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In a 1966 interview with Playboy, Bob Dylan said he’d never had any ambitions to be the president of the United States. It wasn’t a role he’d wanted, but when pressed, the musician offered a list of the first things he would do if he had the job. Some were confusing — he, jokingly or not, misidentified the location of the White House. Another item on his list would be to organize a filmed fight with another political leader.
Bob Dylan’s unfulfilled ambitions did not include being the president
By the time he was in his early twenties, Dylan was a celebrated musician. He played at the March on Washington and captured audiences’ attention with his protest songs. He achieved his dream relatively early in life. Still, he joked about some unfulfilled ambitions.
“Well, I guess I’ve always wanted to be Anthony Quinn in La Strada,” he told Playboy, per the book Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews. “Not always — only for about six years now; it’s not one of those childhood-dream things. Oh, and come to think of it, I guess I’ve always wanted to be Brigitte Bardot, too; but I don’t really want to think about that too much.”
He explained that he’d never wanted to be the president when he was growing up.
“No,” he said. “When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who’d want to be Harry Truman?”
Bob Dylan shared what he would do if he were the president
When pressed, though, Dylan came up with a surprising list of tasks he’d want to accomplish in his first thousand days in office. As with much of the rest of the interview, Dylan didn’t take his response very seriously.
“Well, just for laughs, so long as you insist, the first thing I’d do is probably move the White House,” he said. “Instead of being in Texas, it’d be on the East Side in New York. McGeorge Bundy would definitely have to change his name, and General McNamara would be forced to wear a coonskin cap and shades.”
He would also incorporate his skill as a songwriter into the role.
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“I would immediately rewrite ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ and little school children, instead of memorizing ‘America the Beautiful,’ would have to memorize ‘Desolation Row.’”
His only act that would have international implications was his final one. Dylan said he would fight Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China.
“I would immediately call for a showdown with Mao [Zedong],” Dylan said. “I would fight him personally — and I’d get somebody to film it.”
The musician is a boxer
Dylan’s call for a fight may not be surprising, given his love of boxing. He owns a members-only boxing gym in Santa Monica and once invited former professional boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini to come spar with him.
“We went four three-minute rounds, enough to exhaust most fifty-something part-time boxers, but after we sparred, I was impressed by the fact that Bob went over and did another six rounds on the heavy bag,” Mancini told The Daily Beast in 2021. “He wasn’t playing around. He was serious about training.”
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Still, Dylan hoped Mancini would be careful of his head while they were sparring.
“At the end of the round, Dylan came over and said, ‘Ray, could you lay off those headshots? I still have a few songs left in there.’”
