Joan Baez, Kris Kristofferson and more on Bob Dylan

“The band would play ping pong or cards, then in the morning he would call them and they would record a masterpiece. My memory is really failing. When I try to think of the names of individual songs, I can’t, but when I think of the whole thing, it was like being allowed to watch Michelangelo work. I met his wife and children and they were friendly, but I never spoke to Bob. I was too scared. I met him later through Johnny Cash because they were very close. It was a true meeting of giants.

Mavis Staples

To promote a tour celebrating her 75th birthday in 2014, the gospel singer shared a surprising insight into her relationship with a certain curly-haired cutie:

“Bob Dylan and I became very close. He was just a little folk singer when we first met, an average kid, but he knew the Staples Singers. He asked me to marry him but I told him I wasn’t old enough. None of my sisters were married, so I couldn’t take the plunge. I liked Bobby, he was really cute with his curly hair. I admired him so much for his writing. I thought he was a genius.

Jacob Dylan

A singer-songwriter in his own right, Jakob was Dylan’s fourth child with Sara Lownds. In 2020, to promote his documentary Echo in the Canyon, he spoke to Big Issue, not about his father in particular, but about the musical revolution of the 1960s:

“It’s the advent of poetry in music, which makes things limitless. You don’t need to make sense, you don’t need to have an agenda, you can just express whatever you want. These songs demand that you participate as a listener, they demand that you pay attention – or not pay attention, just be hypnotized by the lyrics. But you have to participate. »

He went on to say that a musical revolution does not necessarily lead to real-world change…

“I’ve never really seen music change society in any significant way. He has the illusion of it. And I think the illusion is enough to keep you there. Sometimes music is just there to entertain people and make them feel better for three and a half minutes. The social impact of this music, how real was it? What change did this actually bring to people? I haven’t lived in that era, I am always cautious and a little suspicious of these scenes and movements.

Giovanni Ribisi

Actor and director Ribisi is perhaps best known as Phoebe’s brother on Friends. But he also starred in the 2003 opus Masked and Anonymous, written by and with Bob Dylan. He told us about his experience a few years later:

“Oh man. I had heard that there was another person he did a movie with on another movie who was really excited and did the movie so they could work with him. And the first day they started filming, he showed up and he started a conversation with Bob, and Bob turned to him and said, “I don’t need any more male friends. ” So I heard this story that kind of intimidated me, so I was like, “I’m just going to go out there and be alone and do the best job I can do.” And I did it. But it was nice, this voyeuristic thing. We shared a two-bedroom caravan. I was in one and he was in the other. He had his guitar and he was playing music in there and I was putting my ear to the wall. He doesn’t know, I don’t even think he would remember me. But it was special for me.

Robbie Robertson

When Bob Dylan caused controversy by going electric, The Band was behind him with Robertson on lead guitar, as he recalled three years before his death in 2023:

“Bob Dylan heard us and asked us to come meet him. And it turned into a musical revolution. I was making music that was the voice of a generation. Playing those electric shows with Bob Dylan in the ’60s, I thought at the time that I’d never heard anyone do that kind of thing before. Someone the size he was – the king of folk music, the voice, the guy who could write songs that brought armies together – would suddenly change everything and go in a different direction. And the way people reacted; we were booed all over the world. And while it was happening, you could laugh partly at it, and partly cry at it. But for us, it was about saying, “You know what? The music we make is really good. And we haven’t changed, the world has changed. The world has turned towards us.

Bruce Hornsby

Hornsby appears on Dylan’s 1990 album, Under the Red Sky. A few years ago he told us how things happened like this:

“I didn’t want to be late for the session. Dylan comes in and introduces himself to everyone. Then he takes out a bunch of paper from various pockets, puts all these pieces of paper with various pieces of lyrics written on them on a table. It’s right in front of where his microphone is positioned. He came up to me and said, “Hey Bruce, come here, let me teach you a song.” He taught it to me (Born in time) and taught it to the rest of the group. We played this a few times, then took a short break. The great drummer Kenny Aronoff started playing, and then Robben Ford, Randy Jackson and I started playing together. Then Bob enters. He stands there, nodding and listening to us. He walks to the table, looks at the pieces of paper, chooses one, walks to the microphone and begins to sing. And it became Talking song on television. Absolute spontaneity.

Peggy Seeger

Edward Norton plays Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown. His real half-sister Peggy remembered what the folk world was like before Dylan arrived on the scene in a 2019 interview:

“Joan Baez came to ask for my autograph in 1961, at the Newport (Folk) Festival. We never had a real conversation but I would have loved to. I would like to do a concert with her but she is too high up for me. She is America’s popular goddess. Dylan wanted our autograph too, in Minnesota, when he was still a student, carrying a tie and a small briefcase. Two years later, when we returned to Minnesota, Bob Zimmerman had become Bob Dylan. And the promoter said, “Remember that funny little guy who followed you a few years ago…”

Todd Haynes

Will Timothée Chalamet’s performance eclipse the six actors who played Dylan in 2007’s I’m Not There? The director of this film explained why musicians are ripe for the biopic treatment:

“I think it has a lot to do with the huge imprint these artists left behind. In each case, they evoke a very specific time and place. Musically and culturally, they reflected the contradictions, possibilities and specificities of the times in which they lived. They inspire a story bigger than the music itself, even if it begins in the music. »

Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman

Writer and musician Sloman came into Dylan’s orbit during the Rolling Thunder Revue era of the mid-’70s, as he recalls in 2019:

“When I first did an article on Bob for rolling stone about Blood on the trackshe loved it so much he invited me on the Rolling Thunder tour to cover it. I realized that others view these people as demigods, and that they are just normal human beings, with the same weaknesses, desires, and insecurities that we all have. Probably the bigger you are, the more insecurities you have. I discovered that the way to interact with Bob was to treat him like a normal human being. In fact, sometimes I even made fun of him in a good-natured way.

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