Bob CollinsIn the event you weren’t feeling old enough, Bob Dylan has given his first interview in more than three years — to the AARP Magazine.
Dylan will be on the cover of next month’s magazine but the AARP posted some excerpts of the interview today. Unsurprisingly, most of the interview is about the music.
But Dylan talking about aging is as jarring as his going electric at Newport in ’65.
Look, you get older. Passion is a young man’s game. Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise. I mean, you’re around awhile, you leave certain things to the young. Don’t try to act like you’re young. You could really hurt yourself.
Dylan is 73 now. He’s a great grandfather.
And he still nails his views on life as well as he did when he was a kid.
OK, a lot of people say there is no happiness in this life and certainly there’s no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Just because you’re satisfied one moment — saying yes, it’s a good meal, makes me happy — well, that’s not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner, you know? Really, time is your soul mate. I’m not exactly sure what happiness even means, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if I personally could define it.
As for you whippersnappers maybe finding his new album of old music “corny” …
You tell me. I don’t know why they would, but what’s the word “corny” mean exactly? These songs are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are. People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it — everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life. These songs are anything but that.
Apparently, the interview with former Rolling Stone writer Robert Love (now the AARP Magazine’s editor in chief) is the only interview he’s going to give about his new album of old-time standards.
