Bob Dylan on what New York City means to him | 60 Minutes Archive
In a Nutshell
Bob Dylan credits New York City—especially the Village below 14th Street—with shaping his entire career and giving him the constant creative energy and folk-music exposure he needed. He moved there from Minnesota in the early 1960s to seize opportunities unavailable at home and left the scene by the late 1960s, though he still loves the city. His parents dismissed his ambitions, but radio, records, and his own drive pushed him toward the wider world he sensed beyond Minnesota.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Bob Dylan described New York City as the city that would come to shape his destiny. In the early years, New York was the be all and end all—the place to go. Dylan stated that he wouldn't have been exposed to as much if he had gone somewhere else, and he doesn't think he could have really done anything without New York.
The impetus that took Dylan from Minnesota to New York was that he had to wait for an opportunity. He had to get there, and he could spot the opportunity when it arose, so he took it.
Dylan probably dropped out of New York in the late 1960s sometime. He doesn't believe the city has played that big a role in his life since then, but he still loves the place. The village that existed then doesn't exist today—it's a different scene now.
Back then, there was just constant activity up and down coming at you in different ways all the time. Dylan was trying to keep up with himself and learning about seeing the people and playing with the people and learning stuff often that he'd always dreamed about doing. He found most of that in New York City, actually below 14th Street.
Dylan started dreaming about this before he even left high school. He'd always heard the folk songs early before he even heard the rock and roll music that came along. He had probably been exposed to folk songs without really knowing about it, with Skip to Malou and Old Joe Clark and John Brown's Body—all that kind of stuff. He'd heard that long before he'd heard folk music, but he hadn't really considered it as anything that he would become a part of really.
Dylan described himself as a loner in high school. He really didn't consider himself happy or unhappy growing up. He always knew that there was something out there that he needed to get to, and it wasn't where he was at that particular moment—it wasn't in Minnesota.
Dylan referred to New York as the capital of the world, but when he told his father, his father thought that it was a joke. His parents wouldn't have wanted him to be a singer-songwriter going to New York. His parents never went anywhere. His father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time—he couldn't possibly be anywhere else. He and his wife were in their own home, and that, to them, was the capital of the world.
What made Dylan different and pushed him out was that he listened to the radio a lot, and he hung out in record stores, and he slam-banged around on a guitar and played the piano, and learned songs from a world which didn't exist around him. That, to him, was his reality, no matter what anybody close by was up to.
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