Bob Dylan other, Interview

Feb 20, 1966 – Bob Dylan: Martin Bronstein Interview, Montreal (audio)

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bob dylan on the phone - 1966

MB: Do you consider yourself a poet or a songwriter?
BD: I don’t consider myself either one of those two things. I did when I first heard the words, you know, of course – “songwriter” – you hear that when you’re very young. “Poet,” I never heard that word really. I never really could think of myself as such until I came to New York and then for a while I did think I was a poet, but I don’t consider myself anymore from seeing all the rest of the people who’re called poets too and I just don’t like to refer to myself as a poet because it puts you in a category with a lot of funny people, you know

Place Des Arts
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
20 February 1966

  • Released in the UK on ON THE CREST OF THE AIRWAVES VOLUME ONE, Music Melon MMLTDBOX12, 13 February 2012.
  • Released on The Classic Interviews 1965-1966, Chrome Dreams CIS2003, 19 May 2003.

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MB: When did you first find yourself writing poetry or verse, or writing?
BD: When I was about eight or nine I wrote; I’ve been writing for a very long time, I mean, if you can say that. I mean, I’m not… I don’t know if other – if most people write when they’re eight – or eight or nine, you know, but I actually did write poems at that age, poems, rhymes, you know, for… you know, about the flowers and my mother and stuff like that but… so I’ve been writing for a while.
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MB: What made you start singing?
BD: Er, well, er, I just did it, you know. It was a natural thing to do. I started a long time or two – I started singing after I started writing. I started that when I was about ten – ten or eleven – and started out just country and western – Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell kind of things. Hank Williams I think was just about… had just died, and I started playing some time around there.
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MB: Was he one of your first influences?
BD: Yeah. I sang… I tried to sing everything he would sing.
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MB: What other influences have you had?
BD: Oh! I’ve had a lot of people that I tried to do things the way they did. As it stands now there’s no influence that maybe I’ve taken. Ah, I don’t really know the extent of their influence that they have on what I do. I’ve had… Hank Williams was the first influence I would think, I guess, for a longer period of time than anybody else. Er, he influenced … nobody influenced what I wrote at that age, because I didn’t really see anything that anybody wrote… er…

 

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One thought on “Feb 20, 1966 – Bob Dylan: Martin Bronstein Interview, Montreal (audio)”

  1. Curious about Martin Bronstein? …from Wikipedia:
    Martin Bronstein (born 1935) is a British-Canadian actor, writer, columnist, broadcaster and journalist. Born in London, England, he moved to Canada in 1959 and worked as a copywriter, journalist and comedy writer. He also did work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interviewing a series of musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington[1] and Bob Dylan.[2]

    Bronstein was a founding member in 1970 of the Jest Society, which became the Royal Canadian Air Farce in 1973. He left the comedy troupe to return to journalism in 1974. In 1982 he returned to Britain to become editor of Squash Player International Magazine and has written extensively on the sport in the ensuing decades.[3]

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