And there was me thinking I was responding to the article @parlance had linked to, not hunting out pictures for @Mr. Kite!!! 

I came across this interview with Bob from 1992. He was being interviewed by Elliot Mintz (close friend of John) on the 22 November about his then new album Good as I Been to You, and Elliot decided to use the opportunity to talk about John with Bob. This section of the interview was later aired on the Westwood One radio series The Beatles Years.

I don’t believe this transcription is 100% accurate, but it’s an interesting read.

EM: Twelve years now after John’s passing… A long time to examine the body of work and what he left behind musically. What do you think his most significant contribution was to rock n’ roll… as an artist?

BD: He was talented as a musician which you don’t see… It’s just like another one of those things… People don’t give him credit for saying something that takes over… It’s like personality takes over at a certain point. To me, he could play and he sang great. And he had the attitude of course. You know, it’s hard to separate what he did as a Beatle, because the attitude was there that he had. To me, he was always a musician first. Like, to me, his version of Stand By Me is the version regardless of the song’s been done so many times, but his was better than the original.

All his stuff was like that. It had an attack to it, you know, that is very rare. Of course, when he put his own thing behind it, it was quite overwhelming. With his Working Class Hero -type thing and Instant Karma kind of thing… To me, it was all just a… you know, you could hear it all there with I Wanna Hold Your Hand but then of course, the harmonies and that stuff had kind of deluded a lot of it. But if you’re asking me how he is perceived, to me he is perceived first and foremost as a musician. And he had an amazing sense of melody, and lyrically he was no slouch, either.

EM: He used to say, in the public statements or recorded statements, he used to say that every time the two of you bumped into each other, from his point of view, he was always kind of paranoid and nervous.

BD: [yawns]

EM: Did you get that sensation from him?

BD: No. He never gave me that impression. No kind of way.

EM: He felt that there was always kind of like a healthy rivalry between the two of you.

BD: Yeah, [cut in the recording] it was never like one of those kind of things where we got Brian Wilson we gotta beat that record, we gotta beat this record, and then they’re coming back and they’re making another one only to make it a Sgt. Pepper , you know, whatever. To me, that kind of thing never really existed. Maybe for those other guys it did, because they were all fighting for chart positions and things. Coming from my world of the folk music world that never really entered into any element of trying to better somebody else. Trying to make this recording better than that recording, this was all records. Those guys went to the recording element of everything and it wasn’t my scene, so it never was really a competitive thing.

———[commercial break]———

What lasts for me in that is the songs he left.

EM: Do you have a favorite?

BD: Not really a favorite. There are some that jump out at me more than others; Nowhere Man . One of my favorites, really, don’t ask me why, is Mother , but I can’t kind of figure out why. He was doing it all the way, you know.

EM: He had some moments where he took some good-natured kidding with you and your approach. Did it bother you?

BD: No, one of my old drummers, he used to play me a tape where he was like spoofing Serve Somebody or something like that. No, it didn’t bother me, it intrigued me. Why would it effect him in such a way? Like who cares? It was just a song.

EM: I wondered about that, too, if that really did impact him. I also think he personally loved and tried to imitate your voice. You know, it was just something that he would fall into frequently. He just enjoyed the experience. And over the years, people have sometimes asked me whether or not that ever bothered you or if you took offence at that?

BD: No, not really.

EM: When you think back about him now, beside the music, was there anything particularly endearing or special that he left you with? Some people say it was the humor, some people say it was the cynicism, some people say it was that edge that he…

BD: He was very quick witted, wasn’t he?

EM: Yeah.

BD: Like a lot of those English guys were just so sharp for sure.

EM: You never recorded with him, did you?

BD: Ah, yeah, once, but no one ever came up with the tape.

EM: I guess there was a great rock n’ roll rumor that the two of you actually made a tape together.

BD: No, ah… Those were… That is all pretty shaky in my mind. What happened and what didn’t happen, but it seems to me there was a tape running at his house. Where was it again?

EM: Kenwood or Tittenhurst Park?

BD: Yeah, that one. Seems to me he had a tape recorder.

EM: Did you record when you were singing?

BD: Probably. Some kind of things. It might’ve been Gene Vincent songs or something.

EM: Oh, if anybody knows where the tape is we’d love to hear from them. It’d be a nice thing to have, wouldn’t it?

BD: [pause] Yeah.

EM: Anything else come to you about John?

BD: Ah, he was just a wonderful guy, really. Well, you know — cool. Anything from me that I could say is that he was kind of a wonderful guy, but he was, speaking as a musician, he was someone to look up to. 

I remember Ben E. King joking in interviews, after it was a #1 in the UK in the ’80s, that he kept being asked what it was like to have a hit with a John Lennon song.

Yes, it is, @Tony Japanese…

The second great Scorsese Dylan film…