Bob Dylan, Minnesota’s favorite son, rarely gives interviews. Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert Hilburn got a good one that was published last Sunday but managed to evade me until today. Kicking off a series exploring the art of songwriting, who better to profile than the master of at least three generations? Hilburn got what seems to be unprecedented access to Dylan—probably because he approached Dylan about his work rather than his persona—and it shows in the carefully crafted piece.
“‘There are so many ways you can go at something in a song,’ he says. ‘One thing is to give life to inanimate objects. Johnny Cash is good at that. He’s got the line that goes, ‘A freighter said, ‘She’s been here, but she’s gone, boy, she’s gone.’ That’s great. ‘A freighter says’ ‘She’s been here.’ ‘That’s high art. If you do that once in a song, you usually turn it on its head right then and there.’”
“The process he describes is more workaday than capturing lightning in a bottle. In working on Like A Rolling Stone,’ he says, ‘I’m not thinking about what I want to say, I’m just thinking ‘Is this OK for the meter?’”
“But there’s an undeniable element of mystery too. ‘It’s like a ghost is writing a song like that. It gives you the song and it goes away, it goes away. You don’t know what it means. Except the ghost picked me to write the song.’”
In response to being passed a lyric sheet for “Just Like A Woman,” Dylan lifts the covers a little:
“It’s a city song. It’s like looking at something extremely powerful, say the shadow of a church or something like that. I don’t think in lateral [sic] terms as a writer. That’s a fault of a lot of the old Broadway writers. ... They are so lateral. There’s no circular thing, nothing to be learned from the song, nothing to inspire you. I always try to turn a song on its head. Otherwise, I figure I’m wasting the listener’s time.”
On learning to mine the wealth of resources in daily life:
“‘Buddy Holly’s songs were much more simplified, but what I got out of Buddy was that you can take influences from anywhere. Like his ‘That’ll Be the Day.’ I read somewhere that it was a line he heard in a movie, and I started realizing you can take things from everyday life that you hear people say.’”
“‘That I still find true. You can go anywhere in daily life and have your ears open and hear something, either something someone says to you or something you hear across the room. If it has resonance, you can use it in a song.’”
Hilburn points out that Dylan began his songwriting in earnest just as the Korean War was ending. This was the era of the red menace scare and the beginning of the civil rights movement, so Dylan and many themes to explore. Surprisingly, Dylan reveals that he didn’t intend to write political songs:
“‘But I never set out to write politics. I didn’t want to be a political moralist. There were people who just did that. Phil Ochs focused on political things, but there are many sides to us, and I wanted to follow them all. We can feel very generous one day and very selfish the next hour.’”
You’ll have to read the Hilburn piece to find the answer to the most obvious question: “Which comes first, the words or the music?” but here’s a clue: Bob Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” in ten minutes. While you’re there, don’t miss the accompanying multimedia gallery. The whole package is an outstanding example of web publishing at its best.
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