Fact #135900

Al Kooper (keyboard player for Bob Dylan] : After Newport, audiences had time to read what the newspapers promulgated as his betrayal and the audience's response to his betrayal. And so these people had been taught to boo. The concert at Forest Hills, N.Y., was particularly dramatic. That was amazing. It was like a Gothic novel. Before the show we had a meeting and Bob said, "Hey, anything could happen out there. Just ignore whatever happens and keep playing. It could be a circus out there. So just keep playing. Whatever happens, just keep playing." We said, "O-kay-ay." It rained briefly in the afternoon, and after the rain we did a sound check so we wouldn't have the problems we had at Newport. And then Dylan went out and played forty five minutes of acoustic music, by himself. Then there was a break and they moved our instruments out. And during the break, the temperature dropped about ten or fifteen degrees, and this wind started swirling around the stadium. It was really weird. Really, really weird.

(New York City DJ) Murray The K came out and introduced the electric portion of the show. "Bobby-baby knows where it's at" - stuff like that. I couldn't believe it. Then Bob came out and his hair was blowing all over the place and we started playing. The crowd just booed through the whole thing. They were yelling, "Dylan, you scumbag!" and "F--- you!" But the most humorous thing was that Like A Rolling Stone was already at the top of the charts. So they sang along with Like A Rolling Stone - and then they booed.

Harvey Brooks (bassist) : Kooper and I just looked at each other and laughed. We were having the time of our lives. It was fun, gleeful, from the heart, exciting – an experience we'd never had before.

Al Kooper : A week after we played Forest Hills, we played the Hollywood Bowl and there was nary a boo. Which sort of breaks down the difference between the East and the West Coast in 1965.
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Bob Dylan : I was doing fine, you know, singing and playing my guitar. It was a sure thing, don't you understand, it was a sure thing. I was getting very bored with that. I couldn't go out and play like that. I was thinking of quitting. Out front it was a sure thing. I knew what the audience was gonna do, how they would react. It was very automatic.

Your mind just drifts unless you can find some way to get in there and remain totally there. It's so much of a fight remaining totally there all by yourself. It takes too much. I'm not ready to cut that much out of my life. You can't have nobody around. You can't be bothered with anybody else's world. And I like people.

What I'm doing now - it's a whole other thing. We're not playing rock music. It's not a hard sound. These people call it folk rock - if they want to call it that, something that simple, it's good for selling records. As far as it being what it is, I don't know what it is. I can't call it folk rock.

It's a whole way of doing things. It has been picked up on, I've heard songs on the radio that have picked it up. I'm not talking about words. It's a certain feeling, and it's been on every single record I've ever made. That has not changed. I know it hasn't changed.

As far as what I was totally, before, maybe I was pushing it a little then. I'm not pushing things now. I know it. I know very well how to do it. The problem of how I want to play something - I know it in front. I know what I am going to say, what I'm going to do. I don't have to work it out. The band I work with - they wouldn't be playing with me if they didn't play like I want them to.
(Interviewed shortly after Forest Hills by Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston)