1981 Dylan Interview

Here’s a little excerpt from a 1981 Bob Dylan interview:

Herman: And you quoted him in a Playboy interview a few years ago, … You said Henry Miller said that the role of an artist is to inoculate the world with disillusion.

Dylan: Yeah.

Herman: Is that what you try to do with your work?

Dylan: No. I don’t consciously try to inoculate anybody. I just have to hope there’s some kind of way this music that I’ve always played is a healing kind of music. I mean if it isn’t I don’t wanna do it. Because there’s enough stuff, so-called music, out there, which is sick music. It’s just sick. It’s made by sick people and it’s played to sick people to further a whole world of sickness. Now, that’s not only true of music, this is true in film industry, it’s true in the magazine industry. You know it caters to people’s sickness. There’s a lot of that. And if I can do something that is telling people or … hoping anyway that .. whatever their sickness is, and we’re all sick, whatever it is, you can be healed and well and set straight. Well if I can’t do that, I’d as soon be on a boat, you know I’d as soon be off hiking through the woods.

Update: November 2009 interview

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