Time Out of Mind: The Lives of Bob Dylan (92 page)

14
. Christopher Connelly, 24 November 1983.

15
. At some point, Dylan grasped that his verse was liable to leave half the species unimpressed. Should you check his website these days, you will find that ‘Taking care of somebody nice’ has been replaced by the less egregious, if clumsy, ‘Watching out for someone who loves you true’.

16
. ‘The life and crimes of the music biz’,
The Observer
, 20 January 2008.

17
. To be fair to Asher, he had by this time earned a reputation for fighting corruption within the industry. In 1983, his stance would cost him his job. Described as ‘a company man’, ‘blunt and a bit awkward’, the former Marine was no diplomat. Asher had been promoted to deputy president to cut costs, a fact that might have a bearing on any clash with Dylan. Asher’s claim to fame as a hit-maker was the success of Julio Iglesias. See Frederic Dannen’s
Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business
(1991), pp. 1–13, ‘The Education of Dick Asher’.

18
. Interview conducted on 5 July 1983 and published in Britain by the
New Musical Express
on 6 August 1983.

19
. Interview with Robert Hilburn,
Los Angeles Times
, 30 October 1983.

20
. Bootleggers tend towards the opposite extreme. At their most extravagant, they turned this single Dylan album into
The Complete Infidels Sessions
, a seven-CD box set with a concert DVD from 1984. If six versions of ‘Neighborhood Bully’ and seven of ‘Don’t Fall Apart On Me Tonight’ are what you seek, the capacious set answers most prayers.

21
. In December 2001, the Associated Press (AP) news agency published a three-part investigation into the theft of land from black Americans that began even before the Civil War and had continued almost to the present. ‘Torn From the Land’ established that property worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, had been stolen.
   Amid a mass of documentation, AP noted: ‘In 1910, black Americans owned at least 15 million acres of farmland, nearly all of it in the South, according to the U.S. Agricultural Census. Today, blacks own only 1.1 million acres of farmland and are part owners of another 1.07 million acres … [Black] ownership has declined two and a half times faster than white ownership according to a 1982 federal report.’

22
. Merline Pitre,
In Struggle Against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900–1957
(1999), pp. 5–6.

23
. Texas State Historical Association (
http://www.tshaonline.org
).

24
.
Song & Dance Man III
(2000), pp. 527–45.

25
.
Bob Dylan in America
(2010), Part 3, Chapter 6: ‘Many Martyrs Fell’.

26
. See, generally, the marvellous
Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell
(2007), to which I am indebted for biographical information and much else besides.

27
.
Rolling Stone
, 7 September 2006.

28
. Edition of 21 June 1984.

29
. Interview with Kurt Loder,
Rolling Stone
, 21 June 1984.

30
. Interview with Martin Keller,
New Musical Express
, 6 August 1983. Asked the same question by the Australian writer Karen Hughes in 1978, Dylan had replied that he believed in reincarnation ‘In a casual but not astonishing way’. (
Rock Express
, April 1978).

31
.
Song & Dance Man III
(2000), p. 464.

1
. ‘September 1, 1939’,
The English Auden: Poems, Essay and Dramatic Writings 1927–1939
, (ed. Edward Mendelson) (1977, pb. 1986), pp. 245–7.

2
.
The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students
(1987), p. 73.

3
. Scott Stossel,
The Atlantic
, 2 September 1998.

4
.
And a Voice to Sing With
(1987, repub. 2009), Part 5, Chapter 1.

5
.
Sunday Times
, 1 July 1984.

6
. Edition of 25 November 1985.

7
. Michael Gray deals with this issue in fascinating and exhaustive detail in his
The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia
(2006), pp. 225–31. Gray also points out that the album’s title derives in part from the fact that there once were movie houses called Empire Burlesques. One such pops up in Philip Roth’s 1983 novel
The Anatomy Lesson
.

8
.
Behind the Shades Revisited
(2000), p. 575.

9
. 4 July 1985.

10
. Interview with Denise Worrell,
Time
, 25 November 1985.

11
. Howard Sounes, the biographer who brought the Dylan of secret marriages and love children to public attention, has more in Chapter 9 of his
Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan
.

12
. The film, part of the BBC’s Omnibus strand, would not be broadcast until September 1987.

13
. The Farley interview was published on 17 September 2001; the Inskeep interview

14
. Allan Jones, ‘Editor’s Diary’,
Uncut
.
www.uncut.co.uk/blog/uncut-editors-diary/the-greatest-shows-on-earth

15
. 18 October 1987.

1
. Edition of 22 December 2001.

2
.
Rolling Stone
, 7 September 2006.

3
. Ben Rayner,
Toronto Star
, 15 November 2012.

4
. Interview with Douglas Brinkley, published 14 May 2009.

5
.
Encyclopedia
, pp. 173–4.

6
.
The Independent
, 21 October 1988.

7
. Edition of 29 July 1988.

8
. Interview with Jon Pareles, 28 September 1997.

9
.
Chronicles
, p. 165.

10
. Both quotations come from interviews given to
Uncut
magazine, November 2008.

11
. 21 September 1989.

12
. Interview with Ellen Futterman,
St Louis Post-Dispatch
, 7 April 1994.

13
. See Ian Bell,
Once Upon a Time: The Lives of Bob Dylan
(2012), p. 101.

14
. 4 February 1991.

15
. Andrew Muir,
Razor’s Edge: Bob Dylan & the Neverending Tour
(2001), p. 71.

16
. Published in July 1991.

17
. The interview was conducted in Los Angeles on 14 April but not published until the winter 1991 edition of the magazine
SongTalk
.

18
. Interview with Ryan Cormnier, Delaware Online, 9 October 2008. Retrieved from
www.delawareonline.com/blogs
.

19
. The Ryan quotations are from an interview published online by
Uncut
magazine in October 2008.

20
.
Requiem for a Nun
(1950).

21
. See Bell,
Once Upon a Time
, p. 138.

22
. See, generally, three books by the late Paul Williams:
Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1960–1973
(1990);
Bob Dylan: Performing Artist: The Middle Years 1974–1986
(1992);
Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1986–1990 and Beyond
(2005). Each is admirable, learned and somehow beside the point. See also Stephen Scobie’s fine
Alias Bob Dylan Revisited
(2003).

23
.
Song & Dance Man III
, p. 389.

24
. Interview with David Gates,
Newsweek
, 5 October 1997.

25
.
Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star
, p. 21.

26
.
Ibid
., p. 209.

27
.
Song & Dance Man III
, p. 389.

28
.
Down the Highway
, p. 475.

29
.
Ibid
., pp. 488–9.

30
.
Biograph
booklet.

1
. The melodrama began to get out of hand when Barry Dickens, Dylan’s British agent, described the infection as ‘potentially fatal’ (
The Independent
, 29 May 1997). The New York
Daily News
(29 May 1997) preferred ‘potentially deadly’. By 8 June,
Newsweek
had reported claims from the previous week that Dylan ‘might be dying’. By 16 October,
Der Spiegel
was stating that he had ‘almost died of a heart disease’.

2
.
The Oxford Companion to Medicine
, Volume I, p. 546.

3
. Edition of 26 August.

4
. Interview with David Gates,
Newsweek
, 5 October 1997.

5
.
Ibid
.

6
. Interview with Jon Pareles, 28 September 1997.

7
.
USA Today
, 29 September 1997.

8
.
Rolling Stone
, 7 September 2006.

9
. Interview with Edna Gundersen,
USA Today
, 29 September 1997.

10
.
Ibid
.

11
. Serge Kaganski,
Mojo
magazine, February 1998 edition.

12
. Alan Jackson, press-conference report,
Times
magazine, 8 September 2001.

13
. Interview with Mikal Gilmore,
Rolling Stone
, 22 November 2001.

14
.
San Francisco Chronicle
, 2 November 1997.

15
. While it is true that only 49 per cent of eligible voters bothered to turn out for the election in November 1996, giving 49.2 per cent of the popular vote to Clinton and 40.7 per cent to his opponent, Bob Dole, polling organisations weight their findings to take account of participation, party affiliation, if any, and other factors besides. Clinton was popular.

16
. The population statistics come from a Bureau of the Census document entitled
Population Profile of the United States 1997
. The firearms figures are from a National Institute of Justice survey published in May 1997.

17
. Sidney Blumenthal,
The Clinton Wars: An Insider’s Account of the White House Years
(2003).

18
.
Mojo
, February 1998. The piece was provided by Serge Kaganski of the French magazine
Les Inrockuptibles
. He had been part of a group of European journalists who had interviewd Dylan in London on 4 October 1997.

19
. A Norwegian committee and John Bauldie, editor of the Dylan magazine
The Telegraph
, were equally important to the campaign. Bauldie died in a helicopter crash just after the nomination was submitted. Contrary to some reports, the submission, though lodged in 1996, was made too late for consideration that year.

20
. From Bill Pagel’s Bob Links, a website ‘dedicated to providing Bob Dylan concert information’. (
http://www.boblinks.com/dates11.html
.)

21
.
Berkshire Eagle
, 22 July 1999.

22
. Reported by Dave Fanning,
Irish Times
magazine, 29 September 2001.

1
.
Rolling Stone
, issue of 7 September 2006.

2
. Interview with Mikal Gilmore, 27 September 2012.

3
. Charles Seeger put some of his thoughts on process and plagiarism in print in the journal
Western Folklore
in April 1962. See Bell,
Once Upon a Time
, pp. 374–5.

4
. Interview with Seth Rogovoy,
Berkshire Eagle
, 8 June 2001.

5
. Pete Seeger and Peter Blood (eds),
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: A Singer’s Stories, Songs, Seeds, Robberies
, (1993) p. 33.

6
. Interview with Paul Zollo,
SongTalk
magazine, 1991 winter issue (Vol. 2, Issue 16). Republished in
Singers on Songwriting
(1993, rev. and expanded 2003).

7
.
Rolling Stone
, 14 September 2012.

8
. Mikal Gilmore interview, 27 September 2012.

9
. 5 October 2004.

10
. The Marqusee review appeared on 16 October 2004, the Appleyard piece on the following day. Carlo Wolff’s notice was published on 5 October.

11
. 8 July 2003.

12
. Lott, p. 5.

13
. Edition of 4 November 1963. Dylan had in fact taken his inspiration from the spiritual ‘No More Auction Block/Many Thousands Gone’, but its resemblance to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ was not self-evident.

14
. Junichi Saga,
Confessions of a Yakuza
(trans. John Bester, 1991), p. 6.

15
. 14 September 2006.

16
. ‘Bob Dylan: Henry Timrod Revisited’:
www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178703
.

17
. Issue of 27 September 2012.

18
.
No Direction Home
, Chapter 2.

19
. To be found at
swarmuth.blogspot.com
.

20
. As a specialist in Aramaic and Hebrew, Cook was probably more alert than most to the biblical connotations of Dylan’s title. Cook’s translations of the Scrolls, with Michael O. Wise and Martin G. Abegg, were published in 1996 with a revised edition in 2005.

21
. See Bell,
Once Upon a Time
, pp. 348–9.

22
.
Los Angeles Times
, 22 April 2010.

23
. The blog can be found at
ralphriver.blogspot.com
. The relevant entry is for 30 July 2011.

24
. ‘Highlands’,
Time Out of Mind
(1997).