Bob Dylan FULL 60 Minutes Ed Bradley 2004 Interview (upscaled to HD)

for as long as i've been here in 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's been largely silent now at age 63 he's written a memoir called chronicles vol 1. and 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 elusive fascinating just like his blowing in the wind in 10 minutes is that right probably just like that yeah where did it come from it just came it came from uh it was like um right out of that wellspring of uh creativity i would think you know that wellspring of creativity has sustained bob dylan for more than four decades [Music] and produced 500 songs and more than 40 hours how does it feel you ever look at music that you've written and look back at it and say whoa that surprised me i used to uh i i don't do that anymore uh i don't know how i got to write those songs what do you mean you don't know how well those early songs were like almost magically written um darkness at the break at noon shadows even the silver spoon a handmade blade a child's balloon eclipses both the sun and moon to understand you knew too soon there is no sense in trying this dillon classic it's all right ma was written in 1964. peace the hollow horn please wasted words proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying well try to sit down and write something like that uh that there's a magic to that and it's not uh sick freedom roy kind of magic you know it's a it's a different kind of a penetrating magic and uh you know i did it i i did it at one time you don't think you can do it today uh-huh does that disappoint you and well you can't do something forever and uh i did it once and i can do other things now but i 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 beede zimmerman did you have a good life a good happy childhood growing up i really didn't consider myself happy or unhappy i always knew that there was something out there that um i needed to get to and it wasn't where i was at that particular moment it wasn't in minnesota no it was in new york city as he writes in his book he came alive when at age 19 he moved to greenwich village which at the time was the frenetic center of the 60s counterculture within months he had signed a recording contract with columbia records you referred to new york as the capital of the world but when you told your father that he thought that it was a joke did did your parents approve of you being a singer songwriter going to new york no uh they wouldn't have have wanted that uh for me but uh my parents never went anywhere my father probably thought the capital of the world was where wherever he was at the time it couldn't possibly be where any you know anyplace else where he and his wife were in their own home now to them was the capital of the world what made you different what pushed you out of there well i listened to the radio a lot i hung out in the record stores and i slam banged around on a guitar and play the piano and and learned songs from a world which didn't exist around me he says even then he knew he was destined to become a music legend i was heading for the fantastic lights he writes destiny was looking right at me and nobody else use the word destiny over and over throughout the book what does that mean to you it's a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does the picture you have in your mind of what you're about will come true that's kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self because it's a fragile feeling and you put it out there somebody will kill it so it's best to keep that all inside when we asked him why he changed his name he said that was destiny too so you didn't see yourself as as robert zimmerman and for some reason you know i never did even before you started performing no even then some people get born you know the wrong names from wrong parents i mean that happens tell me how you decided on bob dylan you call yourself what you want to call yourself this is this is the land of the free bob dylan created a world inspired by old folk music with piercing and poetic lyrics as in songs like a hard reigns gonna fall i saw guns and chop swords in the hands of young children songs that reflected the tension and unrest of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s and it's hard it's hard rain they're gonna fall it was an explosive mixture that turned dylan by age 25 into a cultural and political icon playing to sold out concert halls around the world and followed by people wherever he went he was called the voice of his generation and was actually referred to as a prophet a messiah go driver go yet he saw himself simply as a musician you feel like an imposter when when you're when someone thinks you're something in here and you're not what was the image that people had of you and what was the reality the image of me was certainly not a a songwriter or a singer it was more like some kind of a threat to society in some kind of way what was the toughest part for you personally it was like being in an edgar allan poe story and you're just not that person everybody thinks you are although they call you that all the time you're the prophet you're the savior i never wanted to be a prophet or or savior elvis maybe i could easily see myself becoming him but private now i know that and i accept you don't see yourself as the voice of that generation but some of your songs did stop people cold and they saw them as as as anthems and they saw them as protest songs it was important in their lives it sparked a movement if your time to you is worth saving then you better start swimming on your sink like [Music] i mean you may not have seen it that way but that's the way it was for them how do you reconcile those two things my stuff were songs you know they weren't sermons if you examine the songs i don't believe you're going to find anything in there that says that i'm a spokesman for anybody or anything right they saw it yeah but no but they they they must not have heard the songs it's ironic you know that the way that people viewed you was just the polar opposite of the way you viewed yourself isn't that something dylan did almost anything to shatter the lofty image many people had of him he writes that he intentionally made bad records once poured whiskey over his head in public and as a stunt he went to israel and made a point of having his picture taken at the wailing wall wearing a skull cap when you went to israel you wrote that the newspapers changed me overnight into a zionist and and this helped a little how did it help look if the common perception of me out there in the public eye was that i was either a drunk or i was a or a sicko or a zionist or or a buddhist or a catholic or a mormon uh all all of this was better than uh archbishop and anarchy the spokesman for the generation yeah opposed everything he was especially opposed to the media which he says was always trying to pin him down do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or as a poet i think of myself more as a song and dance man you know let me talk a little bit about your relationship with the media you wrote the press i figured you lied to it why i realized at the time that the press the media that's not the judge god's a judge the only person you have to think about lying twice to is either yourself or to god the press isn't either of them and i just figured they're relevant bob dylan tried to run away from all of that in the mid 60s he retreated with his wife and three young children to woodstock new york but even there he couldn't escape the legions of fans who descended on his home begging for an audience with a legend himself so people would actually come to the house and do what i want to discuss things with me politics and philosophy and organic farming and things you know what did you know about organic farming nothing not a thing what did you mean when you wrote that that the funny thing about fame is that nobody believes it's you people will uh they'll say uh are you uh who i think you are and you say i i i don't know and then they'll say you're you're him and you say okay you know that uh yes i said and then the next thing i said well uh no you know like like are you really him you're not him and uh you know um that can go on and on you go out to restaurants now i don't like to eat in restaurants because people come up and say are you him that's always gonna happen yeah do you ever get used to it no at his peak fame was taking its toll on bob dylan he was heading towards a divorce from his wife sarah and my wife when she married me had no idea of what she was getting into well she was with me back then too thick and thin you know it just wasn't the kind of life that uh she had ever envisioned for herself any more than the kind of life that i was living that i had envisioned for mine by the mid-1980s he felt he was burned out and over the hill you also wrote that i'm a 60s troubadour of folk rock relic or wordsmith from bygone days i'm in the bottomless pit of cultural oblivion those are pretty harsh words well i've seen all these titles written about me you know and you started to believe it well i believed it anyway you know um i wasn't getting any thrill out of performing i thought it might be time to close it up you know you really thought about quitting folding up to 10. i had thought i just put it away for a while but but then i started thinking that's enough you know but within a few years dylan told us he recaptured his creative spark and he went back on the road [Music] performing more than 100 concerts a year and the album of the year is in 1998 he won three grammy awards time out of mine at age 63 bob dylan remains a voice as unique and powerful as any there has ever been in american music his fellow musicians paid tribute to him when he was inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame joining him in a rousing rendition of his most famous song as you probably know rolling stone magazine just named your song like a rolling stone the number one song of all time 12 of your songs are in there in their list of the top 500. that must be good to have as as part of your legacy oh maybe this week but but you know on the list they changed names and you know quite frequently really i don't really pay much attention to that but it's a pat on the back bob this week it is but you know who's to say how long that's gonna last well it's lasted a long time for you i mean you're still out here doing these songs you know you're still on tour i do but i don't take it for granted why do you still do it why are you still out here well it goes back to the destiny thing i mean i made a bargain with it you know long time ago and i'm holding up my hand what was your bargain to get where um i am now should i ask who you made the bargain with with with you know with the chief uh chief commander on this earth and this earth and then in the world we can't see bob dylan has been nominated this year for the nobel prize in literature for his songwriting his new book has been a best seller for the past seven weeks it was published by simon schuster which is owned by viacom the parent company of cbs dylan is planning to write two more volumes of his memoirs

Channel: Start To Continue

Views: 243,850

Rating: 4.8716941 out of 5

Keywords: Start to Continue, records, bob dylan, bob dylan 60 minutes interview full, bob dylan 60 minutes 2004, bob dylan ed bradley 60 minutes, bob dylan ed bradley, rolling stone top 500 songs, like a rolling stone, like a rolling stone bob dylan, bob dylan interview, bob dylan wife, bob dylan woodstock, bob dylan in public, bob dylan music, bob dylan full 60 minutes, bob dylan ed bradley selling soul, bob dylan 2004, bob dylan 2004 interview

Id: hOas0d-fFK8

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/hyundaithumbdrive]

the part where he talks about the commander in the other world or whatever is so grossly misinterpreted. bob is literally a born again Christian he's obviously talking abt God not Satan.

[u/chrisemery]

Hes so hot I wish he wasn't so annoying