Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  Kleinman: Was it a lot of work writing? Was it a labor?

  Dylan: No. It was just something I’d kinda do. You’d just sit up all night and write a song, or . . . in those days I used to write a lot of songs in cafés. Or at somebody’s house with the typewriter. “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”—I wrote that in the basement of the Village Gate. All of it, at Chip Monck’s [the rock lighting designer]. He used to have a place down in the boiler room, an apartment that he slept in, next to the Greenwich Hotel. And I wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” down there. I’d write songs in people’s houses, people’s apartments, wherever I was.

  Kleinman: Were you much of a polisher? I mean, did you write it and then pore over it?

  Dylan: Pretty much I’d just leave them the way they were.

  [Commercial break.]

  Dylan: Well, I don’t know why I walked off that [Ed Sullivan] show [in 1963]. I could have done something else but we’d rehearsed the song so many times and everybody had heard it. They’d run through the show, and they’d put you on and you’d run through your number, and it always got a good response, and I was looking forward to singing it. Even Ed Sullivan seemed to really like it. I don’t know who objected to it, but just before I was going to sing it they came in, and this was show time. There was this big huddle. I could see people talking about something. I was just getting ready to play, and then someone stepped up and said I couldn’t sing that song. They wanted me to sing a Clancy Brothers song, and it just didn’t make sense to me to sing a Clancy Brothers song on nationwide TV at that time. So I just left.

  Mogull: Do you remember that time you were down in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the CBS convention? And it was being held at the San Juan Hilton, I guess. This huge record convention, and it was just as Bob was beginning to hit. And the president of CBS at the time was a fabulous man named Goddard Lieberson. And they wouldn’t let Bob in the hotel, because he was not wearing a tie or a jacket.

  Dylan: Yeah, or a shirt.

  Mogull: And Lieberson, to his credit, told the hotel manager, “Either he comes in the hotel or I’m pulling the whole convention out of here.” Have I told the story right?

  Dylan: Yeah, he was a big supporter of mine, Goddard Lieberson, as was John Hammond. Without those people like that, I don’t think anything would have happened for me. If I was to come along now, in this day, with the kind of people that are running record companies now, they would bar the doors, I think. But you had people back then who were more entrenched in individuality.

  Mogull: And also not as insecure in their jobs.

  Dylan: No, they ran things—they made decisions and it stuck. Now, it seems like everybody chats with somebody else. It’s like, “Well, I’ll tell you tomorrow,” “call me back later,” “yeah, we almost got a deal,” stuff like that.

  Kleinman: Did you get along with Lieberson OK?

  Dylan: Oh, yeah, he was great. He even used to come to some sessions of mine. He’d stop in and say hello.

  Kleinman: Was there ever any pressure on you? I mean, some people considered your music almost subversive. Although I always considered it very American.

  Dylan: I guess they did. I don’t know. But like I said, they seemed to run things. Other people may have been talking under their breath or behind their back. But at this time their big acts were Mitch Miller, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis. I didn’t really begin to sell many records until the second record . . . and the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that made the charts.

  Kleinman: That was an amazing single when you think of what the singles were like at the time.

  Dylan: They made some records then that were good pop records. Not on Columbia, though. Phil Spector was doing a lot of stuff at the time, and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

  Kleinman: Were you listening to a lot of pop stuff at the time?

  Dylan: Yeah, I listened to a lot of pop stuff, but it never influenced what I was doing. At least to any great degree. It had earlier, when rock ’n’ roll came in after Elvis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, those people. Chuck Berry, Little Richard.

  You know, nostalgia to me isn’t really rock ’n’ roll, because when I was a youngster the music I heard was Frankie Laine, Rosemary Clooney, Dennis Day. And Dorothy Collins, the Mills Brothers, all that stuff. When I hear stuff like that, it always strikes a different chord than all the rock ’n’ roll stuff. The rock ’n’ roll stuff, I had a conscious mind at that time, but ten years before that, it was like “Mule Train” and . . . Johnnie Ray. Johnnie Ray was the first person to really knock me out.

  Kleinman: What do you think it was about Johnnie Ray?

  Dylan: Well, he was just so emotional, wasn’t he? I ran into him in an elevator in Australia. He was one of my idols. I was speechless. There I was in an elevator with Johnnie Ray! I mean, what do you say?

  Kleinman: When you started to move from the pure folk style into a more electric style, was that a tough one?

  Dylan: We’re getting into a touchy subject.

  [Laughter.]

  Kleinman: Well, I mean today you go on stage and both of those things coexist. Nobody thinks twice.

  Dylan: Yeah, they always did coexist.

  Kleinman: I’m not talking so much about that, but at least what it seemed like from the outside was that people were trying to tell you how to make your music.

  Dylan: Oh, there’s always people trying to tell you how to do everything in your life. If you really don’t know what to do and you don’t care what to do, then just ask somebody’s opinion. You’ll get a million opinions. If you don’t want to do something, ask someone’s opinion and they’ll just verify it for you. The easiest way to do something is to just not ask anybody’s opinion. I mean, if you really believe in what you’re doing. I’ve asked people’s opinion and it’s been a great mistake, in different areas. In my personal life, I’ve asked people, “What do you think about doing this?” and they’ve said, “Oh, wow!,” you know, and you end up not using it or else using it wrong.

  Mogull: As a matter of fact, I think the artist has to make the innate decision about their—

  Dylan: Yeah, you know what’s right. A lot of times you might be farming around and not knowing what’s right and you might do something dumb, but that’s only because you don’t know what to do in the first place. But if you know what’s right and it strikes you at a certain time, then you can usually believe that instinct. And if you act on it, then you’ll be successful at it. Whatever it is.

  Kleinman: Recording is a whole other thing from being on stage. And you, from what I’ve read, try and record as spontaneously as possible.

  Dylan: I have, yeah, but I don’t do that so often anymore. I used to do that because recording a song bores me. It’s like working in a coal mine. Well, it’s not really as serious as that; you’re not that far underground! Maybe not in a literal sense, but you could be indoors for months. And then what you think is real is just not anymore. You’re just listening to sounds and your whole world is working with tapes and things. I’ve never liked that side of things.

  Plus, I’ve never gotten into it on that level. When I first recorded I just went in and recorded the songs I had. That’s the way people recorded then. But people don’t record that way now, and I shouldn’t record that way either, because they can’t even get it down that way anymore. To do what I used to do, or to do what anybody used to do, you have to stay in the studio longer to get that right. Because you know technology has messed everything up so much.

  Kleinman: It’s messed it up?

  Dylan: Yeah. Technology is giving a false picture. Like if you listen to any of the records that are done now, they’re all done in a technology sort of way. Which is a conniving kind of way. You can dream up what you want to do and just go in and dream it up! But you go see some of that stuff live and you’re gonna be very disappointed . . . I mean, if you want to see some of it live. You may not want to. Well, I think it’s messed it up, but that’s progress. You can’t go back, the
way it used to be. For a lot of people, it’s messed things up, but then for a lot of other people it’s a great advantage. In other words, you can get something right now; it doesn’t have to be right but you can get it right. It can be totally wrong but you can get it right. And it can be done just with sound.

  We were recording something the other night, and we were gonna put some handclaps on it. And the guy sitting behind the board was saying, “Well, do you guys wanna go out there and actually clap? I got a machine right here that can do that.” And the name of this thing was Roland or something. [Laughter.] So we went out and clapped instead. It wasn’t any big deal; we could have had some machine do it. But that’s just a small example of how everything is just machine-oriented.

  Kleinman: You talk almost like—I don’t really know how to put it—like the world’s gone here and you’re old fashioned.

  Dylan: Well, I feel I’m old fashioned, but I don’t believe I’m old fashioned in the way that I’m not modern fashioned. On a certain level there is no old fashioned and there’s no new fashioned. Really nothing has changed. I don’t think I’m old fashioned in that I feel I’m a passé person that’s sitting somewhere out in Montana, just watching it snow. But even if I was, I’m sure that would be OK.

  Mogull: Yeah, Bob, but you can’t go to a concert like Wembley and get that kind of—

  Dylan: Yeah, OK. But life is like that. You don’t get that many years to live, right? So how long can you manage to keep up with things? And when you’re keeping up with things, what are you keeping up with? Who buys most of the records nowadays? Twelve-year-old kids? Who buys Michael Jackson’s records? Twelve-year-olds. Fourteen-year-olds. Sixteen, twenty. I don’t know who buys fifty million records of somebody. You can’t compete with a market that’s geared for twelve-year-olds. You have rock ’n’ roll critics that are forty years old writing about records that are geared for people that are ten years old! And making an intellectual philosophy out of it.

  Kleinman: But you don’t listen to that stuff?

  Dylan: No, and I don’t listen to those critics. I’ve come up with a lot of people who should know a whole lot better, who have made a career about writing about rock ’n’ roll. Writing about rock ’n’ roll! I mean, how indecent can you be? Well, I’m not saying that it’s all bad. People have to express themselves. So rock ’n’ roll gives them a thrill, or did give them a thrill. Well, most of the people that I can think of as rock ’n’ roll authorities are people who have documented what I remember growing up with as it started, right? So everybody knows where the roots of rock ’n’ roll are. But to make such an intellectual game out of it is beside the point. It’s not really going to add anything to the history of popular music. It’s just going to feed a lot of cynical and self-righteous people who think they’ve got a claim on a rock ’n’ roll gold mine or whatever. So I find that very distasteful.

  Kleinman: Are there any things that you look back on and say, “Jesus, that was a good one.”

  Dylan: Oh, yeah. Some of the songs you’re talking about, I can’t write those songs today. No way. But I look at those songs, ’cause I sing ’em all the time. I wonder where they came from and how it’s constructed. Even the simpler songs, I look at them that way. I couldn’t do them now, and I’d be a fool to try. I think there are a lot of good songwriters, though. What I’ve done I’ve done all alone, but there’s a lot of other good songwriters of my era.

  Mogull: Like who, Bob?

  Dylan: Randy Newman writes good songs. Paul Simon’s written some good songs. I think “America” is a good song. “The Boxer” is a good song. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a good song. I mean, he’s written a lot of bad songs, too, but everybody’s done that. Let’s see . . . some of the Nashville writers: Shel Silverstein writes great songs. Really. Like he’s one of my favorite songwriters. You know, whatever you’re expressing is out of the amount of knowledge and light and inspiration you’re giving on it. If you’re just given an inch . . . well, you’ve just got to make of that as much as you can.

  Kleinman: Have you ever tried your hand at any of the other arts?

  Dylan: Yeah, painting.

  Kleinman: Really? Do you do much of it?

  Dylan: Well, not so much in recent years, but it’s something that I would like to do if I could. You’ve got to be in the right place to do it. You have to commit a lot of time, because one thing leads to another and you tend to discover new things as you go along. So it takes time to develop it, but I know how to do it fundamentally so once I get into the rhythm of it, and if I can hang with it long enough . . .

  Kleinman: Do you take time for yourself?

  Dylan: Oh, yeah. I don’t have any public time. People think I do but that’s my time.

  Kleinman: That’s a great place to be.

  Dylan: Well, that’s the place you were at when you were born. That’s the place you should be. I mean, what’s there to make you not be in that place? Do you have to be part of the machine? So what if you’re not part of the machine?

  [Commercial break.]

  Dylan: I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy if we’re talking straight. I don’t consider myself happy and I don’t consider myself unhappy. I’ve just never thought of life in terms of happiness and unhappiness. It just never occurred to me.

  Kleinman: Do you think of it in terms of growth?

  Dylan: No! I tell you what I do think, though, that you never stop anywhere. There’s no place to stop in. You know them places at the side of the road that you can stop? They’re just an illusion.

  Kleinman: The road goes on.

  Dylan: Yeah, you’ve got to get back on the road. And you may want to stop but you can’t stay there.

  Kleinman: When you talk about getting back on the road, isn’t that in a sense growth? Or at least it’s movement. From point A to point B.

  Dylan: Yeah, that’s growth. But what’s growth? I mean, everything grows, that’s just the way life is—life just grows. It grows and it dies, it lives and it dies. Whenever you get to a plateau, that’s not it, you got to go on to the next one. You can’t stay nowhere, there’s no place to stay, there’s no place that will keep you.

  Kleinman: Because of boredom or because that’s the way it is?

  Dylan: No, because that’s just the nature of things.

  Kleinman: So you see yourself just moving onward?

  Dylan: I see everybody like that. I see the whole world that way. That which doesn’t do that is stuff that’s just dead.

  Kleinman: Ha . . . what’s that line? Those that are not busy being born are—

  Dylan: Busy dying? What a line!

  Kleinman: Didn’t somebody write that?

  Dylan: Classic line that. You know, people say, “Isn’t it great to be able to do what you do?” Well, it is to a degree but they forget that anybody that is out touring, playing live from town to town night after night—they think that’s easy. It’s not easy. People think you’re having a ball. They say, “How ya doin’?” I say, “I’m in Schenectady!” [Laughter.] And they say, “Oh, well, you’re having a great time and I’m stuck here in Orlando.”

  When I get off the road, oh, man! For the first two or three weeks you can get up any time you want! You don’t have to go to sleep at this hour and get up at that hour, and get yourself lined up to do this, and be there at that certain place, and go through this and go through that, and get back and get the proper amount of sleep. You know, eat right . . . in case you’re afraid you’ll get sick, or afraid you’re gonna hurt yourself somewhere along the line. All those things, they just disappear on the last show. Then you can do anything you want. It’s a high feeling.

  Kleinman: You go sailing? [Long silence.] Yeah?

  Dylan: Yeah.

  Kleinman: Do you want to talk about anything you like to do other than—

  Dylan: I like to do a lot of things, but I don’t want to talk about the things I like to do.

  Kleinman: OK.

  Dylan: I’ll talk
about things I don’t like to do!

  Kleinman: You said that you consider yourself a pretty regular kind of a guy. Would you say you’re just like anybody else?

  Dylan: Sure. I breathe the same air as everybody else does. I have to do the same things most people do.

  Kleinman: In a lot of the earlier songs there’s a sense of separation.

  Dylan: Oh, well, there’s always a sense of separation, even in the later songs. There wouldn’t be any point to it if there wasn’t a sense of separation. If I didn’t have anything different to say to people, then what would be the point of it? I could do a Ronettes album!

  Mogull: I think the most interesting thing you’ve said so far, Bob—

  Dylan: Have I said anything interesting?

  Mogull: One thing that was exceedingly interesting to me was when you started writing because nobody was writing the songs you wanted to sing.

  Dylan: Yeah, that’s when I started writing, and that’s why I’m still writing. I wish someone would give me some songs that I could do. It would be such a burden taken off my shoulder. It’s heavy, man!

  [Laughter.]

  Kleinman: There’s still a lot of expectation. Have you been able to get beyond that, to stop worrying about what people expect from you?

  Dylan: Anybody that expects anything from me is just a borderline case. Nobody with any kind of reality is going to expect anything from me. I’ve already given them enough. What do they want from me? You can’t keep on depending on one person to give you everything.

  What I usually do is say, OK, I’m gonna write a song, whether it’s a lyric or a rhythm, but I have to go out and play, and I’m not an admirer of stuff like videos. I don’t mind making videos, but it’s nothing for me to attempt to do because it’s fake. It’s all about how good it looks. Anybody can make a video. As long as you have a camera. Anybody can do it. And anybody can make a good one, and people will like it. Everything is done in a technological kind of way. You can dress it up in so many different ways. So people don’t know what to think. Nobody’s gonna sit there and say, “Oh, this is bullshit,” or “This is awful . . . this don’t make any sense.” It’s been a long time since I’ve even seen one of those things, but the last time I saw one, I was appalled. And then when you go see some of these groups, they aren’t anything. That’s because they go for the faking thing so much. And, in the other arena, you have to do it live or you just don’t do it. I’ve always played live since I started, and that’s where it’s always counted for me. It don’t count on a video or a movie. I don’t care about being a movie star or a video star or any of that stuff.