Only through sheer ambition did I end up playing on [Bob Dylan sessions] and the fact that I could do that is a testament to how disorganized it really was.
AL KOOPEROnly through sheer ambition did I end up playing on [Bob Dylan sessions] and the fact that I could do that is a testament to how disorganized it really was.
AL KOOPERProducing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.
AL KOOPERI don’t care, turn the organ up, and that’s really how I became an organ player.
AL KOOPERMusically Bob [Dylan] is a primitive. He’s not a Gershwin, or somebody that uses eloquent music terms.
AL KOOPERI think it was Columbia politics, Columbia Records politics that, that, Tom Wilson left [Bob Dylan] after “Like A Rolling Stone”.
AL KOOPEREvery day from 10 to 6, we’d go in there and pretend that we were 13 year old girls and write these songs. That was the gig.
AL KOOPERYou couldn’t help being influenced by Dylan.
AL KOOPERThe [Bob] Dylan sessions were very disorganized, to say the least. I mean, the “Like A Rolling Stone” session I was invited by the producer to watch.
AL KOOPERAnd a little slate that came out of the wall that you could actually write on. And a door that locked from the outside.
AL KOOPERAt the end of the playback of the take of “Like A Rolling Stone”, or actually during the thing.
AL KOOPERTom Wilson had produced jazz records and was a Harvard educated.
AL KOOPERSo 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 play the chord.
AL KOOPERIn the, uh, ’30s and ’40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City.
AL KOOPERThe first generation from the ’50s that were in 1650 [Broadway] were pretty much all crooks,
AL KOOPERAnd he was about my age, and he just, that finished off my guitar career, just like that, in one afternoon.
AL KOOPERFinally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research.
AL KOOPER