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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.
07:19They like me.
07:20I just want to.
07:23It's going to be a big.
07:23I'm in this event.
07:24I'm in this event.
07:26Restricted gear tickets are available at the box office.
07:28They're still fighting.
07:29I'm in this event.
07:29It wasn't any money when I made music going on when I was in.
07:31If you could just support yourself, that was you were doing good.
07:35You know, there wasn't any money.
07:37It wasn't this big, big billion dollar industry that it is today.
07:42and people do go into it just to make money and because it's a it's proved that you can't make
07:48money in that field but um that's a sad thing you know i don't need money i mean i started
07:59out with
07:59no money don't tell me i i don't want to hear about money i had less money than any anybody
08:04i
08:04know i started i had no money i mean if you're talking about uh you're talking about you know
08:12paper money uh and and money in the bank or value wealth uh what you know possessions and all that
08:23stuff i had nothing i love you all
08:50so if you talk to famous people i guess i am one of them because i have a certain degree
08:55of
08:55notoriety and fame um everybody just kind of copes with a different way but but uh
09:03nobody really seems to think it's what they went after you know um
09:11a lot of people go after
09:14fame and money but they're really after money they don't really want the fame you know because the
09:22fame is is is what is the uh you know to walk down the street and or to go somewhere
09:27and have
09:28people it's like when you look through a window say you're passing a little pub or a little inn and
09:34you look through the window and you see all the people eating and talking and uh carrying on you can
09:40watch outside the window and you can and they're all you can all them you can see them all be
09:43very real
09:44with each other as real as they're going to be because when you walk into the room it's over
09:50you won't see them being being real anymore and even if you're in the room you'll you'll notice that
09:55things have changed things have changed just because a person walks in the room who can be a focus point
10:00for everybody you know i don't know maybe that's got something to do with it i really can't say i
10:06don't
10:06really i don't pay any attention to it it doesn't matter what the person's famous for you could be famous
10:11for
10:14uh you know shooting of a president or something you know what i mean you're still famous they put
10:19your picture on across on all the newspapers you're famous for something you'd be a famous fashion
10:23designer or a famous movie star or a famous wall street executive but you're still under your degree
10:29of fame you know you're just famous people people react to famous people
10:47so
10:52so
11:12His family were Russian Jews, tired of the pogroms.
11:17They 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,
11:40the iron ore range in 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,
12:18but 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
12:30would have some great emphasis on his music and some effect on his personal life.
12:36As to how we're going to quite slice and dice that, I couldn't really say
12:41and may disagree with other Dylan 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
12:52a tendency to identify with the underdog
12:56and a tendency to want to defend those who are downtrodden
13:00and have been refugees or brutalized or marginalized by the 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.
13:25His 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
13:33because there was a great tax base for the state school in his area.
13:37But I do think your upbringing, you know, nature versus nurture,
13:42your upbringing sticks with you.
13:44And having known how the Zimmermans suffered, both sides of his family,
13:49would have suffered back in Eastern Europe,
13:51there can't be any question that somehow or another
13:54that would have to permeate into his grown adult life.
14:01Dylan was born Zimmerman.
14:03And he's denied that Dylan comes from Dylan Thomas.
14:08But we'll never really know.
14:10There is the chance it comes from Marshall Dylan on the Gunsmoke TV show,
14:15which a guy like Bob Dylan, much less myself,
14:17we all watch this cowboy show called Gunsmoke.
14:20And Marshall Dylan was the guy, the good guy, the white hat,
14:24that kept the town clean.
14:26And he'd go on killing unless he's stuck.
14:28Yeah, just like one of them hound dogs who gets a taste of blood in their mouth
14:31and just go crazy, yeah.
14:33That's just exactly what he is, Chester.
14:35Are you going to take him, Mr. Dylan?
14:37I could hold him.
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, Dylan 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 Dylan Thomas.
14:55He's denied it several times.
14:56And we don't really know why he picked that name.
14:59But 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.
15:13Sure, 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.
15:21And I 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, guys
15:40like 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 because it's such a great
15:51tag, 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 ethnically
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 antenna 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, because 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 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.
19:04He may even come in on the basement floor, much less the ground floor.
19:11I walk and cry while my heartbeat keeps time with the drag off my shoes.
19:22The 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.
19:32Then he pushes a little further.
19:33Now, boom, I go to New York.
19:38He did what a lot of people in America do.
19:40They go to Hollywood.
19:42They go to New York.
19:43You sing country western, you go to Nashville.
19:45Dylan was ambitious.
19:46It's not gonna happen for me in Hemming.
19:48It's not gonna happen for me in Duluth.
19:51Chicago, maybe I can do some music there.
19:53Sure, it's got a blues scene.
19:54But where do I go to really impact America?
19:57New York City.
19:59In the shadows of modern Manhattan,
20:01surrounded by glass and steel,
20:04yet only a subway stop away from the seething city,
20:08with its crowds of people,
20:11hectic workday schedules,
20:12and the office routines,
20:15lies 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.
20:37In 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,
20:45but you could be and do anything there.
20:48Always a stepper soul before their time.
20:52Contemporary 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.
21:02You could be a dominatrix.
21:04You could be whatever you wanted.
21:05And that was the kind of culture that Bob Dylan was both attracted to
21:09and mixing with at the same time.
21:11When he arrives in New York, where does he go?
21:14You know, sort of Chelsea Hotel and the White Heart Saloon
21:16and all these taverns and places that are associated with the great writers
21:20and the bohemians of the day and the years previous
21:25that Dylan thought he would find his ilk.
21:27Chelsea Hotel was always known as a literary hotel,
21:30almost from the time it opened its doors.
21:32Personalities such as Mark Twain, O'Henry, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe,
21:37Edgar Lee Masters, Eugene O'Neill.
21:38And strange as it may seem, because it's literary background,
21:43one of the great music personalities started coming here.
21:46That was Bob Dylan.
21:47Because of Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan came here.
21:50And because he lived here for a length of time, got married, had a child here,
21:56other musical personalities started coming here.
22:00Some of the biggest groups started coming here, like Janis Joplin,
22:03the Incredible String Band, the Mamas and the Papas, Leonard Cohen,
22:07and so on and so on.
22:10And it's not only the music group, but almost every creative aspect has been used,
22:14from photography to dance to, you 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.
22:27So did Leonard Cohen and Buffy St. Marie, and there 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, Jeffson 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.
22:51One of those guys that was on that scene just 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,
23:02in the Wall Street 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.
23:11But I think it certainly crossed his mind.
23:32Dylan, early on, sang with a very nasal tone.
23:36He was imitating Woody Guthrie.
23:38But then, in my opinion, he was imitating Woody Guthrie or heavily under the influence.
23:42And so was Jack Elliot.
23:43So are a number of guys heavily imitating Woody Guthrie,
23:46till they broke free and became their own man.
23:48That's what you do in the arts.
23:49No one wakes up and paints like this great individual that we've never seen before.
23:55They paint like Gauguin.
23:56They paint like Gainsborough.
23:57They paint like Jackson Pollock.
23:59They paint like Picasso in the Cubist period, whatever they paint.
24:02And then they become themselves.
24:04Keith Richards didn't become Keith Richards.
24:05He had to go through Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley imitations to get to where he is now.
24:10No less so Bob Dylan and his relationship to Woody Guthrie and others.
24:14But 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.
24:29It'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 the 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,
24:52they have to weigh, can I do this to a relative of my family?
24:56What's in it for me personally and artistically, but what's in it for me in the long term
25:00his regards to 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 a, of a, of a group, another group of people.
25:14You 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?
25:23That's all I do it for.
25:24So guys like Dylan and Guthrie, they're, 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.
25:42Nightfall, 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,
26:08where the actors and audience share their common experiences after each performance.
26:14Clash isn't the right word, but it was just a melting of all different kinds of people
26:17from all over the world as well.
26:19It wasn't just New York.
26:20And it was this one place you kind of pinpoint as a location
26:25where other people with like ideas would come together.
26:38There 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
26:55and that whole Velvet Underground kind of thing.
26:58And that was very much a scene of amphetamines and staying up
27:01and not going to bed and making art round the clock and 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
27:11and they liked that 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
27:19because he was getting 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 cast as an outcast, but the outcast that's making it.
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 Andy Warhol exploding in plastic inevitable,
27:43that comes directly from a Bob Dylan reference, although 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, he'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, this very gruff, imposing manager wants to do this and that.
28:50And Dylan signs with John Hammond.
28:51The significance of John Hammond is twofold.
28:55One, Hammond is an A&R genius.
28:59John Hammond spotted Aretha Franklin, he spotted Bruce Springsteen, he got Benny Goodman.
29:05John 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?
29:26He had 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.
29:44Did 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,
29:52is did Bob Dylan pave the way for hip-hop?
29:55Well, if you listen to Subterranean Homesick Blues,
29:57that to me is the first hip-hop song.
29:59You know, Chuck D, Snoop, they may say I'm nuts,
30:02but I mean, to me, that's the first hip-hop song.
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,
30:33he'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,
30:39which is why he sort of breaks meter.
30:41It's not like a 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 is just going like this clip,
30:49he's got to go to put all the words in.
30:51He can do it, which goes back also not just he's some founder of rap,
30:55but that he's a great singer, that he can do that.
31:10Certainly, when you're a guy like Bob Dylan,
31:13your 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.
31:25I'm not enough of a musicologist to prove it for certain.
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
31:57that happens in a group of crowded people that goes down very 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 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,
32:38he'd scrapped an interim album called Bob Dylan's Blues.
32:41He made, with John Hammond in the booth, the brilliant, iconic, to this day,
32:45mega album, Free Will and Bob Dylan.
32:47It's not mega, and I'm not throwing my hands up because it sold millions of copies
32:50like Thriller by Michael Jackson.
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,
33:00when a hard rain is going to fall.
33:01I mean, the imagery of a hard rain is going to fall.
33:03It's just staggering.
33:04It's the rare folk song you can put on a piece of paper
33:08and hand it out in English class as 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,
33:41another legacy act.
33:43And so when Bob Dylan got involved with CBS and John Hammond,
33:47it was a huge break.
33:49He could have put out an album like Free Will and Bob Dylan
33:52on 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.
34:13There's three electric albums, the two country and western albums,
34:16and three if you want to count self-portrait,
34:17quote unquote 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.
34:44Like 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.
35:35You know, he'd have a stick, and it'd be like six feet long,
35:39and he would keep the plate, and then he'd do this and that.
35:41And then this plate started to fall, so he spins the stick really quickly.
35:45And then elephants 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,
36:01I 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,
36:18which is a satire about the right-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,
36:29that's the department of CBS where the lawyers are,
36:33thought, 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,
36:46but 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.
37:13You know, everyone is a puppet master.
37:15Everybody likes to control puppets and pull their strings
37:17without saying, I am nobody's puppet.
37:19Nobody pulls my strings.
37:21You know?
37:22And I'm sorry.
37:25I just don't, I 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
37:36would have gone along with Ed Sullivan and said,
37:37okay, we won't sing that song.
37:39We'll sing something innocuous.
37:40Something that is palatable to the masses.
37:42It shows who, not necessarily who the winners are in society,
37:47but it shows how society is so frequently molded by the forceful.
37:50Dylan knew, yeah, I'm going away today.
37:53I'm not on network TV, but I'm coming back another day stronger
37:56and I'll damn well sing that day what I want.
38:02Here is a guy that's cracked show business.
38:06I'm successful.
38:07One 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,
38:36he stops and starts singing country and western,
38:38which a lot of young people don't understand.
38:40Country and western was dad, not even dads.
38:43It was grandma's music back in the sixties.
38:45It was unhip.
38:46It was right wing.
38:47It was no one had long hair with dry hair.
38:49They all had slicked back, greased back hair,
38:51and they were rednecks pro Vietnam War.
38:55He's not only left behind that which made him famous once.
39:00He'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.
39:09There's no overt song against the Vietnam War.
39:11There isn't one.
39:15Cinco.
39:16Dos millones setecientos mil americanos sirvieron in Vietnam.
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
39:33and not insist that our puppets stay in charge in South Vietnam?
39:37Priority, foreign policy objective of our next administration
39:41will to be bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.
39:47When Dylan was making those albums in the early 1960s,
39:50there 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.
40:04They'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
40:18farm labor party upbringing, those 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
40:33where 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
40:41talking 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,
40:55that he had so much spotlight and pressure on her
40:57to keep 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,
41:06I wanted to be Elvis.
41:07I didn't want to be the Messiah.
41:10And I didn't want to be Woody Guthrie.
41:10I just wanted to be kind of Elvis, a popular singer.
41:13Now, whether or not he played folk music or rock to become a popular singer
41:18or more popular singer, I'll never know.
41:21But he said that he never wanted these spokesperson of a generation accolades and titles
41:29stuck 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.
41:44How are you doing out there?
41:45And, you know, they'd say, play the song.
41:46I'd 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.
41:50Oh, Jones there, you know, he was grumpy.
41:52He was moody.
41:53He was a recluse.
41:54He came out for a few minutes and he said hello to the audience,
41:56and he went back into his trailer or something,
41:59into the seclusion of his own little kingdom,
42:02which 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 Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan
42:50for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.
42:58We are living in a time when it's all about technology and math and AI
43:04and 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,
43:22not the human experience, I think is very scary.
43:25So the fact that he was celebrated in that way, I think is important.
43:30He's a great poet.
43:32And at the same time, he embodies the tradition
43:35and he handles it in a very original 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.
44:02It's meant to be listened to.
44:04And you may think that's strange.
44:05But then if you think back, you think back to Homer and Sappho,
44:10you realize, well, that was also oral poetry.
44:13It was meant to be performed together with instruments.
44:16But we still read them.
44:182,500 some years later, we still read them.
44:22When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016,
44:25there was a great controversy in some circles in the literary salons of the world,
44:34not 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.
44:58Don't make them on a record.
44:59Just print them on an A4 typing page, and you tell me that's not poetry.
45:04Very good.
45:05This art consists of the melding, the merging, the combination of words and music.
45:11They go together.
45:12You 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.
46:13Dylan 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, that sort of mad men, frankly.
46:40People aspired to have short back and sides and wear a two- or three-piece suit
46:45and be on Madison Avenue making a lot of money, telling America to drink a ginger ale
46:49or smoke a cigarette that America didn't really need to know about at all.
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,
46:59and they 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,
47:09no to the steady job, no to the let's buy this product and have clean breath,
47:14no to let's buy this product and every hair in 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 surroundings.
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're making a movie, you're going, you know,
48:48playing some big tours, but I've seen the bottom too, you know.
48:55I'm not God, you know.
48:58God only knows these things.
49:30Shawnazwitowski
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