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00:00If you talk to famous people, and I guess I'm one of them because I have a certain degree of
00:04notoriety and fame,
00:08nobody really seems to think it's what they went after.
00:11A lot of people go after fame and money.
00:18But they're really after money. They don't really want the fame, you know.
00:22Say you're passing a little pub or a little inn, and you look through the window and you see a
00:25lot of people eating and talking and carrying on.
00:29You can watch outside the window, and you can see them all be very real with each other.
00:36As real as they're going to be. Because when you walk into the room, it's over.
00:40You won't see them being real anymore.
00:49It's not that he's ahead of the game so much, it's that he continually reminds his audience, whether they grasp
00:56it or not,
00:57of what was good about America in the first place.
01:04We are living in a time when it's all about technology and math and AI.
01:11And it's scary to think that like AI, how can AI create art or human empathy or emotions the same
01:17way that a song can?
01:18It just, it can't.
01:20I'm a perfectionist maybe in other areas.
01:23Bob Dylan would be most well known for being a mercurical, impossible to pin down, wonderful songwriter who encapsulated 20th
01:33century United States sensibilities.
01:35You know, America has a tradition of standing up for yourself and free speech and protest, but he kind of
01:42took it to another level.
01:43He took it to a popular culture level, but it became a lifestyle and a lens to look at what
01:49was happening around you at that time in a way that I don't think many other artists have been able
01:54to do successfully.
01:56Justice cannot be rendered by an unfameled and uncontrolled tribunal.
02:01Then the people of this country will have lost confidence.
02:04And when the people of this country lose confidence in their government, no one can say what the result may
02:12be.
02:12You know, there are certain rules and regulations to it. I mean, you just don't sit down and write a
02:16song. You know what I mean? There's a certain amount of learning you have to go through to get to
02:20that point.
02:21I hope people will learn hope, that don't give up, to keep on stumbling, to keep on bumbling, no matter
02:26what the circumstances.
02:28Of course I'm a fan of Bob Dylan. It's not possible to be my age to not be a fan
02:32of Bob Dylan.
02:33The great producer Bob Johnson said, Bob Johnson said before his death a few years ago, he says,
02:39Hell, the leader of the free world ain't the president of the United States. The leader of the free world
02:45is Bob Dylan.
02:46And I couldn't agree more.
02:54Marijuana is an intoxicating, mind-muddling drug. Its use can lead to abnormal behavior.
03:01Because of widespread looting.
03:03Non-violent solution.
03:04To push a voting rights bill.
03:06That the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.
03:11When evil said the stupid, you look like you could use a friend.
03:15And stupid says that's great, I ain't never had me one of them.
03:20Then stupid said the evil, how does this friendship work?
03:25At approximately 2.30 a.m. on June 17th in 1966, two men walked into the Lafayette Grill in Patterson,
03:34New Jersey and began shooting.
03:36Eyewitnesses said that they saw a car that looked like one that belonged to Reuben Hurricane Carter and his friend
03:43John Artis leaving the scene.
03:47They were tried and convicted of murder the next year, really with not any evidence except this one eyewitness saying
03:54the car looked similar to them.
03:56And Bob Dylan really found this abhorrent.
03:59And since these guys were racially profiled, decided to take up the cause for Hurricane.
04:03And that man can judge another man by the color of his skin.
04:10Yes sir, what can I do for you?
04:13What do you hope people will learn from your story here?
04:15I hope people will learn hope.
04:17That don't give up.
04:19To keep on stumbling.
04:20To keep on bumbling.
04:21No matter what the circumstances.
04:23No matter what the obstacles are.
04:25Because obstacles are not placed there to stop us, but simply to make us stronger for the next one.
04:29I hope people can see if a person who's buried in prison for 20 years can dig himself up out
04:36of that by this very, very redeeming quality that's embedded in all of us.
04:45If a person can do it from that level of society, then anybody can do it from out here.
04:51You know what I mean?
04:53Between the races has always been bloody, but it has been one sided.
04:57Never before was there a greater need for unity.
05:00Not the texture of his hair or the color of his skin, but his eternal dignity and worth.
05:09This is the time now we should protest music and protest and art should be reflective of the frustration and
05:17the struggles and what's happening more than ever.
05:19And it's not.
05:20And you look at Bob Dylan, it's like here's someone that actually managed to galvanize an entire generation of people.
05:27And it's still someone that is looked up to for that.
05:44People drove a lot more than 100 miles to go to Bob Dylan's house.
05:49He and his wife, Sarah, came home and found people in the house with a Bob.
05:55He's got these great left wing songs.
05:57He won't mind if we make a sandwich.
05:58Sarah and Bob have both said they found people in the bed.
06:05And so, of course, Dylan becomes angry and jittery.
06:08And I think you start seeing the Bob Dylan walls start to close and turn at that time.
06:13I think it was bad enough with protests.
06:15It was bad enough with rock and roll.
06:16And then when he retreats to Woodstock to kind of get his head together and figure out his next move.
06:20And you find people on your roof or on your property.
06:23It's just crazy.
06:45They have passports and they have driver's licenses and they all have Dylan as their name.
06:51You know, what can I do about that?
06:54I can't do anything about that.
06:56They changed the name on their birth certificate and all that.
07:00You know, what are you asking me about?
07:02I mean, I don't know what people think of me.
07:05I only know about what, you know, record companies say to you.
07:11You know, managers, people like that.
07:14You know, people who want you to do things.
07:16I only know, I only hear about that stuff.
07:23I know about that stuff.
07:26Restricted your tickets are still available at the box office.
07:29There wasn't any money we made in music when I was if you could just support yourself.
07:33You were doing good.
07:34But there wasn't any money.
07:37It wasn't this big billion-dollar industry that it is today.
07:42And people do go into it just to make money.
07:46Because it's proved that you can't make money in that field.
07:52But that's a sad thing, you know.
07:57I don't even money.
07:58I mean, I started out with no money.
08:00I don't want to hear about money.
08:02I had less money than anybody.
08:04I know when I started out.
08:06I had no money.
08:07I mean, if you're talking about, you know, paper money and money in the bank or value, wealth, possessions and
08:23all that stuff, I had nothing.
08:25I love you all.
08:27I love you all.
08:51If you talk to famous people, I guess I am one of them because I have a certain degree of
08:55notoriety and fame.
08:59And everybody just kind of copes with a different way.
09:01But nobody really seems to think it's what they went after, you know.
09:11A lot of people go after fame and money.
09:17But they're really after money.
09:19They don't really want the fame, you know.
09:21Because the fame is the, you know, to walk down the street or to go somewhere and have people.
09:30It's like when you look through a window.
09:32Say you're passing a little pub or a little inn.
09:34And you look through the window and you see all the people eating and talking and carrying on.
09:40You can watch outside the window.
09:41And they're all, you can all, you can see them all be very real with each other.
09:46As real as they're going to be.
09:47Because when you walk into the room, it's over.
09:50You won't see them being, being real anymore.
09:53And even if you're in the room, you'll, you'll notice that things have changed.
09:57Things have changed just because a person walks in the room who can be a focus point for everybody.
10:02You know.
10:03I don't know.
10:03Maybe that's got something to do with it.
10:05I really can't say.
10:06I don't really, I don't pay any attention to it.
10:08It doesn't matter what the person's famous for.
10:10You could be famous for, you know, shooting of a president or something.
10:17You know what I mean?
10:17You're still famous.
10:18They put your picture on, cross on all the newspapers.
10:21You're famous for something.
10:22You could be a famous fashion designer.
10:24Or a famous movie star.
10:25Or a famous Wall Street executive.
10:27But you're still, under your degree of fame, you know, you're just famous.
10:30People, people react to famous people.
10:33You know.
10:40That's what he's doing.
10:43That's what I've done.
10:47That's what I've done.
11:12His family were Russian Jews, tired of the pogroms.
11:16They got out of the Tsar's Russia, came to the United States.
11:21There's a lot of left-wing Eastern European people in the North Central United States,
11:28in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas.
11:32And his family was part of that.
11:34After living in Duluth for a while, they moved to Hibbing on the range, the iron ore range,
11:41in North Central Minnesota, not terribly far from Canada.
11:51Bob Dylan was born in May 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota.
11:55And it's odd because there's not many people from the Duluth-Hibbing area.
11:58There's a few famous athletes from out that way that are unknown to European audiences.
12:05But there's not a lot of famous people from that part of the world.
12:09There's a lot of noteworthy people from that part of the world.
12:11But Dylan is the one that really, by far, not just puts Hibbing on the map,
12:17but puts that part of the country on the map, that section of Minnesota on the map.
12:25There's no question that Dylan's grandparents fleeing Europe would have some great emphasis on his music
12:34and some effect on his personal life.
12:36As to how we're going to quite slice and dice that, I couldn't really say and may disagree with other
12:43Dylan pundits.
12:44But it certainly would have had an effect on him.
12:48And I think it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that it must give you a tendency to identify
12:55with the underdog
12:56and a tendency to want to defend those who are downtrodden and have been refugees or brutalized or marginalized by
13:05the society that they were born into.
13:07I don't see how he could have been anything but.
13:10You know, Hibbing wasn't a particularly poor town.
13:13It was when the Iron Range was really happening.
13:14There was a lot of money in the area.
13:16It was a very steady job for the blue-collar working-class people of the area.
13:26His high school had a brilliant auditorium and facilities,
13:29you know, better than many of the gigs he would have done later on in life.
13:32Because there was a great tax base for the state school in his area.
13:38But I do think your upbringing, you know, nature versus nurture, your upbringing sticks with you.
13:45And having known how the Zimmermans suffered, both sides of his family would have suffered back in Eastern Europe,
13:51there can't be any question that somehow or another that would have to permeate into his grown adult life.
14:01Dillon was born Zimmerman, and he's denied that Dillon comes from Dillon Thomas.
14:08But we'll never really know.
14:10There is the chance it comes from Marshall Dillon on the Gunsmoke TV show,
14:15which a guy like Bob Dillon, much less myself, we all watch this cowboy show called Gunsmoke.
14:20And Marshall Dillon was the guy, the good guy, the white hat that kept the town clean.
14:26Well, he'd go on killing unless he's stopped.
14:28Yeah, just like one of them hound dogs who gets a taste of blood in their mouth and just go
14:32crazy, yeah.
14:33That's just exactly what he is, Chester.
14:35Are you going to take him, Mr. Dillon?
14:37I could hold him up.
14:38Well, what are you going to do?
14:42You'll see.
14:43He was D-I-L-L-O-N, but so what?
14:46You know, Dillon could have looked at that spelling and thought, yeah, D-I-L-O-N.
14:49But anyway, he changed his name.
14:51He's never completely affirmed, yes, it's Dillon Thomas.
14:55He's denied it several times.
14:56And we don't really know why he picked that name.
14:58But think about it.
15:00Zimmerman isn't a name that zings off the tongue.
15:03It doesn't fit on the marquee very well.
15:05And the show business in America was riddled.
15:08It was run by the Wasps, really.
15:11And some Jewish guys in New York, maybe, sure, of course, running, you know, this or that.
15:16But out by Minnesota, you know, a name like Zimmerman, these things aren't going to cut it.
15:21I remember somebody told me that, like, Tony Martin, the great crooner, he, amongst many other crooners, were Jewish.
15:27But they changed their name to either something Anglo-Saxon or Italian because that was acceptable.
15:31Being Jewish was a little hey.
15:33And I definitely remember reading in the New York Times once that until the open air of the 60s,
15:40guys like Simon and Garfunkel, identifying as New York Jews, would have had to change their names.
15:45In the open 60s, Simon and Garfunkel would have been crazy to change their names
15:50because it's such a great tag, Simon and Garfunkel.
15:53By this time, white Anglo-Saxon parts in America is more comfortable with the ideas of Jews at the country
15:59club.
16:00So back in the day, Bob Dylan was probably wise to change his name to the shorter, catchier, less ethically
16:07identifiable Dylan.
16:08I think it was probably a wise move.
16:12The thing about Bob Dylan denying his name might particularly come from Dylan Thomas is twofold.
16:17One, Dylan likes to deny a lot of things which, in my opinion, as one of his fans, as one
16:22of his commentators, is obvious.
16:25For instance, he denies much of an interest in sports.
16:28Yet, if you read Chronicles, he makes references to baseball players that he knows all about.
16:34He makes reference to a basketball player named Pistol Pete Maravich.
16:39I hope this is no great scandal for the Dylan family.
16:42I know that he and his brother attend Minnesota Timberwolves NBA games.
16:46That's the professional basketball league.
16:49So, he's written the Catfish song, which is about Catfish Hunter, a pitcher for the New York Yankees.
17:00Lazy stadium night.
17:07Catfish on the mound.
17:13Start to see the umpire say.
17:18But I have to go back and sit down.
17:22The antennae, rising hundreds of feet into the air, was the instrument of learning that was to banish ignorance and
17:29bring civilization.
17:33A signal was given.
17:35A switch was thrown.
17:37The power went on.
17:39Dylan, like so many people in pop music, was into the radio and music before rock and roll was up
17:49and really running.
17:51I mean, late at night due to the, we didn't get into science class, but due to cold air and
17:55late at night, a broadcasting channel of 50,000 watts during the day, which might on the AM frequency be
18:00banging up against other frequencies in the United States, other radio stations.
18:04At night, that's flying through the air.
18:07So, Dylan could listen to WLAC and Nashville, Tennessee.
18:11He could probably listen to a New Orleans station.
18:13He could certainly hear WLS in Chicago.
18:15These are great, classic, big, powerful 50,000 watt American stations, which define their regions, define their eras and their
18:24times.
18:24Because the disc jockeys on these stations were so influential on generations of American kids.
18:31Think several dozen John Peels.
18:34The way that John Peels is so revered here, he's been dead 20 years, he's still revered in the United
18:37Kingdom.
18:38These guys, they're not taking any prisoners.
18:41So Dylan's already listening to sort of Gene Autry and Tex Ritter, cowboy singers.
18:45He's already well aware of a Muddy Waters blues from 1951 when Muddy was just a pop star back in
18:51the day.
18:52So Dylan was already aware of these musics before rock and roll even came around the block.
18:56He was a Johnny Cash fan the first time around when Cash was on Sun Records and Dylan was in
19:01high school.
19:02So he came in on the ground, he may even come in on the basement floor, much less the ground
19:06floor.
19:07He's got the home of the blues. I walk and cry while my heart beats. Keeps time with the drag
19:19off my shoes. The sun never shines through this window of mine.
19:28You know, first he's in Hemming, then he's in Duluth, you know, University of Minnesota, then he pushes a little
19:32further.
19:33Now, boom, I go to New York.
19:38He did what a lot of people in America do. They go to Hollywood. They go to New York. You
19:43sing country western, you go to Nashville.
19:45Dylan was ambitious. It's not going to happen for me in Hemming. It's not going to happen for me in
19:50Duluth.
19:51Chicago, maybe I can do some music there. Sure, it's got a blues scene.
19:54But where do I go to really impact America? New York City.
19:59In the shadows of modern Manhattan, surrounded by glass and steel, yet only a subway stop away from the seething
20:07city, with its crowds of people, hectic workday schedules and the office routines, lies the sleepy village called Greenwich.
20:21A suburban oasis where one can gather thoughts and enjoy the wonders of nature.
20:28It's so hard now to imagine what Greenwich Village in New York would have been like in the 1960s.
20:34The word that really comes to mind most is it was bohemian in terms of rents were cheap.
20:40It's where you went if you wanted to be different than the mainstream.
20:43And I know that sounds quite cliche, but you could be and do anything there.
20:48Always a stepper soul before their time. Contemporary as today, new as tomorrow.
20:56The cost of living was low enough that you didn't need to make loads of money.
21:00So you could be an artist of any kind, you could be a dominatrix, you could be whatever you wanted.
21:05And that was the kind of culture that Bob Dylan was both attracted to and mixing with at the same
21:11time.
21:11When he arrives in New York, where does he go? You know, sort of Chelsea Hotel and the White Hart
21:16Saloon
21:16and all these taverns and places that are associated with the great writers and the bohemians of the day
21:22and the years previous that Dylan thought he would find his ilk.
21:27Chelsea Hotel was always known as a literary hotel, almost from the time it opened its doors.
21:32Personalities such as Mark Twain, O'Henry, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Edgar Lee Masters, Eugene O'Neill.
21:38And strange as it may seem, because it's literary background, one of the great music personalities started coming here.
21:46That was Bob Dylan. Because of Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan came here.
21:50And because he lived here for a length of time, got married, had a child here, other musical personalities started
21:59coming here.
22:00Some of the biggest groups started coming here, like Janis Joplin, the Incredible String Band, the Mamas and the Papas,
22:06Leonard Cohen, and so on and so on.
22:10And it's not only the music group, but almost every creative aspect has been used, from photography to dance, to,
22:18you know, almost every creative area the hotel has catered to over the years.
22:24In fact, Bob Dylan did a song called the Chelsea Hotel. So did Leonard Cohen, and Buffy St. Marie, and
22:30there were many songs written about the hotel.
22:33And because of these people, the other groups wanted to come here.
22:37Janis Joplin, the Incredible String Band, the Jefferson Airplane, and the Beach Boys, and on and on.
22:43There were so many of the big groups stayed here at one time or another.
22:47So he denies the Dylan Thomas connection, yet think about it. One of those guys that was on that scene,
22:53just previous to Bob, is Dylan Thomas.
22:55He must have known when he's standing next to Liam Clancy, drinking in this tavern or that, in the Wall
23:03Street area, the Greenwich Village area, that Dylan Thomas drank there as well.
23:07He still denies that, you know, he got Dylan only because of the Dylan Thomas name, but I think it
23:12certainly crossed his mind.
23:32Dylan, early on, sang with a very nasal tone. He was imitating Woody Guthrie, but then, in my opinion, he
23:39was imitating Woody Guthrie or heavily under the influence.
23:42And so was Jack Elliot. So are a number of guys heavily imitating Woody Guthrie, till they broke free and
23:47became their own man.
23:48That's what you do in the arts. No one wakes up and paints like this great individual that we've never
23:54seen before.
23:55They paint like Gauguin, they paint like Gainsborough, they paint like Jackson Pollock, they paint like Picasso in the Cubist
24:01period, whatever they paint.
24:02And then they become themselves. Keith Richards didn't become Keith Richards, he had to go through Chuck Berry and Bo
24:07Diddley imitations to get to where he is now.
24:10No less so Bob Dylan and his relationship to Woody Guthrie and others.
24:13But now, once they're through, a guy like Keith Richards, Bob Dylan is an icon.
24:26People now have a nickname for Dylan, Old Weird Bob. It's kind of a cruel nickname.
24:30And he may be old, he may be Bob, but the weird part is, is unlike the rest of us,
24:36he pushes aside a lot of responsibilities that day-to-day life and society give you.
24:44Because he's about this art that he's leaving.
24:47Whereas someone like myself, and other musicians like myself, they have to weigh, can I do this to a relative
24:55of my family?
24:56What's in it for me personally and artistically, but what's in it for me in the long term as regards
25:00to my family and my responsibilities?
25:04Well that accounts for why a lot of entertainers do what they do.
25:07Because they want the love of another group of people, you know.
25:16I don't do it for love.
25:19I do it because I can do it and I think I'm good at it.
25:22You know, that's all I do it for.
25:24So guys like Dylan and Guthrie, they're not, we're not in their league.
25:30They're just, they really are artists and bohemians in every sense of the term.
25:36And not every sense of the term artist or bohemian is a positive.
25:41Nightfall, creating a world of contradiction, of paradoxes in life.
25:56The tourist is lured by a sense of adventure in losing himself in a modern Casbah.
26:03While the resident prefers an evening spent at a theater off Broadway where the actors and audience share their common
26:11experiences after each performance.
26:14Clash isn't the right word, but it was just a melting of all different kinds of people from all over
26:18the world as well.
26:19It wasn't just New York.
26:20And it was this one place you kind of pinpoint as a location where other people with like ideas would
26:27come together.
26:39There was this weird tension between different scenes in New York in the 60s.
26:43You definitely had the emerging hippie movement, which had the folk in there as well.
26:49But then you also had the factory scene, which was Andy Warhol and Nico and Gerald Malanga and that whole
26:56Velvet Underground kind of thing.
26:58And that was very much a scene of amphetamines and staying up and not going to bed and making art
27:03round the clock.
27:04And really kind of wanting to be seen.
27:06And there was a weird tension there because I think that the factory group, they respected him and they liked
27:12that he was again a counterculture kind of person like they were.
27:15But I think that there were some jealousies and there were some kind of us or them because he was
27:19getting quite popular.
27:21And it's hard to imagine Warhol not being the height of popular culture.
27:24But a lot of people that gravitated to New York and to the factory were outcasts in every other way.
27:29And Bob Dylan is kind of the outcast or kind of cast as an outcast, but the outcast that's making
27:34it.
27:34So there's going to be some sort of rivalry, some sort of jealousy there.
27:38And in fact, when Andy Warhol decides to have the Andy Warhol exploding plastic inevitable, that comes directly from a
27:45Bob Dylan reference.
27:46Although they don't want there to be a link between those.
27:49So it was like a frenemy kind of situation between those two groups of artists.
28:05Well, the great thing about Dylan going to New York is if the stars and planets weren't in perfect alignment,
28:11he'd have been on a label like Tradition.
28:13He'd have been on a small folk label.
28:15But the fact of the matter is he got a tremendous break.
28:18He got a write up in The New York Times from Robert Shelton.
28:21Shelton had gone to see the headlining bluegrass band, The Greenbrier Boys.
28:25But he was stunned with Dylan's opening act set.
28:29So it looked like The Greenbrier Boys and The View had opened up for Bob Dylan.
28:40So Dylan, that brought him to the attention of CBS Records.
28:44Albert Grossman's on the scene.
28:46This very gruff, imposing manager wants to do this and that.
28:49And Dylan signs with John Hammond.
28:51The significance of John Hammond is twofold.
28:54One, Hammond is an A&R genius.
28:59John Hammond spotted Aretha Franklin.
29:02He spotted Bruce Springsteen.
29:04He got Benny Goodman.
29:06John Hammond's signings are legendary.
29:09So when John Hammond, who's already what we call a legacy at CBS Records.
29:16When he signed Dylan, people couldn't believe it.
29:20Word spread throughout the company because Dylan's first album was not successful.
29:24A lot of covers, right?
29:26And two originals.
29:27He was called Hammond's Folly because they thought John Hammond had finally made a grievous error
29:32and signed some idiot.
29:34You know, Dylan just couldn't sing, couldn't play.
29:36What's his point?
29:39Did Bob Dylan pave the way for the blue-collar voice of Bruce Springsteen?
29:43Perhaps.
29:43I couldn't say for sure.
29:45Did he pay for the way for grunge?
29:47People say that.
29:47I couldn't really say for sure.
29:49The one that I kind of like is, and this may be reaching, is did Bob Dylan pay the way
29:54for hip-hop?
29:55Well, if you listen to Subterranean Homesick Blues, that to me is the first hip-hop song.
29:59You know, Chuck D, Snoop, they may say I'm nuts, but I mean, to me, that's the first hip-hop
30:04song.
30:12John is in the basement, mixing up the medicine.
30:15I'm on the pavement, thinking about the government.
30:18A man in a trench coat, flat job laid off.
30:20Says he's got a bad cough, wants to get it paid off.
30:26There's a lot of almost rapping in Dylan's songs because he's packed in so many syllables to the bar.
30:31In fact, in some of Dylan's songs, he's packed in more syllables that are allowed in the bar.
30:37And he's got to cram it all in to make it make sense, which is why he sort of breaks
30:40meter.
30:41It's not like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
30:45It's like, da-da-da-da-da-da.
30:46And even though the song's just going on like this clip, he's got to go, to put all the words
30:51in.
30:51And he can do it, which goes back also, not just he's some founder of rap, but that he's a
30:55great singer.
30:56That he can do that.
31:10Certainly, when you're a guy like Bob Dylan, your influence is so multifaceted and so pronounced
31:17that there's a number of ways you can sort of scratch your chin and go back and say,
31:22well, he was doing this then, and I couldn't really, I'm not enough of a musicologist to prove it for
31:27certain.
31:27But I do think, sure, there's some strength to those arguments.
31:31I just write them, I don't know.
31:35I just write them because nobody says you can't write them.
31:40At least where I come from.
31:43Yeah, I wouldn't really call them stories.
31:45Stories are things which have a beginning, middle, and end.
31:48My things are more like short attention span things that happens in a group of crowded people that goes down
32:00very quickly.
32:03So normal I wouldn't even notice it.
32:08There are certain rules and regulations to it.
32:10I mean, you just don't sit down and write a song.
32:15You know what I mean?
32:16There's a certain amount of learning you have to go through to get to that point.
32:21And not only living experience, but I mean, you also have to learn how to play an instrument.
32:29Some kind of, you know, you have to carry some kind of tune, I guess.
32:34By the time Bob Dylan had made and released his second album, he'd scrapped an interim album called Bob Dylan's
32:40Blues.
32:41He made, with John Hammond in the booth, the brilliant, iconic, to this day, mega album, Free Will and Bob
32:47Dylan.
32:47It's not mega, and I'm not throwing my hands up because it sold millions of copies like Thriller by Michael
32:51Jackson.
32:52It's mega because the level of songwriting on it is through the roof.
32:55You can't believe it's the guy in the first album.
32:57I mean, this is stuff like blowing in the wind, Oxford Town, A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall.
33:01I mean, the imagery of A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, it's just staggering.
33:04It's the rare folk song you can put on a piece of paper and hand it out in English class
33:09as poetry.
33:10It's brilliant.
33:12Well, hunger is ugly where the souls are forgotten.
33:18Well, black is the color where none is the number.
33:25And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it.
33:31And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it.
33:37Now Hammond is proven to have yet another winner on his hand, another legacy act.
33:43And so when Bob Dylan got involved with CBS and John Hammond, it was a huge break.
33:48He could have put out an album like Freewheel and Bob Dylan on Folkways, on Vanguard, or on Tradition Records.
33:56These perfectly honorable folky labels of the day.
34:00And it wouldn't have had 1 25th of the impact it did coming out on Columbia.
34:06So as time goes on, the thing that happens is a guy like Bob Dylan gets bored.
34:10After two or three albums in a genre, he splits.
34:12There's three electric albums, the two country and western albums, and three if you want to count self-portrait, quote
34:18unquote religious period.
34:19By the time he gets to saved, he's already bored.
34:22He's got to move on.
34:23That's our Bob.
34:24So he's an artist.
34:26He's restless.
34:26It goes back to what I was saying about the muse.
34:28I mean, look at Picasso.
34:31He has five periods of greatness, Picasso.
34:34Picasso could have stopped after, say, the blue period, and he's a genius.
34:37He keeps going.
34:38He could have stopped at being a cubist.
34:40He keeps going.
34:41Miles Davis, I think jazzers would say he's got five distinct periods.
34:45Like Dylan, you notice Miles Davis' appearances changes to each one.
34:48The protest Bob Dylan would never appear with an electric band.
34:51He's now dressed like a Carnaby Street dandy.
34:53The Carnaby Street dandy would never make those Nashville albums.
34:56He's now wearing denim and very farm-like apparel.
35:01He's going to work on the farm.
35:02And Miles was the same way.
35:04This is what great artists do.
35:05When they shed a skin, they shed all the skin and dress and act and sound differently.
35:12The great artists take their audience with them.
35:14Which is what Miles Davis, Picasso, Bob Dylan all did.
35:23Dylan was going to be on Ed Sullivan in 1963.
35:26That's like the Sunday Night at the London Palladium in the UK.
35:28It was huge.
35:29Everybody watched.
35:30My entire family watched.
35:32It was a variety show.
35:33They had things like where the guy would spin the plates.
35:36You know, he'd have a stick.
35:37And it'd be like six feet long.
35:39And he would keep the plate.
35:40And then he'd do this and that.
35:41And then this plate started to fall.
35:43So he spins the stick really quickly.
35:46Elephants come on and do stupid tricks.
35:47Like the elephant would bow to Ed Sullivan.
35:49You know, I mean, just stupid ass stuff.
35:51But the music part of it was incredibly influential.
35:54If you appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and sang a song that knocked everybody's socks off,
35:59people the next day were going to the record store saying, I want to buy this single.
36:04Everybody, Bob Dylan, would want to do well on the Ed Sullivan Show and be nice.
36:09And I hope they like me and invite me back.
36:11I would.
36:12Dylan goes on.
36:13He runs through some songs.
36:15He sings a song called Talking John Birch Society Blues, which is a satire about the
36:20right wing John Birch Society.
36:23And Ed loved it.
36:24Ed Sullivan, to his credit, thought it was great.
36:26But somebody in standards and practices, that's the department of CBS where the lawyers
36:33are, thought, no, that's got a lawsuit written all over it.
36:36We can't have this short little guy sing this song.
36:40We'll have John Birch Society lawyers up the yin yang.
36:43So Dylan was told, Ed really loves you, but you can't sing that one song in particular.
36:49And Dylan stuck his heels in and got Grossman on his side.
36:53And they said, if we don't sing this song, we walk.
36:55And Ed Sullivan and his people couldn't believe it.
36:58Who's this little guy to stand up to me?
37:00And they said, you can't have you sing it.
37:02I'm sorry, my lawyers say you can't sing it.
37:03And they walked.
37:04Dylan said, bye.
37:06Well, sometimes it's easier to be polite than it is to be rude.
37:11Sometimes the other way around.
37:13Everyone is a puppet master.
37:15Everyone likes to control puppets and pull their strings without saying, I have nobody's puppet.
37:19Nobody pulls my strings.
37:23And I'm sorry.
37:25I just don't like that scene.
37:30He has some backbone.
37:31He has some spine.
37:3399.9% of all the singers that have ever existed would have gone along with Ed Sullivan and said,
37:37okay, we won't sing that song.
37:39We'll sing something innocuous.
37:40This is something that is palatable to the masses.
37:42It shows who, not necessarily who the winners are in society, but it shows how society is so frequently molded
37:50by the forceful.
37:51Dylan knew, yeah, I'm going away today.
37:53I'm not on network TV, but I'm coming back another day stronger and I'll damn well sing that day what
37:58I want.
38:02Here is a guy that's cracked show business.
38:06I'm successful.
38:08One man, one guitar, original songs no one's heard the like of before.
38:1299.9% of all the singers in history would have stopped.
38:16I've cracked it.
38:17I'm making money.
38:18People like me.
38:19I'm popular.
38:19Women like me.
38:20Hey, my dreams come true.
38:22I'll keep my acoustic guitar, my original songs forever.
38:26And if I go out of favor, well, I've had a good run.
38:28Dylan leaves the category.
38:30I'm not picking the acoustic guitar up anymore.
38:32I'm going to play electric music.
38:34And when he was successful with that, he stops and starts singing country and western, which a lot of young
38:39people don't understand.
38:40Country and western was dad, not even dads, it was grandma's music back in the 60s.
38:45It was unhip.
38:46It was right wing.
38:47No one had long hair with dry hair.
38:49They all had slicked back, greased back hair and they were rednecks, pro-Vietnam War.
38:55He's not only left behind that which made him famous once, he's done it several times.
39:02You know, you just don't see that in popular music.
39:05There's a lot of things about Bob Dylan's electric period which bugs people.
39:08There's no overt song against the Vietnam War.
39:12There isn't one.
39:22It's clearly our side, I believe, that's the aggressor in Vietnam.
39:26I think the real question, of course, is one that he hasn't answered yet.
39:31Does he really mean that we're going to withdraw our troops and not insist that our puppets stay in charge
39:36in South Vietnam?
39:37Priority, foreign policy objective of our next administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
39:47When Dylan was making those albums in the early 1960s, there were two key factors as we look back.
39:53He's dating the fabulous Susie Reloto, right?
39:56So, she was a member of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.
40:00I think she worked there.
40:01And she was very involved in left-wing politics.
40:05They're interested in integration.
40:06They're interested in workers' rights.
40:09They're interested in women's rights.
40:10And she has got Bob's ear.
40:14And, of course, with this hibbing Minnesota iron ore socialist farm labor party upbringing.
40:21Those kind of people were his neighbors.
40:22It's easy for Bob to accept that message.
40:25And, of course, Bob in Greenwich Village.
40:27Greenwich Village is one of the least prejudiced places in America.
40:30Even before the First World War, there were integrated parties where black and white writers were talking about their plays
40:37and their poetry and their novels.
40:38And it was not a big deal.
40:40Well, you wouldn't have had black and white writers talking in Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee at a party.
40:45There had been two separate parties.
40:47So, Dylan is just way in with that crowd.
40:51But after a while, I feel, if others don't, that he had so much spotlight and pressure on him to
40:57keep being this protest guy.
40:59He thought, no, I want to be more than that.
41:02He recently said, actually, when I came out of hibbing, I wanted to be Elvis.
41:07I didn't want to be the Messiah, and I didn't want to be Woody Guthrie.
41:10I just wanted to be kind of Elvis, a popular singer.
41:14Now, whether or not he played folk music or rock to become a popular singer or more popular singer, I'll
41:20never know.
41:21He said that he never wanted these spokesperson of a generation accolades and titles stuck on him.
41:30Never wanted that.
41:31He wanted to be a popular singer.
41:34Whatever it is that's happened to us, the mad atomic world today is a place that substitutes kicks for joy.
41:42If I could have gone, I'd say, hello, everybody, how you doing out there?
41:45And, you know, they'd say, play the song, girl, play the song.
41:47I'd say, oh, man, I don't feel like it right now.
41:49And that would be in the press.
41:50Well, I was doing, you know, he was grumpy, he was moody, he was a recluse.
41:54He came out for a few minutes, and he said hello to the audience, and he went back into his
41:58trailer or something,
41:59into the seclusion of his own little kingdom, which is what, you know, people would say.
42:06If you can work, you know, that's the most, that's all you can ask.
42:10In this day and age, you know, you can't take that for granted.
42:17Just to work is, to be able to work is what a person should strive after, you know.
42:44The Noel prize in literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan for having created new poetic expressions
42:54within the great American song tradition.
42:58We are living in a time when it's all about technology and math and AI,
43:05and arts are being ripped out of schools, music is free.
43:09You know, it hearkens back to a time when those things had value.
43:12How can AI create art or human empathy or emotions the same way that a song can?
43:17It just, it can't.
43:18And the fact that that's what we're, that's what we're placing value on, not the human experience,
43:23I think is very scary. So the fact that he was celebrated in that way, I think is important.
43:30He's a great poet. And at the same time, he embodies the tradition and he handles it in a very
43:38original way.
43:39He himself once said that I'm a thief of thoughts.
43:46Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize is important and meaningful and huge in a lot of different ways.
43:53He's the only artist to ever receive that specific title.
44:00It's oral poetry. It's meant to be listened to. And you may think that's strange.
44:05But then if you think back, you think back to Homer and Sappho, you realize, well, that was also oral
44:12poetry.
44:13It was meant to be performed together with instruments. But we still read them.
44:182500 some years later, we still read them.
44:22When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, there was a great controversy in some circles,
44:29in the literary salons of the world, not just the United States of the world.
44:35Many people felt he's a songwriter and he's not really one of literature.
44:41His one book, Chronicles Volume 1, may not be enough to get him the Nobel Prize for Literature.
44:49But the fact remains, many of Dylan's songs are the rare pop songs that are stand-aside poetry.
44:56Subtract the music from them. Don't make them on a record. Just print them on an A4 typing page.
45:02And you tell me that's not poetry. Very good.
45:05This art consists of the melding, the merging, the combination of words and music.
45:11They go together. You can't really have one without the other, in my view.
45:14But that's a perfectly legitimate literary form.
45:17Imagine someone of the order of T.S. Eliot, say, or of that kind of poetic genius,
45:22having a mass audience being heard in that kind of way.
45:25Dylan has done that in a way that no one else could have possibly imagined anybody doing 50 years ago.
45:31So sure, it's a great, it's an extraordinary achievement.
45:36It's also important to remember the impact that Dylan had on the literature audience.
45:42And this is going to sound pompous, but Dylan did literature a bit of a favor.
45:46He brought people into the world of literature that would have been stuck watching TV or maybe reading comic books.
45:53Over and over again, Dylan, in my opinion, showed he was both artistically of great literary merit,
46:00and he was a friend of literature as well, and gave literature a spotlight to shine and draw in on
46:08the audience
46:09that thousands of high school English and humanities teachers couldn't do.
46:14Dylan did their job for them.
46:16And in a way, if you'll allow me to say it, the world of literature owed him.
46:22In a way, owed him that Nobel Prize.
46:24He did them a great service.
46:29What Dylan was really attacking, if you'll allow me to say it, and this is my opinion alone,
46:34this is Sid Griffin speaking, is conformity.
46:37That's sort of mad men, frankly.
46:41People aspired to have short back and sides and wear a two- or three-piece suit and be on
46:45Madison Avenue making a lot of money,
46:47telling America to drink a ginger ale or smoke a cigarette that America didn't really need to know about at
46:52all.
46:53That was kind of what people in the suburbs aspired to.
46:56It's understandable when a lot of those guys were of the World War II generation.
46:59They just wanted a steady job.
47:01But Dylan is like, no, no to the country club, no to the golf course, no to the suit, no
47:09to the steady job,
47:11no to the let's buy this product and have clean breath, no to let's buy this product and every hair
47:17in my head will be in place the whole day long.
47:19Bob Dylan is saying no to conformity.
47:21In the 60s, people thought Bob Dylan was a visitor from the future.
47:27And now that we look at his career, he's actually a visitor from the past.
47:31You know, America has a tradition of standing up for yourself and free speech and protest.
47:37But he kind of took it to another level.
47:39He took it to a popular culture level.
47:41But it became a lifestyle and a lens to look at what was happening around you at that time
47:46in a way that I don't think many other artists have been able to do successfully.
47:53In 300 years, there are X amount of great songwriters that people won't really know about or follow.
47:58I promise you that in 300 years, somebody will be at university discussing Bob Dylan in the way that they
48:07discuss T.S. Eliot or Dylan Thomas or Cicero or Cervantes.
48:11I promise you they will.
48:14It's like I got enough love around me, you know.
48:19So I don't need no people's love.
48:21I don't need to go out to play to a crowd of 20, 30, 50,000 people for their love.
48:25Some performers have to, you know, but I don't.
48:28I got enough love just in my immediate surrounding.
48:35So I don't care.
48:36I don't need, you know what I'm talking about?
48:39I come through good times and bad times, you know.
48:42So I'm not fooled by good times and bad times.
48:45Right now, yeah, you know, making a movie and going, you know, playing some big tours.
48:52But I've seen the bottom too, you know.
48:56I'm not God, you know.
48:58God only knows those things.
49:03Why is the properties?
49:04Well, think I was just pulling nowhere."
49:17But it was not that it was being abandoned.
49:17Thought it all started.
49:18I would've warto to find.
49:18It's 33.
49:18Hip on Kim I did not have the thing be soggy muffled.
49:18It's the big guy who catch up at you.
49:22It's a nice momavus one ripe Josh's christopher,
49:26and I love him that's a nice downloadable.
49:29You
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