Bob Dylan joins The Current to talk about his book, his career, and more.

(00:00:06) Okay, check one two check check check. Check K here. Ready Freddy.
(00:00:11) Okay 1 2 2 1 2 2
(00:00:14) 1 I'm going to just launch into some questions and I'll set it all up when I'm do the thing on the air tomorrow. So, okay. Okay, Billy Idol. I just finished your book and you held nothing back. There is some real truth and honesty warts-and-all some real story and that to me is what's really intriguing about you as an artist when you came up with such a pivotal time in music for me personally. I think it's the most important time and you've talked many times. About you were huge Sex Pistols fan. And of course their message at the time into an 18 year old 19 year old, you know, things are pretty bleak a little hopeless no futile and yet you that would be very appealing I would think as an 18 year old and you were a part of that scene and was that the inspiration for you to lunch Generation X or was it even from your love of The Beatles?
(00:01:24) Yes. I did love music. I had grown up loving music. Really? I mean I did by Beatle records and I was very young six really six and a half. But yeah, when it came to the mid-seventies and England was in such a bad way economically, there's a terrible depression. I mean the whole country had actually been on a three-day week early in the 70s where there was no electricity at night and I don't know there was the whole country was, you know up in an uproar and you know, you could see that Young people like say Johnny Rotten John Lydon. Yeah, he saw that we were being told there's no if we felt it, but he put it into words, you know that there was no future no future no future for you in England's dreaming and we really sort of Grant took hold of that and it was like our Mantra as well you say today over
(00:02:19) but you are such a motivated person, you know, it's still inspired you to start your own band and to in a way almost flipped. That on its head and say no there is a future and there is a possibility of music and fun and sex and rock and roll.
(00:02:37) Yeah. I mean we didn't really know we were doing that because of course we were doing things just purely for the moment when we started Generation X, you know, we very much influenced by by The Clash and the Sex Pistols, but we very much our own band because that was the first sort of wave of of punk rock groups very different they weren't The same and that was really important because that's I think that was part of the message that we were getting from like-minded beings around us was that you didn't just copy what was going on. You you try to come up with your own version of it and your own truth really and that's I think why the groups were so radically different because we were all looking for what was true for us.
(00:03:19) Right and I think with Generation X because you guys always had the punk sensibility and that attitude, but those were A real pop songs you wrote.
(00:03:29) Yeah, we wanted them to really last a long time. I also I wanted them even from the from day one. I wanted them to work on an acoustic guitar, even though I knew they were going to be played on an electric guitar. I wanted the idea that they were good enough. You could just play them acoustically and that's what we're going to be doing tonight. Yes is playing my songs acoustically that usually played electric and I think you'll see that that's part of the fun of writing songs is is To come up with that that a song can exist. Not just one way it can be multifarious. You know, it's it has multi purpose in it's lyrics and stuff like that. So I think a lot of that was what we grew up we grew up with a certain time with music there was using the very important when we were growing up super important and it was really one of the few ways people were communicating back then and I like to think that's still going on. But of course, there's so many different ways of communicating today with the computer. ER and the internet and everything but this was our way of doing it was talking through music. I mean other people picked up a camera and became a photographer some people picked up a you know, a typewriter and made a fanzine wrote about the scene or wrote about what they felt about England or the world and that was our way of speaking
(00:04:47) out and I think you were in a sense ahead of your time because what you were probably thinking I'm assuming was this could also be very danceable music, you know, it didn't have To be just people gobbing and pogoing you had a sensibility. It seems somewhere artistically that you wanted people to groove and to dance.
(00:05:07) Yes. I mean definitely especially when I got into my solo stuff very much about that. I mean early rock and roll the sort of early rock and roll people used to dance to it was like it wasn't just one it was multi and multi-purpose and he could listen to it or you could dance to it or you could have sex to it and very much. Much I was looking for a very similar get back to those who Roots where the music was multi-purpose and you could do all these different things to it. And yeah, and it kind of it was a bit of a funny anti-sex thing going on in Punk and it was it was fun to kind of like cast that aside a bit and so wait a minute. Yeah. It's a lot of fun, you
(00:05:47) know well and then you were a zigzag her you moved to New York and you you know, you lived pretty lean in those early days. I presume you were living in a craphole. Lynn
(00:05:58) yes. Yes, that's kind of the par for the course back in those days. But but you know, you believed in what you were doing so much that you could put up with anything to certain extent and we're very young so calls we could make even the grotius place that remand seem romantic. Yeah Ines and yeah, it was partly what you're doing is sort of taking the crap they'd given us and try to shine it. I don't know. Yeah, I was crazy. But yeah. And turn it into something good and the crap they given us turn into something
(00:06:31) good and and your management ability coin who had been kisses manager really encouraged you to be an individual and to be courageous and his wild as you wanted to be.
(00:06:42) Well, yeah, I think he felt you know, you should follow your own heart. He was doing that with his own life very much. Yeah, and he wasn't just he was a guy wore a suit. But as I've said in my book, he was a least suit person in the world. This guy was a wild man and I Have to go it some on stage if I was going to keep up with him in the boardroom. So just because he was using credible his incredible salesman and it was just a great team and he introduced me to Steve Steve. And so I think you can see a bill aucoin was beyond just a manager. He was very much a part of what we were doing and he you can see he was bigger than just kiss really was bigger than just one group. And I love the fact that he put me in Steve's together and we're sort of still together kind of There you are Bill. We're still together man. Yeah, he's passed on now, but somewhere he knows the thing he put together is still
(00:07:35) alive an MTV could not have come around at a better time for you for an artist who was so visual and you know there weren't a lot of videos that were actually available to people. So anyone who is really making some great music and videos got a lot of AirPlay.
(00:07:51) Yeah, there's hardly any videos when I was a great thing. And then the video channel was on 24 hours a day and in In those days, it wasn't really the reality television of today was purely a music channel and all they did was show the few videos they had and if you had a video out you'd be on it once an hour and everybody in the country started to watch MTV. So it did give us massive exposure and it broke a lot of new acts. He really did. I mean people like me were having problems with the radio the radio didn't want to play your music. They thought you had a punk rock image and then think it's sold advertising dollars. So I think we proved that wrong and next minute all the young people are phoning up the radio stations and they could see there was an audience for this new music and it was so exciting and I hope that comes across in my book. I really
(00:08:40) do. I think it does and again, you know, it's in your book. You're very raw and very honest about you know your drug use and to me I always wonder because it's something that I think everyone has been touched by on some level and yet I wonder at what point did you feel like you weren't you? Drugs, but drugs were using you.
(00:09:01) Yeah, well, I would think really by the early 90s. I started to really understand that it took a long time. You know, you just believe the honeymoons going you just believe the honeymoon is going to go on forever. And it doesn't he keep trying to recapture that first flush of Love. They had and doesn't quite happen. But so course you go on ad infinitum trying to find that but it's really in the 90s really say with my motorcycle accident and a number of other things that happened you soon start seeing the writing on the wall. Though it takes a very long time to see it clearly and understand quite what it's telling
(00:09:36) and sometimes some people never understand it.
(00:09:39) Yeah, and unfortunately a lot of them are not with us today. Yeah, that's a sad thing and I think about a lot a lot of people I used to know they're not here today and I'm very lucky to be here enjoying my
(00:09:49) life. Okay. So tell me a little bit about the new record because you worked with a couple of different producers on this new record. And I think I had read that one of The Producers had produced Lily Allen. And some other really interesting artist had somebody brought these people to you or did you seek them
(00:10:06) out? Well, I was looking up and looking for a producer to kind of understand this modern world, but still had a kind of a touchstone moment with say where I came from and actually Greg kurstin was living in LA and very much a young teenager involved in punk rock and stuff on the scene going to see some of the punk rock groups and the 70s and early 80's so very much grew up with it. So it's it's not foreign to him at all the where I'm coming from. And so that was fun to find someone like that younger than me, but kind of in touch with where we were where we are going and where we like to be sort of mixing sensibilities. I like that. I like to mix sensibilities. I love the idea of mixing dance music with rock and roll with Groove music with soul and just putting it all together in a big stew and seeing what
(00:10:59) happens and You look out into your audience and see faces that are younger and think this is this is me. This was me I'd these people are being changed and reached by rock and roll just as you
(00:11:12) were. Well, I hope so. I know I know a lot of people think say music is not quite so important to people but I don't believe that I think it's always going to be important to people. I think there's things you can see with music that you can't always say with your words, you know your actual She's but you could somehow with the music and the lyrics suddenly a third thing happens and you I don't know you get some clarity with your life and that's what he gave to me. And so I love the idea. I love what you were just saying that that there's somebody down somebody there enjoying what we're doing and gets a buzz from it that he didn't get from something else gives them hope I mean, that's that's kind of what it did for me.
(00:11:55) Is there anyone that you think has written the perfect song that you wish? You
(00:12:00) wrote. I love a lot of Lou Reed songs or Iggy Pop and or David Bowie songs of got all those artists have written great songs, but at the same time it's been fun to sort of add my view into the pot and kind of to take what they gave me and then give something bad. That was the fun of it.
(00:12:22) Oh, so you've done so much. I mean you've done so much in your career. Musically, you've done acting you're an author. Is there anything? Out there that you want to try that you haven't done.
(00:12:34) Well, I'm not sure actually that's the wild question. The great thing is I'm still having fun doing this. I know we're sitting in this kind of Backstage room and doesn't look all that glamorous. But once you're on that stage the Glamour the life the life blood it's there and that's this all fades away. And it's the humanity that's out there in the feelings. They have so excited.
(00:12:59) Well, this has been almost a Dream come true. I thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and then to go up and perform for some really true fans. Thank you. Thank you.