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Bob Dylan bombs on CBS 60 Minutes
Subject: Re: Dylan Loses Magic, Finds It Under Chair
From: cropdustersal@cs.com (Salvador Astucia)
Date: 12/7/04 11:50 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <20041207235058.14275.00001553@mb-m13.news.cs.com>
[Ian/Paramucho]
>Dylan: I've lost the magic
>From correspondents in New York
>December 07, 2004
>
>
>BOB Dylan says he has lost the "magic" that drove his early
>songwriting but he keeps touring because its his "destiny".
>"Those early songs were almost magically written," Dylan told
>America's CBS network in his first television interview in almost 20
>years.
>
>"Try to sit down and write something like that," Dylan said of his
>1964 classic It's Alright Ma.
>
>"There's a magic to that ... You can't do something forever. I did it
>once, and I can do other things now. But, I can't do that."
>
>In the interview, which came two months after publication of the first
>volume of his autobiography, Dylan proved as difficult a subject as he
>has always been where the media is concerned.
>
>His answers to questions about celebrity, his work and his family were
>generally taciturn, often monosyllabic and, at times, almost
>provocatively enigmatic.
>
>Of his early days in New York's Greenwich Village and his swift rise
>to fame, Dylan said he had always felt he was destined for greatness.
>
>"It's a feeling you have that you know something about yourself that
>nobody else does; the picture you have in your mind of what you're
>about will come true," he said.
>
>"It's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self,
>because it's a fragile feeling. And if you put it out there, somebody
>will kill it."
>
>Dismissing the fact that his 1965 song Like a Rolling Stone was voted
>the greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine ("I don't pay
>much attention to that"), Dylan said he kept performing in his 60s out
>of a sense of honour.
>
>"It goes back to that destiny thing. I mean, I made a bargain with it,
>you know, a long time ago. And I'm holding up my end, to get where I
>am now," he said.
>
>Whom did he make the bargain with? "With the chief commander," Dylan
>responded. "In this earth and in the world we can't see."
>
>He also spoke of his struggle with celebrity - a subject he deals with
>extensively in his memoir - and his acute discomfort with being
>labelled the voice of a generation in the 1960s.
>
>"You feel like an impostor when someone thinks you're something and
>you're not," he said. "I never wanted to be a prophet or a savior.
>Elvis maybe. I could see myself becoming him. But prophet? No."
>
>The pressures of fame also took a toll on his marriage to Sara
>Lowndes, which ended in divorce and provided the inspiration for the
>highly acclaimed 1975 album Blood on the Tracks.
>
>"It just wasn't the kind of life that she had ever envisioned for
>herself, any more than the kind of life that I was living, that I had
>envisioned for mine," he said.
>
>Of his change of name from Robert Zimmerman, Dylan said that also came
>from a sense of destiny.
>
>"Some people ... you're born, you know, with the wrong names, wrong
>parents. I mean, that happens," he said. "You call yourself what you
>want to call yourself. This is the land of the free."
>
>Agence France-Presse
Not sure if John Lennon's old pal Elliot Mintz is still Dylan's
publicist, but it certainly looks that way. In 2000, Michael Gray
published a biography of Bob Dylan, "Song & Dance Man III: The Art
of Bob Dylan," which was extremely critical of Mintz. Gray quoted
Paul Zollo who interviewed Dylan in 1991 for Songtalk magazine.
Zollo said Mintz not only sat in on the entire interview, but tried
to control the questions asked beforehand and censor Dylan's answers
afterwards. This is what Zollo said about Dylan and Mintz:
===== quote on =====
Bob made a comment like 'People will burn their hair just because
Jimi Hendrix burned his guitar' and Elliot wanted it cut out
because he thought it offensive to Hendrix. After the interview
Bob said he didn't mean anything against Hendrix and I agreed
that it didn't come off as being negative towards Hendrix, so
Elliot agreed to allow it but the next day he called me and said
that he and Bob had talked it over and that Bob wanted it left out.
Another time, the part where [Dylan] said he didn't write lies,
he mentioned the songs 'Feelings' and 'People' as the type of song
that he wouldn't write. He actually started singing them for a
few seconds and when he sang the line 'People who need people are
the luckiest people in the world' he turned and said that that was
bullshit...He thought for a few seconds and said that maybe people
who needed people were the luckiest people, and laughed. Elliot
had that taken out because he thought it would offend the people
who wrote the songs...I asked him about 'Idiot Wind' and he made
the comment that not even Neil Young had written a song like that,
not yet anyway. Elliot thought that too would be offensive, to
Neil Young...he was in control of the whole scene.
===== quote off =====
After quoting Paul Zollo's description of how Elliot Mintz interfered
with the 1991 interview of Bob Dylan, Michael Gray went into what
can only described as a rant against Mintz. Here is an excerpt:
===== quote on =====
Do you often read anything quite so depressing? There ought to be a
special hell for people like Mintz who sanitize and demean the very
personality of the artist they are supposed to look after. Eternal
fire is too good for them. Eternal tape-loops of 'Feelings' and
'People', maybe.
But that Bob Dylan delivers himself into the hands of these ghouls:
that is the disquieting thing, because of what it augurs for his
work--because of how it threatens to diminish (aims to diminish)
the autonomy of its author, pulling down and intruding upon his
'lone guitar and a point of view.'
Why does he tolerate such people? As well as Elliot Mintz, the
1980s saw him acquire a 'dresser', one Suzie Pullen, to swell his
entourage and, for the 1986 tour for instance, to put on his fingerless
gloves for him and strap up his over-elaborate boots. Why can't he put
on his own?
===== quote off =====
If Dylan is still allowing himself to be manipulated by Elliot Mintz,
or others like him, that would certainly explain the dull 60 Minutes
interview.
Salvador
SOURCE:
* Michael Gray, Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan, pp 843 - 844
(The cited text are the words of Paul Zollo describing his 1991 interview
with Bob Dylan, and how controlling Dylan's publicist Elliot Mintz was.)
===
Ordering information for Salvador Astucia's books can be found at
http://www.jfkmontreal.com/raveningwolf/
Also see Astucia's homepage:
http://www.jfkmontreal.com
Salvador questions whether Dylan actually wrote
the songs he claims he wrote, and reminds readers of a lawsuit: James
Damiano vs. Bob Dylan.
(Damiano made a similar claim.)
Subject: Re:
Dylan Loses Magic, Finds It Under Chair
From: cropdustersal@cs.com (Salvador Astucia)
Date: 12/8/04 12:57 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <20041208005741.14275.00001561@mb-m13.news.cs.com>
<snip>
[zenarus]
>>....I think the magic Bob is refering to was LSD and a lot of reefer...
[Miguel B. Good]
>I don't think that is fair. Like any artist from the 60's and many
>jazz and blues artists they smoked reefer, at least some of the time.
>But for most people smoking pot and taking acid is as likely to make
>one write crap as to write something good. Like Ringo said in the
>Anthology, often when they'd get stoned, they'd think it was great -
>until they heard it back when straight.
>
>Dylan did have a muse, he was creative and he wrote a lot of great
>songs. He deserves the descriptions "artist" and "artistic genius".
>
>I think Dylan's magic was no more a result of pot and lsd than any
>other 60's artist, such as Mssrs. Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and
>Starr. And I think the creativity derrived from those substances would
>not be derived unless the creativity was already there and they were
>already able to connect with it.
>
>I know a lot of people who smoked pot and took lsd and none of them
>wrote any great songs, even those who were trying to.
Perhaps Dylan never wrote a lot of the songs he claims he wrote.
He never seemed be all that bright, not like Lennon. You could
tell Lennon was bright from his interviews alone. It more or
less corroborated that he was a genuine creative talent. With
Dylan, it's less certain.
Ever heard of James Damiano vs. Bob Dylan?
Salvador
===
Ordering information for Salvador Astucia's books can be found at
http://www.jfkmontreal.com/raveningwolf/
Also see Astucia's homepage:
http://www.jfkmontreal.com
Salvador accuses Dylan of selling out years ago
by pushing Holocaust propaganda in the 1963 song,
"With God on our Side."
Subject: Re:
Dylan Loses Magic, Finds It Under Chair
From: cropdustersal@cs.com (Salvador Astucia)
Date: 12/8/04 1:28 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <20041208012835.14275.00001562@mb-m13.news.cs.com>
<snip>
[Miguel B. Good]
> Everyone says Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft were very
> good records, but I find them pretty unlistenable. Give me
> his old stuff any time over those. The Box Set is quite good.
> But really, I don't find myself much in the mood for Dylan
> any more. I liked his music best when it was less enigmatic,
> like on New Morning, or his early protest songs and so on.
> That enigmatic stuff bores me for the most part. I like to
> know what someone is singing about, or at least get a
> feeling from it, ala Strawberry Fields Forever by Lennon.
I never cared for Dylan when I was younger, and I especially
don't care for him now that I've learned a few things. For
example, the so-called pact he made long ago with a greater
power (Morris Levy? :-) probably had more to do with pushing
Holocaust propaganda in exchange for a successful music career
than being a spokesman for a generation or a prophet. (See
Holocaust reference below in lyrics to "With God on our Side.")
For a rebuttal to a younger Dylan's claim that six million
Jews died in Nazi Germany, click here:
http://www.jfkmontreal.com/john_lennon/Usenet/zyklonb.htm
Regarding Dylan's popularity, I don't remember people being
exited about him. All I remember is the press hyped him up
like he was a God. Dylan was right about one thing.
He is an impostor.
Salvador
===
With God on our Side
(Bob Dylan, 1963)
Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
===
END
===
Ordering information for Salvador Astucia's books can be found at
http://www.jfkmontreal.com/raveningwolf/
Also see Astucia's homepage:
http://www.jfkmontreal.com
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