This interview happened in the last week of March in 1994 at WMMR, once the number one FM rock radio station in Philly. Al Kooper, a Nashville resident was in town to promote a new album ReKooperation , an instrumental album that was a tribute to the organ masters of the '50s and '60s who'd inspired him from Jimmy Smith to Bill Doggett to Booker T.

The album on an indie company, MusicMasters came and went pretty quickly and so did the label. As this interview will show, Kooper didn't expect more than that.

Kooper was great to interview because not only does he answer questions in a totally direct manner, he's also hysterically funny. At times it was hard to ask the next question because he kept me cracked up and also quite at ease from the minute I walked in the door. I was his last interview that day and at the time the music industry seemed dominated by people wearing vinyl baseball warm-up jackets that usually had the name of a company on the latest promotion on them so when I walked in wearing a beat-up leather jacket and cowboy boots, Kooper said, “You're the most refreshing sight I've seen all day,” and he meant it.

Parts of this interview were originally published in a long-gone weekly paper in Philadelphia on April 6, 1994 . Sometime after that, a friend of mine posted parts of it as part of a discussion on the Usenet group, Rec.Music.Dylan. Those parts later found their way much to my astonishment into the English Dylan magazine, Isis .

Keep in mind this was done more than eleven years ago. Kooper no longer lives in Nashville, recently released a new album, and some of the people mentioned here are no longer around and even Warner Brothers Records isn't really Warner Brothers Records anymore.

Why did you move to Nashville ?

So I could semi-retire. I thought there was no danger of me getting involved in country music. I thought I'd be relatively safe there, no danger of them even wanting to be involved with me, even though myself and Bill Szymczyk made the two records that all country music is modeled after in the '90s, and we were doing them at the same time at the same studio. He was in studio A, I was in studio B at the record plant, he was doing (the Eagles') Hotel California, and I was doing (Skynyrd's) Second Helping.

What changes have you seen in Nashville in the almost 30 years since you first went there to do Blonde on Blonde?

Not much. It's a little more cosmopolitan, but it's still a great place to live. I love living there.

I was at SXSW in Austin …

That's not Nashville . I've lived in Austin ,. That's a great place to live also, but you can't make a f*****g penny there. It's just hopeless.

…and they were talking about the music business may be shifting out of L.A.

It has to. I won't go back to L.A. Forget about it. I was in the earthquake. That was the start of my bad winter.

Well, it wasn't a great winter here either.

I went to a bunch of places. Every place I went to, I had a f*****g disaster.

Are you planning to tour behind this new album?

I'm trying to figure out how to do it. It always ends up costing me money which is why I don't do it more often. I gotta figure out a way to do it 'cause I really want to go out and play. The kind of show I wanna put on, I gotta take six other musicians with me, and it's like... you can't make any money. You can't even break even. I'll break even, okay. So if I could figure out how to do that, I'd do that for a living because I love to play. And the business is so fucked up that I can't go out and play. I can't do what it is that I do.

What led you to make an all instrumental album?

It's just something I always wanted to do. I just had to find the right moment for. And this is the right moment. I really had nothing at stake 'cause I hadn't made a record in so long.

The album has a more of a sense of history to than some of your other albums, like when you talk in the notes about going to see the jazz guys at Birdland. I always figured you to be more of a rock ' n' roll guy, goin' back to “This Diamond Ring” and the Royal Teens.

I am. But I had a jazz period, from '60 to '64 and on Act Like Nothing's Wrong, I dedicated the album to its influences, and listed all the people who influenced, so people knew what it was that I listened to. I'm never trying to hide. This was an opportunity, I try and make the packages, see I'm a fan. I'm a fan of King's X, I like the new Sound Garden , I go out and I buy CDs. So being a fan, when I make a record, I try and make it like what do I want to see in this record if I'm buying an Al Kooper record. So I put those things in there because I thought people would be sincerely interested in it if they were fans.

I sense a kind of disgust with the music industry.

I hate the music industry. The fact that I found a place where I can do what I do without going through all the f*****g idiocy of the music business is really nice at this point in my life, because I just turned 50 and I just reached that stage where nothing is worth anything to me, where it's like if I gotta go through this, then f**k it, I'll stay home and play with my computer. I'm not gonna go and put up with anything any more. I don't have to. And so I won't. So, I do just what I wanna do, and that's all.

Do you think the music business has dramatically changed?

No. The major companies, they all have a policy of getting away with as much murder as they can. And it's always been that way. It's just that as time goes by they can get away with less and less murder. But for guys like me who have product on their label, but they don't deal with me anymore, they still f**k with me. They still don't pay me and stuff like this. So that goes on, that still exists. That never changes and it never will. Now that CDs are out and there's so much catalog stuff selling, these guys are making so much f*****g money you wouldn't believe it. And none of these people (the musicians) are getting paid. They just don't pay you.

It seems the major record companies are more in the hands of accountants and lawyers

Not Warner Brothers. That's second generation record business. Lenny Waronker, his father ran Liberty Records in the '50s, so what better guy to run a record company than a guy whose father did? So the next generation is more honest than the last one, so that's a good thing. Have you ever seen this guy Al Teller that runs MCA? Have you ever seen a picture of him? Would you put your career in the hands of a guy that combs his hair like that? I mean, get outta here.

He did that album Rhythm Country and Blues.

I like the Al Green/Lyle Lovett track.

The originals are obviously better.

Well of course, but I'd have to say that about my album too. You do what you can. They didn't do it ‘cause they loved it. They did it 'cause it was a f*****g scam.

What I mean is that there aren't any producers around like John Hammond. He may have been one of a kind...

He definitely was one of a kind. I knew him very well. I liked him a lot.

He was obviously into if for the music.

I hate to say this. I think Don Was is. But he produced that record, so I don't know.

I go up and down on Don Was' productions.

So does Don Was.

You played organ on the album he produced for Dylan, what were those sessions like.

They were nice. I liked the sessions because I was really in an ‘I could give a f**k' mood. At that point in my life, it was no big deal to play with Bob, and so I sat back and kind of watched all the other people get that buzz. I enjoyed it for that reason. I was very comfortable. Bob and I had become like really good friends, we understand each other perfectly well. And so it was less than no pressure. I was just looking at my watch to make sure I could see the basketball game. But I like my playing on it. I'm very happy with my playing on it. I think he phoned the lyrics on that album. But I think that's the only thing really wrong with that record is the words are like really silly and the rest of the record's good. I think Don did a great job on that record, myself, but Bob didn't. So, you can't win.

What's really interesting is they're putting out the stuff from England from the '66 tour with the Hawks, and that's some of the greatest rock and roll ever made in the history of rock and roll and that will vindicate probably Dylan to this generation that has no idea why people think he's great. It's scary how good that stuff is.

You decided you didn't want to do that tour?

I decided I didn't want to do that tour, but I was gonna get kicked out anyway because they were bringing the rest of the Band in. Levon and Robbie wanted to bring the rest of their guys in. Me and Harvey Brooks didn't have other guys to bring in. We were just partners.

What's Harvey Brooks been up do all these years?

Beats me, but he and I grew up together. We went to public school together, so any chance I can play with him, I wanna do that, and he's like a monstrously good player now, not that he wasn't then. He's so good it's scary. I love playing with him because it's a treat musically. Plus he's a year younger than me and he looks twice as old as I do.

A couple of years ago you did a Blues Project reunion, do you foresee any more o