Between Copenhagen and Hamlet’s castle in Elsinore, at Hotel Marina in Vedbæk, sitting fifty journalists and waiting for Bob Dylan. The press conference should have started a long time ago. Yesterday, he played in Stockholm. Swedish newspapers go on rundgang. Images of a thin, small elf with tousled curls that wearing sunglasses trying fashion at Gulins before the limousine drives him to a bookstore where he asks after Arthur Rimbaud.
OTHERWISE, the NEWSPAPERS CHARACTERIZED THE debate as the author Sara Lidman started after his journey to Vietnam in march. In Oslo two weeks ago got two thousand people pushed their way into the People’s House under the Studentersamfunnets the “teach ins” about Vietnam. People sang dylan’s antikrigs-songs. “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “Masters Of War”. In the united STATES have the police finally managed to arrest the former Harvard professor Timothy Leary, who openly have advocated the use of LSD. During a swoop at his home in New York city found the police a small quantity of marijuana. And where arriving at Bob Dylan, who recently has been banned his latest single, “Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35”, from the british radio stations because of suspected narkoreferanser in the text, an hour and a half delayed.
A court of ten-fifteen people follow him, many of them in strange clothes, with long hair and sunglasses. A man with top hat films everything that happens. Dylan puts up. He comes pressekorpset anticipate:
– Is there anyone here in the audience who know my music?
– Yes, answers three young women on the first row. Incidentally, there is no response. I was about to answer, because I have the first, acoustic visealbumene his, but then hesitated as I, because I thought that he was referring to the last two albums, which is said to be electric.
– What do you think about protestsanger? reads the first question from the audience. Dylan moves solbrilleblikket from the three girls to a journalist in the middle of the saddle.
– Um… er… God…, he begins, before we hear a short, light, rolling laughter.
– God… he reaffirms.
New, trilled latte – No…
Then comes the slow, horse and dragging:
– I’m not going to sit here and do this. I have been up all night, I have taken some… pills.
The last word spyttes out.
And I’ve eaten bad food and I’ve read the wrong thing and been driven in a car at 160 km/h, so let’s not sit here and talk about me as a protestsanger.
IF ONE didn’T KNOW BETTER, one would have thought that the guy who talks sitting at home in their own living room, at an after party where the last guest, who has not understood that the party is over, trying to keep in time a conversation with the polite but sleepy host.
– Are you a profesj – Before I was in the military, he replies, less slowly now, but it was so poorly paid that I was a singer.
– Why you go around in such strange clothes? sounds it from another journalist.
– I look very normal where I live. Compared with them, I am conservative.
– Like your mother your music?
{ndash}No, my mother likes it not. But my grandmother likes it.
{panel}You have an entourage of twelve. Who is it? A band? You won’t play folk songs more?
– No, it is not a band. They are friends of my grandmother.
– What about your parents? Do you feel anything for your parents? It is said that…
– I have no contact with them. I have never had contact with them.
– But miss it?
– Miss it? I have never had it.
– Never had it?
– Are you trying to get me to be a kind of rebel… a James Dean?
– I’m just wondering what you think about the other teens? Is it wise of them to…
– I have never been a teenager. I played never football, basketball, rugby. I was never on the athletics events. I never got good grades. I was never with in any association. I made never good exams. I was never interested in anything. There was just never anyone there. I don’t know. That is all.
– Well, so what then is a success, do you think?
– Success?
– What is it really?
– I don’t know. What do you think it is? Are you successful?
– Well, I considered it, in my area, answers the journalist.
– Well, I considered it on my site also.
In THE WHITE conference room, in the powerful floodlights, sitting the almost anorexic thin artist with his halo of dark curls, blåhvitblek in the skin and sminket, behind dark sunglasses, in striped pants and fashionable polkaprikket silkeskjorte, perhaps with a colorful barneparaply in the hand, a light bulb about the size of a globe, or with a buktalerdukke that – on behalf of the artist – perform the answers, or rather questions. For the collapse as the artist himself dances on the edge of the draws he often the horny heroine into, by transforming the interview into a courtroom where Bob Dylan kryssforhører the journalist about what he thinks – not only to ask the questions he poses, not only to have innfunnet to the interview or press conference, not only to be a journalist, not only to be present, but what person at all mean to be.
– Remember that you will die, get one of the reporters know, and do your job in the light of it.
– What was your impression of Australia where you now come from? ask a journalist, presumably knowing full well the hostility that I was met with the australian press, where he was described as “a being about the size of a pygmé, likblek in the skin, with the countenance of a man who rolled out of the operating room, still partially in the general anesthesia.”
Australia is no pleasant place for many – for asians and africans.
– You should maybe be careful with what you say.
– I don’t care about what I say. I don’t live there. There are about eleven millions of inhabitants in Australia, right? America is about the same size. There must be a reason that there are only eleven million people in Australia. Maybe it’s because they don’t play baseball.
– You earn a lot of money?
– Awful lot. I don’t know exactly how much, but I have enough set aside approximately seventy-five billion dollars currently. I have sewn the money into the jakkeforet, and use them never. I save.
– To what?
To buy Australia.
– But it is not a political message in some of your songs?
– No. I don’t care about politics.
– What is your opinion about the Green Berets, the u.s. elitestyrkene in Vietnam?
– I plan to associate myself with them. If they will have me.
– Supports you antikrig gestures?
– No. I have no feelings regarding the war.
– What do you feel about the american borgerrettighetsbevegelsens embrace of your songs?
– I’m not for tinted. I’m not against colored. I have no feelings for the colored that I care about to discuss with you. My songs is not about racial discrimination or about young men who fall on the battlefield. It touches me not. I’m quite pleased with the world situation, I don’t want to change it. I would not have been written about colored if you paid me a hundred thousand, because all people are different, and you have no respect for me, sir, if you think that I would write about colored as colored instead of as people.
– What is your message?
– Don’t talk to me about the message. Time, Newsweek, Look, Life and Ladies’ Home Journal call me a protestsanger, but I’m no protestsanger. I’m not a sosialkommentator.
– You have a message?
– No. Have you?
– What do you think?
– I believe in you. I believe in things I can see. Don’t you?
Here occurs a break. Finally dare I to shoot in:
– Is there an underlying theme in your songs?
It is the question I formulated on the train from Oslo. I have had it on the tongue for four hours. There have been so many superficial questions. I feel that mine is deeper.
– Yes, answer Dylan addressed to me, they are all about the second coming of christ.
The brain has not come up with a new question, but a dane is on hand:
– When do you consider it occurs?
– When people stop to go with the clothes.
JOURNALISTS ‘ IRRITATION is noticeable. Sometimes fall the lines on the Danish:
– Who think that he is?
Me reminds him of an international grandmaster in chess as in pure oppvisningsstil wander among the fifty tables and play as many simultanpartier.
– How would you describe yourself?
– I do not describe myself. How to describe yourself?
– What would you be if you were not sangskriver?
– A trenches by the name of William Joe Zimmermann.
– What is your real name?
– William W. Kasonavarich.
– Why changed the name?
– Would you not changed your name if you named William W. Kasonavarich? I never got the lady.
– Who are your favorite authors?
– Freddie McFarland, Muggsy Michaelson, Eddie Condor. Have you heard of them? I like Ingmar Bergman.
– You are going to make the film? ask a journalist. There is a film crew in turn.
– I’m “going”? What does it mean?
– You are interested in making a movie?
– I’m interested in making a movie. I think I’m really going, yes.
– Who do you admire?
– A song writer by the name of Sheldon Orthogity. His songs consist of the words that you say without noticing it even. And Rory Calhoun, an ex-cowboyskuespiller. And I like Shakespeare – the outrageous queen, a cosmic amfetaminhjerne.
– What kind of music do you like?
– I like Ravel and Bartok.
– Do you like any of the protestsangerne that mimic you?
– No. Have you heard me sing?
– No, I have not.
– Feels it’s not strange to sit here and have a conversation about something you know nothing about?
– When you were young, fled you from home often. Are you still on the run from something?
– If I was on the flight, I would not be sat here.
– You don’t really have any desire to communicate with people?
– No.
– But what is it you want, then?
– Nothing.
– You will not something?
– No. Are people friendly towards me, I am friendly toward them, but if people face me with something else in mind, I can destroy
– What do you mean? With the songs and your texts?
– No. Destroy them. Sit here and destroy them.
– WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MUSIC? ask one of the young, female journalists in the first row.
– What is your favorite music? ask Dylan.
– Beethoven, she says, I do very much appreciate Beethoven’s symphonies.
– Yes, but I thought more – But it is the Beethoven.
– Come on now, ” says Dylan, what is your favorite music?
– Can we assume that you are married?
– You can assume what you want. I was born married – 45 years ago.
– Are you married to Joan Baez?
– Joan Baez was an accident.
– A mistake?
– No, an accident.
– Do you have children?
– Every man with medical problems has children.
– What are your medical problems?
– Well. There is glass in the back of my. I am a very sick person. I look bad on Tuesdays. These the sunglasses I’ve got on prescription. I try not to be a beatnik. I have very kvikksølvske eyes. And besides – toenails my is not suitable.
– Have you been in the military?
– No. My feet works when I think about the soldiers.
– Do you have moments where you do not hold out yourself?
– How is it possible? I don’t know myself. I don’t know who I am. There is a fitted mirror on the inside of the sunglasses mine, but for other mixes I me not up in the privacy of my.
-Why, lo you in the opening of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” on LP?
– I don’t remember. Wait a little bit. Yes, someone came into the studio dressed as my mother.
– Who are your friends?
– I have no friends. I have always looked for some, but I’ve never found any.
– You write the book. What is it about?
– It is a book about spiders. It’s called “Tarantula”. It is a insektbok. It took about a week to write, to and from. It is on the trehundreogseksti pages. My next book is a collection gravskrifter.
– What did you feel when dopsangene your was banned from all radio stations because they were perceived as indirect invitations to take drugs?
– Banned? Who said it? I didn’t know.
– Do you think that drugs can give inspiration?
– Have you tried it yourself?
– Sometimes.
– Then you should know it yourself.
Dylan’s manager provides with kroppsspråket signal that the time is soon out.
– What do you think about Danish girls?
How far is it to the nearest windmill? ask Dylan back.
– Where are you leaving after the concert?
– What sykkelprodusent stock the best bikes in Denmark?
– Where were you before you came to Copenhagen?
– What route would you recommend me to follow through Tivoli?
– Why do you have so long hair?
– How far is it to Hamlet’s grave?
WITH QUESTIONS show Dylan that he has more thing in Denmark than the Danish journalists have on Dylan.
– What do you do with all the money you earn? sounds a question. Now aren’t Dylan to ask questions back. He takes up the notepad and ballpoint pen, and turns to the nearest journalist.
– By the way, when the sun is up in this country? he asks.
– In sjutida, answers the journalist, a little bewildered.
– Very interesting. I understand, nods to Dylan and make note of the journalist’s response.
He caters to a different journalist.
And when the goes sun down in this country?
– In åttetida, answers the journalist. Dylan notes.
And this castle, where Hamlet lived, Kronborg, how long does it take to get there on horseback?
– I don’t know.
– You don’t know? What do you know? ask Dylan. Before anyone has time to answer, is the meeting called off.
THE PRESS CONFERENCE IS OVER. Outside the hotel stands two limousines. Dylan and the crew are putting themselves in, with the course for Elsinore and Hamlet’s castle a few miles to the north. Two journalists, from Ekstrabladet and a Swedish ukemagasin also get space. I say I am Norwegian, but no, the cars are full, but the Swedish journalist promises to me and the newspaper photo from the session at Kronborg Castle
