Paul Williams Interview from Homer, the slut #10
Part One

The following interview with Paul Williams took place - (in a Dylan/Nelson fashion?) - via fax. (September 1993) The only omissions are concerned with the details of sending/receiving via the faxes.

Why Write

AM Let's start with the basics: Why write? What was the first thing you remember writing, and can you remember how it felt when you'd finished it?

PW I was always inclined towards writing and publishing, not sure why, put out my first dittoed newspaper (The Sunlight Herald) when I was barely eight years old, and was already pegged as a future professional writer when I graduated from sixth grade. It's the form of expression that made itself available to me--no good at art, no aptitude for acting or music (I took guitar lessons from Spider John Koerner for a few weeks)--I got good feedback for my efforts, attention and praise from adults (and even peers sometimes), and I'm sure that was a big factor. I remember in high school once formulating some idea about the purpose in life being experience, digestion, and expression, and I do think for those of us who produce work in the creative or communicative fields there is a kind of compulsion about expression, a need not just for attention (although that's certainly part of it) but for getting these feelings and thoughts out, as in that Dylan line I quote so much, "I might go insane if it couldn't be sprung." And then after awhile (or maybe right from the start) it becomes a companion, also, someone to talk to and in a funny sense someone to listen to too, writers are kept company by their own writing voices, a voice most of 'em don't hear I think except when they're in the act. I know that even now I get uncomfortable if kept from the act of writing for too long (how long "too long" is depends a lot on whether I have a particular project that's percolating or that I'm in the middle of). Irritable, out of sorts, no fun to be around. So I write for a lot of reasons, but perhaps the strongest of these is that, once engaged, I'm driven to by some internal demon. This need is more basic and real than any highfaluting "purpose" I might dream up.

AM OK, so why Dylan in particular and rock music in general?

PW Well, circumstances directed me towards being someone who writes about music (combined with a keen interest and natural enthusiasm), insofar as my "rock and roll magazine" came along at the right time and got an enthusiastic reception...it was too much fun for me to stop doing it, and what's more it gave me a sense of purpose and identity at a time when I greatly needed one. But then I drifted away from music writing, and eventually came back to it, not through circumstances this time primarily but, again, an inner need, in a sense I invented a language in order to do this work, and it's a language that happens to work well for me, I can talk about all sorts of things that matter to me in the course of writing about music in my particular way. As for Dylan in particular, I first listened to Dylan in August 1963 (was thrilled by 'Davey Moore' at a Pete Seeger concert a month earlier however) and first saw him perform in October 1963, when I was 15. The first time I remember writing about him or about music for that matter was a long track-by-track review (got my basic style right at the beginning) of Bringing It All Back Home written in the spring of 1965. I turned it in as a creative writing assignment and got scorn from my English teacher (I think he made me write something else); I remember I also gave a copy of the piece to Larry McCombs, a friend of mine from science fiction fandom who had started a folk music fanzine called Folkin' Around. He didn't publish the review, but I was soon doing a (mostly white blues) column for him called Not Fade Away, and had one of the thrills of my young life when my first column, a long review of Snaker's Here, elicited an enthusiastic and supportive letter from my hero, Dave "Snaker" Ray.

Dylan's key role in my development as a music writer can also be seen in the fact that the earliest piece of music writing I did that really felt successful to me, the moment where I felt I found my voice (and, therefore, the earliest piece in my collection Outlaw Blues), was the cover story of Crawdaddy! 4, my July 1966 essay about Blonde on Blonde entitled Understanding Dylan. Like my later piece Dylan--What Happened?, this title was meant to reflect the need or question I felt coming from other people--in a sense my intention was to elucidate why "understanding" Dylan was beside the point. Anyway, that piece was some kind of breakthrough, for the first time I really felt good about my music writing as writing. And the piece was well received. It was reprinted in Hit Parader and as the introduction to a Dylan songbook. People were responding to me like I had something to say that wasn't necessarily being said somewhere else. Most encouraging. That article also kept Crawdaddy! alive, because I was broke and not too motivated by the response to the magazine up to that point, and then with $100 I earned by writing a "bio" for Simon & Garfunkel, I mimeographed the fourth issue of Crawdaddy! on a friend's mimeo, with a printed cover (Dylan photo with bass guitar from the "Sooner or Later" ad in Billboard I think, later used in a Fender ad), and a couple of acquaintances hitch-hiked with me to the Newport Folk Festival (I was living in Cambridge Mass), we slept on the ground and sold copies of Crawdaddy! at 25 cents apiece and managed to sell 400 copies or so that weekend. And I met Jac Holzman of Elektra who liked the magazine and took out an ad in the next issue. So I was stoked, and Crawdaddy! was off and running, and I knew at the time that it was mostly because we had Dylan on the cover at the right moment.

AM And so...

PW Um, as for your question, well, Dylan because I loved his music and found I had a lot to say about it. That really hasn't changed over the years. I'm thinking of putting together a collection of my Dylan essays, including Dylan--What Happened? and the Crawdaddy! pieces and other reviews and articles I've written over the years, maybe it'll give me a little breathing room because I don't want to start on Volume 3 of Performing Artist yet. Dylan inspires me, there's always a mystery in the quality of his work and in the impact it has on me and others. The same might be true for someone writing about Duke Ellington or Beethoven or Van Gogh or Shakespeare or Martha Graham, you find yourself writing about the nature of art and that means the nature of human experience, it's a good subject I think. As good as baseball or royalty or whatever else there is to write about.

And rock music--you know, it could be jazz, but in my case rock and roll or whatever you want to call it is the music I know and have focused my attention on. There's a lot to say about it, as long as I stick to what really moves and inspires me, and try to listen deeply before I write ("know my song well...").

AM The story of Crawdaddy! is pretty well known, you document its genesis very well in Heart of Gold (pp61-62, WCS books paperback)

And something else - it wasn't just love for the music - I wanted to start a magazine. And I'd read in a (sf) "fanzine"....that what you need most of all is a subject that a lot of people are into that nobody is doing a magazine about. I read that & believed it & even mentioned it to some people in Cambridge in the summer of '65 before I went to Swarthmore, when a folk music paper called Broadside was the best-read publication in town, that somebody ought to start a magazine about rock 'n' roll. I couldn't do it 'cause I was about to go off to college and get involved in that, but whoever did pick up the idea would meet with certain success.

The common question from this is normally along the lines off: 'Was the phenomenal success of Rolling Stone just outside your grasp here because you elected to go to college? I must admit, though, that I'm more intrigued by the first sentence in that passage from Heart Of Gold. It reads as though the primary aim was to start a magazine, its subject secondary.

PW I started Crawdaddy! at the end of my first semester of college, and never finished the second semester, so it wasn't a matter of college getting in my way. And it's true that starting Crawdaddy! was a reflection of my interest in publishing a magazine more or less equally with my enthusiasm for the music. The two things came together for me at that point and really couldn't be separated--wow, here's this exciting thing I could do, like I had a vision and started chasing after it. And at first I was floundering around, writing reviews of singles that tried to predict whether the song would be a hit or not, because I'd been reading the trade magazines I guess.

It took a while to find out what Crawdaddy! wanted to be--really it was the Dylan article in #4 that gave me the clue. And the news column, which I think started in #5. But my ambition was not to make money or to be famous--my ambition was to play, to be a part of things. Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, which came along in Nov. 67 (Crawdaddy! started in January 66), definitely had an ambition to create the new Time or Newsweek, and so from the beginning he was headed in a somewhat different direction. My impulses were more along the lines of the underground press, I admired the San Francisco Oracle and Boston's Avatar, by 1967 I was smoking grass and taking LSD and taking part in political demonstrations just like the musicians and the people listening to the music. I wasn't really a business person. I had to be to keep the magazine going, and it was tough (I was 17 when I started it), and I did it poorly but just well enough to always get the next issue out somehow.

Anyway, I would never have had Rolling Stone's success even if I'd wanted it, because that was a reflection of a special gift or talent that Jann Wenner had and has that I don't have, having to do with business and running a magazine and tapping into what the public will buy etc. Just something different than what I was up to. I was a natural hippie. I wanted to be a part of whatever was exciting and important to me, I wanted to write my own way and publish people whose writing excited me, even when it irritated and alienated much of the readership.

AM Can you remember the buzz when the first issue of Crawdaddy! came out? Whilst we're on the subject, what was the reason for resurrecting Crawdaddy!? And is the buzz the same?

PW The new Crawdaddy! is more similar to the original than I realized when I first started it. Basically, I started Crawdaddy! again because I felt like writing a really long piece about R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People and I couldn't think of anywhere to get it published. It sounded like fun and I convinced myself it might help publicize my new book (Rock and Roll: The 100 Best Singles) and next thing I knew I'd announced it in the last issue of the PKDS Newsletter and was writing an essay about six albums I'd been listening to, including R.E.M. and Good As I Been to You. And right away, even before I put out the first issue, the response I got was encouraging and surprising, basically along the lines of "we've needed something like this." So I began to realize that diving into the personal impact of a new album and really talking about it apart from the never-ending business of music is something that isn't done much, and really it's just what I set out to do and did do with Crawdaddy! the first time around. The idea I had then was that these new records coming out were something that people like me felt very connected to, and by writing about them one had the opportunity to write in a very intense and personal way and hold people's attention because there was a common interest uniting us, the reader is also listening to the new Dylan album or (in 1966) Beatles album or Jefferson Airplane album and is interested in what someone else feels when they hear it. I saw it as a pre-existing community of listeners that could be tapped into, and the possibility of building bridges, breaking through the solitariness of listening to a record and letting people know that someone else was also having these intense experiences.

In 1966 there was no publication in the U.S. that wrote about new rock music "seriously," that is as something important to our lives. What's surprising to me is that now that rock journalism is a big established business, there's still something missing, still a funny kind of a gap that allows my particular way of writing to find a niche. It doesn't mean the new Crawdaddy! is going to be big in any sense--my intention is to keep the same scruffy format, no ads, stapled pages, no longer than 14 pages most of the time, mostly written by me. I have about 500 subscriptions now and would be thrilled to see that grow...I know there are enough interested readers out there so that I could have a few thousand subscriptions, and that would really work out. Right now I'm not sure how to reach those people, or even how to make sure the present subscribers renew, but anyway the challenge is to stick to my vision, once again, and not try to write what I think the audience wants. I do get the occasional letter from readers that indicates that there's something going on here that really connects for them.

AM On a personal note, my first contact with your name, with your editorship, was in another context altogether. I was in London (for the Wembley 84 show, I suspect) and I heard about a Philip K. Dick Appreciation Society from my good friend Dave Wingrove. Would you mind telling us a bit about how that got started.

PW The Philip K. Dick Society and its Newsletter were started in 1983, the year after Dick died, as a way to make contact with his readers, give them information about newly published books and thus help make it possible for small presses to publish those books (by creating a reachable market), provide a visible place for people to get in touch with the Estate, lay the groundwork for publication of Dick's letters and unpublished novels, provide information to people who would promote Dick's work by writing about him in the press or elsewhere etc. I came up with the idea and proposed it to the Estate, run by Dick's daughter Laura, and she hired me as Literary Executor to publish the Newsletter and serve as a consultant and co-ordinator of posthumous publications and spin-offs (operas, plays, etc).

AM Do you see many parallels between Dick and Dylan? I love both of them so much but, other than that they both work in genres that are considered "low brow" and have created the most compelling art and asked the most serious questions, I don't really feel a strong connection.

PW I don't necessarily see a lot of parallels between Dick and Dylan, though I'm sure people could come up with some. For me they're just artists whose work has touched me deeply and continues to connect for me, so much so that I've ended up writing about them and have at this point become identified as a sort of "expert" on the person's work. I'd rather be a fan than an expert, though.

Direct Dylan

AM Can you tell us what you remember feeling about hearing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ for the first time - in a Manhattan Police Station! (As referred to in Heart Of Gold)?

PW I wasn't actually hearing ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ for the first time in that police station, it was already a hit at that point, but it was certainly an experience of having it reach out to me in strange circumstances. I don't actually remember the first time I heard it-- maybe on the radio in incomplete form, and then I bought a copy of the single the day it arrived in the store.

AM You write at length in Heart Of Gold of the way Hard Rain was dismissed and the tragedy of an audience only wanting old reality and growing deaf to the vigorous, innovative artist. This struck me most forcibly when that show was broadcast in the UK. I remember watching it with my parents who had to get out of bed to see it, but were pretty impressed. I remember the power, the fun and the sheer quality of the music. There was a glorious sound on that day. Next day I remember the newspapers panning the show and pillorying Dylan. This was my first experience of this. I would say that most Dylan fans, at least, would acclaim the album's virtues now, but do you think there are any albums currently suffering from "deaf ears" from a "generation clinging desperately to old truths"?

PW I had some big arguments with other rock writers and Dylan fans about Hard Rain (record and TV film) when it came out. People couldn't hear the merit of the sound Dylan and the band had created, the innovative musical ideas, the intensity of the performance. Some people still can't, of course. As for currently underrated Dylan albums, it depends on who we're talking about. All Dylan albums since Blood are underrated by the public in general, and even by many people who would still call themselves Dylan fans. Even Oh Mercy and The Bootleg Series have been heard by only a small fragment of their potential audience, I mean people who would love them if they listened a few times in the right frame of mind. As for among us fans, everyone has different favorites, and even while people criticize me for being too positive about too much of Dylan's work, they'll still shake their heads at my seeming lack of appreciation for Street-Legal or New Morning. There is no absolute truth here, obviously; it's a matter of taste and personal preference (but needless to say, I was delighted by Paula Radice's comments on ‘Where Are You Tonight?’ in Homer 9. At least I know I'm not crazy, or not alone in my craziness). In general, I think the kind of Dylan fans who read Homer and the other zines have learned to listen to Dylan in a way that makes them fairly open to new sounds and ventures on his part--to the extent that we realize that even when we have a negative reaction to something at first, we may end up liking it a lot once it breaks through our defenses. See my praise of the "long endings" (sometimes they're a mess, but other times they can be truly transcendent) of '92-'93, in On the Tracks #1.

AM Is there a danger of this being used as an excuse for poor quality output? ( The 'No-one likes it but that's because Bob is so far ahead of the game it takes years before he's properly appreciated' syndrome?)

PW Certainly the "Bob can do no wrong" state of mind can lead to another kind of deafness on the part of us, his fans. But judgment as a way of life is overrated. I don't care for Budokan and don't think it represents Dylan very well, but I have to acknowledge the listener who chooses to listen to it carefully and with fresh ears and who is as a result genuinely moved by what he or she hears. Even bad Picasso is full of interest and resonance for a student and fan of Picasso's oeuvre. After a while who knows what "good" and "bad" really mean? In my books I try to distinguish what I truly recognize as great work from other stuff that maybe is very good, maybe is pretty bad, maybe is brilliant but I can't hear it or haven't yet. In other words, I try to tell the truth about what I hear, which requires that I listen with an open mind, and, if I'm writing about something, usually I have to listen a lot, and at a time when I'm able to give my attention to what I'm hearing. I don't like to have music going in the background, actually. I probably listen to music a lot less than many of my readers. One of the great things about this job, writing about music I like, is that it gives me an excuse to spend some time listening intently, to really dive into a particular song or album or tape or concert tour. And finally I can't write about a record, or a concert tape, with any energy or conviction or even much intelligence, unless I find myself truly moved by it at the present moment in a deep and immediate way. So the question of whether something is "good" or "bad" is mostly a confusing one. One thing I keep in mind is that I have often disliked things only to learn to appreciate them at another time, which means anytime I'm negative about something it could well be my ignorance speaking. I'm on much safer ground when I write about what I truly like. That doesn't change, or if it does it's not so much that I was "wrong" as that my situation or tastes have altered. But hopefully what I wrote when I was feeling that enthusiasm continues to have truth and insight in it. (I did try to rekindle my enthusiasm for the early Jefferson Airplane stuff recently, without success, except that Volunteers still strikes me as an excellent album.)

AM You are known for being a great enthusiast, are there any areas of Dylan's work that you heartily dislike?

PW The difficult thing is that we can be righteous and criticize Dylan (or anyone) for sloppy work, say, and be right in one sense, and yet a broader view may well indicate that that sloppiness also is what makes possible so much of the greatness of this particular artist. Another Side of Bob Dylan is a very flawed record, really. But it isn't a bad record. It's wonderful. I certainly wouldn't want it not to have been recorded or released. And to talk of him recording it "better" is so hypothetical as to be almost meaningless. And in the end we'll probably have to say something similar about Down in the Groove--it's not wonderful, but it has some wonderful moments, and if it hadn't been recorded those moments would not be available to us. And if Dylan censored his impulse to record, say, ‘Silvio’, that willingness to censor and be self-critical might also deny us ‘Blind Willie McTell’ or ‘Good As I Been to You’ or ‘Series of Dreams’. Because for the artist these are not rational matters, I think, but emotional. They have to do with one's relationship with oneself, and with the muse.

AM I remember reading that Dylan was delighted with What Happened? and gave some out as Christmas presents. What do you know about that?

PW Shortly after Dylan-What Happened? was published, Barbara Moldt from Dylan's office in Santa Monica called me and arranged to buy 17 copies. I figured that was for the attorneys, since I hadn't asked permission to quote lyrics. Then a few weeks later she called back and ordered another 100 copies. I knew Dylan didn't have that many attorneys, so that was when I began to think he might have found some value in the book. What he did with them, if anything, I don't know, but I do know he encouraged Howard Alk to read the book. And a year later, Dylan's Warfield stand in November 1980, Dylan did let me know during our conversations backstage that he was impressed by certain aspects of the book and that it had meant a lot to him. He never said this very directly, of course, and when he read One Year Later he regretted (I have this from Howard) having encouraged me at all. And I would agree that One Year Later is compromised in a sense by my awareness that Dylan would read it, so that I found myself perhaps talking to him instead of to my usual imaginary listener. Writing Dylan essays to be read by Dylan is not a good idea. You (or anyway I) end up sounding like his mother, or somebody's mother. ("Don't forget your galoshes! Why didn't you release ‘Blind Willie McTell?")

AM You talk of meeting Dylan in 1980, how many times have you met him and which was the most interesting meeting?

PW I met Dylan on February 24, 1966, and talked with him for a few hours in his hotel room in Philadelphia (he had his people invite me after reading the first two issues of Crawdaddy!, which I'd sent to the theater); I was his guest backstage that night and the next night. The next time we met was at the Warfield, Nov. 10, 1980, backstage after the show; I was able to spend time with him (several hours each night, though of course there were other people hanging out as well) for a total of four evenings during that set of concerts. He told me about ‘Caribbean Wind’ when we spoke the first night, and later said if I wanted to hear anything particular I could call his valet Bob Meyers before the show on a day when I was going to be there, and make my request. So I did, on November 12th, and of course I requested ‘Caribbean Wind’. The other particularly memorable moment (still can't remember all the best things he said, actually) that week was when he read me the lyrics of ‘Every Grain of Sand’. The next and only other time I saw him was a quick hello and handshake backstage (between the bus and the building, actually) at Shoreline, June 1988.

Direct Homer

AM What is your favourite part of Homer?

PW My favorite part is probably Focus On, which can be a lot of fun and quite stimulating as well.

AM What is your least favourite part of Homer?

PW My least favorite? Nothing comes to mind, except that it embarrasses and frustrates me that I don't get around to reading all of it (same with The Telegraph), not because I don't want to but because I'm always distracted by something, like giving long-winded responses to interview questions. Oh well. But don't make it shorter on my behalf.

AM What would you like to see Homer start covering/doing?

PW In fact, I have no special requests because what I like especially about Homer is its idiosyncratic nature, its originality, its willingness to follow the editor's impulses and be a large, energetic, enthusiastic mess. Very soulful. Keep on as long as you are so moved. I appreciate the letter column, and the clippings, and Michael Gray...a table of contents and continuous numbering would be nice, but it wouldn't be Homer, would it?
AM Er, well, no! Let's move on to something else, shall we?

On another plane entirely

AM In Heart of Gold you ask:

"And isn't that at least one of the places where dead people live - in the memories of their friends? Maybe "the spirit world" is just another name for the collective unconscious."

In the one long and serious discussion I've had with Joe McShane (you may have seen photos of him in the last issue) he answered my complete lack of belief in life after death by stating that such memories constitute a person's "spirit" - it is the one definition I've ever heard that I could acquiesce to. On the other hand, I'd just call it "people's memories" where you (and he) I suspect mean something more. Any comments?

PW Uh, the collective unconscious, whatever it is, is something other than "people's memories" for sure. Or it's unconcious memories, but that creates a very broad field, which as the word "collective" suggests is in some way "out there" rather than in here. If ya wanna be scientific, those memories are in the DNA, but I think there's more to it than that (well of course there is, like art, music, history etc, but more than that too), and even in terms of DNA I think Sheldrake's morphogenic fields or whatever point in the direction of something that exists and influences outside of or beyond just the DNA that's in your or my particular cells. We are part of a fabric. What this has to do with life after death, or even life before death, is open to endless late-night speculation after a few beers or a joint, right? I sure loved 'Hard Times' and 'Emotionally Yours' and 'God Knows' in Portland a couple of weeks ago...

End of part one

AM I'm going to conclude part one of the interview here; part two concentrates on The Performing Artist books. If you think this is a shameless attempt to force those who are due to renew their subscriptions to do so pronto, well just let me tell you that ....er, you could well be right.