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THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY

BY

JERRY M. LEWIS and THOMAS R. HENSLEY

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The impact of the shootings was dramatic. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close. H. R. Haldeman, a top aide to President Richard Nixon, suggests the shootings had a direct impact on national politics. In The Ends of Power, Haldeman (1978) states that the shootings at Kent State began the slide into Watergate, eventually destroying the Nixon administration. Beyond the direct effects of the May 4, the shootings have certainly come to symbolize the deep political and social divisions that so sharply divided the country during the Vietnam War era.

In the nearly three decades since May 4, l970, a voluminous literature has developed analyzing the events of May 4 and their aftermath. Some books were published quickly, providing a fresh but frequently superficial or inaccurate analysis of the shootings (e.g., Eszterhas and Roberts, 1970; Warren, 1970; Casale and Paskoff, 1971; Michener, 1971; Stone, 1971; Taylor et al., 1971; and Tompkins and Anderson, 1971). Numerous additional books have been published in subsequent years (e.g., Davies, 1973; Hare, 1973; Hensley and Lewis, 1978; Kelner and Munves, 1980; Hensley, 1981; Payne, 1981; Bills, 1988; and Gordon, 1997). These books have the advantage of a broader historical perspective than the earlier books, but no single book can be considered the definitive account of the events and aftermath of May 4, l970, at Kent State University.(1)

Despite the substantial literature which exists on the Kent State shootings, misinformation and misunderstanding continue to surround the events of May 4. For example, a prominent college-level United States history book by Mary Beth Norton et al. (1994), which is also used in high school advanced placement courses.(2) contains a picture of the shootings of May 4 accompanied by the following summary of events: "In May 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guardsmen confronted student antiwar protestors with a tear gas barrage. Soon afterward, with no provocation, soldiers opened fire into a group of fleeing students. Four young people were killed, shot in the back, including two women who had been walking to class." (Norton et al., 1994, p. 732) Unfortunately, this short description contains four factual errors: (1) some degree of provocation did exist; (2) the students were not fleeing when the Guard initially opened fire; (3) only one of the four students who died, William Schroeder, was shot in the back; and (4) one female student, Sandy Scheuer, had been walking to class, but the other female, Allison Krause, had been part of the demonstration.

This article is an attempt to deal with the historical inaccuracies that surround the May 4 shootings at Kent State University by providing high school social studies teachers with a resource to which they can turn if they wish to teach about the subject or to involve students in research on the issue. Our approach is to raise and provide answers to twelve of the most frequently asked questions about May 4 at Kent State. We will also offer a list of the most important questions involving the shootings which have not yet been answered satisfactorily. Finally, we will conclude with a brief annotated bibliography for those wishing to explore the subject further.

WHY WAS THE OHIO NATIONAL GUARD CALLED TO KENT?

The decision to bring the Ohio National Guard onto the Kent State University campus was directly related to decisions regarding American involvement in the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States in 1968 based in part on his promise to bring an end to the war in Vietnam. During the first year of Nixon's presidency, America's involvement in the war appeared to be winding down. In late April of 1970, however, the United States invaded Cambodia and widened the Vietnam War. This decision was announced on national television and radio on April 30, l970, by President Nixon, who stated that the invasion of Cambodia was designed to attack the headquarters of the Viet Cong, which had been using Cambodian territory as a sanctuary.

Protests occurred the next day, Friday, May 1, across United States college campuses where anti-war sentiment ran high. At Kent State University, an anti-war rally was held at noon on the Commons, a large, grassy area in the middle of campus which had traditionally been the site for various types of rallies and demonstrations. Fiery speeches against the war and the Nixon administration were given, a copy of the Constitution was buried to symbolize the murder of the Constitution because Congress had never declared war, and another rally was called for noon on Monday, May 4.

Friday evening in downtown Kent began peacefully with the usual socializing in the bars, but events quickly escalated into a violent confrontation between protestors and local police. The exact causes of the disturbance are still the subject of debate, but bonfires were built in the streets of downtown Kent, cars were stopped, police cars were hit with bottles, and some store windows were broken. The entire Kent police force was called to duty as well as officers from the county and surrounding communities. Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency, called Governor James Rhodes' office to seek assistance, and ordered all of the bars closed. The decision to close the bars early increased the size of the angry crowd. Police eventually succeeded in using tear gas to disperse the crowd from downtown, forcing them to move several blocks back to the campus.

The next day, Saturday, May 2, Mayor Satrom met with other city officials and a representative of the Ohio National Guard who had been dispatched to Kent. Mayor Satrom then made the decision to ask Governor Rhodes to send the Ohio National Guard to Kent. The mayor feared further disturbances in Kent based upon the events of the previous evening, but more disturbing to the mayor were threats that had been made to downtown businesses and city officials as well as rumors that radical revolutionaries were in Kent to destroy the city and the university. Satrom was fearful that local forces would be inadequate to meet the potential disturbances, and thus about 5 p.m. he called the Governor's office to make an official request for assistance from the Ohio National Guard.

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS ON SATURDAY MAY 2 AND SUNDAY MAY 3 AFTER THE GUARDS ARRIVED ON CAMPUS?

Members of the Ohio National Guard were already on duty in Northeast Ohio, and thus they were able to be mobilized quickly to move to Kent. As the Guard arrived in Kent at about 10 p.m., they encountered a tumultuous scene. The wooden ROTC building adjacent to the Commons was ablaze and would eventually burn to the ground that evening, with well over 1,000 demonstrators surrounding the building. Controversy continues to exist regarding who was responsible for setting fire to the ROTC building, but radical protestors were assumed to be responsible because of their actions in interfering with the efforts of firemen to extinguish the fire as well as cheering the burning of the building. Confrontations between Guardsmen and demonstrators continued into the night, with tear gas filling the campus and numerous arrests being made.

Sunday, May 3 was a day filled with contrasts. Nearly 1,000 Ohio National Guardsmen occupied the campus, making it appear like a military war zone. The day was warm and sunny, however, and students frequently talked amicably with Guardsmen. Ohio Governor James Rhodes flew to Kent on Sunday morning, and his mood was anything but calm. At a press conference, he issued a provocative statement calling campus protestors the worst type of people in America and stating that every force of law would be used to deal with them. Rhodes also indicated that he would seek a court order declaring a state of emergency. This was never done, but the widespread assumption among both Guard and University officials was that a state of martial law was being declared in which control of the campus resided with the Guard rather than University leaders and all rallies were banned. Further confrontations between protesters and guardsmen occurred Sunday evening, and once again rocks, tear gas, and arrests characterized a tense campus.

WHAT TYPE OF RALLY WAS HELD AT NOON ON MAY 4?

At the conclusion of the anti-war rally on Friday, May 1, student protest leaders had called for another rally to be held on the Commons at noon on Monday, May 4. Although University officials had attempted on the morning of May 4 to inform the campus that the rally was prohibited, a crowd began to gather beginning as early as 11 a.m. By noon, the entire Commons area contained approximately 3,000 people. Although estimates are inexact, probably about 500 core demonstrators were gathered around the Victory Bell at one end of the Commons, another 1,000 people were "cheerleaders" supporting the active demonstrators, and an additional 1,500 people were spectators standing around the perimeter of the Commons. Across the Commons at the burned-out ROTC building stood about 100 Ohio National Guardsmen carrying lethal M-1 military rifles.

Substantial consensus exists that the active participants in the rally were primarily protesting the presence of the Guard on campus, although a strong anti-war sentiment was also present. Little evidence exists as to who were the leaders of the rally and what activities were planned, but initially the rally was peaceful.

WHO MADE THE DECISION TO BAN THE RALLY OF MAY 4?

Conflicting evidence exists regarding who was responsible for the decision to ban the noon rally of May 4. At the 1975 federal civil trial, General Robert Canterbury, the highest official of the Guard, testified that widespread consensus existed that the rally should be prohibited because of the tensions that existed and the possibility that violence would again occur. Canterbury further testified that Kent State President Robert White had explicitly told Canterbury that any demonstration would be highly dangerous. In contrast, White testified that he could recall no conversation with Canterbury regarding banning the rally.

The decision to ban the rally can most accurately be traced to Governor Rhodes' statements on Sunday, May 3 when he stated that he would be seeking a state of emergency declaration from the courts. Although he never did this, all officials -- Guard, University, Kent -- assumed that the Guard was now in charge of the campus and that all rallies were illegal. Thus, University leaders printed and distributed on Monday morning 12,000 leaflets indicating that all rallies, including the May 4 rally scheduled for noon, were prohibited as long as the Guard was in control of the campus.

WHAT EVENTS LED DIRECTLY TO THE SHOOTINGS?

Shortly before noon, General Canterbury made the decision to order the demonstrators to disperse. A Kent State police officer standing by the Guard made an announcement using a bullhorn. When this had no effect, the officer was placed in a jeep along with several Guardsmen and driven across the Commons to tell the protestors that the rally was banned and that they must disperse. This was met with angry shouting and rocks, and the jeep retreated. Canterbury then ordered his men to load and lock their weapons, tear gas canisters were fired into the crowd around the Victory Bell, and the Guard began to march across the Commons to disperse the rally. The protestors moved up a steep hill, known as Blanket Hill, and then down the other side of the hill onto the Prentice Hall parking lot as well as an adjoining practice football field. Most of the Guardsmen followed the students directly and soon found themselves somewhat trapped on the practice football field because it was surrounded by a fence. Yelling and rock throwing reached a peak as the Guard remained on the field for about 10 minutes. Several Guardsmen could be seen huddling together, and some Guardsmen knelt and pointed their guns, but no weapons were shot at this time. The Guard then began retracing their steps from the practice football field back up Blanket Hill. As they arrived at the top of the hill, 28 of the more than 70 Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols. Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground. However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13-second period.

HOW MANY DEATHS AND INJURIES OCCURRED?

Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard. The closest student was Jeffrey Miller, who was shot in the mouth while standing in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot, a distance of approximately 270 feet from the Guard. Allison Krause was in the Prentice Hall parking lot; she was 330 feet from the Guardsmen and was shot in the left side of her body. William Schroeder was 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when he was shot in the left side of his back. Sandra Scheuer was also about 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot when a bullet pierced the left front side of her neck.

Nine Kent State students were wounded in the 13-second fusillade. Most of the students were in the Prentice Hall parking lot, but a few were on the Blanket Hill area. Joseph Lewis was the student closest to the Guard at a distance of about 60 feet; he was standing still with his middle finger extended when bullets struck him in the right abdomen and left lower leg. Thomas Grace was also approximately 60 feet from the Guardsmen and was wounded in the left ankle. John Cleary was over 100 feet from the Guardsmen when he was hit in the upper left chest. Alan Canfora was 225 feet from the Guard and was struck in the right wrist. Dean Kahler was the most seriously wounded of the nine students. He was struck in the small of his back from approximately 300 feet and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Douglas Wrentmore was wounded in the right knee from a distance of 330 feet. James Russell was struck in the right thigh and right forehead at a distance of 375 feet. Robert Stamps was almost 500 feet from the line of fire when he was wounded in the right buttock. Donald Mackenzie was the student the farthest from the Guardsmen at a distance of almost 750 feet when he was hit in the neck.

WHY DID THE GUARDSMEN FIRE?

The most important question associated with the events of May 4 is why did members of the Guard fire into a crowd of unarmed students? Two quite different answers have been advanced to this question: (1) the Guardsmen fired in self-defense, and the shootings were therefore justified and (2) the Guardsmen were not in immediate danger, and therefore the shootings were unjustified.

The answer offered by the Guardsmen is that they fired because they were in fear of their lives. Guardsmen testified before numerous investigating commissions as well as in federal court that they felt the demonstrators were advancing on them in such a way as to pose a serious and immediate threat to the safety of the Guardsmen, and they therefore had to fire in self-defense. Some authors (e.g., Michener, 1971 and Grant and Hill, 1974) agree with this assessment. Much more importantly, federal criminal and civil trials have accepted the position of the Guardsmen. In a 1974 federal criminal trial, District Judge Frank Battisti dismissed the case against eight Guardsmen indicted by a federal grand jury, ruling at mid-trial that the government's case against the Guardsmen was so weak that the defense did not have to present its case. In the much longer and more complex federal civil trial of 1975, a jury voted 9-3 that none of the Guardsmen were legally responsible for the shootings. This decision was appealed, however, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a new trial had to be held because of the improper handling of a threat to a jury member.

The legal aftermath of the May 4 shootings ended in January of 1979 with an out-of-court settlement involving a statement signed by 28 defendants(3) as well as a monetary settlement, and the Guardsmen and their supporters view this as a final vindication of their position. The financial settlement provided $675,000 to the wounded students and the parents of the students who had been killed. This money was paid by the State of Ohio rather than by any Guardsmen, and the amount equaled what the State estimated it would cost to go to trial again. Perhaps most importantly, the statement signed by members of the Ohio National Guard was viewed by them to be a declaration of regret, not an apology or an admission of wrongdoing:
In retrospect, the tragedy of May 4, 1970 should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Cambodian invasion, even though this protest followed the posting and reading by the university of an order to ban rallies and an order to disperse. These orders have since been determined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to have been lawful. Some of the Guardsmen on Blanket Hill, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed in their own minds that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation. Better ways must be found to deal with such a confrontation. We devoutly wish that a means had been found to avoid the May 4th events culminating in the Guard shootings and the irreversible deaths and injuries. We deeply regret those events and are profoundly saddened by the deaths of four students and the wounding of nine others which resulted. We hope that the agreement to end the litigation will help to assuage the tragic memories regarding that sad day.
A starkly different interpretation to that of the Guards' has been offered in numerous other studies of the shootings, with all of these analyses sharing the common viewpoint that primary responsibility for the shootings lies with the Guardsmen. Some authors (e.g., Stone, 1971; Davies, 1973; and Kelner and Munves, 1980) argue that the Guardsmen's lives were not in danger. Instead, these authors argue that the evidence shows that certain members of the Guard conspired on the practice football field to fire when they reached the top of Blanket Hill. Other authors (e.g., Best, 1981 and Payne, 1981) do not find sufficient evidence to accept the conspiracy theory, but they also do not find the Guard self-defense theory to be plausible. Experts who find the Guard primarily responsible find themselves in agreement with the conclusion of the Scranton Commission (Report , 1970, p. 87): "The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable."

WHAT HAPPENED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SHOOTINGS?

While debate still remains about the extent to which the Guardsmen's lives were in danger at the moment they opened fire, little doubt can exist that their lives were indeed at stake in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. The 13-second shooting that resulted in four deaths and nine wounded could have been followed by an even more tragic and bloody confrontation. The nervous and fearful Guardsmen retreated back to the Commons, facing a large and hostile crowd which realized that the Guard had live ammunition and had used it to kill and wound a large number of people. In their intense anger, many demonstrators were willing to risk their own lives to attack the Guardsmen, and there can be little doubt that the Guard would have opened fire again, this time killing a much larger number of students.

Further tragedy was prevented by the actions of a number of Kent State University faculty marshals, who had organized hastily when trouble began several days earlier. Led by Professor Glenn Frank, the faculty members pleaded with National Guard leaders to allow them to talk with the demonstrators, and then they begged the students not to risk their lives by confronting the Guardsmen. After about 20 minutes of emotional pleading, the marshals convinced the students to leave the Commons.

Back at the site of the shootings, ambulances had arrived and emergency medical attention had been given to the students who had not died immediately. The ambulances formed a screaming procession as they rushed the victims of the shootings to the local hospital.

The University was ordered closed immediately, first by President Robert White and then indefinitely by Portage County Prosecutor Ronald Kane under an injunction from Common Pleas Judge Albert Caris. Classes did not resume until the Summer of 1970, and faculty members engaged in a wide variety of activities through the mail and off-campus meetings that enabled Kent State students to finish the semester.

WHAT IS THE STORY BEHIND THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING PHOTO OF THE YOUNG WOMAN CRYING OUT IN HORROR OVER THE DYING BODY OF ONE OF THE STUDENTS?

A photograph of Mary Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, screaming over the body of Jeffery Miller appeared on the front pages of newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and the photographer, John Filo, was to win a Pulitzer Prize for the picture. The photo has taken on a life and importance of its own. This analysis looks at the photo, the photographer, and the impact of the photo.

The Mary Vecchio picture shows her on one knee screaming over Jeffrey Miller's body. Mary told one of us that she was calling for help because she felt she could do nothing (Personal Interview, 4/4/94). Miller is lying on the tarmac of the Prentice Hall parking lot. One student is standing near the Miller body closer than Vecchio. Four students are seen in the immediate background.

John Filo, a Kent State photography major in 1970, continues to work as a professional newspaper photographer and editor. He was near the Prentice Hall parking lot when the Guard fired. He saw bullets hitting the ground, but he did not take cover because he thought the bullets were blanks. Of course, blanks cannot hit the ground.

WHAT WAS THE LONG-TERM FACULTY RESPONSE TO THE SHOOTINGS?

Three hours after the shootings Kent State closed and was not to open for six weeks as a viable university. When it resumed classes in the Summer of 1970, its faculty was charged with three new responsibilities, their residues remaining today.

First, we as a University faculty had to bring aid and comfort to our own. This began earlier on with faculty trying to finish the academic quarter with a reasonable amount of academic integrity. It had ended about at mid-term examinations. However, the faculty voted before the week was out to help students complete the quarter in any way possible. Students were advised to study independently until they were contacted by individual professors. Most of the professors organized their completion of courses around papers, but many gave lectures in churches and in homes in the community of Kent and surrounding communities. For example, Norman Duffy, an award-winning teacher, gave off-campus chemistry lectures and tutorial sessions in Kent and Cleveland. His graduate students made films of laboratory sessions and mailed them to students.

Beyond helping thousands of students finish their courses, there were 1,900 students as well who needed help with gradation. Talking to students about courses allowed the faculty to do some counseling about the shootings, which helped the faculty as much in healing as it did students.

Second, the University faculty was called upon to conduct research about May 4 communicating the results of this research through teaching and traditional writing about the tragedy. Many responded and created a solid body of scholarship as well as an extremely useful archive contributing to a wide range of activities in Summer of 1970 including press interviews and the Scranton Commission.

Third, many saw as one of the faculty's challenges to develop alternative forms of protest and conflict resolution to help prevent tragedies such as the May 4 shootings and the killings at Jackson State 10 days after Kent State.

WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS?

Although we have attempted in this article to answer many of the most important and frequently asked questions about the May 4 shootings, our responses have sometimes been tentative because many important questions remain unanswered. It thus seems important to ask what are the most significant questions which yet remain unanswered about the May 4 events. These questions could serve as the basis for research projects by students who are interested in studying the shootings in greater detail.

(1) Who was responsible for the violence in downtown Kent and on the Kent State campus in the three days prior to May 4? As an important part of this question, were "outside agitators" primarily responsible? Who was responsible for setting fire to the ROTC building?

(2) Should the Guard have been called to Kent and Kent State University? Could local law enforcement personnel have handled any situations? Were the Guard properly trained for this type of assignment?

(3) Did the Kent State University administration respond appropriately in their reactions to the demonstrations and with Ohio political officials and Guard officials?

(4) Would the shootings have been avoided if the rally had not been banned? Did the banning of the rally violate First Amendment rights?

(5) Did the Guardsmen conspire to shoot students when they huddled on the practice football field? If not, why did they fire? Were they justified in firing?

(6) Who was ultimately responsible for the events of May 4, l970?

WHY SHOULD WE STILL BE CONCERNED ABOUT MAY 4, 1970 AT KENT STATE?

In Robert McNamara's (1995) book, "In Retrospect:The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" is a way to begin is an illustration of the this process. In it he says that United States policy towards Vietnam was "... terribly wrong and we owe it to future generations to explain why."

The May 4 shootings at Kent State need to be remembered for several reasons. First, the shootings have come to symbolize a great American tragedy which occurred at the height of the Vietnam War era, a period in which the nation found itself deeply divided both politically and culturally. The poignant picture of Mary Vecchio kneeling in agony over Jeffrey Miller's body, for example, will remain forever as a reminder of the day when the Vietnam War came home to America. If the Kent State shootings will continue to be such a powerful symbol, then it is certainly important that Americans have a realistic view of the facts associated with this event. Second, May 4 at Kent State and the Vietnam War era remain controversial even today, and the need for healing continues to exist. Healing will not occur if events are either forgotten or distorted, and hence it is important to continue to search for the truth behind the events of May 4 at Kent State. Third, and most importantly, May 4 at Kent State should be remembered in order that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. The Guardsmen in their signed statement at the end of the civil trials recognized that better ways have to be found to deal with these types of confrontations. This has probably already occurred in numerous situations where law enforcement officials have issued a caution to their troops to be careful because "we don't want another Kent State." Insofar as this has happened, lessons have been learned, and the deaths of four young Kent State students have not been in vain.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bills, Scott. (1988). Kent State/May 4: Echoes Through a Decade. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. This book provides town and gown reactions to May 4. It has the best annotated bibliography available on the literature on the shootings and is the basis for the annotations that follow.

Casale, Ottavio M. & Paskoff, Louis (Eds.) (1971). The Kent Affair: Documents and Interpretations . Boston: Houghton Mifflin. This is an early, useful volume which reproduces local and national newspaper articles on the shootings as well as radio and television broadcasts.

Davies, Peter. (1973). The Truth About Kent State: A Challenge to the American Conscience. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. This is a detailed narrative and analysis of the events of May 4 and their aftermath. He argues that the Guard conspired to fire upon the students. 74 photographs are included.

Eszterhas, Joe & Roberts, Michael D. (1970). Thirteen Seconds: Confrontation at Kent State. New York: Dodd, Mead. A very quick publication by two Cleveland journalists who use interviews of students, faculty, and Guardsmen to provide a background and narrative of May 1970 events.

Grant, Edward J. & Hill, Michael (1974). I Was There: What Really Went on at Kent State . Lima, OH: C.S.S. Publishing Co. The only book written by members of the Ohio National Guard, the authors provide a view of the hostile environment in which the Guardsmen found themselves.

Hare, A. Paul (Ed.) (l973). Kent State: The Nonviolent Response. Haverford, PA: Center for Nonviolent Conflict Resolution. A series of articles by noted peace activist Paul Hare as well as many Kent State faculty members. The common theme is the search for nonviolent approaches to conflictual situations.

Hensley, Thomas R. (1981). The Kent State Incident: Impact of Judicial Process on Public Attitudes. Westport, CONN: Greenwood Press. This is a detailed examination of the legal aftermath of the shootings, focusing upon the impact of various legal proceedings on public attitudes about the shootings.

Hensley, Thomas R. and Lewis, Jerry M. (1978). Kent State and May 4th: A Social Science Perspective. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. This collection brings together a number of previous articles on May 4 that were published in social science journals, but articles covering the Kent State litigation and the 1977 gymnasium controversy were written specifically for this volume. This book also contains the excellent analysis of the events of May 4 written by James Best.

Kelner, Joseph and Munves, James. (1980). The Kent State Coverup . New York: Harper and Row. Kelner was the chief legal counsel for the students and parents in the 1975 federal civil trial. He presents a harsh analysis of the handling of the trial by Judge Donald Young. The book has a strong bias, but it provides the only detailed analysis of this long and important trial.

Michener, James. (1971). Kent State: What Happened and Why . New York: Random House and Reader's Digest Books. This is undoubtedly the most widely read book on May 4 because of Michener's reputation and the wide publicity it received. The book suffers from being produced so quickly, however, containing numerous factual errors.

Payne, J. Gregory (1981). Mayday: Kent State. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. The book provides a rather sketchy overview of the May 4 events, presents excerpts from letters written by participants in the events, and discusses the made-for-TV movie on May 4 to which Payne served as a consultant.

Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest. (1970) Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Reprint edition by Arno Press. This remains the best single source for understanding the events of May 4. The report examines not only the shootings at Kent State but also the student movement of the sixties and the shootings at Jackson State University. Excellent photographs are included.

Stone, I. F. (1971). The Killings at Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished. New York: Review Book. This is a rather sketchy book written with a strongly held viewpoint that the Guardsmen committed murder.

Taylor, Stuart; Shuntlich, Richard; McGovern, Patrick; & Genther, Robert. (1971). Violence at Kent State, May 1 to 4, l970: The Student's Perspective. New York: College Notes and Texts, 1971. A study of the perceptions, feelings, attitudes, and reactions of Kent State students based upon a questionnaire sent to all Kent State students shortly after the shootings. Seven thousand students responded, and although this is not a random sample, it has the best data available about the views of Kent State students about May 4.

Tompkins, Phillip K. and Anderson, Elaine Vanden Bout. (l971). Communication Crisis at Kent State: A Case Study. New York: Gordon & Breach. This book presents a harsh analysis of the communications problems that permeated the University during May 1970.

Warren, Bill (Ed.) (1970). The Middle of the Country: The Events of May 4th As Seen by Students & Faculty at Kent State University . A hastily compiled set of essays put together by a Kent State University sophomore containing various reactions to the shootings by Kent State students and faculty members.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Best, James J. (1978). "Kent State: Answers and Questions" in Thomas R. Hensley and Jerry M. Lewis .) Kent State and May 4th: A Social Science Perspective . Dubuque, IA:

Kendall/Hunt.

Haldeman, H.R. (1978). The Ends of Power. New York: Times Books.

McNamara, Robert. (1995). In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. New York: Times Books.

Norton, Mary Beth; Katzman, David M.; Escott, Paul D.; Chudacoff, Howard P.; Paterson, Thomas G.; & Tuttle, William M. (1994). A People and a Nation: A History of the United

States. Fourth Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

NOTES

1.In addition to the many books on the Kent State shootings, numerous reports, book chapters, and articles have been written. The most comprehensive and accurate commission investigation is The Report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest (1970) chaired by William W. Scranton. An excellent book chapter on the shootings is by James J. Best (1978). The most comprehensive bibliography on the shootings is in Bills (1988).

2. Professor Hensley, the co-author of this article, became aware of this reference to the Kent State shootings because his daughter, Sarah, was taking Advanced Placement United States History at Kent Roosevelt High School with Mr. Bruce Dzeda. We thank Mr. Dzeda for reading this article and offering his reactions, although he bears no responsibility for the ideas expressed in this article.

3. In addition to Guard officers and enlisted men, Governor James Rhodes was also a defendant in the civil trial and signed the statement.

PUBLISHED IN REVISED FORM BY THE OHIO COUNCIL FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES REVIEW, VOL 34, NUMBER 1 (SUMMER, 1998) PP. 9-21

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The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy

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The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy May 4, 1970 | THE MAY 4 SHOOTINGS AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY: THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY BY JERRY M. LEWIS and THOMAS R. HENSLEY

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http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=116430964&site=eds-live

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407/john-lennon-imagine-20110516

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/the-500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-20110407/the-who-my-generation-20110516

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Seems like Bob Dylan is a good argument for how music is a motivator instead of a product

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I'm trying to explain something that can't be explained," says Bob Dylan. "Help me out." It's a midsummer day, an hour or so before evening, and we are seated at a table on a shaded patio, at the rear of a Santa Monica restaurant. Dylan is dressed warmer than the Southern California weather invited, in a buttoned black leather jacket over a thick white T-shirt. He also wears a ski cap - black around its lower half, white at its dome - pulled down over his ears and low on his forehead. A fringe of moptop-style reddish-blond hair, clearly a wig, curls slightly out from the front of the cap, above his eyebrows. He has a glass of cold water in front of him. In the 15 years since his 1997 album, Time Out of Mind, Dylan - who is now 71 - has enjoyed the most sustained period of creativity of his lifetime. His new album, Tempest, tells tales of mortal ends, moral faithlessness and hard-earned (if arbitrary) grace, culminating in a swirling, 14-minute epic about the Titanic, which mixes fact and fantasy, followed by a loving, mystical song about his late friend and peer John Lennon. It's unlikely, though, that Dylan will ever eclipse the renown of his explosion of music and style in the 1960s, which transformed him into a definitive mythic force of those times. But Dylan wasn't always comfortable with the effects of that reputation. In 1966, following a series of mind-blazing and controversial electric performances, the young hero removed himself from his own moment after he was laid low by a motorcycle accident, in Woodstock. The music that he returned with, in the late 1960s - John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline - sounded as if Dylan had become a different man. In truth, he now says, that's what he was - or rather, what he was becoming. What Bob Dylan believes really happened to him after he survived his radical pinnacle is much more transformational than he has fully revealed before. This was an incident he'd alluded to briefly in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, but in this interview the matter took on deeper implications.

At moments, I pushed in on some questions, and Dylan pushed back. We continued the conversation over the next many days, on the phone and by way of some written responses. Dylan didn't hedge or attempt to guard himself as we went along. Just the opposite: He opened up unflinchingly, with no apologies. This is Bob Dylan as you've never known him before.

Do you see Tempest as an eventful album, like Time Out of Mind or Love and Theft?
Tempest was like all the rest of them: The songs just fall together. It's not the album I wanted to make, though. I had another one in mind. I wanted to make something more religious. That takes a lot more concentration - to pull that off 10 times with the same thread - than it does with a record like I ended up with, where anything goes and you just gotta believe it will make sense.

Nonetheless, this seems among your bigger works, like Time Out of Mind, though more outward, less inward.
Well . . . the Time Out of Mind record, that was the beginning of me making records for an audience that I was playing to night after night. They were different people from different walks of life, different environments and ages. There was no reason for these new people to hear songs I'd written 30 years earlier for different purposes. If I was going to continue on, what I needed were new songs, and I had to write them, not necessarily to make records, but to play for the public.

The songs on Time Out of Mind weren't meant for somebody to listen to at home. Most of the songs work, whereas before, there might have been better records, but the songs don't work. So I'll stick with what I was doing after Time Out of Mind, rather than what I was doing in the Seventies and Eighties, where the songs just don't work.

That album was plainly received as a turning point. It began a sustained winning streak. Everything since then is a body of work that can stand on its own.
I hope it can. It should connect with people. The thing about it is that there is the old and the new, and you have to connect with them both. The old goes out and the new comes in, but there is no sharp borderline. The old is still happening while the new enters the scene, sometimes unnoticed. The new is overlapping at the same time the old is weakening its hold. It goes on and on like that. Forever through the centuries. Sooner or later, before you know it, everything is new, and what happened to the old? It's like a magician trick, but you have to keep connecting with it.

It's just like when talking about the Sixties. If you were here around that time, you would know that the early Sixties, up to maybe '64, '65, was really the Fifties, the late Fifties. They were still the Fifties, still the same culture, in America anyway. And it was still going strong but fading away. By '66, the new Sixties probably started coming in somewhere along that time and had taken over by the end of the decade. Then, by the time of Woodstock, there was no more Fifties. I really wasn't so much a part of what they call "the Sixties."

Even though you're so identified with it?
Evidently I was, and maybe even still am. I was there during that time, but I really couldn't identify with what was happening. It didn't mean that much to me. I had my own family by then. You know, for instance, [Timothy] Leary and others like him, they wouldn't have lasted a second in earlier days. Of course, the Vietnam War didn't help any.

Do you ever worry that people interpreted your work in misguided ways? For example, some people still see "Rainy Day Women" as coded about getting high.
It doesn't surprise me that some people would see it that way. But these are people that aren't familiar with the Book of Acts.

Sometimes you seem to have a distaste for the 1960s.
The Fifties were a simpler time, at least for me and the situation I was in. I didn't really experience what a lot of the other people my age experienced, from the more mainstream towns and cities. Where I grew up was as far from the cultural center as you could get. It was way out of the beaten path. You had the whole town to roam around in, though, and there didn't seem to be any sadness or fear or insecurity. It was just woods and sky and rivers and streams, winter and summer, spring, autumn. The changing of the seasons. The culture was mainly circuses and carnivals, preachers and barnstorming pilots, hillbilly shows and comedians, big bands and whatnot. Powerful radio shows and powerful radio music. This was before supermarkets and malls and multiplexes and Home Depot and all the rest. You know, it was a lot simpler. And when you grow up that way, it stays in you. Then I left, which was, I guess, toward the end of the Fifties, but I saw and felt a lot of things in the Fifties, which generates me to this day. It's sort of who I am.

I guess the Fifties would have ended in about '65. I don't really have a warm feeling for that period of time. Why would I? Those days were cruel.

Why is that? Was it just too much upheaval, being at the white-hot center of it?
Yeah, that and a whole lot of other stuff. Things were beginning to get corporatized. That wouldn't have mattered to me, but it was happening to the music, too. And I truly loved the music. I saw the death of what I love and a certain way of life that I'd come to take for granted.

Yet people thought your music spoke to and reflected the 1960s. Do you feel that's also the case with your music since 1997?
Sure, my music is always speaking to times that are recent. But let's not forget human nature isn't bound to any specific time in history. And it always starts with that. My songs are personal music; they're not communal. I wouldn't want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I'm not playing campfire meetings. I don't remember anyone singing along with Elvis, or Carl Perkins, or Little Richard. The thing you have to do is make people feel their own emotions. A performer, if he's doing what he's supposed to do, doesn't feel any emotion at all. It's a certain kind of alchemy that a performer has.

Don't you think you're a particularly American voice - for how your songs reference our history, or have commented on it?
They're historical. But they're also biographical and geographical. They represent a particular state of mind. A particular territory.

What others think about me, or feel about me, that's so irrelevant. Any more than it is for me, when I go see a movie, say, Wuthering Heights or something, and have to wonder what's Laurence Olivier really like. When I see an actor on the stage or something, I don't think about what they're like. I'm there because I want to forget about myself, forget about what I care or do not care about. Entertaining is a type of sport.

[ Dylan suddenly seems excited.] Let me show you something. I want to show you something. You might be interested in this. You might take this someplace. You might want to rephrase your questions, or think of new ones [ laughs]. Let me show you this. [ Gets up and walks to another table.]

You want me to come with you?
No, no, no, I got it right here. I thought this might interest you. [ Brings a weathered paperback to the table!] See this book? Ever heard of this guy? [ Shows me Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club, by Sonny Barger.]

Yeah, sure.
He's a Hell's Angel.

He was "the" Hell's Angel.
Look who wrote this book. [ Points at coauthors' names, Keith Zimmerman and Kent Zimmerman.] Do those names ring a bell? Do they look familiar? Do they? You wonder, "What's that got to do with me?" But they do look familiar, don't they? And there's two of them there. Aren't there two? One's not enough? Right? [ Dylan's now seated, smiling.]

I'm going to refer to this place here. [ Opens the book to a dog-eared page.] Read it out loud here. Just read it out loud into your tape recorder.

"One of the early presidents of the Berdoo Hell's Angels was Bobby Zimmerman. On our way home from the 1964 Bass Lake Run, Bobby was riding in his customary spot - front left - when his muffler fell off his bike. Thinking he could go back and retrieve it, Bobby whipped a quick U-turn from the front of the pack. At that same moment, a Richmond Hell's Angel named Jack Egan was hauling ass from the back of the pack toward the front. Egan was on the wrong side of the road, passing a long line of speeding bikes, just as Bobby whipped his U-turn. Jack broadsided poor Bobby and instantly killed him. We dragged Bobby's lifeless body to the side of the road. There was nothing we could do but to send somebody on to town for help." Poor Bobby.

Yeah, poor Bobby. You know what this is called? It's called transfiguration. Have you ever heard of it?

Yes.
Well, you're looking at somebody.

That . . . has been transfigured?
Yeah, absolutely. I'm not like you, am I? I'm not like him, either. I'm not like too many others. I'm only like another person who's been transfigured. How many people like that or like me do you know?

By transfiguration, you mean it in the sense of being transformed? Or do you mean transmigration, when a soul passes into a different body?
Transmigration is not what we are talking about. This is something else. I had a motorcycle accident in 1966.1 already explained to you about new and old. Right? Now, you can put this together any way you want. You can work on it any way you want. Transfiguration: You can go and learn about it from the Catholic Church, you can learn about it in some old mystical books, but it's a real concept. It's happened throughout the ages. Nobody knows who it's happened to, or why. But you get real proof of it here and there. It's not like something you can dream up and think. It's not like conjuring up a reality or like reincarnation - or like when you might think you're somebody from the past but have no proof. It's not anything to do with the past or the future.

So when you ask some of your questions, you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist. But people make that mistake about me all the time. I've lived through a lot. Have you ever heard of a book called No Man Knows My History? It's about Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. The title could refer to me.

Transfiguration is what allows you to crawl out from under the chaos and fly above it. That's how I can still do what I do and write the songs I sing and just keep on moving.

When you say I'm talking to a person that's dead, do you mean the motorcyclist Bobby Zimmerman, or do you mean Bob Dylan?
Bob Dylan's here! You're talking to him.

Then your transfiguration is . . .
It is whatever it is. I couldn't go back and find Bobby in a million years. Neither could you or anybody else on the face of the Earth. He's gone. If I could, I would go back. I'd like to go back. At this point in time, I would love to go back and find him, put out my hand. And tell him he's got a friend. But I can't. He's gone. He doesn't exist.

OK, so when you speak of transfiguration . . .
I only know what I told you. You'll have to go and do the work yourself to find out what it's about.

I'm trying to determine whom you've been transfigured from, or as.
I just showed you. Go read the book.

That's who you have in mind? What could the connection to that Bobby Zimmerman be other than name?
I don't have it in mind. I didn't write that book. I didn't make it up. I didn't dream that. I'm not telling you I had a dream last night. Remember the song "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream"? I didn't write that, either.

I'm showing you a book that's been written and published. I mean, look at all the connecting things: motorcycles, Bobby Zimmerman, Keith and Kent Zimmerman, 1964, 1966. And there's more to it than even that. If you went to find this guy's family, you'd find a whole bunch more that connected. I'm just explaining it to you. Go to the grave site.

When did you come across this book?
Uh, you know. When did I come across that book? Somebody put it in my hand years ago. I'd met Sonny Barger in the Sixties, but didn't know him very well. He was friends with Jerry Garcia. Maybe I saw it on a bookshelf out there and the bookseller slipped it into my hand. But I began to read it, and I thought I was reading about Sonny, but then I got to that part and realized it wasn't about him at all. I didn't even really check the authors' names until later and that blew my mind, too. About a year later, I went to a library in Rome and I found a book about transfiguration, because it's nothing you really hear about every day, and it's in that mystical realm, and I found out only enough to know that, uh, OK, I'm not an authority on it, but it kind of sets you straight on what sets you apart.

I'd always been different than other people, but this book told me why. Like certain people are set apart. You know, it's just like the phrase, "peers" - I mean, I see this, "Well, your peers this, your peers that." And I've always wondered, who are my peers? When I received the Medal of Freedom I started thinking more about it. Like, who are they? But then it became clear. My peers are Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington, B.B. King, John Glenn, Madeleine Albright, Pat Summitt, Toni Morrison, Jasper Johns, Martha Graham, Sidney Poitier. People like that, and they are set apart, too. And I'm proud to be counted among them.

You don't write the kind of songs I write just being a conventional type of songwriter. And I don't think anybody will write them like this again, any more than anybody will ever write a Hank Williams or Irving Berlin song. That's pretty much for sure. I just think I've taken things to a new level because I've had to. Because I've been forced to. You have to constantly reshape things because everything keeps expanding on you. Life has a way of spreading out.

Why do you have that need to constantly reshape things?
Because that's the nature of existence. Nothing stays where it is for very long. Trees grow tall, leaves fall, rivers dry up and flowers die. New people are born every day. Life doesn't stop.

Is that part of what touring is about for you?
Touring is about anything you want it to be about. Is there something strange about touring? About playing live shows? If there is, tell me what it is. Willie [Nelson]'s been playing them for years, and nobody ever asks him why he still tours. Look, you travel to different places and you encounter things that you might not encounter every day if you stayed home. And you get to play music for the people - all of the people, every nationality and in every country. Ask any performer or entertainer that does this, they'll all tell you the same thing. That they like doing it and that it means a lot to people. It's just like any other line of work, only different.

Yet for a long time, from, 1966 to 1974, you left touring behind. Did you always expect to return to live performance, as part of doing what it is that you do?
I know I left it behind, but then I picked it up again. Things change. Also, there are performers that don't go on the road. They might go to Vegas and just stay there. You could do it that way - who knows, I may do that, too, someday. There are a lot of worse ways to end up.

It's always been this way for everybody who's ever done it, going back to those ancient days. The carnival came to town, the carnival left and you ran off with them. It's just what you did. You don't travel to the end of the line until someone gives you a gold watch and a pat on the back. That's not the way the game works. People really don't retire. They fade away. They run out of steam. People aren't interested in them anymore.

What do you think of Bruce Springsteen? U2?
I love Bruce like a brother. He's a powerful performer - unlike anybody. I care about him deeply. U2's a force to be reckoned with. Bono's energy has far-reaching effects, and in some ways, he's his own tempest.

Miles Davis had this idea that music was best heard in the moments in which it was performed - that that's where music is truly alive. Is your view similar?
Yeah, it's exactly the same as Miles' is. We used to talk about that. Songs don't come alive in a recording studio. You try your best, but there's always something missing. What's missing is a live audience. Sinatra used to make records like that - used to bring people into the studio as an audience. It helped him get into the songs better.

So live performance is a purpose you find fulfilling?
If you're not fulfilled in other ways, performing can never make you happy. Performing is something you have to learn how to do. You do it, you get better at it and you keep going. And if you don't get better at it, you have to give it up. Is it a fulfilling way of life? Well, what kind of way of life is fulfilling? No kind of life is fulfilling if your soul hasn't been redeemed.

You've described what you do not as a career but as a calling.
Everybody has a calling, don't they? Some have a high calling, some have a low calling. Everybody is called but few are chosen. There's a lot of distraction for people, so you might not never find the real you. A lot of people don't.

How would you describe your calling?
Mine? Not any different than anybody else's. Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you are called at. Whatever you do. You ought to be the best at it - highly skilled. It's about confidence, not arrogance. You have to know that you're the best whether anybody else tells you that or not. And that you'll be around, in one way or another, longer than anybody else. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that.

Some of us have seen your calling as somebody who has done his best to pay witness to the world, and the history that made that world.
History's a funny thing, isn't it? History can be changed. The past can be changed and distorted and used for propaganda purposes. Things we've been told happened might not have happened at all. And things that we were told that didn't happen actually might have happened. Newspapers do it all the time; history books do it all the time. Everybody changes the past in their own way. It's habitual, you know? We always see things the way they really weren't, or we see them the way we want to see them. We can't change the present or the future. We can only change the past, and we do it all the time.

There's that old wisdom "History is written by the victors."
Absolutely. And then there's Henry Ford. He didn't have much use for history at all.

There doesn't seem to be anything heroic or honorable about it at all. It was suicidal. Four years of looting and plunder and murder done the American way. It's amazing what you see in those newspaper articles. Places like the Pittsburgh Gazette, where they were warning workers that if the Southern states have their way, they are going to overthrow our factories and use slave labor in place of our workers and put an end to our way of life. There's all kinds of stuff like that, and that's even before the first shot was fired.

But there were also claims and rumors from the South about the North . . .
There's a lot of that, too, about states' rights and loyalty to our state. But that didn't make any sense. The Southern states already had rights. Sometimes more than the Northern states. The North just wanted them to stop slavery, not even put an end to it - just stop exporting it. They weren't trying to take the slaves away. They just wanted to keep slavery from spreading. That's the only right that was being contested. Slavery didn't provide a working wage for people. If that economic system was allowed to spread, then people in the North were going to take up arms. There was a lot of fear about slavery spreading.

Do you see any parallels between the 1860s and present-day America?
Mmm, I don't know how to put it. It's like . . . the United States burned and destroyed itself for the sake of slavery. The USA wouldn't give it up. It had to be grinded out. The whole system had to be ripped out with force. A lot of killing. What, like, 500,000 people? A lot of destruction to end slavery. And that's what it really was all about.

This country is just too fucked up about color. It's a distraction. People at each other's throats just because they are of a different color. It's the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back - or any neighborhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn't want to give up slavery - that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can't pretend they don't know that. If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.

It's doubtful that America's ever going to get rid of that stigmatization. It's a country founded on the backs of slaves. You know what I mean? Because it goes way back. It's the root cause. If slavery had been given up in a more peaceful way, America would be far ahead today. Whoever invented the idea "lost cause . . . ." There's nothing heroic about any lost cause. No such thing, though there are people who still believe it.

Did you hope or imagine that the election of President Obama would signal a shift, or that it was in fact a sea change?
I don't have any opinion on that. You have to change your heart if you want to change.

Since his election, there's been a great reaction by some against him They did the same to Bush, didn't they? They did the same thing to Clinton, too, and Jimmy Carter before that. Look what they did to Kennedy. Anybody who's going to take that job is going to be in for a rough time.

Don't you think some of the reaction has stemmed from that kind of racial resonance you were talking about?
I don't know. I don't know, but I don't think that's the same thing. I have no idea what they are saying for or against him. I really don't. I don't know how deep it goes or how shallow it is.

You are aware that he's been branded as un-American or a socialist -
You can't pay any attention to that kind of stuff, as if you've never heard those kind of words before. Eisenhower was accused of being un-American. And wasn't Nixon a socialist? Look what he did in China. They'll say bad things about the next guy, too.

So you don't think some of the reaction against Obama has been in reaction to the event that a black man has become president of the United States?
Do you want me to repeat what I just said, word for word? What are you talking about? People loved the guy when he was elected. So what are we talking about? People changing their minds? Well, who are these people that changed their minds? Talk to them. What are they changing their minds for? What'd they vote for him for? They should've voted for somebody else if they didn't think they were going to like him.

The point I'm making is that perhaps lingering American resentments about race are resonant in the opposition to President Obama, which has not been a quiet opposition.
You mean in the press? I don't know anybody personally that's saying this stuff that you're just saying. The press says all kinds of stuff. I don't know what they would be saying. Or why they would be saying it. You can't believe what you read in the press anyway.

Should we do that? Should we vote?
Yeah, why not vote? I respect the voting process. Everybody ought to have the right to vote. We live in a democracy. What do you want me to say? Voting is a good thing.

I was curious if you vote.
[Smiling] Huh?

What's your estimation of President Obama been when you've met him?
What do I think of him? I like him. But you're asking the wrong person. You know who you should be asking that to? You should be asking his wife what she thinks of him. She's the only one that matters.

Look, I only met him a few times. I mean, what do you want me to say? He loves music. He's personable. He dresses good. What the fuck do you want me to say?

You live in these times, you have reactions to various national ups and downs. Are you, for example, disappointed by the resistance the president has met with? Would you like to see him re-elected?
I've lived through a lot of presidents! And you have too! Some are re-elected and some aren't. Being re-elected isn't the mark of a great president. Sometimes the guy you get rid of is the guy you wish you had back.

I've brought up the subject partly because of something you said the night he was elected: "It looks like things are gonna change now." Do you feel that the change you anticipated has been borne out?
You want to repeat that again? I have no idea what I said.

It was Election Night 2008. Onstage at the University of Minnesota, introducing your band's members, you indicated your bassist and said, "Tony Gamier, wearing the Obama button. Tony likes to think it's a brand-new time right now. An age of light. Me, I was born in 1941 - that's the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. Well, I been living in a world of darkness ever since. But it looks like things are gonna change now."
I don't know what I said or didn't say. As far as Tony goes, yeah, maybe he was wearing an Obama button and maybe I said some stuff because right there in the moment it all made sense. Maybe I said things looked like they could change. And maybe they did change. I don't think I could have predicted how they would change, but whatever was said, it was said for people in that hall for that night. You know what I'm saying? It wasn't said to be played on a record forever. Or did I go down to the middle of town and give a speech?

It was onstage.
It was on the streets?

Stage. Stage.
OK. It was on the stage. I don't know what I could have meant by that. You say things sometimes, you don't know what the hell you mean. But you're sincere when you say it. I would hope that things have changed. That's all I can say, for whatever it is that I said. I'm not going to deny what I said, but I would have hoped that things would've changed. I certainly hope they have.

I get the impression when we talk that you're reluctant to say much about the president or how he's been criticized.
Well, you know, I told you what I could.

What about your role as a producer? How would you describe the sound that you were trying to achieve here?
The sound goes with the song. But that's funny. Somebody was telling me that Justin Bieber couldn't sing any of these songs. I said I couldn't sing any of his songs either. And that person said, "Baby, I'm so grateful for that."

There's a fair amount of mortality, certainly in the last three songs - "Tin Angel," "Tempest" and "Roll On John." People come to hard endings.
The people in "Frankie and Johnny," "Stagger Lee" and "El Paso" have come to hard endings, too, and definitely it's that way in one of my favorite songs, "Delia." I can name you a hundred songs where everything ends in tragedy. It's called tradition, and that's what I deal in. Traditional, with a capital T. Maybe people have to have a simplistic way of identifying something, if they can't grasp it properly - use some term that they think they can understand, like mortality. Oh, like, "These songs must be about mortality. I mean, Dylan, isn't he an old guy? He must be thinking about that." You know what I say to that horseshit? I say these idiots don't know what they're talking about. Go find somebody else to pick on.

There's plenty of death songs. You may well know, in folk music every other song deals with death. Everybody sings them. Death is a part of life. The sooner you know that, the better off you'll be. That's the only way to look at it. As far as agreeing with what the common consensus is of what my songs mean or don't mean, it's just foolish. I can't really verify or not verify what other people say my songs are about.

It was interesting that in the aftermath of the "Titanic" sinking there were many folk and blues and country songs on the subject. Why do you think that was?
Folk musicians, blues musicians did write a lot of songs about the Titanic. That's what I feel that I'm best at, being a folk musician or a blues musician, so in my mind it's there to be done. If you're a folk singer, blues singer, rock & roll singer, whatever, in that realm, you oughta write a song about the Titanic, because that's the bar you have to pass.

Today we have so much media that before something happens, you see it. You know about it or you think you do. No one can tell you a thing. You don't need a song about the fire that happened in Chinatown last night because it was all over the news. In songs, you have to tell people about something they didn't see and weren't there for, and you have to do it as if you were. Nobody can contradict you on a song about the Titanic any more than they can contradict you on a song about Billy the Kid.

Those folk musicians, though, were people who never would've been let aboard the "Titanic," or would've been in steerage.
No, but all the old country singers, country blues, hillbilly singers, rock & roll singers, what they all had in common was a powerful imagination. And I have that, too. It's not that unusual for me to write a song about the Titanic tragedy any more than it was for Leadbelly. It might be unusual to write such a long ballad about it, but not necessarily about the disaster itself.

In some "Titanic" songs, there were those who saw the event as a judgment on modern times, on mankind for assuming that it could be unsinkable. Is there some of that in your song?
No, no, I try to stay away from all that stuff. I don't imply any of it. I'm not interested in it. I'm just interested in showing you what happened, on the level that it happened on. That's all. The meaning of it is beyond me.

You also have a song about John Lennon, "Roll On John," on this album. What moved you to record this now?
I can't remember - I just felt like doing it, and now would be as good a time as any. I wasn't even sure that song fit on this record. I just took a chance and stuck it on there. I think I might've finished it to include it. It's not like it was just written yesterday. I started practicing it late last year on some stages.

Lennon said that he was inspired by you, but also felt competitive with you. You and Lennon were cultural lions in the 1960s and 1970s. Did that ever make for unease or for a sense of competition in each other's company?
I think we covered peers a while back, did we not? John came from the northern regions of Britain. The hinterlands. Just like I did in America, so we had some kind of environmental things in common. Both places were pretty isolated. Though mine was more landlocked than his. But everything is stacked against you when you come from that. You have to have the talent to overcome everything. That was something I had in common with him. We were all about the same age and heard the same exact things growing up. Our paths crossed at a certain time, and we both had faced a lot of adversity. We even had that in common. I wish that he was still here because we could talk about a lot of things now.

You went to visit Liverpool, where Lennon grew up. How long ago was that?
A couple years ago? Strawberry Field is right in back of his house. Didn't know that. Evidently, he grew up with his aunt. He'd be out there in the Strawberry Field, a park behind his house that was fenced off. Being in Britain, there's all this hanging history, chopping off heads. I mean, you grow up with that, if you're a Brit. I didn't quite understand the line about getting hung - "Nothing to get hung about" - well, time had moved on, it was like "hung up," nothing to be hung up about. But he was speaking literally: "What are you doing out there, John?" "Don't worry, Mum, nothing they're going to hang me about, nothing to get hung about." I found that kind of interesting.

In "Roll On John," there's a sense that Lennon was trapped in America, far away from home. Did you feel empathy for those experiences?
How could you not? There's so much you can say about any person's life. It's endless, really. I just picked out stuff that I thought that I was close enough to, to understand.

You said that you originally wanted to make a more religious album this time - can you tell me more about that?
The songs on Tempest were worked out in rehearsals on stages during sound-checks before live shows. The religious songs maybe I felt were too similar to each other to release as an album. Someplace along the line, I had to go with one or the other, and Tempest is what I went with. I'm still not sure it was the right decision.

When you say religious songs . . .
Newly written songs, but ones that are traditionally motivated.

More like "Slow Train Coming"?
No. No. Not at all. They're more like "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."

From the 1980s on, there's been a lot of dark territory in your songs. Has any of this been a reflection of an ongoing religious struggle for you?
Nah, I don't have any of those religious struggles. I just showed you that book. Transfiguration eliminates all that stuff. You don't have those kinds of struggles. You never did, and you never will. No. You have to amplify your faith. Those are struggles for other people. Other people that you don't know and never will. Everybody's facing some kind of struggle for sure.

Has your sense of your faith changed?
Certainly it has, o ye of little faith. Who's to say that I even have any faith or what kind? I see God's hand in everything. Every person, place and thing, every situation. I mean, we can have faith in just about anything. Can't we? You might have faith in that bloody mary you're drinking. It might quiet your nerves.

[Laughs] It's water - not a bloody mary.
Well [ laughs], it looks like a bloody mary to me. I'm gonna say that it is. I'll rewrite your history for you.

You've been willing to talk about these matters before.
Yeah, but that was before and this is now. I have enough faith for me to be faithful to myself. Faith is good - it could move mountains. Not that bloody-mary faith that you have, but the kind of faith that people like me have. You can tell whether other people have faith or no faith by the way they behave, by the shit that comes out of their mouths. A little faith can go a long ways. It's the right thing for people to have. When we have little else, that will do. But it takes a while to acquire it. You just got to keep looking.

Sometimes people have acquired it, then feel like they lose faith.
Yeah, absolutely. You get hit hard in life. People get hit with everything. We all do. We all get hit upside the head. And some of us get hit harder than others. Some of us get no chance at all. Some of us get more than one chance. No two are alike. You have to push on. Make the best of it. Just like the Woody Guthrie song "Hard Travelin'."

Clearly, the language of the Bible still provides imagery in your songs.
Of course, what else could there be? I believe in the Book of Revelation. I believe in disclosure, you know? There's truth in all books. In some kind of way. Confucius, Sun Tzu, Marcus Aurelius, the Koran, the Torah, the New Testament, the Buddhist sutras, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and many thousands more. You can't go through life without reading some kind of book.

"Time Out of Mind" started with this image of somebody walking through streets that are dead.
A lot of walking in that record, right? I've heard that.

When that narrator talks about walking this or that road, do you have pictures of those roads in your mind?
Yeah, but not in a specific kind of way. You can feel it, without being able to see it. It's an old-time thing: the walking blues.

The walking could be what somebody witnesses. It could be the road to death; it could be the road to illumination.
Sure, all those roads. How many roads must a man walk down? Not run down, drive down or crawl down? I've been raised on that. The walking blues. "Walking to New Orleans," "Cadillac Walk," "Hand Me Down My Walkin' Cane." It's the only way I know. It comes natural.

The person who's walking in these songs, is he walking alone?
Sometimes, but then again, sometimes not. Sometimes you got to get into your own space for a while. It never really dawns on me, though, whether I'm walking alone or not. Seems like I'm always walking with somebody.

In "Sugar Baby," on "Love and Theft," you sang, "Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick." Did these words convey a significant change from how you may have felt before?
No, there's been no change whatsoever. I used to think most people felt that way about existence, and I still think that.

And it makes perfect sense, because in the truth world, nothing does begin or end. You know, it's like things begin while something else is ending. There's never any sharp borderline or dividing line. We've talked about this. You know how we have dividing lines between countries. We have boundaries. Well, boundaries in the cosmological world don't really exist, any more than they do between night and day.

After your motorcycle accident, you were in some ways a different person?
I'm trying to explain something that can't be explained. Help me out. Read the pages of the book. Some people never really develop into who they're supposed to be. They get cut off. They go off another way. It happens a lot. We all see people that that's happened to. We see them on the street. It's like they have a sign hanging on them.

Did you have an inkling of this before you read the Barger book?
I didn't know who I was before I read the Barger book.

Here's one way of looking at this: In the 1960s, people saw you as a revolutionary fireball up until the motorcycle accident. Afterward, with the music made in Woodstock with the Band, and with "John Wesley Harding" and "Nashville Skyline," some were bewildered by your transformation. You came back from that hiatus looking different, sounding different, in voice, music and words.

Why is it that when people talk about me they have to go crazy? What the fuck is the matter with them? Sure, I had a motorcycle accident. Sure, I played with the Band. Yeah, I made a record called John Wesley Harding. And sure, I sounded different. So fucking what? They want to know what can't be known. They are searching - they are seekers. Like in the Pete Townshend song where he's trying to find his way to 50 million fables. For what? Why are they doing this? They don't really know. It's sad. It really is. May the Lord have mercy on them. They are lost souls. They really don't know. It's sad - it really is. It's sad for me, and it's sad for them.

Why do you think that is the case?
I don't have a clue. If you ever find out, come and tell me.

Are you saying that you can't really be known?
Nobody knows nothing. Who knows who's been transfigured and who has not? Who knows? Maybe Aristotle? Maybe he was transfigured? I can't say. Maybe Julius Caesar was transfigured. I have no idea. Maybe Shakespeare. Maybe Dante. Maybe Napoleon. Maybe Churchill. You just never know, because it doesn't figure into the history books. That's all I'm saying.

Sometimes we can deepen ourselves or give aid to other people by trying to know them.
If we're responsible to ourselves, then we can be responsible for other people, too. But we have to know ourselves first. People listen to my songs and they must think I'm a certain type of way, and maybe I am. But there's more to it than that. I think they can listen to my songs and figure out who they are, too.

With this sort of question? Just one more: In the past 10 years, you've written an autobiography; there was a fictional film biography, I'm Not There; and there was Martin Scorsese's documentary, No Direction Home - three big attempts to come to terms with your history, the biggest being your book, Chronicles. Wasn't that, in a way, an attempt to explain certain things about your life?
If you read Chronicles, you know it doesn't attempt to be any more than what it is. You're not going to find the meaning of life in it. Mine or anyone else's. And if you've seen No Direction Home, you might have noticed that it ended in '66. And I'm Not There - I don't know anything about that movie. All I know is they licensed about 30 of my songs for it.

I think the movie grew from a long-stated perception of you as somebody with a lot of phases and identities.
I don't see myself that way. But what does it matter? It's only a movie.

In Chronicles, you wrote about declining to write songs for a 1971 play by Archibald MacLeish because you thought the play, Scratch, "spelled death for society with humanity lying facedown in its own blood." Wouldn't that same vision apply to the 2003 film you co-wrote, Masked and Anonymous?
Uh, yeah. You could look at it that way.

Will there be a Chronicles 2?
Oh, let's hope so. I'm always working on parts of it. But the last Chronicles I did all by myself. I'm not even really so sure I had a proper editor for that. I don't want really to say too much about that. But it's a lot of work. I don't mind writing it, but it's the rereading it and the time it takes to reread it - that for me is difficult.

In recent years, you've received numerous high honors, including one recently at the White House, where you were presented with a Medal of Freedom. You weren't always comfortable with this sort of event. What makes you more accepting now of these laurels?
I turn down far more of those medals and honors than I pick up. They come in from all over the place - all parts of the world. Most of them will get turned down because I can't physically be there to get them all. But every once in a while, there's something that is important, an incredibly high honor that I would never have dreamed to be receiving, like the Medal of Freedom. There's no way I would turn that down.

Do you accept the awards in part for your family, for your posterity?
I accept them for myself and myself only. And I don't think about it any other way, and I don't waste a lot of time over-thinking it. It's an incredible honor.

Receiving the Medal of Freedom had to be a bit of a thrill.
Oh, of course it's a thrill! I mean, who wouldn't want to get a letter from the White House? And the kind of people they were putting me in the category with was just amazing. People like John Glenn and Madeleine Albright, Toni Morrison and Pat Summitt, John Doer, William Foege and some others, too. These people who have done incredible things and have outstanding achievements. Pat Summitt alone has won more basketball games with her teams than any NCAA coach. John Glenn, we all know what he did. And Toni Morrison is as good as it gets. I loved spending time with them. What's the alternative? Hanging around with hedge-fund hucksters or Hollywood gigolos? You know what I mean?

The Medal of Freedom, it's an encircled star on a ribbon that hangs around your neck?
Yeah, I guess so. You should've told me you wanted to see it. I'd've brought it by and you could look at it, if you wanted.

Maybe next time.
Yeah. Sure, next time.

That's the side of people I see. People like to betray people. There's something in people that they just want to betray somebody. "That's him over there." They want to deliver you up. Like they delivered Jesus. They want to be the one to do it. There's something in people that's just like that. I've experienced that. A lot.

Before we end the conversation, I want to ask about the controversy over your quotations in your songs from the works of other writers, such as Japanese author Junichi Saga's "Confessions of a Yakuza," and the Civil War poetry of Henry Timrod. Some critics say that you didn 't cite your sources clearly. Yet in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. What's your response to those kinds of charges?
Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It's true for everybody, but me. I mean, everyone else can do it but not me. There are different rules for me. And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who's been reading him lately? And who's pushed him to the forefront? Who's been making you read him? And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. And if you think it's so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. It's an old thing - it's part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you've been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell.

Seriously?
I'm working within my art form. It's that simple. I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It's called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.

When those lines make their way into a song, you're conscious of it happening?
Well, not really. But even if you are, you let it go. I'm not going to limit what I can say. I have to be true to the song. It's a particular art form that has its own rules. It's a different type of thing. All my stuff comes out of the folk tradition - it's not necessarily akin to the pop world.

Do you find that sort of criticism irrelevant, or silly?
I try to get past all that. I have to. When you ask me if I find criticism of my work irrelevant or silly, no, not if it's constructive. If someone could point out here or there where my work could be improved upon, I guess I'd be willing to listen. The people who are obsessed with criticism - it's not honest criticism. They are not the people who I play to anyway.

Everything people say about you or me, they are saying about themselves. They're telling about themselves. Ever notice that? In my case, there's a whole world of scholars, professors and Dylanologists, and everything I do affects them in some way. And, you know, in some ways, I've given them life. They'd be nowhere without me.

And inspiration.
No, they're not good for that.

The flip side is, there's also the audience that really loves you.
Of course. They think they do. They love the music and songs I play, not me.

Why do you say that?
Because that's the way people are. People say they love a lot of things, but they really don't. It's just a word that's been overused. When you put your life on the line for somebody, that's love. But you'll never know it until you're in the moment. When someone will die for you, that's love, too.
This story is from the September 27th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.

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I'm trying to explain something that can't be explained," says Bob Dylan. "Help me out." It's a midsummer day, an hour or so before evening, and we are seated at a table on a shaded patio, at the rear of a Santa Monica restaurant.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Joan Baez has a tape recording that she made while she was in Hanoi as a guest of the Committee for Solidarity with the American People. Other voices on the tape, recorded in the lobby of the Hoa Binh (Peace) Hotel, include the three other members of her party: the Reverend Michael Allen, anti-war vet Barry Romo, and Columbia law professor Telford Taylor, an ex-brigadier general and American prosecutor at the Nuremburg war crimes tribunal.

It was recorded at 7:30 on a cloudless Christmas eve. Reverend Allen begins the American's personal Christmas services with an invocation. Joan Baez starts to sing the Lord's Prayer in her familiar, soaring voice. Suddenly there is an immense concussion, the unmistakable sound of a bomb. The guitar falters, then Joan's voice comes back strong and brave.

"Quiet," someone shouts.

Another, louder voice yells, "No, sing on." An air-raid siren screams nearby, cutting directly into the verse about for-giving trespasses.

("They were Phantom Jets," Joan said later in a San Francisco coffee shop. They had swept out of the cloudless skies just under radar range and dropped tons of Christmas surprises on the people of Hanoi.)

"Get your helmets," a Vietnamese calls in English. The tape ends with the sounds of confusion: running, scuffling feet and the howl of the air-raid siren.

* * *

Forty-eight hours after the United States broke off the Paris peace talks, American warplanes - Phantom Jets and giant B-52 strategic bombers - carried out 12 days of bombing raids against Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong. This marked the first time in the history of the war that B-52s have been used against North Vietnam's two major cities. While the Phantoms are designed to hit a specific target and carry only a few tons of bombs, the huge B-52s carry up to 30 tons of bombs and devastate whole square miles of territory. In the 12 days between December 18th and December 30th, the North Vietnamese News Agency estimates, some 100,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the two cities and nearby populated areas. No figures were available from American military spokesmen though The New York Times quoted a military officer at Guam, where the B-52s are stationed, as saying that the Christmas raids were "the biggest aerial operation in the history of warfare."

One hundred thousand tons of bombs is more than the total tonnage dropped on England during the six years of World War II. It is the equivalent of six Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. As a guest of the North Vietnamese, Joan Baez spent 12 days under the bombs, and saw first-hand the devastation they caused.

"It was interesting how they eased us into it. The first place we saw was across the river and we didn't see bodies as we did later. We could see the ruins and the Red Cross workers. We saw the people with white mourning bands around their heads, which means that they lost a loved one. We saw the devastation. But it wasn't so terrible. A girl came by on a bicycle and said something in Vietnamese. I asked the interpreter what it was she said and he told me that she said, 'Did the Americans come by to look at Nixon's peace?' I said, 'Tell her yes.'

"The second thing we saw was the roughest for us all. That was the day Michael Allen stopped eating. We were about to have breakfast and they rushed in and told us it was time to go see a bomb site. We went with the press in a caravan of cars to Kham Tiem Street. It's a district in downtown Hanoi where the houses are very small - mud and brick, jammed close together. As we toured the district, a North Vietnamese war crimes commissioner stands behind you and tells all the figures: the dead, the wounded, the number of raids.

"The first thing I saw there was everyone carrying their bicycles, because there was no way to walk through the rubble. There was an old man who was trying to walk through the mud and brick, but he was hobbling and having a great deal of trouble moving through the wreckage. I reached over and took his hand. He looked up at me with his exquisite old man's face, those lines, the little white wispy chin beard, and I could feel he was trembling. We held on to each other for some seconds, and both our eyes filled with tears. He mumbled some things in Vietnamese that I couldn't understand then he looked up at me and said, 'Danke schoen.'

"The next thing that made a deep impression on me was a woman sitting on the rubble and sobbing hysterically. They don't cry very much, Vietnamese women. They cover their faces with their hands or a veil if they do; but this woman was to the point where she would stand and clench and unclench her fists for several minutes, then sit on the rubble and just wail. Her face was bloated from crying and her husband was trying to get her to calm down and stop weeping. I sat next to her and she took my hand. There was a girl sitting next to her holding her other hand and she was crying too, only she wasn't making any sound. The woman squeezed my hand. Behind us the war crimes commissioner was just droning on and on: '215 killed, 257 wounded . . .'

"Nearby there was a bomb shelter that had taken a direct hit. Everyone was dead.

"We picked our way across the craters and the debris. It was like a moonscape with all the craters . . . just like being on the moon except for the wreckage. I saw a woman in the distance, but I couldn't see her face. She was chanting and I thought she and her family had survived. Sometimes when there is all this devastation all around and people survive they get very giddy and actually have a celebration in the midst of near oblivion. When we got closer, I saw her face wasn't happy. It was twisted in some kind of awful shock and agony. She was chanting the same thing over and over, dazed as she picked through the rubble. She would pick up a brick and put it down, pick up another brick from someplace else and put it down.

"We asked the interpreter what it was she was chanting and he said it was an old song that went, 'Where are you now, my sons, where are you now?'

"It was relentless. Both her young sons were buried under the bricks and there was no chance she would ever see them again.

"I couldn't go on after that. Someone took me back to the car. The others told me that a couple of craters beyond that there was a family of four who had been killed. They were lying with their arms around one another. That was when Mike Allen stopped eating. He couldn't stomach any food for 48 hours."

* * *

On December 23rd the North Vietnamese Ministry of Public Health announced that Hanoi's Bach Mai hospital, the country's finest hospital and medical school and research center had been completely destroyed by two separate US B-52 raids on the nights of December 19th and December 22nd. The Pentagon denied the report and continued to do so up until the time the Telford-Allen-Baez-Romo party arrived in New York on New Year's Day. Ex-Brigadier General Taylor, a man who had once written a song entitled "Fifty Stars on a Field of Blue," announced to the press that he had film of the Bach Mai hospital. Spokesmen for the Pentagon modified the earlier denial. They said there may have been "some limited accidental damage."

"The hospital was devastated," Joan Baez said. "It was completely obliterated. I saw corpses in a row, which was my first exposure to a line of dead bodies. The others didn't see them because the Vietnamese covered them quickly when we came around; but I was first in line and I saw four of them, including an old woman. There were people racing all around carrying bleeding patients piggyback out of the debris. The most pathetic thing was the director of the hospital who was racing from building to building and trying to show us everything that was.

" 'This was dermatology,' he would say, 'and this was maternity.' All the time he had an hysterical half-smile on his face.

"The hospital had been huge. It took an hour to walk through. Along the way we saw a crane trying to lift a concrete slab off the top of a bomb shelter. There were 20 or 25 people inside. We all had the comforting feeling that they could get them out but we found out later they never did. All those people died in that bomb shelter.

"I usually gave up on those walks in about a half an hour. I'd get light headed and go back to the car. I knew I'd be useless to them if I passed out. And they were very sweet. If they smelt burnt flesh, they'd say, 'Why don't you wait here.' They wouldn't usher me through that part."

* * *

The moon was full over Hanoi during the Christmas holidays, and during the night-raids the people could see the flashes of the bombs as they landed. Occasionally they could see a B-52 explode in mid-air, brought down by a Russian-built Sam 111. The days were cloudswept and cold, much like the San Francisco morning I spent talking to Joan Baez.

She had a tape recorder with her in the San Francisco coffee shop, and a grotesquely shaped piece of melted steel and a sheaf of photos. One of the pictures showed a lovely Vietnamese girl of about 17. She was sitting on a high stool and her legs hung free and bare under a knee-length skirt. Where her feet should have been there was nothing. Her legs ended in blackened stumps at mid-calf. "This girl told me that she lost her legs a week before her wedding. She didn't think that her husband would want her, but he carried her to the wedding on his back."

Another photo was of a girl who looked about 12. She wore a sleeveless blouse. Both arms ended in fire-blackened stumps, at the shoulder. A third photo showed a nurse helping a smiling three-year-old girl learn to use crutches. The girl's left leg was missing.

"There was a woman I met in the lobby of the big hotel," Joan said. "She sold chess sets and jewelry but they didn't have what I wanted. She told me to come back the next day and she would have it. When I arrived the next day I learned that she had lost several relatives in the night's raids. She was working as if nothing had happened, but for one moment I saw her just staring off into space. I went over-and put my arms around her. She held me very tightly and cried on my shoulder for about 15 seconds. Then she tried to smile a little and went back to work. That was life."

North Vietnamese figures put the bombing death toll at about 2000.

"I have these dreams," Joan Baez was saying. "I don't know why, but I have to sleep so much. Sometimes I go to bed at 6:00 and don't wake up until late the next morning, and I dream the whole time."

In one of her dreams, Joan sees many people in a line speaking. Someone or something doesn't want the speaking to go on. One of the figures begins to burn, but his mouth still moves. Another ignites and soon they are all burning. Their bodies melt and their bones ash until the bodies collapse in flame. In the end there is a line of charred skulls, and the skulls are trying to speak.

* * *

There are bomb shelters every ten or 15 feet all along the streets of Hanoi. The shelters hold one or two people. In the public places, near the lake and in the park, there are bigger shelters every 20 feet or so. In the parks also there are rows and rows of trees. The bombs uproot the trees and everywhere in Hanoi the wind carries dead leaves down the rubble-strewn streets.

Throughout the city there are loud-speakers: Hanoi is wired for sound. Most of the time music is played - martial music generally, interspersed with short inspirational and lyrical Vietnamese folk songs. When the radar picks up the B-52s, a woman's voice announces that the planes are so many kilometers from the city. This is the pre-alert. Five or ten minutes later there will be another pre-alert. The children listen for the alerts and run to the nearest shelter where they will laugh and play at the entrance, rather than go immediately into the shelters which are dark and depressing and claustrophobic. When the siren screams, they all run into the shelters calling out the one word of English they know best of all.

"Neexon, Neexon," they shout at the B-52s.

* * *

The American party arrived in Hanoi on December 16th. They were scheduled to leave on the 23rd, but the bombing started on their second day and no planes could land or take off from Hanoi. They stayed until the morning of the 30th, the last day of the bombing.

"The first day of the bombing," said Joan Baez, "I was in our shelter and I was mentally saying goodbye to my son, to my sisters, to everything. Barry Romo, the Viet vet who was so kind to me. He'd smile and tell me that the bombs were nowhere near. I could feel the concussion pop my inner ear, but he told me not to worry. That night the bombs landed four blocks away.

"On the second day of the bombing . . . the first raid of the second day . . . I remember I was getting something to eat and someone slammed a door. I dropped my plate. By the fourth or fifth day I would walk nonchalantly to the shelter.

"I would play in the shelter sometimes. The best song was 'Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around.' It's short and easy to translate. The people would clap along and I'd sing, 'Ain't going to let no Pentagon turn me around.' It was something you needed after an hour in those shelters.

"There were about four or five raids a night, lasting an hour or an hour and a half apiece. We'd get up and go to the shelters. Some nights there were nine or ten raids and we'd just sleep there. We got so we went to sleep and got up whenever we heard the siren. We never heard about a Christmas Day halt in the bombing so we all went to sleep and didn't get up for 14 hours on Christmas Day.

"During one of the raids I talked to a reporter for the French Communist news service. He was talking about packing away his typewriter and getting out a rifle to fight the Americans. He asked me if I didn't like the sound of anti-aircraft fire and I had to tell him I did. The next question was, 'Don't you like to see the planes explode in the sky?'

"I said, 'Yes, if I know the pilot has bailed out.' I can not enjoy the idea of anyone being blown up. That is on the moral side. On the human side I was glad there was ground-to-air fire. It meant that the planes were going to go away and that someone else below wasn't going to be killed. If my pacifism was ever going to be put to a test, this must have been the time. I don't like to see war and I don't like killing, on any side. I'm not a fake pacifist.

"Aside from that, I can visualize every man in every one of those planes as a future Viet Vet Against the War."

By the last night of the bombing, Joan Baez was behaving like a veteran under the bombs. During the last raid she chose not to huddle in the shelter. Instead she stood on the balcony of her hotel and sang songs to the men she could see as future Vets Against the War.

* * *

Part of the purpose of the trip to Hanoi was to deliver letters to the POWs. "We saw about 13 of them. The camp had been near a bomb site. Four of them were slightly injured. All the windows were blasted in and there were pieces of shrapnel on the floor. We were going to hold a Christmas service but the big room we wanted to do it in had caved in. The walls were up and the ceiling was up but everything else had shaken loose and it was just rubble. No place to stand. Mike Allen gave a sermon and I was all set to sing the Lord's Prayer, but they said they'd rather hear 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.'

"Most of them, I think, were terrified. They had never been under the bombs before and they didn't know what was going on. The last thing they had heard, peace was at hand."

* * *

Joan Baez turned the twisted bit of steel in her hands. "After a while we found ourselves making funny macabre jokes. You'd just shake your head, not believing you said anything that ghastly and just go on laughing.

"The Indians in our hotel were the ones I found myself joking with. They called me Miss Bulbul, which is the name of an Indian nightingale. [In a rapid Indian accent]: 'Ah, Miss Bulbul, you must stand up and sing.'

"I would say that I was tired and that I should get some sleep. They'd say, 'We're sorry but it is not proper to go to bed soon so; you must stand up and sing.'

"When we found we were going to be in Hanoi until the bombing was over, they'd take sides teasing. 'I'm sorry, your plane will not come, it is impossible.' Then another one would say, 'This is mean, you must not say this. Your plane will come tomorrow, certainly.'

"I'd laugh and tease them about their accents. I have tapes of us laughing hysterically and somewhere, way in the background, you can hear a bomb explode."

Joan leaned over the booth and handed me the heavy bit of metal. It was twisted by heat and concussion, unmistakably, into the shape of a vulture. "I'm not one of those who makes rings from fallen B-52 parts, but I found this on a pile of rubble. It seems symbolic."

I handed the metal back and she stared at it in silence. Finally she looked up and her eyes seemed infinitely tired and sad. "Last night," she said, "I dreamt there was a snake in my veins. Someone told me I should shoot it, kill it with a hypodermic needle. I don't know what it means. It's just a dream about death and dread."

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Joan Baez in Hanoi: 12 Days Under the Bombs

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SAN FRANCISCO - Joan Baez has a tape recording that she made while she was in Hanoi as a guest of the Committee for Solidarity with the American People.

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For more than 50 years Joan Baez has been an icon of the folk-music revolution and a global activist. Shortly before her induction last night into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Anthony Mason spoke with Baez about the honor.
"How does it feel to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?" he asked.

"A little bit silly, but really nice," she replied.

What's the silly part? "Well, that I am a little bit a fish out of water, but not."

In the early 1960s, as the folk revival took root, Joan Baez emerged as its most prominent female voice.

She'd use her influence to introduce another young musician to the world, recording Bob Dylan's songs and inviting him to join her on stage.

"Her voice," Dylan said in a recent interview, "was like that of a siren off some Greek island."

Calling her an "enchantress," Baez said, "was as good as being called the Virgin Mary and all the rest of it."

Baez's debut album, released in 1960 when she was 19, went gold. By 1962 she'd been annointed the "Queen of Folk."

She admits that at the time, "I didn't have a really good image of myself before that, so I thought that sounded pretty good. And then it was a lot to live up to."

"What do you think of that Joan Baez now?" Mason asked.

"Really sincere. Really dedicated. I love hearing the voice that I don't have anymore."

She lent that voice to the civil rights movement, befriending The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and singing at the March on Washington in 1963.

She says music and social causes merged for her early. "My family was already very politicized and Quakers and active. So I'd made my mind up really early, that I thought it was a really bad idea to kill people."

In 1967, jailed for protesting the draft during the Vietnam War, Baez would spend more than a month at a California prison farm.

"I learned something in there," she said then: "You go into jail as a pacifist, you come out a stronger pacifist."

In 1969 she performed at Woodstock, embracing its political causes, but not its drug culture. "I was always running into Janis Joplin and saying, 'You wanna come over sometime and have tea?' And she'd just look at me like I was crazy!"

Baez's commitment to social action has never waned. Just this week she posted a new song on Facebook, "Nasty Man."

"This thing just came bubbling out in the middle of the night. And it was called 'Nasty Man' about He Who Shall Not Be Named."

You're gonna build a wall, the big-liest wall,
the beautifulest wall 'round our borders.
But here's what I think,
You better talk to a shrink,
'cause you got serious psychological disorders.

"Were you ever worried the protest song was a dying art?" Mason asked.

"You know, people are waiting for a 'We Shall Overcome,' they're waiting for another 'Blowin' In the Wind' and 'Imagine.' Hasn't been written yet. But if music wasn't involved in social change, then I ain't interested, you know?"

For more info:

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For more than 50 years Joan Baez has been an icon of the folk-music revolution and a global activist. Shortly before her induction last night into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Anthony Mason spoke with Baez about the honor. "How does it feel to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?"

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Why the Vietnam War Produced Such Iconic Music

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The relationship between music and war was not an invention of the 1960s. So what made Vietnam's music special?

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The interview took place at John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's temporary basement flat in London - a flat where Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr, and William Burroughs, among others, have stayed. But the flat seemed as much John's and Yoko's as the Indian incense which took over the living room. The walls were covered with photos of John, of Yoko, a giant Sgt. Pepper ensign, Richard Chamberlain's poster collage of news clippings of the Stones bust, the Time magazine cover of the Beatles.
We arrived at five on the afternoon of September 17, said hello to Robert Fraser, who arranged the interview, to John and Yoko, sitting together, looking "tres bien ensemble." We sat down around a simple wooden table, covered with magazines, newspapers, sketch paper, boxes, drawings, a beaded necklace shaped in the form of a pentangle. John said he had to be at a recording session in a half hour, so we talked for a while about John's show at the Fraser gallery. John wrote some reminders to himself in the wonderfully intense and absorbed way that a kid has painting the sun for the first time. As a philosopher once remarked: "Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness." When we arrived the next afternoon, Sept. 18, John was walking around the room, humming what sounded like "Hold Me Tight"- just singing the song to the air. Old '50's forty-fives were scattered about the floor, and John played Rosie and the Originals' version of "Give Me Love." We talked about the lyrics of Gene Vincent's "Woman Love." In spite of having slept only two hours, John asked us to sit down on the floor and begin the interview. Any suspicions that John would be ornery, mean, cruel, or brutish - feelings attributed to him and imagined by press reports and various paranoic personalities - never arose even for the purpose of being pressed down. As John said simply about the interview: "There's nothing more fun than talking about your own songs and your own records. I mean you can't help it, it's your bit, really. We talk about them together. Remember that." It's impossible to recapture in print John's inflections and pronunciations of words like "ahppens," for example. Wish you had been there.
-Jonathan Cott

I've listed a group of songs that I associate with you, in terms of what you are or what you were, songs that struck me as embodying you a little bit: "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," "Strawberry Fields," "It's Only Love," "She Said She Said," "Lucy in the Sky," "I'm Only Sleeping," "Run for Your Life," "I Am the Walrus," "All You Need Is Love," "Rain," "Girl."
Ah, yeh! I agree with some of them, you see. Things like "Hide Your Love Away," right, I'd just discovered Dylan really. "It's Only Love" - I was always ashamed of that 'cause of the abominable lyrics you know - they're probably all right. George just came and talked about it last night. He said, remember we always used to cringe when the guitar bit came on, when we did that blamm blam blam-blam-blam, we liked it but there was something wrong.

And "She Said She Said" - yeh, I dug that cause I was going through a bad time writing then and so I couldn't hear it, but then I heard it and so I dug it. "Lucy in the Sky," all right. "Sleeping," it's like that. "Run for Your Life" I always hated, you know. "Walrus," yeah, "Girl," yeah, "All You Need Is Love" - hah, you know that's sort of natural.

The ones that really meant something to me - look, I don't know about "Hide Your Love Away," that's so long ago - probably "Strawberry Fields," "She Said," "Walrus," "Rain," "Girl," there are just one or two others, "Day Tripper," "Paperback Writer," even. "Ticket to Ride" was one more, I remember that. It was a definite sort of change . . . "Norwegian Wood" - that was the sitar bit. Definitely, I consider them moods or moments.

I feel you in these songs more than in a song like "Michelle," for example.
Yeh, right, they're me touch. Well the thing is, I don't know how they'd work out if I recorded them with other people, it would be entirely different. But it's my music with my band when it's me singing it, and it's Paul's music with his band. Sometimes it's halvey-halvey you know. When we write them together, they're together. But I'm not proud of all of my songs. "Walrus," "Strawberry Fields," you know - I'll sort of stick my name on them, the others are a bit . . . I think they're more powerful.
500 Greatest Songs of All Time: The Beatles, 'Strawberry Fields Forever'
It was the first time I discovered it. On the end of "Rain" you hear me singing it backwards. We'd done the main thing at EMI and the habit was then to take the songs home and see what you thought a little extra gimmick or what the guitar piece would be.

So I got home about five in the morning, stoned out of me head, I staggered up to me tape recorder and I put it on, but it came out backwards, and I was in a trance in the earphones, what is it - what is it? It's too much, you know, and I really wanted the whole song backwards almost, and that was it. So we tagged it on the end. I just happened to have the tape the wrong way round, it just came out backwards, it just blew me mind. The voice sounds like old Indian.

There have been a lot of philosophical analyses written about your songs, "Strawberry Fields" in particula r . . .
Well, they can take them apart. They can take anything apart. I mean I hit it on all levels, you know. We write lyrics, and I write lyrics that you don't realize what they mean till after. Especially some of the better songs or some of the more flowing ones, like "Walrus." The whole first verse was written without any knowledge. And "Tomorrow Never Knows" - I didn't know what I was saying, and you just find out later, that's why these people are good on them. I know that when there are some lyrics I dig I know that somewhere people will be looking at them, and with the rest of the songs it doesn't matter cause they work on all levels. Anything. I don't mind what they do. And I dig the people that notice that I have a sort of strange rhythm scene, because I've never been able to keep rhythm on the stage. I always used to get lost. It's me double off-beats.

In "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," what about an image like "newspaper taxis"?
That was a Paul line, I think. In a lot of them you'll get so far. You've lumbered yourself with a set of images and it's an effort to keep it up.

Pop analysts are often trying to read something into songs that isn't there.
It is there. It's like abstract art really. It's just the same really. It's just that when you have to think about it to write it, it just means that you labored at it. But when you just say it, man, you know you're saying it, it's a continuous flow. The same as when you're recording or just playing, you come out of a thing and you know "I've been there" and it was nothing, it was just pure, and that's what we're looking for all the time, really.

What is Strawberry Fields?
It's a name, it's a nice name. When I was writing "In My Life" - I was trying "Penny Lane" at that time - we were trying to write about Liverpool, and I just listed all the nice sounding names just arbitrarily. Strawberry Fields was a place near us that happened to be a Salvation Army home. But Strawberry Fields - I mean I have visions of Strawberry Fields. And there was Penny Lane, the Cast Iron Shore which I've just got in some song now, and they were just good names, just groovy names. Just good sounding. Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go. Actually I've just written a song which goes "I told you about Strawberry Fields/And you heard about the Walrus and me/Told you about the Fool on the Hill . . . ," it's amazing.

How much do you think the songs go towards building up a myth of a state of mind?
I don't know. I mean we got a bit pretentious. Like everybody we had our phase and now it's a little change over to trying to be more natural, less "newspaper taxis," say. I mean we're just changing. I don't know what we're doing at all, I just write them. Really, I just like rock and roll. I mean these [pointing to a pile of '50's records] are the records I dug then, I dig them now and I'm still trying to reproduce "Some Other Guy" sometimes or "Be-Bop-A-Lula," whatever it is, it's the same bit for me, it's really just the sound.

What's the flip side of "Angel Baby" called - the song you played before we started the interview?
"Give Me Love" by Rosie and the Originals. An amazing record. It's one of the greatest strange records, it's all just out of beat and everybody misses it - they knocked off the B side in ten minutes. I talk Yoko's leg off telling her this is it, this is what it's all about. There's just one line in this Miracles' record - "I've Been Good to You" - where it goes "You got me Cry-y-y-yeying" - no breath, a beautiful little piece, I always love to hear it. I think he's [Smokey Robinson] got the most perfect voice, you know, I just think the group's got into such a samey groove that it spoils it really.

In "Penny Lane," you have the lines: "A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray/And though she thinks she's in a play/She is anyway." Aside from the little kid's quality of these lines, isn't this what you've been saying recently?
Paul had the main bit of that, but I remember working on those lines. It's always been a bit of "She's in a play, she is anyway heh heh" because you're saying that again and again, it's a game, man, it's a game, but because you mean it, it's all right, it's ok. There's all that in it. To us it's just Penny Lane cause we lived there.

The Beatles seem to be one of the only groups who ever made a distinction between friends and lovers. For instance, there's the "baby" who can drive your car. But when it comes to "We Can Work it Out," you talk about "my friend." In most other groups' songs, calling someone "baby" is a bit demeaning compared to your distinction.
Yeh, I don't know why. It's Paul's bit that - "Buy you a diamond ring, my friend" - it's an alternative to baby. You can take it logically the way you took it. See, I don't know really. Yours is as true a way of looking at it as any other way. In "Baby, Your'e a Rich Man" the point was, stop moaning, you're a rich man and we're all rich men, heh heh, baby!

It's a bit of a mocking song, then?
Well they all get like that a bit, cause there is all that in it, that's the point. As we write them or as we sing them that happens you know. And in different takes just the inclination of your voice will change the meaning of the lyrics, and that's why it's after we've done them that we really see what they are. By that time the weight's on it.

I once heard a twelve year old girl singing along with "All You Need Is Love," and she substituted the word "hate" for "love" as she sang.
Could be right, you know. Well, it's like the old Peter Sellers gag - "If only I had the Latin" - meaning, if I had the breaks, you know, all you need is love. I just meant it, I felt it, that's what you needed. Of course when I'm down it doesn't work at all, but I believe it in the songs. That's the thing about writing the songs - you say, well, all you need is love, there you go, and it's a bit of a statement, but you've got to do it. You can't live up to it, that's the thing.

I've felt your other mood recently: "Here I stand head in hand" in "Hide Your Love Away" and "When I was a boy, everything was right" in "She Said She said."
Yeh, right. That was pure. That was what I meant alright. You see when I wrote that I had the "She said she said," but it was just meaning nothing, it was just vaguely to do with someone that had said something like he knew what it was like to be dead and then it was just a sound. And then I wanted a middle-eight. The beginning had been around for days and days and so I wrote the first thing that came into my head and it was "When I was a boy," in a different beat, but it was real because it just happened.

It's funny, because while we're recording we're all aware and listening to our old records and we say, we'll do one like "The Word" - make it like that - it never does turn out like that, but we're always comparing and talking about the old albums - just checking up, what is it? like swatting up for the exam - just listening to everything.

Yet people think that you're trying to get away from the old records.
But I'd like to make a record like "Some Other Guy." I haven't done one that satisfies me as much as that satisfied me. Or "Be-Bop-A-Lula" or "Heartbreak Hotel" or "Good Golly, Miss Molly" or "Whole Lot of Shakin." I'm not being modest. I mean we're still trying it. We sit there in the studio and we say, how did it go, how did it go? come on, let's do that. Like what Fats Domino has done with "Lady Madonna" - "See how they ruhhnnn."

Are there any other versions of your songs you like?
Well, Ray Charles' version of "Yesterday"- that's beautiful. And "Eleanor Rigby" is a groove. I just dig the strings on that. Like Thirties strings. Jose Feliciano does great things to "Help" and "Day Tripper."

"Got to Get You Into My Life" - sure, we were doing our Tamla Motown bit. You see we're influenced by whatever's going. Even if we're not influenced, we're all going that way at a certain time. If we played a Stones record now - and a Beatles record - and we've been way apart - you'd find a lot of similarities. We're all heavy. Just heavy. How did we ever do anything light? We did country music early because that was Ringo's bit. His song on the new album just happens to be country and we got this old fiddler in. But we weren't aware of the country kick coming in. But there we go, so it's all right. On the new album we've done a blues.

What we're trying to do is rock and roll, with less of your philosorock is what we're saying to ourselves and get on with rocking because rockers is what we really are. You can give me a guitar, stand me up in front of a few people. Even in the studio if I'm getting into it I'm just doing my old bit, you know, not quite doing Elvis Legs, but doing my equivalent - it's just natural. Everybody says we must do this and that, but our thing is just rocking - you know, the usual gig. That's what this new record is about. Definitely rocking. What we were doing on Pepper was rocking - and not rocking.

"A Day in the Life Of" - that was something. I dug it. It was a good piece of work between Paul and me. I had the "I read the news today" bit, and it turned Paul on, because now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song, and he just said "yeah" - bang bang, like that. It just sort of happened beautifully, and we arranged it and rehearsed it, which we don't often do, the afternoon before. So we all knew what we were playing, we all got into it. It was a real groove, the whole scene on that one. Paul sang half of it and I sang half. I needed a middle-eight for it, but that would have been forcing it, all the rest had come out smooth, flowing, no trouble, and to write a middle-eight would have been to write a middle-eight, but instead Paul already had one there. It's a bit of a 2001, you know.

Eliot's "The Waste Land."
I don't know that. Not very hip on me culture you know.

So you don't see that song as a peak?
No, I don't. I think whatever we're doing now is past what we were doing then. Even if there is no song comparable to it, say. It's just not the scene now. It was only a song and it turned out well and it was a groove - it did do all that - but there's plenty more.

Songs like "Good Morning, Good Morning" and "Penny Lane" convey a child's feeling of the world.
We write about our past. "Good Morning, Good Morning" I was never proud of it. I just knocked it off to do a song. But it was writing about my past so it does get the kids because it was me at school, my whole bit. The same with "Penny Lane." We really got into the groove of imagining Penny Lane - the bank as there, and that was where the tram sheds were and people waiting and the inspector stood there, the fire engines were down there. It was just re-living childhood.

You really had a place where you grew up.
Oh, yeah. Didn't you?

Well, Manhattan isn't Liverpool.
Well, you could write about your local bus station.

In Manhattan?
Sure, why not? Everywhere is somewhere.

In "Hey, Jude," as in one of your first songs, "She Loves You," you're singing to someone else and yet, you might as well be singing to yourself. Do you find that as well?
Oh, yeah. Well when Paul first sang "Hey, Jude" to me - or played me the little tape he'd made of it - I took it very personally. Ah, it's me! I said. It's me. He says, no it's me. I said "Check, we're going through the same bit." So we all are. Whoever is going through that bit with us is going through it, that's the groove.

Was "Hey, Jude" influenced - perhaps unconsciously - by mantras?
No, it's nothing conscious - you mean the repeat at the end? I never thought of that, but it's all valid, you see. I mean we'd just come back from India. But I always related it to some early Drifters song or "You'd Better Move On" or Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me" or "Send Me Some Loving" - it has that feeling.

Does "Tell Me What You See" have the same singing-to-myself feeling to you?
Not consciously, no. I can't remember, it's way back. As soon as you mention that I just remember running down the stairs at EMI and we went into the middle-eight, because there wasn't one - that's the picture I get. I'd have to hear it to get the rest of it. Otherwise it's just an image of the day I worked on it, what I went through, what I was going through at the time.

Probably paranoia.
It usually is the case - lost paranoias.

In the Magical Mystery Tour theme song you say "The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take you away." In "Sgt. Pepper" you sing "We'd like to take you home with us." How do you relate this embracing, come-sit-on-my-lawn feeling in the songs with your need for everyday privacy?
I take a narrower concept of it, like whoever was around at the time wanting to talk to them talked to me, but of course it does have that wider aspect to it. The concept is very good and I went through it and said, "Well, ok, let them sit on my lawn." But of course it doesn't work. People climbed in the house and smashed things up, and then you think, "That's no good, that doesn't work." So actually you're saying, "don't talk to me," really.

We're all trying to say nice things like that, but most of the time we can't make it - 90% of the time - and the odd time we do make it, when we do it, together as people. You can say it in a song: "Well, whatever I did say to you that day about getting out of the garden, part of me said that, but really in my heart of hearts I'd like to have it right and talk to you and communicate." Unfortunately we're human, you know - it doesn't seem to work.

Wasn't it about the time of Rubber Soul that you moved away from the old records to something quite different?
Yes, yes, we got involved completely in ourselves then. I think it was Rubber Soul when we did all our own numbers. Something just happened. We controlled it a bit, whatever it was we were putting over, we just tried to control it a bit.

Do you feel free to put anything in a song?
Yes. In the early days I'd - well, we all did - we'd take things out for being banal, cliches, even chords we wouldn't use because we thought they were cliches. And even just this year there's been a great release for all of us, going right back to the basics, like on "Revolution" I'm playing the guitar and I haven't improved since I was last playing. But I dug it. It sounds the way I wanted it to sound.

It's a pity I can't do better - the fingering, you know - but I couldn't have done that last year, I'd have been too paranoic. I couldn't play dddddddddddd, George must play or somebody better. My playing has probably improved a little bit on this session because I've been playing a little. I was aways the rhythm guy anyway, but I always just fiddled about in the background, I didn't actually want to play rhythm. We all sort of wanted to be lead - as in most groups - but it's a groove now, and so are the cliches. We've gone past those days when we wouldn't have used words because they didn't make sense, or what we thought was sense.

But of course Dylan taught us a lot in this respect.

Another thing is, I used to write a book or stories on one hand and write songs on the other. And I'd be writing completely free form in a book or just on a bit of paper, but when I'd start to write a song I'd be thinking dee duh dee duh do doo do de do de doo. And it took Dylan and all that was going on then to say, oh, come on now, that's the same bit, I'm just singing the words.

With "I Am A Walrus," I had "I am here as you are here as we are all together." I had just these two lines on the typewriter, and then about two weeks later I ran through and wrote another two lines, and then when I saw something after about four lines I just knocked the rest of it off. Then I had the whole verse or verse and a half and then sang it. I had this idea of doing a song that was a police siren, but it didn't work in the end [sings like a siren]: "I-am-here-as-you-are-here-as . . ." You couldn't really sing the police siren.

Do you write your music with instruments or in your head?
On piano or guitar. Most of this session has been written on guitar cause we were in India writing and only had our guitars there. They have a different feel about them. I missed the piano a bit because you just write differently. My piano playing is even worse than me guitar. I hardly know what the chords are, so it's good to have a slightly limited palette, heh heh.

What did you think of Dylan's "version" of "Norwegian Wood"? ("Fourth time around").
I was very paranoid about that. I remember he played it to me when he was in London. He said, what do you think? I said, I don't like it. I didn't like it. I was very paranoid. I just didn't like what I felt I was feeling - I thought it was an out and out skit, you know, but it wasn't. It was great. I mean he wasn't playing any tricks on me. I was just going through the bit.

How do you feel about his new music?
It's fine, you know. I'm just a bit bored with the backing, that's all. But he's right what he's doing because he usually is. I've only heard the "Landlord" album. I haven't heard the acetate, I keep hearing about it. That's something else, you know.

Is there anybody else you've gotten something from musically?
Oh millions. All those I mentioned before - Little Richard, Presley.

Anyone contemporary?
Are they dead? Well, nobody sustains it. I've been buzzed by the Stones and other groups, but none of them can sustain the buzz for me continually through a whole album or through three singles even.

You and Dylan are often thought of together in some way.
Yeh? Yeh, well we were for a bit, but I couldn't make it. Too paranoic. I always saw him when he was in London. He first turned us on in New York actually. He thought "I Want To Hold Your Hand" - when it goes "I can't hide" - he thought we were singing "I get high" - so he turns up with Al Aronowitz and turns us on, and we had the biggest laugh all night - forever. Fantastic. We've got a lot to thank him for.

Do you ever see him anymore?
No, cause he's living his cozy little life, doing that bit. If I was in New York, he'd be the person I'd most like to see. I've grown up enough to communicate with him. Both of us were always uptight, you know, and of course I wouldn't know whether he was uptight, because I was so uptight, and then when he wasn't uptight, I was - all that bit. But we just sat it out because we just liked being together.

What about the new desire to return to a more natural environment? Dylan's return to country music?
Dylan broke his neck and we went to India. Everybody did their bit. And now we're all just coming out, coming out of a shell, in a new way, kind of saying: remember what it was like to play.

Do you feel better now?
Yes . . . And worse.

You just showed me what might be the front and back album photos for the record you're putting out of the music you and Yoko composed for your film Two Virgins. The photos have the simplicity of a daguerreotype . . . .
Well, that's because I took it, I'm a ham photographer, you know. It's me Nikon what I was given by a commercially minded Japanese when we were in Japan, along with me Pentax, me Canon, me boom-boom and all the others. So I just set it up and did it.

For the cover, there's a photo of you and Yoko standing naked facing the camera. And on the backside are your backsides. At your "For Yoko" show at the Fraser Gallery you just said, "You are here," showed some things that were there, and then people got the horrors. What do you think they're going to think of the cover?
Well, we've got that to come. The thing is, I started it with a pure . . . it was the truth, and it was only after I'd got into it and done it and looked at it that I'd realized what kind of scene I was going to create. And then suddenly there it was, and then suddenly you show it to people and then you know what the world's going to do to you, or try to do. But you have no knowledge of it when you conceive it or make it.

Originally, I was going to record Yoko, and I thought that the best picture of her for an album would be her naked. I was just going to record her as an artist, we were only on those kind of terms then. So after that, when we got together it just seemed natural for us, if we made an album together, for both of us to be naked.

Of course I've never seen me prick on an album or on a photo before: "Whatnearth, there's a fellow with his prick out." And that was the first time I realized me prick was out, you know. I mean you can see it on the photo itself - we're naked in front of a camera - that comes over in the eyes, just for a minute you go!! I mean you're not used to it, being naked, but it's got to come out.

How do you face the fact that people are going to mutilate you?
Well, I can take that as long as we can get the cover out. And I really don't know what the chances are of that.

You don't worry about the nuts across the street?
No, no. I know it won't be very comfortable walking around with all the lorry drivers whistling and that, but it'll all die. Next year it'll be nothing, like mini-skirts or bare tits, it isn't anything. We're all naked really. When people attack Yoko and me, we know they're paranoic, we don't worry too much. It's the ones that don't know and you know they don't know - they're just going round in a blue fuzz. The thing is, the album also says: look, lay off will you, it's two people- what have we done?

Lenny Bruce once compared himself to a doctor, saying that if people weren't sick, there wouldn't be any need for him.
That's the bit, isn't it? Since we started being more natural in public - the four of us - we've really had a lot of knocking. I mean we're always natural, I mean you can't help it, we couldn't have been where we are if we hadn't done that. We wouldn't have been us either. And it took four of us to enable us to do it, we couldn't have done it alone and kept that up. I don't know why I get knocked more often, I seem to open me mouth more often, something happens, I forget what I am till it all happens again. I mean we just get knocked - from the underground, the pop world - me personally. They're all doing it. They've got to stop soon.

Tony Palmer, in an article for The Observer, wrote how he had been predicting the Beatles' failure ever since The Cavern days. All he did was recall the various times he's predicted your failure. And then when he ended this article, he predicted it again. How does he feel?
I just got a letter from him saying he feels fine. Such a lot of mistakes and lies in the article, saying it was Yoko's show and just some very nasty bits about Yoko, just cruel, you know. I don't know what they think we are. They really do think that we're very hard people. I mean they must be hard to do what they do. You just hold your breath and wait.

Couldn't you go off to your own community and not be bothered with all of this?
Well, it's just the same there, you see. Cause I mean India was a bit of that, it was a taste of it - it's the same. So there's a small community, it's the same gig, it's relative. There's no escape.

Do you think Yoko's film of you smiling would work if it were just anyone smiling?
Yes, it works with somebody else smiling, but she went through all this. It originally started out that she wanted a million people all over the world to send in a snapshot of themselves smiling, and then it got down to lots of people smiling, and then maybe one or two and then me smiling as a symbol of today smiling - and that's what I am, whatever that means. And so it's me smiling, and that's the hang-up of course because it's me again. But I mean they've got to see it someday - it's only me. I don't mind if people go to the film to see me smiling because you see it doesn't matter, it's not harmful. The people that really dig the film . . . The idea of the film won't really be dug for another fifty or a hundred years probably. That's what it's all about. I just happen to be that face.

International Times recently published an interview with Jean-Luc Godard . . .
Oh yeah, right, he said we should do something. Now that's sour grapes from a man who couldn't get us to be in his film [ One Plus One in which the Stones appear], and I don't expect it from people like that. Dear Mr. Godard, just because we didn't want to be in the film with you, it doesn't mean to say that we aren't doing any more than you. We should do whatever we're all doing.

But Godard put it in activist political terms. He said that people with influence and money should be trying to blow up the establishment and that you weren't.
What's he think we're doing? He wants to stop looking at his own films and look around.

Time magazine came out and said, look, the Beatles say "no" to destruction.
There's no point in dropping out, because it's the same there and it's got to change. But I think it all comes down to changing your head, and sure, I know that's a cliche.

What would you tell a black power guy who's changed his head and then finds a wall there all the time?
Well I can't tell him anything cause he's got to do it himself. If destruction's the only way he can do it, there's nothing I can say that could influence him cause that's where he's at, really. We've all got that in us, too, and that's why I did the "Out and In" bit on a few takes and in the TV version of "Revolution" - "Destruction, well, you know, you can count me out, and in," like Yin and Yang.

I prefer "out." But we've got the other bit in us. I don't know what I'd be doing if I was in his position. I don't think I'd be so meek and mild. I just don't know.

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John Lennon: The Rolling Stone Interview

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The interview took place at John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's temporary basement flat in London - a flat where Jimi Hendrix, Ringo Starr, and William Burroughs, among others, have stayed. But the flat seemed as much John's and Yoko's as the Indian incense which took over the living room.

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They say Bob Dylan is the most secretive and elusive person in the entire rock & roll substructure, but after doing this interview, I think it would be closer to the point to say that Dylan, like John Wesley Harding, was "never known to make a foolish move."

The preparations for the interview illustrates this well. About 18 months ago, I first started writing Bob letters asking for an interview, suggesting the conditions and questions and reasons for it. Then, a little over a year ago, the night before I left New York, a message came from the hotel operator that a "Mr. Dillon" had called.

Two months later, I met Bob for the first time at another hotel in New York: He casually strolled in wearing a sheepskin outfit, leather boots, very well put together but not too tall, y'understand. It was 10 A.M. in the morning, and I rolled out of bed stark naked - sleep that way, y'understand - and we talked for half an hour about doing an interview, what it was for, why it was necessary. Bob was feeling out the situation, making sure it would be cool.

That meeting was in the late fall of 1968. It took eight months - until the end of June this year - to finally get the interview. The meantime was covered with a lot of phone calls, near misses in New York City, Bob's trips to California which didn't take place and a lot of waiting and waiting for that right time when we were both ready for the show.

The interview took place on a Thursday afternoon in New York City at my hotel, right around the corner from the funeral home where Judy Garland was being inspected by ten thousand people, who formed lines around several city blocks. We were removed from all that activity, but somehow it seemed appropriate enough that Judy Garland's funeral coincided with the interview.

Bob was very cautious in everything he said, and took a long time between questions to phrase exactly what he wanted to say, nothing more and sometimes a little less. When I wasn't really satisfied with his answers, I asked the questions another way, later. But Bob was hip.

Rather than edit the interview into tight chunks and long answers, I asked Sheryl to transcribe the tapes with all the pauses, asides and laughs left in. So, much of the time, it's not what is said, but how it is said, and I think you will dig it more just as it went down.

To bring us up to date after all that, August through September was spent trying to get Baron together with Bob to get some new photographs of him, in a natural, non-performance situation. But it proved fruitless. Perhaps if we had had another six months to work on getting the photographs, but Bob was simply not to be rushed or pushed into something he really didn't feel like doing at the time. ("I'll have Baron meet you in New York tomorrow." "Well, tomorrow I might be in Tucson, Arizona," "Baron will fly to Tucson," etc.)

The photographs we have used are from rehearsals for the Johnny Cash show and from the Isle of Wight, ones you probably have not seen yet, and some photos of Bob from a long time ago. Bob promised that we would get together soon to take some photos, and if we do, you'll see them as soon as we get them. But don't hold your breath.

Meantime, here's the interview.

When do you think you're gonna go on the road?
November ... possibly December.

What thoughts do you have on the kind of back-up you're going to use?
Well, we'll keep it real simple, you know ... drums ... bass ... second guitar ... organ ... piano. Possibly some horns. Maybe some background voices.

Girls? Like the Raelettes?
We could use some girls.

Do you have any particular musicians in mind at this time?
To go out on the road? Well, I always have some in mind. I'd like to know a little bit more about what I'm gonna do. You see, when I discover what I'm gonna do, then I can figure out what kind of sound I want.

I'd probably use ... I'd want the best band around, you know?

Are you going to use studio musicians or use some already existing band?
I don't know ... you see, it involves putting other people on the bill, full-time. I'd only probably use the Band again ... if I went around.

And they'd do the first half of the show?
... Sure ... sure ...

Have you been in touch with either of them
No ... no.

Did you dig doing it?
I dig doing it, yeah. Well, you know, television isn't like anything else ... it's also like the movie business, you know, where they call you and then you just sit around. So by the time you finally do something, you have to do it three or four times, and usually all the spirit's gone.

You didn't watch it on TV?
[ Laughs.] I did watch it on TV ... just because I wanted to see Johnny. I didn't realize they slowed Doug Kershaw down, too. They slowed his song down to ... his song was like this ... [ taps out steady beat] ... and they slowed him down to ... [ taps slow rhythm] ... you know?

Just by slowing down the tape?
They just slowed him down. I don't know how. I don't know what happened. I think the band slowed him down or something, but boy, he was slowed down. During rehearsals and just sitting around, he played these songs ... the way we was going at it, maybe 3/4 time, and they slowed him down to about 2/3 time, you know?

Did you have any difficulty working with the TV people doing something like that?
Oh no, no, they're wonderful people ... they really are. It was by far the most enjoyable television program I've ever done. I don't do television just because you get yourself in such a mess ... so I don't do it.

You told me once that you were going to do a TV special?
That's what I'm talking about.

In Hollywood?
No, I'm talking about CBS.

In New York?
Well, we don't know that yet. They don't have in mind exactly what they would like. They kind of leave it wide open, so we're trying to close the gap now.

What do you have in mind for it?
Oh, I just have some free-from type thing in mind. A lot of music.

Presenting other artists?
Sure ... I don't mind. I don't know who, but ...

Why haven't you worked in so long?
Well, uh ... I do work.

I mean on the road.
On the road ... I don't know, working on the road. ... Well, Jann, I'll tell ya - I was on the road for almost five years. It wore me down. I was on drugs, a lot of things. A lot of things just to keep going, you know? And I don't want to live that way anymore. And uh ... I'm just waiting for a better time - you know what I mean?

Why?
Well, I don't know why. They just do.

- who does the arrangements? The studio musicians, or ...
Boy, I wish you could've come along the last time we made an album. You'd probably enjoyed it ... 'cause you see right there, you know how it's done. We just take a song; I play it and everyone else just sort of fills in behind it. No sooner you got that done, and at the same time you're doing that, there's someone in the control booth who's turning all those dials to where the proper sound is coming in ... and then it's done. Just like that.

Just out of rehearsing it? It'll be a take?
Well, maybe we'll take about two times.

Were there any songs on Nashville Skyline that took longer to take?
I don't know ... I don't think so. There's a movie out now, called Midnight Cowboy. You know the song on the album, "Lay, Lady, Lay"? Well, I wrote that song for that movie. These producers, they wanted some music for their movie. This was last summer. And this fellow there asked me, you know, if I could do some music for their movie. So I came up with that song. By the time I came up with it, though it was too late. [ Laughs.] It's the same old story all the time. It's just too late . . . so I kept the song and recorded it.

There's something going on with Easy Rider - you wrote the lyrics for a song that Roger McGuinn wrote the music for, or something? Something ... writing a song for Easy Rider, the Peter Fonda film? Were you involved in that at all?
They used some of my music in it. They used a song of the Band's, too. They also used Steppenwolf music. I don't know anything more about it than that.

Do you know which song of yours they used?
"It's Alright, Ma" - but they had Roger McGuinn singing it.

Have you been approached to write music for any other movies?
Uh-hum.

Considering any of them?
Unh-unh.

Why? Scripts?
Ummmm ... I don't know. I just can't seem to keep my mind on it. I can't keep my mind on the movie. I had a script awhile ago, that was called Zachariah and the Seven Cowboys. [ Laughs.] That was some script. Every line in it was taken out of the Bible. And just thrown together. Then there was another one, called The Impossible Toy. Have you seen that? [ Laughs] Yeah. Let's see, what else? Ummm ... no, I'm not planning on doing any music for movies.

Have you done another record?
No ... not exactly. I was going to try and have another one out by the fall.

Is it done in Nashville again?
Well, we ... I think so ... I mean it's ... seems to be as good a place as any.

What was Joe South like to work with?
Joe South? Well he was quiet. He didn't say too much. I always did like him, though.

Do you like his record?
I love his records.

Does he have any solos on Blonde on Blonde?
Um-hmm. Yes he does. He has a ... he's playing a high guitar lick on ... well, if you named me the songs, I could tell you which one it was, but it's catchin' my mind at the moment. He was playing ... he played a big, I believe it was a Gretsch, guitar - one of those Chet Atkins models. That's the guitar he played it on.

"Absolutely Sweet Marie"?
Yeah, it could've been that one. Or "Just Like a Woman"... one of those. Boy, he just ... he played so pretty.

I'm sure you read the reviews of Nashville Skyline. Everybody remarks on the change of your singing style ...
Well Jann, I'll tell you something. There's not too much of a change in my singing style, but I'll tell you something which is true ... I stopped smoking. When I stopped smoking, my voice changed ... so drastically, I couldn't believe it myself. That's true. I tell you, you stop smoking those cigarettes [ laughter] ... and you'll be able to sing like Caruso.

Is there one afoot?
A tape?

No, an album.
No ... not that I know of. If there was an album, I believe that we would both have to go back into the studio and record some more songs.

There's been some articles on Wilson and he says that he's the one that gave you the rock & roll sound ... and started you doing rock & roll. Is that true?
Did he say that? Well, if he said it ... [ laughs] more power to him. [ Laughs.] He did to a certain extent. That is true. He did. He had a sound in mind.

You think you might do one?
I do whatever comes naturally. I'd like to do an album like that. You mean using my own material and stuff?

Yeah, using your own material but with vocal background and ...
I'd like to do it. Who wouldn't?

And Tom Wilson was also working at Columbia at the time?
He was ... you know, I don't recall how that happened ... or why that switch took place. I remember at one time I was about to record for Don Law. You know Don Law? I was about to record for Don Law, but I never did. I met Don Law in New York, in 1962 ... and again recently, last year when I did the John Wesley Harding album I met him down in the studio. He came in ... he's a great producer. He produced many of the earlier records for Columbia and also for labels which they had before - Okeh and stuff like that. I believe he did the Robert Johnson records.

What did you do in the year between Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding?
Well I was on tour part of that time ... Australia, Sweden ... an overseas tour. Then I came back ... and in the spring of that year, I was scheduled to go out - it was one month off, I had a one-month vacation - I was gonna go back on the road again in July. Blonde on Blonde was up on the charts at this time. At that time I had a dreadful motorcyle accident ... Which put me away for awhile ... and I still didn't sense the importance of that accident till at least a year after that. I realized that it was a real accident. I mean I thought that I was just gonna get up and go back to doing what I was doing before ... but I couldn't do it anymore.

What did I do during that year? I helped work on a film ... which was supposed to be aired on Stage 67, a television show which isn't on anymore ... I don't think it was on for very long.

What change did the motorcycle accident make?
What change? Well, it ... it limited me. It's hard to speak about the change, you know? It's not the type of change that one can put into words ... besides the physical change. I had a busted vertebrae; neck vertebrae. And there's really not much to talk about. I don't want to talk about it.

I don't think he answers too many questions.
Doesn't he? He doesn't answer questions? Well he's a nice guy. He'll usually talk to you if you show some enthusiasm for what you're talking about.

So what happened to the tapes?
You mean that film? As far as I know, it will be sold ... or a deal will be made, for its sale. That's what I'm told. But you see, Jann, I don't hold these movie people in too high a position. You know this movie, Don't Look Back? Well, that splashed my face all over the world, that movie Don't Look Back. I didn't get a penny from that movie, you know ... so when people say why don't you go out and work and why don't you do this and why don't you do that, people don't know half of what a lot of these producers and people, lawyers ... they don't know the half of those stories. I'm an easy-going kind of fellow, you know ... I'm forgive and forget. I like to think that way. But I'm a little shy of these people. I'm not interested in finding out anymore about any film.

Did you like Don't Look Back?
I'd like it a lot more if I got paid for it. [ Laughter]

There was supposed to be another film that Pennebaker shot - I don't know when or where - maybe it was the ABC film ...
That was it. Sure it was. That's the one you're talking about.

Is it a good one?
Well, we cut it fast on the eye. It's fast on the eye. I'd have to let you see it for yourself, to think about if it's a good one. I don't know if it's a good one. For me, it's too fast for the eye ... but there are quite a few people who say it's really good. Johnny Cash is in it. John Lennon's in it. The Band's in it. Who else ... a lot of different people from the European capitals of the world are in it.

Princes and princesses? [Laughs].
Well, not princesses, [ laughs] but presidents [ laughs] and people like that.

What is the nature of your acquaintance with John Lennon?
Oh, I always love to see John. Always. He's a wonderful fellow ... and I always like to see him.

He said that the first time that you met, in New York, after one of the concerts or something like that, it was a very uptight situation.
It probably was, yes. Like, you know how it used to be for them. They couldn't go out of their room. They used to tell me you could hardly get in to see them. There used to be people surrounding them, not only in the streets, but in the corridors in the hotel. I should say it was uptight.

How often have you seen them subsequently?
Well, I haven't seen them too much recently.

What do you think of the bed-ins for Peace? Him and Yoko.
Well, you know ... everybody's doing what they can do. I don't mind what he does, really ... I always like to see him.

Do you read the current critics? The music critics, so-called "rock & roll writers?"
Well I try to keep up. I try to keep up-to-date ... I realize I don't do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to. I don't know half the groups that are playing around now. I don't know half of what I should.

I mean like Traffic, and ...
See, I never saw Traffic ... I never even saw Cream. I feel bad about those things, but what can I do?

See them? [Laughs.]
Well, I can't now. I'm going to see this new group, called Blind Faith. I'm going to make it my duty to go see them ... 'cause they'll probably be gone [ laughter] in another year or so. So I'd better get up there quick and see them.

Do you like Stevie Winwood singing?
Oh sure, sure ... Stevie Winwood, he came to see us in Manchester. Last time we were in Manchester ... that was 1966. Or was it Birmingham? His brother - he's got a brother named Muff - Muff took us all out to see a haunted house, outside of Manchester, or Birmingham, one of those two. Or was it Newcastle? Something like that. We went out to see a haunted house, where a man and his dog was to have burned up in the 13th century. Boy, that place was spooky. That's the last time I saw Stevie Winwood.

Have you heard the San Francisco bands?
Jefferson Airplane? Quicksilver Messenger Service. Yeah, I've heard them. The Grateful Dead.

Do you like them?
Yeah, sure do.

Is there anything happening on the current rock & roll scene that strikes you as good?
Yeah, I heard a record by Johnny Thunder. It's called "I'm Alive." Never heard it either, huh? Well, I can't believe it. Everyone I've talked to, I've asked them if they've heard that record.

Do you like the stuff that Ray Stevens is doing?
Oh, I've always liked Ray Stevens. Sure.

Have you ever met Ray Stevens?
Uh, I've been in the same building with Ray Stevens, He was behind another door ... but I've never met him; I've never shook his hand. No.

I don't want to get nosy or get into your personal life ... but there was a series recently in the Village Voice, about your growing up, living and going to high school. Did you read that series?
Yeah I did. At least, I read some of it.

You must have some feelings about picking up a newspaper that has a hundred thousand circulation and seeing that some guy's gone and talked to your parents and your cousins, and uncles ...
Well, the one thing I did ... I don't like the way this writer talked about my father who has passed away. I didn't dig him talking about my father and using his name. Now that's the only thing about the article I didn't dig. But that boy has got some lessons to learn.

So if I'm sitting in a room with some people, and I say "Come on now, I need some help; gimme a biography," so there might be three or four people there and out of those three or four people maybe they'll come up with something, come up with a biography. So we put it down, it reads well, and the producer of the concert is satisfied. In fact, he even gets a kick out of it. You dig what I mean?

But in actuality, this thing wasn't written for hundreds of thousands of people ... it was just a little game for whoever was going in there and getting a ticket, you know, they get one of these things too. That's just show business. So you do that, and pretty soon you've got a million people who get it on the side. You know? They start thinkin' that it's written all for them. And it's not written for them - it was written for someone who bought the ticket to the concert. You got all these other people taking it too seriously. Do you know what I mean? So a lot of things have been blown out of proportion.

Well, that was the impression it gave ...
Jann, you know, my best friends ... you're talking about old friends, and best friends ... if you want to go by those standards, I haven't seen my best friends for over 15 years. You know what I mean?

I'm not in the business of covering anything up. If I was from New Jersey, I could make an effort to show people my old neighborhood. If I was from Baltimore, same thing. Well, I'm from the Midwest, boy, that's two different worlds.

This whole East Coast ... there are a few similarities between the East Coast and the Midwest; and, of course, the people are similar, but it's a big jump. So, I came out of the Midwest, but I'm not interested in leading anybody back there. That's not my game.

Why do you choose to live in the East?
Well, because we're nearer New York now. We don't choose anything ... we just go with the wind. That's it.

What do you think of the music business?
I'd love to become a businessman in the music business.

Doing what?
Well, doing that same thing that other businessmen are doing ... talking about recording, publishing, producing ...

Have you ever wanted to produce an album for some other artist?
I have.

Which one?
Uhh ... it's been a long time. I can't even remember which one. I saw somebody once, it was down in the Village. Anyway ...

Are there any artists around today that you'd like to produce?
Well, there was some talk about producing Burt Lancaster doing the hymn "I Saw St. Augustine" ...

Well, the movie business being what it is ... going back to reviews that you've gotten for various albums; everybody has a lot of strange interpretations and decisions ... have you ever read any criticisms about that that you liked or thought was accurate - or possibly got close to what you were trying to do?
Mmmmm ... I can't say that I have. I don't recall. Like I say, Jann, I don't keep up with it as much as I should.

At the time when Highway 61 and Bringing It All Back Home were coming out ... do you remember anything from them?
Do you?

Yeah, the liner notes.
What did you like about those liner notes?

I think they were very groovy. They explained what was going on in the album, and how the album came to be recorded, and how it all came to be said. Why didn't you publish Tarantula?
Why? Well ... it's a long story. It begins with when I suddenly began to sell quite a few records, and a certain amount of publicity began to be carried in all the major news magazines about this "rising young star." Well, this industry being what it is, book companies began sending me contracts, because I was doing interviews before and after concerts, and reporters would say things like "What else do you write?" And I would say, "Well, I don't write much of anything else." And they would say, "Oh, come on. You must write other things. Tell us something else. Do you write books?" And I'd say, "Sure, I write books."

After the publishers saw that I wrote books, they began to send me contracts ... Doubleday, Macmillan, Hill and Range [ laughter] ... we took the biggest one, and then owed them a book. You follow me?

But there was no book. We just took the biggest contract. Why? I don't know. Why I did, I don't know. Why I was told to do it, I don't know. Anyway, I owed them a book.

So I sat down, and said, "Wow, I've done many things before, it's not so hard to write a book." So I sat down and wrote them a book in the hotel rooms and different places, plus I got a lot of other papers laying around that other people had written, so I threw it all together in a week and sent it to them.

Well, it wasn't long after that when I got it back to proofread it. I got it back and I said, "My gosh, did I write this? I'm not gonna have this out." Do you know what I mean? "I'm not gonna put this out. The folks back home just aren't going to understand this at all." I said, "Well, I have to do some corrections on this," I told them, and set about correcting it. I told them I was improving it.

Boy, they were hungry for this book. They didn't care what it was. They just wanted ... people up there were saying, "Boy, that's the second James Joyce," and "Jack Kerouac again" and they were saying "Homer revisited" ... and they were all just talking through their heads.

They just wanted to sell books, that's all they wanted to do. It wasn't about anything ... and I knew that - I figured they had to know that, they were in the business of it. I knew that, and I was just nobody. If I knew it, where were they at? They were just playing with me. My book.

So I wrote a new book. I figured I was satisfied with it and I sent that in. Wow, they looked at that and said, "Well, that's another book." And I said, "Well, but it's better." And they said, "Okay, we'll print this." So they printed that up and sent that back to proofread it. So I proofread it - I just looked at the first paragraph - and knew I just couldn't let that stand. So I took the whole thing with me on tour. I was going to rewrite it all. Carried a typewriter around ... around the world. Trying to meet this deadline which they'd given me to put this book out. They just backed me into a corner. A lot of invisible people. So finally, I had a deadline on it, and was working on it, before my motorcycle accident. And I was studying all kinds of different prints and how I wanted them to print the book, by this time. I also was studying a lot of other poets at this time ... I had books which I figured could lead me somewhere ... and I was using a little bit from everything.

But still, it wasn't any book; it was just to satisfy the publishers who wanted to print something that we had a contract for. Follow me? So eventually, I had my motorcycle accident and that just got me out of the whole thing, 'cause I didn't care anymore. As it stands now, Jann, I could write a book. But I'm gonna write it first, and then give it to them. You know what I mean?

Do you have any particular subject in mind, or plan, for a book?
Do you?

What writers today do you dig? Like who would you read if you were writing a book? Mailer?
All of them. There's something to be learned from them all.

What about the poets? You once said something about Smokey Robinson ...
I didn't mean Smokey Robinson, I meant Arthur Rimbaud. I don't know how I could've gotten Smokey Robinson mixed up with Arthur Rimbaud, [ laughter] but I did.

Do you see Allen Ginsberg much?
Not at all. Not at all.

Do you think he had any influence on your songwriting at all?
I think he did at a certain period. That period of ... "Desolation Row," that kind of New York-type period, when all the songs were just "city songs." His poetry is city poetry. Sounds like the city.

Before, you were talking about touring and using drugs. During that period of songs like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Baby Blue," which a lot of writers have connected to the drug experience, not in the sense of them being "psychedelic music," or drug songs, but having come out of the drug experience.
How so?

An awareness of the mind.
I would say so.

Did taking drugs influence the songs?
No, not the writing of them, but it did keep me up there to pump 'em out.

Why did you leave the city and city songs for the country and country songs?
The country songs?

The songs ... you were talking about Highway 61 being a song of the city, and songs of New York City ...
What was on that album?

Who do you think your current audience is? Who do you think you're selling records to? What kind of people?
Well, I don't know. When I go out on the road, I'll find out, won't I?

Did you get any indication of that from who showed up in the audience in Nashville?
No, they were just people. Just people. I find every audience more or less the same, although you can have a certain attachment or disattachment for one because it may be bigger or smaller. But people are just people.

Many people - writers, college students, college writers - all felt tremendously affected by your music and what you're saying in the lyrics.
Did they?

I guess if you reduce it to its simplest terms, the expectation of your audience - the portion of your audience that I'm familiar with - feels that you have the answer.
What answer?

Like from the film, Don't Look Back - people asking you, "Why? What is it? Where is it?" People are tremendously hung-up on what you write and what you say, tremendously hung-up. Do you react to that at all? Do you feel responsible to those people?
I don't want to make anybody worry about it ... but boy, if I could ease someone's mind, I'd be the first one to do it. I want to lighten every load. Straighten out every burden. I don't want anybody to be hung-up ... [ laughs] especially over me, or anything I do. That's not the point at all.

Let me put it another way. ... What I'm getting at is that you're an extremely important figure in music and an extremely important figure in the experience of growing up today. Whether you put yourself in that position or not, you're in that position. And you must have thought about it ... and I'm curious to know what you think about that ...
What would I think about it? What can I do?

You wonder if you're really that person.
What person?

A great "youth leader" ...
If I thought I was that person, wouldn't I be out there doing it? Wouldn't I be, if I thought I was meant to do that, wouldn't I be doing it? I don't have to hold back. This Maharishi, he thinks that- right? He's out there doing it. If I thought that, I'd be out there doing it. Don't you ... you agree, right? So obviously, I don't think that.

You've been also a tremendous influence on a lot of musicians and writers, they're very obviously affected by your style, the way you do things ...
Who?

I'm thinking also of other singers, of people who were singing before and playing the guitar.
Do you see any influence in the Motown? All those things that the Motown records are doing now? Like "Runaway Child" and those kind of things. I mean, Motown wasn't doing those kind of records a few years ago, were they? What do you think they're doing, Jann? Are they really sincere and all that kind of thing?

I think they're sincere about making good records, and they're going to sell a lot of them. I dig that. Do you like the Motown records?
Well, yeah ... I like them ...

Do you like the ones today better than the ones that they were doing before?
Oh I have always liked the Motown records. Always. But because I like them so much, I see that change.

Have you got anything to do with that change?
Have I? Not that I know of.

There's a lot of talk about you and Albert Grossman, your relationship with Albert Grossman, and whether he's going to continue to manage you.
Well ...as far as I know, things will remain the same, until the length of our contract. And if we don't sign another contract, or if he does not have a hand in producing my next concerts or have a hand in any of my next work, it's only because he's too busy. 'Cause he's got so many acts now ... it's so hard for him to be in all places all the time. I mean you know, it's the old story ... you can't be in two places at once. That old story. You know what I mean?

When does your contract with him expire?
Sometime this year.

Did you want a new label?
I didn't, no.

Who did?
I believe my advisors.

I take it you haven't had any recent trouble with Columbia, like you used to have in the beginning ...
No ... no.

Do you know approximately how many songs that you've recorded that have not been released? Like songs left over from recording John Wesley Harding or Blonde on Blonde? Do you have any idea how many?
Well, we try to use them all. There may be a few lying around.

What do you think was the best song, popular song, to come out last year?
Uhh ... I like that one ... of Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Rolling on the River"?

Any others?
George Jones had one called "Small Town Laboring Man."

Were there any writers that you met that you liked? That you felt did good jobs? Wrote accurate stories ...
On what?

On you. For instance, I remember two big pieces - one was in the New Yorker, by Nat Hentoff...
Yeah, I like 'em. I like that. In a way, I like 'em all, whether I feel bad about 'em or not, in a way I like 'em all. I seldom get a kick out of them, Jann, but ... I mean, I just can't be spending my time reading what people write. [ Laughter.] I don't know anybody who can, do you?

You go into your kitchen and try to write a song, and you can't write a song - I know people who do this - I know some songwriters who go to work every day, at 8:30 and come home at 5:00. And usually bring something back ... I mean, that's legal, too. It just depends on ... how you do it. Me, I don't have those kind of things known to me yet, so I just get 'em when they come. And when they don't come, I don't try for it.

There's been a lot of artists who have done your songs ... songs that you have released and songs that you haven't released. Have you written any songs lately for any other artists to do, specifically for that artist? Or any of your old songs.
I wrote "To Be Alone With You" - that's on Nashville Skyline - I wrote it for Jerry Lee Lewis. The one on Nashville Skyline. [ Laughter.] He was down there when we were listening to the playbacks, and he came in. He was recording an album next door. He listened to it ... I think we sent him a dub.

"Peggy Day," I kind of had the Mills Brothers in mind when I did that one. [ Laughter]

I don't know, Jann. I don't know where I'm gonna be doing the next album. Sometimes I envy the Beatles ... they just go down to the studio, and play around ... I mean, you're bound to get a record. You know what I mean? Bound to get a record. Their studio is just a drive away ... boy, I'd have an album out every month. I mean, how could you not?

Have you ever thought about getting four- or eight-track equipment up where you live?
Well, everyone's talking about that now. But it's just talk as far as I know. I would come to New York if I wanted to use the studio, because it's all here ... if you need a good engineer, or if you need a song, or somebody to record it, an artist ... whereas, some place like up in the country there, in the mountains, you could get a studio in, but that doesn't guarantee you anything else but the studio. You can get violin players, cello players, you can get dramatic readers ... you can get anybody at the drop of a hat, in New York City. I imagine it's that way over in London, where the Beatles make their records. Anything they want to put on their record, they just call up and it's there. I'd like to be in that position.

What do you think of the current rock & roll groups doing all the country music?
Well, once again, it really doesn't matter what kind of music they do, just so long as people are making music. That's a good sign. There are certainly more people around making music than there was when I was growing up. I know that.

Do any particular one of those groups appeal to you?
Who . . . who are in those groups?

Oh, Flying Burrito Brothers ...
Boy, I love them ... the Flying Burrito Brothers, unh-huh. I've always known Chris, you know, from when he was in the Byrds. And he's always been a fine musician. Their records knocked me out. [ Laughs.] That poor little hippie boy on his way to town ... [ laughs.]

Of all the versions of "This Wheel's on Fire," which do you like the best?
Uh ... the Band's. Who else did it?

What was the origin of that collection of songs, of that tape?
The origin of it? What do you mean?

Where was that done?
Well that was done out in ... out in somebody's basement. Just a basement tape. It was just for ...

Did you do most, did you write most of those songs, those demos, for yourself?
Right.

And then decide against them?
No, they weren't demos for myself, they were demos of the songs. I was being pushed again ... into coming up with some songs. So, you know ... you know how those things go.

Do you have any artists in mind for any of those particular songs?
No. They were just fun to do. That's all. They were a kick to do. Fact, I'd do it all again. You know ... that's really the way to do a recording - in a peaceful, relaxed setting - in somebody's basement. With the windows open ... and a dog lying on the floor.

Let me explain something about this interview. If you give one magazine an interview, then the other magazine wants an interview. If you give one to one, then the other one wants one. So pretty soon, you're in the interview business ... you're just giving interviews. Well, as you know, this can really get you down. Doing nothing but giving interviews.

So the only way you can do it is to give press conferences. But you see, you have to have something to give a press conference about. Follow me? So that's why I don't give interviews. There's no mysterious reason to it, there's nothing organized behind it ... it's just that if you give an interview to one magazine, then another one'll get mad.

To get hassled ...
Why would I want to go out and get hassled? If they're gonna pay me, I mean ... who wants to do that? I don't.

Do you have any idea how much money your publishing has brought in over the last five years?
Well, now, that's difficult to answer because my songs are divided up into three, no, four companies. So there you have it. There you have it right there.

Which companies?
Well, I've got songs with Leeds Music. I've got songs with Whitmark Music. I've got a bunch of songs with Dwarf Music. I've got songs in Big Sky Music. So you see, my songs are divided up, so ...

Do you own Big Sky Music wholly yourself?
It's my company. I chose to start this company.

You put all the estimated income from those four companies together, or estimated gross income from publishing from those, it must be a considerable ...
Not as much as the Beatles.

Yeah, but other than the Beatles?
Not as much as those writers from Motown.

Other than the writers from Motown ...
You know there are many more musical organizations than me. They've got staffs of writers bringing in more money than you can dream of.

Otis Redding was playing at the Whiskey A Go Go, a coupla years ago, you came in and talked to Otis. What was that all about?
He was gonna do "Just Like A Woman." I played him a dub of it. I think he mighta cut it for a demo ... I don't think he ever recorded it, though. He was a fine man.

Why did you think "Just Like A Woman" would be a good song for him to do?
Well, I didn't necessarily think it was a good song for him to do, but he asked me if I had any material. It just so happened that I had the dubs from my new album. So we went over and played it. I think he took a dub ... that was the first and only time I ever met him.

I take it that you dug Otis real well. Are there any other soul singers that you dig as much as Otis?
You mean rhythm & blues pop? Well, you know I've always liked Mavis Staples ever since she was a little girl. She's always been my favorite ... she's always had my favorite voice.

Have you heard the Steve Cropper solo album?
Yeah, I heard that too.

Do you like that?
Sure. I've always dug Steve Cropper ... his guitar playing. Ever since the first Booker T. record. I heard that back in the Midwest. Yeah, everybody was playing like him.

What is your day-to-day life like?
Hmmmm ... there's no way I could explain that to you, Jann. Every day is different. Depends on what I'm doing.

Do you paint a lot?
Well, I may be fiddling around with the car or I may be painting a boat, or ... possibly washing the windows. I just do what has to be done. I play a lot of music, when there's a call in ... I'm always trying to put shows together, which never come about. I don't know what it is, but sometimes we get together and I say, "Okay, let's take six songs and do 'em up." So we do six songs, we got 'em in, let's say, 40 minutes ... we got a stopwatch timing 'em. But I mean nothing happens to it. We could do anything with it, but I mean ...

Boy, I hurried ... I hurried for a long time. I'm sorry I did. All the time you're hurrying, you're not really as aware as you should be. You're trying to make things happen instead of just letting it happen. You follow me?

That's the awkwardness of this interview.
Well, I don't find anything awkward about it. I think it's going real great.

The purpose of any interview is to let the person who's being interviewed unload his head.
Well, that's what I'm doing.

What do you think can happen with your career as a singer?
What are the possibilities?

Are you thinking of moving to Nashville? I mean that would be ...
Well, if I moved to Nashville, I'd still have to book studio time, wouldn't I?

But still, you'd have the accessibility of the session men and the engineers ...
That's true. But I'd have to do everything with that same sound, wouldn't I? I couldn't really use a variety of techniques.

Can you see a time when you would stop making records?
Well, let's put it this way: Making a record isn't any more than just recording a song, for me. Well, that's what it's been up 'til now. Not necessarily going into the studio for any other reason than to record a song. So, if I was to stop writing songs, I would stop recording. Or let's say, if I was to stop singing, I guess I would stop recording. But I don't forsee that. I'll be recording, 'cause that's a way for me to unload my head.

You said in one of your songs on Highway 61 ... "I need a dump truck, mama, to unload my head." Do you still need a dump truck or something? [Laughter.]
What album was that?

It was on Highway 61. What I'm trying to ask is what are the changes that have gone on between the time you did Highway 61 and Nashville Skyline or John Wesley Harding?
The changes. I don't think I know exactly what you mean.

How did you make the change? The motorcycle accident?
I just took what came. That's how I made the changes. I took what came.

What people do you think from the outside have influenced a change?
Uhh ... what change are you talking about?

The change from Highway 61 to Nashville Skyline ...
I'm not probably as aware of that change as you are, because I haven't listened to that album Highway 61 ... I'd probably do myself a lot of good going back and listening to it. I'm not aware of that change. I probably could pinpoint it right down if I heard that album, but I haven't heard it for quite a while.

Are there any old albums that you do listen to?
Well, I don't sit around and listen to my records, if that's what you mean.

Like picking up a high school yearbook, and just ...
Oh, I love to do that ... every once in a while. That's the way I listen to my records - every once in a while. Every once in a while I say, "Well, I'd like to see that fellow again."

Are there any albums or tracks from the albums that you think now were particularly good?
On any of my old albums? Uhh ... as songs or as performances?

Songs.
Oh, yeah, quite a few.

Which ones?
Well, if I was performing now ... if I was making personal appearances, you would know which ones, because I would play them. You know? But I don't know which ones I'd play now. I'd have to pick and choose. Certainly couldn't play 'em all.

Where did you write "Desolation Row"? Where were you when you wrote that?
I was in the back of a taxicab.

During the period where you were recording songs with a rock & roll accompaniment, with a full-scale electric band, of those rock & roll songs that you did, which do you like?
The best rock & roll songs ... which ones are there?

Uhh . . . "Like A Rolling Stone" ...
Yeah, I probably liked that the best.

In talking about the songs as performances, which of the performances that you did, that were recorded ...
I like "Like a Rolling Stone" . .. I can hear it now, now that you've mentioned it. I like that sound. You mean, which recorded performances?

Yeah, I mean in your performance of the song ...
Oh ... I like some of them on the last record, but I don't know, I tend to close up in the studio. After I've ... I could never get enough presence on me. Never really did sound like me, to me.

"Nashville Skyline Rag" was that a jam that took place in a studio, or did you write the lyrics before? ...
Ummm ... I had that little melody quite a while before I recorded it.

I mean a fellow like that would be much better off writing about Tolstoy, or Dostoevesky, or Freud ... doing a really big analysis of somebody who has countless volumes of writings. But here's me, just a few records out. Somebody devoting so much time to those few records, when there's such a wealth of material that hasn't even been touched yet, or hasn't even been heard or read ... that escapes me. Does it escape you?

I understand putting time into it, but I read this, in this East Village Other; I read it ... and it was clever. And I got a kick out of reading it [ laughter] on some level, but I didn't want to think anybody was taking it too seriously. You follow me?

He's just representative of thousands of people who do take it seriously.
Well, that's their own business. Why don't I put it that way. That's their business and his business. But ... I'm the source of that and I don't know if it's my business or not, but I'm the source of it. You understand? So I see it a little differently than all of them do.

People in your audience, they obviously take it very seriously, and they look to you for something ...
Well, I wouldn't be where I am today without them. So, I owe them ... my music, which I would be playing for them.

Does the intensity of some of the response annoy you?
No. No, I rather enjoy it.

I'm trying to get back to the thing about being a symbol of youth culture, being a spokesman for youth culture . . . what're your opinions or thoughts on that? At some point you pick up the paper or the magazine and find out that this is happening and you know that you're considered like this that people are watching you for that . . . and you've got to say to yourself, "Am I hung-up?"
Well, not any more than anybody else is who performs in public. I mean, everyone has his following.

What do you think your following is like?
Well, I think there are all kinds ... I imagine they're ... you would probably know just as much about that as I would. You know, they're all kinds of people. I remember when I used to do concerts, you couldn't pin 'em down. All the road managers and the sound equipment carriers, and even the truck drivers would notice how different the audiences were, in terms of individual people. How different they ... like sometimes I might have a concert and all the same kind of people show up, I mean, what does that mean?

What do you tell somebody who says, "What is 'Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat' about?"
It's just about that. I think that's something I mighta taken out of the newspaper. Mighta seen a picture of one in a department store window. There's really no more to it than that. I know it can get blown up into some kind of illusion. But in reality, it's no more than that. Just a leopard skin pillbox. That's all.

How did you come in contact with the Band?
Well. There used to be this young lady that worked up at Al Grossman's office - her name was Mary Martin, she's from Canada. And she was a rather persevering soul, as she hurried around the office on her job; she was a secretary; did secretarial work, and knew all the bands and all the singers from Canada. She was from Canada. Anyway, I needed a group to play electric songs.

Where did you hear them play?
Oh, I never did hear them play. I think the group I wanted was Jim Burton and Joe Osborne. I wanted Jim Burton, and Joe Osborne to play bass, and Mickey Jones. I knew Mickey Jones, he was playing with Johnny Rivers. They were all in California, though. And there was some difficulty in making that group connect. One of them didn't want to fly, and Mickey couldn't make it immediately, and I think Jim Burton was playing with a television group at that time.

How come you never made an album with them?
We tried. We cut a couple sides in the old New York Columbia studios. We cut two or three and right after "Positively 4th Street," we cut some singles and they didn't really get off the ground. You oughta hear 'em. You know, you could find 'em. They didn't even make it on the charts.

Consequently, I've not been back on the charts since the singles. I never did much care for singles, 'cause you have to pay so much attention to them. Unless you make your whole album full of singles. You have to make them separately. So I didn't really think about them too much that way.

But, playing with the Band was a natural thing. We have a real different sound. Real different. But it wasn't like anything heard. I heard one of the records recently ... it was on a jukebox. "Please Crawl Out Your Window."

What role did you play in the album, the album they made by themselves.
Well, I didn't do anything on that album. They did that with John Simon.

Did you play piano on it or anything?
No.

What kind of sound did you hear when you went in to make John Wesley Harding?
I heard the sound that Gordon Lightfoot was getting, with Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey. I'd used Charlie and Kenny both before, and I figured if he could get that sound, I could. But we couldn't get it. [ Laughs.] It was an attempt to get it, but it didn't come off. We got a different sound ... I don't know what you'd call that ... it's a muffled sound.

There used to be a lot of friction in the control booth, on these records I used to make. I didn't know about it, I wasn't aware of them until recently. Somebody would want to put limiters on this and somebody would want to put an echo on that, someone else would have some other idea. And myself, I don't know anything about any of this. So I just have to leave it up in the air. In someone else's hands.

The friction was between the engineer and the producer ...
No, the managers and the advisors and the agents.

Do you usually have sessions at which all these people are there, or do you prefer to close them up?
Well, sometimes there's a whole lot of people. Sometimes you can't even move there's so many people ... other times, there's no one. Just the musicians.

Which is more comfortable for you?
Well, it's much more comfortable when there's ... oh, I don't know, I could have it both ways. Depends what kind of song I'm gonna do. I might do a song where I want all those people around. Then I do another song, and have to shut the lights off, you know?

Did you plan to go down and make a double record set?
No. Those things just happen when you have the material.

Do you like that album?
Blonde on Blonde? Yeah. But like I always think that a double set could be made into a single album. But I dug Blonde on Blonde and the Beatles thing. They are like huge collections of songs. But a real great record can usually be compacted down ... although the Beatles have that album, and Blonde on Blonde ... I'm glad that there's two sides, that there's that much ...

John Wesley Harding - why did you call the album that?
Well, I called it that because I had that song, "John Wesley Harding." It didn't mean anything to me. I called it that, Jann, 'cause I had the song "John Wesley Harding," which started out to be a long ballad. I was gonna write a ballad on ... like maybe one of those old cowboy ... you know, a real long ballad. But in the middle of the second verse, I got tired. I had a tune, and I didn't want to waste the tune, it was a nice little melody, so I just wrote a quick third verse, and I recorded that.

But it was a silly little song [ laughs] ... I mean, it's not a commercial song, in any kind of sense. At least, I don't think it is. It was the one song on the album which didn't seem to fit in. And I had it placed here and there, and I didn't know what I was gonna call the album anyway. No one else had any ideas either. I placed it last and I placed it in the middle somewhere, but it didn't seem to work. So somehow that idea came up to just put it first and get done with it right away, and that way when it comes up, no one'll ... you know, if someone's listening to "All Along the Watchtower" and that comes up, and they'll say, "Wow, what's that?" [ Laughs.]

See, I try very hard to keep my songs from interfering with each other. That's all I'm trying to do. Place 'em all out on the disc. Sometimes it's really annoying to me, when I listen to all these dubs; I listen to one, and then I put on another one, and the one I heard before is still on my mind. I'm trying to keep away from that.

Why did you choose the name of the outlaw John Wesley Harding?
Well, it fits in tempo. Fits right in tempo. Just what I had at hand.

What other titles did you have for the album?
Not for that one. That was the only title that came up for that one. But for the Nashville Skyline one, the title came up John Wesley Harding, Volume II. We were gonna do that ... the record company wanted to call the album Love Is All There Is. I didn't see anything wrong with it, but it sounded a little spooky to me ...

What about Blonde on Blonde?
Well, that title came up when ... I don't even recall how exactly it came up, but I do know it was all in good faith. It has to do with just the word. I don't know who thought of that. I certainly didn't.

Of all the albums as albums, excluding your recent ones, which one do you think was the most successful in what it was trying to do? Which was the most fully realized, for you?
I think the second one. The second album I made.

Of the electric ones, which do you prefer?
Well, sound-wise, I prefer this last one. 'Cause it's got the sound. See, I'm listening for sound now.

As a collection of songs?
Songs? Well, this last album maybe means more to me, 'cause I did undertake something. In a certain sense. And ... there's a certain pride in that.

It was more premeditated than the others? I mean, you knew what you were gonna go after?
Right.

Certainly couldn't call the album Lay, Lady Lay. I wouldn't have wanted to call it that, although that name was brought up. It didn't get my vote, but it was brought up. Peggy Day - Lay, Peggy Day, that was brought up. A lot of things were brought up. Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With Peggy Day. That's another one. Some of the names just didn't seem to fit. Girl From the North Country. That was another title which didn't really seem to fit. Picture me on the front holding a guitar and Girl From the North Country printed on top. [ Laughs.] Tell Me That It Isn't Peggy Day. I don't know who thought of that one.

What general thing was happening that made you want to start working with the Band, rather than working solo?
I only worked solo, because there wasn't much going on. There wasn't. There were established people around ... yeah, The Four Seasons ... there were quite a few other established acts. But I worked alone because it was easier to. Plus, everyone else I knew was working alone, writing and singing. There wasn't much opportunity for groups or bands then; there wasn't. You know that.

When did you decide to get one together, like that? You played at Forest Hills, that was where you first appeared with a band? Why did you feel the time had come?
To do that? Well, because I could pay a backing group now. See, I didn't want to use a backing group unless I could pay them.

You're obligated to do one album a year?
Yes.

Is that all you want to do?
No, I'd like to do more. I would do dozens of them if I could be near the studio. I've been just lazy, Jann. I've been just getting by, so I haven't really thought too much about putting out anything really new and different.

You've heard the Joan Baez album of all your songs ...
Yeah, I did ... I generally like everything she does.

Are there any particular artists that you like to see do your songs?
Yeah, Elvis Presley. I liked Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley recorded a song of mine. That's the one recording I treasure the most' ... it was called "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." I wrote it but never recorded it.

I'm not familiar with it at all.
He did it with just guitar.
This story is from the November 29, 1969 issue of Rolling Stone.

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Bob Dylan Talks: A Raw and Extensive First Rolling Stone Interview

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They say Bob Dylan is the most secretive and elusive person in the entire rock & roll substructure, but after doing this interview, I think it would be closer to the point to say that Dylan, like John Wesley Harding, was "never known to make a foolish move."

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Contents

1. Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule

2. When Was the Vietnam War?

3. The Geneva Accords

4. America Enters the Vietnam War

5. More Troops, More Deaths, More Protests

6. North Vietnam Shocks America

7. Gradual Withdrawal from Vietnam

8. Vietnamization Falters, America Exits

9. How Many Were Killed in the Vietnam War?

The Vietnam War started in the 1950s, according to most historians, though the conflict in Southeast Asia had its roots in the French colonial period of the 1800s. The United States, France, China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Laos and other countries would over time become involved in the lengthy war, which finally ended in 1975 when North and South Vietnam were reunited as one country. The following Vietnam War timeline is a guide to the complex political and military issues involved in a war that would ultimately claim millions of lives.

Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule

* 1887: France imposes a colonial system over Vietnam, calling it French Indochina. The system includes Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. Laos is added in 1893.

* February 1930: Ho Chi Minh founds the Indochinese Communist Party at a meeting in Hong Kong.

* June 1940: Nazi Germany takes control of France.

* September 1940: Japanese troops invade French Indochina and occupy Vietnam with little French resistance.

* May 1941: Ho Chi Minh and communist colleagues establish the League for the Independence of Vietnam. Known as the Viet Minh, the movement aims to resist French and Japanese occupation of Vietnam.

* March 1945: Japanese troops occupying Indochina carry out a coup against French authorities and announce an end to the colonial era, declaring Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia independent.

* August 1945: Japan is defeated by the Allies in World War II, leaving a power vacuum in Indochina. France begins to reassert its authority over Vietnam.

* September 1945: Ho Chi Minh declares an independent North Vietnam and models his declaration on the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 in an (unsuccessful) effort to win the support of the United States.

* July 1946: Ho Chi Minh rejects a French proposal granting Vietnam limited self-government and the Viet Minh begins a guerrilla war against the French.

When Was the Vietnam War?

* March 1947: In an address to Congress, President Harry Truman states that the foreign policy of the United States is to assist any country whose stability is threatened by communism. The policy becomes known as the Truman Doctrine.

* June 1949: The French install former emperor Bao Dai as head of state in Vietnam.

* August 1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atom bomb in a remote area of Kazakhstan, marking a tense turning point in the Cold War with the United States.

* October 1949: Following a civil war, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declares the creation of the People's Republic of China.

* January 1950: The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union formally recognize the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and both begin to supply economic and military aid to communist resistance fighters within the country.

* February 1950: Assisted by the Soviet Union and the newly Communist China, the Viet Minh step up their offensive against French outposts in Vietnam.

* June 1950: The United States, identifying the Viet Minh as a Communist threat, steps up military assistance to France for their operations against the Viet Minh.

* March-May 1954: French troops are humiliated in defeat by Viet Minh forces at Dien Bien Phu. The defeat solidifies the end of French rule in Indochina.

The Geneva Accords

* July 1954: The Geneva Accords establish North and South Vietnam with the 17th parallel as the dividing line. The agreement also stipulates that elections are to be held within two years to unify Vietnam under a single democratic government. These elections never happen.

* 1955: Catholic nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem emerges as the leader of South Vietnam, with U.S. backing, while Ho Chi Minh leads the communist state to the north.

* July 1959: The first U.S. soldiers are killed in South Vietnam when guerrillas raid their living quarters near Saigon.

* September 1960: Ho Chi Minh, facing failing health, is replaced by Le Duan as head of North Vietnam's ruling communist party.

* December 1960: The National Liberation Front (NLF) is formed with North Vietnamese backing as the political wing of the antigovernment insurgency in South Vietnam. The United States views the NLF as an arm of North Vietnam and starts calling the military wing of the NLF the Viet Cong-short for Vietnam Cong-san, or Vietnamese communists.

* May 1961: President John F. Kennedy sends helicopters and 400 Green Berets to South Vietnam and authorizes secret operations against the Viet Cong.

* January 1962: In Operation Ranch Hand, U.S. aircraft start spraying Agent Orange and other herbicides over rural areas of South Vietnam to kill vegetation that would offer cover and food for guerrilla forces.

* February 1962: Ngo Dinh Diem survives a bombing of the presidential palace in South Vietnam as Diem's extreme favoritism toward South Vietnam's Catholic minority alienates him from most of the South Vietnamese population, including Vietnamese Buddhists.

* January 1963: At Ap Bac, a village in the Mekong Delta southwest of Saigon, South Vietnamese troops are defeated by a much smaller unit of Viet Cong fighters. The South Vietnamese are overcome despite their four-to-one advantage and the technical and planning assistance of U.S. advisers.

* May 1963: In a major incident of what becomes known as the "Buddhist Crisis," the government of Ngo Dinh Diem opens fire on a crowd of Buddhist protestors in the central Vietnam city of Hue. Eight people, including children, are killed.

* June 1963: A 73-year-old monk immolates himself while sitting at a major city intersection in protest, leading other Buddhists to follow suit in coming weeks. The United States' already declining confidence in Diem's leadership continues to slide.

* November 1963: The United States backs a South Vietnam military coup against the unpopular Diem, which ends in the brutal killing of Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Between 1963 and 1965, 12 different governments take the lead in South Vietnam as military coups replace one government after another.

America Enters the Vietnam War

* August 1964: USS Maddox is allegedly attacked by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin (the attack is later disputed), leading President Johnson to call for air strikes on North Vietnamese patrol boat bases. Two U.S. aircraft are shot down and one U.S. pilot, Everett Alvarez, Jr., becomes the first U.S. airman to be taken prisoner by North Vietnam.

* August 1964: The attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin spur Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorizes the president to "take all necessary measures, including the use of armed force" against any aggressor in the conflict.

* November 1964: The Soviet Politburo increases its support to North Vietnam, sending aircraft, artillery, ammunition, small arms, radar, air defense systems, food and medical supplies. Meanwhile, China sends several engineering troops to North Vietnam to assist in building critical defense infrastructure.

* February 1965: President Johnson orders the bombing of targets in North Vietnam in Operation Flaming Dart in retaliation for a Viet Cong raid at the U.S. base in the city of Pleiku and at a nearby helicopter base at Camp Holloway.

* March 1965: President Johnson launches a three-year campaign of sustained bombing of targets in North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Operation Rolling Thunder. The same month, U.S. Marines land on beaches near Da Nang, South Vietnam as the first American combat troops to enter Vietnam.

* June 1965: General Nguen Van Thieu of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Governmental Military (ARVN), becomes president of South Vietnam.

More Troops, More Deaths, More Protests

* July 1965: President Johnson calls for 50,000 more ground troops to be sent to Vietnam, increasing the draft to 35,000 each month.

* August 1965: In Operation Starlite, some 5,500 U.S. Marines strike against the First Viet Cong Regiment in the first major ground offensive by U.S. forces in Vietnam. The six-day operation diffuses the Viet Cong regiment, although it would quickly rebuild.

* November 1965: Nearly 300 Americans are killed and hundreds more injured in the first large-scale battle of the war, the Battle of la Drang Valley. At the battle, in South Vietnam's Central Highlands, U.S. ground troops are dropped onto and withdrawn from the battlefield by helicopter, in what would become a common strategy. Both sides declare victory.

* 1966: U.S. troop numbers in Vietnam rise to 400,000.

* June 1966: American aircraft attack targets in Hanoi and Haiphong in raids that are among the first such attacks on cities in North Vietnam.

* 1967: U.S. troop numbers stationed in Vietnam increase to 500,000.

* February 1967: U.S. aircraft bomb Haiphong Harbor and North Vietnamese airfields.

* April 1967: Huge Vietnam War protests occur in Washington, D.C., New York City and San Francisco.

* September 1967: Nguyen Van Thieu wins the presidential election of South Vietnam under a newly enacted constitution.

* November 1967: In the Battle of Dak To, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces resist an offensive by communist forces in the Central Highlands. The United States forces suffer some 1,800 casualties.

* January-April 1968: A U.S. Marine garrison at Khe Sanh in South Vietnam is bombarded with massive artillery by communist forces from the People's Army of North Vietnam (PAVN). For 77 days, the marines and South Vietnamese forces fend off the siege.

North Vietnam Shocks America

* January 1968: The Tet Offensive begins, encompassing a combined assault of Viet Minh and North Vietnamese armies. Attacks are carried out in more than 100 cities and outposts across South Vietnam, including Hue and Saigon, and the U.S. Embassy is invaded. The effective, bloody attacks shock U.S. officials and mark a turning point in the war and the beginning of a gradual U.S. withdrawal from the region.

* February 11-17, 1968: This week records the highest number of U.S. soldier deaths during the war, with 543 American deaths.

* February-March 1968: Battles at Hue and Saigon end with American and ARVN victory as Viet Cong guerillas are cleared from the cities.

* March 16, 1968: At the U.S. massacre at Mai Lai, more than 500 civilians are murdered by U.S. forces. The massacre happens amid a campaign of U.S. search-and-destroy operations that are intended to find enemy territories, destroy them and then retreat.

* March 1968: President Johnson halts bombing in Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. Facing backlash about the war, Johnson announces he will not run for reelection.

* November 1968: Republican Richard M. Nixon wins the U.S. presidential elections on the campaign promises to restore "law and order" and to end the draft.

* May 1969: At Ap Bia Mountain, about a mile from the border with Laos, U.S. paratroopers attack entrenched North Vietnamese fighters in an attempt to cut off North Vietnamese infiltration from Laos. U.S. troops eventually capture the site (temporarily), which would be nicknamed Hamburger Hill by journalists due to the brutal carnage of the 10-day battle.

* September 1969: Ho Chi Minh dies of a heart attack in Hanoi.

* December 1969: The U.S. government institutes the first draft lottery since World War II, prompting ever more young American men-later disparaged as "draft dodgers"-to flee to Canada.

Gradual Withdrawal from Vietnam

* 1969-1972: The Nixon administration gradually reduces the number of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, placing more burden on the ground forces of South Vietnam's ARVN as part of a strategy known as Vietnamization. U.S. troops in Vietnam are reduced from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972.

* February 1970: U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger begins secret peace negotiations with Hanoi politburo member Le Duc Tho in Paris.

* March 1969-May 1970: In a series of secret bombings known as "Operation Menu," U.S. B-52 bombers target suspected communist base camps and supply zones in Cambodia. The bombings are kept under wraps by Nixon and his administration since Cambodia is officially neutral in the war, although The New York Times would reveal the operation on May 9, 1969.

* April-June 1970: U.S. and South Vietnamese forces attack communist bases across the Cambodian border in the Cambodian Incursion.

* May 4, 1970: In a bloody incident known as the Kent State Shooting, National Guardsmen fire on anti-war demonstrators at Ohio's Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine.

* June 1970: Congress repeals the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to reassert control over the president's ability to use force in the war.

Vietnamization Falters, America Exits

* January-March 1971: In Operation Lam Son 719, ARVN troops, with U.S. support, invade Laos in an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They are forced to retreat and suffer heavy losses.

* June 1971: The New York Times publishes a series of articles detailing leaked Defense Department documents about the war, known as the Pentagon Papers. The report reveals the U.S. government had repeatedly and secretly increased U.S. involvement in the war.

* March-October 1972: The People's Army of Vietnam launches the large-scale, three-pronged Easter Offensive against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and U.S. forces. While North Vietnam gains control of more territory in South Vietnam, the offensive isn't the decisive blow its military leaders had hoped for.

* December 1972: President Nixon orders the launch of the most intense air offense of the war in Operation Linebacker. The attacks, concentrated between Hanoi and Haiphong, drop roughly 20,000 tons of bombs over densely populated regions.

* January 22, 1973: Former President Johnson dies in Texas at age 64.

* January 27, 1973: The Selective Service announces the end to the draft and institutes an all-volunteer military.

* January 27, 1973: President Nixon signs the Paris Peace Accords, ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese accept a cease fire. But as U.S. troops depart Vietnam, North Vietnamese military officials continue plotting to overtake South Vietnam.

* February-April 1973: North Vietnam returns 591 American prisoners of war (including future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate, John McCain) in what is known as Operation Homecoming.

How Many Were Killed in the Vietnam War?

* January 1975: President Ford rules out any further U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

* April 1975: In the Fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam is seized by communist forces and the government of South Vietnam surrenders. U.S. Marine and Air Force helicopters transport more than 1,000 American civilians and nearly 7,000 South Vietnamese refugees out of Saigon in an 18-hour mass evacuation effort.

* July 1975: North and South Vietnam are formally unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under hardline communist rule.

* The War Dead: By the end of the war, some 58,220 Americans lose their lives. Vietnam would later release estimates that 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed, up to 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died and more than 2 million civilians were killed on both sides of the war.

Sources

The Vietnam War: The Definitive Illustrated History, created in association with the Smithsonian Institution, published by DK | Penguin Random House, 2017.
The Vietnam War: An Intimate History, by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, based on the film series by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, published by Penguin Random House, 2017.
Vietnam Profile - Timeline, BBC News, June 12, 2017.
Operation Starlite: The First Battle of the Vietnam War, Military.com.
South Vietnam: The Buddhist Crisis, Time.
Buddhists - The 1963 Crisis, GlobalSecurity.org.
Vietnam, Diem, the Buddhist Crisis, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
The Fall of Saigon, United States History.
What Were the Major Battles of the Vietnam War? The Vietnam War.
Statistical information about casualties of the Vietnam War, U.S. National Archives.
"Feuds and Bad Planning in Saigon Exit Recalled,"The New York Times, May 5, 1975.
"Nixon Again Deplores Leak on Bombing Cambodia,"The New York Times, March 11, 1976.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume III, Vietnam, January-August 1963, The U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
"The Truman Doctrine Fades,"The New York Times, May 4, 1975.

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Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule When Was the Vietnam War? The Geneva Accords America Enters the Vietnam War More Troops, More Deaths, More Protests North Vietnam Shocks America Gradual Withdrawal from Vietnam Vietnamization Falters, America Exits How Many Were Killed in the Vietnam War?

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" “In 1969 or 1970,” Gaye said, “I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say. I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.”"

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Written after the Kent State massacre where 4 students were killed protesting the war (product)

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"Ohio" is a protest song written and composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970, and performed by the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quartet.

The incident took place on May 4, 1970 and became a sociopolitical symbolization during the Vietnam War. The sequence of events led to a nationwide anti-establishment student strike, forcing hundreds of colleges and universities to close.
(The image above is a picture of 14-year-old Mary Vecchio kneeling over Jeffrey Miller's dead body crying for help.)
The song was recorded a mere 17 days after the incident and, according to the recording engineer Bill Halverson, was done in (at most) 3 takes "with live vocal and live harmonies and everybody chiming in".

On May 9, some 100,000 protestors gathered across from the White House, and on May 14 another on-campus shooting took place, resulting in the deaths of two African American students and the wounding of 12 others at Jackson State University in Mississippi. These two incidents -particularly the Kent State shooting- gave rise to an unprecedented surge in antiwar activism throughout the United States.

It was released as a single, backed with Stephen Stills', "Find the Cost of Freedom," and it it peaked at #14 on Billboard 's Hot 100. Although a live version of the song was included on the group's 1971 double album Four Way Street, the studio versions of both songs did not appear on an LP until the group's compilation So Far was released in 1974. The song also appeared on the Neil Young compilation album Decade, released in 1977.

Young on writing the song:

It's still hard to believe I had to write this song. It's ironic that I capitalized on the death of these American students. Probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning. My best CSNY cut. Recorded totally live in Los Angeles. David Crosby cried after this take."

Side Note: Due to its "anti-war" and "anti-establishment" sentiments, the song was banned from some AM playlists in the United States.

Rest In Peace:

Jeffrey G. Miller
Allison B. Krause
William K. Schroeder
Sandra L. Scheuer

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Ohio Lyrics: Tin soldiers and Nixon coming / We're finally on our own / This summer I hear the drumming / Four dead in Ohio / Gotta get down to it / Soldiers are cutting us down / Should have

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(RESPONSE)

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ssgt barry sadler - ballad of the green beret + lyrics

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http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=102082394&site=eds-live

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User account | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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Civil Rights

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http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=4024048&site=eds-live

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The Rise of Conservatism: Crash Course US History #41

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You can directly support Crash Course at https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse Subscribe for as little as $0 to keep up with everything we're doing. Free is nice, but if you can afford to pay a little every month, it really helps us to continue producing this content. Crash Course World History is now available on DVD!

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The 1960s in America: Crash Course US History #40

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Vietnam

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"John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance,” which was sung by half a million demonstrators at the Vietnam Moratorium Day protest in Washington, DC, in October 1969."

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Give Peace A Chance (1969) - Official Video

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Vietnam

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Vietnam

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Vietnam

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Vietnam

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1. Are there any songs that were in favor of the war?
2. Were these songs ever played or quoted during protests?
3. Is there a connection of the Woodstock music festival to protests?

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1. Beginnings of rock and roll
2. Very politically charged lyrics that were often anti-government
3. Artists are often affiliated with the hippie movement and drug culture

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To what extent are the songs of the 60s a response of the protests or a motivator?