Bob Dylan has several upcoming concerts in the WAMC listening area on his ongoing Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour: at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady Monday night as well as Symphony Hall in Springfield on Wednesday. It’s Dylan’s first Capital Region appearance since 2017 at the Palace Theatre in Albany after the COVID-19 pandemic canceled a 2020 show at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. To find out more about where the shows fall in Dylan’s long and tangled career, WAMC spoke with writer Ray Padgett, author of this year’s “Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members.” A fascinating collection of interviews conducted with musicians from across Dylan’s decades on the road, it offers rare and diverse insights into the character of one of America’s most inscrutable performers.
PADGETT: Earlier in the pandemic, I started this email newsletter about Bob Dylan in concert – you know, one of these pandemic projects – and I did a few interviews with some musicians. And you know, they weren't famous names. But I was amazed at how many people read them. I was kind of like, this is real deep Dylan nerd stuff, maybe fifteen other people besides me will care- But thousands of people were reading these things. And after I did four or five, and the same thing happened with each of them, and I was just having so much fun learning all this stuff, that's kind of when I started to think maybe I should think a little bigger here and try to do enough that I can turn into a book.
WAMC: Now, talk to you about the shoe leather portion of this. It can't have been easy to go out and make these connections with so many folks from so many eras of this long and often baffling career arc of Dylan- What was it like to actually make these connections? And were there any particularly challenging parts to that effort?
Your instinct is right. That was honestly probably the hardest part. Bob Dylan is a famously private person, and people who work with him take their cue from that, fairly enough. No one wants to feel like they're violating his privacy, no one wants to do an interview with some gotcha question or where something's going to be taken out of context for salacious headlines. So, it took quite a while to convince some of these people to talk. I really had to prove to them that I was serious, that these were going to be in depth conversations, that I knew my stuff, and that while Lord knows there are plenty of amazing behind the scenes stories, I'm really all about the music first. One thing that really helped as I got going is one musician would recommend me to another, would say, all right, that was actually really good, you’ve got to talk to this guy, I'll tell him it's worth his time. And then I'd get a call from someone else. And so, one sort of led to another once I got going.
There were so many fascinating conversations in the book. From your perspective, what's a good taste of some of that action? What conversation stands out to you months later as maybe a good entry point to get folks excited about this collection of interviews?
Oh, it's hard to pick just one. But I mean, one that sort of, I guess, jumps out to me is this conversation with Jim Keltner, in the sense that Jim Keltner is, in the music nerd world, a huge name- In the general world, not a name at all. He's a drummer who's played with everyone. But I think he's interesting in the Dylan sphere, because he's an extreme example of something that happens a lot in the book where someone just comes back again and again. Jim Keltner plays on “Knockin’ on Heaven's Door” and a bunch of early 70s tracks, then they lose touch. Five years later, he does all the Christian stuff and the gospel stuff, and they're getting booed across the country because Dylan's preaching about Jesus. Then it disappears. Now, all of a sudden, he's in the Traveling Wilburys, he's playing drums for Tom Petty and Bob Dylan and George Harrison. So he's someone where he just has all these amazing stories kind of from throughout Dylan's career.
Reading the book, it really struck me how much it reminded me of a novel more like Roberto Bolaño’s “The Savage Detectives,” which famously in its massive central piece tells the story of the main characters entirely for the observations of others. Did that ever occur to you over the course of this? The, not just the archival element of this, but the literary element of using these different third party sources to understand more about someone broadly understood to be perhaps never entirely explicable?
Not in those exact terms, but yes. I mean, Bob Dylan is reclusive. He almost never gives interviews. When he does, they are both fascinating and dissembling. Half the stuff he says may or may not be true, right? So, it's kind of an interesting way to look at someone like him. Really, I think in some ways, you learn a lot more specifically about the nuts and bolts of what his life is like- What his work is like, what's it actually like to be on tour with him for nine months, a year. How do you rehearse the songs? When he rearranges all these songs, how does that come about? What's it like to be in the studio with the guy? You know, those are the sorts of things that Bob Dylan himself pretty much never give straight answers about, but these people do. They've spent in some cases years working side by side with him. And so, I really do think it opens up his work and his life in a fairly unusual way.
One is struck by the mercurial nature of Dylan. The story that Winston Watson, who drummed for Dylan in the 90s, tells about his daughter sneaking off to Dylan's dressing room and then apparently having this long and involved conversation about her trials and tribulations in elementary school, versus this guy who all of a sudden out of nowhere will just cut someone out of his life for decades. What was your takeaway from that, seeing sort of the different poles of this character?
Yeah, I think that's a good observation. I mean, Dylan is in his, both his work and it seems like his life, fairly impulsive, fairly focused always on what's next. He's not someone who ever looks in the rearview mirror. He has the famous line in an early song, “he not busy being born is busy dying,” and that is sort of how he operates. He does sort of always move forward. People do- Sometimes they stay in the band for years and years, sometimes they stay in the band, and then all of a sudden, they're not in the band, they don't quite know what hit them. And then maybe they'll get a call 10 years later, and now they're back in the band. I mean, that sort of thing does happen a lot. You talk to these people, and they, many of them, describe it both as the most sort of energizing point in their entire career, but also the most exhausting.
What were your big takeaways about Dylan that this project revealed to you? Were there any big surprises that you feel like you uncovered during this work?
Yeah, there were quite a few. One that jumps out to me is Dylan, his public reputation for decades has been reclusive, mysterious, private- All of which is true. It is extremely hard for anyone to make their way into Dylan's inner circle. But, talking to all these people who did make their way into the inner circle, I was amazed at just how much, how many stories of hanging out backstage and goofing off and going swimming on a down day and taking a motorcycle ride with Bob- like, you hear these rumors of oh, no one can make eye contact with him backstage and stuff. And it turns out, that's not at all the case. Once you're in there, he really just, in many cases, hangs out with his band, and they spent so much time on the road together every single year that these fairly close relationships sometimes form.
The story of him bailing on a rehearsal to go see Sinatra and then turning down an invitation from Sinatra to meet I thought was one of the standout little glimpses of that exact dynamic, of how he could get swept off in these little side quests with members of the band.
Yeah, that's Stan Lynch. The drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers told me that, this hilarious story about- Basically, the short version is they meet for rehearsal very first time. Stan has met Bob Dylan and Bob's like a couple hours late, so like an hour into rehearsal with the entire Heartbreakers, including Tom Petty, Stan sort of raises his hand and he says, I gotta go, and everyone like gives him the stink guy. You know, Tom Petty's glaring at him, like, what, you're ditching Bob Dylan? Bob Dylan storms up to Stan, looks him dead in the eyes, and is like, where do you got to be? And Stan stammers, oh, well, I bought tickets to see Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis. There's this long, awkward pause where everyone’s avoiding eye contact, and then Bob says, I love those guys! Can I come? And yeah, then they go on this date, and Sinatra’s people eventually figure out Bob's there, invite him backstage. Stan’s through the moon, Sinatra is one of his heroes. They make it as far as Sinatra’s dressing room door, and then Bob's like, ah, the heck with it, let’s go. Just, totally impulsive. And so, they leave.
Now you're, of course, a close observer of Dylan up to this very day. For folks in the Capital Region, there's a lot of excitement about his coming appearance at Proctors in Schenectady. Can you sort of set the stage for us where this prolific and frequently difficult to understand artist is at this point in his career? In Fall 2023, what zone are we in with the Bob Dylan experience?
So, for the first time in decades, he has named his tour, and the name of the tour is The Rough and Rowdy Ways Worldwide Tour. And the significance of that is emphasizing this is really focused on the new album, even more than his other stuff is. You're not going to get a greatest hits show, he's not going to strum on an acoustic guitar and do “Blowin’ in the Wind” like it's 1962. He and this frankly amazing band are performing the songs from his new album and some old songs, but kind of old songs that are rearranged to sound like as if they could be from his new album, and it's really almost a mood piece as much as anything. I mean, the shows are getting rave reviews. It's sort of amazing, but you do have to approach it on its own terms, rather than hoping to hear “Like a Rolling Stone” or “Knockin’ on Heaven's Door.”
Ray, if you could sit down with Dylan and ask him a few questions, what would be the top of your list? I have to imagine you've considered this over your months of investment in understanding this guy.
Well, if I could interview him, I'd hope I'd have more than a few questions. I'd like a 48-hour marathon interview. But I mean, ultimately, I think what I'd be most curious about is, why has he spent basically his entire life and especially every single year for the past 30 plus years, pandemic aside, touring? Why does he put so much stock into concerts? I mean, the guy's richer than God. He doesn't need the money from going to twenty towns in America in one month. So, what is it about the live performance that invigorates him so much that into his 80s, he's still going to Schenectady and Montreal and Indianapolis and places all over the world?
One of the most enjoyable pastimes of any fan bases to reconsider controversial aspects of any artist’s career, and lately, over the last decade, it seems like there's been a lot of vested interest in reexamining Dylan's gospel period, for example, or the 80s writ large, a period that, for a long time, was written off as sort of a lost decade for Dylan. Over the course of this book, did you find yourself reconsidering or getting a new perspective on any the aspect of his career that left you appreciate it more than maybe it currently is in the in the popular conscience?
That's very true. It often seems like if you write off some chunk of Dylan, you're going to have to reconsider it at some point. And that happened to me a lot, hearing about, for instance, even touring years that you've listened to the recordings, and you’re thinking, ah, I don't know if he's really all there or all invested. And then you talk to someone who is there, and they tell you just how extensively they rehearsed, or just all the amazing rehearsal things that didn't quite translate into the stage. I mean, it's not that every single thing Dylan does is perfect. Lord knows that's not the case. But it's always interesting. And it's always fun to get sort of the behind-the-scenes story, even at the things that maybe didn't work out, or that you don't quite understand.
What was your take on Dylan's decision to start inexplicably mining the Grateful Dead song book while on tour in Japan? It certainly prompted a lot of speculation about a possible appearance of the final Dead and Company concerts, which of course, did not come to pass, but it certainly is a fascinating swerve in this long and difficult career. What were your thoughts on that?
You know, Bob Dylan has had a closer relationship, both personal and also just sort of seeing a kinship there, with the Grateful Dead generally, and Jerry Garcia specifically. I mean, from things he has said in interviews, it's clear that he sees Garcia as a peer in a way that I don't think many people are really Bob Dylan's peers. Why, in 2023, all of a sudden, he's digging out Dead tunes again, as with so many things with Bob Dylan, is a bit of a mystery.
