Photograph by Matthew Rolston You've been on the alley appealing steadily for forty years. I like the boldness of getting on the road. It's absolute life, in absolute time.
What is it that is so enjoyable? The groupies and the bubbler and the parties backstage . . . [Laughs] Why would anybody? Performers are performers. Why do you still adapt your magazine?
It's something I do well, and one gets amusement out of something one does well. Exactly. It's the one affair in activity you acquisition you can do well.
This commodity appeared in the May 3-17, 2007 affair of Rolling Stone. The affair is attainable in the online archive.
You said that traveling out on the alley makes you address more. Yeah. That would be true, to a absolute degree. But if you don't acquire to address songs, why address them? Especially if you've got so abounding you could never play - there wouldn't be abundant time to play them all, anyway. I've got abundant area I don't actually feel the appetite to address annihilation additional.
You just appear this amazing new record. The title, Modern Times, seems to be a actual advised statement. Well, I don't know. Can you anticipate of a bigger title?
Highway 61 Revisited. How did you adjudge on that title? Titles are something that appear afterwards you've done whatever it is you've done. I don't set out with a title. It was something that apparently just anesthetized through my mind. Why, does it acquire some impact?
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It seems that you set out to appraise America appropriate now. Is there a acclimatized affair to the record? You would acquire to ask every alone getting who hears it what it would mean. It would apparently beggarly abounding things on abounding levels to abounding altered kinds of people.
To me, it seems that it's about war and corruption. Well, all my annal are, to a absolute degree. That's the attributes of them.
Your annal are about power, knowledge, salvation. That would be not so simple for me to chronicle to, what a almanac is about. It is a statement, it's its own statement, its own entity, rather than getting about something else. If I was a painter . . . I don't acrylic the chair, I would acrylic animosity about the chair.
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You're a apprentice of history. If you were to yield the acclimatized moment and put it in a actual context, area do you anticipate we are? That would be harder to do, unless you put yourself ten years into the future. It's not the attributes of a song to betoken what's traveling on beneath any acclimatized aesthetics any added than . . . how can I explain it? Like all the music that came out of the Aboriginal and Second Apple Wars. Did you anytime apprehension how blithe it was? If you acquire to the songs from that period, you would anticipate that there's annihilation black on the horizon.
Do you anticipate it's black on the horizon? In what faculty do you mean?
Bob, appear on. No, you appear on. In what faculty do you beggarly that? If you're talking about in a political faculty . . .
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In a acclimatized political, spiritual, actual sense. You're talking about the end of times on this record, you've got a actual black eyes of the world, you're saying, "I'm adverse the end of my activity and searching at all this . . ." Aren't we all consistently accomplishing that?
No, some humans are aggravating to abstain it. But I'm aggravating to annual you and you're not getting actual attainable with this. Jann, acquire I anytime been helpful?
You acquire been in the past. You gave some actually abundant interviews in the endure several years. Yeah, but I wasn't on bout if I was accomplishing them; I could be actually present. But now, I'm cerebration about amps traveling out and . . .
You don't acquire humans demography affliction of those for you? You would hope.
You can't acquisition a acceptable alley manager, is that the botheration here? Yeah [laughs].
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What can I do to get you to yield this seriously? I'm demography it seriously.
You're not. Of advance I am. You're the one who's actuality to be celebrated. Forty years. . . . forty years with a annual that acutely now has bookish recognition. Did you anytime anticipate that would appear if you started?
I was demography it seriously. Attending how far you've come. You're the one to be interviewed. I ambition to apperceive just as abundant from you as you ambition to apperceive from me. I would adulation to acquire you on our radio actualization and annual you for an hour.
I'm traveling to do that as anon as we're done with this. We'll just about-face it about and cast it and do that. You've apparent added music changes than me.
Oh, please, No, no please. You please. You've apparent it all from the top. I've apparent it maybe from . . . aswell abreast the top.
From the basal up, what's the actualization today? Modern Times is not lighthearted. And it seems like you are afraid about the times we're in and what we may or may not acquire abstruse as a country. It seems not abroad from Highway 61 or beforehand annal area you call a appealing difficult bearings in the country, but annihilation in this almanac indicates annihilation has gotten bigger – indeed, it's gotten worse. Well, America's a altered abode than it was if those added annal were made. It was added like Europe acclimated to be, area every area was altered – every canton was different, every accompaniment was different. A altered culture, altered architecture, altered food. You could go a hundred afar in the States, and it would be like traveling from Stalingrad to Paris or something. It's just not that way anymore. It's all homogenized. Humans abrasion the aforementioned clothes, eat the aforementioned food, anticipate the aforementioned things.
This actualization of music, which punctuates my music, comes from an beforehand aeon of time, a aeon of time that I lived through. So it's actual attainable to me. Someone who was not about at that aeon of time, it wouldn't be attainable to them. For them, it would be added of a revivalist affair or a actual thing. You're from that time, too. I'm abiding you apperceive all these aforementioned things. The aboriginal time I anytime went to London, which was in the aboriginal Sixties, '61, they still had the bits and the damaged barrio from Hitler's bombs. That was how abutting the complete abolition of Europe was to the aeon of time if I was advancing up.
Robert Johnson had just died, three years afore I was born. All the abundant aboriginal artists were still there to be heard, acquainted and seen. Already that gets into your blood, you can't get rid of it that easily.
What gets in your blood? That accomplished culture, that aeon of time, that old America.
You beggarly the 1920s and 1930s? It wouldn't acquire fabricated faculty to allocution to somebody who was, say, in their fifties [back then], to ask him, "What was it like in the backward 1800s or 1900s?" It wouldn't acquire absorbed anybody. But for some reason, the 1950s and 1960s absorption humans now. A allotment of the reason, if not the accomplished reason, is the atom bomb. The atom bomb fueled the absolute apple that came afterwards it. It showed that aimless killing and aimless assassination on a accumulation akin was accessible . . . admitting if you attending at warfare up until that point, you had to see somebody to shoot them or batter them, you had to attending at them. You don't acquire to do that anymore.
With the atom bomb, man – suddenly, and for the aboriginal time – had the adeptness to actually abort mankind. I anticipate so. I'm abiding that fueled all aspects of society. I apperceive it gave acceleration to the music we were playing. If you attending at all these aboriginal performers, they were atom-bomb-fueled. Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran . . .
How were they atom-bomb-fueled? They were fast and furious, their songs were all on the edge. Music was never like that before, Lyrically, you had the dejection singers, but Ma Rainey wasn't singing about the getting that Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee were singing about, cipher was singing with that blazon of blaze and destruction. They paid a abundant amount for that, because acutely the beforehand bearing took apprehension and affectionate of got rid of them as bound as they could admit them. Jerry Lee got ostracized, Chuck Berry went to jail, Elvis, of course, we apperceive what happened to him. Buddy Holly in a even crash, Little Richard, all that getting . . .
Then, in this new record, you're still ambidextrous with the cultural furnishings of the bomb? I anticipate so.
But accomplishing it in the agreeable styles of beforehand generations? I don't apprehend abundant bedrock in there. You don't apprehend any bedrock in there, because I'm not acclimatized with bedrock music. It's not something that I feel alloyed into. It's too spacey, there's too abundant amplitude in it. It doesn't get to the point quick enough, if there is a point. It's what's taken over, but the bedrock & cycle element's been affectionate of taken out . . . I don't apperceive how to put it. It either alcove you or it doesn't adeptness you. I just like the beforehand music better.
What do you anticipate of the actual moment we're in today? We acquire to be hell-bent on destruction. Do you anguish about all-around warming? Where's the all-around warming? It's freezing here.
It seems a appealing alarming outlook. I anticipate what you're active at, though, is we apprehend politicians to break all our problems. I don't apprehend politicians to break anybody's problems.
Who is traveling to break them? Our own selves. We've got to yield the apple by the horns and break our own problems. The apple owes us nothing, anniversary and every one of us, the apple owes us not one individual thing. Politicians or whoever.
Do you anticipate America is a force for acceptable in the apple today? Theoretically.
But in applied actuality . . . The applied actuality is consistently altered than theory.
What do you anticipate the applied actuality is appropriate now? With what's traveling on? Animal attributes hasn't actually afflicted in 3,000 years. Maybe the obstacles and actualities and circadian community change, but animal attributes actually hasn't changed. It cannot change. It's not fabricated to change.
Do you acquisition yourself getting a added religious getting these days? A religious person? Adoration is allegedly a force for absolute good. Area can you attending in the apple and see that adoration has been a force for absolute good? Area can you attending at altruism and say, "Humanity has been aerial by a affiliation to a godly power"?
Meaning organized religion? Corporations are religions. It depen is what you allocution about with a religion. . . . Annihilation is a religion.
At one point, you took on Christianity in a actual austere way, and again Judaism. Area are you now with all that? Adoration is something that is mostly apparent appearance. Accepting is a altered thing. How abounding religions are there in the world? Absolutely a few, actually.
What is your accepting these days? Accepting doesn't acquire a name. It doesn't acquire a category. It's oblique. So it's unspeakable. We abase accepting by talking about religion.
When you address songs area you say you airing in "the mystical garden," there's a lot of religious imagery. In the abstruse garden. That affectionate of adumbration is just as acclimatized to me as breathing, because the apple of folk songs has belted me for so long. My analogue all comes from folk music. It doesn't appear from the radio or TV or computers or any of that stuff. It's anchored in the folk music of the English language.
Much of which comes from the Bible. Yeah, a lot of it is biblical, a lot of it is just accompanist stuff, a lot of it is getting that Uncle Dave Macon would sing off the top of his head.
What do you yield accepting in? Nature. Just basal nature. I'm still tramping my way through the forest, really, on circadian excursions. Attributes doesn't change. And if there is any war traveling on on a big akin today, it's adjoin nature.
On Modern Times, it seems like you're ambidextrous with the armament of reckoning. Reckoning? You beggarly every day is a judgment? That's all absolute in me. I wouldn't apperceive how to get rid of it.
How is it absolute in you? It's absolute in me by the way I grew up, area I appear from, aboriginal feelings. . . .
Is it something you see as advancing or something that's accident appropriate now? We actually don't apperceive abundant about the abundant Acumen Day that's coming, because we've got cipher to appear aback and acquaint us about it. We can alone acquire absolute things because of what we've been taught.
What do you acquire is accident in the apple about us if you airing in the mystical garden? Abstruse garden.
You see things closing in, you see the black coming. I could acquire appear up with that bandage thirty years ago. This is all the aforementioned affair from altered angles.
It's like the mural of "Desolation Row," alone you've afflicted from abuse to acceptance. I anticipate as we get older, we all appear to that feeling, one way or another. We've apparent abundant accident to apperceive that things are a absolute way, and even if they're changed, they're still traveling to be that absolute way.
Therefore, we acquire to acquire it? I've consistently acclimatized that. I don't anticipate I've anticipation about things any abnormally in the accomplished time I've been around, really.
You've resisted talking about your accomplished for years. In Chronicles and No Direction Home, you're autograph about your legacy. Why are you accomplishing it now? Well, it apparently was because abundant things acquire bound themselves, and I had an editor who was a acceptable ally. I could acquire apparently done it earlier, but I just didn't acquire the encouragement.
Did you adore it? If I did it, I did, yeah. What I didn't like about it was the affiliated alteration and revising, because I'm not acclimated to that. A song is annihilation compared to some affectionate of arcane thing. A song, you can accumulate it with you, you can hum it, you can affectionate of go over things if you're out and around, you can accumulate it in your mind. It's all small. But you can't do that with a book. If you ambition to analysis it, you acquire to reread what you've done. It's actual time-consuming, and I didn't like that allotment of it.
If I wasn't aggressive to do it, I wouldn't do it. So abundant flashes would appear to me. These after-effects would come, and I would acquire to either mark things down or acquire to go aback to area I could address things and accumulate typewriters actuality and there and do that. But it was agreeable in that I alone did it if I was aggressive to do it and never afflicted it if I wasn't. I never approved to accomplish the inspiration.
I was addled by your annual of advancing to New York if you were young, traveling to the accessible library, and by the actual advised and methodical appearance in which you went about acquirements your adeptness and architecture your knowledge. But I was acquirements aggregate I bare to apprentice from absolute reside humans who were actually there at the time, so I was in it firsthand. I anticipate that's area my animosity came from, in agreement of all of them aboriginal songs. Even songs at afterwards dates, it's "What is animal attributes actually like?" Not "What am I like, what do I like, what don't I like, what am I all about?" Not that affectionate of thing, but "What are all these airy alcohol all about?" I anticipate that's area songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" appear from. It's a added age-old attempt than what adeptness currently be apparent as the blueprint of area the lyrics are advancing out of.
Are you afraid that you fabricated a almanac today that's as basic and as important and as artistic as any you've fabricated in the past? No. No, I knew I was traveling to accomplish it. I'm afraid that it awash as abounding annal as it did, so a lot of humans accept to feel a agnate way.
Why do you anticipate humans reacted so acerb to you in the 1960s? What did you adeptness in humans that resonated so deeply? Because I had - and conceivably still do acquire - that boldness that others don't have. Because I appear from a time if you had to be original, and you had to acquire some affectionate of God-given aptitude just to activate with. You couldn't accomplish that. Just about everybody and anybody who was about in the Fifties and Sixties had a amount of originality. That was the alone way you could get in the door. That was just a all-important allotment of your makeup, which bare to be there.
My affair was never heard or apparent before, but it didn't appear out of a vacuum. There's a absolute alternation amid something like Highway 61 Revisited and "Blue Yodel No. 9," by Jimmie Rodgers. It just doesn't bounce out of the apple afterwards beat or reason.
Nobody had heard getting said that way or announced that way. But cipher had heard the getting that we heard. You came up in the Fifties. There was added agnostic then, there wasn't such accumulation comformity as there is today. Today, a agnostic getting gets ridiculed. Aback then, they were just array of abandoned and maybe avoided. The accepted accord at the time, in this time we're speaking about, was a actual balmy anatomy of entertainment; it was arid and uninteresting. Beneath that surface, though, there was an actually altered world.
And you broke into that world? We all did. Some of us absitively we could reside in this world. Others decided, well, they could appointment it already in a while, but it wasn't necessarily their thing.
So you lived in it. I did.
And everybody abroad was just visiting? Yeah, like tourists. Like at the beat hop.
So humans entered your apple and were addled by it, but couldn't reside in it? No, I don't anticipate you could, any added than . . . did you anytime see Little Richard perform? You could be addled by it, but you were not a allotment of it. Unless, of course, you capital to be a allotment of it, again it was accessible to you.
Last night, you chose to abutting with "All Along the Watchtower," which has now become an canticle of yours. Who knew?
Did you balance that song because of Hendrix? Probably.
Had you heard that before, in your mind, what he did with it? No, that record's affectionate of a abstruseness to me, anyway. If he fabricated it, it acquired me to sit up and pay attention. Like, "Oh, there adeptness be added to that than I had dreamed."
What did you do from Highway 61 Revisited endure night, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"? How did you accept that one? I adulation the rearrangement. You know, it's not rearranged. There's a altered dynamic. The activating on all of those songs can change from night to night, because of the actualization of music that I've developed acclimatized to playing, which I consistently could play. But you can't do everything. You can't just affectation aggregate at the aforementioned time.
You change them to accomplish it added fun for yourself? Well, it's added apish than that
Why is it added contrived? It's because I acquire so abounding altered types of songs, speaking musically: fast ballads, apathetic ballads, minor-key twelve-bar things, major-key twelve-bar things, twelve-bar pieces that alter abundantly in the dynamics of the rhythm, which causes the lyrics, the way you bear them, to change from night to night. It's based on an absolute arrangement area you don't necessarily acquire to feel acceptable to play it, but if you just chase the rules, you can do altered things every night.
Take "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," for instance, which you did endure night. Don't humans appear to the actualization and ambition to apprehend that original, atrocious version? I don't apperceive who would, unless it's somebody who bought that almanac in 1960-what. But it's the aforementioned song, and I'm the aforementioned person, and it's consistently been there. Those aboriginal songs I fabricated with just an acoustic guitar. In a way, those are like demos, because that's what humans do if they admirers a song, they just go in and play it with their acoustic guitar, and that's what it is. Again they advance the song later.
Do you anticipate your achievement of it in this way gives it a altered meaning? Originally it was absent and sad; now it's assertive. Yeah. Astrologically, you're ambidextrous with a altered day every day of the week. Every day is a altered color, a altered planet rules it. You could say the aforementioned thing, you could feel the aforementioned way, you could address the aforementioned thing, but if it's on a Tuesday, it's traveling to be altered than if it comes out on Friday. That's just a fact. You can ask any astrologer.
When you see Bono do his Africa abatement plan or Bruce Springsteen go out and do the Vote for Change Tour, do you anticipate that bedrock music can be a articulation for change? Maybe to some humans it can. A getting feels acceptable if they do alms work. What Bono does is a acceptable thing. Bruce has got a absolute amount of power. He can use that adeptness any way he sees fit. You acquire to acclaim him for it. He's not arena around, and he agency what he says.
But do you anticipate bedrock music is a articulation for change? It's a change in lifestyle. I don't know. I've never been afflicted by it that way, so I can't actually say.
When you heard music as a adolescent kid, there was a calling of your talent, but wasn't there aswell a calling of "My activity can be different"? Yeah, but that was a calling. Humans who acquire a calling to play it are altered than humans who just play it for frivolity, humans who acquire . . . whose motives aren't sincere. You allocution about musicians - maybe one in a thousand are account alert to. In agreement of what they acquire to say, in agreement of what they're putting forth, in agreement of the apple they're complex in, in agreement of affective you from actuality to there. There's not abounding musicians able of that.
A few of your accompany and contemporaries: What do you anticipate of Neil Young? Neil is actual sincere, if annihilation else. He's sincere, and he's got a God-given talent, with that articulation of his, and the adapted ache that runs through actually aggregate he does. He could be at his a lot of thrashy, but it's still traveling to be animated by some melody. Neil's the alone one who does that. There's cipher in his category.
Tell me about George Harrison. George got ashore with getting the Beatle that had to action to get songs on annal because of Lennon and McCartney. Well, who wouldn't get stuck? If George had had his own accumulation and was autograph his own songs aback then, he'd acquire been apparently just as big as anybody. George had an astonishing adeptness to just play chords that didn't acquire to be affiliated in any affectionate of way and appear up with a melody and a song. I don't apperceive anybody abroad who could do that, either. What can I acquaint you? He was from that old bandage of arena area every agenda was a agenda to be counted.
You were actual close, right? Yeah.
What was the attributes of your friendship? We'd accepted anniversary added aback the old days, really. I knew the Beatles actually aboriginal on, all of them.
What was your accord with John Lennon like? Somewhat competitive? Yeah. Alone to a absolute extent, but not really. Him and McCartney both, really, they were absurd singers. Lennon, to this day, it's harder to acquisition a bigger accompanist than Lennon was, or than McCartney was and still is. I'm in awe of McCartney. He's about the alone one that I am in awe of. He can do it all. And he's never let up. He's got the allowance for melody, he's got the rhythm, he can play any instrument. He can scream and bark as acceptable as anybody, and he can sing a carol as acceptable as anybody. And his melodies are effortless, that's what you acquire to be in awe of. . . . He's just so abuse effortless. I just ambition he'd abdicate [laughs]. Aggregate that comes out of his aperture is just affected in melody.
What do you anticipate accounted for that aeon in the Sixties that was so appreciably creative? It was a added atypical time. I anticipate what we talked about in the aboriginal allotment of the annual is something to be anticipation about: the aboriginal atom bomb that went off. That was explosive, and it gave acceleration to a altered blazon of personality. You had ablaze people, admitting before, aggregate was added in the backcountry and added secretive. The aforementioned things were traveling on aback then, they were just added abandoned or demography abode in the high rooms. That's what I think, anyway. I don't apperceive why it was a added able aeon of time. I don't feel it was any beneath afflictive than it is today.
What does it feel like to abound older? Do you feel wiser? Happier? Added age-old in your bones? Things activate to appear that you never advised before. You apprehend how brittle a animal getting is and how something insignificant, like what happened to your feel or your toe or something like that, may be abundant to actually sit you down for a while. I've absolutely had agitation in those areas. As you go on, you apprehend activity goes by at a actual fast pace, so you've got to apathetic aggregate down, because it's traveling by too quick. I anticipate we all apprehend it's still traveling down fast, and we're just not absolutely as active as we acclimated to be.
Do you feel wiser? Wiser? Not necessarily.
Happier? I don't anticipate happier. . . . Happiness to me is just getting able to breathe well.
You acquire happier to me, beneath affronted and amped up and pissed off. Oh. It depends what hour of the day you bolt me in, though. It'll get bigger afore it gets worse.
Do you still try to adeptness your admirers every night, every adviser there? In the aforementioned way that the Stanley Brothers would acquire done or Chuck Berry would do: try to affectation aptitude in a way that could be conceivable.
Are you cerebration about that getting in the endure row or up there in the balcony? No, I'm not. I apperceive a lot of performers say they do, but I don't apperceive how abundant they actually do. To me, the accord amid a aerialist and the admirers is absolutely annihilation but a affable thing, any added than me traveling in and admiring a Van Gogh painting and cerebration that me and him are on the aforementioned akin because I like his painting.
So you're there to do your art, and they're there to acknowledge it and try to accept it. I would achievement so. I anticipate so.
How do you call your access if you aboriginal came out? Maybe just like what the books say, that my getting accustomed humans to address and accomplish getting they acquainted like singing, which hadn't been done before. But I don't anticipate about that as abundant of an influence.
You just gave them the befalling to accessible up their own thinking? Yeah, but I never opened up my own thinking. My getting was never about me, per se, so everybody who came afterwards who anticipation it was about me, per se, or them, per se, they took the amiss road.
Do you anticipate you acquire any access on things appropriate now?
Well, how abounding performers are out there accomplishing what we do night afterwards night? How abounding shows are you traveling to go to? We play on some of these festivals, and me and my bandage are the alone performers there accomplishing annihilation accidentally abutting to what we're accomplishing in the blazon of music that it is. It about like Tony Bennett or something - it's, like, archaic. You acquire to be beholden that you still acquire a acceptable audience.
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From The Archives Affair 1025: May 3, 2007
