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Michael Bloomfield: I had heard the first Dylan album when it came out. I thought it was just terrible music. I couldn’t believe this guy was so well touted. I went down to see him when he played in Chicago. I wanted to meet him, cut him, get up there and blow him off the stage. He couldn’t really sing, y’know. But to my surprise he was enchanting. I don’t know what he had, but he got over.
Bob Dylan: I was playing in a club in Chicago, and I was sitting in a restaurant—I think it was probably across the street or maybe it was even a part of the club, I’m not sure—but a guy came down and said that he played guitar. He had his guitar with him, and I said, "Well, what can you play?" And he played all kinds of things—Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, that type of thing. He just played circles around anything I could play, and I always remembered that.
Michael Bloomfield: He could get over better than anybody I ever saw. I thought Jack Elliott was the best single guy, for just a man with a guitar, for getting over, I mean—winning you. But Bob got over better than anyone I’d ever seen in my whole life. Anyway, we jammed that day, and way later he phoned me up. He remembered me, and he asked me to come play on his record.
Bob Dylan: We were back in New York, and I needed a guitar player on a session I was doing. I called him up, and he came in and recorded an album. At that time he was working in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Michael Bloomfield: You wouldn’t believe what those sessions were like. There was no concept. No one knew what they wanted to play, no one knew what the music was supposed to sound like—other than Bob, who had the chords and the words and the melody. But as far as saying, "We’re gonna make folk-rock records" or whatever, no one had any idea what to do. None.
Al Kooper: The first time I met Michael was at the Dylan session for "Like a Rolling Stone." No one knew who he was. He was in the Butter band, but they had no records out. They weren’t known outside of Chicago.
It’s pretty funny—it was the dead of winter in New York, and he came into the studio with his Telecaster, without a case. He had it on his shoulder like some guy in a platoon or Johnny Appleseed or something. It was all wet, because it was snowing out. He just wiped it off with a towel, plugged it in, let’s go—you know, that kind of thing. So he endeared himself to me right away, with that stunt.
He was very funny. He cracked me up. He had a great sense of humor. And he was very primitive. He could tell a story pretty darn good. The primitiveness and the humor were the key things for me.
 Michael Bloomfield: The producer was a non-producer—Tom Wilson. He didn’t know what was happening. I think they wanted rock & roll. We did 20 alternate takes of every song, and it got ridiculous. These were long songs, and poor Dylan was cranking out these versions of "Desolation Row," doing it three times and finally saying, "Do you guys realize this is a 10-minute song? And you’re making me do it three times?"
It was never like, "Here’s one of the tunes, and we’re gonna learn it and work out the arrangement." That just wasn’t done. The thing just sort of fell together in this haphazard, half-assed way. It was like a jam session.
He had a sound in his mind…he said, "I don’t want any of that B.B. King shit, man."
but the Byrds’ sound was what he wanted to get in his sessions. I don’t think he was into getting a producer and letting himself rest in the producer’s hands. He didn’t want to log the studio time that someone like the Beatles or the Stones had, so that your records sound good—or if they don’t sound good, at least you can drive for a certain kind of sound. He never wanted to log that time. And it’s a pity.
Al Kooper: We had lunch on break at one of the sessions, and Bloomfield assumed that I would go on and play live with Dylan. He said, "Yeah, you’re going to make all kinds of money, and get chicks, and have a great time. But I would never leave Butterfield’s band. I’m a blues guy. You’re going to be on the cover of Time magazine. And I’m going to be in Chicago, playing the blues with Butterfield."
Nick Gravenites: In July of 1965, the Butterfield Band was going to play the Newport Folk Festival. After the festival, they were going to record in New York. So Paul, of course, was very excited and ready to go.
When Butterfield’s band was introduced, it was almost an insulting introduction by Alan Lomax. I mean, he insulted them onstage. It was something like, "Well, they’ve got this band from Chicago. Some people feel that white people can’t play the blues, and some people feel they can—you make up your own mind. Here they are." It was like—why didn’t you just say "fuck you" while you’re at it?
Michael Bloomfield: Alan Lomax, the great folklorist and musicologist, gave us some sort of introduction that I didn’t even hear, but Albert found it offensive. And Albert went upside his head. The next thing we knew, right in the middle of our show, Lomax and Grossman were kicking ass on the floor in the middle of thousands of people at the Newport Folk Festival. Tearing each others’ clothes off. We had to pull ’em apart. We figured, "Albert, man, now there’s a manager!" We used to call him "Cumulus Nimbus"—he was such a vague guy. It was so hard to understand what he was saying. The Gray Cloud.
Fritz Richmond: For the Butterfield set, I was standing right in front—over on one side, but right up against the fence.
I had not seen Mike Bloomfield play until the Newport Folk Festival. I just loved the way he looked. He was so into it, so fidgety.
He was all over the guitar—he wouldn’t let it alone for an instant, and he shook it all around. It was like he was in a fight with it all the time. It was marvelous to watch. He was hunched over it. And you didn’t get the impression that he really had to look at it, like an amateur player. He was just staring it down. It was beautiful. I’d never seen anybody who was so visual playing an instrument. He would have made great television.
Nick Gravenites: It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. When they were putting the band together,
Michael was brilliant as a guitarist and as a musician. He knew how to do stuff. People would come in, and he knew what Dylan’s stuff was going to be like. He knew all the chord changes and stuff. And he’d waltz people through the chord changes. If they could cut them, they’d be part of the band. If they couldn’t—"Next." They got the band together that way. Michael was, essentially, the leader. He’s the guy that selected the band. He figured that these guys could cut it and do it.
Al Kooper: The first day (at the festival), I ran into Albert Grossman. He said, "You know, Bob’s looking for you." He gave me some passes, and I sold my tickets. Bloomfield was playing there with the Butterfield band, so they decided to have the Butterfield band back up Dylan with me. The rehearsal was in some millionaire’s mansion, and it was all night. Paul Rothchild put it together. And it was pretty fun—I mean, it was a good rehearsal. It was a lot better than the show was. Michael got Barry Goldberg to play, also.
Nick Gravenites: When Dylan came out and played electric, the people went nuts. They were booing him. The whole folk festival became a really crazy affair.
 Barry Goldberg: We went on that night, and Michael just went nuts. He rammed it right down their throats. He loved those kind of things. I thought it was an amazingly brave and bold move—Dylan plugging in. And the old folk crowd, the old guard, was standing fast. They felt so threatened that a new thing was happening—out with the old and in with the new.
I remember a lot of people cheering, too. It was probably 60 percent booing and 40 percent cheering. I remember Michael counting it off and saying, "Let’s go!" and it was like POW!—we went into this whirlwind. Bob was like a warrior, and we were all on this mission.
Michael Bloomfield: When I played with Dylan, I thought they loved us—but they were booing. I heard a noise. I thought it was, "Yeah, great band!" But they were booing. I said, "Well, Bob, we knocked their asses in the dirt." And he said, "I thought it was boos, man."
Eric Von Schmidt: Dylan got up there playing electric with a band that was vaguely in control. I was one of the first people that started hollering, "Turn up Dylan’s mike, turn down the guitar." The first number, "Maggie’s Farm"
It was obvious that Bloomfield was out to kill. He had his guitar turned up as loud as he could possibly turn it up, and he was playing as many notes as he could possibly play. "Maggie’s Farm" was one of my favorite Dylan songs, but Bloomfield couldn’t have cared less whether they were playing "Maggie’s Farm" or "Old McDonald Had a Farm." It was just his moment to scream.
Sam Lay: At Newport when we played with Bob Dylan, they kind of booed us. They didn’t boo us because it was us. They didn’t want Bob Dylan playing with electrical instruments.
Al Kooper: No, that’s not true. At Newport—the legend is just not true. I was there. I understand exactly what happened. I would have booed myself, if I was in the audience. What happened is that they had paid top dollar to see Dylan. No matter who was on the show that night, Bob Dylan was advertised as playing. He came out and played three songs and said, "Thank you very much. Good night." And people went nuts.
We had stayed up all night the night before rehearsing, and we only got three songs together. I’m not so sure Dylan wanted to play more than that. That’s why they were booing. They didn’t boo until that particular moment. There’s a film, and I defy you to point out a boo to me until the last song is over and he says, "That’s it" and leaves. There was booing, but it wasn’t for that reason. And then people wrote, "Oh, they booed them off the stage," which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Michael’s playing that night was pretty wild. It was raw. Again, I keep coming back to that primitive thing.
Al Kooper: After Newport, we came back to New York and finished the Highway 61 album. They wanted the band that was on the record to be the band that went out live, but Michael really wasn’t interested. There was nothing they could dangle in his face to make him do it.
Harvey Brooks: After the sessions, we had a discussion. Dylan had some gigs coming up—we were going to do Forest Hills and the Hollywood Bowl. But Michael was going to stay with Butterfield, because he felt that was his obligation and that’s what he should do. That’s what he felt was best for him. He said we’d go on and be stars and everything, but he was going to play the blues.
Michael Bloomfield: Since Grossman managed both Butterfield and Dylan, I figured he would say, "Well, I think you’d be most effective here. Or most effective there." I probably would have bowed to his judgment, even against the wishes and dictates of my own soul. My own soul told me to play with Paul.
I could see even then that Bob was real thrilling, but idolatry and charisma and all like that was almost becoming more important. I just thought I wouldn’t get a chance to play enough music, enough licks. Seriously, to move my fingers enough—I don’t care if I’m moving ’em in the back.
Nick Gravenites: It wasn’t so much playing with Paul. He wanted to play blues.
Michael Bloomfield: With Bob, I’d have had no identity. I didn’t even know that—all I knew was that I didn’t understand what was happening. At the same time, I was being offered a gig as the guitar player on a TV show called Shindig. I was supposed to be in the Shindogs. They had set it all up. The idea of going to LA and being a Shindog instead of being a bluesman was just crazy.
I told Albert, "Man, I’m a bluesman. I’ll go with Butterfield." So I played with Butter and didn’t play with Dylan, and we were cookin’. We wailed from then on.
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