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Fact #39545

When:

Short story:

When keyboardist Al Kooper and bassist Harvey Brooks decide to quit Bob Dylan's touring band, they are replaced by Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel - who will become the core of The Band.

Full article:

Al Kooper : I don't know why Harvey left. We left around the same time but it wasn't something we'd talked about. I left because I got a tour schedule which said we were gonna play in Dallas and I said, 'Man, if they shot Kennedy down there, what are they gonna do to Dylan?' I said, 'Man, I'm scared to go down there.' So I decided to quit the band.

I called up Bob and said and said, 'Hey, what ya doin'?'

He said, 'Eatin a piece of toast and listenin' to Smokey Robinson.'"

I said, 'I'm callin' because I think I'm gonna have to leave the band.'

He said, 'OK.'

And so I said, 'OK then. Talk to you soon.' That was the whole conversation.

They were going to get rid of us anyway because they were going to put The Hawks back together, which became The Band. So they'd have got rid of us anyway. I think that's why the conversation was so short.

But it didn't really cost me anything. We stayed friends and I ended up playing on the next album, so that was good.
(Source : interview by Johnny Black for Rock'n'Reel, 2007)