Iggy Pop on Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ (1965)

What else in hell should be so great about the USA, other than this music?

When this album got released, I listened to it over and over and over again. I can still sing along to songs like It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) und Subterranean Homesick Blues. Back then, I sat in front of the turntable and learned them word by word. It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue is such a beautiful ballad, Them have once done a very atmospheric cover of that song. While Mr. Tambourine Man never has been my favorite song. Even if you love an artist, from time to time you can say with good conscience: that’s not for me. Outlaw Blues was another song that always sounded to me like Dylan had to fill another three minutes on the album. But the other stuff- simply awesome! This non-chalance! Dylan didn’t polish his tracks too much.

Of course, the record is very famous because it marks his way to the electric guitar. I have seen him on tour back then, in autumn 1965 he came to Detroit. At the first half of the evening he stood there with his acoustic guitar, for about an hour. It was absolutely magical, he played songs from this record and earlier stuff. Then he left the stage, and when he came back, he was wearing a Beatles suit and winklepickers- and a Fender Stratocaster. He made a real show out of his return to the stage: he walked backwards, jumped up and turned around within the move, and then instantly started to play. He was joined by Mike Bloomfield and his backing band The Hawks, which later became famous as The Band. How damned good they were! They produced a fat sound, and while they were playing, bearded men in the audience roared: “Cut the shit, Bob! Play folk!” It drove some people really angry, but I thought it was fantastic.

Bob showed me that you can make things differently in rock music, and that was a true revelation. A few months ago I had seen the Beach Boys at the very same place. They had impressed me so much, that I immediately bought the same shirt that they were wearing. But they hadn’t given me any hope that I could ever be like them- I knew that I would never sing as high and clear, let alone understand anything about diminished 9-chords or such stuff. But Bob Dylan, The Stones or The Kingsmen made me think: Okay, why don’t I do something like that, maybe just a little more simple?

Dylan of course has not just paved the way for me, but also for other rock-greats like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. The Stones also got inspired by him in their song-writing. Dylan and the Beatles were also the ones who drove Elvis crazy because he found no connection to their youth movements anymore, so that he wrote a letter to President Nixon in 1970. The letter read something like: “Mr. President, I think I should come to the White House, so that we can talk about how to protect America’s youth from this music that ruins our country.”

I’ve been loyal to Dylan over the years. Even when I didn’t like an album that much, I still always discovered at least one song on it that I really liked. On one of his Nashville albums, which I keep confusing, there is this one great song- The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest. Or Tangled Up In Blue, that was fantastic. By now he also should have recorded American standarts in the volume of four or five full records. Everything that I hear from him in this style is sublime. He can adopt a standart and make it his own. He developed into a really convincing, authentic American.

If you want to be succesful in American music business, you have to be able to commit yourself to American music in one way or the other. That’s why the Stones record a Blues track every now and then, and put certain songs on their setlist. What else in hell should be so great about the USA, other than this music? The better films come from France, the better drugs and scientists from Germany- pharmaceutical companies like Bayer and Merck gave the world methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin, the great drugs of the 20^th century. And the Russians are at least more scary. No, the only really great thing about America is the music, which is really extraordinary.

by Iggy Pop

(Read about other artists’ album choices and reviews here)

(In collaboration with the German MINT Magazin, print edition published in MINT No. 30 – 08/19. Photo: Mary Beth Koeth)