1. Steve Barnett, chairman of Columbia Records, said that the company was ‘approaching Modern Times as the third release in an outstanding trilogy of recorded works along with Time Out Of Mind and Love And Theft‘. The new album certainly has a similarly rootsy sound to its predecessors.

2. "I remember asking Geffen one day, ‘I don‘t know why you signed me because I don‘t know what it is I do that you like, because it doesn‘t seem to be anything.‘ " Once he‘d finally sobered up, he found his mark with the rootsy "Bring the Family" in 1'87.

3. Among the personas: an 11–year–old black boy (Marcus Carl Franklin) riding the rails with a guitar and calling himself Woody Guthrie, Dylan‘s early inspiration; a surrealist sage called Arthur (Ben Whishaw) speaking in symbolic riddles, representing Dylan‘s fascination with poet Arthur Rimbaud; and old coot Billy the Kid (Gere) traveling the Old West in self–imposed retirement from the modern world, a parallel to Dylan‘s rootsy sojourn as a reclusive country squire around Woodstock, New York, where he hung with the Band and recorded "The Basement Tapes." Weird and wild as it is, Dylan liked the concept and gave co–writer–director Todd Haynes the rarest of gifts: the rights to use his music in the film, both in his own versions and many covers.