Al Kooper Quotes

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.

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

If you'd done a good job you'd just step back and let all these different chemistries interact and let it go.

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.

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

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

I think it was Columbia politics, Columbia Records politics that, that, Tom Wilson left [Bob Dylan] after "Like A Rolling Stone".

Producing Bob Dylan was pretty much a spectator sport.

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

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

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

I started in the music business I was first introduced to 1650 Broadway, uh, which was in reality where everything happened in the '60s.