Bob Dylan recently posted a rare, extensive interview with Bill Flanagan on his website, and the legendary singer-songwriter uses the opportunity to go deep into his new three-disc album, Triplicate, along with some of this thoughts on life and the people he’s met in his career, including the Frank Sinatra and Joan Baez, among others.

On Triplicate, Dylan speaks on the importance of the collection, which continues his run of albums covering classic American tunes. “I had some idea of where they stood,” Dylan says on the songs’ lasting impact. “But I hadn’t realized how much of the essence of life is in them – the human condition, how perfectly the lyrics and melodies are intertwined, how relevant to everyday life they are, how non-materialistic.”

Dylan goes on to say that the songs, though written many years ago at a time he was a young man, still have resonance for him in his later years. “In my 20s and 30s I hadn’t been anywhere,” he says. “Since then I’ve been all over the world, I’ve seen oracles and wishing wells. When I was young there were a lot of signs along the way that I couldn’t interpret, they were there and I saw them, but they were mystifying. Now when I look back I can see them for what they were, what they meant. I didn’t understand that then, but I do now. There is no way I could have known it at the time.”

On the topic of Dylan’s past two albums, which were covers of tunes that were in Frank Sinatra’s repertoire, Dylan talks about an encounter he had with the iconic singer, saying, “He was funny, we were standing out on his patio at night and he said to me, ‘You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we’re from up there,’ and he pointed to the stars. ‘These other bums are from down here.’ I remember thinking that he might be right.”

After getting into some specifics on the record and some of the songs’ writers and Dylan’s influences in creating the record, the songwriter speaks on the passing of many legends in the last year, saying they all had an impact on him. “They all did – we were like brothers,” he says. “We lived on the same street and they all left empty spaces where they used to stand. It’s lonesome without them.” When asked about meeting countless celebrities and famous musicians in his time and if any of them made him nervous, Dylan responds, “All of them.”

Dylan also speaks on other friends, acquaintances and more, saying that Joan Baez “was something else, almost too much to take. Her voice was like that of a siren from off some Greek island. Just the sound of it could put you into a spell.” He says he was “absolutely” a fan of Amy Winehouse, calling her “the last real individual around.”

Read the full interview here.