interested in Judaism at one point. You visited Israel
and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Do you feel that your
interests at that time are compatible with your present beliefs?
BD:
There's really no difference between any of it in my mind. Some
people say they're Jews and they never go to a synagogue or
anything. I know some gangsters who say they're Jews. I don't
know what that's got to do with anything. Judaism is really the
laws of Moses. If you follow the laws of Moses you're
automatically a Jew I would think.
NS: You've
always had a strong religious theme in your songs even before you
became a Christian.
BD:
(Angrily) I don't really want to walk around with a sign on me
saying 'Christian'.
NS: It
might appear that way to a lot of people...
BD:
Yeah, but a lot of people want to hang a sign on you for whatever.
It's like Mick Jagger said, 'they wanna hang a sign on you'.
NS: In a
Playboy interview three years ago you said you agreed with Henry
Miller's saying that "the purpose of the artist is to
inoculate the world with disillusionment". Do you still
agree with that?
BD:
(Laughs) That's pretty good for Henry Miller... maybe that would
be good for what he wanted to do. Maybe that's the purpose of his
art.
NS: Not yours?
BD: Well, what I do is more of an immediate thing; to stand up on stage and sing - you get it back immediately. It's not like writing a book or even making a record. And with a movie - it's so difficult to get anything back working on a movie, you never know what you're doing and the results never come in until usually years afterwards. What I do is so immediate it changes the nature, the concept, of art to me. I don't know what it is. It's too immediate. It's like the man who made that painting there (points to painting on wall of hotel room) has no idea we're sitting here now looking at it or not looking at it or anything... performing is more like a stage play.
NS: You
haven't painted your masterpiece yet then?
BD:
No. I don't know if I ever will, I've given up thinking about it
though.
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Found on Bill Parr's "Slow Train Coming" Site Link
It's from Shirley Eder's column in The Detroit Free Press, Sunday March 13, 1983:
DYLAN GOES ON RECORD ON THE SUBJECT OF RELIGION
Bob Dylan is going into a recording studio late this month or early April to do a new album for Columbia records. When asked by someone at the record company if the new music was going to be another "Born Again" Christian album, and if he were still Christian, Dylan for the very first time (in spite of having been asked so often) answered the latter part of the question. He said, "What are you talking about? What makes you think that? Whoever said I was Christian? Did you see the movie 'Gandhi?' Well, like Gandhi, I'm Christian, I'm Jewish, I'm Moslem, I'm a Hindu. I am a humanist!"
P.S. Don't look for music and lyrics with religious overtones in Dylan's next album. His religious-theme records didn't sell too well, and he's going back to the old Dylan kind of music: some folk pop, a little protest and a few love songs.
Bill Parr Notes:
A few notes on this (my personal opinion, just as this column quoted above is Shirley Eder's personal opinion):
0) I have downloaded the entire column, and the above is all the material which relates to Dylan.
1) The alleged "quote" from Dylan is based on a report that "someone at the record company" asked Dylan a question, to which this was his response.
2) The "someone" is never named. Did they take notes? Was it someone with an ax to grind? Is this their paraphrase, as told to someone else and then repeated to Shirley Eder? We are not told.
3) I do note that the prediction made by Shirley Eder in the P.S. re no religious overtones is certainly a big miss when it comes to Infidels, the album recorded in April and May of 1983. Songs like: Jokerman, Death is Not the End (recorded at those sessions), Man of Peace, License to Kill, Sweetheart Like You, I and I, Tell Me, Lord Protect My Child -- no religious overtones? Hardly an accurate prediction.
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The ambiguous relationship between
Dylan's songs, statements, and rumors of lifestyle provide grist
for this concocted story by a London tabloid paper.
Found
on Elston Gunn's "Corpus Christi Tribune" site
link .
SUPERSTAR folk singer Bob Dylan is heading for London
next month - and a reunion with an exotic actress who
claims she was once his sex-slave. Flamboyant Gypsy Fire has told
how she danced half-naked for religious-freak Dylan, shared kinky
sex sessions - and massaged his feet because she thought he was
Christ. "He might be into religion but he spends more time
talking about sex than God," said buxom Gypsy, 40, a well-known
Australian actress. She revealed how she became obsessed with
Dylan, 45, in the States and how he finally invited her on stage
during a concert in Sydney.
"But his minders brutally dragged me
away by my breasts," she said. "Later, at his hotel, I
rushed up and complained that I'd been bruised. He asked to see
my breasts. "In a couple of days I was staying in a room
next to his. I became his sex-slave. It was really weird. In one
erotic scene I danced for him nearly naked." Gypsy, added:
"I went without sex for five weeks so I'd be spiritually and
physically prepared for our encounte.
Kinky
"Dylan turned out to be a wonderful
lover. He was very kinky. I did everything he wanted, massaging
his feet because I thought he was Jesus Christ himself."
Gypsy added that she and Dylan are constantly in touch on the
phone and hope to meet in London. But the multi-millionaire
superstar, who comes to Britain next month to make a £14 million
film about a rock singer wouldn't talk about Gypsy. In Denver,
Colorado, where he is on tour, his spokesman Guy McKane
said: "We have nothing to say about this dame."
Notes
from Karl Eric-Anderson's Expecting Rain site
at359@yfn.ysu.edu (David Todd) - from The Telegraph:
Sexsational gossipmonger (no smoke without Gypsy? See "My Sexy Nights As A Slave to Bob Dylan," The People, UK, 27 July 1986).
Date:
Tue, 3 Oct 1995 16:06:21 +1000
From:
Daniel Luth (dluth@ARIEL.UCS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU)
Subject:
GYPSY FIRE..."I WAS DYLAN'S SEX SLAVE!"
Whilst
browsing through a NSW law journal the other day (as you do), I
came
across
a bizarre court case from 1987 involving one 'Gypsy Fire'. Most
of
it's full of legal mumbo jumbo, but the beginning sounds
interesting,
and
involves our favourite 'rock guru'.
GYPSY FIRE v TRUTH NEWSPAPERS P/L
"On
8 August 1986, the plaintiff brought proceedings in the name of
"Gypsy
Fire" (her real name seems to be Emelia Caruana) claiming
damages
from
the defendent for the publication by it of an article in the
"Weekend
Truth" newspaper in July of that year. The article is
entitled:
"AUSSIE ACTRESS TELLS...I WAS DYLAN'S SEX SLAVE!...GYPSY
FIRE...starved herself of sex."
The
contents of the article itself are not of such enduring value
that I
need
to describe them here. Amongst the imputations pleaded by the
plaintiff
is that she engaged in obscene and indecent behavior (with
'rock
guru' Bob Dylan) and another that she engaged in blasphemous
conduct
(massaging his feet because she thought that he was Jesus Christ).
On
the previous day (August 7), the plaintiff had cause to be issued
by
the
Local Court summonses against the defendant and its publisher
alleging
that, by the publication of that article, they had committed the
offenses
of obscene libel, blasphemous libel and criminal defamation"....
NSWLR, 1987 Vol 9.
The rest
of the case argues about defamation issues and the like and
Dylan's
name is not mentioned again. A few questions come to mind:
1/
Does anyone have any information on the above Gypsy Fire?
2/
Is she the one referred to in 'Went to see the gypsy? ;)
3/
Does anyone have the above mentioned article, or remember reading
it?
Daniel
> 1/ Does anyone have any information on the above Gypsy Fire?
Andrew
Muir : She has appeared in many tabloid papers around the world
telling her various
Dylan
tales
> 2/ Is she the one referred to in 'Went to see the gypsy? ;)
Andrew Muir : No
> 3/ Does anyone have the above mentioned article, or remember reading it?
Andrew
Muir : Yes. It was reprinted in Homer, the slut....many versions
of it (the article)
are around - Mark Carter probably has
a whole file of them.
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Sunday Times, July 1, 1984
Week
In Focus, p 15
Found On: rec.music.dylan
DYLAN 'Jesus, who's got time to keep up with the times?'
This week Bob Dylan comes to Britain. The folksinger-cum-folk hero of the 1960s has not always had a good reception here. In 1965 purists attacked him for "going electric". In 1981 his new-found evangelism left many of his fans cold. What should they expect this time? Last week Mick Brown had an exclusive interview.
Bob Dylan tugged at a cigarette, stroked the beginnings of an untidy beard and gazed pensively at the stream of traffic passing down the Madrid street. "What you gotta understand," he said at length, "is that I do something because I feel like doing it. If people can relate to it, that's great; if they can't, that's fine too. But I don't think I'm gonna be really understood until maybe 100 years from now. What I've done, what I'm doing, nobody else does or has done."
The messianic tone grew more intense. "When I'm dead and gone maybe people will realize that, and then figure it out. I don't think anything I've done has been evenly mildly hinted at. There's all these interpreters around, but they're not interpreting anything except their own ideas. Nobody's come close."
But a lot of people, it seems, still want to. Bob Dylan may no longer sell records in the consistently enormous quantities he once did - a fact to which he will allow a tinge of regret - but his capacity to hold his audience in thrall seems undiminished.
By the time Bob Dylan arrives in Britain this week for performances at St. James's Park, Newcastle, on Tuesday and Wembley Stadium on Saturday, he will already have performed to almost half a million people throughout Europe - half a million people singing the chorus of Blowing In The Wind, an esperanto that is as much a testament to Dylan's abiding influence and charisma as the insatiable interest of the world's press in his activities.
This interest is equaled only by Dylan's determination to keep his own counsel whenever possible. As Bill Graham, the tour's garrulous American promoter and Dylan's closest adviser, keeps reminding you, Bob "is not your everyday folksinger."
All the German magazine Stern had wanted to do was touch base for five minutes in return for a front cover. Dylan declined. The press conference that he had been persuaded to hold in Verona, attended by 150 excitable European journalists, had been a fiasco: photographers barred, and the first question from the floor - "What are your religious views nowadays?" - met by Dylan irritably brushing the table in front of him, as if to sweep aside that and all other questions to follow.
"I mean, nobody cares what Billy Joel's religious views are, right?" he tells me with a wry smile. "what does it matter to people what Bob Dylan is? But it seems to, right? I'd honestly like to know why it's important to them."
One expects many things of Bob Dylan, but such playful ingenuousness is not one of them.
Dylan protects himself well, not with bodyguards but with a smokescreen of privacy and elusiveness of the sort that encourages speculation and myth. Meeting him involves penetrating a frustrating maze of "perhapses" and "maybes", of cautions and briefings - suggestive of dealing with fine porcelain - culminating in a telephone call summoning you to an anonymous cafeteria filled with Spanish families who give not a second glance to the figure in a hawaiian shirt and straw hat who at last comes ambling through the door.
He is surprisingly genial, youthful for his 43 years, lean, interested and alert, who treat the business of being Bob Dylan with an engagingly aw-shucks kind of bemusement.
It was in striking contrast to the apparition Dylan had presented the previous night, on stage in front of 25,000 people in a Madrid football stadium, his black smock coat, high boots and hawkish profile suggesting some avenging backwoods preacher.
The emphasis in his performance has shifted from the overtly evangelical songs heard in Dylan's last visit to Britain three years ago. Now it spans every phase of his 21-year career. The themes of social protest, personal love and religious faith have never been more of a piece. Dylan remains what he has always been, an uncompromising moralist. And to hear songs such as "Masters Of War", "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall" (about nuclear war), and "Maggie's Farm" (about rebellious labour) invested with fresh nuances of meaning, not to say vitriol, is to realize that, while the sentiments may have become unfashionable in popular music, they are no less pertinent. Nobody else is writing songs like Bob Dylan. Nobody ever did.
"For me, none of the songs I've written has really dated," he says. "They capture something I've never been able to improve on, whatever their statement is. A song like "Maggie's Farm" - I could feel like that just the other day, and I could feel the same tomorrow. People say they're 'nostalgia', but I don't know what that means really. A Tale of Two Cities was written 100 years ago; is that nostalgia? This term 'nostalgia', it's just another way people have of dealing with you and putting you some place they think they understand. It's just another label."
Labels exercise Bob Dylan greatly. People have been trying to put them on him since he started, he says, "and not one of them has ever made any sense."
The furor about his religious beliefs puzzled him most of all, "like I was running for pope or something." When the word first spread that he had eschewed Judaism and embraced Christianity, and he toured America in 1979 singing overtly religious songs, the most hostile reception came not from rock audiences but when he played university campuses, "and the so-called intellectual students showed their true monstrous selves."
"Born-again Christians" is just another label, he says. He had attended bible school in California for three months, and the book was never far from his side, but the idea that faith was a matter of passing through one swing door and back out another struck him as ridiculous. "I live by a strict disciplinary code, you know, but I don't know how moral that is or even where it comes from really. These things just become part of your skin after a while; you get to know what line not to step over - usually because you stepped over it before and were lucky to get back."
Was he an ascetic? Dylan lit another cigarette and asked what the word meant. "I don't think so. I still have desires, you know, that lead me around once in a while. I don't do things in excess, but everybody goes through those times. They either kill you, or make you a better person."
By this time in the conversation it did not seem awkward to ask: did he believe in evil?
"Sure I believe in it. I believe that ever since Adam and Eve got thrown out of the garden that the whole nature of the planet has been heading in one direction - towards apocalypse. It's all there in the Book of Revelations, but it's difficult talking about these things to most people because most people don't know what you're talking about, or don't want to listen."
"What it comes down to is that there's a lot of different gods in the world against the god - that's what it's about. There's a lot of different gods that people are subjects of. There's the god of mammon. Corporations are gods. Governments? No, governments don't have much to do with it anymore, I don't think. Politics is a hoax. The politicians don't have any real power. They feed you all this stuff in the newspapers about what's going on, but that's not what's really going on."
"But then again, I don't think that makes me a pessimistic person. I'm a realist. Or maybe a surrealist. But you can't beat your head against the wall forever."
He had never, he said, been a utopian: that was always a foreign term to him, something to do with moving to the country, living communally, and growing rice and beans. "I mean, I wanted to grow my own rice and beans - still do - but I never felt part of that movement."
But he could still look back on the 1960s with something approaching affection. "I mean, the Kennedy's were great-looking people, man, they had style," he smiles. "America is not like that anymore. But what happened, happened so fast that people are still trying to figure it out. The tv media wasn't so big then. It's like the only thing people knew was what they knew; then suddenly people were being told what to think, how to behave, there's too much information."
"It just got suffocated. Like Woodstock - that wasn't about anything. It was just a whole new market for tie-dyed t-shirts. It was about clothes. All those people are in computers now."
This was beyond him. He had never been good with numbers, and had no desire to stare at a screen. "I don't feel obliged to keep up with the times. I'm not going to be here that long anyway. So I keep up with these times, then I gotta keep up with the 90s. Jesus, who's got time to keep up with the times?"
It is at moments such as this that Dylan - once, misleadingly perhaps, characterized as a radical - reveals himself as much of a traditionalist; an adherent of biblical truths; a firm believer in the family and the institution of marriage - despite his own divorce from his wife, Sara; a man disenchanted with many of the totems and values of modern life, mass communications, the vulgarity of popular culture, the "sameness" of everything. Personally he had been reading Cicero, Machiavelli and John Stuart Mill. Contemporary literature? "Oh yeah, I read a detective story, but I can't remember what it was called."
"At least in the 1960s it seemed there was room to be different. For me, my particular scene, I came along at just the right time, and I understood the times I was in. If I was starting out right now I don't know where I'd get the inspiration from, because you need to breathe the right air to make the creative process work. I don't worry about it so much for me; I've done it; I can't complain. But the people coming up, the artists and writers, what are they gonna do, because these are the people who change the world."
Nowadays, he admits, he finds writing harder than ever. A song like "Masters of War" he would dispatch in 15 minutes, and move onto the next one without a second thought. "If I wrote a song like that now I wouldn't feel I'd have to write another one for two weeks. There's still things I want to write about, but the process is harder. The old records I used to make, by the time they came out I wouldn't even want them released because I was already so far beyond them."
Much of his time nowadays is spent traveling. He was in Jerusalem last autumn for his son Jesse's bar mitzvah - "his grandmother's idea", he smiles. Israel interests him from "a biblical point of view", but he had never felt that atavistic Jewish sense of homecoming. In fact he lives principally on his farm in Minnesota, not far from the town of Hibbing where he spent his adolescence. Then there is the domed house in Malibu, California, originally built to accommodate his five children - good schools nearby, he says - but which he has seldom used since his divorce, and a 63 ft sailing boat with which he cruises the Caribbean "when I can't think of anything else to do."
He had never contemplated retirement: the need to make money was not a factor - he is a wealthy man - but the impulse to continue writing was. "There's never really been any glory in it for me," he says. "Being seen in the places and having everybody put their arms around you, I never cared about any of that. I don't care what people think. For me, the fulfillment was always in just doing it. That's all that really matters."
As the conversation had progressed, more and more people had realized who the man in the straw hat was. A steady stream had made their way to his table, scraps of paper in hand. Dylan had signed them all, with a surprisingly careful deliberation - almost as if he was practicing - but his discomfort at being on view was becoming more apparent. As peremptorily as he arrived, Bob Dylan made his excuses and left.
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