BOB DYLAN Interview
from Tour Program 2003

"I know there are groups at the top of the charts that are hailed
as the saviours of rock'n'roll and all that, but they are
amateurs, They don't know where the music comes from... I was
lucky. I came up in a different era. There were these great blues
and country folk artists around, and the impulse to play 'those
sounds' came to me at a very early age. I wouldn't even think
about playing music if I was born in these times..."

Q: What do you think would have interested you today if music
weren't an option?

A: I'd probably turn to something like mathematics. That would
interest me. Architecture would interest me. Something like that.

Q: Are you surprised by the return of so much placid pop -- which
was one of the original targets of rock'n'roll ?

A: I don't think what we call pop music today is any worse than
it was. We never liked pop music. It never occurred to me (in the
50s) that Bing Crosby was on the cutting edge 20years before I
was listening to him. I never heard that Bing Crosby. The Louis
Armstrong I heard was the guy who sang "Hello, Dolly!" - I never
heard him do "West End Blues".

Q: How would you describe the spirit of the '50s and'60s?

A: I knew it was an unsettled, rebellious spirit.

Q: What was it like to be adored at times and booed at others --
like on the "Slow Train Coming" Tour in the 1970s?

A: I was booed at Newport before that, remember. You can't worry
about things like that. Miles Davis has been booed. Hank Williams
was booed. Stravinsky was booed. You're nobody if you don't get
booed sometime.

Q: "Time Out Of Mind" seemed to spark a creative resurgence for
you. Did you know right away it was something special?

A: It was a little sketchy to me. I knew after that record when
and if I ever committed myself to making another record, I didn't
want to get caught short without up-tempo songs. A lot of my
songs are slow ballads. But if you put a lot of them on a record,
they'll fade into one another, and there was some of that in
"Time Out Of Mind".

Q: What about the creative process for you? Do you write
constantly?

A: I overwrite. If I know I am going in to record a song, I write
more than I need. In the past that's been a problem because I
failed to use discretion at times. I have to guard against that.
On love and theft, "Lonesome Day Blues" was twice as long at one
point. "Highlands" (a 17-minute song on "Time Out Of Mind") was
twice as long originally.

Q: When do you tend to do the most writing? When you're on tour
or when you're home for a few weeks?

A: I don't know. Some things just come to me in dreams. But I can
write a bunch of stuff down after you leave ... about, say, the
way you are dressed. I look at people as ideas. I don't look at
them as people. I'm talking about general observation. Whoever I
see, I look at them as an idea ... what this person represents.
That's the way I see life. I see life as a utilitarian thing.
Then you strip things away until you get to the core of what's
important... in the larger scheme of things, the government is
irrelevant. Everybody, everything can be bought and sold.

Q: Isn't that pretty pessimistic for someone who everyone thought
was so optimistic and inspiring in the '60s?

A: I'm not sure people understood a lot of what I was writing
about. I don't even know if I would understand them if I believed
everything that has been written about them by imbeciles who
wouldn't know the first thing about writing songs. I've always
said the organized media propagated me as something I never
pretended to be ... all this spokesman of conscience thing. A lot
of my songs were definitely misinterpreted by people who didn't
know any better, and it goes on today.

Q: Give me an example of a song that has been widely
misinterpreted.

A: Take "Masters Of War." Every time I sing it, someone writes
that it's an antiwar song. But there's no antiwar sentiment in
that song. I'm not a pacifist. I don't think I've ever been one.
If you look closely at the song, it's about what Eisenhower was
saying about the dangers of the military-industrial complex in
this country. I believe strongly in everyone's right to defend
themselves by every means necessary... you are affected as a
writer and a person by the culture and spirit of the times. I was
tuned into it then, I'm tuned into it now. None of us are immune
to the spirit of the age. It affects us whether we know it or
whether we like it or not.

"In the early '90s when I escaped the organized media. They let
me be. They considered me irrelevant, which was the best thing
that could have happened to me. I was waiting for that. No artist
can develop for any length of time in the light of the media, no
matter who it is. If the media was commenting on every article
you wrote, imagine what it would do to you."

Q: Do you worry. that the latest rash of awards and acclaim will
make the media start focusing on you again?

A: No, that time has passed. Once they move away and lose track
of you, they'll never catch up with you again. They're off
searching for someone new to put a label on.

Q: Do you see yourself touring indefinitely?

A: I don't see myself doing anything indefinitely. I see myself
fulfilling the commitments at the moment. Anything beyond that,
time will have to tell.

Q: So, how do you feel personally? Do you feel pretty good about
things?

A: Any day above the ground is a good day.