During a 1966 interview with Robert Shelton, Bob Dylan shared his thoughts on love and sex. Challenging heteronormative concepts, Dylan said, “Sex and love have nothing to do with female and male. It is just whatever two souls happen to be. It could be male and female, and it might not be male and female. It might be female and female or it might be male and male. You can try to pretend that it doesn’t happen, and you can make fun of it and be snide, but that’s not really the rightful thing. I know, I know.”[1] Since then, critics and scholars such as Rebecca Slaman, Andrew Warwick, and Charles Kaiser have explored Dylan’s support of the queer community. I have often thought Dylan’s January 16, 1993, performance of “Chimes of Freedom” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial signaled support of the incoming administration’s policies on AIDS and the queer community after a decade of absent, botched, or ineffective policies. In this episode, Paul Haney joins me to talk about his personal memoir and its connections to Bob Dylan, queer readings of Dylan’s work, and Dylan as a queer ally.
Executive Editor of the Dylan Review, Paul Haney is a queer writer, educator, and Dylanologist in the Boston area. His Bob Dylan writing has appeared in such outlets as The Rumpus, Hobart, Glide, the Potomac Review, and the anthology Teaching Bob Dylan (Bloomsbury 2024). Other work has appeared in Slate, Boston Globe Magazine, Fourth Genre, Normal School, Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He's spoken on Bob Dylan panels in Tulsa, Orlando, and Odense, Denmark, and his manuscript in progress is a queer Bob Dylan memoir.
[1] “Interview with Robert Shelton from No Direction Home.” Cott, Jonathan. Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews. Wenner Books, 2007. 85..
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