Foto: David Bowie by Christof Graf

…. This is an ode to the folk singer, Bob Dylan. It includes the lyric: „Now hear this Robert Zimmerman, though I don’t suppose we’ll meet.“ Funnily enough, Bowie would go on to meet Dylan multiple times throughout the 70s and 80s, though Dylan was reportedly rude to Bowie and according to one biographer, Dylan told Bowie that he hated his Young Americans album!

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Nevertheless, David Bowie called Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen as two among 29 musicians, he was inspired by.

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In einem PLAYBOW-Interview aus dem Jahre 1976 erzählte Bowie:

PLAYBOY: You’re not noted for cordial relationships with other artists. Yet there was the rumor that you flew to Europe to spend a sabbatical with Bob Dylan. What about it?

 

BOWIE: That’s a beaut. I haven’t even left this bloody country in years. I saw Dylan in New York seven, eight months ago. We don’t have a lot to talk about. We’re not great friends. Actually, I think he hates me.

 

PLAYBOY: Under what circumstances did you meet?

 

BOWIE: Very bad ones. We went back to somebody’s house after some gig at a club. We had all gone to see someone. I can’t remember who, and Dylan was there. I was in a very, sort of…verbose frame of mind. And I just talked at him for hours and hours and hours, and whether I amused him or scared him or repulsed him, I really don’t know. I didn’t wait for any answers. I just went on and on about everything. And then I said goodnight. He never phoned me.

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20 Jahre später gab Bowie im Hamburger Atlantic-Hotel ein Interview anlässlich des „Earthling-Albums“, in dem der Interviewer auch auf Dylan zu sprechen kam. Es war kurz nach der Meldung, Dylan hätte ernsthafte gesundheitliche Probleme:

… [interrupts] out of the hospital. Someone told me the breaking news just minutes ago. I have to admit I was nervous about his recent state of health. But everything should be OK by now.

 

You are a man who has continued to rediscover himself and his music. In this sense you are similar to Bob Dylan.

 

His comeback since the beginning of the nineties is simply spectacular and this positive tendency will continue, of this I am quite sure. His albums have a great class to them, even those albums where he is actually playing songs of long-dead blues singers. His writing, his song texts, leave me speechless. To a certain extent it’s a disadvantage for him that in certain circles today it’s not exactly fashionable to listen to Bob Dylan.

 

Do you really think that something like that bothers someone like Dylan?

 

No, I don’t think so. I am actually pretty sure that he is totally immersed in what he does. I mean, if he writes, then he writes. That means that when he writes, he writes for himself. And not for anyone else. I’ve also experienced that if you have an audience, then you have an audience. If you don’t have one, then you don’t have one. But when you have a task, a goal, something that you can lose yourself in, then you just do it. Then one isn’t really interested in being popular with one’s audience. Dylan is a writer in the original sense of the word: you write, but you’re not a supplier for consumers. Period. End.

 

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im Verlaufe des Interviews wird nochmals auf Dylan eingegangen:

If we can come back to Bob Dylan once more, his texts and his music, indeed his entire presence, has become more serious or one could even say more religious or more spiritual, without having needed to produce explicitly religious albums…

 

You’re right there, even if Bob Dylan has always had a very strongly developed sense for the metaphysical. I am furthermore of the opinion that he has from the very beginning been on a spiritual search that has consumed his entire energy and given his whole being and his work such a philosophical dimension. I can only too well understand that throughout this search he has encountered different religious structures that he has absorbed into himself and which have at different times flowed into his work. One of the forces that have always driven me both as an artist and as a private person has been the search for a reason—a rational, comprehensible reason for my existence. That is an intensely deep type of quest that forcibly leads one into a religious-spiritual examination of oneself. What I actually want to say is the following: if one sees this spiritual search for meaning as one’s mission in life, as Bob Dylan does, then it can turn into an obsession that, on the other hand, might take away the innocence one had before when one led a more unassuming, naïve and unburdened life. In other words, one perhaps isn’t as influenced by television and other fast moving things as one was previously. These are the important questions. That’s exactly how I see things as well and I’d like to emphasise that. I find much more pleasure in this self-examination than I do in other things.

 

The reason that I persist is that I have the feeling that there are a large number of similarities between yourself and Bob Dylan and that there is possibly some kind of even deeper level of respect between you two than is usually the case. Both of you have enriched musical history in several genres. Not very many musicians have so much creative drive! Another similarity between you and Dylan is that you are both very popular. A great deal of people would recognise you or Bob Dylan on the street. That surely has an effect, or not really?

 

You’re totally right, but there is a third similarity between us both: we actually have never sold that many records. For both of us it is the case that our work, our songs, are much more well known than would be usual relative to the number of recordings we have sold. I find that strange and noteworthy at the same time. We have both written songs that are extremely well known around the world, but hardly anyone has them on record at home. That is really unusual. That might be because we have both been far more occupied in our lives with changing things, exploring the textures of music and finding out exactly what music is capable of doing rather than simply writing songs and then sitting back comfortably and attaching ourselves to this or that trend. I’d go so far as to say that our task was and still is to explore the depths of music and to alter the shape of music. Bob Dylan has said about himself that he “was chosen to be a performer”. I think that says everything. We have changed and expanded the vocabulary of music and we have thrown new facets into the great big pot of musical history. And the songs we have written can be considered as the proverbial splinters that fall when wood must be chopped. I suspect that the majority of people out there would also see it that way: they have watched on with interest at our experiments but have preferred to buy the songs of other artists who have set about turning the results of our research into more refined forms.

 

In this way you are characterizing your songs and the songs of Bob Dylan as a kind of common property?

 

Yes, it appears that way to me. Having said that, it fills me with a sheer unfathomable happiness that it is that way. I am not complaining. I have a great sense of joy for example when I see or hear bands out there and I notice that they consciously or unconsciously are adapting things that I was the first to do so many years ago. That’s when one has the sweet realisation that one has changed music. That is immensely satisfying, having such a feeling. That all being well, this feeling of happiness hasn’t helped me in the slightest to answer the questions that I carry around with me. I sometimes get the impression that in this regard I haven’t taken a step forward since I was 19.

Quelle:

 http://www.electronicbeats.net/from-the-vaults-david-bowie-i-am-he-who-quotes-i-am-the-sponge-that-absorbs/

Über Cohen liess sich Bowie nie derart speziell aus, In einem Interview aus dem Jahre 1996 anlässlich des Bizarre-Festival in Offenbach mit mir nannte er ihn zumindest als „erinflussreicher Songwriter“ unserer Zeit“., neben Bob Dylan.