Every 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 KOOPERI believe Irving Berlin was there, and uh, and everything just centered around there.
More Al Kooper Quotes
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The first generation from the ’50s that were in 1650 [Broadway] were pretty much all crooks,
AL KOOPER -
Musically Bob [Dylan] is a primitive. He’s not a Gershwin, or somebody that uses eloquent music terms.
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 -
At the end of the playback of the take of “Like A Rolling Stone”, or actually during the thing.
AL KOOPER -
I think it was Columbia politics, Columbia Records politics that, that, Tom Wilson left [Bob Dylan] after “Like A Rolling Stone”.
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 -
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 -
Producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.
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 -
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 KOOPER -
I don’t care, turn the organ up, and that’s really how I became an organ player.
AL KOOPER -
I mean just out and out crooks. And the next generation had a little more finesse. But I mean those first wave of people, you know, definitely would take all your money, no doubt about it.
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 -
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 -
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.
AL KOOPER