Dylan Speaks

Dylan's new album, Together Through Life, is out. If you've ever read the interviews he gave when he first became a star, you know his lyrics were clearer. He was cryptic and dismissive--an arrogant young man with a gift for words (who was probably high half the time).

But his 2004 book Chronicles: Volume One (supposedly the first of three volumes--I'll believe it when I read it) was surprisingly straightforward and confessional. And his recent interviews, while he still has his poetic side, are at least responsive.

This interview from the TimesOnline has some interesting nuggets:

BF: Do you think [Obama will] make a good president?
BD: I have no idea. He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of them going back. You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned.

BF: When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that no battles, except Gettysburg, were fought in the North.
BD: Yeah. That’s what probably makes the Southern part of the country so different.
BF: There is a certain sensibility, but I’m not sure how that connects?
BD: It must be the Southern air. It’s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They’re all screaming and forlorning. It’s like they are caught in some weird web - some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can’t rest. They can’t live, and they can’t die. It’s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It’s all over the place. There are war fields everywhere … a lot of times even in people’s backyards.
BF: Have you felt them?
BD: Oh sure. You’d be surprised. I was in Elvis’s hometown – Tupelo. And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.