Rolling Stone, 10 February 1977, pp. 68, 70
Backstage
at the Creation
By
Al Kooper with Ben Edmonds
[In
this excerpt from Kooper's memoir, Backstage
Passes (Stein & Day, 1977), he recounts an incident that occurred
during Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde
recording sessions.]
I
was sitting in the control booth while Dylan was in the studio unmoving,
writing again. Al Grossman had made a habit of pitching quarters into the
soundproofed ceiling, and now everyone was doing it. I just knew when we left
town, some engineer was gonna turn up a bass track all the way and all them
fuckin' quarters was gonna rain down on the control room like a Las Vegas
jackpot.
Anyway,
me and Grossman and Johnston are pitchin' quarters, and this local newspaperman
had somehow got in. He was in there about an hour and a half just staring at
the motionless Dylan through the glass when he finally said, "Damn! What's
he on, anyhow?"
Grossman,
not wanting the facts to get distorted in this guy's potential scoop, tells
him, "Columbia Records, sir." The guy is ushered out shortly
thereafter.
[In
Kooper's liner notes to No Direction Home
(Columbia Records, 2005), a collection of Dylan outtakes, demos, and live
versions, he claims the obtuse journalist made two visits:]
Bob
would arrive, go to the piano in the studio and start changing a lyric.
Sometimes he would be in there for four or five hour stretches. The band took
it in good humor and played pool and ping pong, watched TV and catnapped. One
night a journalist somehow slipped in with a friend and was asked to come back
later as Bob was writing. He returned four hours later and Bob appeared to be
in the exact same position at the piano as when the journalist was originally
expelled.
"Man...what
is he ON?" the reporter asked no one in particular in a loud voice.
"Columbia
Records," Albert Grossman, Bob's manager, replied as he showed the
gentleman to the door (p. 42).
