thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
had to make it somehow. Obviously I'm not a hard-working cat. I played the guitar, that was all I did. I thought it was great music. Certainly I haven't turned my back on it or anything like that. There is--and I'm sure nobody realizes this, all the authorities who write about what it is and what it should be, when they say keep things simple, they should be easily understood--folk music is the only music where it isn't simple. It's never been simple. It's weird, man, full of legend, myth, Bible and ghosts. I've never written anything hard to understand, not in my head anyway, and nothing as far out as some of the old songs. They were out of sight.Q: Like what songs?A:"Little Brown Dog." "I bought a little brown dog, its face is all gray. Now I'm going to Turkey flying on my bottle." And "Nottemun Town," that's like a herd of ghosts passing through on the way to Tangiers. "Lord Edward," "Barbara Allen," they're full of myth.Q: And contradictions?A:Yeah, contradictions.Q: And chaos?A:Chaos, watermelon, clocks, everything.Q: You wrote on the back of one album, "I accept chaos but does chaos accept me."A:Chaos is a friend of mine. It's like I accept him, does he accept me.Q: Do you see the world as chaos?A:Truth is chaos. Maybe beauty is chaos.Q: Poets like Eliot and Yeats--A:I haven't read Yeats.Q: they saw the world as chaos, accepted it as chaos and attempted to bring order from it. Are you trying to do that?A:No. It exists and that's all there is to it. It's been here longer than I have. What can I do about it? I don't know what the songs I write are. That's all I do is write songs, right? Write. I collect things too.Q: Monkey wrenches?A:Where did you read about that? Has that been in print? I told this guy out on the coast that I collected monkey wrenches, all sizes and shapes of monkey wrenches, and he didn't believe me. I don't think you believe me either. And I collect the pictures too. Have you talked to Sonny and Cher?Q: No.A:They're a drag. A cat got kicked out of a restaurant and he went home and wrote a song about it.Q: They say your fan mail has radically increased since you switched sounds.A:Yeah. I don't have time to read all of it, but I want you to put that I answer half of it. I don't really. A girl does that for me.Q: Does she save any for you--any particularly interesting letters?A:She knows my head. Not the ones that just ask for pictures, there's a file for them. Not the ones that say, I want to make it with you, they go in another file. She saves two kinds. The violently put-down--Q: The ones that call you a sellout?A:yeah. Sellout, fink, Fascist, Red, everything in the book. I really dig those. And ones from old friends.Q: Like, "You don't remember me but I was in the fourth grade with you"?A:No, I never had any friends then. These are letters
from people who knew me in New York five, six years ago. My first fans. Not the people who call themselves my first fans. They came in three years ago, two years ago. They aren't really my first fans.Q: How do you feel about being booed at your concert at Forest Hills?A:I thought it was great, I really did. If I said anything else I'd be a liar.Q: And at Newport Folk Festival?A:that was different. They twisted the sound. They didn't like what I was going to play and they twisted the sound on me before I began.Q: I hear you are wearing a sellout jacket.A:What kind of jacket is a sellout jacket?Q: Black leather.A:I've had black leather jackets since I was five years old. I've been wearing black leather all my life.Q: I wonder if we could talk about electronic music and what made you decide to use it.A:I was doing fine, you know, singing and playing my guitar. It was a sure thing, don't you understand, it was a sure thing. I was getting very bored with that. I couldn't go out and play like that. I was thinking of quitting. Out front it was a sure thing. I knew what the audience was gonna do, how they would react. It was very automatic. Your mind just drifts unless you can find some way to get in there and remain totally there. It's so much of a fight remaining totally there all by yourself. It takes too much. I'm not ready to cut that much out of my life. You can't have nobody around. You can't be bothered with anybody else's world. And I like people. What I'm doing now--it's a whole other thing. We're not playing rock music. It's not a hard sound. These people call it folk rock--if they want to call it that, something that simple, it's good for selling records. As far as it being what it is, I don't know what it is. I can't call it folk rock. It's a whole way of doing things. It has been picked up on, I've heard songs on the radio that have picked it up. I'm not talking about words. It's a certain feeling, and it's been on every single record I've ever made. That has not changed. I know it hasn't changed. As far as what I was totally, before, maybe I was pushing it a little then. I'm not pushing things now. I know it. I know very well how to do it. The problem of how I want to play something--I know it in front. I know what I am going to say, what I'm going to do. I don't have to work it out. The band I work with--they wouldn't be playing with me if they didn't play like I want them to. I have this song, "Queen Jane Approximately"--Q: Who is Queen Jane?A:Queen Jane is a man.Q: Was there something that made you decide to change sounds? Your trip to England?A:I like the sound. I like what I'm doing now. I would
have done it before. It wasn't practical to do it before. I spend most of my time writing. I wouldn't have had the time. I had to get where I was going all alone. I don't know what I'm going to do next. I probably will record with strings some time, but it doesn't necessarily change. It's just a different color. And I know it's real. No matter what anybody says. They can boo till the end of time. I know that the music is real, more real than the boos.Q: How do you work?A:Most of the time I work at night. I don't really like to think of it as work. I don't know how important it is. It's not important to the average cat who works eight hours a day. What does he care? The world can get along very well without it. I'm hip to that.Q: Sure, but the world can get along without any number of things.A:I'll give you a comparison. Rudy Vallee. Now that was a lie, that was a downright lie. Rudy Vallee being popular. What kind of people could have dug him? You know, your grandmothers and mothers. But what kind of people were they? He was so sexless. If you want to find out about those times and you listen to his music you're not going to find out anything about the times. His music was a pipedream. All escapes. There are no more escapes. If you want to find out anything that's happening now, you have to listen to the music. I don't mean the words, although "Eve of Destruction" will tell you something about it. The words are not really gonna tell it, not really. You gotta listen to the Stapes(Staple?) Singers, Smokey and the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas. That's scary to a lot of people. It's sex that's involved. it's not hidden. It's real. You can overdo it. It's not only sex, it's a whole beautiful feeling.Q: But Negro rhythm and blues has been around underground for at least twelve years. What brought it out now?A:The English did that. They brought it out. They hipped everybody. You read an interview asking who the Beatles' favorite singer was and they say Chuck Berry. You never used to hear Chuck Berry records on the radio, hard blues. The English did that. England is great and beautiful, though in other ways kinda messy. Though not outside London.Q: In what way messy?A:There's a snobbishness. What you see people doing to other people. It's not only class. It's not that simple. It's a kind of Queen kind of thing. Some people are royalty and some are not. Here, man, somebody don't like you he tells you. There it's very tight, tight kinds of expressions, their whole tone of speaking changes. It's an everyday kind of thing. But the kids are a whole other thing. Great. They're just more free. I hope you don't think I take this too seriously--I just have a headache.Q: I think you started out to say that music was more in
tune with what's happening than other art forms.A:Great paintings shouldn't be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemetaries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men's rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out. The only thing where it's happening is on radio and records, that's where people hang out. You can't see great paintings. You pay half a million and hang one in your house and one guest sees it. That's not art. That's a shame, a crime. Music is the only thing that's in tune with what's happening. It's not in book form, it's not on the stage. All this art they've been talking about is nonexistent. It just remains on the shelf. It doesn't make anyone happier. Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner. It's not the bomb that has to go, man, it's the museums.
It was in March 1966 that PLAYBOY published the first full-length interview with Bob Dylan. In the intervening years, he has talked to journalists only rarely, and, shortly before completing his first feature film, he agreed to talk with us. We asked writer Ron Rosenbaum, who grew up listening to Dylan songs, to check in with the elusive artist. His report:"Call it a simple twist of fate, to use a Dylan line, but perhaps psychic twist of fate is more accurate. Because there was something of a turning point in our ten day series of conversations when we exchanged confidences about psychics. "Until that point, things had not been proceeding easily. Dylan has seldom been forthcoming with any answers, particularly in interview situations and has long been notorious for questioning the questions rather than answering them, replying with put-ons and tall tales and surrounding his real feelings with mystery and circumlocution. We would go round in circles, sometimes fascinating metaphysical circles, and I'd got a sense of his intellect but little of his heart. He hadn't given anyone a major interview for many years, but after my initial excitement at being chosen to do this one, l began to wonder whether Dylan really wanted to do it. "It's probably unnecessary to explain why getting answers from Bob Dylan has come to mean so much to many people. One has only to recall how Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, burst upon the early Sixties folk-music scene with an abrasive voice and an explosive intensity, how he created songs such as 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' that became anthems of the civil rights and antiwar movements. How he and his music raced through the Sixties at breakneck speed, leaving his folk followers behind and the politicos mystified with his electrifying, elliptical explorations of uncharted states of mind How, in songs such as 'Mr. Tambourine Man,' 'Desolation Row,' 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'Just like a Woman,' he created emotional road maps for an entire generation. How, in the midst of increasingly frenzied rock-'n'-roll touring, Dylan continued to surround the details of his personal life with mystery and wise-guy obfuscation, mystery that deepened ominously after his near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966. And how, after a long period of bucolic retreat devoted to fatherhood, family and country music, he suddenly returned to the stage with big nationwide tours in 1974 and, most recently, in 1976 with the all-star rock-'n'-roll ensemble known as The Rolling Thunder Revue. How his latest songs, particularly on the 'Blood on the Tracks' and 'Desire' albums, take us into new and often painful investigations of love and lust, and pain and loss, that suggest the emotional predicaments of the Seventies in a way few others can approach. "The anthologies that chronicle all of that are littered with the bodies of interviewers he's put on, put down or put off. I was wondering if I were on my way to becoming another statistic when we hit upon the psychic connection. "Late one afternoon, Dylan
began telling me about Tamara Rand, an L.A. psychic reader he'd been seeing, because when the world falls on your head, he said, 'you need someone who can tell you how to crawl out, which way to take.' I presumed he was referring obliquely to the collapse of his 12-year marriage to Sara Dylan. (Since the child-custody battle was in progress as we talked, Dylan's lawyer refused to permit him to address that subject directly.) Dylan seemed concerned that I understand that Tamara was no con artist, that she had genuine psychic abilities. I assured him I could believe it because my sister, in addition to being a talented writer, has some remarkable psychic abilities and is in great demand in New York for her prescient readings. Dylan asked her name (it's Ruth) and when I told him, he looked impressed. 'I've heard of her,' he said. I think that made the difference, because after that exchange, Dylan became far more forthcoming with me. Some of the early difficulties of the interview might also be explained by the fact that Dylan .was physically and mentally drained from an intense three-month sprint to finish editing and dubbing 'Renaldo & Clara,' the movie he'd been writing, directing and co-editing for a full two years. He looked pale, smoked a lot of cigerettes and seemed fidgety. The final step in the moviemaking process-the sound mix-was moving slowly, largely because of his own nervous perfectionism. "Most of our talks took place in a little shack of a dressing room outside dubbing stage five at the Burbank Studios. Frequently, we'd be interrupted as Dylan would have to run onto the dubbing stage and watch the hundredth run-through of one of the film's two dozen reels to see if his detailed instructions had been carried out. I particularly remember one occasion when I accompanied him onto the dubbing stage. Onscreen, Renaldo, played by Bob Dylan, and Clara, played by Sara Dylan (the movie was shot before the divorce-though not long before), are interrupted in the midst of connubial foolery by a knock at the door. In walks Joan Baez, dressed in white from head to toe, carrying a red rose. She says sine's come for Renaldo. When Dylan, as Renaldo, sees who it is, his jaw drops. At the dubbing console, one of the sound men stopped the film at the jaw-drop frame and asked, 'You want me to get rid of that footstep noise in the background, Bob?' 'What footstep noise?' Dylan asked. 'When Joan comes in and we go to Renaldo, there's some hind of footstep noise in the background, maybe from outside the door.' 'Those aren't footsteps,' said Dylan. 'That's the beating of Renaldo's heart.' 'What makes you so sure?' the sound man asked teasingly. 'I know him pretty well,' Dylan said, 'I know him by heart.' 'You want it kept there, then?' 'I want it louder,' Dylan said. He turned to me. 'You ever read that thing by Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"?' I was surprised at how willing Dylan was to explain the details
of his film; he'd never done that with his songs. But he's put two years and more than a piece of his heart into this five-hour epic and it seems clear that he wants to be taken seriously as a film maker with serious artistic ambitions. "In the 'Proverbs of Hell,' William Blake (one of Dylan's favorite poets) wrote: 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.' Eleven years ago, Dylan's motorcycle skidded of that road and almost killed him. But unlike most Dionysian Sixties figures, Dylan survived. He may not have reached the palace of wisdom (and, indeed, the strange palace of marble and stone he has been building at Malibu seems, according to some reports, to be sliding into the sea). But despite his various sorrows, he does seem to be bursting with exhilaration and confidence that he can still create explosive art without having to die in the explosion."PLAYBOY: Exactly 12 years ago, we published a long interview with you in this magazine, and there's a lot to catch up on. But we'd like at least to try to start at the beginning. Besides being a singer, a poet and now a film maker, you've also been called a visionary. Do you recall any visionary experiences while you were growing up?DYLAN: I had some amazing projections when I was a kid, but not since then. And those visions have been strong enough to keep me going through today.PLAYBOY: What were those visions like?DYLAN: They were a feeling of wonder. I projected myself toward what I might personally, humanly do in terms of creating any kinds of reality. I was born in, grew up in a place so foreign that you had to be there to picture it.PLAYBOY: Are you talking about Hibbing, Minnesota?DYLAN: It was all in upper Minnesota.PLAYBOY: What was the quality of those visionary experiences?DYLAN: Well, in the winter, everything was still, nothing moved. Eight months of that. You can put it together. You can have some amazing hallucinogenic experiences doing nothing but looking out your window. There is also the summer, when it gets hot and sticky and the air is very metallic. There is a lot of Indian spirit. The earth there is unusual, filled with ore. So there is something happening that is hard to define. There is a magnetic attraction there. Maybe thousands and thousands of years ago, some planet bumped into the land there. There is a great spiritual quality throughout the Midwest. Very subtle, very strong, and that is where I grew up. New York was a dream.PLAYBOY: Why did you leave Minnesota?DYLAN: Well, there comes a time for all things to pass.PLAYBOY: More specifically, why the dream of New York?DYLAN: It was a dream of the cosmopolitan riches of the mind.PLAYBOY: Did you find them there?DYLAN: It was a great place for me to learn and to meet others who were on similar journeys.PLAYBOY: People like Allen Ginsberg, for instance?DYLAN: Not necessarily him. He was pretty established by the time I got there. But it was Ginsberg and
Jack Kerouac who inspired me at first-and where I came from, there wasn't the sophisticated transportation you have now. To get to New York, you d have to go by thumb. Anyway, those were the old days when John Denver used to play sideman. Many people came out of that period of time. Actors, dancers, politicians, a lot of people were involved with that period of time.PLAYBOY: What period are you talking about?DYLAN: Real early Sixties.PLAYBOY: What made that time so special?DYLAN: I think it was the last go-round for people to gravitate to New York. People had gone to New York since the 1800s, I think. For me, it was pretty fantastic. I mean, it was like, there was a cafe-what was it called?-I forgot the name, but it was Aaron Burr's old livery stable. You know, just being in that area, that part of the world was enlightening.PLAYBOY: Why do you say it was the last go-round?DYLAN: I don't think it happened after that. I think it finished, New York died after that, late to middle Sixties.PLAYBOY: What killed it?DYLAN: Mass communication killed it. It turned into one big carnival side show. That is what I sensed and I got out of there when it was just starting to happen. The atmosphere changed from one of creativity and isolation to one where the attention would be turned more to the show. People were reading about themselves and believing it. I don't know when it happened. Sometime around Peter, Paul and Mary, when they got pretty big. It happened around the same time. For a long time, I was famous only in certain circles in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, and that was fine enough for me. I am an eyewitness to that time. I am one of the survivors of that period. You know as well as I do that a lot of people didn't make it. They didn't live to tell about it, anyway.PLAYBOY: Why do you think they didn't survive?DYLAN: People were still dealing with illusion and delusion at that time. The times really change and they don't change. There were different characters back then and there were things that were undeveloped that are fully developed now. But back then, there was space, space-well, there wasn't any pressure. There was all the time in the world to get it done. There wasn't any pressure, because no body knew about it. You know, I mean. music people were like a bunch of cotton pickers. They see you on the side of the road picking cotton, but nobody stops to give a shit. I mean, it wasn't that important. So Washington Square was a place where people you knew or met congregated every Sunday and it was like a world of music. You know the way New York is; I mean, there could be 20 different things happening in the same kitchen or in the same park; there could be 200 bands in one park in New York; there could be 15 jug bands, five bluegrass bands and an old
crummy string band, 20 Irish confederate groups, a Southern mountain band, folk singers of all kinds and colors, singing John Henry work songs. There was bodies piled sky-high doing whatever they felt like doing. Bongo drums, conga drums, saxophone players. xylophone players, drummers of all nations and nationalities. Poets who would rant and rave from the statues. You know, those things don't happen anymore. But then that was what was happening. It was all street. Cafes would be open all night. It was a European thing that never really took off. It has never really been a part of this country That is what New York was like when I got there.PLAYBOY: And you think that mass communications, such as Time magazine's putting Joan Baez on the cover-DYLAN: Mass communication killed it all. Oversimplification. I don't know whose idea it was to do that, but soon after, the people moved away.PLAYBOY: Just to stay on the track, what first turned you on to folk singing? You actually started out in Minnesota playing the electric guitar with a rock group, didn't you?DYLAN: Yeah. The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. That was in '58 or something like that. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson.PLAYBOY: What was so special to you about that Odetta record?DYLAN: Just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record. It was her first and the songs were-Mule Skinner, Jack of Diamonds, Water Boy, Buked and Scorned.PLAYBOY: When did you learn to play the guitar?DYLAN: I saved the money I had made working on my daddy's truck and bought a Silvertone guitar from Sears Roebuck. I was 12. I just bought a book of chords and began to play.PLAYBOY: What was the first song you wrote?DYLAN: The first song I wrote was a song to Brigitte Bardot.PLAYBOY: Do you remember how it went?DYLAN: I don't recall too much of it. It had only one chord. Well, it is all in the heart. Anyway, from Odetta, I went to Harry Belafonte, the Kingston Trio, little by little uncovering more as I went along. Finally, I was doing nothing but Carter Family and Jesse Fuller songs. Then later I got to Woody Guthrie, which opened up a whole new world at the time. I was still only 19 or 20. I was pretty fanatical about what I wanted to do, so after learning about 200 of Woody's songs, I went to see him and I waited for the right moment to visit him in a hospital in Morristown, New Jersey. I took a bus from New York, sat with him and sang his songs. I kept visiting him a lot and got on friendly terms with him. From that point on, it gets a little foggy.PLAYBOY: Folk singing was considered pretty weird in those days, wasn't