Carol Dennis: "Who is Bob Dylan?"

Carol Dennis This is a brief interview with Carol Dennis published on "Follow That Dream international" December 1992, a Bruce Springsteen's fanzine. I've cut the other parts leaving only the Bob related piece.

Q. After getting involved with theatre and working with Stevie Wonder and Burt Bacharach you started your long collaboration with Bob Dylan...

A. Yeah, I went on the road for a couple of weeks with Burt Bacharach doing a tour in South America, and I came back to a surprising phone call from a girl who was dating Mr. Dylan at the time, for him. I have say - as embarrassing as it might be - I didn't know who he was, because my young life had been so reclusive and so sheltered. So I called and I asked "Who is Bob Dylan? I got a call, they want me to come and audition for this guy named Bob Dylan. Who is he?". And the Union went "What? Oh My God! In the sixties there was nobody but Bob Dylan and the Beatles!". It was May 1978 when I first met him and started working for him, did the United States, started recording with him.

Q. After your first tour with him, you had a kind of special role in helping with the vocal parts...

A. Well, I mean, I would call background singers and then, you know, he'd hear them of course, the final decision was his, you know. But he knew that I'd basically bring in what he was after, people that could go after a feeling, that it wasn't so much standing there with the music and trying to prove how perfectly you could sing, but people who had a story in their voices, when they'd sing there was a feeling there. That feeling comes from life experiences, and that's what he was after. He wanted his show to have that kind of spontaneous spiritual type of feeling to it, a lot similar to what Bruce is requesting