DYLAN: Jokes, laughter and a series of dreams
by Peter Wilmoth
Bob Dylan is considering the symbolism of the '60s voice of youth turning 50 last year. "Well, Rod's around," he says. "He must be close to me or even above me. (Rod Stewart is 47). A couple of 'em are around. The Stones."
What does he think of the Stones 30 years later? Dylan breaks up laughing. "If you like that sort of thing."
Bob Dylan: sit-down comic? The man who has been called one of this century's most influential - and possibly earnest - figures is not expansive, but he's not walking out of the interview after seven minutes either, as he did to one journalist.
This is a kinder, gentler Dylan, cooling off after his first Melbourne show on Wednesday night. Dylan is a small man, almost curled up in his chair. His shoulders are hunched against intrusion. He offers a limp hand and a grunt in greeting. This is Dylan in a good mood.
Why Dylan has agreed to meet a journalist after refusing 300 requests for interviews when he turned 50 in May last year is unclear. But 'The Age' is the beneficiary of half an hour of sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes lucid thoughts, punctuated by three or four belly laughs. America's greatest living poet is actually being charming.
Since he became famous in the coffee shops of New York's Greenwich Village in 1961, Dylan has embodied other people's dreams and ideals of the '60s. "People seem now to have forgotten about it," he says. "People are now more or less interested in the '90s. Sixties memories are fading a little."
There seems to be a '60s revival every few months. Dylan smiles. "There were '60s revivals in the '60s."
When journalists are finally allowed to touch the hem, they are usually forewarned not to get personal. "There's nothing that is really very interesting about me," Dylan protests, laughing. "Talking about me doesn't make a conversation more interesting. It doesn't interest me to talk about me. It's my least favourite subject (laughs again)."
But Dylan seems happy enough when asked about his children Anna, 25, and Jacob, 21, who, with Sara Dylan were immortalised in the song 'Sara' from his acclaimed 1975 album 'Desire'. "They're just around. I have an extended family, this, that and the other. We get on well, for the most part."
After 30 years of singing 'Blowin' in The Wind', does he perform the early songs under sufferance? "I do those songs because they feel right to sing," he says. "Even if they weren't my songs, they're my style of song, and they're oriented to what I'm doing today."
He is tired of interpreting his early songs too literally. "Some of my records I've been overloaded with, some parts and arrangements," he admits. "Whereas the song itself still has its strength for me. With some of the older songs, the vision is still quite focused."
Strangely, he admits to changing the list of songs he performs to keep certain fans happy. "There are a lot of people that come to our shows lots of times, so just for them, it's a good idea to do different things. It's not like they come and see me once."
Dylan has recently been the subject of a biography, Clinton Heylin's 'Behind the Shades', and there are several retrospectives, including a three-CD boxed set of "bootlegged" versions of his earliest songs. "Well, you know, people bootleg concerts, they might as well be out legally. Nobody would ever have thought that was that big a business. They sell quite a bit."
Was there any music Dylan admires today? "No. Nothing." He believes music lost the plot. "There was a cut-off point sometime." The early '70s? "Maybe. When the machines got into making music, you could turn it off more. It seemed to take a different turn at that point and the purpose got kind of lost."
The audience at Dylan's shows consists largely of people who were in nappies when he released 'All Along The Watchtower' in 1968. "I'm lucky to have any audience," Dylan says. "A lot of my contemporaries really don't have any."
His views on Australia are a little disjointed, but he claims to be fascinated by a country so different from his own. "To me Australia is ancient ground broken off from Africa, and that's why there are different animals here. Someone told me kangaroos are prehistoric. The people who are indigenous are prehistoric, too.
"Just looking at the ground... it doesn't look this way in America or Europe. This is ancient territory. For that reason alone, it's worth spending time here."
Dylan said recently that he'd written enough songs. "My songs aren't written like they used to be, which was all the time. They come slower now (laughs)."
Dylan ties a towel around his head and walks out of the dressing room and disappears into his tour bus. To rejuvenate himself, he sometimes decides to escape from the circus. "Oh, I get away to the boondocks somewhere."
(Bob Dylan plays at the Palais Theatre tonight, and on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.)