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 KOOPERIn the, uh, ’30s and ’40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City.
More Al Kooper Quotes
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In the, uh, ’30s and ’40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New York City.
AL KOOPER -
I liked being challenged by music. It’s good for me.
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 -
Producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.
AL KOOPER -
The place that I worked I used to joke about it. There was a, 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 bricks on the wall.
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 -
And he was about my age, and he just, that finished off my guitar career, just like that, in one afternoon.
AL KOOPER -
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 KOOPER -
Every now and then we could steal somebody else’s stuff.
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 -
You couldn’t help being influenced by Dylan.
AL KOOPER -
Tom Wilson had produced jazz records and was a Harvard educated.
AL KOOPER -
And a little slate that came out of the wall that you could actually write on. And a door that locked from the outside.
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 -
Mike Bloomfield sat down and started playing, and I went, whoa! Because I had never heard any white person play like that before.
AL KOOPER