Bob Dylan, interview with Bill Flanagan

In a Telegraph online exclusive, Bob Dylan reveals what he thinks about The Rolling Stones, Nazis and the difference between actors and singers.

• Bob Dylan rarely gives interviews and when he does they are rarely revealing. But in the run up to the release of his 33rd album, Together Through Life, he has been engaged in a long and fascinating conversation with leading US rock critic and MTV producer, Bill Flanagan. In three previously released extracts (available to read on www.bobdylan.com) Dylan spoke about his love for the accordion, distrust of politicians, his concerns about the fate of Barack Obama, his experiences with the ghosts of the American civil war and his own role as an itinerant truth seeker.
• Here, on playful, teasing form, a simple question about former wrestler turned Governor of Minnesota leads to some tongue-in-cheek criticism of The Rolling Stones, a discussion of the difference between actors and singers and Dylan’s bafflement at the appeal of Adolf Hitler. With his weary acknowledgement that Hitler “knew something, he knew that people didn’t think” and distrust of charisma and “the torch of the spoken word” that filled the graves of Europe in the Second World War, it adds up to a revealing insight into the greatest singer-songwriter of our times.
• Bob Dylan: 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.
• BD: I hear from Keith once in a while but that’s about it.
• BD: What do I think of them? They’re pretty much finished, aren’t they?
• BD: 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.
• BD: I know. I’m trying to break free.
• BD: 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.
• BD: 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 it’s 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.
• BD: Oh yeah, in my songs it is. Pain, sex, murder, family – it goes way back. Kindness. Honour. Charity. You have to tie all that in. You’re supposed to know that stuff.
• BD: It sounds like it’s south of the border or close to the border.
• BD: 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.
• BD: 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.
• BD: 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.
• BD: Gosh I don’t know, James Cagney, Mickey Rooney
• BD: 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.
• BD: Not at all. Mae West wasn’t. She was just who she was on the screen. Just like Jimmy Stewart and Burt Lancaster.
• BD: Yeah, Lon Chaney, too.
• BD: Well sure, a part of him is. But of course he’s not Hitler. And neither is anybody else. Hitler was Hitler.
• BD: No, not growing up. He was dead by the time I was four or five. I never had a real understanding of that.
• BD: 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.
• BD: 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.
• BD: Yeah, it’s clear as day.