him it’s hard to believe he wasn’t giving a hundred percent on
Highway 61 Revisited
or
Blonde on Blonde.
He flashes a shy grin and shrugs. “Well, maybe I was. But there’s something at the back of your mind that says, ’I’m not giving you a hundred percent. I’m not giving
anybody
a hundred percent. I’m gonna give you this much, and this much is gonna have to do. I’m good at what I do. I can afford to give you this much and still be as good as, if not better than, the guy over across the street.’ I’m not gonna give it all—I’m not Judy Garland, who’s gonna die onstage in front of a thousand clowns. If we’ve learned anything, we should have learned that.”
A moment later an engineer is standing in the doorway, telling Dylan the overdubs are done. “This is all gonna pass,” Dylan says before getting up to go back into the studio. “All these people who say whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing—that’s all gonna pass, because, obviously, I’m not gonna be around forever. That day’s gonna come when there aren’t gonna be any more records, and then people won’t be able to say, ’Well
this
one’s not as good as the last one.’ They’re gonna have to look at it all. And I don’t know what the picture will be, what people’s judgment will be at that time. I can’t help you in that area.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, Bob Dylan sits on a dog-eared sofa in the Van Nuys studio where Tom Petty is working, sipping at a plastic cup full of whiskey and water. He blows a curt puff of smoke and broods over it. His weary air reminds me of something he’d said earlier: “Man, sometimes it seems I’ve spent half my life in a recording studio. . . . It’s like living in a coal mine.”
Dylan and Petty have been holed up in this room the better part of the night, working on a track called “Got My Mind Made Up,” which they have co-written for Dylan’s album. By all appearances, it’s been a productive session: The tune is a walloping, Bo Diddley-like raveup with Delta blues-style slide guitar, and Dylan has been hurling himself into the vocal with a genuinely staggering force. Yet there’s also a note of tension about the evening. The pressure of completing the album has reportedly been wearing on Dylan, and his mood is said to have been rather dour and unpredictable these last several days. In fact, somewhere along the line he has decided to put aside most of the rock & roll tracks he had been working on in Topanga, and is apparently now assembling the album from various sessions that have accrued over the last year. “It’s all sorts of stuff,” he says. “It doesn’t really have a theme or a purpose.”
While waiting for his backup singers to arrive, Dylan tries to warm up to the task of the evening’s interview. But in contrast to his manner in our earlier conversations, he seems somewhat distracted, almost edgy, and many questions don’t seem to engender much response. After a bit, I ask him if he can tell me something about the lyrical tenor of the songs. “Got My Mind Made Up,” for example, includes a reference to Libya. Will this be a record that has something to say about our national mood?
He considers the subject. “The kinds of stuff I write now come out over all the years I’ve lived,” he says, “so I can’t say anything is really that current. There may be one line that’s current. . . . But you have to go on. You can’t keep doing the same old thing all the time.”
I try a couple more questions about political matters—about whether he feels any kinship with the new activism in pop music—but he looks exhausted at the possibility of seriously discussing the topic. “I’m opposed to whatever oppresses people’s intelligence,” he says. “We all have to be against that sort of thing, or else we have nowhere to go. But that’s not a fight for one man, that’s everybody’s fight.”
Over the course of our interviews, I’ve learned you can’t budge
Highway 61 Revisited
or
Blonde on Blonde.
He flashes a shy grin and shrugs. “Well, maybe I was. But there’s something at the back of your mind that says, ’I’m not giving you a hundred percent. I’m not giving
anybody
a hundred percent. I’m gonna give you this much, and this much is gonna have to do. I’m good at what I do. I can afford to give you this much and still be as good as, if not better than, the guy over across the street.’ I’m not gonna give it all—I’m not Judy Garland, who’s gonna die onstage in front of a thousand clowns. If we’ve learned anything, we should have learned that.”
A moment later an engineer is standing in the doorway, telling Dylan the overdubs are done. “This is all gonna pass,” Dylan says before getting up to go back into the studio. “All these people who say whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing—that’s all gonna pass, because, obviously, I’m not gonna be around forever. That day’s gonna come when there aren’t gonna be any more records, and then people won’t be able to say, ’Well
this
one’s not as good as the last one.’ They’re gonna have to look at it all. And I don’t know what the picture will be, what people’s judgment will be at that time. I can’t help you in that area.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, Bob Dylan sits on a dog-eared sofa in the Van Nuys studio where Tom Petty is working, sipping at a plastic cup full of whiskey and water. He blows a curt puff of smoke and broods over it. His weary air reminds me of something he’d said earlier: “Man, sometimes it seems I’ve spent half my life in a recording studio. . . . It’s like living in a coal mine.”
Dylan and Petty have been holed up in this room the better part of the night, working on a track called “Got My Mind Made Up,” which they have co-written for Dylan’s album. By all appearances, it’s been a productive session: The tune is a walloping, Bo Diddley-like raveup with Delta blues-style slide guitar, and Dylan has been hurling himself into the vocal with a genuinely staggering force. Yet there’s also a note of tension about the evening. The pressure of completing the album has reportedly been wearing on Dylan, and his mood is said to have been rather dour and unpredictable these last several days. In fact, somewhere along the line he has decided to put aside most of the rock & roll tracks he had been working on in Topanga, and is apparently now assembling the album from various sessions that have accrued over the last year. “It’s all sorts of stuff,” he says. “It doesn’t really have a theme or a purpose.”
While waiting for his backup singers to arrive, Dylan tries to warm up to the task of the evening’s interview. But in contrast to his manner in our earlier conversations, he seems somewhat distracted, almost edgy, and many questions don’t seem to engender much response. After a bit, I ask him if he can tell me something about the lyrical tenor of the songs. “Got My Mind Made Up,” for example, includes a reference to Libya. Will this be a record that has something to say about our national mood?
He considers the subject. “The kinds of stuff I write now come out over all the years I’ve lived,” he says, “so I can’t say anything is really that current. There may be one line that’s current. . . . But you have to go on. You can’t keep doing the same old thing all the time.”
I try a couple more questions about political matters—about whether he feels any kinship with the new activism in pop music—but he looks exhausted at the possibility of seriously discussing the topic. “I’m opposed to whatever oppresses people’s intelligence,” he says. “We all have to be against that sort of thing, or else we have nowhere to go. But that’s not a fight for one man, that’s everybody’s fight.”
Over the course of our interviews, I’ve learned you can’t budge
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