Bob Dylan - The Essential Interviews

[DudeAsInCool]

BOB DYLAN

The Essential Interviews

Edited by Jonathan Cott.

447 pages. Wenner Books. $23.95.

THE BOB DYLAN ENCYCLOPEDIA

Bob Dylan will turn 65 on Wednesday to the strains of "Forever Young," a song likely to be played by radio stations as if it were the national anthem. What will this symbolize? What are its ramifications? Will reaching that milestone have resonance for an entire generation?

This much is certain: He will hate hearing any of this stuff. "It's horrible," he told Playboy 40 years ago, on one of the countless occasions when he was asked if being a folk hero was a position of great responsibility. "I'll bet Tony Bennett doesn't have to go through this kind of thing. I wonder what Billy the Kid would have answered to such a question."

Billy the Kid didn't engage in a book's worth of verbal showdowns with the press. But Mr. Dylan has, and now those interviews have been invaluably collected. In an irresistible new anthology edited by Jonathan Cott, one of the original editors of Rolling Stone and arguably the most simpatico writer ever to converse with Mr. Dylan, the interview format remains eminently readable through more than 400 pages. And it yields far more than an extended conversation.

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Source: NY Times Book Reviews

[DudeAsInCool]

Time Magazine Interview

[Kooperman]

Most interviews of Dylan that I've heard/seen are really limp. He offers more in print interviews that I've read.