Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards

by Al Kooper

  Energized by the Newport reaction, we went back to New York and straight into the studio to finish work on Highway 61 Revisited, as that album was to be called. Then, once again, when those sessions were completed, I returned to my little cubicle lovenest in Forest Hills to lead the comparatively mundane life I had lived before I got my organ caught in the tail of that comet.

  Prior to my recent Dylan association, I had been playing in bars with my good friend Harvey Goldstein, a bass player. We were partners. If one of us got hired for a gig, he would strenuously rally to get said employer to hire the other one of us, if it was at all possible. Of course, Harvey almost got me killed once. He occasionally played with this singer named Bobby Marico. I would play with them when Harv could get me on the gig. One night we had an engagement in upstate New York at a lovely place called the Luau Nyack. We were supposed to start at 9:00 p.m. and play until 2:00 a.m. Five sets, forty-five minutes on and fifteen minutes off = $400. We got real lost on the way up there and had to call the club to get directions from wherever we were. We arrived at 8:45 p.m., set up quickly, and started playing at 9:15. Bobby, who fronted the band, told the owner we’d play late to make up for the fifteen minutes we had lost by arriving late. There were only ten people in the audience when we started playing in the first place. At the end of the night, the clubowner deducted half our pay for being late. Bobby Marico went ballistic. He screamed at the guy and walked into the guy’s office yelling at him. We followed like sheep to watch his back. The guy opened his desk drawer and pulled out a gun.

  “Does this change the argument at all?” he inquired, smiling and pointing the gun at Bobby. Harvey and I were incredulous. Bobby was not.

  “Hey, before you pull that fuckin’ trigger you should know my father is good friends with Angelo D’Ambrosio [not his real name].”

  Amazingly this stopped the guy.

  “Hey kid, you don’t throw names like that around here, y‘unnerstan’?”

  Bobby didn’t back down. I was trying to remember if I told anyone I was going to Nyack that night and wondering if I would just be missing for all time or if miraculously they’d find my body in the woods around the club.

  “I’m not throwin’ any fucking names around, pal. My father knows Angelo D’Ambrosio and I think you should put that gun away and give us our money!!” God, that Bobby had balls!

  Amazingly, the guy put the gun down and gave him all the money.

  “Awright, you little punks, take the fucking money and don’t ever come around here again.”

  Yeah. Like we were gonna come back the next night just for a coupla drinks. In the car, I asked Bobby if his dad really knew that guy. Bobby said he did and that mentioning Angelo D’Ambrosio’s name had saved him two other times from compromising situations. I wasn’t Italian-looking enough to remember Angelo’s real name for the future, fortunately.

  Harvey and Bobby Marico got a gig for the whole summer of ’64 at the World’s Fair. Harvey talked Bobby into hiring me as well. This was a great payday and a three-month steady gig, not far from our homes. I owed Harvey. I talked Dylan into trying Harvey out on one of the Highway 61 sessions because I could tell Bob liked having people closer to his age around.

  Harvey met with Bob’s approval and stayed on. Things went so splendidly that Dylan decided to assemble the studio band to accompany him on his upcoming concert tour. Bloomfield was another story. Harvey and I had lunch with him one afternoon.

  “You guys going on the road with Dylan?” he asked us.

  “Yeah, sure, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “You guys will be big stars, be on TV and in the movies, have your picture on the cover of Time, but I can’t do it. I want to stay with Butterfield.”

  “Why?”

  “All I want to do is play the blues, man. Ah loves tuh play de blues,” he grinned.

  So that was it for Bloomfield. Bobby Gregg, the drummer on the album, also opted to stay home; something about having enough session work to keep him busy. As it turned out, Mary Martin, a Canadian-born secretary who worked at Albert Grossman’s office, took Dylan out to a club in New Jersey to see a journey-man band called the Hawks, who hailed from her native Canada and had formerly backed up Ronnie Hawkins. Bob apparently liked what he saw that night, because suddenly guitarist Robbie Robertson and drummer Levon Helm were in the picture in addition to Harvey and me. This gave us a young, rockin’ quartet behind Bob (though it did effectively break up the Hawks at that time). We rehearsed exhaustively every day over a two-week period, and the pieces fell together nicely.

  After rehearsals, I fell into the habit of tagging along at night with Dylan and his left-hand man, Bob Neuwirth, in their regal odysseys around the Village. Hanging out at the Kettle Of Fish, eating at the Limelight (not the recent disco, but a now-defunct, low-key eatery on Seventh Avenue in the West Village), going to an endless succession of clubs, parties, and recording sessions. With a completely flexible song-writing and session schedule, I had plenty of time to devote to hanging out and soaking it all up. Plus here was a guy who, for no charge, was rerouting my entire train of thought. It was like taking a blackboard with all my former values written on it, erasing everything, and starting all over again.

  Dylan would hold court at a back table at the Kettle Of Fish, a seedy little bar on MacDougal Street in the Village that was distinguished only by its musical clientele. Once the place was fairly full, they’d lock the doors and Dylan would take over. Word that Dylan was inside circulated on the street, and people would jam up outside the front window hoping to catch a glimpse of the action.

  Dylan, as always, was buying the drinks. Neuwirth would carry the money, pay the bills, and make all the necessary apologies. It was never very long before the room was on a collective drunk (except for yours truly, whose raging ulcer precluded anything stronger than soda). The cast of characters usually included Dylan, Neuwirth, Eric Andersen, Debby Green, Phil Ochs, David Blue, Dave and Teri Van Ronk, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Clarence Hood (who owned the Gaslight, the club next door), myself, and Paul Rothchild (a staff producer at Elektra).

  If Dylan got drunk enough, he’d select a target from among the assembled singer/songwriters, and then pick that person apart like a cat toying with a wounded mouse. Making fun of a person’s lyrics, attire, or lack of humor was the gist of his verbal barrage. Dylan was so accomplished at this nasty little game, that if he desired, he could push his victim to the brink of fisticuffs. It was all relative to how much alcohol was being consumed by the party of the first part, the party of the second part, or the party in general. When temperatures would threaten to shatter the room’s emotional thermometer, it would be good ol’ Bob Neuwirth’s job to step in and negotiate a temporary truce over yet another bottle of Remy. These nights would usually end with everyone carrying everyone else home and Neuwirth paying a tab that was well into the hundreds.

  Dylan maintained a fierce rivalry with his “children” (as Life magazine called them), although underlying his antagonism was a comprehensive awareness of their latest albums and career moves. Maybe he wanted to keep everyone on their toes, or perhaps he was just trying to stay awake.

  After rehearsing for two weeks, we were ready to take this new electric Dylan on the road. Grossman had booked a couple of impressive dress rehearsals: the Forest Hills, New York, Tennis Stadium for one night; and the Hollywood Bowl a week later. The day of the Forest Hills gig, we spent the entire afternoon doing a soundcheck and getting acquainted with the big room. It had rained earlier in the day, God’s little preview of what the night held in store.

  This concert took place a brief six weeks after the Newport show, which had been ballooned by the media into a major boo-fest to suit the purposes of the countless articles being written about Dylan “selling out” to crass rock ‘n’ roll. America was ready for hand-to-hand confrontation with its reckless idol, and Forest Hills would prove to be the battleground. We had no way of knowing this in advance, however.

/>   Forest Hills concert—afternoon soundcheck. New York City, 1965. (Left) Bob (with senses reeling); (right) Al (with Beatle boots, kneeling). (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)

  The concert started off smoothly enough, with Dylan sailing through a well-paced acoustic set to the delight of the overflow crowd. At intermission, Dylan cleared the backstage area and called the band into a huddle.

  “I don’t know what it will be like out there. It’s going to be some kind of a carnival, and I want you all to know that up front. So just go out there and keep playing no matter how weird it gets.” Yeah, well ... sure.

  While we had this little band meeting, the concert promoter had decided to have the electric half of the show introduced by the self-proclaimed “Fifth Beatle,” Murray the K. Murray represented the antithesis of what Dylan was all about and could have even been a character in one of Dylan’s current songs. When Murray was introduced, the crowd was in total disbelief. I still don’t know how Albert Grossman let this detail get past him. When Murray hit the stage, a wave of booing swept over him, the likes of which he had probably never endured before. He was like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl.

  Our instruments were pushed into place and we walked out on stage. Suddenly an ill-timed wind whipped through the stadium, dropping the temperature at least ten degrees in as many seconds. The crowd stirred at the sound of the tentative drum rolls and guitar tunings; an ominous rumble from the other side of the darkness.

  The lights went up and we were into “Tombstone Blues” full force, but the audience got quiet. Too quiet. The wind churned around the stadium and blew Dylan’s hair this way and that, as if reprimanding him for this electric sacrilege. The conclusion of the song was greeted with the boos all these kids had read so much about and probably felt obliged to deliver. Of course, the barrage was peppered with “Dylan, you scumbag! ... Get off the fucking stage!” and other subtle pleasantries characteristic of our generation.

  Bob didn’t flinch. He just bulled his way straight through the hour-plus set. It seemed that even the hero worshippers were unusually aggressive on this particular evening. They’d try to claw their way onto the stage to make contact with Dylan, and the police were sparing no tactic to keep them back. One kid was chased behind me by a cop and as he flew by, he hooked his leg on my stool, taking me with him as he went down. I was on my ass and not the least bit pleased about the situation.

  Three-quarters of the way through, Dylan stood at the piano to play “Ballad Of A Thin Man,” a song from the as-yet-unreleased Highway 61 album. It had a quiet intro, and the kids persisted in yelling and booing all the way through it. Dylan shouted out to us to “keep playing the intro over and over again until they shut up!” We played it for a good five minutes—doo do da da, do da de da—over and over until they did, in fact, chill. A great piece of theater. When they were finally quiet, Dylan sang the lyrics to them: “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you?”2 It was almost as if he’d written the song knowing full well that the moment would come when he’d sing it to a crowd like this one. Just like “Baby Blue” at Newport. It was lovely. We then segued into “Like A Rolling Stone,” which was number one on the charts that week. Everyone sang along and then booed when it was over!

  Dylan pulled his customary vanishing trick, leaving Harvey and me to make our way out into the chilly Forest Hills night unaided. People, recognizing our shirts from the stage, reached out to grab us, and believe me, they could have had anything in mind. We eventually escaped and stopped off at my apartment to shower before driving into New York for the postconcert party at Albert Grossman’s apartment in Gramercy Park. Neither of us had the slightest clue as to what Dylan had thought of the concert. All we knew was that we played what we were supposed to play, and that the sound had been excellent. (There is great coverage of the soundcheck, the backstage area, and the concert itself in Dan Kramer’s photobook Bob Dylan.)

  Harvey and I walked into Albert’s apartment, and Dylan bounded across the room and hugged both of us. “It was fantastic,” he said, “a real carnival and fantastic.”

  He’d loved it!

  The following weekend we were scheduled to play the Hollywood Bowl with the same repertoire. Not only had I never been to California, I’d never even seen the inside of an airplane. The band was supposed to make that journey in Grossman’s private plane (the Lodestar), but I pleaded to fly commercially for my first flight ever. Harvey took the Lodestar, but I had visions of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

  I sat between Dylan and Neuwirth coast-to-coast, and they staged the best horror show they could dream up for my benefit. Every time the plane would dip or move the least bit awkwardly, they’d look at each other with blatantly pessimistic frowns and say, “This is the worst flight I’ve ever been on.” Dylan would grip my arm and stammer, “I think this is the big one, Al.” And Neuwirth would cradle his head in his hands and whimper “No, no, no.” They’d be ringing for the stewardess every ten minutes, telling her I was very ill and could they please have yet another air-sickness bag. This drama had me just about ready to blow the emergency hatch until I looked around and saw everybody else on the plane calmly enjoying their cocktails and conversation. I quickly caught on and relaxed. When the plane landed, Neuwirth handed us pull-on wrestling masks to get through the crowd. The three of us ran through LAX with these stupid masks on till we got to the limo. Our baggage was “looked after” as we sped to the hotel.

  While in Los Angeles, Harvey and I shared a suite at the Hollywood Sunset Hotel down the hall from Dylan’s suite, which was the hub of activity for the week. We got there about two days before the concert, and I went the goggle-eyed hip tourist route all over L.A., which, in 1965, was approaching the zenith of its glory. I went shopping and saw all the clothes that I’d ever wanted to own. Incredible brightly colored shirts featuring big polka dots and floral patterns; the kind of mod look that had been imported from London to Los Angeles but hadn’t hit New York yet. I immediately blew my entire wad on shirts.

  One day a bunch of us were congregating in Dylan’s room: Irwin Levine (he came along for the ride), Michael J. Pollard, P. F. Sloan, who was the most blatant West Coast Dylan imitator, and a few hangers-on. Dylan loved meeting lower-echelon, mirror images of himself; and it was sorta like giving them the Bad Housekeeping Seal of Approval. “Get P. F. Sloan,” he’d scream. “Let’s have P. F. Sloan up here.”

  Dylan was in the midst of modeling a new suit he’d just purchased when the phone rang. It was obviously someone Bob didn’t want to talk to, because he was trying to hang up almost as soon as he took the call. As he was talking, room service wheeled in an elaborate cart of sandwiches and desserts that Bob had ordered for everyone, and he grabbed a sandwich. Now at this time it didn’t particularly matter whether Bob was lighting a cigarette, reading a book, or talking on the phone; he was the center of attention. He tried to explain to the guy on the other end of the line that he had to hang up, that they just brought lunch in, but evidently the guy was holding on hard. Dylan nonchalantly took the egg salad sandwich he was eating and started grinding it into the mouthpiece of the phone, all the while explaining that it was lunchtime. The guy must have been getting the message, because everyone in the background was loudly in stitches. Dylan’s parting shot was to pour his glass of milk into the phone as well, saying, “Well, so long, thanks for having lunch with us.” Totally oblivious to the milk and mayonnaise all over his new suit, he just strolled into the other room and took a nap. End of audience.

  The Hollywood Bowl concert was in sharp contrast to the Forest Hills show, in that it defined the essential differences between the two coasts. The audience (and what an audience: Gregory Peck, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, The Byrds, and Tuesday Weld for starters) listened attentively to the new Dylan and, after polite initial applause, got caught up in the electric feeling. Soon we were getting thunderous ovations. In the middle of the encore, my ulcer began to go haywire. I didn’t have my pills wi
th me, so the most logical plan of action was to try and latch on to the coattails of Dylan’s escape at the end of the song. This part of the evening was as well planned as any military maneuver, so it was a matter of pure timing. I didn’t know what the plan was, but I figured that if I followed Dylan, I couldn’t go wrong. Boy, that little fucker could run! By the time he was halfway down the back ramp, the car, driven by his old friend Victor Mamudes, was already moving. “Wait for me, wait for me,” I yelled, as they pulled Dylan into the car.

  The view from behind the organ at the Hollywood Bowl soundcheck: Robbie Robertson and Bob Dylan warm up. Los Angeles, 1965. (Photo: AI “Instamatic” Kooper.)

  They yanked me inside barely in time. We were doing about ten miles an hour already, and when the door closed behind me, Victor quickly accelerated. Because of the tremendous amount of sweat Dylan and I contributed by our presence, all of the windows in the car became fogged. When I glanced up, the speedometer said eighty-five, and the girl in the front seat beside Victor was screaming, “You’re going the wrong way! We’re headed for a brick wall! Turn around, Victor!”

  She was perfectly correct, and Victor executed a turn that would have given Evel Kneivel an ulcer to rival my own. Out of the Bowl we wheeled, making it to the hotel before the audience’s demands for more had died away. I took a double dose of pills and crashed.

  As no other concerts were scheduled, Irwin and I stayed on in Hollywood for an additional week. We were theoretically there to hustle our songs, but mostly we just let L.A. hustle us.

  When I finally made my way back to New York, Dylan’s office dropped the full itinerary for a major tour in my lap. Noting that the tour stopped in Texas, I began to give serious consideration to making my exit from this traveling circus. I mean, look what they had just done to J.F.K. down there, and he was the leading symbol of the establishment. So what was going to happen when Bob Dylan, the most radical vision of the counterculture, paid them a visit? I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out. Besides, what musician enjoys being booed on a consistent basis?