The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [2]
Reading over this collection, I’m struck by how many intimate moments our subjects chose to share with us, and with our readers: Jack Nicholson recalling the moment he learned the woman he thought was his sister was in fact his mother; Axl Rose sharing his recovered memories of child abuse; Robin Williams sitting for an interview just months after the death of his father and discussing the end of his first marriage; Courtney Love talking with David Fricke less than six months after the suicide of her husband, Kurt Cobain. (“If I start to cry,” she told Fricke, “I will probably get up and leave the room. Don’t be offended.” Except that when she did start to cry, she just kept talking.)
Though he has a reputation as reticent, Bob Dylan has proved one of our most rewarding interview subjects. I remember how hard I worked to land a Dylan interview when the magazine started. He had little interest in talking with the press, and I wrote to him for nearly two years asking for a meeting. On a trip to New York in 1969, I returned to my hotel and found a phone message that a “Mr. Dillon” had called. I thought I’d missed my chance, but a few months later, I was back in New York and there was a knock at the door. I opened it to find Dylan in the hallway. He’d come to check me out, and when he was comfortable enough, we began Dylan’s first Rolling Stone Interview. Over the years, as Dylan changed masks and passions again and again, we’ve sent numerous writers to talk with him, always striving to find the right match for what was going on in his life and career. Among the best were a pair of 1978 interviews with Jonathan Cott, full of mysticism, and a frank sit-down with Kurt Loder in 1984 at the time of Infidels. (You can find them in a collection we put together in 2006, Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, from Wenner Books.) The interview we’ve chosen here was conducted in 2001 by Mikal Gilmore after the release of “Love & Theft,” an album that stood with Dylan’s best work of the sixties. The interview is filled with the remarkable perspective (to say nothing of the clear, ringing language) that Dylan would bring to his autobiography, Chronicles, three years later: “Every one of the records I’ve made has emanated from the entire panorama of what America is to me. America, to me, is a rising tide that lifts all ships, and I’ve never really sought inspiration from other types of music.”
A similar perspective graces the interviews with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Keith has long been a favorite assignment for Rolling Stone writers because he’s one of rock’s great raconteurs. In 2002, as the Stones celebrated their fortieth year, he talked with David Fricke about longevity and mortality: “We’re fighting people’s misconceptions about what rock & roll is supposed to be. You’re supposed to do it when you’re twenty, twenty-five—as if you’re a tennis player and you have three hip surgeries and you’re done. We play rock & roll because it’s what turned us on. Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf—the idea of retiring was ludicrous to them. You keep going—and why not?”
Mick, on the other hand, does not relish interviews. He’s reluctant to look back, to be introspective or too self-involved. In 1994, though, he agreed to sit for a long interview, which we both saw as an opportunity to set it all down as a matter of history. It took over a year to put together. I joined him at tour stops