Been a couple of years, but Dylan has opened up in interview again. The occasion is the 3-cd set called Triplicate.
This music he is recording and discussing, this is what I was listening to before folk music and the Beatles. Really it wasnt until Tamborine Man and Satisfaction that I got with rocknroll. There is still an old time easy listening station on AM in Boston and everyone in my family tunes into it from time to time. The melodies and arrangements are great - and it is so removed from everything else. Through YouTube have been able to track down the Swing Vocal versions of Jazz standards (No Moon at All), and discover more deeply the lush bygone era. (I am reading by coincidence a bio of Bing Crosby by Gary Giddens, with detailed descriptions of the arrangements of his great numbers.)
So given that I appreciate that Dylan appreciates this trove of musical art. And his singing has gotten better through the process of doing the five or so CDs, but he still has so much trouble shifting his voice when the songs shift intervals...so painful to hear.
I like his dicussion of rocknroll, sounds like he is firing up for a number on Hwy 61.
It was skeleton music, came out of the darkness and rode in on the atom bomb and the artists were star headed like mystical Gods....
Back then people feared the end of time. The big showdown between capitalism and communism was on the horizon. Rock and roll made you oblivious to the fear, busted down the barriers that race and religion, ideologies put up. ....
We lived under a death cloud; the air was radioactive. There was no tomorrow, any day it could all be over, life was cheap. That was the feeling at the time and I’m not exaggerating....
Groups like the Five Satins and the Meadowlarks seemed to be singing from some imaginary street corner down the block. Jerry Lee Lewis came in like a streaking comet from some far away galaxy. Rock and roll was atomic powered, all zoom and doom.....
On artistic creation:
...most everything is a knockoff of something else. You could have some monstrous vision, or a perplexing idea that you can’t quite get down, can’t handle the theme. But then you’ll see a newspaper clipping or a billboard sign, or a paragraph from an old Dickens novel, or you’ll hear some line from another song, or something you might overhear somebody say just might be something in your mind that you didn’t know you remembered. That will give you the point of approach and specific details. It’s like you’re sleepwalking, not searching or seeking; things are transmitted to you. It’s as if you were looking at something far off and now you’re standing in the middle of it. Once you get the idea, everything you see, read, taste or smell becomes an allusion to it. It’s the art of transforming things. You don’t really serve art, art serves you and it’s only an expression of life anyway; it’s not real life. It’s tricky, you have to have the right touch and integrity or you could end up with something stupid....Some people never get this and they’re left outside in the dark. Try to create something original, you’re in for a surprise.
http://bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLL8w0lrfqh8OH4gd63KYP5xz5IXgnZ9k
1 comment:
Took a break on this to review/listen to "The Cutting Edge" bootleg collection. Only a bit overdone (e.g., 20 versions of Like a Rolling Stone). This is the acme of folk rock...he was really composing at every level with vivid imagination. It is interesting to see the simple twists made in the incrementing arrangements. Let's do it faster, let's do it with breaks. Do a few and find something and move on.
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