DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. "A Complete Unknown," the new film about Bob Dylan's early career, starring Timothee Chalamet, is out in theaters. Today we hear from three of the people who were depicted in the film - first, Suze Rotolo, 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. Rotolo was the young woman arm-in-arm with Dylan in the now-famous cover photo from his album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan." Here's a scene from the film. The girlfriend, named Sylvie, based partly on Rotolo, is played by Elle Fanning.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A COMPLETE UNKNOWN")
ELLE FANNING: (As Sylvie Russo) I think about how much I'm going to miss you, and I realize I don't know you. There's a face on your driver's license. He's different. He has a different name.
TIMOTHEE CHALAMET: (As Bob Dylan) Wow.
FANNING: (As Sylvie Russo) When I get back, I'd like to get to know that guy.
CHALAMET: (As Bob Dylan) Don't do this, Sylvie.
FANNING: (As Sylvie Russo) You wrote a five-minute song about this girl in Minneapolis. Who was that? What happened? You tell me you dropped out of college.
CHALAMET: (As Bob Dylan) I ain't dropped out of college. I didn't say that.
FANNING: (As Sylvie Russo) You came here with nothing but a guitar. You never talk about your family, your past, besides the carnivals.
CHALAMET: (As Bob Dylan) 'Cause people make up their past, Sylvie. They remember what they want. They forget the rest.
FANNING: (As Sylvie Russo) I tell you everything - my folks, my sister, the street I grew up on.
CHALAMET: (As Bob Dylan) Yeah. And I never asked you about any of it. What - do you think that stuff defines you?
FANNING: (As Sylvie Russo) What I come from, what I want and what I don't want, what I reject? Yes.
BIANCULLI: 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 Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir Of Greenwich Village In The Sixties."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: Suze Rotolo, welcome to FRESH AIR, and thanks for being here.
SUZE ROTOLO: Thank you.
GROSS: 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?
ROTOLO: Well, there was a folk music club, Gerde'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 kind - the kind of place where other - 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 Elliott, and that's when we kind of got to know each other.
GROSS: In Dylan's biographical book "Chronicles, Volume I," 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, (reading) 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 overboard.
(Reading) 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 you to a Rodin sculpture come to life and says, (reading) she reminded me of a libertine heroine. She was just my type.
What - how does that description sound to you? Do you hear yourself in that description?
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 well.
GROSS: 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?
ROTOLO: Well, 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 lived very much in the present. So I don't think any of us really talked about where they - we came from and what we - 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 OK he didn't tell everybody else.
GROSS: 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.
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.
GROSS: So how did you find out that his last name was actually Zimmerman?
ROTOLO: He was - he had - we had come home. We were living by then together on West Fourth 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 he's - 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.
GROSS: Now, you said that, you know, 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...
ROTOLO: Yes.
GROSS: ...Grow up with some secrecy because you grew up...
ROTOLO: Exactly.
GROSS: ...During the McCarthy era.
ROTOLO: Exactly.
GROSS: So you couldn't very well go around talking about your communist parents.
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 I - 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.
GROSS: Now, you write about how Dylan had to develop and present an image to the outside world. And you write, (reading) 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.
ROTOLO: Yes.
GROSS: 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.
(LAUGHTER)
ROTOLO: Yes. Well, it was the image of being a rambling, gambling 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 - impeccably dressed. So this - we were the - these new folk singers were the anti-Kingston Trio image, you know.
GROSS: While we're talking about image, let's talk about the cover - the now-famous cover from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," the cover 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 (laughter)? So tell us how that cover came to be.
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 something. And then he said - Don Hunstein 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...
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROTOLO: ...So many layers on. And he was freezing, and I was freezing and had more clothes on. It was very cold that day.
GROSS: Well, he was freezing, you say, in part, because he wore this light suede jacket...
ROTOLO: Yes.
GROSS: ... 'cause it looked good (laughter).
ROTOLO: Yes. Image, image.
GROSS: Even though he knew he was going to be really cold.
ROTOLO: Yeah.
GROSS: And who can blame him? It did look really good.
ROTOLO: It looked good. He had impeccable taste.
GROSS: Yeah. 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, like...
ROTOLO: Exactly.
GROSS: ...Really important. I think who wouldn't...
ROTOLO: Yes.
GROSS: ...Want to choose the right article of clothing and risk being cold (laughter)?
ROTOLO: Yes, it's true. Suffer for beauty, isn't it that what you...
GROSS: How did that album cover change your life?
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 would - 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 cover 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 became 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, OK, that's what that is. But it was an odd feeling for many years.
BIANCULLI: Suze Rotolo speaking to Terry Gross in 2008 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2008 interview with Suze Rotolo, who wrote a memoir about her younger years living in Greenwich Village, where her boyfriend at the time was a young Bob Dylan. Their romance is part of the story of "A Complete Unknown," the new film about Dylan. Dylan's girlfriend in the film is given a different name but is based on Suze Rotolo. She died in 2011 at age 67.
GROSS: 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. You really admired his music and had so much to learn from that. He was really interested in learning about your world. You were working in the Civil Rights Movement. You were working in avant-garde theater. He learned about the music of Weill 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're an artist yourself. I was glad to see that, to see how much you had to learn from each other.
ROTOLO: Oh, good, good. That's nice because it's true.
(LAUGHTER)
ROTOLO: We did. We were very curious, and we were both in search of poetry. And we fed each other's curiosity, and - well, 'cause 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 it as being culturally very, very wealthy because of, you know, books. 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.
But I knew an awful lot about music just from listening and hearing and being exposed to it, whereas with Bob, he was - 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 he would, 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.
GROSS: 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?
ROTOLO: Well, 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 was - 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 on whether I should or shouldn't or whether I wanted to or not. It was difficult.
GROSS: Why did you go?
ROTOLO: In the end, I think I went for many reasons, and 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 getting oppressive in many ways and was not...
GROSS: Greenwich Village.
ROTOLO: Yes, Greenwich Village was getting - 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 in 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.
GROSS: Is the song "Boots Of Spanish Leather" written about your leaving for Italy?
ROTOLO: You know, 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. You know, it was...
GROSS: And the experience he was going through was the experience of missing you?
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.
GROSS: So the fiction is that you weren't in Spain, you were in Italy. And did he ever ask for boots of Spanish leather?
ROTOLO: No.
(LAUGHTER)
ROTOLO: I think I had a pair, though, of boots of Spanish leather at some point.
GROSS: Well, here's the song we've been talking about, "Boots Of Spanish Leather."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER")
BOB DYLAN: (Singing) Oh, I'm sailing away, my own true love. I'm sailing away in the morning. Is there something I can send you from across the sea, from the place that I'll be landing? No, there's nothing you can send me, my own true love. There's nothing I'm wishing to be owning. Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled from across that lonesome ocean. Ah, but I just thought...
BIANCULLI: 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 Kooper. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER")
DYLAN: (Singing) ...Or 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. Well, I might be gone a long old time. And it's only that I'm asking, is there something that 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. The same thing I would want today...
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. 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, Rotolo was talking about leaving Dylan for a short trip to Italy. The character in the film was partly based on Rotolo.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: 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 (laughter).
ROTOLO: Yeah.
GROSS: And you say, (reading) 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?
ROTOLO: Well, I felt it was very - after all, I was - 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.
GROSS: 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?
ROTOLO: Well, it was all this stuff that was going on around his fame. And it was - 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 insecure, that I was just a string on his guitar. I was just this chick, and I was losing confidence in who I was, in 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 look, 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.
GROSS: Did you feel like you were always competing for his attention with other women who wanted it?
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, the - kind of as a safe haven, so he could come back from wherever he was and whoever he was with and - but he'd always have this quiet space in New York. But I couldn't live that way. I wanted my own life and 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. Man could, you know.
GROSS: 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 a public interest in their relationship because they were both famous singers - what was that like for you?
ROTOLO: Well, it doesn't have to get personal if we just keep it at this, like to say that she - 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 must - she knew that this wasn't what she could keep on singing and maintain a career. She - 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 a 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.
GROSS: So was that difficult for you to see him with another woman in such a public way?
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, they are definitely going to be a couple here, and 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.
GROSS: Do people still recognize you from the "Freewheelin'" album?
ROTOLO: I look exactly the same, Terry (laughter).
GROSS: Yeah. Don't we all?
(LAUGHTER)
ROTOLO: Yes.
GROSS: But, you know, still, it doesn't mean you're not recognizable.
ROTOLO: Well, for those who notice those things, yes. I mean, otherwise, no. I mean, it's a funny kind of recognition. I mean, it's people who are Dylanphiles. You know, Dylanophiles, 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 - and most of the time nobody does. This is going to change that a bit, I suppose.
GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. Good luck with your memoir.
ROTOLO: Thank you. It's been a pleasure to speak to you.
BIANCULLI: Suze Rotolo spoke to Terry Gross in 2008. Rotolo died in 2011. Coming up, Joan Baez, in an interview with Terry Gross from 1987, talks about meeting Bob Dylan. This is FRESH AIR.
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 offstage. 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIAMONDS AND RUST")
JOAN BAEZ: (Singing) Well, I'll be damned. Here comes your ghost again. But that's not unusual. It's just that the moon is full, and you happened to call. And here I sit, hand on the telephone, hearing a voice I'd known a couple of lightyears 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? A booth in the Midwest. Ten years ago, I brought you some cufflinks. You brought me something. We both know what memories can bring. They bring diamonds and rust.
BIANCULLI: Terry Gross spoke with Joan Baez in 1987 upon the publication of her autobiography, "A Voice To Sing With."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: When did you start moving your repertoire toward more contemporary and political songs?
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, the spirituals, and those things could connect me with that movement. And then there was this odd situation of me being an interpretess of song. It never occurred to me to write. And I probably couldn't have in those days anyway 'cause I was convinced I couldn't. 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.
GROSS: 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?
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. And 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 awe of that, 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.
GROSS: 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 in your act.
BAEZ: Yeah, I did. Yeah, I'd introduce him. And my audience - I mean, 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 schoolmarm 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.
GROSS: 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.
BAEZ: That's true. I don't really enjoy telling Dylan stories over the air, but I would say that in what I wrote about Bob, which is - I think has surprised people because it's very candid, I open myself up. I mean, I think you learn more about me than you do about Bob and all 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.
GROSS: 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?
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. You know, 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.
GROSS: Do you still sing songs by him?
BAEZ: Sure. Yeah. They're marvelous. 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.
GROSS: You know, one thing that strikes me about your early career is that it was a combination of selflessness and ego. Do you know - I guess you seemed, on stage, like a very selfless person who was 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.
BAEZ: We'll, 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 the 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.
BIANCULLI: 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.
This is FRESH AIR. Al Kooper, a session musician in his early career, played in the band Blues Project and founded the band Blood, Sweat & 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 Kooper 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 Kooper, go electric at the Newport Folk Festival. Kooper talked with Terry Gross in 1998 when his revised and expanded memoir, "Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards," had just been released.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Well, in the 1960s, you met Bob Dylan through Dylan's record producer of the time, Tom Wilson. And this was in what year, about?
AL KOOPER: 1965.
GROSS: Sixty-five. And Tom Wilson had just cut Dylan's first electric single, "Subterranean Home Sick 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?
KOOPER: 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 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 realized I was in way over my head. He was the best guitar player I had 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 myself, I've got to 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 piano, actually. His name was Paul Griffin. He was a studio keyboard player. And I walked over to Tom Wilson and I said, hey, why don't you let me play organ on this? I got a great part for this. And he went, oh, man, you're not an 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 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've 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, OK, this is Take 6. 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, OK, OK, let's go. We're rolling. This is Take 7. I guess he thought, you know, if I wanted to do this so bad, he would stand behind it because he was my friend.
GROSS: When you had told Tom Wilson that you had a part worked out in your head, did you really?
KOOPER: No, of course not - 90% ambition.
GROSS: (Laughter) OK, so then what happened? They start performing the song?
KOOPER: 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 there were 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 listen 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.
GROSS: Let's hear "Like A Rolling Stone," with my guest Al Kooper featured on organ.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LIKE A ROLLING STONE")
DYLAN: (Singing) Once upon a time, you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? People call, say beware doll, you're bound to fall. You thought they were all kidding you. 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 meal. How does it feel? How does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?
GROSS: That's my guest, Al Kooper, featured on organ. Al Kooper, are you surprised at the impact that organ line had on pop music?
KOOPER: 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 'n' roll so great, is something like that could happen.
GROSS: Now, the record that you first made with Dylan - you started 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, you 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, et cetera, and they were booing him. What's your explanation?
KOOPER: 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-aged 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.
GROSS: But weren't they booing during the performance, too, though?
KOOPER: No.
GROSS: No?
KOOPER: 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 true. But that 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.
BIANCULLI: Al Kooper 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 Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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