Bob Dylan Talks About Minnesota Upbringing In Rare Interview
NEW YORK (AP/WCCO) -- Bob Dylan opened up about his music and songwriting and discussed his relationships with Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and others in a rare and lengthy interview posted to his website Wednesday.
In the Q&A with author Bill Flanagan, Dylan recalled Sinatra telling him, "`You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we're from up there ... These other bums are from down here."'
Of the many superstars who died last year, including Muhammad Ali and Merle Haggard, Dylan said the deaths hit him hard: "We were like brothers ... It's lonesome without them," he said.
When asked about why Presley didn't show up for a recording session with Dylan and George Harrison, he replied: "He did show up -- it was us that didn't."
Also, regarding his childhood in Minnesota, he had this to say:
Minnesota has its own Mason Dixon line. I come from the north and that's different from southern Minnesota; if you're there you could be in Iowa or Georgia. Up north the weather is more extreme – frostbite in the winter, mosquito-ridden in the summer, no air conditioning when I grew up, steam heat in the winter and you had to wear a lot of clothes when you went outdoors. Your blood gets thick. It's the land of 10,000 lakes – lot of hunting and fishing. Indian country, Ojibwe, Chippewa, Lakota, birch trees, open pit mines, bears and wolves – the air is raw. Southern Minnesota is farming country, wheat fields and hay stacks, lots of corn fields, horses and milk cows. In the north it's more hardscrabble. It's a rugged environment – people lead simple lives, but they lead simple lives in other parts of the country too. People are pretty much the same wherever you go. There is good and bad in most people, doesn't matter what state you live in. Some people are more self-sufficient than other places – some more secure, some less secure – some people mind their own business, some don't.
He also called Duluth "a dark place, even in the light of day – curfews, gloomy, lonely, all that sort of stuff." He added that when he arrived in the Twin Cities, they were "rock and roll towns. I didn't know that. I thought the only rock and roll towns were Memphis and Shreveport."
