Original subtitles

I'm looking for a place that will

"collect, clip, bath, and return my dog.

KN1-7727, cigarettes and tobacco."

"Animals and birds bought or sold on commission."

I want a dog that's gonna collect and clean my bath, return my cigarette,

and give tobacco to my animals and then give my birds a commission.

I'm looking for somebody to sell my dog,

collect my clip, buy my animal, and straighten out my bird.

I'm looking for a place to bathe my bird...

...buy my dog, collect my clip...

...sell me cigarettes and commission my bath.

I'm looking for a place that's going to collect my commission,

sell my dog, burn my bird, and sell me to the cigarette.

Going to bird my buy, collect my will, and bathe my commission.

I'm looking for a place that's going to animal my soul,

knit my return, bathe my foot, and collect my dog.

Commission me to sell my animals, to the bird to clip and buy my bath

and return me back to the cigarettes.

These are all protest songs. Now, come on.

This is not British music, it's American music. Now, come on.

My left fingertips?

- Yeah, let me feel them. - Good God, man.

What?

Bob!

Every single one of them. That's....

That's all I do, is protest.

The March on Washington was not only a moment of extreme hopefulness,

it was a moment of the confirmation of the possibility

of that hope becoming a reality.

That was the moment of recognition

of what people could do to change history.

I have a dream...

...that one day...

...this nation will rise up...

...and live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

...that all men are created equal.

I was up close when King was giving that speech.

To this day it still affects me in a profound way.

I would like now to introduce a young singer...

...from New York, Bob Dylan.

I looked out the podium, I looked out at the crowd,

and I remember thinking to myself,

"Man, I've never seen such a large crowd."

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty.

We are free at last.

He would take individuals

and infuse them with life that you could understand.

So even if he never considered himself a protest singer,

he was a protest singer.

And he saw what was happening all around him

and everybody else saw what was happening all around them,

but he voiced that for the first time.

"Hard rain's gonna fall" means something's going to happen.

He's been shot! Oswald has been shot.

We were going to make this world a decent, better place, but...

...that loss, I think it traumatized the nation terribly.

The Emergency Civil Liberties Union

was people who were really, deeply involved in progressive politics

were idealists and had a dream about fairness and justice.

Well, here's Bobby, he's 21 years old or whatever, he gets up there,

and they're giving him an award and his discomfort was extraordinary.

And he pointed his finger at them and he said....

"I haven't got any guitar. I can talk, though.

I want to thank you for the Tom Paine Award

on behalf of everybody that went down to Cuba.

First of all, because they're all young,

and it took me a long time to get young,

and now I consider myself young, and I'm proud of it.

I'm proud that I'm young.

And I only wish that all you people who are sitting out here tonight

weren't here,

and I could see all kinds of faces with hair on their head,

and everything like that, everything leading to youngness."

You know, they were trying to build me up as a topical songwriter.

I was never a topical songwriter to begin with.

For whatever reason they were doing it was...

...reasons not, really-- That didn't really apply to me.

"Old people, when their hair grows out, they should go out.

I look down to see the people that are governing me

and making my rules, and they haven't got any hair on their head.

I get very uptight about it.

There's no black and white, left and right to me anymore.

There's only up and down, and down is very close to the ground.

And I'm trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial

such as politics."

The evening that Dylan was given the Freedom Award

from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee,

apparently he got up, stood on his hind legs,

and said he was not a political poet and nobody's left wing servant,

but an independent minstrel or something.

And astonished and pissed everybody off

by not being a nice trained seal.

People were expecting him to give the same thing over and over again

in a precise manner, and a precise theory

and a precise way, and it got creepy,

because why should you have to...

...push yourself into a tunnel that isn't yours?

I mean, you're driving along and all these roads are apparent.

Why do you have to take that tunnel, go in and it's literally a tunnel,

because it's political in its theory?

Whereas you're out there, driving around

with all this other scenery going on, and that's what you're bringing out.

I was like an outsider, anyway.

I'd come to town as an outsider, and still, in a lot of ways,

I was still more outside than I ever was, really.

They were trying to make me an insider

to some kind of trip they were on. I don't think so.

Bob had a concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

where he told everybody how he and Neuwirth and them had traveled

across the country and he sang "Chimes of Freedom Flashing",

and it was incredible.

After the concert, all of a sudden we found ourselves trapped.

There was a press of people outside.

We made it into the station wagon,

and then all the people came rushing over to the station wagon,

and we slowly started to move the station wagon out.

And I turned around and saw.... There was an amp and his guitars...

and their suitcases in the back with a little tarp over it,

and I saw the tarp moving.

Two young girls stowed away under the tarp.

So we had to stop and gently eject them.

And of course, then all the people were pressing around.

Bobby!

All of a sudden, he had become an idol.

That was the beginning of people wanting more from him.

You know, as if just the songs weren't enough.

Everybody wanted to sleep with Bobby...

...to get high with Bobby.

The reverence was for Bobby, but it was also for what he had created,

and everybody wanted to get close to it.

The desire to be next to him produced a huge magnet which drew everybody.

Young and old.

Genius makes its own rules, and Dylan is a genius.

A singing conscience and moral referee, as well as a preacher.

He's also a very embarrassed young man now, because....

It's always embarrassing to sit there with your feet in cement

while somebody compliments you, either casually or lavishly.

But I've been reading a number of stories about Bob this afternoon,

and they are all of that order.

A comment in Billboard, the trade publication, says,

"Dylan's poetry is born of a painful awareness

of the tragedy that underlies the contemporary human condition."

Bob, do you sing partly your own songs

and partly other people's, or where do you get your material?

- Well, they're all mine now. - You sing all your own material?

And how long have you been writing your own music?

For about two years.

He came to be as he is because things needed saying,

and the young people were the ones who wanted to say them.

He somehow had an ear on his generation.

I don't have to tell you. You know him, he's yours, Bob Dylan.

I want to say thank you.

I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you, I love you.

Johnny Cash was more like a religious figure to me.

And there he was at Newport, you know, standing side by side.

Meeting him was a high thrill of a lifetime.

And just the fact that he had sung one of my songs

was just... unthinkable.

Johnny Cash and June Carter came by after Bob had put a couple,

three tunes on tape for him, this little portable machine.

Johnny called him out in the hall...

...and Bob came back in a few minutes later,

and he was holding this guitar, and he says, "He gave me his guitar."

Neuwirth was saying, "Wow, that's an old country tradition.

If somebody gives you a guitar, that's a big honor, you know?"

This is called "Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man".

Please play a song for me.

When Bob began to ignore topical material, it bothered me,

'cause he wrote such marvelous material, you know?

And suddenly to have stopped that meant that he was going away...

...from a political consciousness that we felt we all had.

One can attribute that as going commercial...

...as getting away from this, and that bothered us.

An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place

where he thinks he's "at" somewhere.

You always have to realize that you're constantly

in the state of becoming, you know?

And as long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sort of be all right.

I can't self-analyze my own work, and I wasn't going to cater to the crowd,

because I knew certain people would like it

and certain people didn't like it, I mean....

I had gotten in the door when no one was looking.

I was in there now, and there was nothing anybody,

from then on, could ever do about it.

There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,

makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part.

You can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies

upon the gears and upon the wheels,

upon the levers, upon all the apparatus,

and you've got to make it stop, and you've got to indicate to the people

who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free,

the machine will be prevented from working at all!

The police have got Mario, they are pulling him away.

The police have pulled Mario away....

All of us felt that those folks before didn't get it.

We were surrounded by...

...people who were insensitive to the need for change.

And that's why Peter, Paul and Mary, and Bob Dylan, Joan Baez,

all of whom were about the same age,

were put in positions of leadership

because there was an identification

amongst the college students.

I felt it all over America.

You know, wherever in America you went,

you felt that things were happening,

in an Olympian type of way,

in which children were beyond their parents' command.

He tried to exercise free speech....

Sometime around that period of time I was painting in Berkeley

and the phone rang, and I think this was 1964.

The phone rang, it was Bob, and he said,

"I have to do these shows, you want to come?"

I said, "Well, I'm painting pictures."

He said, "I'll buy you a leather jacket,"

and, he said, "all the paint you need."

The next thing I knew, you know, I got on a plane...

...and I flew to New York.

In those days, artistic success...

...was not dollar-driven.

It was, you know.... Those were simpler times.

If you had something to say, which was the....

Basically, the way people were rated,

you know, they'd say, "Have you seen Ornette Coleman?

Does he have anything to say?"

And it was the same with, like.... With Bob or anybody else.

Do they have anything to say or not?

Nobody had heard anything like this before.

No one had heard anything like this before.

There was a word of mouth.

And by the way, a crowd of 1 ,200 people isn't that big a crowd

if you stop and think about it.

That's about how many people are waiting for the D train

at Sheridan Square right now.

Around that time, he asked me if I wanted to go with him to--

He had a date in Chicago. Did I want to come along?

What struck me was that he was at one,

or he became identical with his breath.

And Dylan had become a column of air, so to speak, at certain moments,

where his total physical and mental focus was...

...this single breath coming out of his body.

He had a found a way in public to be almost like a shaman

with all of his intelligence and consciousness

focused on his breath.

He was doing more and more prose writing, I think, at the time, too.

I think he was spending more time...

actually sitting down and writing stuff

that he wasn't necessarily going to sing.

And then finding out that some of that could be sung as well.

The ideal performances of the songs

would then come on stages throughout the world.

Very few could be found on any of my records.

Every second, every... You know...

Reaching the audience is what it's all about.

There are no veils, curtains, doors, walls, anything

between what pours out of Bob's hand onto the page,

and what is somehow available to the core of people

who are believers in him.

There's some people who'd say... You know, not interested.

But if you're interested, he goes way, way deep.

A typical evening.

I guess there would be soundcheck.

And there would be me dealing with what kind of mood

Bob was going to be in.

I was already doing that, you know.

And when he was cheerful and up, it was just spectacular.

And if he was dark, there wasn't any way to reach him.

Bob seemed to ignore whatever was coming towards him.

He could literally, and I'd seen him do it,

turn his back and play a whole song, play two songs.

Fiddling around with the equipment on the stage,

and never even look at the public

and it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference in the magnetic draw.

It's as though the public wasn't even there,

he's just going to do what he's going to do, and he has to change.

And he has to keep moving, and he has to add this

and he has to crank the sound, and...

If you ever work with him, if he did the song the night before as a waltz,

tonight he's gonna do it in 2/4 time, just to fuck you up, you know?

And so, with somebody who moves like that...

I now see it, that it's very unique, and it's admirable,

and it's a pain in the ass if you're trying to work with him.

Or it's a pain in the ass if you were expecting something else from him.

If everybody really listened to his own conscience

and really acted upon what he thought was right and wrong,

rather than being so hopelessly passive,

which I think just about everybody is.

I think it's probably the main disease

is the passivity, where we will listen to whatever anybody else says.

It's Daddy, and Mommy, and schoolteacher,

and Sunday school teacher, and President.

This is what the war in Vietnam is all about.

The old and the very young.

The Marines have burned this old couple's cottage

because fire was coming from here.

The day's operation burned down 1 50 houses,

wounded three women, killed one baby,

wounded one Marine, and netted these four prisoners.

Four old men who could not answer questions put to them in English.

I was feeling this political pull very strongly.

And I was thinking what the two of us could do together, you know,

as far as any kind of movement, and that...

And so, we... Our tour had come to an end...

and Bob said something like: "Hey, we ought to do Carnegie Hall,

or some big place like that."

And I said, "What are we going to do with it?"

And... It was a pretty cold thing to say.

But then we did talk about...

you know, that he wanted to do his music

and I wanted to do all this other stuff,

and he said he didn't want to do all that other stuff,

you know, so that was pretty clear.

And yeah, I was disappointed.

But I mean, he'd given us, by that point, the greatest songs

in our anti-war, civil rights arsenals.

Thirty-some years, whenever I go to a march or a sit-in, or a lie-in,

or a be-in, or a jail-in, people'd say, "Is Bob coming?"

I'd say, "He never comes, you moron!"

You know, "When are you going to get it? Never did, probably never will."

And so I think he...

I think he couldn't have written songs like the ones he wrote

if he didn't feel, generally, I think, sort of, for the underdog.

But I think that he didn't want to

have to be the guy people were going to go to.

I mean, the times then were cut and dry.

You were either for the war or you were against it.

You either hated niggers or, you know, you supported King.

And you were forced to take a side.

Words have their own meaning, or their different meanings.

and words change their meaning.

Words that meant something ten years ago don't mean that now,

they mean something else.

"Subterranean Homesick Blues",

I mean, I don't think I would have wanted to do that by myself.

I thought I'd get more power out of it, you know,

with a small group in back of me.

It was electric, but doesn't necessarily mean

that it's modernized just because it's electric, you know?

It was, you know, like a...

Country music was electric, too.

The "Bringing It All Back Home" session was really fun because

it was this sort of spontaneous, telepathic thing, you know?

Like, he might have, you know, played through a song very briefly,

and that was all the rehearsal or preparation

that anyone had for the songs.

Everyone was really good, everyone was really funky, you know,

everyone had great time.

And everyone really got behind Bobby's songs.

It was almost like just getting together and jamming...

without any mandate or any charts or anything.

He was playing all by himself, at first.

And then he stopped and everybody laughed...

and then two seconds later, he started it again...

and everybody came in just "bang," like gangbusters.

I mean, the whole culture has moved and changed.

This is really what we're announcing.

The entire culture, both in America and England, has changed.

There's a whole new generation that's grown up, everybody.

Do people at the Museum of Modern Art

and the Metropolitan know about this, do you think?

Do they know that culture has changed,

that there's a new generation?

Well, they have been in the foreground

of showing all this new pop art themselves...

Warhol will be there in Albert Hall, and Warhol's on the walls

of the Museum of Modern Art for the last five years.

There were signs of new life, of another generation picking up

a revolution in consciousness. A bloodless revolution.

You know, like, the first revolution that never shed any blood.

That was the important thing.

I had just been kicked out of Cuba for just talking privately

about Castro's persecution of gay people.

And then went to Czechoslovakia, was elected King of May on May Day.

A week later was kicked out by the Minister of Education

and deported to London,

and then I landed around the time of Dylan's concerts at Albert Hall.

There was a very exciting scene, back at the hotel,

and Dylan was down the hall with the Beatles.

Then a message came that I was supposed to come in there.

So I came into the room and everybody was sitting there,

totally stone-cold silent, frozen, paranoid.

Not quite knowing my place, knowing Bob,

I sat down on the side of his armchair.

John Lennon said snidely, "Why don't you sit a little closer?"

I suddenly realized they were just so naive, they were young.

So I actually, I fell over laughing on to John's lap,

looking up at him, and asked him, "Do you ever read William Blake?"

He said, "Never heard of him!"

And his wife said, "Oh, John, stop lying."

Then everybody began laughing, and then the scene sort of broke up.

You know, the ice was broken.

It struck me as funny that these guys at the summit of power...

spiritual power, musical power, world fame...

'65, May to June...

were so unsure...

of their minds and speech.

It interested me just to watch Dylan.

I could sort of see

that things that he did and said were interesting to me.

And I didn't know why, and so that got me hooked on making a movie.

- Do you really like that song? - Yeah, it's fantastic.

- What do you like about it? - I just...

I don't like any of the "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

Oh, you're that kind of... Okay, see, I understand right now.

When we'd go into a town, there would be no sign.

And there would be people, kind of, just hanging out at the steps...

waiting for him to, you know...

And not waiting to crowd around or see him or get his autograph.

Just waiting for him.

And it gave you a feeling that there was some substance

that you had to really...

see through, that you weren't going to find out about this quickly.

But you had to kind of see it the way they did.

Do you care about what you sing?

How could I answer that if you got the nerve to ask me?

Well, then you have...

I mean, you've got a lot of nerve asking me a question like that.

Do you ask the Beatles that?

I have to ask you that,

because you have the nerve to question whether I can...

I'm not questioning you, because I don't expect any answer from you.

But do you think somebody wouldn't go see somebody

if they didn't want entertainment?

We showed him the first rough cut.

What he saw must have made him look like he was bare bones.

And I think that was a big shock to him.

But then he saw, I think the second night,

he saw that it was total theater.

It didn't matter.

He was like an actor, and he suddenly had reinvented himself

as the actor within this movie, and then it was okay.

That's what he's good at, is getting used to the way things are.

I mean, he understands that time changes everything.

They didn't light places, they didn't have to stop filming.

If you ran, they ran.

If you went in a room, they went into the room.

And you know, at a certain point, you just became oblivious to that.

I was young, and I had expectations.

And wanted to be where the action was.

And I should not have been there at that time.

Everybody was having a wonderful time and they were all smashing things up

in the hotel room, and I was this weird square over in my room

who didn't do all that stuff.

I was very critical of everybody who did, and wanted my time with Bob,

because I thought he was a special friend, and he had moved on.

And it was awful. I mean, it just hurt like hell.

I thought, I assumed,

that since I'd invited him on the stage in the States...

he would invite me on the stage there.

He had no intention of doing that.

- Bob? - Bob?

He was ready to have that whole stage all to himself, that's what I'd say.

He didn't want anybody competing with it.

That's as close as I can get.

You know, it was probably a stupid thing to do...

not letting her play, but you can't be

wise and in love at the same time, so...

I hope she'd see the light sooner or later on that.

Bob is one of the most complex human beings I've ever met, and...

I think at first I really tried to figure this guy out. No.

I gave it up, and so I don't know.

I don't know what he thought about, all I know is what he gave us.

The poetry, it tumbles out. And I watched him write,

at the typewriter or writing... It's done.

Do you remember that goddamn song?

I never finished that song. Did I? No, I never finished it.

Oh, God. You finished it in about eight different ways.

Did I?

I stole "Four Letter Word".

I took that, and disappeared with it, and sang it...

and I think the next Bob knew about it, he heard it on the radio.

I was with him when he heard it on the radio

and he was listening, he said:

"That's a great song."

That's a great song. He didn't remember he had written it.

I said, "You wrote it, you dope."

A lot of my songs, they were becoming hits for other people.

There was, the Byrds had a big hit.

Some group called the Turtles had some hit.

Sonny and Cher had a hit with a song of mine.

People were sort of writing a jingly-jangly kind of song

which seemed to have something to do with me, I, you know, like, "okay."

"I Got Me, Babe" is some kind of take-off of me, something I wrote.

But I don't know what it was a take-off on that I wrote, you know?

I didn't really like that sound...

or folk-rock, whatever that was,

I didn't feel that had anything to do with me.

It got me thinking about the Billboard charts and the songs

which become popular, which I hadn't thought of that before.

I found myself writing this song, this story

this long piece of vomit, 20 pages long, and out of it...

I took "Like A Rolling Stone", and made it as a single,

and I'd never written anything like that before.

And it suddenly came to me that was what I should do.

After writing that, I wasn't interested

in writing a novel or a play or anything.

Like, I knew I just had too much, I wanted to write songs.

Mike Bloomfield said he had heard my first record...

...and said he wanted to show me how the blues were played,

and I didn't feel much competitive,

I didn't feel much competitive with him,

I mean, he could outplay anybody, even at that...

at that point, you know.

But when it was time to bring in a guitar player on my record,

I couldn't think of anybody but him.

I mean, he just was the best guitar player I ever heard.

Okay, Bob. We've got everybody here, let's do one....

A producer named Tom Wilson invited me to a recording session.

And me being 21 years old and incredibly ambitious

and a big Bob Dylan fan, I decided I was going to play on that session.

There was another guitar player who sat down, and was warming up...

and just was playing far beyond my abilities.

And he turned out to be Mike Bloomfield.

I packed up my guitar,

and I went into the control room where I belonged.

After the first couple of hours of the session, they moved...

the organ player over to piano.

And I said, "Well, here's another chance for me."

So I said to Tom Wilson:

"Why don't you let me play the organ?

I got a great part for this," which was total bullshit.

And Tom Wilson said, "Oh, man, you don't play the organ.

You're a guitar player."

I said, "I got a really good part for this, I can play it."

He said, "Al."

And just then someone came and got him...

to take a phone call that came in for him.

So he didn't say no.

"Like a Rolling Stone", remake, Take One.

What are you doing there?

At that point, he really could have just busted me...

and got me back in the control room.

But he was a very gracious man, and so he let it go.

And so I began to play.

In the verses, in the beginning, you hear me come in

always an eighth note behind the band,

to make sure that I played the right chord.

The band would go... And I'd go like that.

Like that. They started playing it back.

After about a verse or two, Bob said to Tom Wilson,

"Hey, turn the organ up."

And Tom Wilson said to Bob, "Oh, man, that guy's not an organ player.

He's just..."

And then Bob said, "I don't care, turn the organ up."

"Like a Rolling Stone" definitely broke through somewhere.

I didn't feel like radio had ever played a song like that before.

I know I'd never heard a song like that before.

So....

And everything I'd done up to that point had led up to

writing a song like that, just effortlessly.

"Like a Rolling Stone" originally had about 50-some verses, as I recall.

And people who think it's long now, you know...

...should have had a look at it when it was raw.

I think he always made exactly the works that he wanted to make

at the time he wanted to make it. The audience came to Bob.

And that's one of the things that makes him so unique

in the history of American music, is the audience came to Bob Dylan.

I've never been that kind of performer

that wants to be one of them, you know, like one of the crowd.

I don't try to endear myself that way.

Now, do performers look for applause? Yeah, yes and no.

It really depends what kind of performer you are.

Like the story of Billie Holiday, you know,

when she sang "Strange Fruit" for the first time, nobody applauded.

You know, you could leave somebody kind of in a spellbound way and...

...I don't know. There's a lot of things going on

when there's a performer on stage and there's an audience out there.

That weekend, my daughter had been born.

Pete Seeger had made a recording of her. And he played it.

He opened the night on Sunday night at Newport

and he played this little recording of a new baby, he says,

"Here's the first folk song, the first voice

and we're dedicating this festival and this music and our purposes

to this new child, and the new world that she's going to grow up in."

And that was kind of, you know.... That's the way the evening began.

I was walking around in the afternoon and Albert Grossman took me aside

and said, "Bob is looking for you."

And he took me to Bob and Bob said, "I want to play Sunday night

and try and reproduce what we did on the album."

And I said...

..."Okay. Sounds great."

Ladies and gentlemen...

...the person that's going to come up now...

...has a limited amount of time.

His name is Bob Dylan.

He sang that song, "I ain't going to work on Maggie's farm no more."

I said, "Hey look, he's taking that old "Penny's Farm"

and putting it somewhere else. That's terrific."

I thought that was interesting.

But the volume of the blues band was kind of wild,

like, you couldn't get the words too clearly.

It was not possible to share the kind of intimacy

that we were sharing with folk music,

when you've got those electric instruments going.

The moment you've got drums there,

everything has got to come up in level.

The sound was a bit harsh.

But we thought it was way cool.

And what we noticed was...

...about a third of the audience was booing, which was unheard of,

not in all our days of seeing

whatever kind of show, had we ever seen that.

I remember understanding that drugs were bad and alcohol was bad

and rock 'n' roll was wicked and sex was bad.

And so I thought, "Oh, my goodness, how depraved this is all getting."

I was thinking that somebody was shouting,

"Are you with us? Are you with us?"

And, you know, I don't know what that, you know, like,

what was that supposed to mean?

I had no idea why they were booing.

I don't think anybody was there

having a negative response to those...

...songs, though.

I mean, whatever it was about, it wasn't about...

...anything that they were hearing.

You could not understand the words.

And I was frantic. I said, "Get that distortion out."

It was so raspy, you could not understand a word.

And I ran over to the sound system,

"Get that distortion out of Bob's voice."

"No, this is the way they want to have it."

I said, "God damn it, it's terrible. You can't understand it.

If I had an axe, I'd chop the mike cable right now."

We ran backstage and there was mayhem going on.

Pete Seeger and Theodore Bikel and all the old guard,

the old leftist, protest-singing factions

were horrified, and thought, "This is pop music, this isn't folk music."

And there was just a big battle raging backstage and

Pete, I understand Pete Seeger had an axe,

and was going to go cut the electric cables and had to be,

you know, subdued.

And Theodore Bikel was saying, "This is what the young people want!

We have to go with the change, this is what's happening now."

So they were all arguing among themselves.

Seeger...

...from all reports, was very upset by this.

And I had heard that he tried to cut the wires

and that he'd gone into a car

and wouldn't come out after this whole thing.

That's not my interpretation. You see,

Pete's father was there, Charlie Seeger,

and he had a hearing aid, and Charlie was very distressed

when he couldn't hear things clearly.

And with all this sound coming from the speakers,

Charlie Seeger was quite upset. And I think that affected Pete.

Rock 'n' roll was considered a real sellout music for a lot of folk fans

and "Like a Rolling Stone" seemed like the direct slap in the face

to everything that topical songs represented.

"How does it feel to be on your own." And they took it as this most

extremely negative...

...you know,

selfish statement, basically, and it was, you know, it was not

"Better World A-Coming", you know, it was not that.

Let's go, man. That's all.

I thought he would go out and play some other stuff by himself and then

we'd come out and play these three songs.

But we just came out and played these three songs and then

he said, "Goodnight."

And we'd been out there for a total of 15 minutes...

...and everybody else had played for an hour.

So that was pretty weird. And he was the headliner.

Bobby, can you do another song, please?

He's going to get his axe.

He's coming.

Bobby was terribly shaken and I ran backstage

and he said to me, "What have you done to me?"

Peter Yarrow came out and said, "Okay, everybody calm down,

Bob's gone to get his acoustic guitar."

And everybody....

I'd heard a rumor that Pete was going to cut the cable.

I heard it later, you know. And it was like, it didn't make sense to me.

Like, Pete Seeger, like, someone whose music I cherish, you know.

Like someone who I highly respect is going to cut the cable.

It was like, "Oh, God." It was like...

It was like a dagger, you know, it was...

Just the thought of it was, you know...

made me go out and get drunk.

I remember seeing Bob later on that evening

looking kind of blue, as though he hadn't...

Hadn't made the point that he wanted to make properly.

He didn't want to feel that he was limited here or limited there.

He wanted to do something with the Butterfield Blues Band.

And it was great.

Every night, after the concerts, the festival people would have a party.

And Bob was sitting in the corner,

I guess thinking about what had happened.

I said, "Hey, Bob, do you want to dance?"

And he looked up at me and said,

"I'd dance with you, Maria, but my hands are on fire."

And it's sort of, like... That was a cryptic remark, but I kind of knew...

exactly what he meant, you know.

So I said, "Okay, man," and I just left him alone.

We want Dylan!

A couple of months later, he played Forest Hills.

There, the first half was acoustic, the second half was rock 'n' roll.

The electric half, silence, booing.

At least 15, 20 kids ran on the stage through the whole electric set.

There would be somebody, two, three times during a number

actually jumping on the stage and running around amongst the musicians.

And an incredible animosity in the audience.

I think it was the only concert I have ever been at where that

animosity was that strong and you actually felt a little threatened

if you applauded during this, which I did.

When we played Forest Hills, "Like a Rolling Stone" was number one.

And so when we played "Like a Rolling Stone",

they stopped booing and sang along.

And then when we finished they started booing again.

I thought that was great.

I enjoyed that. But at the party after the show,

Bob came running up to us and gave us big hugs, he said.:

"That was fabulous. It was great. It was like a carnival.

It was fantastic." He really enjoyed the show.

The booing didn't really, you know... I had a perspective on the booing.

Because you got to realize you can kill somebody with kindness, too.

I walked in the studio and he was out there in a corner

and I walked up and I said, "Bob, I'm Bob Johnston."

He said, "How you doing?" And he smiled at me.

All I remember is Dylan doing that and starting in

and from that moment, I really have no memory.

Nobody ever counted off for Dylan,

he always did what the fuck he wanted to.

And I always just got the sound pretty well.

And he seemed to love the sound.

I was just caught in this whirlwind of...

you know, of being tacked on to this music that was going to be forever,

and being involved in it. And knowing that it was going to be forever.

The music actually changed by, I think the word is freedom.

Everything was changing. It wasn't like four songs a session.

There wasn't any clock. I took all the clocks down.

Nobody had a fucking clock in there.

It's just like, "Play some music.

What about this thing? What about this?"

We're recording 86845. Number one.

I believe in giving credit where credit's due.

I don't think Dylan had a lot to do with it.

I think God, instead of touching him on the shoulder,

he kicked him in the ass. Really!

And that's where all that came from. He can't help what he's doing.

I mean, he's got the Holy Spirit about him.

You can look at him and tell that.

"It Takes a Lot to Laugh", "It Takes a Train to Cry".

In fact, there was two versions of that cut. The first version,

which turned up on bootlegs, it was like a fast...

It was a much faster and much more jivey version...

that sounded kind of a lot like the other things that had been done.

What the fuck are we doing with this song, man?

It's not such a terrible song to do.

Then he said, "Let's take a break."

And he sent everybody off by saying it was a lunch break or whatever.

People went out for an hour.

He was sitting alone at the piano working over...

just play a few chords and he'd scribble something down.

And they came back and they did that other take...

after the lunch break, and it was, like,

the much slower, bluesier version

you hear on the album, and it's really changed the whole character...

and the feel of the song. It was really, really nice.

I'd like to know about the cover of your album.

I'd like to know about...

the meaning of the photograph of you

and the wearing of the Triumph t-shirt.

What did you want to know about it?

Well, I'd like to know if that's an equivalent photograph...

it means something. It's got a philosophy in it.

And I'd like to know, visually, what it represents to you.

Because you're a part of that.

I haven't really looked at it that much. I don't really...

I've thought about it a great deal.

It was just taken one day when I was sitting on the steps, you know.

I don't really remember.

I don't worry too much about it.

Well, what about the motorcycle as an image in your songwriting?

You seem to like that.

Oh, we all like motorcycles to some degree.

I do.

Do you prefer songs with a subtle or obvious message?

- With a what? - A subtle or obvious message.

A message, you mean like... What song with a message?

Well, like "Eve of Destruction" and things like that.

Do I prefer that to what?

I don't know, but your songs are supposed to have a subtle message.

- A subtle message? - Well, they're supposed to.

Where'd you hear that?

- In a movie magazine. - Oh, my God!

Do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or as a poet?

I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man, you know.

Mr. Dylan, I know you dislike labels and probably rightly so,

but for those of us who are well over 30,

could you label yourself and perhaps tell us what your role is?

Well, I sort of label myself as well under 30.

And my role is to, you know, to just stay here as long as I can.

You're considered by many people to be

symbolic of the protest movement in the country,

for the young people.

Are you going to participate in the Vietnam Day Committee demonstration

in front of the Paramount Hotel tonight?

I'll be busy tonight.

Things had gotten out of hand.

You know, it fell into the...

You know, you ask me why I write surreal songs

or whatever, I mean that type of activity is surreal.

I had no answers to any of those questions

any more than any other performer did, really.

But, you know, that didn't stop...

the press or people or whoever they were

from asking these questions. They, for some reason the press thought

that performers had the answers to all these...

problems in the society and...

you know, like what can...

What can you say to something like that?

I mean, it's just kind of absurd.

Phil Ochs wrote something in a recent Broadside Magazine

to the effect that you have...

you have twisted so many people's wigs that he feels that it becomes

increasingly dangerous for you to perform in public before an audience.

Well, that's the way it goes, you know.

I don't... I can't apologize, certainly.

Do you feel that part of the popularity

is because of an identification...

of your audience with you or with

what you're saying or what you've been writing about?

I have no idea.

Mr. Dylan, you seem very reluctant to talk about the fact that

you're a popular entertainer, and you're a most popular entertainer.

- What do you want me to say? - Well, I don't understand why you...

Well, what do you want me to say about it?

Well, you seem almost embarrassed to admit that you're-- To talk about--

Well, I'm not embarrassed, I mean, you know.

What do you want exactly for me to say?

Do you want me to jump up and say, "Hallelujah" and crash the cameras

and do something weird? Tell me.

Tell me. I'll go along with you.

If I can't go along with you, I'll find somebody to go along with you.

No, but I find that-- You really have no idea

as to why, or no thoughts on why you're popular?

- That's what interests me. - I just have--

I haven't really struggled for that. I don't....

It happened, you know.

It happened like anything else happens.

How many people who labor

in the same musical vineyard in which you toil,

how many are protest singers?

That is, people who use their music and use the songs

to protest the social state in which we live today.

The matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.

- How many? - Yes.

- Are there many who-- - Yeah.

I think there's about 136.

- You'd say, "about 136?" - Yeah.

Or do you mean exactly 136?

It's either 136 or 142.

At a certain point, people seemed to have a distorted, warped view of me,

for some reason, and those people were usually

outside of the musical community. "The spokesman of the generation."

"The conscience of a...." This, and that and the other.

That I could not relate to. I just couldn't relate to it.

As long as I could continue doing what it is that I loved to do,

I didn't care what kinds of labels were put on me, or how I was

perceived in the press, because I was playing to people every night.

I played at the Hollywood Bowl.

Then I left the organization.

I actually was frightened, when I got the tour itinerary,

to see that we were going to play Dallas,

where they had just killed the President.

And I thought, you know, "If they didn't like that guy,

what are they going to think of this guy?"

And I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to be

the analogy to John Connally.

I didn't want to be the guy next to him.

The guys that were with me on that tour, which later became The Band,

you know, we were all in it together.

We were putting our heads in the lion's mouth and

I had to admire them for sticking it out with me.

Just for doing it, in my book, they were gallant knights for even,

you know, standing behind me.

By the time we got to England, it was out of control.

And I don't know if word of mouth...

...preceded our concert tour...

...but...

...it really was pretty revolutionary, in the fact that

here was someone who everyone loved

and they didn't like what he was doing.

And they were showing it.

These stages were created for people who stood on stage

and recited Shakespearean plays.

They weren't made for this kind of music we were playing.

The sound was pretty archaic, really.

The sound really hadn't been perfected.

The sound quality hadn't been perfected,

many years after that.

The first half of the concert was Bob Dylan alone,

acoustic and harmonica.

When we kicked off the second half, I mean, we did kick ass and take names.

And we got everyone in there's attention.

They knew that we had arrived.

Because they were such fans of his acoustic set,

that when we came in and did the electric set

people have said the word to me that

he was a traitor to folk music. The pure music.

I mean, I'd just about had it, though. I'd had it with the....

With the whole scene.

And I was.... Whether I knew it or didn't know it, I was looking

to just quit for a while.

What about the scene? What had you had it with?

What about the scene were you sick of?

Well, you know, people like you. People like, you know,

like, just, you know, like just being pressed

and hammered and, you know, expected to answer questions. You know?

What can I-- You know, like, it was enough to make anybody sick, really.

- He's terrible. He's a fake. He's... - He's cheap!

And having a half concert. Half one and half the other.

Fake, hypocrite!

That's what he is.

- Crap. - Crap. Rubbish.

- Complete rubbish. - Pathetic.

Moronic.

We paid to see a flipping folk singer, not a big group.

- Didn't you boo me last night? - I didn't.

- Oh? - We didn't boo you, Bob.

- Please, just a minute. - Well.

I want the names of all the people that booed me.

We didn't boo you! Come back soon.

Okay. I'll... I'll be back in a month or two.

- We'll wait ya! - So long, cheerio!

All you sweet, lovely people.

- Hello, Bob! - So long, sweet...

For the first half, when they're all so quiet, I'll just...

I'll play four or five songs and they just don't make a sound.

All of a sudden, "Boo."

And then Albert will come out and they go, "Boo."

And I loved the description in the paper last night.

What they said, that was classic.

There wasn't one truth in the entire article.

It was all the most fantastic lies

- they could concoct. - From what town, man?

From the last town, Edinburgh.

"Another night of catcalls for Dylan."

- Oh, I didn't see that. - "Many of the audience walked out."

I saw one, man. Did you see one paper that said

- everybody walked out? - I haven't seen that one.

Everybody walked out. Saw a paper it said, "Everybody walked out."

- In Liverpool, I saw it. - They're really losing their minds.

- Totally insane. - I'm going to walk out.

"We want the real Dylan."

"Will the real Dylan stand up?"

I've decided just to tell them, man, that Dylan got sick.

What do you think? Just...

I won't tell anybody what you say. What do you think?

- Not your personal comment. - Yeah. What do you think?

I have no opinion about that.

Well, why?

Because I haven't heard you sing, actually.

You've never heard me sing?

And here you are sitting here and you're asking me all these questions.

- Well, this is my job. - Yeah, well.

Suck them?

Just put them in your mouth for one second.

Put the corner of your glasses in your mouth. That's it.

Just suck your glasses.

No, I don't want to suck them. Well, just like that.

Does anybody want to suck my glasses?

Who said that?

- This one here. This fellow here. - You? Ask him if he's American.

- Are you American? - I'm French.

Well, that's why you probably think the first records are better.

This is called...

This is a folk song. I want to sing a folk song now.

I knew that would make you happy.

This is called

"Yes, I See You've Got Your Brand-New Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat".

- You're so miserable... - Come on, it won't take long.

It won't take half an hour just to sign it.

They don't ask me, those other two people don't ask me. Why do you?

- Why shouldn't you give it? - You're so miserable?

Why do we come out to see you for?

- Because they like me. They said-- - We don't like you anymore.

She called me a bum.

- I'll tell you why! - May I have your autograph, please?

He'll call you a bum if you don't sign the autograph.

- Come on, Bob. - Oh, come on!

You don't need my autograph. If you needed it, I'd give it to you.

Just give up your autograph, will you?

What's wrong with him today, eh?

Hey, we've been on the road a long time, right?

I don't know. I don't remember.

I guess maybe we have. We've been on the road a very long time.

Man, I can't make it tonight. I don't know how to cover up for it.

It's something I never figured out.

There's nothing I can do about it. I just shouldn't be singing.

I think I'm gonna get me a new Bob Dylan next week.

Get me a new Bob Dylan and use him.

Use the new Bob Dylan, see how long he lasts!

I want to go home. You know what home is?

I don't want to go to Italy no more. I don't want to go nowhere no more.

You end up crashing in a private airplane

in the mountains of Tennessee.

Or Sicily.

When you stay in the States, I mean, when you come back?

I don't know. I just want to go home.

- Are you in the controls at all? - Yeah.

What does it sound like?

Like you're in a recording studio downstairs.

The son of a bitch picks up great here.

The acoustics are fantastic. I don't know what they'll be like....

Fellas, can we have you, please? In about two minutes.

Okay, two minutes.

No. I mean by the time you get down there it'll be two minutes,

not, "In two minutes, we start to go down there."

- Yeah, two minutes. - Hey, two minutes, man.

Last on the bill. Not least, ladies and gentlemen...

...here he is, back from the grave.

Right, straight from the grave.

I don't believe you.

You're a liar!

Thank you.