Gates of Eden Revisited
A Conversation with Bob Dylan
(Toby Creswell)
It doesn't really matter now whether Bob Dylan is a fundamentalist Christian, anymore than it mattered whether he was going to the Synagogue when he recorded 'Blood on the Tracks' ten years ago. Amongst all the crucial lines that Dylan has sung, one sticks out - "He not busy being born is busy dying." Dylan, of all the great creators of his generation, has been busy being born over a series of almost thirty albums, each of which has added to all that had come before.
However, there have been some constants. There has always been a sense of engagement with the external world. When Dylan gave up writing specific protest songs in 1964, he began writing songs about hypocrisy, prejudice, injustice, malice, exploitation and cruelty. Those concerns are still the subject of his songs. At the same time he was writing love songs like "Love Minus Zero/No Limit", which is a tender and complete statement of affection that is also a religious statement. Dylan has sung of both sacred and profane love throughout his career, sometimes concentrating on one, sometimes on the other. Then there was the electric bite of pure rock & roll as portrayed on "Subterranean Homesick Blues," a song that Dylan notes, on the five-album 'Biograph' retrospective, was recorded in one take.
All these are still elements of Dylan's current work. His choice of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as a backing band suggests that he still after that fire in his rock & roll. Moreover, the news that he is working with Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics suggests that he still sees himself as contemporary.
Given all of that and the quality of the last album, 'Empire Burlesque,' the presence of the Heartbreakers on Dylan's Australian tour promises us an extraordinary series of concerts.
CBS has just issued the 'Biograph' box set: ten sides of Dylan from 'Bob Dylan' to 'Shot of Love.' It is an awesome body of work, unequalled in rock & roll, even the outtakes and the unfinished songs like "Jet Pilot" which later became "Tombstone Blues."
As somebody who has listened to Bob Dylan for twenty years, I jumped at the chance of an interview. But what do you say over the telephone to someone whom you have grown up with? My friend Danny said you usually talk about how the family is doing. What do you ask Bob Dylan, though?
TC: This tour you'll be playing with the Heartbreakers, the first time you've played with a band since the Band tour a decade ago. It must be good to get back to that format.
BD: We don't really know what the format is going to be yet. It's a lot easier, though, because as band members they sort of think as one person. When you put people together who've never played together before, there's so many different people ; it takes years for people to play together like the Tom Petty Band. We were all raised on the same sort of music.
TC: You played with the Heartbreakers for Farm Aid. You seem to have been doing rather a lot of those shows lately.
BD: These things pop up every once in a while. I don't think it'll become a regular thing. This year these seem to have been a couple of those kind of shows.
TC: It seems that these shows have become such huge events that they tend to overshadow the issues.
BD: I know what you mean. That can happen. The atmosphere is like a carnival. But by raising that kind of money, they must be getting these problems into the minds of a lot of people who wouldn't have had it on their minds before, and that's a good thing.
TC: You have said in the past that the function of art is to lead you to God. There were the three gospel albums: 'Slow Train Coming,' 'Saved' and 'Shot of Love,' but your last two records have taken a different slant.
BD: Well, it all depends where you come at it from. I come at things from different sides to get a different perspective on what it is I'm trying to focus in on. Maybe all my songs are focusing on the same thing. I don't know; maybe I'm just coming in from all sides.
TC: The difference between the gospel records and the recent stuff seems to be that earlier you were laying down the law.
BD: Every so often you have to have the law laid down so that you know what the law is. Then you can do whatever you please with it. I haven't heard those albums in quite awhile ; you're probably right.
TC: You have said recently that you didn't think rock & roll still existed in its pure form, that it was no longer viable. Would you put yourself in with that?
BD: I don't think I put myself in that category. I'm not coming up anymore, you know what I mean? I probably was speaking about the industry itself. I listen to it but mostly I don't pay much attention to modern music. It's everywhere, in places that maybe it shouldn't be. There comes a time to shut off the radio, there's a time to turn off the tube, but the way it's projected into society there's not much of a chance that you can get to do that. There are very few people I know who play the real old-style music. When it first appeared, as I remember it, it was an escape from everything that was going on, which was mainly lies, so when music came it was a direction to pull you in that was out of this myth. But now nobody wants to get pulled out of the myth because they don't recognise it as being a myth. That's what it's like here anyway. They like where they're at, they like what's going on, and music is just an extension of that, so they like it, too. It's nothing different, it doesn't pull you anywhere.
TC: So what's the solution?
BD: Turn it off. It's a decision people have to make. That's what the Sixties and the Fifties were all about. There are other ways to operate, to survive. There's got to be some type of light, some type of brightness outside of everything that you're given on a mass consumer level. What I can see is the mass monster. I don't know what it's like in Australia, but in America it's everywhere. It's invaded your home, your bed, it's in your closet. It's come real close to kicking over life itself. Unless you're able to go into the woods, the back country, and even there it reaches you. It seems to want to make everybody the same. People who are different are looked at as being a little bit crazy or a little bit odd. It's hard to stand outside of all that and remain sane. Even outrageousness gets to be in fashion. Anything you can think of to do, someone is going to come along and market it. I think it's going to change. I don't think it can stay like this forever, that's for sure. I think it's going to change but for the moment it's hard to find anything that's really hot.
TC: 'Empire Burlesque'seems a very straightforward record by comparison with some of your earlier work. Is simplicity something you are striving for?
BD: I strive for somehing that feels right to me. It could be a lot of different kinds of moods and phrasings, or lines that might not seem to be too connected at the time with the music. They're all connected. A lot of times people will take the music out of my lyrics and just read them as lyrics. That's not really fair because the music and the lyrics I've always felt are pretty closely wrapped up. You can't separate one from the other that simply. A lot of time the meaning is more in the way a line is sung, and not just in the line.
TC: These last few years have been very prolific for you.
BD: Yeah, I've been trying to find different things that are offshoots of the things I would normally do. I feel like something might open up in the next couple of months in different areas. There's a bunch of songs I want to write that I haven't been able to get close to. I almost know what they are but the information that I need is not really available to me so I have to go out and get it and I haven't done that. I expected to have a little more of that on Empire Burlesque but I just didn't do it. They are the true story type things, real things that have happened that I would like to comment on. I need to talk to the people involved but I haven't followed through yet. I hope to have some of that stuff on the next album I do.
TC: Were you pleased with the way 'Empire Burlesque' turned out?
BD: Yes, for what it was I thought it was really good. I think the next record is going to sound even better. I'm not too experienced at having records sound good. I don't know how to go about doing that, though I thought I got pretty close last time with Arthur Baker. I think next time, working with Dave Stewart here, the stuff we're doing has been happening a lot easier, quicker, so I think it's going to sound a lot more together than the last record.
TC: You recorded that album yourself and gave it to Arthur Baker to mix?
BD: Pretty much so. I just went out and recorded a bunch of stuff all over the place and then when it was time to put this record together I brought it all to him and he made it sound like a record. Usually I stay out of that side of the finished record.
TC: Why?
BD: I'm not good at it. There are guys that don't mind sitting in the control booth for days and days. I'm just not like that ; I'm a one-mix man. I can't tell the difference after that.
TC: Your music often seems to get ignored as compared with the emphasis that's placed on the lyrics, but they're have been some really nice instrumental passages like "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," for example.
BD: Yes, I just did a bunch of tracks with Dave Stewart that have no lyrics, and you don't even miss the lyrics, really. They're just different chord patterns that make up a melody. My records usually don't have a lot of guitar solos or anything like that on them. The vocals mean a lot and the rhythm means a lot, that's about it.
TC: Your voice seems to have changed a lot over the years.
BD: Maybe it has, I don't know.
TC: It sounded different to me, particularly after 'Street Legal' when you started using girl singers.
BD: I'm not aware of any significant difference, really. I've always heard that sound (female backing) with my music. I just hear it in there, it's just like another way of putting horns in. That sound has always been one of my favourites, just that vocal part, because I don't do anything with solo-type work - it's all part of the overall effect, it's more just playing the song and getting the structure of it right. The vocal parts are like another instrument but not a solo instrument. Apart from that, I just like the gospel sound.
TC: Seeing the latest videos and the 'We are the World' video, you seem to have less of the legend around your neck, you seem freed of the burden of being Bob Dylan.
BD: I don't think I ever carried that around except for 1974, when I did that tour with the Band. That was pretty much of a heavy tour because of the notoriety and the legendary quality of the people involved. I had to step into Bob Dylan's shoes for that tour. Since that time, I never thought about it. I wouldn't do half the things I do if I was thinking about having to live up to a Bob Dylan myth.
TC: Do you feel that you've been guided to where you are?
BD: You're always guided to where you are., but you have the choice to mess it up. Sooner or later evrything that goes around comes around. So, yeah, I feel like I've been guided to wherever it is I'm at right now, but I don't know whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing. I might have something else to do. I can't figure out what it would be, though, because I like doing what I do. Who's to say? There's a lot of luck involved, a lot of circumstance. You can't do anything alone, though. You've always got to have somebody supporting you or nobody would get anywhere.
TC: Do you think that with time comes wisdom?
BD: With experience. Things don't really change, just attitudes.
TC: You've been doing videos with Dave Stewart. What do you think of the video age?
BD: I don't think much about it at all. It's not going to go away. Everyplace you look, you're drowning in it. You can't turn on your TV without seeing music videos. It's like the unions. Unions in the early thirties were all communist organisations and now they're big business.
TC: It's got to the point where everybody seems to be using rock & roll for their own ends. In America, you have politicians associating themselves with rock & roll songs.
BD: Absurd isn't it. The rock & roll songs they're quoting from don't deserve to be quoted from like that. You couldn't do that with the early stuff, Little Richard and Chuck Berry - what politician is going to quote Chuck Berry? Who's going to quote Carl Perkins or Gene Vincent or any of those guys? It was outside then.
TC: Today it's image rather than content. People hold up an image of a star and hope to attach themselves to that image.
BD: That's absolutely correct. It's destroying the fabric of our minds and all we can do is complain about it, so we just have to shut it out. You just have to cut it off and not let it get into your framework because that's the only way you're going to escape it. You can't meet it head on. You've probably got a little more space to breathe over there, but here it's heavy. There's not many places you can go where you're not reminded of the current cultural ambitions of people who are on their way to be stars.
TC: When you started out you must have wanted to be a star in some way?
BD: I wanted to be a star in my own mind, I wanted to be my own star. I didn't want to be a star for people I didn't really identify with. For me what I did was a way of life, it wasn't an occupation.
TC: Has it been all it was cracked up to be?
BD: Yes and no. I'm still doing it , you know. It seems to be what I've done more years than I haven't done it, but I'm just going to keep on doing it till it runs out. Yes, it was all it was cracked up to be, because I never strayed from it. Maybe I would've gone down if I'd gone into being a movie star or if I'd started believing what other people said of me or if I'd started to think I was this person that everybody was talking about. I know there are a lot of people that did go down. They started believing what the newspapers said about them. I never believed it one way or another, so for me, I don't really feel much of a change. I feel very little change between now and ten years ago, twenty years ago. I don't feel like I've travelled that far or done that much.
TC: You mentioned the Unions earlier and I was thinking of the song "Union Sundown," on 'Infidels' which is a very specific commentary. Do you still feel a need to make that type of comment?
BD: Oh, yes, that comes with the territory.
TC: There seems to be two types of songs you've written, those which are here and now, and a lot that seem to focus on the eternals.
BD: Well, that's the important thing, if you lose that, you start getting into stuff that is mindless and meaningless. Usually there's a voice that goes on, there's some kind of warning point if that ever happens, but mostly what this kind of music is about is your ability to feel things. There's a lot of stuff going on that you hear that you know nobody felt nothing about ; you can hear it in the spirit. So much stuff gets thrown at you with no feeling behind it because nobody feels anything anymore. But there are a lot of good things going on that I don't understand. A lot of music that's coming out is way beyond me. There are some people who are really gifted musicians, I mean in a classical sense, and they're coming out with a lot of different stuff that is being thought out and preplanned.
TC: There does seem to be an attempt by people, like Miami Steve on the "Sun City" record, to say things about apartheid and about what is happening in America today.
BD: Yes, he's highly committed to that.
TC: It seems like a very difficult struggle.
BD: Well, it is a very difficult struggle, because most people don't want to hear that.
TC: There's a lot of red-baiting going on again.
BD: That's been going on since the Fifties.
TC: The cold war seems to be coming back.
BD: I don't think it ever went away, you know. It just lays low for a while. People need something to hate, you've got to hate something. As soon as your old enough, people try to make you hate something or somebody. Blacks are a little easier, Communists you can't really see. The early Christians were like Communists. The Roman Empire treated the Early Christians the same way as the Western world treats the Communists.
TC: So it doesn't really change?
BD: No, things don't, it's just got a different name on it. There's always someone you're told you've got to step on so you can rise up a little higher.
TC: Your kids are grown up now. What's the perspective like as a father?
BD: It gives you a perspective on what kids are doing. I don't think kids are any different from what they ever were, really. It's like my daddy once said, when he was twelve years old he asked his dad something and he didn't think his dad knew too much about what he was talking about. When he got to twenty-five, he asked him the same question and he got the same answer and he was amazed how his father got to be so smart.