DYLAN '65

DYLAN '65

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Note—Three years, some odd months ago, I walked backstage before Bob Dylan's concert at Masonic Auditorium intending to do an interview for a high school paper I edited. Instead, I met Alan Stone, then a Dj for WDTM, A Detroit FM station now disappeared, and after talking with Stone, decided to use parts of his talk. Here then, is Alan’s conversation in its entireity as it was aired on WDTM: Remember, remember. ..

Bob Fleck

Stone-Last time you were here, you drew a fair amount of people, but with none of the great deal of general /Recognition you’ve gotten, among the public at this time. And the main question I have for you riow is this: what does it mean to you personally, interms of your work, in terms of what you’re doing, to suddenly be confronted with. a tremendous amount of public acclaim?

Dylan-It doesn’t really mean that much to me in terms of words you know. My, I don’t know what you’d call it, training or whatever have you, I don’t really know, and what 14o has already been formed, you know,, and it can’t really mean anything to me, its just, uh, I have-io getaway a lot more now than I used to.

Stone-That’S whaM had in mind, in terms of just functioning as an individual, as a human being. Do you think that the situation is in' any aspect too unpleasant for you?

Dylan-Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. But I can’t really let it bother me, cause its happened / you know, and I can’t say anything about it one way or the other. I just don’t even like to even think about it, cause it does take a lot of useless time, time which is not really realistic for me to thirik abqut. Like the little girls that wanna tear at you and that kinda thing.

Stone-Does it frighten you in aspect, in terms of your general outlook?

Dylan-No, I don’t really pay top much attention to it. I try not to get into,too much contact with it. Ijqst play the music youdenow, and leave.

Stone-So it changes your style pf life from day to day: where you stay in hotels, what stores you go into.

Dylan-Oh yeah, but I set that out ahead of time. I know when we’re gonna be on the road that’s just the way its gonna be, so I accept it. I don’t know what more there is to say about it.

Stone-Let’s get to talking a bit about the group you have with you here in Detroit. Now, could you tell us who the musicians are that you broughtlb Detroit?

Dylan-Well, I can tell you their names, it' they mean anything ... there’s Robby Robertson, plays lead guitar, Lee Von Helm plays drums, Richard plays the piano and Rick plays the electric bass and Garth plays the organ. I play rhythm guitar & harmonica.

Stone-Where did you meet these musicians to work with them?

Dylan-I’ve known them for a while. I’ve known Robby, Robby and. Lee Von have played befofe with orfe in Forest Hills and Hollywood Bowl. They know what I’m doing without being able to

express it into words or whatever.

! Stone-They empathize with you?

Dylan-Yeah,they, kppw about, -what it is. It is a new thing, of not a fiew thing; its something which I know is a definite difference but I don’t exactly know what that difference is. I have an idea of it, but I pan’t really explain it in downright > simple words. I’d probably be arrested you know. Its not got anything to do with one thing or the other, its just, all of my records have sort of lead to it inevitably.

Stone-They led in a definite direption and you let them speak for ' you, in general?

Dylan-Yeah, its also different, its like I used to play rock ’n roll when I was 15,14, and by thfe time I Was 17 you just couldn’t make it any more at all, unless you wanted to be a side man and live forever in carnivals, and recording studios. So I just couldn’t make it that way and I just played an 'acoustic guitar, and discovered this thing called folk music and I did that for a while. Then I stopped dpirig that, and started writing the songs myself. I always wanted company, man, but I just couldn’t afford it, and I just put that out of my mind. And now that its happened I don’t really think about it one way or the other. I like it more this way. ,

Stone-Do you feel the audience is not willing to give the artist* total freedom?

v Dylan-Oh yes, I think that’s very true. I really don’t know how much longer I’ll be playing and Singing on r the stage. I really don’t plan to do it ' for the rest of my life or anything. YOu caff find that all these people who play on the stage generally have some kind of image which .you have come to see and hear him do, * whether it be Lawrence Welk, Jar j.4 Steve McQueen, or Howdy Dooay, I or President Johnson, they (the I aud.) all expect something. And N| usually they get what they expect, I you know, and what they paid for. I ! haven’t promised anything. I used to get up On the stage when I first begin playing concerns and not; even know what I was going to do. I’d just walk in from the street in my clothes you know, anything could happen. I used to talk/sometimes for 20 minutes. But now'its different, I wanna play the songs because I actually dig them myself. Whereas I was doing a lot of stuff before I didn’t Really dig, because I’d written, it so fasjC and under such vary wierd, grange ^circumstances which motivated things, stuff which had reasons to be A

written which anybody worth anything could really see through, which I fcan ^ee through, and higher up people can see through, but just wouldn’t let on, cause it is a thing to play a game with.-So I let people play games with me and call me wierd names cause I wrote spngs like With God On Your Side. Bu{ what it really meant to write something like that and sing it on the stage has never been brought out or expressed. I’ve never seen that written anywhere. What we’re doing now I know, is hard for most people to take. Its very frightening. 1A lot of stuff isn’t even sopgs or anything. They’re just things which I’ve written under amusing circumstances and written for no reason except to write it and I know its good, you know, I know what’s not good: I know what’s deceiving in terms of poetry and all this kind of stuff/

Stone-Doesn’t need the excuse of a well known form... Its created its own situation. I noticed there was a new record put out by Roland Kirk and it was entitled Rip, Rig, and Panic and he explained it as being “Rest In Peace” for the people who vgot all ripped up and didn’t understand him and got rigor mortis and panicked iwhen he played, and that was why he titled the song Rip, Rig and Panic: And when I thought of that, I thought of some of the people who react to your material. You’re doing somewhatsimilar things. The foriri is different, but its this individual;, direct thing that people tend to panic when they hear because it hits them too hard foT the

genre 4ts in, well you’re called a popular artist now...

Dylan—Well we can’t really call me a popular artist or anything because its absurd.

Stone-Well you’re a fact in Billboard magazine where you weren’t before. For like 2^,3 years, here in Detroit we played the records you had on Columbia, and most of the other stations wouldn’t touch them. There was no understanding, no attempt at communication. The minute ypu became a fact in terms of the music business, why, it didn’t matter what you were doing.

' Dylan-Right, I know that.

Stone-And now the headlines are. “Dylan Captures Teen Market.”

Dylan-Yeah, well, it can all be explained pimply, like when you really catch on to what its all about. All these parents can take away all the money" the people are buying my records with, and won’t let ’em come to see me in concert anymore. Ahd then its all over. Just like that. It won’t be over for me^-they can’t stop what I’m doing. They can stop people ‘from hearing it I guess...

Stone-Do you think that there is -among the audience a number of people who are actually going to be changed by listening to the material you’ve done?

Dylan-No, I don’t think anyone’s gonna actually be changed from something to something else. I don’t think that’s possible at all... it might hit them very hard maybe, or it might hit them very negatively or positively, or get a wierd reaction or something. But it’ll only last until the concept’s oyer and maybe if its 10 minutes after on the way home when they talk about it or something ... but tit certainly can’t change anybody’s way of thinking, because everybody lives by themselves, you know, all these people that come to the concert, "'they have to go home, you know, after the concert.

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DYLAN FROM P. 13

Stone-Do you think then, that you effect the people who are ready to identify with the material that you are doing anyway?

Dyaln-Yeah, I’ll tell you, it’s more like I’ve only played, one place so far where I can, I know, I had this very powerful feeling, I was in Dallas, Texas & Austin Texas. We played concerts down there, and we played Tom Thumb’s Blues, its called. They knew the feeling, what it was all about, and they clapped after every verse, and went wild. They really knew. They didn’t exactly maybe know what it was all about. But they knew the feeling, of it. They’re real g close to that whole Mexican color and everything down there, you know and that’s the way things feel. But we’ve played this music all over, now, and its funny; we can’t seethe audience, but I know that some people go through a lot of changes, other people just know. I khow a lot of people know. They just know, and that’s about all there is to it.

Stone-Lemme ask you more question and then I know you want to get set up for a rehearsal before i you go on stage, and thatis, we talked the last time yob were in town aboutha forthcoming novel or book. Is there anything further on that?

Dylan-I have aJ book coming out, it’ll probably ottt-in February. It’s just a book of writihg, stuff, ya know. I’ve-' started writing novels before whek' Everybody said “what are you doing?” I said “writing novels,” or something,’ so I figured I had to do it. ‘

Stone-John Koerner mentioned that.-

Dylan-That he was writing one?

Stone-No, he said that he had seen you and your answer was that “I’m writing a movie,” I was ~ very impressed, and then he said “he can’t be serious” and he didn’t know how to take it...

Dylan-It’s writing and I still have a ^ot of words written for it. But I can’t use anything I’ve written, up to.. .anything I’ve written before a year ago I can’t really use as valid. I can’t even use the ideas, they’re so deformed, and just not really right ideas. Stuff whidh has been expressed a million times in the past and anybody can see it does no good to talk about filings which just don’t make any sense to talk about. I don’t write now unless it just happens. I used to write before for a lot of reasons. I used to be in N.Y.C. and you could just about pick where you wanted it to be, what you wrote, see who was doing it and I just went where there was nobody doing anything^, and I just wrote that. Now, who needs to write that ... everybody writes that: people in Omaha, Nebraska write protest songs.

Stone-Does your book have a definite title about it?

Dylan-Its called Tarantula.

Stone-WhoV going to be the* publisher?

Dylan-Macmillan.

Stone-Do you have a definite date on it now?

Dylan-Well it was gonna be out already but I took itback a few times and reworded a few things in it. It’ll be out again. I do wanna write the novel sometime. I really do. But its gonna take a long time to write it. Its kinda tricky. When it gets too bad for me or someplace I’ll just have to go somewhere for a while and write it.

Stone-So your general outlook is that you’re heading toward a verbal kind of expression?. _

Dylan-Yeah.

Stone-This writing you’re doing here, this presentation, from listening to it, I assume from the records that you really enjoy it when you’re up there singing. This thing is enjoyable, is one of the strongest things communicated, its real, this whole involvement in the media thing and what you’re doing. This isn’t the end?

Dylan-No,' its not. I don’t know where its going, but I know its now the end of the road, I know that. I could be, if I die tomorrow or something like that but I can’t quit where it is now.

Stpne-Is there any chance you’ll be doing any movie work?

Dylan-Well ... we’ll do a movie > sonriethUe. But its gotta be right' though, you knoW. It can’t be an Elvis type or a Beatle type or a Truffant type movie or a Tony Richardson kind of thing. Its just gotta be something else. I don’t know\exactly; what, but its gotta be' “right.” .

Stone-What’s your, feeling about working with other performers, Are there any people you particularly admire and enjoy working with on st^ge.or haye you done all solo..

Dylah-Fdoh-1 >vqrk with anybody on stage. I have heyer done that. We play the whole show. The only people who play on stage are the. people with me. We don’t use any warmup acts, thn the warmup act.,..

Stonc-I mean other people of equal stature to you,..

Dylan-1 like Charlie Rich who plays piano and writes sOngs. I like the Staple Singers and most of the people from ... I like the Motown records..!. /

Stone-That’s what we were thinking of and as a matter of fact there was people fantasizing about having a show with Dylan and the Supremes. This would be a wonderful album project.

Dylan-Well, yeah, I guess so, if anybody wants to do that.