barely managed to catch bob dylan’s interview on 60 minutes the other night. as much as bob seems to be trying to “open up” these past few years, i don’t think he’ll ever be able to. he has a protective shell around him — self-constructed or put there by God — that i don’t think many people on this earth can penetrate. not ed bradley, that’s for sure.
anyway, the interview seemed to be something else forced upon dylan by his agent or editor or, most likely, the marketing department of his publisher, owned by viacom just like CBS.
the shield that dylan relies on is mostly constructed of his own ability to be crpytic and vague. nonetheless, if you really listen and really think about what he’s saying, a few gems of this legend’s reality shine through:
“It’s a feeling you have that you know something about yourself - nobody else does - the picture you have in your mind of what you’re about will come true,” says Dylan. “It’s kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling. And if you put it out there, somebody will kill it. So, it’s best to keep that all inside.”
i have a hard time buying it, and i’m not the only one, but dylan has maintained for almost his entire career that he has never wanted to be a spokesman for the civil rights and anti-war movements, that he is — as he famously said — “a song and dance man” and nothing more.
Yet Dylan says he saw himself simply as a musician: “You feel like an impostor when someone thinks you’re something and you’re not.”
What was the image that people had of him? And what was the reality?
“The image of me was certainly not a songwriter or a singer,” says Dylan. “It was more like some kind of a threat to society in some kind of way.”
What was the toughest part for him personally? “It was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story. And you’re just not that person everybody thinks you are, though they call you that all the time,” says Dylan. “‘You’re the prophet. You’re the savior.’ I never wanted to be a prophet or savior. Elvis maybe. I could easily see myself becoming him. But prophet? No.”
i mean, was that “destiny” he talked about feeling inside himself just the destiny to be a great entertainer? then why the songs about war and freedom and the times they are a-changin?
sure, my favorite dylan songs are probably the not-so-political… “shelter from the storm,” “tangled up in blue,” “idiot wind” (and a lot of other songs not off blood on the tracks). it’s those chilling songs he’s done about love and love lost and the pain of life that really strike with me. maybe that’s the destiny that got lost in the power of the 60s. when bob set out as a folk singer in the vein of woody guthrie, he couldn’t have known the breadth and power of the movements of the 1960s. maybe he did just see his destiny as a modern shakespeare and not as a political force.
he is a mystery, through and through, and i think we’ve reached a point where we’ve learned about as much about him as he is going to let us.
as CBS concluded the interview, so will i conclude my little ramblings:
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