PLAYBOY: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock 'n' roll route?
DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall.
Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13- year-old girl.
Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs.
Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce.
Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road.
The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?
PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock 'n' roll singer?
DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.
——
From the Bob Dylan 1966 Playboy interview, Photo in London, England, by Barry Feinstein (1966)
A woman in front yelled at him "Play something we know" and so...
I have it on good authority that this is Istanbul/Constantinople, not Putting on the Ritz, in its structure. "Ritz moves the three notes of the arpeggio around the measure (so the low note is one beat 1 the first meaure, beat 3 the second, etc.) while it's always on the first beat in Istanbul (and this arrangement)."
ok, i need some help
this video (was from 2019 i think, not sure tho) of dylan performing "not dark yet"
it was painfully slow and i loved that performance
a big part of my dylan therapy
now it's gone!
searched youtube and can't seem to get that exact video...
I'm reading that this is NOW, that's his voice is back and he's playing guitar. Waiting to see confirmation somewhere else.
ok, i need some help this video (was from 2019 i think, not sure tho) of dylan performing "not dark yet" it was painfully slow and i loved that performance a big part of my dylan therapy now it's gone! searched youtube and can't seem to get that exact video...
THAT was good. And unexpected.
They were clearly not playing live, and so it was basically a series of beautifully shot music videos.
And, with a little research, it's easy to see what he was doing - reprising his other "concert" shot in front of a bunch of lumberjacks back at the beginning of his career. Nice.
âThey say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. Steal a little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and then they make you king.â
Its a subjective thing for sure. I think that same thing sometimes about some pop music or when someone pushes a 25 year old expert in just about any subject in my face. But I digress.
Dylan is pretty special to me (again subjectively) Like most things that are worth carrying with me when I venture outside the box, his prolific gift is woven through my experiences. I guess that makes it personal when someone says they don't like him. I'm curious but respectfully unflustered. Lol
To me, Dylan is a songwriter troubadour culturist street performer writ large bohemian warrior poet hero.
I've seen him many times beginning with the Rolling Thunder Review to about a year & a half ago in Boulder. No two shows were alike & they were all great.
While fair enough no artist is for everyone, Dylan's place in history is firmly sealed for all time. Meanwhile, he clearly has no fucks to give about what anyone thinks about him. The best ones never do.
Of course. I don't question the taste of fans of Bob Dylan. Not one bit. There are plenty of artists, of great fame or barely known, that I have little time for. Doesn't make me wrong. Or right. Just not my thing. I'm happy he's a fave of many here, but Dylan's voice isn't one for me. Unlike politics, where if someone chooses the other side, well then, they are just plain stupid. :-)
