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PLAYBOY:?Are you sure you want to know if there's bad news in your future?

DYLAN:?Well, sometimes when the world falls on your head, you know there are ways to get out, but you want to know which way. Usually, there's someone who can tell you how to crawl out, which way to take.

PLAYBOY:?Getting back to colors and chords, are there particular musical keys that have personalities or moods the way colors do for you?

DYLAN:?Yeah. B major and B-flat major.

PLAYBOY:?How would you describe them?

DYLAN:?(Pause) Each one is hard to define. Assume the characteristic that is true of both of them and you'll find you're not sure whether you're speaking to them or to their echo.

PLAYBOY:?What does a major key generally conjure up for you?

DYLAN:?I think any major key deals with romance.

PLAYBOY:?And the minor keys?

DYLAN:?The supernatural.

PLAYBOY:?What about other specific keys?

DYLAN:?I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.

PLAYBOY:?Since we're back on the subject of music, what new songs have you planned?

DYLAN:?I have new songs now that are unlike anything I've ever written.

PLAYBOY:?Really?

DYLAN:?Yes.

PLAYBOY:?What are they like?

DYLAN:?Well, you'll see. I mean, unlike anything I've ever done. You couldn't even say that Blood on the Tracks or Desire have led up to this stuff. I mean, it's that far gone, it's that far out there. I'd rather not talk more about them until they're out.

PLAYBOY:?When the character Bob Dylan in your movie speaks the words "Rock ''n' roll is the answer," what does he mean?

DYLAN:?He's speaking of the sound and the rhythm. The drums and the rhythm are the answer. Get into the rhythm of it and you will lose yourself; you will forget about the brutality of it all. Then you will lose your identity. That's what he's saying..

PLAYBOY:?Does that happen to you, to the real Bob Dylan?

DYLAN:?Well, that's easy. When you're playing music and it's going well, you do lose your identity, you become totally subservient to the music you're doing in your very being.

PLAYBOY:?Do you feel possessed?

DYLAN:?It's dangerous, because its effect is that you believe that you can transcend and cope with anything. That it is the real life, that you've struck at the heart of life itself and you are on top of your dream. And there's no down. But later on, backstage, you have a different point of view.

PLAYBOY:?When you're onstage, do you feel the illusion that death can't get you?

DYLAN:?Death can't get you at all. Death's not here to get anybody. It's the appearance of the Devil, and the Devil is a coward, so knowledge will overcome that.

PLAYBOY:?What do you mean?

DYLAN:?The Devil is everything false, the Devil will go as deep as you let the Devil go. You can leave yourself open to that. If you understand what that whole scene is about, you can easily step aside. But if you want the confrontation to begin with, well, there's plenty of it. But then again, if you believe you have a purpose and a mission, and not much time to carry it out, you don't bother about those things.

PLAYBOY:?Do you think you have a purpose and a mission?

DYLAN:?Obviously.

PLAYBOY:?What is it?

DYLAN:?Henry Miller said it: The role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusionment.

PLAYBOY:?To create rock music, you used to have to be against the system, a desperado. Is settling down an enemy of rock?

DYLAN:?No. You can be a priest and be in rock 'n' roll. Being a rock-'n'-roll singer is no different from being a house painter. You climb up as high as you want to. You're asking me, is rock, is the lifestyle of rock 'n' roll at odds with the lifestyle of society in general?

PLAYBOY:?Yes. Do you need to be in some way outside society, or in some way an outlaw, some way a

DYLAN:?No. Rock 'n' roll forms its own society. It's a world of its own. The same way the sports world is.

PLAYBOY:?But didn't you feel that it was valuable to bum around and all that sort of thing?

DYLAN:?Yes. But not necessarily, because you can bum around and wind up being a lawyer, you know. There isn't anything definite. Or any blueprint to it.

PLAYBOY:?So future rock stars could just as easily go to law school?

DYLAN:?For some people, it might be fine. But, getting back to that again, you have to have belief. You must have a purpose. You must believe that you-can disappear through walls. Without that belief, you're not going to become a very good rock singer, or pop singer, or folk-rock singer, or you're not going to become a very good lawyer. Or a doctor. You must know why you're doing what you're doing.

PLAYBOY:?Why are you doing what you're doing?

DYLAN:?[Pause] Because I don't know anything else to do. I'm good at it.

PLAYBOY:?How would you describe "it"?

DYLAN:?I'm an artist. I try to create art.

PLAYBOY:?How do you feel about your songs when you perform them years later? Do you feel your art has endured?

DYLAN:?How many singers feel the same way ten years later that they felt when they wrote tile song? Wait till it gets to be 20 years, you know? Now, there's a certain amount of act that you can put on, you know, you can get through on it, but there's got to be something to it that is real-not just for the moment. And a lot of my songs don't work. I wrote a lot of them just by gut-because my gut told me to write them-and they usually don't work so good as the years go on. A lot of them do work. With those, there's some truth about every one of them. And I don't think I'd be singing if I weren't writing, you know. I would have no reason or purpose to be out there singing. I mean, I don't consider myself . . . the life of the party. [Laughs]

PLAYBOY:?You've given new life to some songs in recent performances, such as I Pity the Poor Immigrant in the Rolling Thunder tour.

DYLAN:?Oh, yes. I've given new life to a lot of them. Because I believe in them, basically. You know, I believe in them. So I do give them new life. And that can always be done. I rewrote Lay, Lady, Lay, too. No one ever mentioned that.

PLAYBOY:?You changed it to a much raunchier, less pretty kind of song.

DYLAN:?Exactly. A lot of words to that song have changed. I recorded it originally surrounded by a bunch of other songs on the Nashville Skyline album. That was the tone of the session. Once everything was set, that was the way it came out. And it was fine for that time, but I always had a feeling there was more to the song than that.

PLAYBOY:?Is it true that Lay, Lady, Lay,' was originally commissioned for Midnight Cowboy?

DYLAN:?That's right. They wound up using Freddy Neil's tune.

PLAYBOY:?How did it feel doing Blowin' in the Wind after all those years during your last couple of tours?

DYLAN:?I think I'll always be able to do that. There are certain songs that I will always be able to do. They will always have just as much meaning, if not more, as time goes on.

PLAYBOY:?What about Like a Rolling Stone?

DYLAN:?That was a great tune, yeah. It's the dynamics in the rhythm that make up Like a Rolling Stone and all of the lyrics. I tend to base all my songs on the old songs, like the old folk songs, the old blues tunes; they are always good. They always make sense.

PLAYBOY:?Would you talk a little about how specific songs come to you?

DYLAN:?They come to me when I am most isolated in space and time. I reject a lot of inspiring lines.

PLAYBOY:?They're too good?

DYLAN:?I reject a lot. I kind of know myself well enough to know that the line might be good and it is the first line that gives you inspiration and then it's just like riding a bull. That is the rest of it. Either you just stick with it or you don't. And if you believe that what you are doing is important, then you will stick with it no matter what.

PLAYBOY:?There are lines that are like riding wild bulls?

DYLAN:?There are lines like that. A lot of lines that would be better off just staying on a printed page and finishing up as poems. I forget a lot of the lines. During the day, a lot of lines will come to me that I will just say are pretty strange and I don't have anything better to do. I try not to pay too much attention to those wild. obscure lines.

PLAYBOY:?You say you get a single line and then you ride it. Does the melody follow after you write out the whole song?

DYLAN:?I usually know the melody before she song.

PLAYBOY:?And it is there, waiting for that first line?

DYLAN:?Yeah.

PLAYBOY:?Do you hear it easily?

DYLAN:?The melody? Sometimes, and sometimes I have to find it.

PLAYBOY:?Do you work regularly? Do you get up every morning and practice?

DYLAN:?A certain part of every day I have to play.

PLAYBOY:?Has your playing become more complex?

DYLAN:?No. Musically not. I can hear more and my melodies now are more rhythmic than they ever have been, but, really, I am still with those same three chords. But, I mean, I'm not Segovia or Montoya. I don't practice 12 hours a day.

PLAYBOY:?Do you practice using your voice, too?

DYLAN:?Usually, yeah, when I'm rehearsing, especially, or when I'm writing a song, I'll be singing it.

PLAYBOY:?Someone said that when you gave up cigarettes, your voice changed. Now we see you're smoking again. Is your voice getting huskier again?

DYLAN:?No, you know, you can do anything with your voice if you put your mind to it. I mean, you can become a ventriloquist or you can become an imitator of other people's voices. I'm usually just stuck with my own voice. I can do a few other people's voices.

PLAYBOY:?Whose voices can you imitate?

DYLAN:?Richard Widmark. Sydney Greenstreet. Peter Lorre. I like those voices. They really had distinctive voices in the early talkie films. Nowadays, you go to a movie and you can't tell one voice from the other. Jane Fonda sounds like Tatum O'Neal.

PLAYBOY:?Has your attitude toward women changed much in your songs?

DYLAN:?Yeah; in the early period, I was writing more about objection, obsession or rejection. Superimposing my own reality on that which seemed to have no reality of its own.

PLAYBOY:?How did those opinions change?

DYLAN:?From neglect.

PLAYBOY:?From neglect?

DYLAN:?As you grow, things don't reach you as much as when you're still forming opinions.

PLAYBOY:?You mean you get hurt less easily?

DYLAN:?You get hurt over other matters than when you were 17. The energy of hurt isn't enough to create art.

PLAYBOY:?So if the women in your songs have become more real, if there are fewer goddesses -

DYLAN:?The goddess isn't real. A pretty woman as a goddess is just up there on a pedestal. The flower is what we are really concerned about here. The opening and the closing, the growth, the bafflement. You don't lust after flowers.

PLAYBOY:?Your regard for women, then, has changed?

DYLAN:?People are people to me. I don't single out women as anything to get hung up about.

PLAYBOY:?But in the past?

DYLAN:?In the past, I was guilty of that shameless crime.

PLAYBOY:?You're claiming to be completely rehabilitated?

DYLAN:?In that area, I don't have any serious problems.

PLAYBOY:?There's a line in your film in which someone says to Sara, "I need you because I need your magic to protect me.

DYLAN:?Well, the real magic of women is that throughout the ages, they've had to do all the work and yet they can have a sense of humor.

PLAYBOY:?That's throughout the ages. What about women now?

DYLAN:?Well, here's the new woman, right? Nowadays, you have the concept of a new woman, but the new woman is nothing without a man.

PLAYBOY:?What would the new woman say to that?

DYLAN:?I don't know what the new woman would say The new woman is the impulsive woman....

PLAYBOY:?There's another line in your movie about "the ultimate woman." What is the ultimate woman?

DYLAN:?A woman without prejudice.

PLAYBOY:?Are there many?

DYLAN:?There are as many as you can see. As many as can touch you.

PLAYBOY:?So you've run into a lot of ultimate women?

DYLAN:?Me, personally? I don't run into that many people. I'm working most of the time. I really don't have time for all that kind of intrigue.

PLAYBOY:?Camus said that chastity is an essential condition for creativity. Do you agree?

DYLAN:?He was speaking there of the disinvolvement with pretense.

PLAYBOY:?Wasn't he speaking of sexual chastity?

DYLAN:?You mean he was saying you have to stay celibate to create?

PLAYBOY:?That's one interpretation.

DYLAN:?Well, he might have been on to something there. It could have worked for him.

PLAYBOY:?When you think about rock and the rhythm of the heartbeat is it tied into love in some way?

DYLAN:?The heartbeat. Have you ever lain with somebody when your hearts were beating in the same rhythm? That's true love. A man and a woman who lie down with their hearts beating together are truly lucky. Then you've truly been in love, m' boy. Yeah, that's true love. You might see that person once a month, once a year, maybe once a lifetime, but you have the guarantee your lives are going to be in rhythm. That's all you need.

PLAYBOY:?Considering that some of your recent songs have been about love and romance, what do you feel about the tendency some people used to have of dividing your work into periods? Did you ever feel it was fair to divide your work, for example, into a political period and a nonpolitical period?

DYLAN:?Those people disregarded the ultimate fact that I am a songwriter. I can't help what other people do with my songs, what they make of them.

PLAYBOY:?But you were more involved politically at one time. You were supposed to have written Chimes of Freedom in the back seat of a car while you were visiting some SNCC people in the South.

DYLAN:?That is all we did in those days. Writing in the back seats of cars and writing songs on street corners or on porch swings. Seeking out the explosive areas of life.

PLAYBOY:?One of which was politics?

DYLAN:?Politics was always one because there were people who were trying to change things. They were involved in the political game because that is how they had to change things. But I have always considered politics just part of the illusion. I don't get involved much in politics. I don't know what the system runs on. For instance, there are people who have definite ideas or who studied all the systems of government. A lot of those people with college-educational backgrounds tended to come in and use up everybody for whatever purposes they had in mind. And, of course, they used music, because music was accessible and we would have done that stuff and written those songs and sung them whether there was any politics or not. I never did renounce a role in politics, because I never played one in politics. It would be comical for me to think that I played a role. Gurdjieff thinks it's best to work out your mobility daily.

PLAYBOY:?So you did have a lot of "on the road" experiences?

DYLAN:?I still do.

PLAYBOY:?Driving around?

DYLAN:?I am. interested in all aspects of life. Revelations and realizations. Lucid thought that can be translated into songs, analogies, new information. I am better at it now. Not really written yet anything to make me stop writing. Like, I haven't come to the place that Rimbaud came to when he decided to stop writing and run guns in Africa.

PLAYBOY:?Jimmy Carter has said that listening to your songs, he learned to see in a new way the relationship between landlord and tenant, farmer and sharecropper and things like that. He also said that you were his friend. What do you think of all that?

DYLAN:?I am his friend.

PLAYBOY:?A personal friend?

DYLAN:?I know him personally.

PLAYBOY:?Do you like him?

DYLAN:?Yeah, I think his heart's in the right place.

PLAYBOY:?How would you describe that place?

DYLAN:?The place of destiny. You know, I hope the magazine won't take all this stuff and edit-like, Carter's heart's in the right place of destiny, because it's going to really sound

PLAYBOY:?No, it would lose the sense of conversation. The magazine's pretty good about that.

DYLAN:?Carter has his heart in the right place. He has a sense of who he is. That's what I felt, anyway, when I met him.

PLAYBOY:?Have you met him many times?

DYLAN:?Only once.

PLAYBOY:?Stayed at his house?

DYLAN:?No. But anybody who's a governor or a Senate leader or in a position of authority who finds time to invite a folkrock singer and his band out to his place has got to have . . . a sense of humor . . . and a feeling of the pulse of the people. Why does he have to do it? Most people in those kinds of positions can't relate at all to people in the music field unless it's for some selfish purpose.

PLAYBOY:?Did you talk about music or politics?

DYLAN:?Music. Very little politics. The conversation was kept in pretty general areas.

PLAYBOY:?Does he have any favorite Dylan songs?

DYLAN:?I didn't ask him if he had any favorite Dylan songs. He didn't say that he did. I think he liked Ballad of a Thin Man, really.

PLAYBOY:?Did you think that Carter might have been using you by inviting you there?

DYLAN:?No, I believe that he was a decent, untainted man and he just wanted to check me out. Actually, as Presidents go, I liked Truman.

PLAYBOY:?Why?

DYLAN:?I just liked the way he acted and things he said and who he said them to. He had a common sense about him, which is rare for a President. Maybe in the old days it wasn't so rare, but nowadays it's rare. He had a common quality. You felt like you could talk to him.

PLAYBOY:?You obviously feel you can talk to President Carter.

DYLAN:?You do feel like you can talk to him, but the guy is so busy and overworked you feel more like, well, maybe you'd just leave him alone, you know. And he's dealing with such complicated matters and issues that people are a little divided and we weren't divided in Truman's time.

PLAYBOY:?Is there anything you're angry about? Is there anything that would make you go up to Carter and say, "Look, you fucker, do this!"?

DYLAN:?Right. [Pause] He's probably caught up in the system like everybody else.

PLAYBOY:?Including you?

DYLAN:?I'm a part of the system. I have to deal with the system. The minute you pay taxes, you're part of the system.

PLAYBOY:?Are there any heroes or saints these days?

DYLAN:?A saint is a person who gives of himself totally and freely, without strings. He is neither deaf nor blind. And yet he's both. He's the master of his own reality, the voice of simplicity. The trick is to stay away from mirror images. The only true mirrors are puddles of water.

PLAYBOY:?How are mirrors different from puddles?

DYLAN:?The image you see in a puddle of water is consumed by depth: An image you see when you look into a piece of glass has no depth or life-flutter movement. Of course, you might want to check your tie. And, of course, you might want to see if the make-up is on straight. That's all the way. Vanity sells a lot of things.

PLAYBOY:?How so?

DYLAN:?Well, products on the market. Everything from new tires to bars of soap. Need is-need is totally overlooked. Nobody seems to care about people's needs. They're all for one purpose. A shallow grave.

PLAYBOY:?Do you want your grave unmarked?

DYLAN:?Isn't that a line in my film?

PLAYBOY:?Yes.

DYLAN:?Well, there are many things they can do with your bones, you know. [Pause] They make neckpieces out of them, bury them. Burn them up.

PLAYBOY:?What's your latest preference?

DYLAN:?Ah-put them in a nutshell.

PLAYBOY:?You were talking about vanity and real needs. What needs? What are we missing?

DYLAN:?There isn't anything missing. There is just a lot of scarcity.

PLAYBOY:?Scarcity of what?

DYLAN:?Inspirational abundance.

PLAYBOY:?So it's not an energy crisis but an imagination crisis?

DYLAN:?I think it's a spiritual crisis.

PLAYBOY:?How so?

DYLAN:?Well, you know, people step on each other's feet too much. They get on each other's case. They rattle easily. But I don't particularly stress that. I'm not on a soapbox about it, you know. That is the way life is.

PLAYBOY:?We asked about heroes and saints and began talking about saints How about heroes?

DYLAN:?A hero is anyone who walks to hi' own drummer.

PLAYBOY:?Shouldn't people look to other to be heroes?

DYLAN:?No; when people look to other for heroism, they're looking for heroism in an imaginary character.

PLAYBOY:?Maybe that in part explains why many seized upon you as that imaginary character.

DYLAN:?I'm not an imaginary character, though.

PLAYBOY:?You must realize that people get into a whole thing about you.

DYLAN:?I know they used to.

PLAYBOY:?Don't you think they still do?

DYLAN:?Well, I m not aware of it anymore.

PLAYBOY:?What about the 1974 tour? Or the Rolling Thunder tour of 1976?

DYLAN:?Well, yeah, you know, when I play, people show up. I'm aware they haven't forgotten about me.

PLAYBOY:?Still, people always think you have answers, don't they?

DYLAN:?No, listen: If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

PLAYBOY:?Would you be right?

DYLAN:?I don't think so. Maybe he'd have a lot of answers for him, but for me? Maybe not. Maybe yes, maybe no. Bob Dylan isn't a cat, he doesn't have nine lives, so he can only do what he can do. You know: not break under the strain. If you need someone who raises someone else to a level that is unrealistic, then it's that other person's problem. He is just confronting his superficial self somewhere down the line. They'll realize it, I'm sure.

PLAYBOY:?But didn't you have to go through a period when people were claiming you had let them down?

DYLAN:?Yeah, but I don't pay much attention to that. What can you say? Oh, I let you down, big deal, OK. That's all. Find somebody else, OK? That's all.

PLAYBOY:?You talked about a spiritual crisis. Do you think Christ is an answer?

DYLAN:?What is it that attracts people to Christ? The fact that it was such a tragedy, is what. Who does Christ become when he lives inside a certain person? Many people say that Christ lives inside them: Well, what does that mean? I've talked to many people whom Christ lives inside; I haven't met one who would want to trade places with Christ. Not one of his people put himself on the line when it came down to the final hour. What would Christ be in this day and age if he came back? What would he be? What would he be to fulfill his function and purpose? He would have to be a leader, I suppose.

PLAYBOY:?Did you grow up thinking about the fact that you were Jewish?

DYLAN:?No, I didn't. I've never felt Jewish. I don't really consider myself Jewish or non-Jewish. I don't have much of a Jewish background. I'm not a patriot to any creed. I believe in all of them and none of them. A devout Christian or Moslem can be just as effective as a devout Jew.

PLAYBOY:?You say you don't feel Jewish. But what about your sense of God?

DYLAN:?I feel a heartfelt God. I don't particularly think that God wants me thinking about Him all the time. I think that would be a tremendous burden on Him, you know. He's got enough people asking Him for favors. He's got enough people asking Him to pull strings. I'll pull my own strings, you know. I remember seeing a Time magazine on an airplane a few years back and it had a big cover headline, "IS COD DEAD?" I mean, that was-would you think that was a responsible thing to do? What does God think of that? I mean, if you were God, how would you like to see that written about yourself? You know, I think the country's gone downhill since that day.

PLAYBOY:?Really?

DYLAN:?Uh-huh.

PLAYBOY:?Since that particular question was asked?

DYLAN:?Yeah; I think at that point, some very irresponsible people got hold of too much power to put such an irrelevant thing like that on a magazine when they could be talking about real issues. Since that day, you've had to kind of make your own way.

PLAYBOY:?How are we doing, making our own way?

DYLAN:?The truth is that we're born and we die. We're concerned here in this life with the journey from point A to point Z, or from what we think is point A to point Z. But it's pretty self-deluding if you think that's all there is.

PLAYBOY:?What do you think is beyond Z?

DYLAN:?You mean, what do I think is in the great unknown? [Pause] Sounds, echoes of laughter.

PLAYBOY:?Do you feel there's some sense of karmic balance in the universe, that you suffer for acts of bad faith?

DYLAN:?Of course. I. think everybody knows that's true. After you've lived long enough, you realize that's the case. You can get away with anything for a while. But it's like Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart or Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment: Somewhere along the line, sooner or later, you're going to have to pay.

PLAYBOY:?Do you feel you've paid for what you got away with earlier?

DYLAN:?Right now, I'm about even.

PLAYBOY:?Isn't that what you said after your motorcycle accident-"Something had to be evened up"?

DYLAN:?Yes.

PLAYBOY:?And you meant. . . ?

DYLAN:?I meant my back wheel had to be aligned. [Laughter]

PLAYBOY:?Let's take one last dip back into the material world. What about an artist's relationship to money?

DYLAN:?The myth of the starving artist is a myth. The big bankers and prominent young ladies who buy art started it. They just want to keep the artist under their thumb. Who says an artist can't have any money? Look at Picasso. The starving artist is usually starving for those around him to starve. You don't have to starve to be a good artist. You just have to have love, insight and a strong point of view. And you have to fight off depravity. Uncompromising, that's what makes a good artist. It doesn't matter if he has money or not. Look at Matisse; he was a banker. Anyway, there are other things that constitute wealth and poverty besides money.

PLAYBOY:?What we were touching on was the subject of the expensive house you live in, for example.

DYLAN:?What about it? Nothing earthshaking or final about where I live. There is no vision behind the house. It is just a bunch of trees and sheds.

PLAYBOY:?We read in the papers about an enormous copper dome you had built.

DYLAN:?I don't know what you read in the papers. It's just a place to live for now. The copper dome is just so I can recognize it when I come home.

PLAYBOY:?OK, back to less worldly concerns. You don't believe in astrology, do you?

DYLAN:?I don't think so.

PLAYBOY:?You were quoted recently as having said something about having a Gemini nature.

DYLAN:?Well, maybe there are certain characteristics of people who are born under certain signs. But I don't know, I'm not sure how relevant it is.

PLAYBOY:?Could it be there's an undiscovered twin or a double to Bob Dylan?

DYLAN:?Someplace on the planet, there's a double of me walking around. Could very possibly be. PLAYBOY: Any messages for your double? DYLAN: Love will conquer everything-I suppose.

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: BOB DYLAN (interferenza.net)