portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Saturday, July 23, 2022

From the Bob Dylan 1966 Playboy interview


Smilin’ Bob Dylan in London’s Savoy Gardens, April 1965, via rollingstone

PLAYBOY: In recent years, according to some critics, jazz has lost much of it's appeal to the younger generation. Do you agree?


DYLAN: I don't think jazz has ever appealed to the younger generation. Anyway, I don't really know who this younger generation is. I don't think they could get into a jazz club anyway. But jazz is hard to follow; I mean you actually have to like jazz to follow it: and my motto is, never follow anything. I don't know what the motto of the younger generation is, but I would think they'd have to follow their parents. I mean, what would some parent say to his kid if the kid came home with a glass eye, a Charlie Mingus record and a pocketful of feathers? He'd say, "Who are you following?" And the poor kid would have to stand there with water in his shoes, a bow tie on his ear and soot pouring out of his belly button and say, "Jazz, Father, I've been following jazz." And his father would probably say, "Get a broom and clean up all that soot before you go to sleep." Then the kid's mother would tell her friends, "Oh yes, our little Donald, he's part of the younger generation, you know."


–From the Bob Dylan 1966 Playboy interview, Photo by Keystone-France\Gamma-Rapho (1966)

not that Bob was in the best of moods . . . as Art Kane relates 1966

Bob Interview Playboy 1966 here (Interferenza)




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