thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
and there for a band, but I didn't feel like I could trust them man-to-man in the studio with unrecorded songs. So we started to use some musicians that Lanois would choose and a couple that I had in mind: [keyboardist] Jim Dickinson; [drummer] Jim Keltner; [guitarist] Duke Robillard. I started just assembling people that I knew could play. They had the right soulful kind of attitude for these songs. But we just couldn't . . . I felt extremely frustrated, because I couldn't get any of the up-tempo songs that I wanted.Don't you think a song like "Cold Irons Bound" certainly has a drive to it?Yeah, there's a real drive to it, but it isn't even close to the way I had it envisioned. I mean, I'm satisfied with what we did. But there were things I had to throw out because this assortment of people just couldn't lock in on riffs and rhythms all together. I got so frustrated in the studio that I didn't really dimensionalize the songs. I could've if I'd had the willpower. I just didn't at that time, and so you got to steer it where the event itself wants to go. I feel there was a sameness to the rhythms. It was more like that swampy, voodoo thing that Lanois is so good at. I just wish I'd been able to get more of a legitimate rhythm-oriented sense into it. I didn't feel there was any mathematical thing about that record at all. The one beat could've been anywhere, when instead, the singer should have been defining where the drum should be. It was tricky trying to steer that ship.I think that's why people say Time Out of Mind is sort of dark and foreboding: because we locked into that one dimension in the sound. People say the record deals with mortality -- my mortality for some reason! [Laughs] Well, it doesn't deal with my mortality. It maybe just deals with mortality in general. It's one thing that we all have in common, isn't it? But I didn't see any one critic say: "It deals with my mortality" -- you know, his own. As if he's immune in some kind of way - like whoever's writing about the record has got eternal life and the singer doesn't. I found this condescending attitude toward that record revealed in the press quite frequently, but, you know, nothing you can do about that.The language in "Time Out of Mind" seems very stripped down, as if the songs don't have the patience or room to bear any unessential imagery.I just come down the line too far to make any superfluous song. I mean, I'm sure I've made enough of them, or that I've got enough superfluous lines in a lot of songs. But I've kind of passed that point. I have to impress myself first, and unless I'm speaking in a certain language to my own self, I don't feel anything less than that will do for the public, really."Highlands" strikes me as the album's most singular song. It
begins in a place of isolation; it tells a story but rambles. It's poignant as hell, but it's also very funny - especially the conversation it portrays between the narrator and the waitress in the cafe. And by the time we get to the end of it, we don't know if we're in a place of desolation or release.That particular song, we worked with a track that I had done at a sound check once in some hall. The assembled group of musicians we had down at the studio just couldn't get it, so I said, "Just use that original track, and I'll sing over it." It was just some old blues song I always wanted to use, and I felt that once I was able to control it, I could've written about anything with it. But you're right - I forgot that was on that record. You know, I'm not really quite sure why it seems to people that Time Out of Mind is a darker picture. In my mind, there's nothing dark about it. It's not like, you know, Dante's Inferno or something. It doesn't paint a picture of goblins and goons and grotesque-looking creatures or anything like that. I really don't understand why it is looked at as such a dark album, really. It does have that song "Highlands" at the end.In the end, are you happy with "Time Out of Mind"? After all, it was seen as not merely a return to form for you but also as a real extension of your gifts - and as your most powerful work since 1975's "Blood on the Tracks."Well, you know, I never listen to my records. Once they're turned in, I'm done with them. I don't want to hear them anymore. I know the songs. I'll play them, but I don't want to hear them on a record. It sounds superficial to me to hear a record - I don't feel like it tells me anything in particular. I'm not going to learn anything from it.It was during the final stages of the album that you were hit with a serious swelling around your heart and were laid up in the hospital. You've said that that infection was truly painful and debilitating. Did it alter your view of life in any way?No. No, because it didn't! You can't even say something like, "Well, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time." Even that excuse didn't work. It was like I learned nothing. I wish I could say I put the time to good use or, you know, got highly educated in something or had some revelations about anything. But I can't say that any of that happened. I just laid around and then had to wait for my strength to come back.Do you think that the proximity of your illness to the album's release helped account for why reviewers saw so many themes of mortality in "Time Out of Mind"?When I recorded that album, the media weren't paying any attention to me. I was totally outside of
it.True, but the album came out not long after you'd gone through the illness.It did?Yes. You were in the hospital in the spring of 1997, and Time Out of Mind was released in autumn that same year.OK, well, then it could've been perceived that way in the organized media. But that would just be characterizing the album, really.I want to step back a bit, to those years preceding Time Out of Mind. First, I'd like to ask you about an occasion at an earlier Grammy Awards, in 1991, when you received a Lifetime Achievement Award. At that point, America was deep into its involvement in the Gulf War. You came out onstage that night with a small band and played a severe version of "Masters of War" -- a performance that remains controversial even today. Some critics found it rushed and embarrassing, others thought it was brilliant. Then, after Jack Nicholson presented you the award, you made the following comment: "My daddy [once said], 'Son, it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own mother and father will abandon you. And if that happens, God will always believe in your own ability to mend your ways.' " I've always thought that was one of the more remarkable things I've heard you say. What was going through your mind at that time?I don't remember the time and place my father said that to me, and maybe he didn't say it to me in that exact way. I was probably paraphrasing the whole idea, really - I'm not even sure I paraphrased in the proper context. It might've been something that just sort of popped in my head at that time. The only thing I remember about that whole episode, as long as you bring it up, was that I had a fever -- like 104. I was extremely sick that night. Not only that, but I was disillusioned with the entire musical community and environment. If I remember correctly, the Grammy people called me months before then and said that they wanted to give me this Lifetime Achievement honor. Well, we all know that they give those things out when you're old -- when you're nothing, a has-been. Everybody knows that, right? So I wasn't sure whether it was a compliment or an insult. I wasn't really sure about it. And then they said, "Here's what we want to do. . . . " I don't want to name these performers because you know them, but one performer was going to sing "Like a Rolling Stone." Another performer was going to sing "The Times Are A-Changin'." Another was going to sing "All Along the Watchtower," and another was going to sing "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." They were going to sing bits of all these songs, and then they were going to have somebody introduce me, and I would just collect this Lifetime Achievement Award, say a few words and go on my merry way. The performers, they told me, had all agreed to it, so there really wasn't
anything for me to do except show up.Then the Gulf War broke out. The Grammy people called and said, "Listen, we're in a tight fix. So-and-so, who was going to sing 'Times Are A-Changin',' is afraid to get on an airplane. So-and-so, who was going to sing 'Like a Rolling Stone,' doesn't want to travel because he just had another baby and he doesn't want to leave his family." That's understandable. But then so-and-so, who was going to sing "It's All Over, Baby Blue," was in Africa and didn't want to take a chance flying to New York, and so-and-so, who was going to sing "All Along the Watchtower," wasn't sure he wanted to be at any high-visibility place right then, because it may be a little dangerous. So, they said, "Could you come and sing? Could you fill the time?" And I said, "What about the guy who's going to introduce me [Jack Nicholson]?" They said, "He's OK. He's coming." Anyway, I got disillusioned with all the characters at that time -- with their inner character and their ability to be able to keep their word and their idealism and their insecurity. All the ones that have the gall to thrust their tortured inner psyches on an outer world but can't at least be true to their word. From that point on, that's what the music business and all the people in it represented to me. I just lost all respect for them. There's a few that are decent and God-fearing and will stand up in a righteous way. But I wouldn't want to count on most of them. And maybe me singing "Masters of War" . . . I've said before that song's got nothing to do with being anti-war. It has more to do with the military industrial complex that Eisenhower was talking about. Anyway, I went up and did that, but I was sick, and I felt they put me through a whole lot of trouble over nothing. I just tried to disguise myself the best I could. That was more along the line of . . . you know, the press was finding me irrelevant then, and it couldn't have happened at a better time, really, because I wouldn't have wanted to have been relevant. I wouldn't have wanted to be someone that the press was examining -- every move. I wouldn't have ever been able to develop again in any kind of artistic way.But certainly you knew by playing "Masters of War" at the height of the Gulf War, it would be received a certain way.Yeah, but I wasn't looking at it that way. I knew the lyrics of the song were holding up, and I brought maybe two or three ferocious guitar players, you know? And I always had a song for any occasion.Truthfully, I was just disgusted in having to be there after they told me what they intended to do and then backed out. I probably shouldn't have even gone myself, and I wouldn't have gone, except the other guy [Nicholson] was true
to his word. [Taps his fingers rapidly on the tabletop]What about that statement you made, about the wisdom your father had shared with you? It could almost be read as a personal statement -- you talking about your own life. Or was it about the world around you?I was thinking more in terms of, like, we're living in a Machiavellian world, whether we like it or we don't. Any act that's immoral, as long as it succeeds, it's all right. To apply that type of meaning to the way I was feeling that night probably has more to do with it than any kind of conscious effort to bring out some religiosity, or any kind of biblical saying about God, one way or another. You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary. So people better be able to deal with that, too.That's interesting, because so many people think that God is constant, you know, and unchanging.Oh, absolutely.But "arbitrary" would seem to imply a rather different view. Is there something about the word "arbitrary" that you would like to clarify or perhaps that I'm not understanding?No. I mean, you can look it up in the dictionary. I don't consider myself a sophist or a cynic or a stoic or some kind of bourgeois industrialist, or whatever titles people put on people. Basically, I'm just a regular person. I don't walk around all the time out of my mind with inspiration. So what can I tell you about that? Anyway, I wasn't in a good state of mind that night. I was frustrated. It's difficult to attach yourself to the past or be paralyzed by the past in any kind of way, so I just said it and moved on. I was glad to have gotten out of there, really.You said a moment ago that this happened during a time when you weren't being seen as relevant and didn't want to be seen as relevant. Though you would continue to tour through most of the 1990s, more than seven years would pass between albums of new songs. Some biographers have more or less referred to this as a time when you seemed adrift and confused -- a time in which you seemed unhappy and disconnected from your music. What was going on during this period?I really thought I was through making records. I didn't want to make any more. I thought, "I'll make a couple more records and just have them be folk songs, in a really simplified way -- no big production or anything." Beyond that, I didn't want to record anymore. I was more concerned with what I do in personal appearances. It was clear to me I had more than enough songs to play. Forever. See, I'd made that record
with Lanois in 1988 [Oh Mercy]. I was already playing over a hundred shows a year at that point. I decided I would just go back to live performing, which I hadn't really thought I'd done since maybe 1966. Some performers make a lot of sacrifices to make a record -- they forfeit an abundance of time and energy. I did that with Lanois back then, and it worked out rather well.But then around that same time I was making a Traveling Wilburys record, and then I started this record with Don Was, Under the Red Sky. All of this was happening in the same period. Looking back on it now, it seems kind of unthinkable. I would leave the Wilburys and go down to Sunset Sound and record Under the Red Sky simultaneously, all within a set schedule because I needed to be in Prague or someplace on a certain date. And then both records -- the Wilburys record and Under the Red Sky -- I'd just leave them hanging and see the finished product later. All those things happened at the same time, and that was when I found I'd really had it. My rational mind didn't know what to make of that. I'd really had my fill. I was going to stick to my declaration and definitely not make any records. I didn't feel the need to announce that, but I had come to that conclusion. I didn't care to record no more. I'd rather play on the road. Recording was too mental. Also, I didn't feel I was writing any of the songs that I really wanted to write. I wasn't getting the help I needed to record right, I didn't like the sound of the records. . . . I don't really remember. It was just . . . one thing leads to another, you know? I reckoned I was done with it. But then you go out and play live shows, and you do get thoughts, and you do get an inspiration here and there. So I just reluctantly started writing things down, in the way I described that led to the making of Time Out of Mind.Did you ever consider just flat-out retiring?Well, I really don't have any defined retirement plan! More than a few times I probably felt I had retired. I felt I'd had retired in 1966 and 1967. I was fulfilling my recording contracts, but outside of that I think I felt like I had retired from the cultural scene at the time.Did you have comparable feelings at any point in the 1980s or 1990s?Something would always come up that put the idea off. But sure, at times I felt like, "I don't want to do this anymore." Then something would always lead me to something else, which would keep me at it.According to a couple of recent biographies, the late 1980s and early 1990s were troubling for you in other ways. Some people have claimed that these were years when you were drinking too frequently -- and that your drinking was
interfering with your music or was a reflection of a deeper unhappiness for you. According to these biographers, it wasn't until you quit drinking -- some time in the early 1990s -- that your performances and writing really rebounded.That's completely inaccurate. [Laughs] I can drink or not drink. I don't know why people would associate drinking or not drinking with anything that I do, really. I've never thought about it one way or another. For some reason there's a certain crowd -- if you want to call it a crowd -- that would assume certain things about me or anybody which simply aren't true. They perceive it by appearances. They might hear rumors. They might start rumors, but it's their own minds going to work. Therefore, if they believe a certain thing about that person, then any act that person does they would apply it to that. "Oh, he fell down -- he must be drinking." Or, "He smashed his car into a tree. I guess he was hopped-up on something." But those are people who are celebrity-minded. They live in their own universe, and they try to project it outwardly, and it doesn't work. Usually, those people have a touch of insanity, and they have to be knocked down to earth. It's like you got to choose. Either there's order or there's chaos, and you got to choose. People of that nature don't seem to understand either one. And they apply it to, well, in this country, to celebrities. But I don't think any of us who could fit the description of that can pay any mind to what people think or how many books are written or any of that if we want to exist and have a certain amount of free will about what we do. I mean, these kind of people are the ones who would make laws against free will, that are contrary to free will. They're just not serious people. Unfortunately, I guess, all performers have a bunch of them hanging on. Anybody and everybody can get typecast, you know, in a second, by just doing great work. But the truth is, it's my job to drive my own car, if you know what I mean. It's not somebody else's job.But something did seem to turn around for you in the early 1990s. You've said as much yourself. You've spoken about some epiphany that changed your purpose and commitment -- some recognition that came to you onstage. You've described it as a moment when you realized that what was important was not your legend or how that weighed you down. What was important, you seemed to say, was for you to stand by your work -- and that meant playing music on a regular basis, no matter who you were playing it for.It happened -- or had its beginning, anyway -- when I was playing some shows with the Grateful Dead [in 1987]. They wanted to play some of my songs that I hadn't played in years and years. I had already been on a long
string of dates with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and night after night I was only playing maybe fifteen to twenty of the songs I had written, and I couldn't really grasp the older ones. But when I began to play with the Grateful Dead, those are the only songs they wanted to play: the ones that I wasn't playing with Petty. I really had some sort of epiphany then on how to do those songs again, using certain techniques that I had never thought about. When I went back and played with Petty again, I was using those techniques, and I found I could play anything. But then there was a show in Switzerland when the techniques failed me, and I had to come up with another one really quick. I was kind of standing on a different foundation at that point and realized, "I could do this." I found out I could do it effortlessly -- that I could sing night after night after night and never get tired. I could project it out differently.Not only that, but Lonnie Johnson, the blues-jazz player, showed me a technique on the guitar in maybe 1964. I hadn't really understood it when he first showed it to me. It had to do with the mathematical order of the scale on a guitar, and how to make things happen, where it gets under somebody's skin and there's really nothing they can do about it, because it's mathematical. He didn't even play that way himself. He played mostly jazz -- a kind of guitar I can't play at all, though when I think of a guitar player, I think of somebody like Eddie Lang or Charlie Christian or Freddie Green. I don't listen to many people in the rock & roll area. Anyway, he just told me, "I want to show you something. You might be able to use this some day." It's more kind of an ancient way of playing. I always wanted to use this technique, but I never was really able to do it with my own songs.One of the things I've noticed about your shows is that starting in the 1990s they grew more and more musical. You've opened the songs up to more instrumental exploration and new textures and rhythmic shifts -- like you're trying to stretch or reinvent them -- and you seem very much at the heart of that. You're your own band director at this point.Well, I don't think you've seen me play too many mindless jams. What I do is all done with technique and certain stratagems. But they're not intellectual ones; they're designed to make people feel something. And I understand that it's not necessarily the same for everyone who hears me play and sing. Everyone is feeling a different thing. I would like to be a performer who maybe could read and write music and play the violin. Then I could design a bigger band with more comprehensive parts of harmony in different arrangements, and still have the songs evolve within that. But if