Dylan switching producers in '65 - Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston
Patricia Jungwirth
Jeff asked this question on the dylanpool phorum today, and having a bit of
time on my hands I put together quotes from various sources which might
throw a bit of light on the subject. I thought it was worth posting the
results to r.m.d. in case anyone's interested, and also to archive the
information in one place. All the links are to longer interviews/features
which are well worth checking out, if you haven't read them before.
here's a quote from the 69 Jann Wenner interview :
How did you make the change ... or why did you make the change, of
producers, from Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston?
Well, I can't remember, Jann. I can't remember ... all I know is that I was
out recording one day, and Tom had always been there -- I had no reason to
think he wasn't going to be there -- and I looked up one day and Bob was
there. (laughs)
There's been some articles on Wilson and he says that he's the one that
gave you the rock and roll sound . . . and started you doing rock and roll.
Is that true?
Did he say that? Well, if he said it . . . (laughs) more power to him.
(laughs) He did to a certain extent. That is true. He did. He had a sound
in mind.
a bit further down in the Jann Wenner interview from 69 :
When did you make the change from John Hammond...or what caused the change
from John Hammond?
John Hammond. He signed me in 1960. He signed me to Columbia Records. I
think he produced my first album. I think he produced my second one, too.
And Tom Wilson was also working at Columbia at the time?
He was . . . you know, I don't recall how that happened ... or why that
switch took place. I remember at one time I was about to record for Don
Law. You know Don Law? I was about to record for Don Law, but I never did.
I met Don Law in New York, in 1962 . . . and again recently, last year when
I did the John Wesley Harding album. I met him down in the studio. He came
in ... he's a great producer. He produced many of the earlier records for
Columbia and also for labels which they had before -- Okeh and stuff like
that. I believe he did the Robert Johnson records.
<http://www.rollingstone.com/features/cs47article.asp>
............
this comment from Dylan in a 1974 interview seems to negate the
"falling-out" :
"... but the producers that have meant the most to me are Tom Wilson, John
Hammond and Bob Johnston. They were there. They were there when . . . well,
it's like a small group of friends."
<http://www.rollingstone.com/features/coverstory/featuregen.asp?pid=2003>
...
here's an interesting comment from the ever-informative Richie Unterberger
(this is from an interview somebody did with him, just to reverse the usual
scenario) :
3. There's no question that in 1963 and 1964 Bob Dylan was the most
influential poet of his time. Do you think that his change from all
acoustic music to electric purely out of musical boredom?
There's a quote in my book from filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker that sees boredom
as a big factor in Dylan's switch to electric music, and although it *was*
a factor, I think it was just one. There were several forces at work. One
was that he, like many and perhaps most of the first folk musicians to plug
in, really did love rock'n'roll from an early age. That love had kind of
gone underground when they want into folk music, but I think Dylan was
generally eager to get back into it when the climate made it possible for
him to do that without causing serious damage to his career. Don't forget,
also, that he *had* actually done some tentative rock sessions for Columbia
in 1962 so the concept of recording electric rock wasn't alien, even if
those '62 tracks were unreleased or barely released at the time.
In addition, I think Dylan felt and/or realized that he probably *needed*
to electrify to keep in the vanguard of contemporary popular music. There
may have even been some mercenary or at least careerist motives at work, in
that he might have feared that he would start to be considered passé when
so much great electric music -- by the Beatles, of course, but also by many
British Invasion groups and soon-to-record American ones like the Byrds and
the Lovin' Spoonful -- was hogging the spotlight and making the most
important advances in pop music. I also believe producer Tom Wilson's role
in Dylan's electrification has been somewhat underestimated. It seems that
Wilson pushed, if gently, or at the very least encouraged Dylan's move into
electric rock recordings at the very beginning of 1965, where a more
conservative producer would not have brought it up or might have resisted
it had Dylan brought it up solely on his own. Once electric rock had
occupied one entire LP side of Bringing It All Back Home and his popularity
had if anything grown, it was inevitable that he would make it part of his
live show as well, though it took about half a year for that to happen.
5. The focus of your book appears to be the recording of The Byrds' first
album, Mr. Tambourine Man, as the birth of folk rock, but you state that
Bob Dylan beat them to the punch by electrifying half of his album,
Bringing It All Back Home after discovering what The Byrds were doing.
Well, I wouldn't say that Dylan beat them to the punch. I think both the
Byrds and Dylan were arriving at their brands of folk-rock synthesis pretty
simultaneously. To break it down, Dylan actually recorded Bringing It All
Back Home, including the electric half, a few days before the Byrds
recorded the "Mr. Tambourine Man" single, though the Byrds had been
recording electric rehearsals (including at least one electric version of
"Mr. Tambourine Man") for some time before they did the single. The Byrds
didn't start recording the rest of the Mr. Tambourine Man album until about
a couple of months after they did the "Mr. Tambourine" single and Dylan had
cut Bringing It All Back Home.
Although Roger McGuinn speculated that Dylan got his inspiration for doing
rock from the Byrds and "Mr. Tambourine Man," I think he was talking about
more general inspiration for Dylan to pursue rock all-out, rather than
specifically giving Dylan the idea to go rock after discovering what the
Byrds were doing.
Dylan, I think, would certainly have gone rock even if the Byrds hadn't
formed. The Byrds having a folk-rock hit with one of his songs certainly
helped pave the way for wide acceptance of his transition, though. It is
certain that the Byrds were playing electric folk-rock *live,* for about
half a year, before Bob Dylan started playing electric live.
To briefly state a more general observation, I'm sometimes asked questions
along the lines of "who was the first to go folk-rock" or "what was the
first folk-rock record." Part of what the book illustrates is that *no one*
was "first." There were dozens or perhaps hundreds of musicians making the
move to go folk-rock, in varying degrees, at the same time in the 18 months
or so before "Mr. Tambourine Man" became a hit. The Byrds and Dylan were
the most important pioneers in this process, and the Byrds' single "Mr.
Tambourine Man" and their first album were the most important recordings in
popularizing folk-rock on a mass scale. But there were plenty of other
folk-rock moves afoot by other artists at the same time.
<http://www.libranpoet.com/unterberger_interview.htm>
...
There's a quote from Tom Wilson here :
Then again, Dylan was always the grown-up at the party in the 1960s,
disdaining airy talk of love and change. He was the closest thing to a real
bluesman born of that time. I remember what Al Kooper, who played organ on
Highway 61 Revisited and at Newport in 1965, once told me. Producer Tom
Wilson, the only black staff producer at Columbia, owned an indie jazz
label before producing records by the Animals, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel and
the Velvet Underground. Wilson said of Dylan, "Put him with an electric
band, and you'll have a white Ray Charles who's a poet."
<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&c=3&s=santoro>
...
From a fascinating interview with Bob Johnston
<http://mixonline.com/ar/audio_bob_johnston/>
Not a lot has changed in the business since then. But you became a producer
in an era when labels owned studios and staff producers were given artists
almost as a matter of chance. How did you wind up producing Bob Dylan's
Highway 61 Revisited?
I heard him, and I wanted to work with him. He was a prophet, and in
another few hundred years, they'll realize he stopped the [Vietnam] War.
Mercy asked me, “Why do you want to work with him? He's got dirty
fingernails and he breaks all the strings on his guitar.” But I wanted to.
I was afraid they'd give him to [Byrds producer] Terry Melcher, so I had a
meeting with John Hammond, Mercy and [Columbia Records president Bill]
Gallagher, and they said, “Okay, you do him.”
Dylan had had a falling out with his previous producer, Tom Wilson. What
did you bring to the picture, and what was your first meeting like?
It was in the Columbia Studios on West 52nd Street. I just walked up to him
and said, “Hi, I'm Bob Johnston,” and he just smiled and said, “Hi, I'm
Bob, too.” As for producing, I always say I'm someone who just lets the
tapes roll, but anyone who can't write songs, can't sing, can't produce,
can't perform really shouldn't be working with an artist. You need to
relate on their level, if for no other reason than you can stay out of
their way when you need to. All of the other staff producers at Columbia
were tapping their feet out of time and whistling out of tune and picking
songs based on what their boss liked last week so they could keep their
jobs three more months. But I figured Dylan knew something none of us knew,
and I wanted to let him get it out. Also, I should tell you that though
“Like a Rolling Stone” was on Highway 61, it was produced by Tom Wilson. I
produced all the rest of the songs on it.
What were the sessions for Highway 61 like?
The old studios on 52nd Street were a big complex with tons of staff
engineers. I walked in on the first day, and there was a German engineer in
the studio waiting for me, and he said, “Vot are ve vorking on today?” I
told him it was Bob Dylan, and he said, “Do ve haff to?” And I said, “Hell,
no,” and got another engineer. [That turned out to be Mike Figlio, who also
recorded Tony Bennett's “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” and who would
follow Johnston down to Columbia Nashville a few years later.]
I don't know how Tom Wilson recorded him, but when I did Dylan, we set up
all of the musicians in the same room, with Bob behind a glass baffle so
you could see him. With Dylan, you always had to keep your eye on him. He
came in and played a song to the band once and that was how they learned
it. He never counted off, just launched right into it, so you always had to
keep the tape rolling. And that wasn't easy at Columbia; we were using
4-track for that record, 8-track on Blonde on Blonde, and the machines were
way down the hall. We had union engineers, so one would be in the control
room at the console with me, and I'd say, “Roll tape,” and he'd tell his
assistant near the door, “Roll tape,” and he'd yell down the hall to a guy
at the other end, “Roll tape,” and then they'd start all over again
yelling, “Is tape rolling?” God, it took 20 minutes to get those damned
machines going. It was like a Three Stooges short. So I got in the habit of
using several machines with Dylan so as not to lose anything. He would
start a song on the piano, and if the musicians dropped out during it, he'd
go to the guitar and start playing another one. I lost one song that way
and said never again, so I always used multiple machines.
How do you mike a guy like that?
I always used three microphones on Dylan, 'cause his head spun around so
much. I used a big [Neumann] U47 on him, same as I used on Johnny Cash
later. I would put a baffle over the top of his guitar because he played
while he sang lead vocals. I didn't use any EQ on the band, just set the
mics up right to make each instrument sound the best it could. I used some
EQ on Dylan's voice.
How did you help Dylan make the transition to Nashville for Blonde on Blonde?
I had been doing record sessions in Nashville with the old A-Team guys,
like Grady Martin and Floyd Kramer. They were great musicians, but they
were used to working a certain way. I'd ask them to play this or that part,
and they'd say, “Nope, don't want to play that.” They wouldn't play
anything they didn't want to play. So, my wife talked to Ray Stevens' wife
and she told her about all these musicians who had moved up from Florida
[and other parts of the South] to Nashville, guys like Jerry Kennedy and
Wayne Moss and Kenny Butrey. I started using them on demo sessions there
and liked them. I brought [harp player] Charlie McCoy up from Nashville to
play guitar on Highway 61 and Dylan liked him. But not everyone thought
recording in Nashville was a good idea.
When we were doing Highway 61, Bill Gallagher and [Dylan manager] Albert
Grossman were in the studio when I mentioned to [Dylan] that maybe we
should try recording in Nashville, they got these great musicians. Bob just
kind of said, “Hmm,” and put his hand to his chin, looking like Jack Benny.
That's how he always was with a new idea — everything you ever said to him
he always heard, but he never reacted right away. He'd just file it away,
and it would come out later if he liked it. But a little later, Grossman
and Gallagher came to me and said, “If you ever mention anything about
Nashville again to Dylan, we'll fire you. The reason being, we're having
too much success the way we're doing it now.” I said, “Okay, you're the
boss. Then I took Dylan down to Nashville for Blonde on Blonde, and he
loved working there.
Was it a radical shift in musicians, from guys like Mike Bloomfield to
Jerry Kennedy?
We also bought some of the guys from The Band, like Rick Danko, who Dylan
had been working with, and Al Kooper. I'll tell you a great Al Kooper
story: Al was in Nashville dressed in an undertaker's hat and a black cape
and high-heeled boots, real hippie-like, and he went down to Ernest Tubb's
Record Shop on Broadway. Well, the boys there didn't care for the way he
was dressed and they chased him out of there, and he ran into a phone booth
to get away and called [Elvis Presley “Memphis Mafia” member] Lamar Fike,
who came and rescued him in his Cadillac.
Bob got real into recording in Nashville. For the next record, John Wesley
Harding, he was staying in the Ramada Inn down there, and he played me his
songs and he suggested we just use bass and guitar and drums on the record.
I said fine, but also suggested we add a steel guitar, which is how Pete
Drake came to be on that record.
I have to ask about Dylan's notorious vocal sound change for Nashville
Skyline.
If you listen to all of the records in a row — Highway 61, Blonde on
Blonde, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline — you'll notice his voice
changes on every one. It's just something that happened. Skyline was just
the most noticeable change. I never changed microphones on him. Hell, if he
came in singing like The Chipmunks, and if Johnny Cash came in playing a
ukulele, I couldn't care less, because they all knew something no one else
knew — they were artists.
You were recording Dylan at the same time you were working with Simon &
Garfunkel?
Yes. Always had multiple albums going on at once. All at Columbia's Studios
in New York or Nashville. Highway 61 and Sounds of Silence were done at the
same time, same for Blonde on Blonde and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme,
and John Wesley Harding and Bookends.
Did you ever get Simon & Garfunkel or Leonard Cohen down to Nashville?
Paul Simon came down for about a week once. But we did Songs From a Room
with Leonard in Nashville.
You followed Tom Wilson onto Simon & Garfunkel as well, right?
I did. He was the one who had put the drums and band on [the song] “Sounds
of Silence” while Paul was in England. But I did the rest of the album.
Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel must have been very different working experiences.
Very. Dylan was fast, and you never knew what he was going to do next. With
Paul Simon, something in the studio might take an hour, it might take a
day, a week, a month. He was very meticulous. He knew how to make records.
He had made lots of demos, and he and Art had [made records] under the name
Tom & Jerry. He really didn't need me or Roy [Halee, then a Columbia staff
engineer and soon to co-produce with Simon], except to bounce things off of.
Did they do their vocals together?
No, they overdubbed them separately. I don't recall which microphones we
used on them, but Paul helped choose those, too. He chose the musicians. He
hired the newscaster to come in and record the [voice-over] for “7 O'Clock
News/Silent Night,” another song that I think helped end that war.
You produced the two records that brought Johnny Cash's career back to full
steam, the live records from Folsom Prison and San Quentin.
Columbia didn't want to do those, either. But I called Warden Duffy at
Folsom Prison and set it up. Good thing, too. Sold 7 million records.
What was the equipment used for Folsom?
We had a truck full of whatever we could take from Columbia Studios in
Nashville. Charlie Bragg, who was on staff at Columbia, was the engineer.
The show was done in the prison cafeteria, and it was huge and echoing, and
catwalks and hard surfaces everywhere. So, we put up as many mics as we
could on the stage, sometimes a couple or three for each player, close in.
We recorded it to 8-track. But it was the show that made itself, really. I
think the most important thing I did on that recording was, instead of
having an announcer work the audience up, I told Johnny to walk out there
and just say, “Hello, I'm Johnny Cash.” You can hear the explosion after that.
You ran Columbia Records in Nashville for a short time before going
independent. What prompted you to leave Columbia?
I knew I could do better on my own. After Highway 61 and Sounds of Silence,
Columbia put together a pot for the staff producers, and I got $3,000 in
addition to my pay as a staff producer. After Parsley, Sage and Blonde on
Blonde, I got $6,000. For those records? Screw that. So I went off on my own.
Too much of the business is determined by guys in suits these days, people
who are too afraid of being fired instead of determined to make good music.
In that kind of environment, there can't be another Beatles or Stones.
Wasn't it like that when you were staff at Columbia? Didn't the “suits”
have complete control over the artists?
Yeah, but they didn't have complete control over me.
...
more from Bob Johnston <http://www.b-dylan.com/pages/samples/bobjohnston.html>
How did you get involved with working on Highway 61 Revisited?
I don’t know. I can’t tell you the honest truth [because I’m not sure
myself]. What I heard from the people at CBS was that Grossman and Dylan
didn’t like Tom Wilson, who was producing him. Wilson had come in when John
Hammond found Dylan, and they said they didn’t like him. Whether Dylan
didn’t like him or loved him, I have no idea if that’s the truth or not.
[When] they came and told me that they were gonna get somebody else, and I
went to John Hammond and asked him to please help me ‘cause I wanted [to
work with] Dylan more than I ever wanted [to produce] anybody in my life.
Someone once asked Dylan how he met me and he said, "I don’t know. One
night, Wilson was there and the next night Johnston was there."
I’d just stepped in ‘cause I had been used to producing and recording and a
lot of the other people were just beginning. When I walked into a place it
became mine.
Who was your boss when you worked with Dylan?
John Hammond, who was the greatest music man that ever lived, Mr. CBS. He
discovered all the blues people, all the jazz people, Dylan, Springsteen,
Paul Simon and hundreds of others. He was my mentor all the way down the
line. He was the one I would go to for help. He always managed to see that
I was in there before anybody else, so I give him all credit.
What were your initial impressions of Bob Dylan?
Before I met him, I had actually seen him in the Village and things like
that. He was freaky to me...because I still believe that he’s the only
prophet we’ve had since Jesus. I don’t think people are gonna realize it
for another two or three hundred years when they figure out who really did
help stop the Vietnam War, who did change everybody around and why our
children aren’t hiding under the damn tables now worrying about an atomic
war. One day they’ll wake up–and they’ll realize what they had–instead of
asking what kind of album he did and is it as good as the last one. That
was always bullshit to me.
I never cared what he did and I never cared what he did in the studio. I
was trying to get down anything he was doing next, so we could have a
record of it–so the people could hear it all over the world. I figured that
was my job.
My job wasn’t to be a hero and to tell Paul Simon or Bob Dylan or Johnny
Cash or Willie Nelson what the f@#k to do! I thought if you want to be a
hero or if you want to take credit, get some other people to work with.
Don’t work with these people. I wasn’t like some other people who were
looking to be the next Phil Spector. I had three sons; all I cared about
was seeing that it was gonna be a better world. And I think these people
made a better world for us.
...
Richie Unterberger again (what a treasure that man is!) talking to Bruce
Langhorne :
But you were using a pickup and playing with band arrangements. That's what
makes it different than, say, a Carolyn Hester or Odetta record.
Yeah...Well, not really. I mean, like the Dylan sessions weren't arranged.
They weren't! (laughs) They were not arranged.
Do you remember anything about what Tom Wilson was doing at those sessions?
Hanging out in the control room. "Oh, we got a take." "Oh, that's really
cool!" (laughs)
It's too bad I can't interview him, but some musicians have said that when
he produced them, he spent most of his time on the phone with girlfriends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was like...but see, like...production. I discovered,
like, production, directing, and a lot of things, where people get their
names onto projects, has to do with putting the right people together for
the right projects. Like, in my movie scoring career, I worked with
Jonathan Demme on several projects. And one thing that really blew my mind
about Jonathan Demme was that Jonathan Demme would put a bunch of people
together, and then just step out of the way, and let the interaction and
the project take over and have its own life. I think that's the kind of
producer that Tom Wilson was, and I also think that's also the kind of
producer that John Hammond was too. I think that they were producers who
really had so much love and respect for the artists that they would
just...and they had faith, this is the thing. Some producers felt that they
had a job to do, that the universe would not do the job, but they had to do
it, you know. And other producers felt that hey, you know, put the right
people together in the right circumstance, and it will evolve. And I think
that's the kind of producer Tom was.
<http://www.richieunterberger.com/langhorne3.html>
...
Tricia
"I wish I was on some Australian mountain range
I got no reason to be there but
I imagine it would be some kinda change... "
-Bob Dylan, 'Outlaw Blues'
-January 1965
***tric...@aardvark.net.au
Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan in Melbourne, 1966:
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/5581/
Avylan
> producers, from Tom Wilson to Bob Johnston?
>
> Well, I can't remember, Jann. I can't remember ... all I know is that I
was
> out recording one day, and Tom had always been there -- I had no reason to
> think he wasn't going to be there -- and I looked up one day and Bob was
> there. (laughs)
This is just like the Mickey Jones basketball quote; .. they send me places,
uh...
It's quite an art to fake other-worldliness like this. I think Tony Blair
could learn a trick or two from Bob on this one. "Ummm, let me see. I don't
recall exactly. It was like, one minute we weren't at war, then I looked up
and Geoff Hoon tells me we're at war. How we got there, well... " Not sure
we'd credit him for it, but GWB would be able to pull it off with panache.
Richard
track.
I once asked Mr. Grossman and his wife, at a time when they had a small
record company in Woodstock, about the John Hammond and Tom Wilson changes.
Mr. Grossman was not very specific, but my feeling from this tone was that
it was Mr. Grossman's idea to make these changes. I was a bit shy and did
not press him any further since it was a social situation and not an
interview. (My wife's friend worked as a secretary at the Grossman record
company at the time). I sure wish someone had interviewed Mr. Grossman about
all this but apparently that never happened.
Richard.
Dorwin C. Black
Wilson, Bob Johnston, and mid-60's Dylan..
I was amazed during one of my recent viewings of the Don't Look Back DVD, to
notice Tom Wilson walking around in the background during various scenes. I had
never noticed it before. Why did he go along on this tour? I know Dylan recorded
a session with the Bluesbreakers. Was Tom Wilson involved in the production for
that session?
-DCB
John Howells
because Tom Wilson left Columbia to work exclusively for MGM? Since
Dylan was not making records for MGM, it would follow that Tom Wilson
could no longer produce him.
--
John Howells
how...@punkhart.com
http://www.punkhart.com
Bill
when talking about the Highway 61 sessions. He said, boiling things
down a bit, that Dylan found Wilson useless when working with a rock
band. Wilson was usually satisfied with the first or second complete
take, assuming there weren't any serious lyrics screwups, and didn't
contribute anything when Dylan wanted to work more on the
arrangements, etc.
If you look at the session records, they bear out Bloomfield's
account. Lots more work, song by song, and rarely work on a song stop
without about a half dozen complete takes.
tric...@aardvark.net.au (Patricia Jungwirth) wrote in message news:<3.0.32.20040205...@aardvark.net.au>...
