BOB DYLAN TALKS ABOUT HIS NEW RECORD WITH BILL FLANAGAN

A lot of this album feels like a Chess record from the fifties. Did you
have that sound in your head going in or did it come up as you
played?

Well some of the things do have that feel. It’s mostly in the way the
instruments were played.

You like that sound?

Oh yeah, very much so … the old Chess records, the Sun records … I think
that’s my favorite sound for a record.

What do you like about that sound?

I like the mood of those records - the intensity. The sound is uncluttered.
There’s power and suspense. The whole vibration feels like it could be coming
from inside your mind. It’s alive. It’s right there. Kind of sticks in your head like a
toothache.

Do you think the Chess brothers knew what they were doing?

Oh sure, how could they not? I don’t think they thought they were making
history though.

Did you ever meet Howlin’ Wolf? Muddy Waters?

I saw Wolf perform a few times but never met him. Muddy I knew a little bit.

I suspect that a lot of men will identify with MY WIFE’S HOME TOWN.
Do you ever get in hot water with your in-laws over your songs?

No not really. The only person it could matter to gets a kick out of it. That song
is meant as a compliment anyhow.

Do relatives come up to you at cookouts and ask when you’re going

to write a song for THEM?
Oh yeah, one of my uncles’ wives used to pester me all the time, “Bobby, when
are you gonna write a song about me … put me on the radio?” It would make
me uncomfortable.

How would you get out of it?

I’d say, “I already did Auntie. You’re just not listening to the right stations.”

Do you have a picture in your head of where these songs take

place? Where is the guy in LIFE IS HARD standing when he sings that
song?

Well the movie’s kind of a road trip from Kansas City to New Orleans. The guy’s
probably standing along the way somewhere.

Movie?

Yeah.

Right, you mentioned something about that before. How did you get
involved?

The French director, Olivier Dahan, approached me about composing some

songs for a film he was writing and directing.

When was that?

I can’t remember exactly, it was sometime last year.

What did you find intriguing about that? You must get approached
for movie songs all the time.

I had seen one of his other movies, the one about the singer Edith Piaf, and I
liked it.

What’s this new one about?

It’s kind of a journey … a journey of self discovery … takes place in the

American South.
Who’s in it?

At the time we were talking I didn’t know who was going to be in it. I think
Forest Whitaker and Renee Zellweger are in it now.

And he wanted you to do the soundtrack?

Yeah, pretty much. But he wasn’t too specific. The only thing he needed for
sure was a ballad for the main character to sing towards the end of the movie.
And that’s the song LIFE IS HARD.

Were all the songs on this record written for the movie then?

Well no, not really. We started off with LIFE IS HARD and then the record sort of
took its own direction.

The new record’s very different from Modern Times which was a
number one hit. It seems like every time you have a big hit, the next
time out you change things around. Why don’t you try to milk it a
little bit?

I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed
the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the
widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs
have more of a romantic edge.

How so?

These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times
songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain
way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no
point.

What do you mean by that?

There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some

people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian
period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people
prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t
particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in
a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if
there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to
make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face
value and it kind of freed me up.

In what way?

Well for instance, if there are shadows and flowers and swampy ledges in a
composition, that’s what they are in their essence. There’s no mystification.
That’s one way I can explain it.

Like a locomotive, a pair of boots, a kiss or the rain?

Right. All those things are what they are. Or pieces of what they are. It’s the
way you move them around that makes it work.

A lot of violence in these tunes – you advise anyone going to

Houston to keep their gun belts tight, someone’s packing a Saturday
Night Special in JOLENE, there’s a cold blooded killer stalking the
town in IT’S ALL GOOD and the woman in MY WIFE’S HOME TOWN is
going to make the singer kill someone. Does putting violence in a
song up the ante?

How do you mean that?

Does it make the song riskier?

Well no. The main point is to acknowledge things without going off the deep
end. I think whatever’s there is justified. You choose these things carefully.

You’ve been working in a lot of different areas lately. Your book

was a best-seller, you acted in a movie, “Theme Time Radio Hour” is
very popular and you had an exhibit of your art work. Does working
in other media feed back into the music?

I think if it happens it might happen the other way around.

Did Chronicles work like that?

Well sure, Chronicles has its own rhythm. And I guess that would come out of
playing songs.

How about your art work?

That’s completely out of the blue. I’ve always drawn and painted, but up until
recently, nobody’s taken an interest. There’s never been any support for it.

And now?

Well, I’ve had a museum exhibit, I have an association with a London gallery, and
there’ll probably be another exhibition of new works in another European
museum in 2010. Now I’m scrambling to keep up. I’ve been commissioned to
do paintings and they want me to work with iron and lead.

How do you find subject matter?

I just draw what’s interesting to me, and then I paint it. Rows of houses,
orchard acres, lines of tree trunks, could be anything. I can take a bowl of fruit
and turn it into a life and death drama. Women are power figures, so I depict
them that way. I can find people to paint in mobile home communities. I could
paint bourgeois people too. I’m not trying to make social comment or fulfill
somebody’s vision and I can find subject matter anywhere. I guess in some way
that comes out of the folk world that I came up in.

Say you wake up in a hotel room in Wichita and look out the window.
A little girl is walking along the train tracks dragging a big statue of
Buddha in a wooden wagon with a three-legged dog following
behind. Do you reach for your guitar or your drawing pad?

Oh wow. It would depend on a lot of things. The environment mostly; like what
kind of day is it. Is it a cloudless blue-gray sky or does it look like rain? A little
girl dragging a wagon with a statue in it? I’d probably put that in last. The
three-legged dog - what type? A spaniel, a bulldog, a retriever? That would
make a difference. I’d have to think about that. Depends what angle I’m seeing
it all from. Second floor, third floor, eighth floor. I don’t know. Maybe I’d want to
go down there. The train tracks too. I’d have to find a way to connect it all up. I
guess I would be thinking about if this was an omen or a harbinger of
something.

If a young man considering a career in the arts wanted to meet a lot

of women, would he be better off learning to paint or to play
guitar?

Probably neither. If he had women on his mind, he might think about becoming
a lawyer or a doctor.

Seriously?

Yeah, seriously. Maybe a private detective, but that would be the wrong
motivation for any career.

In IF YOU EVER GO TO HOUSTON the character sends messages to

three sisters in Dallas; two get off with a friendly greeting but then
the other is warned to “Pray the Sinner’s Prayer.” What’s the
Sinner’s Prayer?

That’s the one that begins with “Father forgive me for I have sinned.”

The guy in IF YOU EVER GO TO HOUSTON mentions he was in

Houston during the Mexican War. A lot of people think the Anglos
treated the Spanish badly in Texas, but miss the fact that the
Spanish had claimed Texas for Mexico without ever populating it.
They just drew a big line on the map and said, “All this is ours.” The
people who actually lived there were either Anglo settlers or
Indians, and none of them wanted anything to do with Spain or its
Mexican colony. Do you think Sam Houston has gotten a bum rap?

I don’t know. I never heard that he had gotten a bum rap. Are we talking about
Sam Houston the statesman, soldier and politician? Sam Houston was the
governor of two states, both Texas and Tennessee. Who else has ever done
that! What was he supposed to have gotten a bum rap for?

Well, he chopped off Texas from Mexico.

No he didn’t. He chopped it off from Spain. Just like somebody else chopped off
Florida from Spain. Where does the bum rap come in?

Somebody insulted him in the movie GIANT, which got Rock Hudson
all worked up. And I think Steve Earle might have taken a shot at
him - or maybe it was Colonel Travis.
GIANT’S all about money. That’s where Jimmy Dean says to Rock Hudson, “I’ll
have more money than you and all the rest of you stinkin’ sons of Benedict.” I
thought it was that which got Rock so worked up. Steve Earle, he may know
something I don’t know. As for Travis, he was a lawyer and died at the Alamo. It
could have been something personal.

The instrumental sections on your albums have a different quality

than the usual rock instrumental sections. For instance, on an
Aerosmith record, at least part of it is about Joe Perry’s solo. While
there's wonderful playing on BEYOND HERE LIES NOTHING, we don't
hear the usual guitar soloing technique. Is there a special way you
approach the instrumental sections on a record?

What can I say, if I had Joe Perry with me everything would obviously be
different. As it is though, he wasn’t there. Soloing is not a big part of my
records anyway. Nobody buys them to hear solos. What I try to do is to make
sure that the instrumental sections are dynamic and are extensions of the
overall feeling of the song.

Who’s that playing with you here?

Mike Campbell.

You have a history with Mike?

Yeah, I do. He played with me a lot when I played with Tom Petty.

I saw some of those shows. I particularly liked the segment during

the show when it was just you and Mike and Benmont and no bass or
drums.

Yeah. We worked out a few things. I would’ve always liked to have seen that
develop more, but it didn’t.

How is he to work with?

He’s good with me. He’s been playing with Tom for so long that he hears
everything from a songwriter’s point of view and he can play most any style.
A lot of accordion on this record – in places where we might expect
to hear harmonica or organ or lead guitar.

Yeah, I guess so. The accordion can sound like all those instruments. Actually, I
wished I had used it more on some of my past records.

Who’s playing that?

David Hidalgo.

Have you guys ever played together before.

I think so. Los Lobos played some shows with me in Mexico a while back. I
remember playing some things with David and Cesar then.

Is there a chance you’ll add an accordion on stage?

Well sure, if I could fit it into my rhythm section.

Did you write any of these songs with the accordion in mind or did it
come up during the sessions?

I use an accordion player when I play off-road shows. It’s a perfect instrument in
a lot of ways. It’s orchestrative and percussive at the same time. Actually
accordion players were the first musicians that I had seen a lot of growing up.

“Opened his eyes to the tune of the accordion.”

Precisely.

Tell me about Joey Gallo.

Tell you what about him?

You wrote a song about him. Some say it takes liberty with the
truth.

Really? I wouldn’t know. Jacques Levy wrote the words. Jacques had a
theatrical mind and he wrote a lot of plays. So the song might have been
theater of the mind. I just sang it. Some say Davy Crockett takes a lot of
liberties with the truth and Billy the Kid too - FDR in Trinidad. Have you ever
heard that?

I certainly do remember it. "When Roosevelt came to the land of

the hummingbird." I wonder if anybody in Georgia or Ukraine wrote a
song about George Bush's visit? I know they named the airport road
after him and his popularity in those places remained very high,
even when no one liked him at home.

They name roads after a lot of people.

In MY WIFE’S HOME TOWN there’s the line, “Dreams never did work
for me anyway.” Do you really believe that?

Well, yeah. Dreams can lead us up a blind alley. Everybody has dreams. We go to
sleep and we dream. I’ve always thought of them as coming out of the
subconscious. I guess you can interpret them. Dreams can tell us a lot about
ourselves, if we can remember them. We can see what’s coming around the
corner sometimes without actually going to the corner.

Can’t dreams also mean hopes about the future?

Oh sure. It’s about how we use the word, I guess. Hopes for the future? I’ve
always connected them up with fears about the future. Hopes and fears go
together like a comedy team. But I know what you are talking about. Like in the
Everly Brothers song, ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM. If they said, “All I have to do
is hope,” it wouldn’t be saying the same thing. It wouldn’t be as strong.

What about political dreams?

Oh yeah. Politicians would have political dreams - dreams and ambitions. Maybe
we are talking about two different things.

What’s your take on politics?

Politics is entertainment. It’s a sport. It’s for the well groomed and well heeled.
The impeccably dressed. Party animals. Politicians are interchangeable.

Don’t you believe in the democratic process?

Yeah, but what’s that got to do with politics? Politics creates more problems
than it solves. It can be counter-productive. The real power is in the hands of
small groups of people and I don’t think they have titles.

In that song CHICAGO AFTER DARK, were you thinking about the new
President?

Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how
sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I
was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.

You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that?

I’d read his book and it intrigued me.

Audacity of Hope?

No it was called Dreams of My Father.

What struck you about him?

Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a

fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never
lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody
Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill.
Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson
Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African
intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage - cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean
it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You
kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey
except in reverse.

In what way?

First of all, Barack is born in Hawaii. Most of us think of Hawaii as paradise – so I

guess you could say that he was born in paradise.

And he was thrown out of the garden.

Not exactly. His mom married some other guy named Lolo and then took Barack
to Indonesia to live. Barack went to both a Muslim school and a Catholic school.
His mom used to get up at 4:00 in the morning and teach him book lessons
three hours before he even went to school. And then she would go to work.
That tells you the type of woman she was. That’s just in the beginning of the
story.

What else did you find compelling about him?

Well, mainly his take on things. His writing style hits you on more than one level.
It makes you feel and think at the same time and that is hard to do. He says
profoundly outrageous things. He’s looking at a shrunken head inside of a glass
case in some museum with a bunch of other people and he’s wondering if any of
these people realize that they could be looking at one of their ancestors.

What in his book would make you think he’d be a good politician?

Well nothing really. In some sense you would think being in the business of
politics would be the last thing that this man would want to do. I think he had a
job as an investment banker on Wall Street for a second - selling German bonds.
But he probably could’ve done anything. If you read his book, you’ll know that
the political world came to him. It was there to be had.

Do you think he’ll make a good president?

I have no idea. He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come
into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would
be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of
them going back. You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get
burned.

Did you ever read any other presidential autobiographies?

Yeah, I read Grant’s.

What was he like? Any similarities?

The times were different obviously. And Grant wrote his book after he’d left
office.
What did you find interesting about him?

It’s not like he’s a great writer. He’s analytical and cold, but he does have a
sense of humor. Grant, besides being a military strategist, was a working man.
Worked horses. Tended the horses, plowed and furrowed. Brought in all the
crops – the corn and potatoes. Sawed wood and drove wagons since the time
he was about eleven. Got a crystal clear memory of all the battles he’d been in.

Do you remember any particular battle that Grant fought?

There were a lot of battles but the Shiloh one is most interesting. He could’ve
lost that. But he was determined to win it at any price, using all kinds of
strategies, even faking retreat. You could read it for yourself.

When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that
no battles, except Gettysburg, were fought in the North.

Yeah. That’s what probably makes the Southern part of the country so
different.

There is a certain sensibility, but I’m not sure how that connects?

It must be the Southern air. It’s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed
spirits. They’re all screaming and forlorning. It’s like they are caught in some
weird web - some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can’t rest. They
can’t live, and they can’t die. It’s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting
to tell somebody something. It’s all over the place. There are war fields
everywhere … a lot of times even in people’s backyards.

Have you felt them?

Oh sure. You’d be surprised. I was in Elvis’s hometown – Tupelo. And I was

trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.

Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?

No, but I’ll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that
Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There’s an eeriness to the
town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.
Are you a mystical person?

Absolutely.

Any thoughts about why?

I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land
created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I‘m more at
home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a
love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous
type than a relationship type.

But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love
remembered, love denied.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Getting back to politics, what did you think of Jesse Ventura, being
a Minnesotan and all?

He did some good things or tried to. I never met him. All I know about the
governor is that he’s a Rolling Stones fan.

Your old cohorts?

I hear from Keith once in a while but that’s about it.

What do you think of the Stones?

What do I think of them? They’re pretty much finished, aren’t they?

They had a gigantic tour last year. You call that finished?

Oh yeah, you mean Steel Wheels. I’m not saying they don’t keep going, but
they need Bill. Without him they’re a funk band. They’ll be the real Rolling
Stones when they get Bill back.

Bob, you’re stuck in the 80’s.

I know. I’m trying to break free.

Do you really think the Stones are finished?

Of course not, They’re far from finished. The Rolling Stones are truly the
greatest rock and roll band in the world and always will be. The last too.
Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you
name it …. you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first
and the last and no one’s ever done it better.

THIS DREAM OF YOU has this wonderful South of the Border feel, but
at the same time, I detect echoes of Sam Cooke, the Coasters, the
Brill Building, and Phil Spector. Were those records from the 50's
and 60's important to you? Did you try to capture some of that
flavor in THIS DREAM OF YOU?

Those fifties and sixties records were definitely important. That might have
been the last great age of real music. Since then or maybe the seventies its all
been people playing computers. Sam Cooke, the Coasters, Phil Spector, all that
music was great but it didn’t exactly break into my consciousness. Back then I
was listening to Son House, Leadbelly, the Carter family, Memphis Minnie and
death romance ballads. As far as songwriting, I wanted to write songs like
Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson. Timeless and eternal. Only a few of those
radio ballads still hold up and most of them have Doc Pomus’ hand in them.
Spanish Harlem, Save the Last Dance for Me, Little Sister … a few others.
Those were fantastic songs. Doc was a soulful cat. If you said there was a little
bit of him in THIS DREAM OF YOU I would take it as a compliment.

Even though many of the tracks on the album are about love, the
album is full of pain – sometimes in the same song. In BEYOND HERE
LIES NOTHING, the song is underscored by a feeling of foreboding.
You’re moving down "boulevards of broken cars.” You’re going to
love "as long as love will last.” Is pain a necessary part of loving?

Oh yeah, in my songs it is. Pain, sex, murder, family - it goes way back.
Kindness. Honor. Charity. You have to tie all that in. You’re supposed to know
that stuff.

Getting back to THIS DREAM OF YOU, the character sings, “How long
can I stay in this nowhere café?” Where is that café?
It sounds like it’s south of the border or close to the border.

You’re not saying?

Well, no, it’s not like I’m not saying. But if you have those kind of thoughts and
feelings you know where the guy is. He’s right where you are. If you don’t have
those thoughts and feelings then he doesn’t exist.

The character in the song reminds me a lot of the guy who is in the
song ACROSS THE BORDERLINE.

I know what you’re saying, but it’s not a character like in a book or a movie.
He’s not a bus driver. He doesn’t drive a forklift. He’s not a serial killer. It’s me
who’s singing that, plain and simple. We shouldn’t confuse singers and
performers with actors. Actors will say, “My character this, and my character
that.” Like beating a dead horse. Who cares about the character? Just get up
and act. You don’t have to explain it to me.

Well can’t a singer act out a song?

Yeah sure, a lot of them do. But the more you act the further you get away
from the truth. And a lot of those singers lose who they are after a while. You
sing, “I’m a lineman for the county,” enough times and you start to scamper up
poles.

What actor could you hear singing THIS DREAM OF YOU?

Gosh I don’t know, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney

How about Humphrey Bogart?

Yeah, sure, him too. Funny thing about actors and that identity thing. Every
time I run into Val Kilmer, I can’t help myself. I say, “Why, Johnny Ringo - you
look like somebody just walked on your grave.” Val always says, “Bob, I’m not
Johnny Ringo. That’s just a role I played in a movie.” He could be right, he could
be wrong. I think he’s wrong but he says it in such a sincere way. You have to
think he thinks he’s right.

Do you think actors have to be sincere?

Not at all. Mae West wasn’t. She was just who she was on the screen. Just like
Jimmy Stewart and Burt Lancaster.

And Johnny Weissmuller.

Yeah, Lon Chaney, too.

Could that mean that Alec Guinness is Hitler?

Well sure, a part of him is. But of course he’s not Hitler. And neither is anybody
else. Hitler was Hitler.

Do you remember images of Hitler from growing up?

No, not growing up. He was dead by the time I was four or five. I never had a
real understanding of that.

Never had an understanding of what?

How you take a failed landscape painter and turn him into a fanatical mad man
who controls millions. That’s some trick. I mean the powers that created him
must have been awesome.

Well, the social and economic conditions of the Weimar Republic

were so different than now.

Yeah sure, looking back in hindsight, you can see that someone would have to
take control. But still, it’s so perplexing. Like why him? You could see that the
man’s a total mutt. No Aryan characteristics whatsoever. You couldn’t guess his
ancestry. Brown hair, brown eyes, pasty complexion, no particular type of
stature, Hitler mustache, raincoat, riding whip, the whole works. He knew
something. He knew that people didn’t think. Look at the faces of the millions
who worshipped him and you see that he inspired love. It’s scary and sad. The
torch of the spoken word. They were glad to follow him anywhere, loyal to the
bone. Then of course, he filled up the cemeteries with them.

It brings to mind Hitler talking to the crowd in Triumph of the Will

by Leni Riefenstahl.

Yeah, it’s clear as day.

Going back to that song you wrote for the movie that you
mentioned earlier, LIFE IS HARD has the formality of an old Rudy
Vallee or Nelson Eddy ballad right down to the middle eight (“Ever
since the day…”). Do you figure that if you start a song in that
style, you stick with the rules right down the line?

Sure, I try to stick to the rules. Sometimes I might shift paradigms within the
same song, but then that structure also has its own rules. And I combine them
both, see what works and what doesn’t. My range is limited. Some formulas are
too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

FORGETFUL HEART - how do you decide to put an Appalachian banjo

on a minor key blues? Is it something you think of ahead of time or
does it come up in the session?

I think it probably came up at the studio. A banjo wouldn’t be out of character

though. There is a minor key modality to FORGETFUL HEART. It’s like Little
Maggie or Darling Cory, so there is no reason a banjo shouldn’t fit or sound
right.

You wrote a lot of these songs with Robert Hunter. How does that
process work?

There isn’t any process to speak of. You just do it. You drive the car.
Sometimes you get out from behind the wheel and let someone else step on the
gas.

You must have known Hunter a long time. Do you remember where
you first met?

It was either back in ’62 or ‘63 when I played in the Bay area. I might have met
him in Palo Alto or Berkeley or Oakland. I played all those places then and I could
have met Hunter around that time. I know he was around.

Didn’t Hunter play in a bluegrass band with Jerry Garcia?

Yeah, it was either that or a jug band.

Have you ever thought about composing anything with those

Nashville songwriters?
I’ve never thought about that.

Neil Diamond did an album years ago where he co-wrote with

different Nashville songwriters.

Yeah, that might have worked for him. I don’t think it would work for me.

You don’t think it would work for you?

No. I’m okay without it. I’m not exactly obsessed with writing songs. I go back a
ways with Hunter. We’re from the same old school so it makes it’s own kind of
sense.

Do you listen to a lot of songs?

Yeah – sometimes.

Who are some of your favorite songwriters?

Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those
kinds of writers.

What songs do you like of Buffett’s?

DEATH OF AN UNPOPULAR POET. There’s another one called HE WENT TO

PARIS.

You and Lightfoot go way back.

Oh yeah. Gordo’s been around as long as me.

What are your favorite songs of his?

SHADOWS, SUNDOWN, IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND. I can’t think of any I don’t
like.

Did you know Zevon?

Not very well.

What did you like about him?

LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY. BOOM BOOM MANCINI. Down hard stuff. JOIN ME
IN L.A. sort of straddles the line between heartfelt and primeval. His musical
patterns are all over the place, probably because he’s classically trained. There
might be three separate songs within a Zevon song, but they’re all effortlessly
connected. Zevon was a musician’s musician, a tortured one. DESPERADO
UNDER THE EAVES. It’s all in there.

Randy Newman?

Yeah, Randy. What can you say? I like his early songs, SAIL AWAY, BURN DONW
THE CORNFIELD, LOUISIANA, where he kept it simple. Bordello songs. I think of
him as the Crown Prince, the heir apparent to Jelly Roll Morton. His style is
deceiving. He’s so laid back that you kind of forget he’s saying important things.
Randy’s sort of tied to a different era like I am.

How about John Prine?

Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth

degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first
brought him on the scene. All that stuff about SAM STONE the soldier junky
daddy and DONALD AND LYDIA, where people make love from ten miles away.
Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might
be LAKE MARIE. I don’t remember what album that’s on.

A lot of the acts from your generation seem to be trading on

nostalgia. They play the same songs the same way for the last 30
years. Why haven’t you ever done that?

I couldn’t if I tried. Those guys you are talking about all had conspicuous hits.
They started out anti-establishment and now they are in charge of the world.
Celebratory songs. Music for the grand dinner party. Mainstream stuff that
played into the culture on a pervasive level. My stuff is different from those
guys. It’s more desperate. Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys,
Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly
… exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So
there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I’m no mainstream artist.
Then what kind of artist are you?

I’m not sure, Byronesque maybe. Look, when I started out, mainstream culture
was Sinatra, Perry Como, Andy Williams, Sound of Music. There was no fitting
into it then and of course, there’s no fitting into it now. Some of my songs have
crossed over but they were all done by other singers.

Have you ever tried to fit in?

Well, no, not really. I’m coming out of the folk music tradition and that’s the
vernacular and archetypal aesthetic that I’ve experienced. Those are the
dynamics of it. I couldn’t have written songs for the Brill Building if I tried.
Whatever passes for pop music, I couldn’t do it then and I can’t do it now.

Does that mean you create outsider art? Do you think of yourself as
a cult figure?

A cult figure, that’s got religious connotations. It sounds cliquish and clannish.
People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young. Back then
I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had
no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing
through. The side show performers - bluegrass singers, the black cowboy with
chaps and a lariat doing rope tricks. Miss Europe, Quasimodo, the Bearded Lady,
the half-man half-woman, the deformed and the bent, Atlas the Dwarf, the fire-
eaters, the teachers and preachers, the blues singers. I remember it like it was
yesterday. I got close to some of these people. I learned about dignity from
them. Freedom too. Civil rights, human rights. How to stay within yourself. Most
others were into the rides like the tilt-a-whirl and the rollercoaster. To me that
was the nightmare. All the giddiness. The artificiality of it. The sledge hammer
of life. It didn’t make sense or seem real. The stuff off the main road was where
force of reality was. At least it struck me that way. When I left home those
feelings didn’t change.

But you’ve sold over a hundred million records.

Yeah I know. It’s a mystery to me too.

LIFE IS HARD comes from a tradition that got pretty much wiped out
by the popularity of swing and blues and rock n roll. I remember
Leon Redbone said once that the big break in 20th century music
was not in the 50’s when rock came in; it was when swing and jazz
knocked off parlor piano ballads in the late 20’s and early 30’s. Do
you ever wish that old style had stuck around a little longer?

Today, the mad rush of the world would trample over delicate music like that.
Even if it had survived swing and jazz it would never make it past Dr. Dre.
Things changed economically and socially. Two world wars, the stock market
crash, the depression, the sexual revolution, huge sound systems, techno-pop.
How could anything survive that? You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of
hi rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless
state of life. I love those old piano ballads. In my hometown walking down dark
streets on quiet summer nights you would sometimes hear parlor tunes coming
out of doorways and open windows. Somebody’s mother or sister playing A
BIRD IN A GILDED CAGE off of sheet music. I actually tried to conjure up that
feeling once in a song I did called IN THE SUMMERTIME.

No one was expecting a new album from you right now. I heard even
the record company was surprised. How do you know it’s time to go
in and make a new one?

You never do know. You just think sometimes if not now I’ll never do it. This
particular album was supposed to come out next Fall sometime; September,
October; when the movie’s released. We made it last year and it was supposed
to be put away for a year. But then the guys from the record company heard it,
and decided that they would like to put it out in early spring and not wait for
the movie.

You don’t use elevated language on these songs – it’s mostly every-
day speech and imagery. Did you decide to keep a lid on the poetry
this time out - was it what the musical style demanded?

I’m not sure I agree. It’s not easy to define poetry. Hank Williams used simple
language too.

IT’S ALL GOOD is a terrific song. You use that common catch phrase
as a hook and describe a world that gets darker and more miserable
with every verse – it’s kind of funny and kind of scary. How did that
song get started?
Probably from hearing the phrase one too many times.

Every girl named Roxanne feels a connection to Sting. Every Alison

thinks Elvis Costello was singing about her. You expecting to meet a
lot of Jolenes?

Oh gosh, I hope not.

Any chance your Jolene is the same woman who got Dolly Parton so
worked up?

You mean that woman with the flaming locks of auburn hair?

Yeah! Whose smile is like a breath of Spring.

Oh yeah, I remember her.

Is it the same one?

It’s a different lady.

At the end of JOLENE I noticed that those riffs start happening. I’ve
seen you do that live, but I’ve never heard that on any of your
records. I assume that’s Donnie playing with you.

Yeah, it is. The organ sound and steel guitar combined make those riffs.

Tony, your bass player has been with you now for … what?

Gee, I don’t know, probably for a while. Fifteen, twenty years.

How about your drummer, George?

Not as long as Tony but longer than my last drummer.

Where does George come from to play like that?

George is from Louisiana. He’s from New Orleans.

There’s no characters on this record like the ones in DESOLATION

ROW, except maybe Judge Simpson in SHAKE, SHAKE MAMA. Would
he be one of these archetypal figures like Cinderella or Shakespeare
in the alley?

Oh, most definitely. He’s a possum huntin’ judge.

Certain singers show up in IT’S ALL GOOD. Neil Young and Alicia
Keys have popped up on your recent albums. Do you think all your
musician friends are going to be looking for shout-outs now? Once
you start down that road how do you get out of it?

Well these people are archetypes, too. They might not think of themselves like
that, but they are. They represent an idea.

Could you write a song about anybody?

Well I bet you could, yeah.

How would you get Stevie Wonder into a song?

When Stevie Wonder recorded BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND/ I was playin’ cards/ I was
drinkin’ gin/

Could you write a song LIKE Stevie wonder?

I could write one like SUPERSTITION but I couldn’t write one like SIR DUKE.

Could you write a song about George Bush?

Well sure. George’s name would be easy to rhyme.

In the song I FEEL A CHANGE COMING ON the character says….

Wait a minute Bill. I’m not a playwright. The people in my songs are all me.
I thought we talked about that?

What exactly makes it you?

It’s in the way you say things. It’s not necessarily the things you say that make
you who you are.
Okay, I think the line is, “I see my baby coming, she’s walking with
the village priest/I feel a change coming on.”

Yeah, but you’re leaving a lot out.

Okay, but that’s the part I remember. I assume the guy, or YOU, are
talking about being hooked up with somebody and feeling pretty
good about it. Given what a hard time women have given the men,
or YOU, in the other songs on the album, we can read this as a
happy ending or a sign of trouble ahead. What are the chances that
the guy in FEEL A CHANGE is likely to live happily ever after?

You might be reading too much into it. It’s not a fairy tale type song. There are
degrees of happiness. You go from one to the other and then back again. It’s
hard to be completely happy when those around us are suffering and groaning
from hunger. But I know what you mean. You are talking about riding off into
the sunset hoping that whatever you’ve done will outlive you.

Isn’t that the Hindu point of view?

Maybe it is.

A lot of performers give God credit for their music. How do you
suppose God feels about that?

I’m not the one to ask. It sounds like people just giving credit where credit is
due.

How do you think this new record will be received?

I know my fans will like it. Other than that, I have no idea.