“Good reviews don’t hurt you, but they don’t help either, It’s better to have a record the critics hate that sells 10 million copies than one the critics love that sells 10.”
~Bob Dylan to Edna Gundersen (August 31, 1990)

Interviews

31 August 1990
Edna Gundersen Interview, Lincoln, Nebraska

An interview with Edna Gundersen for USA Today. This took place on August 31, 1990 in Lincoln, Nebraska on the day of the concert at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. The article that appeared in the European edition of USA Today was in a considerably abbreviated form.

ROCK ICON IS HAPPY WITH HIS PLACE
The poetic revolutionary reflects on his charmed life in an exclusive Lincoln, Neb. – On the opening day of the interview Nebraska State Fair, Bob Dylan is the star attraction, performing in a rocking 90 minutes of mostly early hits. Most of the Devaney Sports Center’s 6,000 cheering fans are college students who weren’t yet born when rock’s poetic revolutionary held a generation rapt with the show’s climax, Like A Rolling Stone. It’s been 30 years since he left college himself to stake a claim in the Greenwich Village folk scene.

How does it feel? “In some ways, it felt older to be 30 than to be 60 or however old they say I am,” Dylan says after the show. “How old am I now?” He’s 49. “That’s what they say, but nobody knows my real birth date,” he counters teasingly.
His take on aging: “You just can’t help it.” Dylan whose new Under The Red Sky album is out this week, is the only living rocker in Life’s list of the century’s 100 most important Americans. Still godlike to many, he admits he’s less hungry these days.
“You reach a certain place and that’s sufficient,” he says. “Sometimes there is no higher. How much higher can Michael Jackson go? Or Madonna? You get your territory and you’re content with that.”
Friendly and direct, Dylan talks freely about his work – in the present tense, anyway. He steers clear of ancient history (the 1960’s), Dylan mythology or anything remotely personal. “People can learn everything about me through my songs, if they know where to look. They can juxtapose them with certain other songs and draw a clear picture. But why would anyone want to know about me? It’s ridiculous.”
Informed that his childhood home in Hibbing, Minn., recently sold for $84,000 (twice it’s appraised value), Dylan says only, “Well, they better check the furnace.”
Clad in a crisp white shirt, cap, jeans and heavy black boots, Dylan clutches a cup of coffee backstage. Clearly tired, he’s nonetheless witty and enthusiastic, even as he faces a 334-mile bus ride to Hannibal, MO., for the next nights show.
For the third year running, Dylan has surfaced with a tour and album. Red Sky is the 36th in a canon dating back to 1962. The Traveling Wilbury’s second album – “a whole lot better than
the first,” he promises – was recorded last spring and is due in October. A tour may follow, if Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Geoff Lynne can co-ordinate schedules.
Continue reading Bob Dylan – On This Day – August 31 →

At every point in my life I’ve had to make decisions for what I believed in. Sometimes I’ve ended up hurting people that I’ve loved. Other times I’ve ended up loving people that I never thought I would.
~Bob Dylan (to Karen Hughes, May 21, 1980)

Historic event

Feb 12, 1961

Dylan sends a second postcard to the Whitakers. In it he states that he visits Guthrie four times a week and that he has been playing The Commons
“where people clap for me.”
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

Continue reading Bob Dylan – On This Day – February 12 →

I once read a book of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s letters to some girl, and they were extremely private and personal, and I didn’t feel there was any of myself in those letters, but I could identify with what he was saying. A lot of myself crosses over into my songs. I’ll write something and say to myself, I can change this, I can make this not so personal, and at other times I’ll say, I think I’ll leave this on a personal level, and if somebody wants to peek at it and make up their own minds about what kind of character I am, that’s up to them. Other times I might say, well, it’s too personal, I think I’ll turn the corner on it, because why do I want somebody thinking about what I’m thinking about, especially if it’s not to their benefit.
~Bob Dylan to Scott Choen (SPIN), 1985

Studio work

• Studio A, A & R Recording, New York City, New York
  September 16, 1974, 6 pm-midnight.
  Produced by Bob Dylan
  Engineers: Phil Ramone & Glenn Berger (“Phil & Lenn”)
  –

  Check out: September 16: Bob Dylan “Blood On The Tracks” first recording session 1974

Concerts

• 1978 – Maine Cumberland Civic Center, Portland, ME, USA
• 1987 – Frankenhalle, Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Germany
• 1988 – University Of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
• 2000 – Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
• 2007 – Zilker Park, Austin City Limits Music Festival, Austin, TX, USA

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Right, that’s the way I learned how to record, and that’s the way other people were doing it Now, you don’t do it that way, because the machinery is… they got… you know, it’s like, er… you go in a recording studio now and what I do is obsolete. So, I don’t, half the time, use a decent studio. I mean, we made the last record, we made Street Legal in a rehearsal hall, you know, only because we couldn’t use the studio we booked in town, you know. So, yeah, I could use a good producer, you know, I could make some well-produced records, ‘cause my songs are good enough, I mean, you don’t need but a fairly decent song, you know, to have a well-produced record.
~Bob Dylan (Matt Damsker Interview, Senator Hotel, Augusta, Maine – 15 September 1978)

Historic event

• September 15 – 1965

  

  Dylan flies to Toronto to rehearse with the Hawks at Friars, a Toronto nightclub. Al Kooper has decided not to tour, so the remainder of the Hawks (Garth Hudson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel) are reunited with Robertson and Helen, becoming Dylan’s backing band for the remainder of the historic 1965-1966 world tour. Dylan flies in by private plane, arriving in the early evening at the Four Seasons Hotel.
  ~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
  –

• September 15 – 1986
  Robert Shelton visits Dylan on the film set.
  ~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

TV

Continue reading Bob Dylan – On This Day – September 15 →

“I get very bored with my old songs, I can’t sing ‘With God on My Side’ for 15 years. What I write is much more concise now than before. It’s not deceiving.”
~Bob Dylan (to Robert Shelton – 27 August 1965)

Historic event

September 3 – 1965

Concert @ Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California

With the same band and repertoire as at Forest Hills, Dylan plays a major west coast show. However, this time far more of the audience are enthusiastic about the show, and Dylan treats them to an encore. Afrer the show, he attends a Hollywood-style party, along with 300 other guests, at which he meets a longtime idol, Marlon Brando.
~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)

September 3 – 2007

The movie “I’m Not There” was released.

I’m Not There is a 2007 biographical musical film directed by Todd Haynes, inspired by the life and music of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Six actors depict different facets of Dylan’s public personas: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw. Production notes published by distributor The Weinstein Company explain that the film “dramatizes the life and music of Bob Dylan as a series of shifting personae, each performed by a different actor—poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity, rock and roll martyr, born-again Christian—seven identities braided together, seven organs pumping through one life story.” A caption at the start of the film declares it to be “inspired by the music and the many lives of Bob Dylan”; this is the only mention of Dylan in the film apart from song credits, and his only appearance in it is concert footage from 1966 shown during the film’s final moments.
~wikkipedia

Check out our post: September 3: I’m Not There the Bob Dylan film was released in 2007

Concerts

• 1965 – Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  Check out our post -> Bob Dylan: Hollywood Bowl Los Angeles – 3 September 1965
  –
• 1988 – Riverfront Park, Manchester, NH, USA
  Dylan performs his first-ever electric “Visions of Johanna.” He also reintroduces “Rank Strangers to Me” and “I Don’t Believe You” into the acoustic set.
  ~Clinton Heylin (Bob Dylan: A Life in Stolen Moments Day by Day 1941-1995)
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• 1989 – Greek Theatre, University Of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
• 1992 – The Orpheum Theater, Minneapolis, MN, USA
• 1993  – Darien Center, State Fairgrounds, Syracuse, NY, USA
• 1998 – Entertainment Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia
• 2004 – Southwestern Bell Bricktown, Oklahoma City, OK, USA
• 2006 – Lubrano Park, Medlar Field, University Park, PA, USA
• 2008 – Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, USA
• 2010 – Yakima County Stadium, Yakima, Washington, USA
• 2014 – State Theatre, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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