Rock and Roll; Interview with Al Kooper [Part 2 of 4]

Yeah let's do with that time with you because that you were saying about what kind of producer he was and what it took to produce the dawn sessions. Tom Wilson he was an interesting choice to produce Dylan because he had primarily done jazz records before then and I think I think that the Dylan camp was happy with a man of color think that interested them. He was a Afro-American. He is Harvard educated. He was very hip. He was very funny and he was an asset to anything. He was appearing on. So I think what he would do is pick the musicians and then kind of stand back and let it go on. He's he's got a very memorable cameo and I

think it's another side of Bob Dylan Bob Dylan's 115 dream is a false start at the beginning and he's laughing and saying wait a bit wait a bit. OK take two. There's just you get it. It's a great recording it was a laugh a had a great infectious laugh. He he also did this amazing thing with Simon and Garfunkel is that they recorded sounds of silence as a non plugged in track. Just the guitar and them singing. And then Paul moved off to England to live for a while and while he was gone Tom Wilson went and and overdubbed a band on top of it without even consulting the artists and made this amazing hit record that really had nothing to do with Simon and Garfunkel.

And then they've spread it out and all of a sudden they are the number one record in the country and Paul had to come back from England. And this is just as is the producer just mucking around. So I thought that was a very cool thing that he did he really like started their career off because they were dyin up there as the acoustic act and this was just record put them on the map and it was his doing that did it and I think that coming into you doing after one. I think so yeah. I can say that I think I think that when they replaced Tom Wilson that it was Columbia Records doing that more than the Dylan camp. I think maybe that was the end of Tom Wilson at CBS. And then he moved over to MGM

and signed the Mothers of Invention and the Blues Project and continued really his winning ways. He's responsible for Frank Zappa. I mean that alone is pretty worthwhile. Bob Johnson was a Southerner who was very adept at standing back and letting things happen. And also at what I call slapping the artist on the back and telling them how fantastic they are doing this sort of thing bedside manner as it were which as a producer I'm the most efficient and so I respect it involved John. And and that was a good thing to do on a Dylan session. And Bob assembled and Bob Johnston assembled a stellar cast for Blonde on

Blonde and he brought Dylan to Nashville to record this was all Bob Johnson's doing. He created that setting for Blonde on Blonde which I did which is my favorite Dylan record. And so you got to give him a lot of credit for that. Let me qualify it's my favorite Dylan record til the live Albert Hall stuff comes out in a few months. Maybe out when you're seeing this folks. But Dylan and the band live in England in 66 is I think the greatest rock n roll music ever made. So I'm very excited that that's going to be released. Yeah you don't know this. Oh it was yes. What kind of challenge did claim

lives in your house. Well some of the live shows were circuses. Newport was and Forest Hills was one of the biggest circuses I've ever been at Newport. There were a lot of warring factions the Lomax's and the Grossman's were at war over the fact that there were electric instruments at Newport. In fact way before Bob played the Butterfield band and played electric and the Chambers Brothers had played electric and and the board of directors were going bizarre. They didn't like it. This was really not known

by the crowd that was there. The crowd that was there certainly took it all in and enjoyed it and didn't boo the Butterfield band or the Chambers Brothers or anything like that. Now most of these people had come to see Bob Dylan he was the star of the festival and he played on the last night at the highlight of the show and all these other acts were pretty much something that these primarily college kids had to endure as opposed to appreciate. They didn't care about the Georgia Sea Island singers or Sun House or Robert Pete Williams or any of the other things that were on there. They wanted to see their hero Bob Dylan play. And that's what they plunk down the money for and they came sort of like a spring break mentality. And of course there were people there to see the other things that I was going about by and large the majority of the people that were there were there with

a spring break mentality to see their hero Bob Dylan. So the Georgia Sea Island singers Son House and Robert Pete Williams came out and they all played like 45 minutes to an hour shows. And then I played with Bob at Newport with the Butterfield band backing him and we were rehearsing the night before all night in some mansion in Newport and we heard three songs. So Bob came out with this electric band and played three songs and we especially play that good. It wasn't that good. And so all these people that endured this whole weekend and Bob Dylan comes out and plays 15 minutes after Sun House plays 45 minutes. Well they went nuts not because he played electric

but because they had paid all this money and spent all this time and suffered all this other musics. And I heard 15 minutes of Bob Dylan they went nuts. I don't know that they really booed. I didn't hear any booing but they certainly were unhappy and they were yelling more more more more more and I was backstage and Peter Yarrow who is the emcee from Peter Paul and Mary came over to Dylan and said you gonna do another one bobs and we don't know any others. And Peter said Well for God's sakes go out there with a guitar and just play one cool I'm out there going nuts. I think Peter understood the severity of the situation whereas we didn't really understand it. You know what was happening. Other than that you know they wanted to get as much Dylan as they could get but it didn't understand the dichotomy of the 15 minutes versus the 45 in an hour.

So Bob with an acoustic guitar and played It's All Over Now Baby Blue which is great drama. And it was cracking me and. And it was it was All Over Now Baby Blue. Now and then we played Forest Hills a few months later. And what had transpired is that at this time now like a Rolling Stone is number one in the country. And all the journalists have written about how the audience booed Dylan at Newport for playing electric which is a crock. And so these kids came to the show at Forest Hill with all their blues and they

were they were going to do it and they paid their 10 bucks or whatever it cost to get and so they could do it. And this was the biggest circus I've ever seen. Bob went out and played acoustic for the first part of the show and then in intermission the temperature dropped 15 degrees. Or maybe even 20. And it got downright cold in there and this bizarre wind began swirling around Forest Hills Tennis Stadium where we were fine. And then Murray the K came in and introduced which was the silliest damn thing I've ever seen. So at intermission the

temperature dropped 15 or 20 degrees and the press became downright cold there. And this huge wind was sweeping around the stadium. This Forest Hills Tennis Stadium where we were playing and then before we came out Murray the K came out of all people like I mean the most. Bob Dylan person. There could be this horrible disc jockey and into you know Bob is what's happening. And here we go. You know and Bob's really doing it like this. People went nuts. They hated it. And they just booed him down and then we came out play our electric music the band was bass myself on keyboards Robbie Robertson on guitar and drums.

And this was like this sort of bastardized half band half recording studio band that was Bob's first electric band and we went out there and it was nuts to which is blowing their way yelling the most bassist insults out at him. People were rushing the stage to grab them. Some guy came running by me with cops chasing him on stage and like caught his foot in the back of my chair and like knocked me flat over. Like in the middle of the show. And it was while. And so we started playing a ballad of a Thin Man and they were just booing mercilessly. And Bob yelled out to the band keep playing the intro till they shut up. So we were gone.

For five minutes. Until they realize that until they showed up he wasn't going to do anything. And then he sang this song which said something is happening here but you don't know what it is do you Mr Jones. Which was some more good drama. Kind of like It's All Over Now Baby Blue at Newport. And and it was a crazy show and then at the end we played like a rolling stone and they all sang along because it was the number one record at the time. You know go understand this. And the very next week we played the Hollywood Bowl with the same show that we had played Forest Hills with. And at the Hollywood Bowl.

Nobody booed and everybody was very appreciative and enjoyed the show. So the difference between New York and Los Angeles at the time. And it was nice we got to go to Gregory Peck's house and it was a very pleasant experience being in Los Angeles and I had never been to Les Angeles before I spent all my money on clothes. I bought all these wild shirts that I always wanted that I couldn't find anywhere. And there they all were in Los Angeles. So I spent all my money on clothes and it turned out that that was the end of my tenure in the Bob Dylan touring band. I got to tour schedule and I saw that we were playing in Dallas and just a few short years ago they had killed the President of the United States there. And I figured we could chant this Bob Dylan. I don't think I want to be sitting just to the right of him when he plays there.

So I kind of chickened out I don't want to do it. So I called him up and I said I don't think I want to make the tour. And he said well that's cool when in fact we're going to get canned anyway because Robin wanted to have the rest of their band out with. So it worked out very well. And. Off they went to an entire year of touring to blues. I just think that these folks have access to some footage from you or what you think it makes you consequently just a bit about what happened making that show with them is that the zone will lose whatever the beat got turned around and did Sam Lay was the drummer and the

beat got turned around in other words. Could you mention their names and Maggie's Farm at Newport. The beat got turned around in middle of the song. So instead of it being the snare being on 2 and 4 it was on one of the three and it threw the whole band off. And like I say we didn't play very well and therefore there is no doubt about that. And if there is a film of it it will substantiate what I was saying. Do you want to tell them you will bunch of blood and was it a unique situation for a Dylan record in that.

During the day. I would go up to his hotel room and he had a piano in his hotel room and he would teach me a song he was writing. And I would play it over and over again and he would sit there and write the lyrics. This way I became very conversant with the song itself musically speaking and after acting as his cassette recorder I would then go to the studio earlier than him and teach the band of the song and the band were like crack musicians they were the top studio players in Nashville and they could learn something that quick and play beautifully and the difference between Highway 61 and blonde I'm blind is that highway so I was 16 when I was like a punk rock feel and record with no.

For lack of a better word grace and Blonde on Blonde is all grace it's all very well thought out very amazingly played and and how 61 is lashed out. So but when Bob would get to the studio the band would know the song and they would be playing it impeccably. And he would just have to do what he loved to do which is one take. And so the only the only way we would stop is if he made a mistake because he didn't like to overdubbed anything and interesting things that happened because of that is. You go your way and I'll go mine. Charlie McCoy played bass and trumpet at the same time. So that there would have to be an overdose. So I played the bass like this by just with his left hand

hitting the notes and the string at the same time and this is the quality of musician we were dealing with. In another song we found we needed a trombone at about two o'clock in the morning so Charlie said Oh just a minute I'll get some when I made a call and this guy showed up at 2:30 with a god damned shirt and tie and and and came in and played two takes. Rainy Day Women. And and then thanked everyone and went home. And three o'clock in the morning they killed me as he had a shirt and tie on it. 2:30 in the morning.

And this was you know this is what Nashville was all about in 1966 and they barely know who Bob Dylan was. Everybody got the same treatment. Didn't make any difference. This is how they treated people they came then they had a record and they were so elated that it wasn't country music that they really gave it their all. And sometimes Bob would start writing and everyone would just leave him alone in the studio. And we go play ping pong or eat or something and he'd be in there. Sometimes he's in there for six hours writing a song and everybody just hung loose. Nobody complained or anything. So the there was a journalist who was there and he came in about 6:30 and Bob was sitting at the piano writing and he was this guy was in the control room. He said what's going on I says. Bob's right. So we just let him be.

And then so I think Bob Johnston took the guy out to dinner and he came back about 10 and there was Bob still at the piano and I said as he bent I was all done like I said yeah yeah yeah what's CII. And Albert Grossman said Columbia records and tapes. I like that. Carroll 36. It's going to be 36.