The times they are a-changin’. Indeed. Bob Dylan, the voice of a generation, knows where his generation is nowadays.
According to the New York Post, Dylan sought out AARP magazine as the place to launch hi latest album.
“They sought us out,” said AARP Magazine editor Bob Love. At first, it may have seemed like a mistake. Love had spent 20 years at Rolling Stone before heading to AARP.
“I said, you realize I am not with Rolling Stone anymore?” said Love.
Apparently there was no mistake. Bob Dylan wanted to give away 50,000 copies of his new CD, called “Shadows in the Night” to random AARP magazine subscribers. The magazine has a circulation of 22 million.
The new Dylan CD is full of covers of Frank Sinatra songs. Love asked Dylan if he thought that doing that was “risky.”
“Risky? Like walking across a field laced with land mines? Or working in a poison gas factory? There’s nothing risky about making records. Comparing me with Frank Sinatra? You must be joking. To be mentioned in the same breath as him must be some sort of high compliment. As far as touching him goes, nobody touches him. Not me or anyone else.”
Dylan had his opinions about the history of popular music in the United States, particularly how the industry responded to the influence of black musicians in the early days.
“When they finally recognized what it was, they had to dismantle it, which they did, starting with payola scandals,” Dylan said. “The black element was turned into soul music, and the white element was turned into English pop.”
“When I first heard Chuck Berry, I didn’t consider that he was black. I thought he was a white hillbilly. Little did I know, he was a great poet, too. And there must have been some elitist power that had to get rid of all these guys, to strike down rock ’n’ roll for what it was and what it represented — not least of all it being a black-and-white thing.”
