A celebrity discussion about Bob Dylan's "Time Out Of Mind" album
Charlie Rose Show
Interview with Daniel Lanois,
Tom Pareles (from The New York Times)
and Suzanne Vega
Friday, October 10, 1997
CR = Charlie Rose
DL = Daniel Lanois
TP = Tom Pareles
SV = Suzanne Vega
CR: Bob Dylan, the legendary singer-songwriter, is back in a big way. He has been honored by the French government, honored by the Pope, and he has been on the cover of Newsweek Magazine, and the cover story is saying "Dylan Lives, The Rock Poet". His new album debutted in the top 10 called "Bob Dylan: Time Out of Mind". It is his first top ten album since 1979 and "Slow Train Coming".
CR: Joining me now to discuss the resurgence of one of rock's legendary figures is record producer Daniel Lanois who worked with Dylan on the album, Tom Pareles (The New York Times Chief Rock Critic) and singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. Welcome, one and all.
Everybody: Thank you.
CR: This is getting some kind of attention. This couldn't please you any more, could it?
DL: Yea. That's a nice photo of Bob.
CR: Did Richard Avedon take that photo?
DL: Yes, he did.
CR: What do you think of this, Tom.
TP: It's a wonderful record. I mean, it's the best thing he's done in 20 years -- by a long shot, by leaps and bounds. It's a very spooky kind of harrowing, drenched-in-the blues record, and it doesn't sound like anything that's out there at the moment, and the songs are kind of nakedly honest songs about feeling old, feeling unloved, wondering what to do in the world, wondering where to go, and the sound of it is just haunting. It's a great record.
CR (to SV): You just heard it last night.
SV: I just heard it last night for the first time, and I didn't know what to expect. I had read all the press and everything like that. I wasn't sure whether to expect the old Bob Dylan or something else. In my way of thinking, it's not the old Bob Dylan. But it's a really good Bob Dylan, and I would say it's very genuine.
CR: How do we explain this, after all the 10 years, you say 20 years, but all these years, it was almost like he was not speaking very clearly; you couldn't make out the lyrics. And all of a sudden this is so clear and powerful.
DL: I think he was proud of his lyrics, and he wanted to have them clear.
CR: You really think that.
DL: Yea, I believe so.
CR: That he really felt that it was good and different and special and demanded to be --
DL: Well, we met in New York before we did the record, and he didn't play me anything, but he read me all the lyrics to all the songs in one sitting. And I could clearly understand that it was a body of work of something that he was very proud of. He was looking to get it out there.
CR: What do you mean?
DL: Well, he was looking to project.
CR: He wanted this album to connect.
DL: Yes, he did. I think he felt like he was writing from a new perspective, and he knew what the words were all about, and he had an idea of what kind of tone he wanted the record to have.
CR: Why now?
DL: I have no idea. I can only imagine that he is seeing things in a certain way at this point in his life, or I always think that Bob's lived a lot of lives [chuckling], so he's probably able to see the world from a perspective of someone who has done a lot of living.
CR: What makes him legendary? What makes him a magazine cover story?
TP: Well, he changed the way everybody thinks of popular music. He said, "Popular music doesn't have to be boy-meets-girl", it can be, you know, "Johnnie's in the basement, mixing up the medicine". It can be visionary, it can be deep, it can be literary, it can be funny.
SV: Yea, that's the way I feel. It's like he blew the roof off of pop music and just expanded it as far as he could possibly take it. And in some ways I don't think it's ever recovered. People still try and do what he did in the '60s, but they haven't quite been able to achieve that.
CR: Was it erroneous of us -- should we have expected him to be at this level all along? Is that too much to expect of Bob Dylan?
TP: Well with these songs, he hasn't put out an album of new songs since 1990. This is his first album of his own songs. It isn't like it's an album a year -- here comes the next album. He's been working on this. He's been thinking about this.
CR: Did he talk about it?
DL: Um, he talked about spending a lot of late nights working on this chapter of work. And, when he finished the words, he believed that the record is done, the record was written. He said, "you know, we can do a waltz version, we can do this in 4/4, it can be up, it can be down, it can be these kind of chords, you know whatever we decide to do with it, that's that".
But what's important is that it's written.
CR [chuckling]: Do you think it had this potential to debut?
DL: I had no idea what would happen. It was very much, you know, a roller coaster ride in the beginning. And, uh, a good roller coaster ride. You know, I like going up and down with Bob. No problem.
CR: Well, what's a roller coaster ride with Bob?
DL: Well, you just never what you're going to get. He's an eccentric man, and you might get something great on the first take, or [chuckling] you may get nothing at all. You know, I mean, what we would do, Bob and I would go out to the parking lot and speak in the absence of the band. The band would wait in the studio. We'd go out in the parking lot and speak and make a plan for the next song.
CR: This is great! [chuckling] Is this great, or what?! Bob Dylan's out in the parking lot with you.
DL: So, in regard to last minute musical decisions. I remember saying to Bob, "You know, Bob, one of my favorite songs of yours is 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands'". It's in a kind of 6/4. I said, "It would be great to have something that feels that way on the record. Is there
one of the songs that might lend itself to that time signature?" And he said, "Well, this one 'Standing in the Doorway Crying', let's try that."
CR (to SV): Has celebrity been hard for him?
SV: Yea, because I think that he's writing as a man, and not as a celebrity. He's not someone who seems comfortable in front of the camera. I mean, he can project a great image, but that's not what it's all about, really. I think it's really more about the spirituality and his lyrics. And to write about the spirituality and his lyrics he's got to be part of the human race and eat your breakfast like everybody else and be able to walk around the street
and feel things. And in some ways I think that's what he's doing on this album, 'cause it's a very human record, and he seems very vulnerable to me right now.
CR: You think vulnerable.
SV: Yes.
CR: About death, about mortality.
SV: And about what his place is.
TP: He seems to be a real outsider on this record. He's looking at things from a distance. He's saying "my eyes are far away". You feel like he's an old man, or an older man, even though he's only 56. He's not at the center of things anymore. He's not some young kid with the whole world coming to him. He's standing outside and looking at the whole human comedy and tragedy -- from a distance. It sounds like a record, in a way, of a 70-year old man. He's looking at it from a prospective of age and fatalism. You don't expect him -- I mean 56 isn't retirement age, it's not death age.
CR (to DL): God, I hope not. The notion of this success, what's his reaction to it?
DL: I haven't talked to him in the last couple of weeks, but, um...
CR: Does he know?
DL: I'm sure Bob's very much aware of what's going on. And I'm sure he's very excited about it.
CR: Was he excited about the Pope?
DL (laughing): Oh, I think he was excited about it.
TP: I asked him about the Pope, 'cause I interviewed him a couple weeks ago. I said, "what's it like to play to play for the Pope?" And he said, "It's OK. I only have to play for 30 minutes. [Everybody laughed] And they know what I'm like in Italy." It's another gig. Another job on the endless tour. But I think it must be good for any artist to think that he's revealed himself really clearly on this album and really uncompromising on this album. And
to have that get through to people must be a real pleasure for him.
CR: Will he discover a new audience with this? Or will a new audience discover him because of this?
TP: Actually I think they already have. If you go to a concert now, there's a lot of Deadheads there. There's a lot of college age kids who like the fact that he's so bluesy and so deep into country and that he's got so many folk roots. And that he plays differently every night. People like that. There's a whole group of listeners that don't want to hear him copy himself from 30 years ago but want to see what Bob Dylan's doing now.
CR (to DL): How long have you known him?
DL: I've known him since 1988.
CR: And how did you get started in this friendship?
DL: We did a record in '89, a record called "Oh Mercy", and, um, it's quite a good record.
It's a soft record, a bid moody. And I decided that I wanted to try one more chapter with him
now.
CR (to SV): Have you met him?
SV: I've never met him.
CR: Never met him. Have you wanted to?
SV: Not particularly. I get what I want from the lyrics.
CR: This is a legend.
SV: I mean, yes, he is a legend. But with the songwriters that I really love in my life, I listen to their records, I get what I want from their records. I don't want to bother them. I don't want to be in their face and, you know, talk to them about stuff.
CR: Sure.
SV: I just want to get what I can from the records. I saw him once live, and I didn't stay. [Laughing] I left. I left half way through.
CR: Because?
SV: Because, first of all, I didn't have a seat. I was at the Beacon Theatre. I was being shuffled from one stair to the other, and I couldn't hear. It was enough to see him, to see his hands because he has beautiful hands, and you could see he's the same [unintelligible] guy that he was before, but I wanted to hear the words, so that's what I went home to do.
CR: That's what a songwriter would want to do.
SV: Yea, well that's what I wanted.
CR: Well, having said that, he doesn't consider himself a songwriter.
TP: Oh yes he does. Definitely.
CR: Didn't he say once that he doesn't consider himself as that big of a songwriter? And he said that people like Randy Newman and Peter Gabriel are songwriters.
TP: He's not a pop style songwriter. He's not a jazz-influenced, tinpan alley songwriter. He says he's very much in line of folk songwriters. He did a couple of interviews around this album, and I think one thing he wanted to make very clear was that he's connected to folk tradition. This is where he wants to be seen. He said that folk songs are his prayerbook
and his lexicon to me. And that means he gets his religion from Hank Williams' "I Saw the Light", he gets his sense of humor from Jimmy Rogers. They're very much the tradition he feels himself a part of, which is an old tradition. People who grew up on Bob Dylan don't hear all of those roots that's kind of splayed behind him — all the blues, all the country, all those songwriters that he's really steeped in. If you look at him, if you take the CD out of CD case, it looks like an old Columbia record. It looks like an old record from the '30s.
CR [taking CD out of case]: Oh, yea, it does.
TP: And I think he's saying with that, "I'm part of this tradition. I am not the rock 'n roll maniac. I'm somebody who's right up there with Sonnyboy Williamson".
CR: What's he like to be around?
TP: Well, I only met him just once [laughing], and I was expecting, given how down-hearted the album is, I was expecting him to be pretty morose. He was totally cheerful. He was in a really good mood. He said, "That's just the way I am. My mood changes. It could
change with a cloud going behind the sun." (I was praying that no clouds went behind the sun.) But he was very onto himself, too. He's very self-conscious. He knows what he does. He knows what makes his songs good.
CR: Other than what you've just said, was he different in any way than you expected?
TP: Uh, I had no expectations [laughing].
CR: Did you look forward to this? Was it a special time for you?
TP: I was thrilled -- I was thrilled. I've talked to a lot of rock musicians.
CR: What did you take with you to see Bob Dylan? From talking to all these rock musicians
-- they gave you an impression, they created a legend, they said things to you.
TP: Sure, but musicians like to talk about music. That was really what he wanted to talk about. One thing he told me that was that [speaking to DL] you and he spoke a lot about the key the songs would be in, and that you tried to put them in hard keys because that would make them sound more like a struggle. The guitar plays easily in the key of E. He's got some here in the key of B-flat, which is a tough key for a guitar.
DL: That goes even a step further than that. Just as we're about to do a take, he'll do it in
a different key than what he's done in the rehearsal, and sometimes a different time signature. And everybody just sort of jumps in and, you know, they just like stumble to the song.
CR: Wherever he is they go.
DL: Exactly. And I think he assumes that everybody is so good that at least this will keep everyone making discoveries with the arrangement.
CR: In December he's going to be one of the Kennedy Center honorees. I mean, this is the reason to be there.
DL: Well, that's great for him.
CR: You mean that, too, don't you? You're not saying that sarcastically?
DL: No.
CR: It's great for him.
DL: Yea, I think so.
CR: I guess I want to say, what's happening here? Is it coming to be something to be honored by the Kennedy Center? He's got an album out — all of a sudden there's lots of attention for Bob Dylan.
TL: The French gave him the Order of Letters. He got a life-time Grammy Award. If the Kennedy Center is going to recognize a pop songwriter, Bob Dylan's the guy to recognize.
CR: He is.
SV: I think it's also the fact that he had his brush with death earlier this year, even though that happened after the album was done. It reminds you that he's a mortal guy, so I think the world is interested in him to see what he has to say right now.
CR: I think they are too. But you've seen him [to TP], is there some sense that he thinks he's at some plateau somewhere?
TP: He's really proud of these songs. I asked him about his old songs, and he said, "You know, I can tell when I was being tricky, and I can tell when I was [I'm paraphrasing] I can tell when I was sending out a smokescreen of words, and I can tell when I was really on to something". But, when you get to be a certain age, you decide to just say what you mean.
And I think that's what he said on his album.
CR: Well said. Bob Dylan: "Time Out of Mind" is one of the top 10 albums in the country, according to Billboard. Thanks for coming. Thank you.
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This interview was transcribed by Barbara Holtz. I am not responsible for any errors which may have occurred in the transcription.