{"id":162860,"date":"2020-06-15T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=162860"},"modified":"2020-06-15T08:20:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T07:20:05","slug":"nobel-literature-laureate-bob-dylan-has-a-lot-on-his-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/nobel-literature-laureate-bob-dylan-has-a-lot-on-his-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"[Nobel Literature laureate] Bob Dylan Has a Lot on His Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a rare interview, the Nobel Prize winner discusses mortality, drawing inspiration from the past, and his new album, \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways\u201d is his first album of original songs since 2012. Credit…Kevin Winter\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

12 Jun 2020 – <\/em>A few years ago, sitting beneath shade trees in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., I had a two-hour discussion with Bob Dylan that touched on Malcolm X, the French Revolution, Franklin Roosevelt and World War II. At one juncture, he asked me what I knew about the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864<\/a>. When I answered, \u201cNot enough,\u201d he got up from his folding chair, climbed into his tour bus, and came back five minutes later with photocopies describing how U.S. troops had butchered hundreds of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapahoe in southeastern Colorado.<\/p>\n

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Given the nature of our relationship, I felt comfortable reaching out to him in April after, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, he unexpectedly released<\/a> his epic, 17-minute song \u201cMurder Most Foul,\u201d about the Kennedy assassination. Even though he hadn\u2019t done a major interview outside of his own website<\/a> since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature<\/a> in 2016, he agreed to a phone chat from his Malibu home, which turned out to be his only interview before next Friday\u2019s release of \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways,<\/em>\u201d his first album of original songs since \u201cTempest\u201d in 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n

Like most conversations with Dylan, \u201cRough and Rowdy Ways\u201d covers complex territory: trances and hymns, defiant blues, love longings, comic juxtapositions, prankster wordplay, patriotic ardor, maverick steadfastness, lyrical Cubism, twilight-age reflections and spiritual contentment.<\/p>\n

In the high-octane showstopper \u201cGoodbye Jimmy Reed,\u201d Dylan honors the Mississippi bluesman with dragon-fierce harmonica riffs and bawdy lyrics. In the slow blues \u201cCrossing the Rubicon,\u201d he feels \u201cthe bones beneath my skin\u201d and considers his options before death: \u201cThree miles north of purgatory \u2014 one step from the great beyond\/I prayed to the cross and I kissed the girls and I crossed the Rubicon.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n