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List Price: $14.95 | | Publisher: Wenner
Salesrank: 458049
Released: May 15, 2007 |
| Our Price: $14.04 |
| Used Price: $6.63 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
Now in paperback -- the definitive collection of Bob Dylan’s essential interviews from 1962 to the present
Dylan expert and longtime Rolling Stone contributor Jonathan Cott has compiled thirty-one interviews that, taken together, present the public transformation of a brilliant young man evading fame and its attendant invasion of privacy into a seasoned professional who has learned how to impart truth to those questioning him without giving away too much of his private self.
Included in Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews are all six major interviews Rolling Stone conducted with Dylan, by Jann S. Wenner, Mikal Gilmore, Kurt Loder, and Cott himself. Other highlights include Nat Hentoff’s legendary 1966 Playboy interview with the singer; Studs Terkel’s 1963 radio interview on Chicago’s WFMT; the interview Dylan gave to screenwriter Jay Cocks when Cocks was a Kenyon College student in 1964; a 1965 interview with director Nora Ephron; and an interview that Sam Shepard turned into a one-act play for Esquire in 1987. Each piece portrays Bob Dylan as an interview subject who, as Cott writes in his introduction, is "at once obviously reluctant, self-protecting, and self-concealing but equally often a stunningly direct, heartfelt, epiphanic, poetic, and, most important, playful expositor of his munificent and inspiring thought-dreams."
Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews Reviews:
It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Reading)......... 
2009-12-22 - People. As you all know I've been a good friend of Bob's since the early days in the folk clubs of NYC. He even took a song of mine at that time. I was known as Metamorpho Von Ronk in my prime. But I didn't mind because today Bob has returned the favor. How else would I afford 5 star hotels while I lecture across the land? I ask you.
In any event, It took me about 2 years to read this. And it's not that it's difficult reading. It's not. It flows evenly. My problem is I start 5 books at the same time and have only so much time to devote to reading. But I did finish this one, and now I feel I must read it again to be sure I didn't miss anything. Dylan is such a complex creature that you have to allow for other levels of thought to guide you through this. And, even at that, you will feel you don't really have an insight into his persona. I do. But I am one of the chosen few and I can't divulge anything for fear of no more free hotel rooms. "Sigh".
Anyway, the book starts off with a radio interview in 1962 (when his star was starting to rise) until 2004. You will find a vast array of formats and publications that were interested in him. He never thought much of all this acclaim, he just did what he was good at - writing songs. But you'll get interviews from radio stations as well as notable publications like The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and even Playboy (!). Bob Dylan as a sex god - go figure.
The interesting thing I noted about Bob in this book was his way to be a virtual Houdini when it came to interviewers who tried to nail him down, or try to back him into specific meanings or explanations he has conveyed. It's a laugh how he turns it around so the interviewer is made to be specific. I look at Bob as being pure conciousness in the here and now. I think he must be the most aware person on earth. And, if you read this book, you will see how pure Seer thought has been learned by him.
One of the central motifs of his work is finding truth. We learn that he likes that very much. But, like anyone before him who has tried to teach enlightenment, he is mostly misunderstood by the masses. I think people miss his messages sometimes because they don't like the way he sings. That is very hollow, but Dylan just keeps doing what he does best, and that is write songs that beg you to think. He also knows that as an artist he doesn't need to explain anything to you.
If the mind of Dylan interests you at all, this is an excellent book to read. Will you come away with a clearer picture of who he is? Probably not. But, he wants it that way.
Happy Holidays and Buy this book for the myoptic visioned one in your life!
love, Metamorpho ;)
Essential
2009-08-15 - This book is absolutely essential for Dylan fans and everyone who intend to understand Dylan.
bob 
2009-06-01 - It's good stuff. It's life experiences. It's a wealth of info that they would not teach you of in college...
Watching Dylan Grow
2008-01-17 - Provides a fascinating portrait of a man attempting to deal cleverly with the exigencies of fame, while retaining his soul.
Particularly interesting for the early interviews, as we see Dylan developing the playful, Dadaesque indirection that he would use with interviewers, and for the interviews with those that accompanied him in his early years--folksters with whom he would drop the guise, and speak clearly and directly about his craft.
Great reading.
" A hero is a man who can talk to his drummer"
2007-02-26 - Thirty interviews over a forty year span are included in this volume. Dylan fans will thus have a lot of fun here. Dylan can be very funny and he also can be just plain kookie. One of his best gigs is his responses to questions that would make him a kind of Savior , political or otherwise of mankind. Here he is usually self- effacing and ironic.
One of the touching bits for me was his telling how as a nineteen year old youngster he took a Greyhound bus each day from Midtown Manhattan to visit Woody Guthrie who was dying of 'Huntington's Chorea'. Guthrie could barely speak . All he could do was give a name of his own song. Dylan says he knew them all and whatever Woody asked he played him.
Dylan really knows and loves popular music and talks in an interview with Sam Shepherd as well as in others of tens of groups I myself and I suspect most people never heard of. In another interesting piece someone asks him about contemporary songwriters and surprisingly he names Shel Silverstein as a real favorite. Also Randy Newman. And he mentions a couple of Paul Simon songs like 'A Bridge over Troubled Water' but then says that Simon has written a lot of flack. But who hasn't?"
I in general believe the Interviews are very interesting when Dylan talks about what he really loves , the Music, and how he makes it and plays it. In one interview he says that he has to play a certain time each day, but that he cannot do twelve- hour practice sessions like a Segovia 'There is a bit about the born- again Dylan which I found a bit distrubing , but I did not find him talking about his alleged reconversion to Judaism. Supposedly one topic he has pretty much avoided is his parents and parental home in Hibbing.
Dylan talks about his songwriting, about how he often throws out the most inspiring lines. It is interesting that the person who along with the Beatles has written the 'lyrics ' most song- listeners of the latter part of the twentieth century 'know' , begins his songs also with the music, the melody. The words come later.
I have no doubt that fans of Dylan will love this collection of interviews and learn much from it.
