some other kinds of pictures
The Age, Tuesday April 19, 1966News of the Day
It was a hot, crowded conference at the airport. Radio interviewers, cameramen and reporters - and many followers who had sneaked in - jostled in suffocatingly on top of Bob Dylan.
Somebody thrust forward a copy of Antoine de Saint Exupery's book "The Little Prince" to be autographed.
One interviewer prattled on about a visit to Healesville Sanctuary. Another wanted "approval" for a technique used by the Beatles.
Questions - likes, dislikes, psychological, sociological, racial equality, bourgeois living, pop art and ballads - some silly, some provocative and some just insulting.
Beneath his mop of shaggy hair, Dylan, the acclaimed "king of folk music," rocked backwards and forwards on his feet as if feeling faint from the onslaught. His voice was barely audible.
Some of the queries he threw back at the questioners, others he shrugged off as if they weren't worth the physical effort of answering, and for a few he wove long answers of fairyland fancy from the beat world - nonsensical, but sharply amusing.
Patience.
When it was all over, enterpreneur Ken Brodziak breathed deeply: "Thank goodness he kept his patience."
If anybody has been tempted to lose his patience, it was Dylan.
His unusual appearance and thorny individualism make him the butt for conservative censure.
On the other hand, he finds himself subject to many long and far too "clever" analytical profiles in the glossier magazines.
Dylan tries without conceit to explain that he's a "watcher," embroiled in nothing. He's a talented writer, composer and singer with a sensitive touch for interpreting the feelings of the moment.
But the publicity people these days demand non-conformists who are conforming nonconformists.
(No by-line)
Bob Dylan's Anti-Interview
by Craig McGregor
Sydney Morning Herald ,
Wednesday, April 13 , 1966
Page 1
Dylan disappointed none of his disciples, who crowded into the reception room at Kingsford Smith airport to hear him.
Dressed conservatively in a black corduroy suit, black suede high-heeled calf-length zipper-sided boots, dark glasses and long ringleted hair, Dylan disembarked from the airliner accompanied by the five members of his band (dressed even more conservatively in a variety of dark glasses and black sombreros) and the greying bulk of his manager, Albert Grossman.
After the Customs check, Dylan was besieged by auograph-hunters in camel-hair jeans, Toulouse-Lautrec blazers and Viva Zapata mousaches.
He obligingly signed himself "The Phantom" and accepted a pop-art envelope containing a letter made of newspaper and magazine cuttings.
He settled himself down for the Press conference and it was clear that the questioners had made up their minds that Dylan was either a protest singer with a message or a phony, or maybe both, and they weren't going to be put off by any of that jazz about his 'just' being a person who writes songs.
Questions and answers followed.
"Are you a protest singer?" "I haven't heard that word for a long time. Everybody knows that there are no protest songs any longer - it's just songs." "If you aren't a protest singer why does everybody say you are?" "Everybody? Who?" "Time Magazine." "Oh, yeah."
"Are you a professional beatnik?" "Huh?" "Are you a professional beatnik?" "Well, I was in the brigade once - you know, we used to get paid money - but they didn't pay me enough so I became a singer."
"Why do you wear those outlandish clothes?" "I look very normal where I live. I'm conservative by their standards." "Does it take a lot of trouble to get your hair like that?" "No, you just have to sleep on it for about 20 years." "What would you be if you weren't a songwriter?" "A ditch-digger called Joe."
Gracious Words
Dylan kept his cool throughout, answered each question in a mumbling beat patois and had a gracious word for everyone, including Pete Seeger ("rambustacious") and the Beatles' songs ("side-splitting").
He made one or two attempts to get across. He wrote songs, he said, for himself; it was just an accident that other people liked them. He didn't write songs about Negroes, because all people were different and you have no respect for me, sir, if you think I would write about Negroes as Negroes instead of as people.
And he had changed his name to Dylan not because of the Welsh poet ("I don't care for Dylan Thomas") but because his mother's name was Dillon.
Improvised Parody
Finally Dylan was left stretched out on a settee, with Albert Grossman, the five members of his band and a last cameraman. "Why don't you interview yourself?" said his manager.
Moving swiftly from seat to seat, Dylan immediately improvised his own Press conference.
"About three months."
"Why don't you see her more often? Doesn't she approve of your music?"
"Well, my mother doesn't approve of it, but my grandmother does."
"Isee you've got about 12 people there with you; what's that, a band? Don't you play pure music any longer?"
"No, man, that's not a band with me. They're all friends of my grandmother..."
Sydney Morning Herald ,
April ? 1966
Dylan: not here to win hearts
by Dale Plummer
Those close to him are sure Bob Dylan is intelligent, sensitive, concerned and well read.
He didn't look like that when I met him.
With one half of his mind on the questions being asked him and the other half on the children's shows on TV, Dylan conversed in a series of grunts, huhs, slurred sentences and long silences.
Only occasionally did he emerge from his boredom and show some animation.
One of these occasions was when he felt someone was "getting at him."
He's been touring since September and when he slows down he has no special place to go. His mother is in Minnesota, where Dylan was born nearly 25 years ago. His father is in Texas.
He spent most of his first 18 years in the small Minnesota mining town of Hibbing. His name then was Robert Zimmerman.
By the age of 15, Dylan had taught himself to play the guitar, autoharp, piano and harmonica and had become "hooked " on singing folk songs.
After graduating from high school he sruck out on a hitch-hiking career as an itinerant folksinger and made his New York debut in early 1961.
He had tremendous success, bowling over people like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez.
His first album, recorded about the same time, enjoyed tremendous sales and after the success of "Blowin' in the wind" in 1962 Dylan was well and truly in.
As he's known for his "protest" songs, perhaps he takes part in civil rights marches?
This idea was dismissed very rapidly. "It's very fashionable to participate in the civil rights movement," he said, accenting the word "fashionable".
Then: "I don't want to hear no more about Negroes."
He enjoys the adulation he receives as the cult hero of the "folkies" but "I'm not my own hero," he explained.
Unlike anybody else he shows no visible signs of his affluence. It's estimated he must be a near-millionaire and he employs people just to look after his money. He claims he doesn't know anything about the hows, whys and wherefores of his finances. The money certainly doesn't go into palatial mansions, flashy cars, exotic holidays or expensive women.
It does allow him freedom of movement and it's for this one reason that Dylan could grow rather fond of it.
Unfortunately, it doesn't allow him freedom from the Press, a collection of people he doesn't like because "they misquote me."
He might have been thinking of us when he wrote a savage number called "Positively 4th Street" -
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you.
Yes I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you.
We'd all dressed up to make ourselves look older, I think we were worried about the
licensing laws, being under 18, we tried to look like a bunch of secretaries
instead of would-be teenage groupies.
The only thing we could afford on the menu was pizza - one between all of us, and somehow I don't think we ate it.
Absolutely extraordinary appearance. Aura to burn. Were we gob-smacked? Were we what...
Sat down opposite us at a table for two...opposite a fat man in glasses,
whom he proceeded to rip to shreds, verbally, for what seemed like hours -
probably ten minutes.
The fat man couldn't get a word in. Much jabbing of
thin, white fingers. But sotto voce. We couldn't hear a word.
Then the tirade stopped, a crumpled sheaf of little pieces of paper was somehow
extracted from a pocket in those skin-tight pants, a pen was borrowed from a
waitress, and the fat man could not induce him to make eye-contact again at
all. Zero.
Albert (for it was he) no longer existed. He eventually left,
looking very down in the mouth. Bob scribbled away at his papers, sipping
his coffee, smoking cigarettes, showing no sign of any concern over time, or
indeed anything going on 'on the outside'.
So we left him - quietly scribbling away. At what? I've always wondered. And later
on stage, he was another being--stoned or acting that way, a charming,
inebriated Chaplin, a Botticelli angel, a screaming vixen... all of them.
And also the quiet writer, the dignified gentleman, the master of withering
verbal abuse. No wonder I was scarred for life.
Bless you, Bob, and thanks for the memories.
I wish that for just one time
- LOOKING BACK -
a personal account
_________________________________
And there he was...shades, hair, flower-spotted shirt with puffy sleeves,
veery tight pin-striped bell-bottoms, high-heeled boots, striding into the
restaurant, exuding the most incredibly dignified, gracious air.
He was concentrating so intently
on writing, of all things, how could anyone disturb him? And we had to
leave, had to find a taxi to take us to the concert - his concert!
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