People Just Don't Know

People don't realize how funny Dylan can be. Here is an excerpt from a 1966 interview. He'd been getting bothered a lot about his decision to start using electric instruments -- a backing band -- in the second half of his concerts, as opposed to just playing by himself on an acoustic. Finally in this interview he'd had enough so he decided to have some fun with it:

Interviewer: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock-and-roll route?

Dylan: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. I wind up in Phoenix. I get as job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?

Interviewer: And that's how you became a rock-and-roll singer?

Dylan: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.