Bob Dylan -- Meet Joe Thoreau
“First of all, I’m not even a pop singer.” - Bob Dylan.
Let’s pause for a moment and appreciate the singular contradiction that is Bob Dylan, through the lens of this notoriously contentious interview with Horace Judson of Time Magazine in 1964.
Dylan is one of the most cantankerous, most unlikely superstars of all time. Known for speaking the plain truth - in obtuse, symbolic verse.
BD: I got nothing to say about these things I write, I mean, I just write them. I got nothing to say anything about them, I don’t write ‘em for any reason. There’s no great message. I mean, if, you know, if you wanna tell other people that, you know, go ahead and tell them but I’m not going to have to answer to it. And, they’re just going to think, you know, what’s this Time Magazine telling us? But that, you couldn’t care less about that either. You don’t know the people that read you.
HJ: Ah…
BD: ‘Cause you know, I’ve never been in Time Magazine and yet this hall’s filled twice, you know, and I’ve never been in Time Magazine. I don’t need Time Magazine… and I don’t think I’m a folk singer. You’ll probably call me a folk singer but, you know, the other people know better ‘cause the people, you know, that buy my records, listen to me, don’t necessarily read Time Magazine. You know, the audience that subscribe to Time Magazine? The audience of the people that want to know what’s happening in the world week by week. The people that work during the day and can read it small, right? And it’s concise, and there’s pictures in it.
Known for being a political artist - who staunchly denied singing about politics.
BD: I read it on the airplanes but I don’t take it seriously. If I want to find out anything I’m not going to read Time Magazine. I’m not gonna read Newsweek. I’m not gonna read any of these magazines, I mean, ‘cause they just got too much to lose by printing the truth, you know that.
HJ: What kind of truths do they leave out?
BD: On anything! Even on a world-wide basis. They’d just go off the stands in a day if they printed really the truth.
HJ: What is really the truth?
BD: Really the truth is just a plain picture.
HJ: Of what? Particularly
BD: Of, you know, a plain picture of, let’s say, a tramp vomiting, man, into the sewer You know, and next door to the picture, you know, Mr Rockefeller, you know, or Mr C.W. Jones, you know, on the subway going to work, you know, any kind of picture. Just make some sort of collage of pictures which they don’t do. They don’t do. There’s no ideas in Time Magazine, there’s just these facts. Well, you know, which too are switched because even the article which you are doing, the way it’s gonna come out, don’t you see, it can’t be a good article. Because, the guy that’s writing the article is sitting in a desk in New York, he’s not, he is not even going out of his office.
Known as a folk singer - who has sold more than 100 million records.
If that ain’t popular, what is?
HJ: Do you care about what you sing?
BD: How could I answer that if you’ve got the nerve to ask me?
HJ: Well then you, how could you…
BD: I mean, you’ve got a lot a lot of nerve asking me a question like that.
HJ: I have to ask that.
BD: Do you ask The Beatles that?
Bob Dylan could be trouble… But Bob Dylan never met Joe Thoreau - the most difficult man in all of music, the tallest tale teller who ever lived - the man who brought avant garde to the folk world, then returned it for store credit - reviled in equal measure by the press and many of his “fans” alike.
In controversial and largely debunked authorized biography, If The Bright Hot Sun Was A Cinnamon Bun, Thoreau comments on one of the most divisive periods in his long career:
Folk had gone stale by 65. Music and words are just sounds, and what do sounds even mean? The answer is “nothing” if there is no intelligent mind on the other side of the gap to interpret those sounds. A tree falling in the woods, and all that… Everyone in the audience was morons, and I was sick of it. Sick of sucking up to a crowd of critics who couldn’t tell a bum note from a blue one… Well, at the Oldpier Folk Festival I went “silent” - I shocked the entire square community, all those phoney music conformists.
For my entire three song set, I mimed the words - “Happy Little Place,” “Questions Without Answers,” and “That One Time Down On Beale Street.” Released it as an EP later that year. You can hear all of the idiots booing and jeering - check it out yourself, if you can handle it. Most people can’t. And they couldn’t make sense of it. Some claimed there was a malfunction with the sound equipment, but I released a statement - I wanted everyone to know --
The joke is on you, and there’s nothing funny about it.
As far as we can tell, Bob Dylan won’t even acknowledge the existence of Joe Thoreau, despite maintaining parallel careers for the better part of five decades.
Check out more from Joe Thoreau, the only man to out-Dylan Dylan on the most recent episode of Flashback to Now, available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.