Missed this from the peerless Aquarium Drunkard. It came from the Newsletter which is well worth subscribing to . . . . . 



Bob Dylan - 60 Minutes Interview (2004)
In 2004, on the heels of the publication of his sole memoir, Chronicles Volume 1, Bob Dylan agreed to an interview with 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley. The occasion marked the artist's first televised interview in more than twenty years. As an interview subject, Dylan is notoriously known for coming across as glib, cagey, subversive, and evasive. For the devoted, this is all part of his enduring enigmatic charm and persona. Who knows what the remainder of the primetime audience thought that night. Clocking in around 15 minutes, the piece is by no means exhaustive, yet Bradley does coax a bit of reflective insight from the iconoclast, who would have been age 64 at the time of taping. 

EB: For as long as I have been here with “60 Minutes” I’ve wanted to interview Bob Dylan. Over his 43-year career, there is no musician alive who has been more influential. His distinctive twang and poetic lyrics have produced some of the most memorable songs ever written. In the ‘60s, his songs of protest and turmoil spoke to an entire generation.While his life has been the subject of endless interpretation, he has been largely silent.Now at age 63, he’s written a memoir called “Chronicles, Volume One.”I finally got to sit down with him in his first television interview in nearly 20 years. 

What you will see is pure Dylan – mysterious, allusive, fascinating – just like his music. 

EB: I’d read somewhere that you wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” in ten minutes, is that right? 

BD: Probably. 

EB: Just like that? 

BD: Yeah. 

EB: Where did it come from? 

BD: It just came. It came from… was like a… right out of that wellspring of creativity, I would think, you know. 

That wellspring of creativity has sustained Bob Dylan for more than four decades, and produced 500 songs and more than 40 albums. 

EB: Do you ever look back at the music that you’ve written and look back at it and say“Wow! That surprised me!”? 

BD: I used to. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t know how I got to write those songs. 

EB: What do you mean you don’t know how? 

BD: All those early songs were almost magically written. Ah… “Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon, a handmade blade, the child’s balloon…” 

[This Dylan classic, “It’s Alright, Ma,” was written in 1964]. 

BD: Well, try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that, and it’s not Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. And, you know, I did it. I did it at one time. 

EB: Do you think you can do it again today? 

BD: Uh-uh. 

EB: Does that disappoint you, or…? 

BD: Well, you can’t do something forever. I did it once, and I can do other things now. But, I can’t do that.

Dylan has been writing music since he was a teenager in the remote town of Hibbing,Minnesota. The eldest of two sons of Abraham and Beatty Zimmerman.

Part One at Streamable
Streamable - Bob Dylan 60 minutes 1
part Two here 
Streamable - Bob Dylan 60 minutes 2