NEW YORK (Newsweek magazinen press release) -
Bob Dylan tells Newsweek Senior Editor
David Gates that writing his memoir wasn't quite like writing songs. "I'm used to writing songs," he says, "and songs - I can fill 'em up with symbolism and metaphors. When you write a book like this, you gotta tell the truth, and it can't be misinterpreted." Gates writes that Dylan is clearly proud of the book, but he didn't enjoy writing it. "Lest we forget, while you're writing, you're not living. What do they call it? Splendid isolation? I don't find it that splendid."
In his soon-to-be-published memoir, "Chronicles, Volume One," which is exclusively excerpted in the October 4 Newsweek cover, "Bob Dylan Opens Up" (on newsstands Monday, September 27), Dylan writes about being called the conscience of a generation. "That was funny. All I'd ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of."
Dylan writes that he wanted a "nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard. That would have been nice. That was my deepest dream. After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back."
In the memoir, Dylan writes about how getting married and having children changed his life, making him want to get out of the rat race. "I found myself stuck in Woodstock, vulnerable and with a family to protect. If you looked in the press, though, you saw me being portrayed as anything but that. It was surprising how thick the smoke had become. It seems like the world has always needed a scapegoat-someone to lead the charge against the Roman Empire. But America wasn't the Roman Empire and someone else would have to step up and volunteer."
He writes about his first house in Woodstock, which once was a quiet refuge, but no more after he arrived. "Roadmaps to our homestead must have been posted in all fifty states for gangs of dropouts and druggies. Moochers showed up from as far away as California on pilgrimages. Goons were breaking into our place all hours of the night. At first, it was merely the nomadic homeless making illegal entry-seemed harmless enough, but then rogue radicals looking for the Prince of Protest began to arrive-unaccountable-looking characters, gargoyle-looking gals, scarecrows, stragglers looking to party, raid the pantry."
"Peter LaFarge, a folksinger friend of mine, had given me a couple of Colt single-shot repeater pistols, and I also had a clip-fed Winchester blasting rifle around, but it was awful to think about what could be done with those things. The authorities, the chief of police (Woodstock had about three cops) had told me that if anyone was shot accidentally or even shot at as a warning, it would be me that would be going to the lockup. Not only that, but creeps thumping their boots across our roof could even take me to court if any of them fell off. This was so unsettling. I wanted to set fire to these people. These gate-crashers, spooks, trespassers, demagogues were all disrupting my home life and the fact that I was not to piss them off or they could press charges really didn't appeal to me. Each day and night was fraught with difficulties. Everything was wrong, the world was absurd. It was backing me into a corner. Even persons near and dear offered no relief."
Dylan takes some shots at how his music was interpreted by critics and the interpretations of his lyrics. "For sure my lyrics had struck nerves that had never been struck before, but...whatever the counterculture was, I'd seen enough of it. I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. What the hell are we talking about? Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw."
He writes: "As long as my own form of certainty stayed intact, I owed nobody nothing. I wasn't going to go deeper into the darkness for anybody. I was already living in the darkness. My family was my light and I was going to protect that light at all cost. That was where my dedication was, first, last and everything in-between. What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The press? I figured you lie to it. For the public eye, I went into the bucolic and mundane as far as possible. In my real life I got to do the things that I loved the best and that was all that mattered-the Little League games, birthday parties, taking my kids to school, camping trips, boating, rafting, canoeing, fishing...I was living on record royalties. In reality I was imperceptible, my image, that is. Sometime in the past I had written and performed songs that were most original and most influential, and I didn't know if I ever would again and I didn't care."
