(What was it you wanted? #15)
P.G.: Who's coming in the backing band this time? What's the music gonna be like?
Dylan: I'm bringing the same band that I have been touring with for the last two years.
P.G.: You'd be at Earl's Court, which is where you were last time. Were you surprised last time by the friendly response?
Dylan: Aaah, sometimes the response is less than friendly, and sometimes it's friendly, but over the years you just kind of get used to any kind of response.
P.G.: I know that recently in the States you've been performing a lot of your inspirational material. Will you be doing that in London?
Dylan: We'll be doing some of it. Most of the stuff comes from all the albums. And then we just finished an album, so we'll be including some new songs too. The name of the new album is Shot Of Love.
P.G.: Does that continue in the inspirational vein?
Dylan: You kind of have to decide that for yourself. It's different than the last, it's different than Saved and it's different than Slow Train, and it sounds old but it's new.
P.G.: Does it feature any of your recent players like Barry Beckett?
Dylan: No, I didn't do this one down in Muscle Shoals, I did it in California. So Barry's not on this one. I did use my usual band. Actually Ronnie Wood played on one song, so did Ringo.
P.G.: I've received some very exciting mail on the last couple of albums, because some people who shared your sense of what might be called ministry or message were very excited that you were with them on it and other people had thought, well, what is Bob doing, now?
Dylan: Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it takes ... , you know the older album don't really mean something to some people until they're hearing the new one and in retrospect they go back and hear something else from the path that'll seem like it takes the steps that leads up to the new one.
I think this new album we did, for me it is the most explosive album I've ever done. Even going back to Blonde On Blonde or Freewheelin' or any of those, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61, or whatever they were ... I think this one is, for it's time right now, will be perceived in the same way and I may be totally wrong in saying that, but I feel that same way about this album as I did when we recorded Bringing It All Back Home, that was like a break through point, it's the kind of music I've been striving to make and I believe that in time people will see that. It's hard to explain it, it's that unidentifiable thing, you know, that people can write about, but the can only write about and around it, they can't really take charge over it, because it is what it is and you can't really expound on it, it itself is the beginning and the end of what it is.
P.G.: In Blood On The Tracks, which was another of my favorite albums, you were speaking right from the heart. Is that the kind of feeling you have lyrically on this album?
Dylan: Well, that was a different sort of thing. That was a break through album for me too in another sense of lyrics. I've done things I've never done before. This is just a different sort of thing, it's the thing I've always wanted to do. And, for one reason or another, I have always been bound in certain areas where I couldn't have the right structure around some kind of things to make it come off, in a way, because mainly, when I don't do that much talking, so when I'm playing, you have to be able to communicate with the people around you in order to get your point of view across. If you have to do too much of that communication it gets confusing and something is lost along the way. And this time that didn't happen. Everybody was pretty much together.
P.G.: Do you feel then, that you now have accomplished what you want to as an artist?
Dylan: I think so. I think the next album I do I don't --- I think I will do an instrumental album now.
P.G.: [surprised] You think so??
Dylan: Yeah. I've come as far as there is to come and now I'm gonna start doing instrumentals.
P.G.: Are you finding at the moment inspiration from any other artists, as I think you probably found from Dire Straits a couple of years ago?
Dylan: Oh, yeah well, I just spoke with Mark recently ... Hmmm, I've always liked Gordon Lightfoot ...
P.G.: Recently here, Bruce Springsteen's gone down very well. Do you like him?
Dylan: Yeah, Bruce is a very talented guy.
P.G.: Did you know that Bruce has included 'This Land Is Your Land' in his concert program?
Dylan: Oh he has? That's amazing! That's good. Well maybe he'll start doing 'Blowing In The Wind'! Maybe he'll do an album with Bob Dylan songs!
P.G.: Well, funnily enough, I heard on the radio recently, Manfred Mann's version of 'With God On Our Side'. And I thought that in this current atmosphere where there is so much talk about nuclear disarmament and the missile talks, particularly in Europe, where it is a great concern at the moment, that these songs of yours from the early albums about the nuclear disarmament situation take on a new timeliness. Do you ever think about that?
Dylan: No. Not really, but it doesn't surprise me. I thought they were timely then, and just as sure they're timely now.
Transatlantic telephone conversation between Bob Dylan in Detroit and Paul Gambaccini in London. Broadcasted by Radio One, BBC June 20 in the program "Rock On".
Source: Tape.