Amidst the glut of Dylan-related material on YouTube is a lengthy interview that Bob did with someone named Martha Quinn, just before a concert at London’s Wembley Stadium in July of 1984. That also puts it in between his Infidels album and his Empire Burlesque album. The interview is noteworthy for how good-humored Dylan is throughout. It’s broken into five parts on YouTube. It appears to be raw footage — whatever originally aired on TV would surely have been edited a great deal, although I don’t know that for certain. I frankly had never heard of this interview before seeing it on YouTube. The whole thing is worth watching if you enjoy Dylan interviews, in particular to hear him talk a lot about the recording of Infidels. I found a few segments especially amusing and made some transcriptions, as follows:

Martha Quinn interview, 1984.

Part 3 of 5.

Q: How do you think your music lends itself to videos?

Dylan: I think it lends itself great to videos. I haven’t found anybody to direct a real good video — I wanted to do a video of Neighborhood Bully, and I had an idea, I thought it would have been great, but now it’s too late, because it’s on that last record, but if you’re working all the time, and …

(later in the interview)

Dylan: Like I said, we wanted to do Neighborhood Bully, but trying to explain it to somebody, what you see, and draw up storyboards — I haven’t found anybody that really thinks a certain way, that — y’know like the German filmmakers or the English filmmakers, in the States you just don’t have people like that. They just don’t exist, they don’t — their education doesn’t train them for that sort of thing …

Responding to a question about the Jokerman video:

Dylan: I only saw that one time, and I don’t even want to talk about that video.

(later in the interview)

Q: How do you visualize the images in the song (for a video)?

Dylan: Well, Neighborhood Bully could have been — I visualized Neighborhood Bully. I wanted to find — I had a couple of guys cast for Neighborhood Bully.

One of these guys is this wrestler, I forget his name, um, Jerry Blackwell, he’s a wrestler, comes out of the Midwest. He would have been great as the neighborhood bully. And there were certain segments which I just wrote down one night which I thought would look great on film, and would be like a Fassbinder movie. Have you ever seen his movies? Something of that nature. But, uh –

Q: I’m sorry, I never have, what kind — ?

Dylan: Just like, it’s hard to explain, it’s like somebody saying what’s that song about, I mean y’know, it’s not about — that’s what it’s about! “Have you heard the song?” “Yeah, I’ve heard the song.” “Well, what’s it about?” Well, have you heard it?” “Yeah.” “Well, that’s what it’s about.” It’s about that. You know what I mean?

Q: Yeah, but you referred to Fassbinder as like a style –

Dylan: Oh, yeah, well for me he had three different styles. He had the style he started out with, and a middle style. Then he had his gospel period [starts smiling] and, y’know, his blue period, and then he went electric. [laughs]

The wrestler that Dylan refers to, Jerry Blackwell, was indeed a real personage. There’s a profile of him here. He died in 1995, apparently of complications after a car accident. It’s a pity that video never got made. (Does this mean Dylan was contemplating releasing Neighborhood Bully as a single?)

Part 4 of 5.

Q: License to Kill and Neighborhood Bully — it’s interesting you say they were recorded live, ‘cos that’s something that you did an awful lot of, and it also strikes me that those are two songs that deal directly with contemporary social and political issues, which is also something that (inaudible). Why are both of those things on this album?

Dylan: I think all my songs deal with social/political issues. That’s why they call me a protest singer. They all deal with that. [Dylan is smiling/smirking]

Q: But you hate being called a protest singer?

Dylan: But that doesn’t matter. That’s what they call me anyway. What does it matter what I care? What does it matter what I feel about what I do? Everybody else seems to have their opinion. So what does my opinion matter?

Part 5 of 5.

On the subject of “religion.”

Q: I was wondering, because of your theological excursions, where you’re at today?

Dylan: I’m just right here. I’m in the back of Wembley Stadium, waiting to go on, and theologically, it’s just one great big church. I don’t know how else to put it, y’know. Theologically, what are my religious feelings and all that? Ah, I don’t feel I really have to go into all that right now.

Links to watch the whole interview:

Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.
Part 5.

…

Addendum: Thanks to Joe who emails regarding the interviewer, Martha Quinn, that “she was one of the original MTV ‘veejays’, so I think that the interview was done for MTV. Besides being an early staple of MTV, Martha’s other claim to fame is that she’s the daughter of Jane Bryant Quinn, a writer on economic issues who appears (appeared?) in Newsweek.”

So there you go.

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