Mike Bloomfield sat down and started playing, and I went, whoa! Because I had never heard any white person play like that before.
AL KOOPERThe first generation from the ’50s that were in 1650 [Broadway] were pretty much all crooks,
More Al Kooper Quotes
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Tom Wilson had produced jazz records and was a Harvard educated.
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Every now and then we could steal somebody else’s stuff.
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Finally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research.
AL KOOPER -
If you’d done a good job you’d just step back and let all these different chemistries interact and let it go.
AL KOOPER -
I don’t care, turn the organ up, and that’s really how I became an organ player.
AL KOOPER -
Still being ambitious to want to play on the record, I was a mediocre keyboard player. And uh, I seized the opportunity and played the organ.
AL KOOPER -
Unlike so many Dylan-writer-wannabes and phony ‘encyclopedia’ compilers, Sean Wilentz makes me feel he was in the room when he chronicles events that I participated in.
AL KOOPER -
The very funny thing about “Like A Rolling Stone” is it was a six minute song, there was no music to read from. And there I was playing this unfamiliar instrument.
AL KOOPER -
I believe Irving Berlin was there, and uh, and everything just centered around there.
AL KOOPER -
I started in the music business I was first introduced to 1650 Broadway, uh, which was in reality where everything happened in the ’60s.
AL KOOPER -
The [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 KOOPER -
And he was about my age, and he just, that finished off my guitar career, just like that, in one afternoon.
AL KOOPER -
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 play the chord.
AL KOOPER -
Bob Dylan said to the producer, turn up the organ. And Tom Wilson said, oh man, that guy’s not an organ player. And Dylan said.
AL KOOPER -
I liked being challenged by music. It’s good for me.
AL KOOPER