Dylan on Dylan

by Jeff Burger

  * * *

  “Subterranean Homesick Blues” . . . I don’t think I’d have wanted to do it all by myself. I could get more power out of it with a small group in back of me. Well, there wasn’t any negative response to people who hadn’t heard it before. I didn’t understand what the gripe was all about. I’m a musician first and I can’t self-analyze my own work, and I wasn’t gonna cater to a crowd because I knew certain people would like it and certain people didn’t like it. I mean, there’s many of us who could’ve probably gone into this field or that field because of guaranteed success one way or another. But I never was interested in that. Negative response to me would be somebody stops coming to see you play or they flat-out don’t want to deal with your recording. The negative response had nothing to do with me. I’ve read that Stravinsky had negative response, Coltrane, many negative responses. Charlie Parker had lots of negative responses. People are always emotionally charged up when they feel some artist is not doing what they used to do.

  * * *

  The British audiences were the first audiences that really accepted what I was doing at face value. To that crowd, it wasn’t different at all. It was right in line with everything that they’d read about in school—the Shakespearean tradition, Byron, and Shelley.

  * * *

  Mary Martin is this woman . . . she worked at [Dylan manager Albert] Grossman’s office, and I had many shows coming up and it was obvious that I needed a band to play them. Putting together a band can be tedious, and I was hoping that there was some existing band that I could just use. [Paul] Butterfield was doing his thing. So who I really wanted was Al Kooper, who I thought was a perfectly complementary keyboard guy and he had a bass player named Harvey [Brooks] and there were a bunch of other people around.

  But Mary said that she knew of a band out of Canada that were working out in Jersey. And in the past, I’d played with Ronnie Hawkins, who had made some records for Roulette, and I knew who Ronnie Hawkins was. And she said this band had been with him a long time and they knew this kind of music, and I should use them. And she knew them personally and a couple of ’em came up to New York. And we talked a while. I said I needed a band.

  But I was just looking for a couple of guys, ’cause I wanted to put ’em with Kooper and the other guy, the bass player. But I ended up taking the guitar player and the drummer . . . Later, they became the group known as the Band but at that time I think they were called Ronnie Hawkins or the Hawks. Or something like that. They were working just rhythm and blues clubs. And the kind of music they were playing was cover tunes by Bobby Blue Bland and Junior Parker songs. And they did it quite well. But that wasn’t what was happening at the time.

  * * *

  Well, Mike Bloomfield, I always thought he should’ve stayed with me instead of going with Butterfield but that was his life to lead. I first heard him when Grossman had me come out to play at a club they had started in Chicago, and I think the name of the club was The Bear. He just introduced himself and said he’d heard my first record and he wanted to show me how the blues were played [laughs]. And I didn’t feel much competitive with him. He could outplay anybody even at that point. Well, when it was time to bring in a guitar player to play on my record, I couldn’t think of anybody but him. I mean, he was the best guitar player I ever heard on any level. He could flatpick and he could fingerpick, and it looked like he’d been just born to play guitar. And he came into the session once more carrying his guitar in a paper bag.

  * * *

  You can be famous on the street where you live and that’s one type of fame. You can be famous in your town, another kind of fame, you can be famous in a county. Or you can be famous and known only to a few people who are in a similar field. I mean, certain doctors are famous to other doctors, certain lawyers are famous to other lawyers, but the common man wouldn’t really know who they were. The kind of fame that musicians seem to get is the kind of fame where everybody, whether they want to know who you are or not, your whole personal condition is just forced on them. And that becomes tricky, when people who don’t know what you’re really about suddenly know who you are.

  DYLAN ON

  Love and Theft

  “All the songs are variations on the twelve-bar theme and blues-based melodies. The music here is an electronic grid, the lyrics being the substructure that holds it all together. The songs themselves don’t have any genetic history. Is it like Time Out of Mind, or Oh Mercy, or Blood on the Tracks, or whatever? Probably not.”

  —from Columbia Records press release, June 2001

  PRESS CONFERENCE

  July 23, 2001 | Rome

  Thirteen journalists from twelve countries participated in this press conference at Rome’s Hotel de la Ville Inter-Continental. The Q&A took place two months prior to the release of Love and Theft, a Top 10 album that is widely viewed as a continuation of a comeback that began with 1997’s Time Out of Mind.

  Dylan sounds much more accommodating and respectful of the reporters than he did in his early press conferences, but he makes some puzzling statements. Though he has now been one of the world’s most admired artists for more than thirty-five years, for example, he claims to have no “hard-core” fans. And though he has long expressed great admiration for artists like Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Buddy Holly, he says, “I don’t really look up to entertainers at all. They don’t have any meaning for me.” —Ed.

  Reporter: Love and Theft sounds like a return to the allegorical [inaudible] of Time Out of Mind. I haven’t seen the lyric sheets but do you see that’s a fair assumption?

  Bob Dylan: Pretty fair.

  Reporter: Could you explain the title of the album Love and Theft? Does it refer to one of the songs or to the general atmosphere?

  Dylan: Probably. Yeah.

  Reporter: Can I rephrase it?

  Dylan: Sure.

  Reporter: Love and theft are synonymous or opposite concepts?

  Dylan: [Laughs.] Are they what?

  Reporter: Synonymous or opposite concepts? Is it the same or the opposite?

  Dylan: No. I don’t think of them as contrary, no.

  Reporter: Love and theft are the same?

  Dylan: I don’t think they’re at opposite ends of the line, no. Do you?

  Reporter: For me, they are the same.

  Dylan: Yeah, exactly.

  Reporter: Someone steals something for something.

  Dylan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly! That’s just what I said. [Laughs.]

  Reporter: Would you say they go hand in hand?

  Dylan: Exactly! Like fingers in a glove.

  Reporter: Do you enjoy to be in Rome?

  Dylan: Oh, yeah.

  Reporter: You write songs about—

  Dylan: Quite a few.

  Reporter: “[When] I Paint My Masterpiece.”

  Dylan: Exactly.

  Reporter: You speak exactly of this place. [The song refers to the “streets of Rome” and also to the “Spanish Stairs,” an apparent reference to the famous Spanish Steps, which are outside the hotel where this press conference took place. —Ed.]

  Dylan: This is it. Spanish Steps.

  Reporter: Would you say this is the first record of yours that people can dance to? We’ve listened to it now all morning and—

  Dylan: You been dancing all morning?

  [Laughter.]

  Reporter: Was it one of the intentions, to make it swinging and—

  Dylan: I can’t say that, no.

  Reporter: But you seem to have returned to the music of your youth, the ’40s and the ’50s, the Western swing, the rockabilly, and these things, and those are forms that Bob Dylan has not utilized before. Was this a conscious intention?

  Dylan: No. Most of the songs have some traditional roots to them. If not all of them.

  Reporter: Since there’s no producer credit, was it an album you produced with the band in the studio or are you the producer de facto?

  Dylan: Well, exactly, yeah.

  Reporter:
The song “High Water” is for Charley Patton. I think it’s a reference to [Patton’s 1929 blues number] “High Water Everywhere.”

  Dylan: Exactly.

  Reporter: What is your relationship to the music of Charles Patton?

  Dylan: Oh, he’s one of my favorite performers.

  Reporter: Did the songs of Charley Patton or Robert Johnson or the old blues players . . . do you think that these guys have too little respect in American cultural—

  Dylan: Maybe thirty years ago. But wasn’t there a Robert Johnson record come out a few years ago that displayed his music to quite a few people who maybe weren’t aware of it? When I first heard him, I was given that record before it was even released by the man who kind of discovered me at the record company, John Hammond. No one had heard of Robert Johnson then outside of maybe a dozen people in all of America.

  Reporter: When was this?

  Dylan: About 1961. They were about to release it.

  Reporter: Was it a shock to hear that voice?

  Dylan: No one had heard him. People had only heard the records that were reissued on rural labels at that time, and you could find a song by this person or that person on all the different records, which actually weren’t that many. But I think this was the first record where everything was by one singular performer, which had taken years and years to put that together.

  Reporter: It seems to be a very happy record.

  Dylan: The Robert Johnson?

  Reporter: No. [Laughter.] Your record.

  Dylan: Oh, Love and Theft.

  Reporter: A lot of the music seems like good-time music. Three or four tunes are like swing. But the lyrics are very harsh and rough, I think.

  Dylan: Yeah. When you’re working with a producer, they can take you this way or that way on a particular song if you’re not determined that it should go a certain way. And in many cases, a lot of my records have been compromised in that way.

  Reporter: Which ones do you think?

  Dylan: Most of them. When we play live on the stage, people would say, “Oh, this song doesn’t sound like it did on the record or it doesn’t go that particular way.” Well, of course not, because that way was never the way it should be really perceived, anyway.

  Reporter: Is it hard to be a Dylan record then without any—

  Dylan: Oh, no. I wouldn’t call myself a record producer but if you have a singular vision, there’s nothing really a producer can do to help you.

  Reporter: Did it come out on record like you wanted it to sound?

  Dylan: Well, I don’t know about the audio part of it, but as far as all the arrangements go, yeah.

  Reporter: Did you catch the songs at a certain point in their history? And do the arrangements still vary and evolve? And does this record document a certain moment in these songs and their life?

  Dylan: No, no. These songs really weren’t written when we recorded them. They were written earlier. So I had the idea in my mind for months and months before everything was pretty set.

  Reporter: I noticed your voice sounds much darker than on the last one.

  Dylan: Well, I’ve never been recorded that properly—

  Reporter: What was wrong?

  Dylan: Well, usually, when it comes to me, whoever is operating the controls is just thinking, Well, this is a Bob Dylan record. This is a Bob Dylan song. So they’re not really thinking about what I particularly sound like. One person who was working with me earlier on did a whole entire record with me and then realized that he used the wrong mikes on me and for a variety of reasons, my vocal range would fall into the exact line of another instrument that would be playing on every song and so there’s a presence tug-of-war there.

  Reporter: But you think it’s hard to record your voice?

  Dylan: I don’t think so. On this particular record, we had a young guy who understood how to do it. I don’t think anybody really has understood how to record me, which is no fault of theirs. But what was the last record we put out? [Time Out of Mind. —Ed.] I think that my vocal track was tricked up with effects put on after to make it sound like I actually did sound.

  Reporter: Would you say that it’s different?

  Dylan: They take highs off and they take lows off, and my particular vocal range just subverts the system. It always has, actually. I don’t know why.

  Reporter: Do you think the producers who are working for you are also kind of prisoners of the Bob Dylan myth?

  Dylan: Exactly, yeah. I find that to be an unbearable problem. Sometimes people . . . you can feel they’re uncomfortable.

  Reporter: Do you think there’s a standard preconception about what voices should sound like?

  Dylan: Sure.

  Reporter: Your voice and Leonard Cohen’s voice and Lou Reed’s voice are not the way voices should be—

  Dylan: Well, I don’t know about Lou’s and Leonard’s, but I think Leonard’s would be a little bit more understandable to somebody because of where his vocal range is—so down that you can only do so much with it, anyway. Lou sort of talks and sings at the same time, and I don’t really think that would present a problem for anybody who’s recording.

  Reporter: But it’s not what you would you consider a normally good singer a crooner or something like that? The three of you?

  Dylan: Well, I really don’t know but I’ve said it before—that the best way to record me or even deal with what I do is the more antiquated system. I was better served by that system rather than whether it’s analog or stereophonic or whatever. I’m served the simpler way better.

  Reporter: You certainly seem to stretch yourself on “Po’ Boy” where you go to those high notes and it’s kind of unexpected of you . . . on that chorus where you go really high, sort of jazz inflection. Do you know what I’m talking about?

  Dylan: I do know what you’re talking about. But that song sort of plays itself. I have to sing that way on that particular song. Because that’s a song that can exist without any lyric. It exists just on chord structures with no instrumentation except maybe a minimalistic acoustic guitar playing and the lyrics are just trying to stay in the path and not lay too much emotional rhetoric here or there. But as far as how to sing that, you have to sing it that way. It’s just not gonna come off [otherwise].

  Reporter: Do you think the success of the Time Out of Mind album reflected the way you did this album?

  Dylan: I haven’t listened to that Time Out of Mind album for a long, long time. I very rarely listen to the records that I make.

  Reporter: You said around that time that you’d gotten used to being slagged off your records—

  Dylan: I don’t know what I said at that time but don’t really pay any attention. Why would you? Something you wrote five years ago? Should we pay attention to that?

  Reporter: To have a success like that, does it change your sense of confidence in what you do or do you just keep on doing what you would have done anyway?

  Dylan: I would just do it, yeah. I mean, I’m fortunate that I have an audience. I don’t know if I’d do it if I didn’t have an audience.

  Reporter: Your audience is growing, it seems. After all these years, there’s still young people—

  Dylan: Well, people of my age . . . they either die or they fade away or they get—

  Reporter: They don’t stay with you?

  Dylan: Well, some do but not very many because at a certain time in a person’s life, they start to have families and different priorities than light entertainment—

  Reporter: Listening to the record, the impression is this is a very fresh sound, like you were playing for the public. This was intentional?

  Dylan: Yeah. This is not a record for me. If I wanted to make a record for me, I’d record Charlie Patton songs.

  Reporter: Is this the Dylan version of the blues albums that you originally liked?

  Dylan: No, I just use blues formats or twelve-bar formats that are altered somewhat or Elizabethan ballads that are deconstructed. I just use those as forms.


  Reporter: It’s a record that has influences from all the American roots music—Western swing, jazz, blues, but the smallest part of influence for roots music is folk music. It seems to me like it’s the opposite of World Gone Wrong and Good as I Been to You, which were the deepest folk records you’ve done since ’62.

  Dylan: Well, what you call folk music is fundamentally there on the ground level.

  Reporter: I’m talking more about the arrangements.

  Dylan: The arrangements are as tight as can be. And that was all done intentionally. There really isn’t any superfluous playing on it. Actually, I wanted to accomplish that.

  Reporter: Who else is on this record apart from your live band?

  Dylan: I’d have to look at the labels to tell ya. My memory gets a little froggy. Am I an idiot? Am I not understanding? [Chatter and laughter] I mean, I’m trying here. Is this something I should concentrate on?

  Reporter: My point is, from what I’ve heard of the record it seems the images associate with one another and flow in a natural way, rather than the songs being about something specifically and describing a feeling.

  Dylan: My avenue of approach on all of it is to just allow it to happen and reject what doesn’t seem to fit, if that makes sense to you.

  Reporter: Is the songwriting process . . .

  Dylan: The songwriting process is a small process of performing. As it happens to be, I write the songs—

  Reporter: The process of live concerts . . . how has that changed over the years? I’m told that you only recently started to use set lists, for instance.

  Dylan: You mean a list of songs? [Laughs.] Well, we can use a set list or . . . we don’t need one, I guess.

  Reporter: The process of how you go about concerts . . . has that changed over the years?

  Dylan: I don’t think so.