Let's do that Tom Wilson thing again, and the kind of stuff you were saying about what kind of producer he was and what it took to produce a Dylan session as opposed to…

Tom Wilson was an interesting choice to produce Dylan, uh, because he had primarily done jazz records before then. I think, I think uh, that the Dylan camp was happy with a man of color, I think that interested him. He was an Afro-American, he was Harvard educated, uh, he was very hip, he was very funny. And uh, he was an asset to anything he was appearing on. Uh, so what I think he would do is pick the musicians and then kind of stand back and let it go on. He's uh, uh, he's got a very memorable cameo on, I think "It's Another Side Of Bob Dylan," "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream." There's a false start at the beginning and he's laughing and saying, wait a minute, wait a minute -- okay, take two. He's just, you get, it's a great recording of his laugh. He had a great infectious laugh. Uh, he, he also did this amazing thing with Simon and Garfunkel. They recorded "Sounds Of Silence" as an unplugged track, just, uh, the guitar and them singing. And then Paul moved off to England to live for a while, and while he was gone, Tom Si-, uh, Tom Wilson went in 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 put it out, and all of a sudden they had the number one record in the country, and Paul had to come back from England and this was, this is just the producer mucking around. So I always thought that was a very cool thing that he did. He really like started their career off, because they were dying up there as the acoustic act. And this, this record put them on the map. And it was his doing that did it.

And do you think that Bob Johnston coming in to produce Dylan after "Like A Rolling Stone" was basically record company politics?

I think so, yeah.

Can you say that as a statement.

I think, uh, 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, uh, then he moved over to, uh, 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 Johnston was a Southerner who was very adept at standing back and letting things happen, and also at, uh, what I call slapping the artist on the back, and telling them how fantastic they're doing, this sort of thing, bedside manner as it were, uh, which as I'm a producer I'm the most deficient in. So I respect it in Bob Johnston. And uh, that was a good thing to do on a Dylan session. And Bob assembled, Bob Johnston assembled, oh, a stellar cast for "Blonde On Blonde," and he brought Dylan to Nashville to record. This was all Bob Johnston's doing. He created that setting for "Blonde On Blonde," which is my favorite Dylan record. And uh, so you've got to give him a lot of credit for that. Let me qualify that. It's my favorite Dylan record until the live Albert Hall stuff comes out in a few months. It may be out when you're seeing this stuff, folks. But Dylan and the Band live in England in '66 is I think the greatest rock and roll music ever made. So I'm very excited that that's going to be released.

Yeah, maybe it'll sound like it wasn't pressed on old asphalt.

Oh, it won't.

What kind of challenge did playing these live shows with Dylan present? And how was that different from the studio?

Well, some of the live shows were circuses. Uh, Newport was, and Forest Hills was one of the biggest circuses I've ever been in. At Newport there were a lot of warring factions. The Lomaxes and the Grossmans were at war over the fact that there were electric instruments at Newport. In fact, way before Bob played, the Butterfield Band had played electric, and the Chambers Brothers had played electric. And, and the board of directors were going berserk. 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 Son 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 plunked down the money for. And they came sort of like a spring break mentality. And of course there were people to see the other things, but I'm talking 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, uh, I played at Bob at Newport with uh, the Butterfield Band backing him up. And we rehearsed the night before all night in some mansion in Newport. And we rehearsed three songs. So Bob came out with this electric band and played three songs. And we didn't especially play that good. It wasn't that good. And so all these people who had endured this whole weekend, and Bob Dylan comes out and plays 15 minutes after Son House plays 45 minutes. Well, they went nuts. Not 'cause he played electric. But because they'd paid all this money and spent all this time and suffered all this other musics, and heard 15 minutes of Bob Dylan, and 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. And I was backstage, and Peter Yarrow, who was the MC, from Peter, Paul and Mary, came over to Dylan and said, you gotta do another one. Bob said, we don't know any others. And Peter said, well, for godsakes go out there with your guitar and just play one. Cool them out, they're 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 they wanted to get as much Dylan as they could get, but didn't understand the dichotomy of the 15 minutes versus the 45 and an hour. So Bob went out with an acoustic guitar and played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". Which was great drama. And it was cracking me up. And uh, it was. It was all over now, baby blue. Now, 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 was a crock. And so these kids came to the show at Forest Hills with all their boos on. They were, they were going to boo Bob Dylan and they paid their ten bucks or whatever it cost to get in, so that they could boo Bob Dylan. And this was the biggest circus I've ever seen. Bob went out and played acoustic through 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 began swirling around, uh, Forest Hills Tennis Stadium where we were playing. And then Murray the K came out and introduced Bob, which was the silliest damn thing I'd ever seen.

So at intermission the, uh, the temperature dropped 15 or 20 degrees. And it 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 un-Bob Dylan person there could be, this horrible disc jockey. And it, Bob is what's happening, and here we go, you know. And Bob's really doing it, and like the people went nuts, they hated him. And they just like booed him down. Then we came out, playing our electric music. The band was, uh, Harvey Brooks on bass, myself on keyboards, Robbie Robertson on guitar and Levon Helm on 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. They were just booing, they were yelling the most basest insults at him, people were rushing the stage to grab him. 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 wild. And so we started playing, uh, uh, "Ballad Of A Thin Man." And they were just booing mercilessly. And Bob yelled out to the band, "Keep playing the intro until they shut up." So we're going, uh, -- [plays organ] -- for five minutes. Until they realized that, until they shut 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 Bob 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. So you know, go understand this. And the very next week we played the Hollywood Bowl, with the same show we had played Forest Hills with. And at the Hollywood Bowl nobody booed, and everybody was very appreciative and enjoyed the show. Showed the difference between New York and Los Angeles at the time. And it was nice. We got to go to Gregory Peck's house. It was a very pleasant experience being in Los Angeles. I had never been to Los 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 the 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 well, what chance does Bob Dylan have there? 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 didn't want to do it. So I called him up and I said, uh, I don't think I want to make the tour. And he said, well, that's cool. And in fact, we were going to get canned anyway. Because Robbie and Levon wanted to have the rest of their band out with Bob. So it worked out very well. And uh, off they went. To an entire year of touring to boos.

I understood that these folks had access to some film footage of Newport, and what do you think it's of -- it's of "Maggie's Farm." Did you consequently say just a bit about what happened with "Maggie's Farm" at that show. Was that the song that was real loose or whatever or the beat got turned around.

The beat got turned around indeed. Uh, Sam Lay was the drummer, and uh, the beat got turned around. In other words --

Could you mention the name of the song?

In "Maggie's Farm" at Newport, the beat got turned around in the middle of the song. So instead of the snare being on 2 and 4, it was on 1 and 3, and it threw the whole band off. Well, like I say, we didn't play very well at Newport. There's not doubt about that. And if there's a film of it, it will substantiate what I'm saying.

Do you want to tell us how "Blonde On Blonde" differed from the earlier recordings?

Well "Blonde On Blonde" was 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 again and he would sit there and write the lyrics. This way I became very conversant with the song itself musically speaking. And uh, after acting as his cassette recorder, I would then go to the studio earlier than him, and teach the band the song. 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 On Blonde" is that "Highway 61" is like a punk, rough hewn record, with no, uh, 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 "Highway 61" is slashed out. So, but when Bob would get to the studio, the band would know the song, they'd 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 overdub anything. And interesting things that happened because of that is, uh, "You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine." Charlie McCoy played bass and uh, trumpet at the same time, so that there wouldn't have to be an overdub. So he played the bass like this, dum-bum, dum-bum, just with his left hand, hitting the notes and the string at the same time, and dum-bum, bum-da-bu-da-bu-da-dah, bu-da-da-da -- this is the quality of musician we were dealing with there. In another song we found we needed a trombone at about 2 o'clock in the morning. So Charlie said, oh, just a minute I'll get someone. Went out and made a call, and this guy showed up at 2:30 with a goddamn shirt and tie on -- and, and came in and played two takes of, uh, "Rainy Day Women," and then thanked everyone and went home at 3 o'clock in the morning. What killed me is he had a shirt and tie on at 2:30 in the morning. And this was, you know, this is what Nashville was all about in 1966. They barely knew who Bob Dylan was. Everybody got the same treatment. Didn't make any difference. This was how they treated people that came down there to 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 everybody'd just leave him alone in the studio. And we'd go ping-pong or eat or something, and he'd be in there, sometimes he'd sit in there for six hours writing a song. And everybody just hung loose, nobody complained or anything. So there was a, a journalist who was there. And uh, he came in about 6:30 and Bob was sitting at the piano writing, and this guy was in the control room. He said, what's going on? We said, Bob's writing a song so we're just letting him be. He said, oh. So then I think Bob Johnston took the guy out to dinner and he came back at 10, and there was Bob still at the piano. And he says, has he been there this whole time? And we said, yeah. And he went, damn, what's he on? And Albert Grossman said, uh, Columbia Records and Tapes. I like that.