[Harp-L] Bob Dylan Exclusive Interview: Reveals His Favorite Songwriters, Thoughts On His Own Cult Figure Status

[Randy Singer <randy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

DEAR HARMONICA PLAYERS

from the golden pen of bob lefsetz, he sent this rare candid bob dylan  
interview.

It has little harmonica content so I hope you do not mind me posting  
this.

It just occurred to me that bob dylan is such a pre historic  
iconoclastic bluesman, a living relic of the past seemingly unattached  
by convention.

here is the quote that really got me, following by a link to the site.

let our harmonica blues be inspired by the traveling circus too.


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.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/bob-dylan-exclusive-inter_n_187216.html



ps



if you want the real deal on music commentary, I always check with bob  
lefsetz. He is another iconoclast bluesman who sees the world as it  
is, without an agenda and unbiased by corporations.



here is his original posting.



FROM BOB LEFSETZ
You live long enough and you no longer worry about perception.  You  
know life is brief, that yours will soon be over and that the world is  
a game, where the winners lose and the losers frequently win.  Money  
can't buy you love and fame doesn't make you happy.  But a trusted  
companion and a good conversation will make you feel like the king of  
the world.  The key is to get enough distance from the tilt-a-whirl,  
the fire and brimstone, to see that the planet, as George Carlin so  
famously said, will save itself.  But people?

The artist is beholden to nobody.  He follows his muse.  He has to.   
We've been lacking artists for far too long.  In a commercial world  
where private jet travel is an achievement more worthy than a perfect  
rhyme.  We're all about the material, that which feeds our souls has  
been pushed aside.  Except by the chest beaters, often religious  
wingnuts, who tell us they have the answers, and insist we follow  
their rules.  You get old enough and you realize there's no manual,  
there are no rules, we're all here alone, and you try to make sense of  
it all. Still, it's difficult, with everybody telling you what to do  
and how to feel.  The role of the artist is to open the door just a  
little, so we can experiment, so we can take the unpopular route, so  
we can become enlightened.

I don't expect Bob Dylan's new album to be good.  I thought "Love and  
Theft" was unlistenable and "Modern Times" not much better.  But I'll  
give it a chance, all because of "Things Have Changed", from the movie  
of the Michael Chabon book, "Wonder Boys".  Bob got it right. He seems  
to get it right at least once a decade, sometimes two or three times.   
He's like Picasso, his flame never extinguishes, he keeps on  
surprising us.  While other acts were left in the folk world, Dylan  
went electric, Christian, took so many left turns that he ended up on  
his own path.

Have you been reading the Bill Flanagan interview posted to  
bobdylan.com?  I checked it out, seemed a bit mannered to me at  
first.  Did Flanagan truly come up with these questions?  How much was  
edited, how much was scripted?  It didn't seem as artificial as Bob's  
satellite radio show, but it seemed a put-on.  Bob gives us the Bob he  
wants to.  But now he's adopting a persona no other major artist  
will.  Being a regular person.  Unlike Eminem, he's not trotting out  
his drug problem, he's not Steely Dan, revealing who Rikki was all in  
an effort to sell a new record few really want, rather he's sitting in  
your living room and you're asking him all kinds of questions, which  
he's answering, in a way that you feel is so intimate that you  
wouldn't dare take notes and breach the trust.  It's like your long  
lost pal has come back to your house in Minnesota, and you're drinking  
a beer in the basement and catching up on a few decades of history.

It's so strange this latter Dylan period.  Reminds me of my dad.  Who  
had a very hard life.  But suddenly, not long before he died, but  
before he was stricken with cancer, my father would start revealing  
intimacies.  About relatives I'd never heard of, experiences in high  
school, my dad became more three-dimensional, just like Dylan.  Rather  
than pull a Salinger, the older Dylan gets, the more he lets out, and  
us in.

You'd think that Dylan is not a member of society.  But reading the  
transcript of this interview, you find out he's got an interest in  
politics, and history, and is not afraid to utter an opinion.

He's the anti-Bon Jovi.  There's no fear of shattering his image,  
after all, that's all it is, an image!  You know this if you've ever  
met any of these stars.  Personally, they're radically different.

Bob Dylan's opinionated.  He shits on the Stones.  Stating "They're  
pretty much finished..."  Yet lauds Jimmy Buffett.  And Gordon  
Lightfoot.

Lightfoot's most famous now for that old girlfriend who supplied John  
Belushi with his lethal dose.  Maybe his almost fatal illness.  But no  
one speaks of Lightfoot's music anymore.  But Dylan does.  He says he  
can't think of any of Gordon's songs he doesn't like, singling out  
"Shadows", "Sundown" and "If You Could Read My Mind".  Was Bob driving  
around in his car in the summer of '74 listening to "Sundown" being  
banged on the radio incessantly, just like me?  Are we both two  
wanderers on the planet, more alike than dissimilar?

As for Buffett, he's considered a joke.  Known as a concert blue chip  
and a one man conglomerate, his musical talent has been forgotten. But  
did you ever listen to those early records, like "Life Is Just A Tire  
Swing"?  Or "Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season"?  Or "A Pirate  
Looks At Forty"?

"Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall
You've seen it all, you've seen it all"

We start out with dreams, we take a few chances and then we end up  
with the life we've got.  How we got from there to here is a line we  
can see but cannot fathom.  Chance encounters, impulsive decisions,  
failures to act and suddenly our skin sags, the equipment doesn't work  
too well and we find ourselves closer to the end than the beginning.

But, as I stated earlier, realizing there's only a reel or two left in  
the movie is liberating, if you're willing to jump off the cliff, stop  
worrying about preconceptions, others' opinions, and know that your  
accumulated years of living give you as much insight as anyone, that  
you're just as big an expert as the talking heads on TV trying to sell  
you shit and infect your brain with their power games.  And being  
liberated, you become suddenly alive, more so than so many of your  
contemporaries, dying their hair and tightening their faces, and the  
kids who are too young to know that age brings wisdom.

Jessica Simpson got dumped by Sony Nashville.  Britney may not be able  
to tour Australia.  They saved a contestant on "American Idol" last  
night.  A couple of years from now, no one will remember these minor  
blips on the radar screen.  It's cotton candy for a public those in  
power want to keep high on carbohydrates.

"Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I've found
My occupational hazard is my occupation's just not around
I feel like I've drowned, gonna head uptown"

Realize this is where you're at.  Stop trying to prove yourself.   
Don't worry about what others think.  Investigate the works of the  
poets and pirates, those who've rejected the game in search of  
answers.  If you haven't got more questions than answers then you're  
an uptight master of the universe headed for a fall.  We're all lost,  
looking for a bit of direction.  That's what artists do, nudge us.   
Insist we challenge convention and think for ourselves.  How can you  
follow performers who do neither?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/bob-dylan-exclusive-inter_n_187216.html



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