Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  RA: But as an artist don’t we have to keep in touch with the people, the country, the earth—

  BD: Sure, sure we do.

  RA: So how do you do that? One has to, otherwise we become solipsistic—

  BD: Otherwise we go into a monastery. No, I’m not livin’ in a monastery. I’m out and about in the world, and I just come in contact with where people are and what their feelings are and from that I create the artistic experience—plus my own feelings and instinct that I have myself, I use that. But sometimes it seems like there isn’t enough time to go and be where you wanna be.

  RA: See, in other ages artists could walk among the people, and be of the people.

  BD: Well, look at Baudelaire or Lord Byron. They could write a monumental work sittin’ in a café, you know.

  RA: Doesn’t that bother you as a limitation—

  BD: Yeah, but that’s the environment in this country. You can’t really do that. Your reality is broken up by plastic and it affects you. And if you don’t want that plastic in your work you’ll have to go elsewhere. So it’s a continual search to find what’s real. What’s real and what’s more organic in a way.

  RA: One of my favorite poets is Walt Whitman and of course he was able to walk among the streets of Brooklyn and embrace the people.

  BD: Allen Ginsberg does that to a certain degree.

  RA: He can get away with that.

  BD: Yeah, he can get away with that. Me, I’m not that type of poet, because I play music. And I have to play that on that stage. So when you’re playin’ on the stage it’s a—you’re of the people but you’re not of the people.

  RA: (making a gesture) There’s a—

  BD: No, there really isn’t a wall there. It’s all the same room. But, you really sometimes have to hole up to gain that inspiration.

  * * *

  Only time will tell if Renaldo and Clara is Dylan’s Moby Dick or a self-important, artistic white elephant. On a peaceful California evening, I saw the film at the Regent Theatre in Westwood near the UCLA campus. For four dollars you get four hours plus of film, one hour of which is devoted to concert footage from the Rolling Thunder tour of 1976. (Dylan edited down 100 hours of film to four hours—and I’m sure the A.J. Webermans [a reference to the “Dylanologist.” —Ed.] of the world would kill to see the 96 hours that ended up on the cutting room floor.)

  The musical interludes are arguably the best scenes in the film. Dylan’s rendering of “Isis” is riveting (it drew a smattering of applause in Westwood)—as are “One More Cup of Coffee” and “Sara.” The whole group of gypsies do righteous versions of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” (as Dylan’s entourage tours an Indian gathering) and Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

  As much as I dislike her, Joan Baez did raise goosebumps with “Diamonds and Rust,” her transparent ode to Bob. But then she embarrasses herself with a non-seductive, flailing dance onstage while Roger McGuinn leads the band through “Eight Miles High.” McGuinn follows that with a fine vocal on “Chestnut Mare.” There are a lot of close-ups in the concert footage and all the performers come off as dedicated and intense throughout.

  The three hours given over to improvised vignettes, broken and recurrent storylines and semi-documentary inserts would definitely make the movie tedious and cumbersome to a non-fan. Following Warhol’s lead, Dylan lets the cameras roll on, waiting for special moments. The obligatory, Felliniesque bordello scenes which keep cropping up are questionable in their relevancy. So are the snippets of Ginsberg reading “Kaddish” to a confused bunch of Jewish matrons at some naugahyde nightclub. However, Sara Dylan is an interesting onscreen figure—still beautiful despite being in her upper thirties and having born five children and despite the fact she takes to wearing a hideous wig halfway through the movie.

  Ronnie Hawkins, the big old rockabilly singer the Band backed up in their early days and who ostensibly plays “Bob Dylan” in the movie, does a good job in an improvised scene in which he tries to lure a farmer’s daughter into joining him on the road—memorable quote: “Rock and roll’s the answer—live fast, love hard and die young.” The freeze-frame, street interviews with blacks on the Hurricane Carter issue are also affecting.

  The film was shot down the line of the Rolling Thunder tour on the East Coast: New York, Cape Cod, Maine, with a sidetrip up to Quebec City. The film has an annoying randomness to it, with one attempt made at making it cohere: a sort of ad hoc, rambling narrative by [folksinger] David Blue who functions as Boswell to Dylan’s Johnson, remembering things past as he plays a losing game of pinball poolside in some Cape Cod motel. Some of it’s very funny.

  Many of the characters (who seem to interchange roles as the movie rolls along) wear makeup. Dylan himself starts out the movie by singing “When I Paint My Masterpiece” onstage with a plastic, transparent mask on. Indeed, in watching the movie, it’s confusing as to which was more important—the mask or what was behind the mask. Renaldo and Clara is also vaguely and hesitatingly autobiographical—the final scene of the Woman in White (Joan Baez) interrupting the love-making of Dylan and Sara is undeniably a contorted attempt to come to terms with the frighteningly fuzzy line between myth and reality that obtains in the movie. Still, it’s a fascinating albeit somewhat false contretemps.

  By the time I talked to Dylan, the critics had pretty much lambasted Renaldo and Clara. For most, figuratively and literally, it was a pain in the ass (with only a 100 millimeter cigarette intermission to ease the ache). It’s not like eating at McDonald’s. It’s as if Dylan had made a huge, four-sided album that, condensed down, would have made a great double album. Still, for four dollars—if you can dismiss what critics have said about Dylan’s self-indulgence and supposed Messianic complex—it’s worth it. Just allow yourself to be dragged into the dreamy momentum of a long, late-night flight.

  Sensing the non-commercial nature of Renaldo and Clara, Dylan had Wasserman (the publicity man in entertainment, he also has handled the likes of the Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon and James Taylor) to set up interviews to plug the movie, in hopes of salvaging some of the 1.25 million dollars he sunk into it.

  * * *

  RA: . . . an interviewer sometimes feels like a thief when he interviews someone—

  BD: Heh! Heh!

  RA: It’s like the old African tribesmen who feel like you’re stealing part of their soul when you take a picture of them. Like I get people to talk and then I get it on tape and take it home and show it to the public. That make any sense to you?

  BD: Oh yeah. I agree with that picture-taking thing. You gotta have a protective layer around ya to have your picture taken. And, I feel the same exact way as those old tribesmen, about havin’ your picture taken. I don’t believe it’s really proper, to do that to somebody else.

  RA: I really don’t either and that’s why sometimes I feel morally against interviews as verbal pictures—although it’s my job. How do you approach an interview given that you feel like that?

  BD: How do I do an interview?

  RA: Yeah, you’re obviously aware that that’s my job.

  BD: Yeah, I’ve just become accustomed to that. I used to do interviews in the old days so I know what they are. I haven’t done ’em in a long time cuz I really had nuthin’ to do an interview about. I didn’t figger what I was doin’ was that interesting. So now we’re doin’ interviews and why? I couldn’t really say for sure. But it seemed like a good idea cuz of this movie, so whatever you wanna know I’m gonna try to tell ya.

  RA: . . . I once saw the movie Don’t Look Back. As an interviewer there’s no way I can purge that from my mind when I come to talk with you and when I’m waiting here for you to come in. How you are now is totally different from the bullshit that’s been passed down to us over the years.

  BD: Yeah, a lot has changed though since those days. People in those days—that was the establishment press we were talking to. They didn’t understand what was goin’ on in the musical arena. But n
owadays, I’ve found from doin’ these interviews that there’s a lot of people who do understand what I’ve been doin’, so it isn’t that difficult because people relate to me on that level where before people were relating to me—“What’s this phenomenon that’s being created?”; “What does that song mean?”—they would just coldly ask me these things. How was I to explain to them what the song meant? They should have asked the crowd. They should have asked the audience what the songs meant. And they never do. They never talk to my audience. They always wanna hear it from me or else they make up their own mind and they tend to disregard all the people that do find something worthwhile in my work.

  RA: Have most of these interviews been enjoyable?

  BD: I’ve found them to be interesting because I get a sense of what people are thinkin’ of the movie when they see it. Some people say, “Gee, I saw it and I didn’t understand it.” Or some other people say, “I saw it and I understood a lot of it and didn’t understand some of it.” And some people say, “I thought it was—you know, brilliant.” People react in different ways, and they usually say that right off.

  RA: What’s been the breakdown pro and con?

  BD: Very mixed. Very, very mixed. If you really wanna know what the people are thinkin’ you should just go to the movie theater and ask the people when they’re comin’ out. That’s the way you’re gonna find out what people are thinkin’ of this movie cuz I can’t tell you what anybody’s thinkin’ of this movie. And you can’t tell me, you know.

  RA: As a 36-year-old artist do you still suffer from insecurity in regard to your work? A lot of people think, “He’s gone through it all, he probably doesn’t care what we say about him anyway.” Or, do you find that insecurity is a permanent part of existence no matter who you are.

  BD: Yeah, insecurity in the area of being able to write and perform. (ten second pause) I had that for a while. . . . Yeah, around like ’72, ’73. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do and didn’t really feel much like singin’ and playin’ or writing. But nowadays . . . if you have belief then you won’t be insecure.

  RA: Faith—in yourself and in your work?

  BD: Yeah.

  RA: Yet faith in yourself is something that goes up and down, isn’t it?

  BD: That’s right . . . you want some more cigarettes?

  RA: Yeah, I’d love some.

  BD: Lemme go get some.

  RA: How much more time we got, Bob?

  BD: Well, let’s just talk and see.

  Tape off. Dylan returns; upstairs, the band plays on—sounds vaguely like the Allmans’s “Mountain Jam.”

  RA: Say, did you have any misgivings about granting us an interview? I mean . . . we’re not exactly Rolling Stone or Playboy.

  BD: No I really didn’t. Not at all.

  * * *

  Dylan had talked to several people by the time A&E got an interview. In reading some of the interviews, I got the impression that he would be arrogant and unfriendly. (For Playboy, he didn’t take his sunglasses off for days.) At the very least, I expected an encounter with the Jack of Hearts—that archetypal rascal, master of ambiguity. Yet already, one unforgettable thing about the interview is how friendly, how human he seems. Perhaps it’s part of the demythologizing process. He isn’t necessarily helpful to an interviewer (in fact he’s a bit lazy in answering questions, and definitely considers interviews work) but he does, in subtle ways, make you feel relaxed. Invariably, a good stretch of music from his band upstairs distracts him a little, causing him to tap his feet. Essentially, though, he’s a very restless person—like an energetic youth in a boring math class.

  Nonetheless, he’s undeniably charismatic. His eyes are most memorable—steel blue to some, “bluer than robins’ eggs” to Joan Baez (“Diamonds and Rust”). They dart, dance and fix, attesting to an inner intensity when his voice falls silent. More than anything, they remind you that you’re not talking to any “regular guy”—the man was not destined for anonymity.

  * * *

  RA: Did you ever read The Great Gatsby? (Young man leaves Minnesota, changes name and, answering the “drums of destiny,” becomes a mysterious, famous figure in New York.)

  BD: Yeah, I read it in high school, but I couldn’t tell you anything about it, though.

  RA: Did you have a dream you wanted to live out like Gatsby?

  BD: No, not exactly that, because I always played the guitar. It was always directed toward the music I was playing.

  RA: . . . Do you feel you have a public persona that functions as a mask for you that you can fall back on?

  BD: No, I don’t feel I have that persona to fall back on. I don’t consider myself in the public eye. I’m in the public eye superficially but I don’t consider myself being a public personality.

  RA: I guess what I’m talking about is the Dylan myth, the one that you’re making us confront somewhat in Renaldo and Clara.

  BD: There’s no myth for me to fall back on. It’s ah . . . whoever said there was a myth? Time magazine or Newsweek magazine might have said there was a myth.

  RA: Exactly. But that’s something that you have to live with, that becomes part of your life that I don’t have to live with . . .

  BD: But I don’t feel I’m in any danger because I’ve never believed it.

  RA: But that’s a struggle that you have that most people don’t have. It’s a struggle against what people are doing with your life.

  BD: Yeah—

  RA: What’s that like?

  BD: Well, sometimes, at different times you confront people who can’t see you. I’ve met a lot of them. They can’t see you. They’re only seeing the myth, or whatever they’re choosing to see.

  RA: What do you do with a person like that?—give ’em the myth or say to hell with ’em and don’t deal with ’em?

  BD: Those incidents don’t usually last a great deal of time—they don’t usually last too long. But I know what you mean because I’ve experienced it.

  RA: What I’m basically getting at is that those occurrences aren’t everyday occurrences for everyday people. I would imagine the myth’s a burden—maybe it isn’t.

  BD: Well, a myth is a story, a myth isn’t a person necessarily. A myth is a happening. We think of things in mythological terms: the myth of the younger sister, the myth of the false bride, the myth of the two brothers, the myth of the king and queen. We think of those stories and involvements as myths. Singular people we can’t really consider as being myths, although we can. We have the myth of Robin Hood—

  RA: That’s more like a legend.

  BD: A legend, yeah. Legendary is for singular people. But mythological isn’t. I think people have just got the wrong terminology when they think of me in terms of myth.

  RA: But just because of the way the country is set up, it has a way of making living people seem larger than life. And maybe some people have an inner need to have heroes.

  BD: Maybe so but ah . . . (ten second pause) legendary is something that happens after we die or after we’re gone. So like if we experience a lot of different changes in this life you can become legendary, meaning that something you did yesterday you’re not doing anymore.

  RA: When the history of the 20th century is written, how would you like to be remembered? . . . The reason I bring it up is because of that scene in the movie when you and Ginsberg are standing by Kerouac’s grave—or don’t those things concern you?

  BD: No, it doesn’t really concern me—how I’m going to be remembered.

  RA: But to get involved with art on such a grandiose scale there has to be an ego involved.

  BD: You’re concerned with being remembered by your children . . . and your neighbors. (ten second pause) In those terms, I’d like to be remembered as doing the best I could—for them and for myself.

  RA: How important are your children in your life?—or is that an unfair question? (Dylan is recently divorced and for the past year has been playing a painful game of tug-o’-war with his wife over the children.)
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br />   BD: No, it’s not an unfair question. (12 second pause)

  RA: In other words, what fulfillment do they give you that art can’t give you? Is it an extra dimension?

  BD: (ten-second pause, and then he speaks softly and poignantly) Yeah, it’s maybe the only dimension that really counts. We’re all playin’ games with this art business you know. But in reality it’s a—we have to be able to, we have to be willing to be a fulfilled human being.

  RA: Did you figure that out at an early age or was there a time when you thought of yourself as a permanent single person, traveling light and fast . . . or did you always want children?

  BD: Well, that’s just a belief in life. At a certain point, you must decide whether you want to sacrifice your ideas for something which may have more value. Sacrifice your ideas for something which has more value in terms of flesh and blood. You just are either orientated that way or you’re not.

  RA: You don’t think all people are oriented that way?

  BD: I don’t think of all people as being fulfilled the same way.

  RA: . . . I find I constantly change my attitude about something I’ve done. Do you have that problem with the film? The film is forever, a song you can redo onstage every time you sing it.

  BD: No, the film’s gotta stand because it’s too involved, it’s more involved than a song, it’s gotta stand. Sure we coulda made it better, embellished it a bit. But I don’t have any regrets about what it is.

  RA: A favorite song of mine is Edith Piaf’s “I Have No Regrets.” Do you believe in regrets?

  BD: No, regrets just keep you chained to the past. You gotta make peace with the past. There’s no reason to regret it. You’ve done it, just make peace with it.

  RA: Are you at peace with your past?

  BD: I am, yeah. I try to be, yeah. I always try to keep my past and my present and my future all on the same level.