How To Fabricate Bob: The Fake Spitoutyourgum Interview

I'm sure by now everybody's heard about Jonah Lehrer, the writer who got busted fabricating quotes from Bob Dylan for a book about creativity. The irony is of course multi-leveled. To fabricate quotes from the master fabricator about creativity, while somehow being blind to the fact that in this world a few score people seem to dedicate their lives to poring over every word Dylan utters, or allegedly utters, is flat out dumb. What really irks me about all of this is that the purported quotes, in addition to those poorly cut and pasted from famous Bob musings over the years, are so mundane and uncreative. Any quick perusal of a couple interviews with Bob reveals anything but the mundane. Bob's answers to the same old questions are full of red herrings, obfuscations, verbose shaggy dog meanderings, and not a little seemingly spontaneous poetry. If you're going to make up quotes from Bob, do the man justice and have some fun with the language. Instead, Lehrer has Bob saying this stupid nonsense when supposedly asked about creativity: "It's a hard thing to describe. It's just this sense that you got something to say." Huey Lewis, okay, but not Bob Dylan.

What follows, then, is a truly fabricated interview with Bob Dylan, with enough Bobesque bon mots for lazy writers to fill up several tomes. If Bob didn't say these things (and I can't swear that he didn't anymore than I can swear that he did), he should have, or, much more likely than the quote (sic) above, could have.

"Escargot," he answers when I ask, incredulously, "Bob? Is it really you?" We sit side by side in cars pulled to the side in that no-man's-land in the McDonalds parking lot where they tell you to wait while they process your complex drive-thru order. At first I hadn't thought much of the car in front of me in the line, a fire engine red Reliant with New Mexico plates, but now that I see that Bob Dylan is behind the wheel, I'm intrigued. "Nice car, Bob," I offer. Dylan, dressed in a white sleeveless shirt with either some barbeque or blood stains scattered down the front and a pair of bulky jeans, is on a short hiatus between legs of his Never Ending Tour. "I was in Topeka hunting down an old circus, when this car, this car, full of Mexicans pulled up and asked if I wanted to go for a ride." Four days later, it seems, Bob is driving the car, sans Mexicans, through a McDonalds drive-thru in South Euclid, Ohio. When I mumble a series of how's why's and what happened to the Mexicans, he retorts, "It's a hard thing to describe. Sometimes you just sense that a car has got something to say. So you just put it gear. The Mexicans bailed in Dayton. Hey, you know where I can find Michael Stanley's boyhood home?" For the next twenty minutes I sit shotgun in the red Reliant as Bob and I munch on our burgers--his arrive six minutes before mine--and talk.

Didn't they give you a napkin?

I told them to hold the napkin. Always do. Extra ketchup, hold the napkin.

What do you think about all this fuss over the guy who fabricated quotes from you?

I gave up thinking years ago. Along with earrings, Gatorade, and badminton. Thinking's for fools and businessmen and retired hookers. Are your fries cold too?

They haven't brought out my order yet.

Be patient. I learned a long time ago that fast food restaurant delivery systems are all mathematical. And of course, with all things mathematical, truth is the necessary end product. Trust in the mathematical. You won't lose any hair. Or sleep, because you won't need much sleep.

Is math spiritual for you?

Everything 'cept the media, politics, and all-star studded festivals is spiritual. That's not a Happy Meal, is it? I love them toys.

Bob, I gotta ask you. One of my favorite songs of yours is one no one ever asks about. 'Never Say Goodbye.' Where did that come from? How did you create such an amazing, compact tone poem?

I didn't create nothing of that one. Well, one line. I added the "my dreams are made of iron and steel," part. Originally it was 'cotton and silk,' which is understandable, coming from an angel and all.

Angel?

I was in Durango, making that movie. Or was it the other one? Anyway, some nights in Mexico, when it's no longer night but daylight all of a sudden, all you've got is what's left in the bottle, or the angel. That time I chose the angel. Gave me that song complete, 'cept for the iron and steel part. A minor angel, maybe, but at that time, any angel in any dusty town was a gift.

You know angels, personally?

A ton of them. Some of them are my best friends. Never can tell which are the Fallen ones or not. Not that it makes a whole lot of difference. Does it? Angels provide.

Give me an example of a song you wrote that wasn't provided by angels. One you actually worked on, created.

'Sally Sue Brown.'

You didn't write that one, Bob.

I didn't? Well, I should have. Great song. (He hesitates a minute and stares out the windshield.) It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry, I guess.

That wasn't an angel song? You wrote that one from scratch? I love that song.

What? Oh, the song? No, what? I was just stating the obvious. Armageddon and all. I'll give you a harmonica if you let me have half of that apple pie.

E flat?

Whatever. Hmm, apple pie.

We savor our separate halves of that apple pie while watching an old man put money in the newspaper box and then fail to get the thing open. "I could write a double album about that man and that newspaper box, if I wanted to. But I'd rather find a gas station selling gas for less than $3.75," Bob says, and I take that as my cue that my lunch with Bob is over. As I close the passenger side door of the Reliant and thank Bob for his time and company, he kind of winks and says, "I like the way you chew, man." The left he makes onto Mayfield Road in the middle of lunchtime traffic is sublime, and I'd like to think one of the many car horns that follow in its wake is Bob tootin' me goodbye.