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- [00:00]
David Biancooli
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Biancooley. A complete unknown, the new film about Bob Dylan's early career, starring Timothy Chalamet, is out in theaters today. We hear from three of the people who were depicted in the film. First, Suze Rodolo, who was Dylan's girlfriend and his muse. She met him when she was 17 and he was 20, and they soon moved in together in Greenwich Village. They shared a love of poetry and an abundant curiosity. At the time, the Village was the center of the urban folk scene. Rodolo was the young woman arm in arm with Dylan in the now famous cover photo from his album the Freewheeling Bob Dylan. Here's a scene from the film. The girlfriend Named Sylvie, based partly on Rodolo, is played by Elle Fanning.
- [00:48]
Bob Dylan
Think about how much I'm gonna miss you. And I realize I don't know you. There's a face on your driver's license. He's different, has a different name. When I get back, I'd like to get to know that guy. Don't do this. You wrote a five minute song about this girl in Minneapolis. Who was that? What happened? You tell me. You dropped out of college.
- [01:15]
Joan Baez
I didn't drop out of college.
- [01:16]
Bob Dylan
You came here with nothing but a guitar. You never talk about your family, your past. Besides, people make up their past, Sylvie.
- [01:23]
Suze Rotolo
They remember what they want.
- [01:24]
Al Cooper
They forget the rest.
- [01:25]
Bob Dylan
I tell you everything. My folks, my sister, the street I grew up on.
- [01:29]
Suze Rotolo
Man, I never asked you about any of it. What do you think that stuff defines you?
- [01:33]
Bob Dylan
What I come from, what I want and what I don't want. What I reject.
- [01:37]
Suze Rotolo
Yes.
- [01:39]
David Biancooli
Suze Rotolo became an artist and taught at the Parsons School of Design. She married and had a son. In 2011, she died from lung cancer at the age of 67. Three years before that, she spoke to Terry Gross on the occasion of the publication of her memoir, A Freewheel in Time. A memoir of Greenwich village in the 60s.
- [02:00]
Bob Dylan
Suze Rodolo, welcome to FRESH Air and thanks for being here.
- [02:04]
Suze Rotolo
Thank you.
- [02:05]
Bob Dylan
You met Dylan at a marathon folk concert at the Riverside Church in New York in 1961. He wasn't well known yet. He'd only recently arrived in Greenwich Village. You'd already been living there. What attracted you to him then? What did you know of him when you first started seeing him?
- [02:22]
Suze Rotolo
Well, there was a folk music club, Gertie's Folk City, in the Village. And I used to go there and he was performing with other people or he'd play backup harmonica for other groups. And it was the Kind of place where musicians played with other people. And then he gradually started playing with this one other folk singer, Mark Spoelstra. And so I would see him around and I enjoyed his harmonica playing. I thought he was really good in a funny kind of way. He'd sit in the back and really get into playing the harmonica. But we didn't actually talk to each other or see each other person to person. Until that folk concert at Riverside Church where he was playing and by himself. And he was playing also with Jack Elliot. And that's when we kind of got to know each other.
- [03:15]
Bob Dylan
In Dylan's biographical book Chronicles, Volume 1, he writes about you in the end of the book. And I want to read some of the things he says about you. He says, right from the start, I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, Full blood Italian. The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves. We started talking and my head started to spin. Cupid's arrow had whistled by my ears before but this time it hit me in the heart and the weight of it dragged me overbo. Susie was 17 years old, from the East Coast. Had grown up in Queens. Raised in a left wing family. Her father had worked in a factory and had recently died. She was involved in the New York art scene. Painted and made drawings for various publications. Worked in graphic design and in off Broadway theatrical productions. Also worked on civil rights committees. She could do a lot of things. Meeting her was like stepping into the tales of 1001 Arabian Nights. And then he compares her to a Rodin sculpture come to life. And says, she reminded me of a libertine heroine. She was just my type. How does that description sound to you? Do you hear yourself in that description?
- [04:26]
Suze Rotolo
I think that's wonderful and generous and a lovely thing that he wrote. And he captured that sense of being young and meeting somebody and being overwhelmed by feelings for them. And that's what young love is. He did that.
- [04:43]
Bob Dylan
Well, everyone knows now that Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman and he grew up in Minnesota. What did he tell you about his past when you met him?
- [04:54]
Suze Rotolo
At that time? When I met him, I think it was the time when we all were. People were coming to the village to find or lose themselves. And you live very much in the present. So I don't think any of us really talked about where we came and what our parents were like. But there were rumors that that was his name. Because he had to get a cabaret card. And then you had to have documentation. So rumors started flying that it wasn't his real name. I think a lot of people suspected it wasn't his real name, but it didn't make any difference. But for me, when once we were a couple and we were together, I was hurt that he didn't tell me. It was okay, he didn't tell everybody else.
- [05:36]
Bob Dylan
But there are other things. He told you about his past. That he was abandoned at a young age in New Mexico and went to live with a traveling circus?
- [05:43]
Suze Rotolo
Yes. He used to tell those stories. Well, everyone used to tell stories like that, only his were wilder and funnier. And they would contradict each other, and people would wait around to see what the next installment would be that would contradict the other one that he had told a few days before.
- [05:59]
Bob Dylan
So how did you find out that his last name was actually Zimmerman?
- [06:03]
Suze Rotolo
He was. We had come home. We were living by then together on West 4th street, and we had come home one evening, and he was a bit in his cups, and he took his wallet out of his pants, and everything fell on the floor. And I saw his draft card. There were draft cards in those days. And his. I saw his name, and I was really. That's when I was hurt. I said, you never told me that this was your real name. I understand you didn't tell anybody else, but you could have at least told me.
- [06:34]
Bob Dylan
Now, you said that just as he didn't want to be too forthcoming about his upbringing and his family. You felt the same way, too, but you were from Queens, New York, and your parents were both Communists, and you had to grow up with some secrecy because you grew up during the McCarthy era.
- [06:51]
Suze Rotolo
Exactly.
- [06:51]
Bob Dylan
You couldn't very well go around talking about your Communist parents.
- [06:55]
Suze Rotolo
No, I couldn't. Until 1989, I didn't feel comfortable saying that. So that was why. To give you an idea of how secrecy would make sense in something like that, I could understand people not wanting to talk about their story. And you didn't go around saying that your parents were Communists because what was from the McCarthy era into the 60s certainly left its mark.
- [07:20]
Bob Dylan
Now, you write about how Dylan had to develop and present an image to the outside world. And you're right. Much time was spent in front of the mirror trying on one wrinkled article of clothing after another until it all came together to look as if Bob had just gotten up and thrown something on. Image was all. I found it so amusing to read that. To think that, you know, Dylan was trying on all these clothes, trying to look, you know, authentically, like he didn't care.
- [07:48]
Suze Rotolo
Yes, well, it was the image of being a Ramblin Gamblin folk singer. So you couldn't look neatly pressed after all. Also, to give him a little credit, they all did that, you know, they all had to have their costume, how it looked. But it was also, if you think back then there were folk groups that were very mannered and like the Kingston Trio and impeccably dressed. So this, we were the. These new folk singers were the anti Kingston Trio. Image.
- [08:22]
Bob Dylan
You know, while we're talking about image, let's talk about the COVID The now famous cover from the freewheelin Bob Dylan. The COVID that you're on with him walking down a partially snow covered street. He has his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up because it's cold. And you have your arms wrapped around one of his arms. You're wearing like a green trench coat that's tied around the waist and you have nearly knee high boots over your pants and you look really in tune with each other. It's such a romantic cover. I mean what woman didn't want to be on Dylan's arm in that cover? What woman didn't want to be in your place? So tell us how that cover came to be.
- [09:15]
Suze Rotolo
It was all very casual and the apartment was very small. And the photographer came and the publicity guy from Columbia came. So then they figured they'd start taking some pictures in the apartment of Bob sitting around, pick up your guitar, put it down, sing some. And then he said, Don Huntstein said to me, get in some of the pictures. So I did and he took more pictures. And then he said, let's go outside and walk. It was very casual, completely unplanned, and it was freezing outside. And then again referring to Bob getting dressed, he just took this thin suede jacket that wasn't good for a New York cold winter day. And I had on a couple of sweaters. The last one was his, a big bulky knit sweater because the apartment was cold and I threw on a coat on top. So I always look at that picture as I feel like an Italian sausage because I had so many layers on and he was freezing and I was freezing and had more clothes on. It was very cold that day.
- [10:18]
Bob Dylan
Well, he was freezing you say, in part because he wore this light suede jacket. Because it looked good.
- [10:24]
Suze Rotolo
Image, Image.
- [10:25]
Bob Dylan
Even though he knew he was going to be really cold. Yeah, and who can blame him? It did look really good.
- [10:30]
Suze Rotolo
It looked good. He had, he had impeccable taste.
- [10:33]
Bob Dylan
I mean, I don't want to sound harsh about this clothes thing, because who wouldn't want to look right on an album cover? It's important, I think. Who wouldn't want to choose the right article of clothing and risk being cold?
- [10:44]
Suze Rotolo
Yes, it's true. Suffer for beauty, isn't it?
- [10:47]
Bob Dylan
How did that album cover change your life?
- [10:51]
Suze Rotolo
I had no idea. And I don't think anyone who had anything to do with it thought it would be. It would have such an enormous impact. So it became something that was, you know, it was my identifier, but it wasn't my identity. So it became something that was separate from who I knew myself to be. Which might sound odd, but I thought it was a great cover. A very unusual cover for the time. And the first time I saw it was. He was playing at Carnegie Hall, I think, or Town Hall. And it was. The COVID was blown up and put on right outside. It was in black and white and blown up very big. And that really made an impression. It was almost embarrassing. There we were up on 57th Street. Huge, huge. So each time the album began more and more known as the album became more what it is. It became an iconic album. The more I could detach from it and just look at it. Okay, that's what that is. But it was an odd feeling for many years.
- [11:58]
Bob Dylan
I think one of the problems for young women who fall in love with men older, even if they're just slightly older, particularly if that man becomes very famous, is that you risk this kind of mentor, mentee relationship where, you know, the woman is expected to be the learner, looking up to the man, and he teaches her everything he knows. And it could really be a kind of uncomfortable relationship as opposed to, like a relationship of equals. But when you and Dylan met, you had so much to learn from each other. I mean, you really admired his music and had so much to learn from that. He was really interested in learning about your world. Were working in the civil rights movement. You were working in avant garde theater. He learned about the music of Viol and Brecht through the fact that you were working on a Brecht production. And he writes in his memoir about how it really changed him to be exposed to that music. You exposed him to art that he was unaware of because you were an artist yourself. I was glad to see that, to see how much you had to learn from each other.
- [13:09]
Suze Rotolo
Oh, good, good. That's nice. It's true. We did. We were very curious, and we were both in search of poetry, and we fed each other's curiosity. And I was. Because I was From New York City also, you know, and he was from Hibbing, Minnesota. So the fact that in New York you're exposed to a lot more. Plus, the family I came from, we were very. We didn't have much money, but we were very culturally. I always think of culturally, very, very wealthy, because books we had. We didn't have a tv, but the house was filled with books and phonograph records. And we listened to the radio. I was exposed to all different kinds of music from a very early age. My mother loved Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf. And they listened to opera, classical records we had. It was very, very rich. And when you grow up in that, you just assume everybody else knows all this.
- [14:07]
Terry Gross
But.
- [14:08]
Suze Rotolo
But I knew an awful lot about music just from listening and hearing and being exposed to it. Whereas with Bob, he heard this music and knew this is what he wanted to investigate. But he had a harder time finding it and finding people. And there are stories now about when he was in Minnesota, taking. Stealing people's records so he could learn the music on it. So he had a harder time finding things, whereas I was almost born into it.
- [14:37]
Bob Dylan
You decided to leave for Perugia, Italy. You were supposed to go there after high school. You'd had a trip planned, but because of a car accident, you never made it. And then you moved to Greenwich Village, and then you met Dylan and so on. But the opportunity was offered to you again by your mother. So you decided to leave for Perugia. It was a very difficult decision for you. What was his reaction when you told him you were going?
- [15:02]
Suze Rotolo
He didn't want me to go, but at the same time, he didn't want to put pressure on me. But I learned later from a friend that he was furious when she sympathized with my. She said, well, you should go, because this is a wonderful opportunity. And then he was very angry with her for a long time. But to me, he didn't want to come down hard. He did say, don't go, but he didn't want to restrict me from considering going at the same time. And it was a difficult decision for me. I kept hemming and hawing whether I should or shouldn't or whether I wanted to or not. It was difficult. Why did you go in the end? I think I went for many reasons. One being because I couldn't stand the arguments anymore that were going on in my own head of should I or shouldn't I? And it did seem like a good thing to do, a real opportunity. And also, the Village was oppressive in many ways. Greenwich Village, Yes. Greenwich Village was getting oppressed. It was so much the folk music scene. And I wasn't a musician. And I couldn't keep on obsessing about folk music the way the musicians would. So it also seemed like a nice way to get away. And it was only going to be for three months, maximum. But I ended up staying a good eight months because when I was there, it was. I was no longer in this. I kind of see it as in these small, smoky taverns. I was out in the bright sunshine with people from all over the world my age, and I was seeing. Hearing all this other kind of music and other poets. And I was trying to read. I remember trying to read Rimbaud in French and trying to, you know, just absorb. It was like a college experience. I hadn't gone to college, and this time that I spent in Perugia and this atmosphere of international students. And I had also found an art academy, a small art academy that I went to. It was just thrilling.
- [17:07]
Bob Dylan
Is the song Boots of Spanish Leather written about your leaving for Italy?
- [17:13]
Suze Rotolo
Most of the songs that he's written, I hate to say, oh, this is written about me or this. But that's a good example of a song that is a fiction based on an experience he was going through and.
- [17:27]
Bob Dylan
The experience he was going through, the experience of missing you.
- [17:30]
Suze Rotolo
Yes. So that's a good example of how it becomes art, your life experience. You translate it into art. It serves a purpose for the music you're making or the art you're making.
- [17:41]
Bob Dylan
So the fiction is that you weren't in Spain, you were in Italy. And did he ever ask for boots of Spanish leather? No.
- [17:49]
Suze Rotolo
I think I had a pair, though, of boots of Spanish leather at some point.
- [17:54]
Bob Dylan
Well, here's the song we've been talking about. Boots of Spanish leather.
- [17:58]
Terry Gross
Oh, I'm sailing away My own true.
- [18:03]
Suze Rotolo
Love.
- [18:06]
Terry Gross
I'm sailing away in the morning here's something I can send you from across the sea from the place that I be landing now there's nothing you can send me My own true love there's nothing I'm wishing to be owning Just to carry yourself back to me Unspoiled I'm across that lonesome ocean.
- [18:59]
David Biancooli
Suze Rotolo spoke to Terry Gross in 2008. More of her interview after a break. And we'll also hear from two other people who are portrayed in the new film, A Complete Unknown, about a young Bob Dylan musicians Joan Baez and Al Cooper. I'm David Biancooli, and this is Fresh.
- [19:16]
Terry Gross
Air, Far from the coast of Barcelona but if I had the stars of the darkest night and the diamonds from the deepest ocean I'd forsake them all for your sweet kiss for that's all I'm wishing To be owning But I might be gone In a long old time and it's only that I'm asking Here's something I can send you to remember me by to make your time more easy passing oh, how can how can you ask me again? It only brings me sorrow this same.
- [20:39]
David Biancooli
Thing I would want Today we're featuring interviews with three people depicted in the new film, A Complete Unknown, about Bob Dylan's early years in New York City. Suze Rotolo was Dylan's girlfriend. In the early 1960s. They lived together in Greenwich Village. Terry spoke to her in 2008. When we left off. Rodolo was talking about leaving Dylan for a short trip to Italy. The character in the film was partly based on Rodolo.
- [21:09]
Bob Dylan
After about eight months in Perugia, you came back to Greenwich Village. And you write that during your absence he suffered in public. You didn't get a friendly reception when you returned. A lot of people, you say, thought that you'd been cold and indifferent to someone who loved you. And that some people, some of the folk singers. Deliberately sang songs that Dylan had written about his heartache. As well as any ballad that pointed a finger at a cruel lover when you were around.
- [21:36]
Suze Rotolo
Yeah.
- [21:37]
Bob Dylan
And you say it was as if every letter Bob had written to me. And every phone call he had made had been performed in a theater in front of an audience. What do you mean by that?
- [21:46]
Suze Rotolo
Well, I felt it was very. After all, I've always been a shy person. So to have this relationship kind of thrown right out there in public was very horrible. I thought it was terrible that he. I was very private. I didn't go broadcasting things around. And yet people seemed to know how I had made him suffer publicly. He was letting that out. But I see that that was just his way of working through it, making it part of his art. But at the time, I just felt so exposed. It was awful.
- [22:22]
Bob Dylan
Well, you moved back to Greenwich Village and you got together. But then you eventually moved out of the apartment that you shared with Dylan. What was the breaking point for you?
- [22:33]
Suze Rotolo
It was all this stuff that was going on around his fame. And there was so much pressure. I just felt that there was no longer. I no longer had a place in this world of this music and fame. And I more and more felt more and more insec. That I was just a string on his guitar. I was just this chick. And I was losing confidence in who I was. And the way I felt in Italy that I was still I was my own self. And could continue my life. And not become this object that's next to Dylan. And also, the more famous he got, there were more pressures on him. And of course, there's all these women that were running around. And so it became something that I didn't like being involved anymore. I saw it as a small, cloistered, specialized world that I just didn't belong in it.
- [23:24]
Bob Dylan
Did you feel like you were always competing for his attention with other women who wanted it?
- [23:30]
Suze Rotolo
But I didn't want to be in that kind of a situation at all. I didn't feel there was a competition. I just felt there was just. He was leaving for another world and another place. And he would, like, expect me to be there always, kind of as a safe haven. So he could come back from wherever he was and whoever he was with. But he'd always have this quiet space in New York. But I couldn't live that way. I wanted my own life in my own way. And even with all this conflict. That tortured young love, you know, was there. We were still attached to each other. Even though we were both going in different directions. And needed to go in different directions. And it was harder for me to pull away. It was easier for him to lead several lives. Men could.
- [24:19]
Bob Dylan
You know, this might be too personal. So if it is, you just let me know. When Dylan started seeing Joan Baez, and that was such a kind of. There was such public interest in their relationship. Because they were both famous singers. What was that like for you?
- [24:41]
Suze Rotolo
Well, it doesn't have to get personal if we just keep it at. To say that he was singing the songs that she needed to sing. Because she was just singing beautiful ballads with that beautiful voice of hers. And she knew that this wasn't what she could keep on singing and maintain a career. And she heard his music and knew this is what she wanted to sing about and what she wanted to sing. And it was a natural. It was natural that they be together. Because he was writing what she wanted to sing. And she was extremely famous. And without her help, I mean, she literally brought him into the folk firmament. Bringing him around with her on tour.
- [25:27]
Bob Dylan
So was that difficult for you to see him with another woman in such a public way?
- [25:33]
Suze Rotolo
Well, by then it was pretty much. I was detaching from him. It was difficult because it became so public. People could see, oh, God, there are definitely going to be a couple here. What are you going to do? And it became very difficult then. And as I said, he was could do go off and be with whoever he wanted to be with and then expect me to be there when he came back to New York. So it was rough for a while.
- [26:02]
Bob Dylan
Do people still recognize you from the Free Wheeling album?
- [26:06]
Suze Rotolo
I look exactly the same, Terry.
- [26:08]
Bob Dylan
Yeah, don't we all? Yes, but, you know, still, it doesn't mean you're not recognizable.
- [26:15]
Suze Rotolo
Well, for those who notice those things, yes. I mean, otherwise, no. I mean, it's a funny kind of recognition. It's people who are Dylan files, you know, Dylan o'files or however I could say that would know to recognize the name, but not everybody does. So it's kind of a funny sometimes I'm surprised that someone recognizes me and, you know, a lot most of the time nobody does. This is going to change that a bit, I suppose.
- [26:46]
Bob Dylan
Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Good luck with your memoir.
- [26:50]
Suze Rotolo
Thank you. It's been a pleasure to speak to you.
- [26:53]
David Biancooli
Suze Rotolo spoke to Terry Gross in 2008. Rodolo died in 2011. Coming up, Joan Baez, in an interview with Terry Gross from 1987, talks about meeting Bob Dylan. This is FRESH AIR. Another character from Bob Dylan's early career portrayed in the new movie A Complete Unknown, is Joan Baez. She already was an established folk music star when Dylan was trying to break into the New York folk scene in the early 1960s. She sang traditional ballads and early on was labeled the Madonna, in part for her sense of purity performing the songs she sang, but also for her behavior off stage. She didn't do drugs, she engaged in social activism, and she shunned major record companies. After Bob Dylan met her, she began recording a number of his songs and invited him on tour when he was just starting out. They also had a temporary, sometimes tempestuous romantic relationship. Here's the song Diamonds and Rust, which she wrote years later about that relationship.
- [27:58]
Joan Baez
Well, I'll be damned.
- [28:01]
Suze Rotolo
Here comes your ghost again.
- [28:05]
Joan Baez
But that's not unusual. It's just that the moon is full and you happen to call. And here I sit and on the telephone hearing a voice I'd known a couple of light years ago, heading straight for a fall. As I remember, your eyes were bluer than Robin's eggs. My poetry was lousy, you said, where are you calling from?
- [28:53]
Suze Rotolo
A booth in the Midwest.
- [28:58]
Joan Baez
10 years ago. I bought you some cupcakes. You brought me something. We both know what memories can bring. They bring diamonds and rust.
- [29:16]
David Biancooli
Terry Gross Spoke with Joan Baez in 1987 upon the publication of her autobiography, A Voice to Sing With.
- [29:23]
Bob Dylan
When did you start moving your repertoire toward more contemporary and political songs?
- [29:29]
Joan Baez
Well, I think my courtship with ballads took maybe two years of my life in Cambridge in 59 60. And then as soon as I had any relationship at all with civil rights movement and I started that in 61, I started picking up the songs that would really be relevant in those situations. So I would start with the early songs, spirituals, and those things could connect me with that movement. And then there was this odd situation of me being an interpreter of song. Never occurred to me to write. I probably couldn't have in those days anyway, because I was convinced I couldn't. And so that when Phil Ochs wrote There but for Fortune. And then Dylan began writing those real gems that he gave us, that's when some of my thoughts and feelings and activism connected with the music. 63, 64, 65.
- [30:19]
Bob Dylan
You've, during your career sung a lot of songs by Bob Dylan, who was your good friend and for a short time, your lover. How did you meet?
- [30:29]
Joan Baez
Meet Bob. Somebody said, you've got to come to Greenwich Village. There's this incredible guy who writes music. And I had been told by a number of people the same thing. So I went to see him and he was incredible. I mean, I was very impressed. It was this funny little guy with his guitar. The night I saw him, he was making up songs. He sang the song to Woody and then he was just making up words, which just. I was in total to just stand there and ad lib and make up music. And then he was dragged over to the table to meet the Madonna. And it was all very awkward because, you know, I felt like some aging dowager at that point. And he seemed so young. And I didn't work with him for I think maybe a year or so after that.
- [31:10]
Bob Dylan
Well, you were more established than he was at the time. And you took him on an American tour that you were doing and used to introduce him.
- [31:19]
Joan Baez
Yeah, I did. Yeah, I'd introduce him and I and my audience and you know, they're trained into absolute silence to listen to the Madonna singer nubile folk songs. And on would come this little scruff ball and he would sing. And his voice, you know, was not. They were not prepared for that. And then sometimes they would boo and I'd shake my little finger at them like a school marm and say, now you listen to this boy. He's a genius. And so they'd be quiet and obedient and then before very long, maybe a verse or two. They figure out that, in fact, it was something quite astonishing going on with the songs he was writing.
- [31:52]
Bob Dylan
Well, that really helped him get known. And then shortly thereafter, he went on an English tour and took you with him. Except he didn't share the spotlight with you the way you had shared it with him.
- [32:02]
Joan Baez
That's true. I don't really enjoy telling Dylan's stories over the air. But I would say that in what I wrote about Bob. Which I think has surprised people. Because it's very candid. I opened myself up. I mean, I think you learn more about me than you do about Bob. And tell that the magnificence of the music and the times that we had together. And really some glorious things about him. And then it's very unflattering on the dismal parts. And that was very difficult to figure out how to write that. Because that, you know, he and the other people I've dealt with in the book. Are important to me, were important to me. And so I think you have to write some of the good and the bad. On the other hand, I don't think a book should be written to level accounts. And I really tried not to do that. I tried to just express what those times were like.
- [32:57]
Bob Dylan
Let's talk about this effect on you. When you were touring England with him. And weren't getting called onto stage. And weren't sharing the spotlight with him. How did it affect you emotionally?
- [33:07]
Joan Baez
Well, I would talk about that in a grander sense, in general. Somebody who came into an identity at age 18, as I said. And I thought it was pretty terrific to be the Madonna. And got lots and lots of attention. And learned to sort of survive on that. And one of the things that happened was I couldn't stand having the show stolen from me. I was very ungraceful about that. And I simply couldn't believe that that was happening about Bob's gracelessness. People can make their own assumptions why he did what he did. But the difficulty for me was my own reaction to that. That I kept going back to it and didn't sort of, you know, didn't use my head or didn't have one in that situation.
- [33:50]
Bob Dylan
Do you still sing songs by him?
- [33:52]
Joan Baez
Sure, yeah. They're marvelous. They're the best. They're the best that anybody wrote, in my opinion. For the things that we needed and the things that we did in the 60s. They are really a gold mine.
- [34:03]
Bob Dylan
You know, one thing that strikes me about your early career. Is that it was a combination of selflessness and ego. I guess you seemed on stage like a very selfless person who is pouring out her heart for the larger good. And yet you get so fed by audiences that you become very ego involved with that attention.
- [34:23]
Joan Baez
Well, it's true for those of us who have almost as our partners that audience. So when people tease or accuse me of enjoying the attention, I say, yeah. I mean, when I was 15, it's written in the book. When I was 15, we found this essay I wrote called what I Believe. And among other things, it's talking about when I show off at school and I say, I'm not a saint, I'm a noise. So it was already started way back then. That's how I got my attention. We moved a lot, and I was always the new kid in a school. And though people weren't unkind to me, we always lived at the fringe. I didn't have whatever it took to sort of be instantly in the in crowd. So I was always at the edge of it. And the new kind of attention, namely people applauding and saying, gee whiz, you're wonderful, was I began to feed on that. And then, you know, then the part of saying, that's the ego, and then trying to keep my head straight or, quote, be a good person, go back to Quaker meeting, you know, and find out, try and just keep both feet on the ground and use the entire process, people's adulation, people's response, what I do my voice for a common good, for something good rather than something negative.
- [35:38]
David Biancooli
Joan Baez speaking with Terry Gross in 1987. Coming up, Terry's interview from 1998 with one more person portrayed in the new Bob Dylan biopic, Al Cooper, who played the famous organ opening on Like a Rolling Stone. This is FRESH air. Al Cooper, a session musician in his early career, played in the band Blues Project and founded the band Blood, Sweat and Tears, famous for its use of horns and its mix of jazz, blues and rock. In the new Dylan biographical film A Complete Unknown, Al Cooper figures in two pivotal musical scenes. One is during the recording of Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, and the other is at the climax when Dylan and his band, including Cooper, go electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Cooper talked with Terry Gross in 1998 when his revised and expanded memoir, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, had just been released.
- [36:38]
Bob Dylan
Well, in the 1960s, you met Bob Dylan through Dylan's record producer of the time, Tom Wilson. And this was in what year?
- [36:45]
Al Cooper
About 1965.
- [36:48]
Bob Dylan
65. And Tom Wilson had just cut Dylan's first electric single, Subterranean Homesick Blues. And he invited you to watch Dylan at a session. And you were determined, you say, to do more than watch. You wanted to actually play on it. The session turned out to be the session for Highway 61 Revisited. In which Like a Rolling Stone was recorded. And you played Hammond B3 on like a Rolling Stone. How did you get to play on it?
- [37:14]
Al Cooper
Well, I was just determined to play. I was a guitar player at the time. And I stayed up all night practicing. And I had actually an inflated opinion of my ability as a guitar player. And I got to the session, and at the time, I was playing guitar on records as a session musician. So the other musicians that were there early when I got there. Did not think it was unusual for me to be there with my guitar. Because I'd played sessions with them and they knew that I did session work. And I set up my stuff and I sat down and I waited. And Dylan came in with a guitar player who was roughly my age. And he sat down and started warming up. And I. I realized I was in way over my head. He was the best guitar player I'd ever heard in my life. Just warming up. Just those things he was playing were way beyond my grasp as a player. And I said to him, to myself, I gotta get out of here before I really embarrass myself. So when there was a moment, I took my guitar and put it in the case and put it against the wall. And I went in the control room where I belonged and watched the session. And Tom Wilson came in. And he hadn't seen me sitting out there with the guitar. So that was very good. And then during the session, they had someone playing the organ. And they moved him over to a piano. Actually. His name was Paul Griffin. He was at studio keyboard player. And I walked over to Tom Wilson. I said, hey, why don't you let me play organ on this? I got a great part for this. He went, oh, man, you. You're not a organ player. You're a guitar player. You don't play the organ. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I got a great part for this, Tom. And at just. At that point, they called him for a phone call. And I thought to myself, well, he didn't say no. He just said I wasn't an organ player. And so I went out and sat down at the organ. And as a matter of fact, if Paul Griffin hadn't have left the organ switched on, that would have been the end of my career. Because it's very complicated to turn on a Hammond B3 organ. It takes about three separate moves, and you have to know what you're doing. And I didn't, but it was on already, so I was saved. And then Tom Wilson came back out, and he said, okay, this is take six. And then he saw me and he said, hey, what are you doing out there? And I just started laughing. And he was a gentleman. He just said, okay. Okay, let's go. We're rolling. This is take seven. I guess he thought, you know, if I wanted to do this so bad, he would stand behind it because he was my friend.
- [40:06]
Bob Dylan
When you had told Tom Wilson that you had a part worked out in your head, did you really?
- [40:11]
Al Cooper
No, of course not. 90% ambition.
- [40:16]
Suze Rotolo
Okay.
- [40:17]
Bob Dylan
So then what happened? They start performing the song?
- [40:19]
Al Cooper
Well, they were rehearsing for a second, and I kind of got the thing. And the speaker to the organ was very far from where I was sitting at the organ. And it was covered by baffling so that it wouldn't leak into other microphones that were on in the studio. And so I couldn't actually hear what I was playing. And if I put the headphones on, I could kind of hear a little bit of it, but other things that were much louder, like the guitar. And I didn't have any music to read. I had to do it by ear, which I was used to doing because of playing on sessions as a guitar player. And I just kind of, you know, muddled my way through it. And it was the only complete take of the day. So they went in to play it back and listened to it. And during the playback, Dylan went over to Tom Wilson and said, hey, turn the organ up. And he said, oh, man, that guy's not an organ player. He says, I don't care. Turn the organ up. And that's how I became an organ player.
- [41:25]
Bob Dylan
Well, let's hear Like a Rolling Stone with my guest, Al Cooper, featured on Oregon.
- [41:41]
Terry Gross
Once upon a time you dress so fine through the bumps of dime in your prime Then you people call say beware, doll, you're bound to fall. You thought they were.
- [41:55]
Joan Baez
Come on.
- [41:56]
Bob Dylan
I'm kidding you.
- [42:02]
Terry Gross
You used to laugh about everybody that was hanging out now you don't talk so loud now you don't seem so proud about having to be scrounging your next me. How does it feel? How does it feel to be without.
- [42:40]
Al Cooper
Home.
- [42:44]
Terry Gross
Like a complete unknown.
- [42:48]
Al Cooper
Like a.
- [42:49]
Terry Gross
Rolling stone.
- [42:58]
Bob Dylan
My guest, Al Cooper, featured on organ. Al Cooper. Are you surprised at the impact that organ line had on pop music?
- [43:05]
Al Cooper
Well, I mean, it was ironically hilarious because here's a guy that really didn't know what he was doing playing hunt and peck organ. And like a whole style of organ playing came out of that. It founded like a whole style of organ playing, which as we sit here, was really based on ignorance. But that's what's so great about rock. That's what makes rock and roll so great, is something like that could happen.
- [43:35]
Bob Dylan
Now, the record that you first made with Dylan, you started in a longer relationship with him, you know, playing with him. And you played with him at the Newport Festival, his first, you know, like electric concert. And it's a concert that's famous because Dylan got booed. And in your memoir kind of have a different interpretation of why he was getting booed. The standard interpretation is because he had electric instruments. The audience was really angry and thought that he'd sold out, etc. And they were booing him. What's your explanation?
- [44:07]
Al Cooper
Well, many people came to that festival, which was a three day festival, like Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to see Dylan because he was like the king of folk music at the time. And he was the headliner of the festival and was playing the final set on Sunday night. And so primarily a college age crowd came and they sat through many musics over the three day period under the umbrella of folk music that I'm sure that they didn't care for. And Most people played 45 minute to an hour sets. And then we came out and we played for 15 minutes, three electric songs. And I think that the people were horrified and incensed that we only played for 15 minutes.
- [45:04]
Bob Dylan
Weren't they booing during the performance too though? No, no.
- [45:08]
Al Cooper
You. You find me some oral record of that and I'll be very surprised. There was an undercurrent of the festival directors that were very upset with Dylan playing electric. That is a fact and that is TR really had no way of making itself known to the audience that was attending the thing, other than through the press later on after the festival was over, which is how that myth came to be promulgated after the festival. That's what the press wrote about. Because they were privy to the fact that Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax were very upset with the electrification that Dylan was doing. And in fact there were other acts that played electric at that festival that nobody got bent out of shape about, like the Chambers Brothers and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. And they didn't get booed because they played electric.
- [46:08]
David Biancooli
Al Cooper speaking with Terry Gross in 1998. The new film in which he's portrayed a complete unknown about a young Bob Dylan is now in theaters. On Monday's show, comedian Roy Wood Jr. His new comedy special, lonely Flowers, looks at how isolation has sent society spiraling into a culture full of guns, rude employees, self checkout lanes and sex parties. I hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Biancooli.
- [46:39]
Al Cooper
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- [47:07]
David Biancooli
Wait, wait, don't tell me. Fresh Air up first, NPR News. Now Planet Money TED Radio Hour Throughline the NPR Politics podcast Cast Code Switch Embedded books we love Wild Card are just some of the podcasts you can enjoy. Sponsor free with NPR. Plus, get all sorts of perks across more than 20 podcasts with the bundle option. Learn more at plus.NPR.org.