Al Kooper

Every now and then we could steal somebody else's stuff.

— 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

Producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.

— Al Kooper

The "Highway 61" album [of Bob Dylan] was produced by Bob Johnston if I'm not incorrect. And Bob Johnston was an entirely…

— Al Kooper

I liked being challenged by music. It's good for me.

— 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 place that I worked I used to joke about it. There was a, every morning at 10:30 I'd come into work…

— Al Kooper

Still being ambitious to want to play on the record, I was a mediocre keyboard player. And uh, I seized the opportunity…

— Al Kooper

My influences were mostly gospel. So I was playing my twisted Jewish equivalent of gospel music over his twisted equivalent of rock…

— Al Kooper

Only through sheer ambition did I end up playing on [Bob Dylan sessions] and the fact that I could do that is…

— Al Kooper

Musically Bob [Dylan] is a primitive. He's not a Gershwin, or somebody that uses eloquent music terms.

— Al Kooper

Mike Bloomfield sat down and started playing, and I went, whoa! Because I had never heard any white person play like that…

— Al Kooper

The first generation from the '50s that were in 1650 [Broadway] were pretty much all crooks, I mean just out and out…

— Al Kooper

The very funny thing about "Like A Rolling Stone" is it was a six minute song, there was no music to read…

— Al Kooper

I started in the music business I was first introduced to 1650 Broadway, uh, which was in reality where everything happened in…

— Al Kooper

At the end of the playback of the take of "Like A Rolling Stone", or actually during the thing, Bob Dylan said…

— Al Kooper

In the, uh, '30s and '40s, the Brill Building was the hub of, uh, musical activity in Tin Pan Alley in New…

— Al Kooper

...You couldn't help being influenced by Dylan.

— Al Kooper

The [Bob] Dylan sessions were very disorganized, to say the least. I mean, the "Like A Rolling Stone" session I was invited…

— 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…

— Al Kooper