it was like watching van gogh

“I was the only songwriter in Nashville allowed in at the time. There were police round the building. Bob was doing a great thing for Nashville, giving it credibility. I never said a word to him - I didn’t dare - but I spoke to his wife and son. In Nashville at the time, if you didn’t cut three songs in three hours, you were being extravagant and wasteful. He just went in there and sat down at the piano, all by himself, and wrote all night long. The band were playing ping pong and waiting for him. I’d never seen anything like it. I respected him. To me, he lifted songwriting up to an art form that was worth committing your life to, like poetry... To me, it was like watching Van Gogh go through different stages of his painting and his inspiration. He’s working all the time now, Bob is.”

Kris Kristofferson was a janitor at Columbia Studio in Nashville when Dylan was recording Blonde on Blonde