Interviewer: After you spoke to a roomful of songwriting students at the Berklee College of Music clinic in November, you told me you were working on fleshing out a version of I’m Not There.

RH: Well I did, I wrote it. I painstakingly transcribed the five verses, and I filled in the gaps with what I thought Dylan might have said if he’d finished it (laughs) … I wasn’t sort of pretending to be him, but obviously I have a Dylan app in me, a “Dylan 66-67 app,” so I kind of used it. I also just made it so it sounded good, but I’ve left it in storage. I should have brought it with me. I had it all written out on the dining room table in Sydney, but I took it back to Britain, and it’s in storage. I’ll see if I could dig it up again. I’d have to re-transcribe it. But you know, it’s pretty atmospheric, it’s almost kind of like a sort-of Leonard Cohen song.

It’s so brilliant to do something … I love the way he’d come up with something as great as that, and then decides to discard it (laughs), and decides not to finish it. Anyone else, you would think might go, “Hey, I’ve got something here. I’ll land this fish properly.” Dylan’s just sort of, “Wow, that was it,” and moves on. I like the sort of disdain and … the sort of confidence, in a way, that he could go, “Oh, fuck it, I’ll leave that. I’ve probably done the best version.” You can imagine the guys in the Band going afterwards (imitating the voices), “Oh, what was that, Bob?” “I don’t know man, that’s not happening. Let’s do something else.” It’s just terrific.

But anyway, I somewhere have finished it, did my version. I sang it at McCabe’s in Santa Monica. I don’t know if somebody was taping it, in June. If they would have, there’s a recording. I memorized all my verses. Yeah, great song.