10 Times Musicians Owned Interviewers
2. Bob Dylan - Speaking Truth To Time Magazine
When Bob Dylan rose to super stardom in the 1960s the press bombarded him with intrusive questions, accusation as to the meaning of his lyrics, and explanations as to his stance on just about everything going on in the world...
This was at a time when popular rock and mainstream music journalism was in its infancy. Before 1964 (and the rise of The Beatles) music journalism wasn't taken all that seriously and music critics resigned themselves to covering more classical music.
But, when the '60s exploded into that transitional period when pop and rock music became more popular than Jesus, newspapers and media corporations realised this was the stuff people wanted to read about. Unsurprisingly, the institution of journalism was mostly populated with stuffy old men, and many of those assigned to covering the popular musicians of the day weren't popular music lovers themselves. This often resulted in some rather obtuse and ignorant questions being reeled off at artists, giving them the opportunity to have a bit of fun.
There's a number of brilliant examples of Dylan toying with interviewers, but during this particular sit down with a Times Magazine writer, he had clearly had enough. He goes in hard, eroding the very bedrock of this particular journalist profession, in a way that leaves the man almost speechless.