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Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews

by Jonathan Cott, Bob Dylan (Contributor)

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349573,311 (4.19)3
Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews features over two dozen of the most significant and revealing conversations with the singer, gathered in one definitive collection that spans his career from street poet to Nobel Laureate. First published in 2006, this acclaimed collection brought together the best interviews and encounters with Bob Dylan to create a multi-faceted, cultural, and journalistic portrait of the artist and his legacy. This edition includes three additional pieces from Rolling Stone that update the volume to the present day. Among the highlights are the seminal Rolling Stone interviews--anthologized here for the first time--by Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder, Mikal Gilmore, Douglas Brinkley, and Jonathan Lethem--as well as Nat Hentoff's legendary 1966 Playboy interview. Surprises include Studs Terkel's radio interview in 1963 on WFMT in Chicago, the interview Dylan gave to screenwriter Jay Cocks when he was a student at Kenyon College in 1964, a 1965 interview with director Nora Ephron, and an interview Sam Shepard turned into a one-act play for Esquire in 1987.… (more)
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Showing 5 of 5
Very interesting read. Bob Dylan is a very unusual, maybe strange guy who clearly thinks much differently than the rest of us. His thought process is very stream of consciousness, and while his songs seem introspective he repeatedly claims that is not so, that he just writes what he feels. His growth and maturity become very clear as you move from his earlier interviews to his later ones. ( )
  JohnKaess | Jul 23, 2020 |
I approached this book as a big Bob Dylan fan (Highway 61 Revisited, Blood on the Tracks, Desire and Planet Waves being my favorite albums) but as a relative novice of his personal life and development. In fact the majority of what I know of his personal life came from my viewing of (and subsequent research concerning) the recent movie "I'm Not There." Long story short, I was aware of Dylan's reputation as an enigma and intrigued by the possibility of dispelling some of the mystery.

There's good news and bad news: this book does dispell a lot of the Dylan mystique, but it turns out that the self-concocted enigma was mostly smoke and mirrors hiding a pretty vacuous core.

Full disclosure: ever since I learned of Dylan's abrupt turn to fundamentalist Christianity (again, from the movie "I'm Not There") in the late 70's, I had harbored misgivings about his integrity. It seems like those misgivings were mostly confirmed in these interviews. Dylan first comes off as a brilliant but obfuscating trickster. But then around the mid-70's, particularly in the interviews concerning his movie "Renaldo and Clara," he just seems full of you-know-what. These are followed by the bizarre articles from his born-again period, after which he just comes across as kind of burned out, until a revival around the Time Out of Mind release. The main impression I had from these later interviews was that he was pretty much just agreeing with whatever the interviewer posited, but dressing it up to seem like he was saying something original.

The exceptions are the '97-and-after interviews, probably the most valuable of the book in terms of showing an honest Dylan making a sincere effort to explain himself; in fact, the two L.A. Times interviews with Robert Hillburn are probably the best in the entire book.

The grand impression I took away from the the collection was that Dylan started out following his passion (you don't memorize Woody Guthrie's entire catalog just to fit in), then created a mysterious persona to stand out from the crowd once he started writing his own songs. This takes brains, talent and ambition. Then he began repeating the facts of "Bob Dylan" and playing the character of "Bob Dylan" to the public so often that he gradually convinced himself that that was who he was. He developed a combative personality with the "Mr. Jones's" of the world and played word games and riddles on anyone who asked him a legitimate question, mostly in order to hide the fact that he had no idea what he was talking about.

All the while, at least part of him remained cognizant of not actually being any of those things, creating a tension which ultimately escalated into his spiritual crisis of the late 70's. In the aftermath of this episode, the early 80's, it was pretty much too late to figure out who he actually was so he gave up trying, instead leaning on the persona that he had spent years cultivating so fastidiously, hoping that it would support him for as long as he needed it. That position became untenable in the mid-90's when he finally gave in and stopped putting forth effort to nourish that persona, which is coincidentally when he started to produce his best music once more.

It is telling to me that Dylan is by far at his most earnest when he's discussing a) Christianity and b) "Renaldo and Clara," perhaps the only two ventures in which he ever fully invested himself, and both equally misguided. I plead guilty to charges of armchair psychology, but this smacks to me of someone who was always searching for fulfillment, never content with his own identity. Additionally, you have to feel a pretty spectacular void in order to turn to such a drastic solution as born-again Christianity.

This is further borne out just by looking at the "Renaldo" movie, which seems to be an amazingly narcissistic vanity project. It is basically a movie about "Bob Dylan" in which Bob, who may or may not be Bob (because there's another guy playing "Bob Dylan" who's not Bob), must decide between two beautiful goddesses who love him and are striving for his affection. This is a project that only could have been brought to fruition by someone with a complete cult of personality surrounding him. There is a palpable bitterness in his 11/16/78 Rolling Stone interview when Dylan expresses irritation at the unkind critics who would dare to not understand his movie. He even utters the cliché "I'd like to see any one of those assholes try and do what I do." (p.265)

I used to think of Dylan as a chameleon, but now I think that maybe a mockingbird would be a better analogy. A chameleon tries to blend in, whereas a mockingbird succeeds by standing out, loudly imitating as many different birds as it can. Dylan is a beautiful mockingbird, perhaps the best and most amazing ever, but there is something sad and vaguely troubling about an organism whose strength lies in its ability to dress itself as something else. He essentially admits that he does this in his most recent interviews, where he talks blatantly about robbing melodies and snippets from other traditional songs.

Yet through all the BS, I don't appreciate Dylan's music any less. His songs, lyrics and melodies are unforgettable, even if nobody (including him) knows what they mean. In fact, I think he does himself and his fans a disservice by trying to explain any of them either to us or to himself. His music is most evocative on an instinctive, intuitive and archetypal level. Dylan himself admitted that his best writing occurs as inspiration, very quickly and without him actually knowing how he's getting the idea.

Perhaps this is his strongest legacy: he is the best example of a well-oiled but ultimately empty funnel through which inspiration may flow in the most unimpeded way possible. I do not say this to belittle him; there is great value in such a talent. It's songwriting on an instinctive level, and he's the best at it. He is the artist who least gets in the way of the music he plucks from the ether. He is very much like Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter, or to a lesser extent The Band, in that ability to tap into the primal, ancient sensibilities that move us all.

It's strange that my feelings while reading this book changed and adapted almost as often as did Dylan himself. Three quarters of the way through I found myself thinking poorly of the artist, just another pretentious dick. But at the end, post-'97, he genuinely seems to come to grips with his shortcomings and actually get past most of his earlier hang ups, something which is damn impressive to witness over the course of a handful of interviews and several years. ( )
1 vote blake.rosser | Jul 28, 2013 |
Amazing body of work selected here. Fascinating autobiography at times both flabbergasting and frustrating, but as Mr. Dylan has aged his honesty has issued forth on a more regular basis. Not that he outright lied about things as a younger man, he just seemed to delight in pulling our puppet strings and showing to a fault what fools we were for believing he may have the answers. It is obvious to me in this chronicle of his life through certain interviews that Dylan was searching as hard as anyone for answers, and for a time looked outside himself for Jesus to save him. He is not alone as many others have done the same thing. It all depends on the extent of the fire in ones ass as to what or who we may turn to in our horrendous hour of pain. Dylan has much to teach us now that he is definitely an elder. His autobiography Chronicles Vol. I is a good companion piece to this fine book. And not to be remiss it might be important to mention the interviews of Bonnie Prince Billy as a book in which to compare these titles to. Dylan does not like to be compared to himself but instead to other artists. It is there he will take his chances as to where he stands in the hierarchy of the performing artist as songwriter. ( )
  MSarki | Mar 31, 2013 |
I know a lot more about Bob Dylan than I ever did. I always assumed his biggest song was "Mr. Tamborine Man" but in fact it was only mentioned a few times throughout all the interviews. You get real insight into who this man was and his attitude towards his work and the people who nearly worshiped the words he sang to them. The interviews start in the 60s and finish in 2004. Through the decades you can see a change in the man and you also sort of watch him grow up through the interviews and his answers and denials. ( )
  blondierocket | Apr 8, 2008 |
INT: BRIDGE OF USS ENTERPRISE
Spock: Fascinating, Captain. An entire planet inhabited by fans of a single folk- singer with no discernible talent for singing.
Bones: Dag-Nab that pointy-eared Vulcan. No appreciation for art.
Kirk: Now, Doctor...
Scotty: Ay, it's true, Captain, his harmonica sounds like a lithium crystal with the life getting squeezed out of it.
Kirk: Ah, Scotty, Dylan is the poet, the voice, the humanity of us all, saying things that can't be said otherwise, saying them with such eloquent power.
Spock: Are all humans so inexplicably odd?
Bones: Sputter, Vulcan, frack, sputter, spack...
All: Laughter

Fade to black, roll credits. ( )
1 vote rwk | Jan 10, 2007 |
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Jonathan Cottprimary authorall editionscalculated
Dylan, BobContributormain authorall editionsconfirmed
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Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews features over two dozen of the most significant and revealing conversations with the singer, gathered in one definitive collection that spans his career from street poet to Nobel Laureate. First published in 2006, this acclaimed collection brought together the best interviews and encounters with Bob Dylan to create a multi-faceted, cultural, and journalistic portrait of the artist and his legacy. This edition includes three additional pieces from Rolling Stone that update the volume to the present day. Among the highlights are the seminal Rolling Stone interviews--anthologized here for the first time--by Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder, Mikal Gilmore, Douglas Brinkley, and Jonathan Lethem--as well as Nat Hentoff's legendary 1966 Playboy interview. Surprises include Studs Terkel's radio interview in 1963 on WFMT in Chicago, the interview Dylan gave to screenwriter Jay Cocks when he was a student at Kenyon College in 1964, a 1965 interview with director Nora Ephron, and an interview Sam Shepard turned into a one-act play for Esquire in 1987.

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