Bruce Springsteen Forum

This interview was held at Mikal Gilmore`s home and was part of an article that was published in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, October 13, 1985. I`ve left out the passages by Gilmore and concentrated on Bob`s answers:

On the interviewer`s record collection:

Dylan: “The Delmore Brothers – God, I really love them. I think they`ve influenced every harmony I`ve ever tried to sing. This Hank Williams thing with just him and his guitar – man, that`s something, isn`t it? I used to sing these songs way back, a long time ago, even before I played rock and roll as a teenager. Sinatra, Peggy Lee, yeah. I love all these people, but I tell you who I`ve really been listening to a lot lately – in fact, I`m thinking about recording one of his earlier songs – is Bing Crosby. I don`t think you can find better phrasing anywhere.”

On making music videos:

Dylan: “Making these things is like pulling teeth. For one thing, because of that movie “Renaldo and Clara”, I haven`t been in a place where I could ask for my own control over these things – plus, because my records aren`t exactly selling like Cyndi Lauper`s or Bruce`s, I didn`t feel I had the credibility to demand that control.

But the company wanted me to try one more to help boost “Empire Burlesque`s” sales, and I said I would as long as I got to name Dave Stewart as director. His stuff had a spontaneous look to it, and somehow I just figured he would understand what I was doing. And he did: He put together a great band for this lip-sync video and set us up with equipment on this little stage in a church somewhere in West L.A. So between all the time they took setting up camera shots and lights and all that stuff, we could just play live for this little crowd that had gathered there.

I can´t express how good that felt – in fact, I was trying to remember the last time I`D felt that kind of direct connection, and finally I realized it must have been back in the 50s, when I was 14 or 15 years old playing with four-piece rock and roll bands back in Minnesota. Back in those days there weren`t any sound systems or anything that you had to bother with. You`d set up your amplifiers and turn them up to where you wanted to turn them. That just doesn`t happen anymo`. Now there are just so many things that get in the way of that kind of feeling, that simple directness. For some reason, making this video just made me realize how far everything has come these last several years – and how far I`d come.”

On Live Aid and Farm Aid:

Dylan: “While it`s great that people are supporting USA for Africa or Farm Aid, what are they really doing to alleviate poverty? It`s almost like guilt money: Some guy halfway around the world is starving, so okay, put 10 buicks in the barrel, then you can feel you don`t have a guilty conscience about it. Obviously, on some level it does help, but as far as any sweeping movement to destroy hunger and poverty, I don`t see that happening.

Still, Live Aid and Farm Aid are fantastic things, but then musicians have always done things like that. When people want a benefit, you don`t see them calling dancers or architects or lawyers or even politicians – the power of music is that it has always drawn people together.

But at the same time, while they`re asking musicians to raise money, they`re also trying to blacklist our records, trying to take somebody like Prince or Madonna off the radio – the same people that they ask to help raise funds. And it isn`t just them. When they`re talking about blacklisting records and giving them ratings, they`re talking about everybody.”

On Bruce Springsteen`s growing popularity:

Dylan: “Bruce knows where he comes from – he has taken what everybody else has done and made his own thing out of it – and that`s great. But somebody`ll come along after Bruce, say 10 or 20 years from now, and maybe they`ll be looking to Bruce as their primary model and somehow miss the fact that his music comes from Elvis Presley and Woody Guthrie. In other words, all they`re going to get is Bruce; they`re not going to get what Bruce got.

If you copy somebody – and there`s nothing wrong with that – the top rule should be to go back and copy the guy that was there first. It`s like all the people who copied me over the years, too many of them just got me, they didn`t get what I got. “

On his own historical presence in rock and roll:

Dylan: “There are certain things you can say you`ve done along the way that count, but in the end it`s not really how many records you sell [Dylan has sold more than 35 million], or how big a show you play or even how many people end up imitating you. I know I`ve done a lot of things but if I`m proud of anything, it`s maybe that I helped bring somebody like Woody Guthrie – who was not a household name – to a little more attention, the same way the Rolling Stones helped bring Howlin` Wolf more recognition. It`s because of Woody Guthrie and people like him that I originally set out to do what I`ve done. Stumbling onto Woody Guthrie just blew my mind.

Then again, I never really dwell on myself too much in terms of what I`ve done. For one thing, so much if it went by in such a flash, it`s hard for me to focus. I was once offered a great deal of money for an autobiography, and I thought about it for a minute, then I decided I wasn`t ready. I have to be sat down and have this stuff drawn out of me, because on my own I wouldn`t think about these things. You just go ahead and you live your life and you move on to the next thing, and when it`s all said and done, the historians can figure it out. That`s the way I look at it.”

On the Biograph Box Set:

Dylan: “I`ve never really known what this thing is supposed to be. There´s some stuff that hasn`t been heard before, but most of my stuff has already been bootlegged, so to anybody in the know, there`s nothing on it they haven`t heard before. I probably would`ve put different things on it that haven`t been heard before, but I didn`t pick the material, I didn`t put it together and I haven`t been very excited about this thing. All it is, really, is repackaging, and it`ll just cost a lot of money. About the only thing that makes it special is Cameron`s book.”

Lack of sales. Does it bother him?

Dylan: “Yeah. In fact, it concerns me to a point where I was thinking about regrouping my whole thought on making records. If the records I make are only going to sell a certain amount, then why do I have to spent a lot of time putting them together? You see, I haven`t always been into recording all that much. It used to be that I would go and try to get some kind of tracks which was magical, with a vocal on it, and just wait for those moments. I mean, talk about Nebraska. People say to me, ‘When you gonna make a Nebraska album?’ Well, I love that record, but I think I`ve made five or six Nebraska albums, y`know?

You know, I can`t release all the stuff that I want to release. I`ve got a lot of just melodic instruments laying around. I was thinking the other day that maybe I should put them out, but I can`t. I`ve also got a record of just me and Clydie King singing together and it`s great, but it doesn`t fall into any category that the record company knows how to deal with. It`s like … well, something like the Delmore Brothers: it`s very simple and the harmonies are great. If it was up to me I`d put that kind of stuff out, or I would`ve put some of it on Biograph, but it`s not up to me. Anyway, who`s to know what people would make of it?”

Taken from Bob Dylan – Four Decades of Commentary by Carl Benson.