Bob Dylan thought he’d had it. “Many didn’t feel my heart was in it any more,” he says. They
were right. He was a burned-out rock star. Then he went into a bar and heard a small jazz band.
Suddenly he felt inspired. “It was mostly the singer,” he says.
In what’s believed to be his first broadcast interview in 19 years
— to promote his new memoir “Chronicles,
Volume One” — Dylan talks about how every day he still thinks
of quitting and why he’s bothered when people call him “the voice of his generation.” He
says simply, “these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way.”
Is he back on track? Judging from the concert at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y.,
which opened his tour this summer with Willie Nelson, I didn’t think so then. And
judging from the tone of his NPR interview yesterday, I don’t think he thinks so now. But
more than any other poet/songwriter of our time, including all the Beatles, Bob
Dylan is irreplaceable. Also unstoppable. That’s just how it is and how it should be.
