80 Lines: Bob Dylan

Compiled by Saswat Pattanayak
New York, May 25, 2021

Bob Dylan is remembered for his poetry. To commemorate his 80th birthday, I thought to focus on his prose instead. I have ardently studied his interviews because they reflect the limitlessness of his expressions; his spoken words are spontaneous and follow no rules ordinarily associated with musical recordings. Below, I have (randomly) selected about 80 lines from among the various chats he has had with journalists over the decades. Here they are, in no particular order. The interviewers include Jonathan Cott (Rolling Stone), Ron Rosenbaum (Playboy), John Cohen (Sing Out!), Happy Traum (Sing Out!), Toby Creswell (Rolling Stone, Australia), and Robert Hillburn (LA Times).

Words by Bob Dylan.

“Think about the periods when people don’t do anything, 
or they lose it and have to regain it, 
or lose it and gain something else. 
So its taken me all this time, 
and the records I made along the way were like openers 
trying to figure out whether it was this way or that way,
just what is it, what’s the simplest way I can tell the story and make this feeling real.

New York died late to middle sixties. Mass communication killed it.
It turned into one big carnival sideshow…
The atmosphere changed from one of creativity and isolation
to one where the attention would be turned more to the show.

Songs are a funny thing.
If I didn’t have the recording contract and I didn’t have to fulfill
a certain amount of records, I don’t really know
if I’d write down another song as long as I lived.
I am just content enough to play just anything I know.
But seeing as how I do have this contract,
I figure my obligation is to fill it,
not in just recording songs, but the best songs I can possibly record.

You read about these rebels in the cartoons,
people who were rebels in the twenties, in the thirties,
and they have children who are rebels, and they forget that they were rebels.
Do you think that those who are rioting today
will someday have to hold their kids back from doing the same thing?

It’s not that events won’t reach me.
It’s more a case of what I, myself would reach for.
The decisions I would have to make are my own decisions,
just like anyone else has to make their own.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that any position must be taken.

The first mask, as I said, is one you can see through.
But they’re all masks.
In the film, the mask is more important than the face.

Soul mates do exist, but sometimes you never meet them.
There’s a male and a female in everyone, don’t they say that?
So I guess the soul mate would be the physical mate of the soul.
But that would mean we’re supposed to be with just one other person.
Is a soul mate a romantic notion or is there real truth in that?

I don’t know how Jewish I am, because I’ve got blue eyes.
My grandparents were from Russia, and going back that far,
which one of those women didn’t get raped by the Cossacks?
So there’s plenty of Russian in me, I’m sure. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be the way I am.

I strive for something 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 nor 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.

I never listen to my albums, once they are completed.
I don’t want to be reminded. To me, I’ve done them.
I find it like looking into a lifeless mirror.

I’ll take a song I know and simply start playing it in my head.
That’s the way I meditate.
A lot of people will look at a crack on the wall and meditate,
or count sheep or angels or money or something…
I don’t meditate on any of that stuff. I meditate on a song.

I always admired true artists who were dedicated, so I learned from them. 
Popular culture usually comes to an end very quickly.
It gets thrown into the grave.
I wanted to do something that stood alongside Rembrandt’s paintings.
To me, Woody Guthrie was the be-all and end-all.
Woody’s songs were about everything at the same time.
They were about rich and poor, black and white, the highs and lows of life,
the contradictions between what they were teaching in school and what was
really happening. 
He was saying everything in his songs that I felt but didn’t know how to.
It wasn’t only the songs, though. 
It was his voice — it was like a stiletto — and his diction.
I had never heard anybody sing like that.
His guitar strumming was more intricate that it sounded.
All I knew was I wanted to learn his songs.”