Parts 4 & 5:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/1 ... 86297.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/1 ... 87216.html
In anticipation of the release of his 33rd album, Together Through Life, Bob Dylan sat down with rock critic and MTV producer Bill Flanagan for a lengthy and unusually candid conversation (three previously released portions of the interview can be read at bobdylan.com). In the fourth installment, published below, Dylan discusses The Rolling Stones, Hitler, acting, and sheds some interesting light on the songwriting in Together Through Life.
Bill Flanagan: Getting to politics, what did you think of Jesse Ventura, being a Minnesotan and all?
Bob Dylan: He did some good things or tried to. I never met him. All I know about the governor is that he's a Rolling Stones fan.
BF: You're old cohorts?
BD: I hear from Keith once in a while but that's about it.
BF: What do you think of the Stones?
BD: What do I think of them? They're pretty much finished, aren't they?
BF: They had a gigantic tour last year. You call that finished?
BD: Oh yeah, you mean Steel Wheels. I'm not saying they don't keep going, but they need Bill. Without him they're a funk band. They'll be the real Rolling Stones when they get Bill back.
BF: Bob, you're stuck in the 80's.
BD: I know. I'm trying to break free.
BF: Do you really think the Stones are finished?
BD: Of course not, They're far from finished. The Rolling Stones are truly the greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too. Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it .... you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one's ever done it better.
BF: This Dream of You has this wonderful South of the Border feel, but at the same time, I detect echoes of Sam Cooke, the Coasters, the Brill Building, and Phil Spector. Were those records from the 50's and 60's important to you? Did you try to capture some of that flavor in This Dream of You?
BD: Those fifties and sixties records were definitely important. That might have been the last great age of real music. Since then or maybe the seventies it's all been people playing computers. Sam Cooke, the Coasters, Phil Spector, all that music was great but it didn't exactly break into my consciousness.
Back then I was listening to Son House, Leadbelly, the Carter family, Memphis Minnie and death romance ballads. As far as songwriting, I wanted to write songs like Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson. Timeless and eternal. Only a few of those radio ballads still hold up and most of them have Doc Pomus' hand in them. Spanish Harlem, Save the Last Dance for Me, Little Sister ... a few others. Those were fantastic songs. Doc was a soulful cat. If you said there was a little bit of him in This Dream of You I would take it as a compliment.
BF: Even though many of the tracks on the album are about love, the album is full of pain - sometimes in the same song. In Beyond Here Lies Nothing, the song is underscored by a feeling of foreboding. You're moving down "boulevards of broken cars." You're going to love "as long as love will last." Is pain a necessary part of loving?
BD: Oh yeah, in my songs it is. Pain, sex, murder, family - it goes way back. Kindness. Honor. Charity. You have to tie all that in. You're supposed to know that stuff.
BF: Getting back to This Dream of You , the character sings, "How long can I stay in this nowhere café?" Where is that café?
BD: It sounds like it's south of the border or close to the border.
BF: You're not saying?
BD: Well, no, it's not like I'm not saying. But if you have those kind of thoughts and feelings you know where the guy is. He's right where you are. If you don't have those thoughts and feelings then he doesn't exist.
BF: The character in the song reminds me a lot of the guy who is in the song Across The Borderline.
BD: I know what you're saying, but it's not a character like in a book or a movie. He's not a bus driver. He doesn't drive a forklift. He's not a serial killer. It's me who's singing that, plain and simple. We shouldn't confuse singers and performers with actors. Actors will say, "My character this, and my character that." Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up and act. You don't have to explain it to me.
BF: Well can't a singer act out a song?
BD: Yeah sure, a lot of them do. But the more you act the further you get away from the truth. And a lot of those singers lose who they are after a while. You sing, "I'm a lineman for the county," enough times and you start to scamper up poles.
BF: What actor could you hear singing This Dream of You?
BD: Gosh I don't know, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney
BF: How about Humphrey Bogart?
BD: Yeah, sure, him too. Funny thing about actors and that identity thing. Every time I run into Val Kilmer, I can't help myself. I say, "Why, Johnny Ringo - you look like somebody just walked on your grave." Val always says, "Bob, I'm not Johnny Ringo. That's just a role I played in a movie." He could be right, he could be wrong. I think he's wrong but he says it in such a sincere way. You have to think he thinks he's right.
BF: Do you think actors have to be sincere?
BD: Not at all. Mae West wasn't. She was just who she was on the screen. Just like Jimmy Stewart and Burt Lancaster.
BF: And Johnny Weissmuller.
BD: Yeah, Lon Chaney, too.
BF: Could that mean that Alec Guinness is Hitler?
BD: Well sure, a part of him is. But of course he's not Hitler. And neither is anybody else. Hitler was Hitler.
BF: Do you remember images of Hitler from growing up?
BD: No, not growing up. He was dead by the time I was four or five. I never had a real understanding of that.
BF: Never had an understanding of what?
BD: How you take a failed landscape painter and turn him into a fanatical mad man who controls millions. That's some trick. I mean the powers that created him must have been awesome.
BF: Well, the social and economic conditions of the Weimar Republic were so different than now.
BD: Yeah sure, looking back in hindsight, you can see that someone would have to take control. But still, it's so perplexing. Like why him? You could see that the man's a total mutt. No Aryan characteristics whatsoever. You couldn't guess his ancestry. Brown hair, brown eyes, pasty complexion, no particular type of stature, Hitler mustache, raincoat, riding whip, the whole works. He knew something. He knew that people didn't think. Look at the faces of the millions who worshipped him and you see that he inspired love. It's scary and sad. The torch of the spoken word. They were glad to follow him anywhere, loyal to the bone. Then of course, he filled up the cemeteries with them.
BF: It brings to mind Hitler talking to the crowd in Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl.
BD: Yeah, it's clear as day.
In anticipation of the release of his 33rd album, Together Through Life, Bob Dylan sat down with rock critic and MTV producer Bill Flanagan for a rare and unusually candid conversation. The first three portions of their meeting can be read at bobdylan.com, and the fourth installment can be read here on the Huffington Post).
In the fifth installment, published below, Dylan reveals his favorite songwriters, discusses whether he's a cult figure, and gives his thoughts on trading on nostalgia and if he's a mainstream artist (to view a slide show of Dylan's favorite's, click here).
Bill Flanagan: Going back to that song you wrote for the movie that you mentioned earlier, "Life is Hard," has the formality of an old Rudy Vallee or Nelson Eddy ballad right down to the middle eight ("Ever since the day..."). Do you figure that if you start a song in that style, you stick with the rules right down the line?
Bob Dylan: Sure, I try to stick to the rules. Sometimes I might shift paradigms within the same song, but then that structure also has its own rules. And I combine them both, see what works and what doesn't. My range is limited. Some formulas are too complex and I don't want anything to do with them.
BF: "Forgetful Heart" - how do you decide to put an Appalachian banjo on a minor key blues? Is it something you think of ahead of time or does it come up in the session?
BD: I think it probably came up at the studio. A banjo wouldn't be out of character though. There is a minor key modality to "Forgetful Heart." It's like Little Maggie or Darling Cory, so there is no reason a banjo shouldn't fit or sound right.
BF: You wrote a lot of these songs with Robert Hunter. How does that process work?
BD: There isn't any process to speak of. You just do it. You drive the car. Sometimes you get out from behind the wheel and let someone else step on the gas.
BF: You must have known Hunter a long time. Do you remember where you first met?
BD: It was either back in '62 or '63 when I played in the Bay area. I might have met him in Palo Alto or Berkley or Oakland. I played all those places then and I could have met Hunter around that time. I know he was around.
BF: Didn't Hunter play in a bluegrass band with Jerry Garcia?
BD: Yeah, it was either that or a jug band.
BF: Have you ever thought about composing anything with those Nashville songwriters?
BD: I've never thought about that.
BF: Neil Diamond did an album years ago where he co-wrote with different Nashville songwriters.
BD: Yeah, that might have worked for him. I don't think it would work for me.
BF: You don't think it would work for you?
BD: No. I'm okay without it. I'm not exactly obsessed with writing songs. I go back a ways with Hunter. We're from the same old school so it makes it's own kind of sense.
BF: Do you listen to a lot of songs?
BD: Yeah - sometimes.
BF: Who are some of your favorite songwriters?
BD: Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.
BF: What songs do you like of Buffett's?
BD: "Death of an Unpopular Poet." There's another one called "He Went to Paris."
BF: You and Lightfoot go way back.
BD: Oh yeah. Gordo's been around as long as me.
BF: What are your favorite songs of his?
BD: "Shadows," "Sundown," "If You Could Read My Mind." I can't think of any I don't like.
BF: Did you know Zevon?
BD: Not very well.
BF: What did you like about him?
BD: "Lawyers, Guns and Money." "Boom Boom Mancini." Down hard stuff. "Join me in L.A." sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical patterns are all over the place, probably because he's classically trained. There might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they're all effortlessly connected. Zevon was a musician's musician, a tortured one. "Desperado Under the Eaves." It's all in there.
BF: Randy Newman?
BD: Yeah, Randy. What can you say? I like his early songs, "Sail Away," "Burn Down the Cornfield," "Louisiana," where he kept it simple. Bordello songs. I think of him as the Crown Prince, the heir apparent to Jelly Roll Morton. His style is deceiving. He's so laid back that you kind of forget he's saying important things. Randy's sort of tied to a different era like I am.
BF: How about John Prine?
BD: Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about "Sam Stone" the soldier junky daddy and "Donald and Lydia," where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be "Lake Marie." I don't remember what album that's on.
BF: A lot of the acts from your generation seem to be trading on nostalgia. They play the same songs the same way for the last 30 years. Why haven't you ever done that?
BD: I couldn't if I tried. Those guys you are talking about all had conspicuous hits. They started out anti-establishment and now they are in charge of the world. Celebratory songs. Music for the grand dinner party. Mainstream stuff that played into the culture on a pervasive level. My stuff is different from those guys. It's more desperate. Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly ... exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist.
BF: Then what kind of artist are you?
BD: I'm not sure, Byronesque maybe. Look, when I started out, mainstream culture was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting into it then and of course, there's no fitting into it now. Some of my songs have crossed over but they were all done by other singers.
BF: Have you ever tried to fit in?
BD: Well, no, not really. I'm coming out of the folk music tradition and that's the vernacular and archetypal aesthetic that I've experienced. Those are the dynamics of it. I couldn't have written songs for the Brill Building if I tried. Whatever passes for pop music, I couldn't do it then and I can't do it now.
BF: Does that mean you create outsider art? Do you think of yourself as a cult figure?
BD: A cult figure, that's got religious connotations. It sounds cliquish and clannish. People have different emotional levels. Especially when you're young. Back then I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through. The side show performers - bluegrass singers, the black cowboy with chaps and a lariat doing rope tricks. Miss Europe, Quasimodo, the Bearded Lady, the half-man half-woman, the deformed and the bent, Atlas the Dwarf, the fire-eaters, the teachers and preachers, the blues singers. I remember it like it was yesterday. I got close to some of these people. I learned about dignity from them. Freedom too. Civil rights, human rights. How to stay within yourself. Most others were into the rides like the tilt-a-whirl and the rollercoaster. To me that was the nightmare. All the giddiness. The artificiality of it. The sledge hammer of life. It didn't make sense or seem real. The stuff off the main road was where force of reality was. At least it struck me that way. When I left home those feelings didn't change.
BF: But you've sold over a hundred million records.
BD: Yeah I know. It's a mystery to me too.
