Bob Dylan: The essential interviews

“A historical compilation to savor” (Los Angeles Times) that is “invaluable…irresistible” (The New York Times)—the ultimate collection of interviews and encounters with Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, spanning his entire career from 1962 to today.

Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews features over two dozen of the most significant and revealing conversations with the singer, gathered in one definitive collection that spans his career from street poet to Nobel Laureate. First published in 2006, this acclaimed collection brought together the best interviews and encounters with Bob Dylan to create a multi-faceted, cultural, and journalistic portrait of the artist and his legacy. This edition includes three additional pieces from Rolling Stone that update the volume to the present day.

Among the highlights are the seminal Rolling Stone interviews—anthologized here for the first time—by Jann Wenner, Jonathan Cott, Kurt Loder, Mikal Gilmore, Douglas Brinkley, and Jonathan Lethem—as well as Nat Hentoff’s legendary 1966 Playboy interview. Surprises include Studs Terkel’s radio interview in 1963 on WFMT in Chicago, the interview Dylan gave to screenwriter Jay Cocks when he was a student at Kenyon College in 1964, a 1965 interview with director Nora Ephron, and an interview Sam Shepard turned into a one-act play for Esquire in 1987.

Introduced by Rolling Stone editor Jonathan Cott, these intimate conversations from America’s most celebrated street poet is a “priceless collection with honest, open, and thoughtful musings…a fascinating window into his one-of-a-kind mind” (Publishers Weekly).

Jonathan Cott is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and has written for the The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is the author of twenty books, including Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein, Days That I’ll Remember: Spending Time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Dylan (a biography), Conversations with Glenn Gould, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer, Back to a Shadow in the Night: Music Writings and Interviews—1968–2001, and Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews. He lives in New York City.