Bob Dylan’s back. And doesn’t he sound as good as ever?This song, Feel A Change Comin’ On, from his new album, Together Through Life, is classic Dylan – bluesy and romantic.
He says he is a mystical person in an interview which accompanies this song on The Times and Newsweek websites.
Newsweek says:
Bob Dylan is on a roll. After taking seven years to pen “Time Out Of Mind,” another four to make “Love and Theft,” and then touring for half a decade while musing on “Modern Times,” he is delivering a follow-up album of new material faster than at any point since 1990…
At one point, a romantic-sounding electric guitar break, coupled with accordion, comes before a verse in which Dylan reveals: “I’ve been listening to Billy Joe Shaver / and I’m reading James Joyce / some people, they tell me / I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.”
Equally interesting is The Times interview with him.
The interviewer Bill Flanagan (BF): You liked Barack Obama early on. Why was that?
Bob Dylan (BD): I’d read his book and it intrigued me.
BF: Audacity of Hope?
BD: No it was called Dreams of My Father.
I too loved Dreams From My Father – just like a Bob Dylan fan! Why else is this blog called Blowin’ In The Wind?!
Dylan’s take on Obama is just like his songs – bittersweet.
BF: Do you think he’ll 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.
Dylan is Dylan the singer songwriter even in this interview.
BF: What struck you about him?
BD: Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage – cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.
Dylan has something nice to say about Elvis Presley too — by way of Ulysses S Grant, the victorious general who succeeded Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson as US president (1869 –1877) , and the Civil War.
When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that no battles except Gettysburg were fought in the North.
Yeah. That’s what probably makes the Southern part of the country so different.
There is a certain sensibility, but I’m not sure how that connects.
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.
Have you felt them?
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.
Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?
No, but I’ll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There’s an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.
Are you a mystical person?
Absolutely.
Any thoughts about why?
I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.
But the new album is all about love–love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.
Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.
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