Rock and Roll; Interview with Al Kooper [Part 1 of 4]

Could you tell us about first came to that building maybe like what it was. And you know a little bit about the differences in the building. Well when I started in the music business I was first introduced to 16:50 Broadway which was in reality where everything happened in the 60s. The actual Brill building itself was a harbinger of pop music in the 40s and up until the mid 50s probably and then 16:50 took over. The biggest concern in the music business was a company called olden music which was a company that was run by Al Nevins and Don

Kirshner Don Kirshner Don Kirshner's Rock Concert fame. But he actually did more for music and Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. This company signed some unbelievably great writers. Carole King and Gerry Goffin very mad and Cynthia Weil Neil Sadak and how he Greenfield Helen Miller just an amazing amount of great writers and and they wrote the anthems of the 60s the early 60s and 16:50 Broadway in this huge complex called all in music and they had a stranglehold on the charts. Now I came into this. I was writing with two other guys and we had to buck these people and it was impossible. And through some miracle we we got a number one record which was this diamond ring by Gary Lewis and the

Playboys which was actually a song we had written for the Drifters and was turned down by the Drifters and was in a rhythm and blues song and Gary Lewis record was completely devoid of all the rhythm and blues that we had written into the song. And when I first heard it I was horrified. But then the next time I heard it was on the Ed Sullivan Show and I was feeling a little better about it. And then very quickly it knocked an old song out of Number One. You've lost that loving feeling. Certainly not for quality sake. And. We had a number one record in the heyday of all which is pretty darn good. One thing they're pretty much the kind of thing that has come down to a legend at home I you can just get into that building being

date for it. Well in the 30s and 40s the Brill Building was the hub of musical activity and Tin Pan Alley in New York City. I believe Irving Berlin was there and just everything centered around there was Sinatra place. And then these upstarts started booking into 16:50 Broadway all these new people I imagine the rents were cheaper too. And 16:50 became like the alternative music place in the late 50s and early 60s. And one of the complexes that was there was a publishing company run by Al Nevins who was a songwriter who had written Twilight Time for the

platters and who was a member of the three sons. And and Don Kirshner who was also a writer who wrote with Bobby Darin mostly and they started a publishing company and they signed some amazing writers. They signed Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Barry man and Cynthia we are Howie Greenfield Nielsen Dacca and just got amazing songs and ran out and placed them all over the music business and got a stranglehold on the top 10. In the early 60s there probably was not a week from 1962 to 1965 that there wasn't an old song in the top 10 and usually more than one. And so this kind of catalyzed 16:50 and there were a lot of firms there. I was there from the time I came into the music business from 1958 on

and dealt with a number of places there. Were there cubicles with pianos in teams of songwriters working there is that there was the place that I worked. There was definitely that we I used to joke about it. There was every morning at 10:30 I'd come into work and I'd go into this cubicle that had a little upright piano and fake white cork break from the wall and a little slate that came out of the wall that you could actually write on and a door that locked from the outside. And every day from ten to six we'd go in there and pretend that we were a 13 year old girls and write these songs. That was the gig. The people working there were all they were right next to I yeah you could. It was semi soundproofed by the

fake white korek bricks but not really soundproofed. Every now and then we could steal somebody else's stuff. Was there some difference that you know the sort of the personal style and just sort of way of operating between the people who came into this world with you in the early 60s generation. Well the first generation from the 50s that were in 16:50 were pretty much all crooks. I mean just out and out crooks and the next generation had a little more finesse. But I mean the first wave of people you know definitely would take all your money. No doubt about it but what about the arrival of folk music on

the music scene with some reference to your album Casey persona develops and perhaps was a kind of don't like being part of that scene. Yeah well the part I was pretty much a rock n roll or pop music guy and that's how I made my living and that's what I did and that's what consumes my life pretty much. And then my friend from Forest Hills Paul Simon turned me on to Bob Dylan and that kind of. Had me at war with my values like how could I be a 13 year old girl every day when I was listening to this stuff which was lyrically you know more challenging and more adept at the kind of than the kind of thing I was doing in my daily trials and I think that was really weird

about it is then I played on that record like a rolling stone which sort of started the whole thing going and and just trying to get the chronology correct. I had had I think I had had this diamond ring or any prior to playing on like a rolling stone but only just a little bit before that you know that transition was very strange I was playing in a band at the world's fair with my good friend Harvey Brooks and we were partners and whoever got us whoever got a gig would get the other guy in on the gig. So he got the world's fair and then I remember that we went right from the world's fair to playing with Bob Dylan. That was our next gig. So it was interesting times then than it was way. I think that was the end of my tin pan alley

days. What about your period. OK folks this before that was just around the world's fair time. That was my Dylan emulation period. That's what that's when I was writing you know our sets Dylan songs. That's who Al Casey was. He was a guy he was saying you know Queens Bob Dylan it's really just me the commercial be played organ it all ended up playing on my own. Well I had played a little on demos on songwriter demos that I had done but I didn't really understand the instrument. It's kind of like I'd push a few buttons and and if I got something that was close to what I

wanted. That's what I would do but I don't understand what really made it tick. Can you do that again. I play the organ right prior to the like a rolling stone session. I had sort of dabbled with the organ I had used it on songwriter demos but I didn't understand the instrument very well. The possibilities and capabilities of it I would just push a few buttons and whatever came out if it was close to what I needed I would keep that and I could never figure out how to turn it on. It was sort of a complicated process. So it was a and then and still is an intimidating instrument. There's a there's a lot of things going on on this one. If you watch somebody play in concert you have these draw

bars here which alter the sound. And then these black and white keys here are the reverse black and white which change the sound. Both manuals and you have a Leslie thing which makes the speakers were all around you and you go boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom and you have Bravo. And somebody is you know really into I have a dog and will be left out percussion percussion. Like that. So all these things are going on and all these possibilities are going on and if you get to be an integrated player then you're

constantly tweaking things where you're trying to play at the same time. And it's it's a lot of fun to watch an organ player like from overhead. And some guys play bass with their left foot which I don't think there's any Jewish people that can do that you know and I'm Jewish. But I mean but there are a lot of non-Jewish people that play bass with their foot while they're doing all that other stuff. I mean I can hardly do all that other stuff and then think of something to play at the same time. So what I played on like a rolling stone is very primitive compared to what I evolved to and I understood more of the instrument. What guys did you develop between you and what was going on. He was finding place to be sort of guy.

Well the Dylan sessions were very disorganized to say the least. I mean like a rolling stones session I was invited by the producer to watch and only through sheer ambition that I ended up playing on it. And the fact that I could do that is a testament to how disorganized it really was. However I had played sessions prior to this as a guitar player. So it was not unusual for the people that were on that session to see me be on a session. What was unusual was that I was playing keyboards. That was the only weird thing about. And in fact I had planned to play guitar on that session until Mike fulfilled walked in and sat down and started playing and I went whoa. I never heard any white person play like that before. And he was about my age and I just

like that finished off my guitar career just like that in one afternoon. And so still being ambitious to want to play on the record I was a mediocre keyboard player and I seized the opportunity and play the organ and the take that I played on was the keeper take. So you know before they could get me out of there I was already accepted. Find it as you went on and did those gigs within that session. Were there certain things that you could do on your work in music and certain things that were within your grasp that not happening. Well see the good thing is is musically Bob is a primitive. He's not a Gershwin or somebody that is eloquent musical terms is

more blues derived. And and he's a primitive so my primitive organ playing fit in with that very well. And my influences were mostly gospel. So I was playing my twisted Jewish equivalent of gospel music over his twisted equivalent of rock and roll music. And it was a very excellent marriage. It was good. And at the same time I was thinking in my head as a session musician I still had this sort of code which is if the artist could play this instrument what would he play and that's the approach that I was taking. And you have to you have to stay out of the way when it's correct to stay out of the way which I even did on like a rolling stone. And then the very funny thing about like a rolling stone is it was a six minute song and there was no music to read from. And there I was playing this unfamiliar

instrument. So I would come in on the upbeat of one. I would wait until the band played the chord and then as quickly as I could come in and play the chord. So the band would go visit the band this is me. So if you listen to the record you can hear I'm always on the upbeat of the band because I'm listening to hear what the chord is. And I had good ears and that's really what got me through that take. The other thing is see with the Levalley speakers over there at the session that was covered up by sound material and the band was playing so loud that I couldn't even hear the lazily. So I was playing it sounded like this. Oh no not even.

This is where I was playing. And I just knew what those notes were from having a little musical knowledge. But I could not hear it till I came into the playback and it very could have easily been wrong. But it wasn't. Yeah I don't think you really like the organ sound the same reason that you felt that combination of organ or express. Well at the end of the playback of that take of like a rolling stone or actually during that thing he said to the producer turn up the organ and Tom Wilson said oh man that guy's not an organ player. Dylan. I don't care. Turn or going up. And that's really how I became an

organ player and maybe a year later Bob and I were in Los Angeles playing at the Hollywood Bowl and we had gone record shopping and we were sitting in the hotel room listening to all these records that imitated the sound that we did. And I was laughing because they were imitating me not knowing what I was doing which I was not lost on me. So I used to enjoy that quite a bit. Al Kooper corncrake ignorant Oregon sounds like that play critically important. I would. What was Tom Wilson. Kind of. Or was he in the media. That.

It's producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport. You would. Your job would be to put to select the cast and if you'd done a good job you'd just step back and let all these different chemistries interact and let it go. And that was an interesting cast. However I had not been selected that day. And but after that day I was selected and then then it started to gel and make sense. And I felt more comfortable once I knew I was in and I had so much to learn on this instrument. I like that. I like being challenged by music. It's good for me. Do you have any sense of why it was done. I don't think it had anything to do with Bob. I think it was Columbia Powell at

Columbia Records politics that Tom Wilson left after like a rolling stone because I think then the highway 61 album was produced by Bob Johnson if not correct. And Bob Johnson was an entirely different producer than Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson had produced jazz records and was a Harvard educated black man who was