Part two of Bill Flanagan’s interview with Bob Dylan, on his new album Together Through Life and other topics, is up at BobDylan.com. Click here to read it all.

When I saw the song Jolene in the track list for Together Through Life, I was pretty excited. I thought: How is Bob going to sing this song from a male point of view?

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I’m begging of you please don’t take my man
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
Please don’t take him just because you can

Or maybe he could just sing it as is, from the woman narrator’s point of view, like the White Stripes have done. Or like he did with House of the Risin’ Sun or his own North Country Blues.

But no, as revealed in this interview, Bob Dylan’s song Jolene features a handgun. So it’s a different song (perhaps a sequel, where things get resolved).

Anyway, Flanagan deserves kudos, I think, for coming at Bob from unusual angles, trying to get at things we don’t normally hear in a Bob Dylan interview. Not that it always works. But this is interesting:

Say you wake up in a hotel room in Wichita and look out the window. A little girl is walking along the train tracks dragging a big statue of Buddha in a wooden wagon with a three-legged dog following behind. Do you reach for your guitar or your drawing pad?

Oh wow. It would depend on a lot of things. The environment mostly; like what kind of day is it. Is it a cloudless blue-gray sky or does it look like rain? A little girl dragging a wagon with a statue in it? I’d probably put that in last. The three-legged dog – what type? A spaniel, a bulldog, a retriever? That would make a difference. I’d have to think about that. Depends what angle I’m seeing it all from. Second floor, third floor, eighth floor. I don’t know. Maybe I’d want to go down there. The train tracks too. I’d have to find a way to connect it all up. I guess I would be thinking about if this was an omen or a harbinger of something.

This installment of the interview ends with Flanagan probing Bob in very general terms on politics, and getting answers that are pretty consistent with what we’ve heard Dylan say before on these things.

What’s your take on politics?

Politics is entertainment. It’s a sport. It’s for the well groomed and well heeled. The impeccably dressed. Party animals. Politicians are interchangeable.

Don’t you believe in the democratic process?

Yeah, but what’s that got to do with politics? Politics creates more problems than it solves. It can be counter-productive. The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don’t think they have titles.

The world awaits on the edge of its seat for part three of the interview.

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