David Kemper was Dylan’s drummer for five big years, and his interview with Uncut magazine — part of their series of first-hand accounts by musicians and recording professionals who have worked with Bob Dylan — is definitely one of the most interesting yet. Read it all at this link; see a couple of snippets below.

Kemper spoke about how Dylan had heard him play with T-Bone Burnett’s band and later with Jerry Garcia, and how he got hired to be Dylan’s drummer.

[The Jerry Garcia Band] were releasing a live performance tape, and he sent a copy to Bob, just because Bob was a fan of the band. Jerry had died two years before, and he sent him this copy, and Bob called him back right away, and said, “Do you know Kemper’s number?” He gave it to Bob, and then he called me immediately and said: “You’re gonna get a nice phone call.” About a half hour later, Bob didn’t call, but his manager did. And he said Bob would like you to join his band. He would like you to commit to being a member for years. Not just a tour. And would I be interested.

And he offers an interesting picture of those rehearsals Bob and the band do before each tour:

Before each tour, if we’d do a six week tour, we’d have four days somewhere where go in the studio, and we’d play. Like, if we’re going to do a South American tour, we’d go to Miami, because that would be the jumping off place to South America. If we went to England, it would be New York: that’s where we’d take off from, so the band would assemble in New York for four days, and we’d play music. Sometimes, it would be trying to figure out a song we were having trouble with. But more than that it was just to play music. A couple of four day periods I remember, we would play Dean Martin songs. “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”. We would work it up just like a record. And then we would put all of that music away, and we never would revisit it. We would never play it again.

And on the recording of Cold Irons Bound:

That was a weird thing. I had come in early that day, and going through Miami Beach, it’s all this Cuban influence. And I heard this disco record with a Cuban beat, and when I got to the studio, I sat back at the drums and I slowed the beat down, and turned it upside down, and I was just playing, and there was nobody there. No one was expected for a half hour. So I was playing this drum beat, and then Bob snuck up behind me and said, “What are you playing?” I said Hey Bob, how are you today? He said “No, don’t stop, keep playing, what are you playing?” I said It’s a beat, I’m just writing it right now. “Don’t stop it. Keep doing it.” And he went and got a yellow pad of paper and sat next to the drums, and he just started writing. And he wrote for maybe ten minutes, and then he said “Will you remember that?” And I said, yeah, I got it. And then he said, all right, everybody come on in, I want to put this down.

Well I got it in my head, and by then everyone had arrived and tuned up. And take one, he stepped up to the microphone, and “I’m beginning to hear voices, and there’s no one around.” And I think we did two takes, and then he said, all right, let’s move on to something else. I remember Daniel Lanois wasn’t happy; he didn’t like it. It was one of his guitar breaking incidents. He said to Tony and I: “The world doesn’t want another two-note melody from Bob.” And he smashed a guitar. So I thought, well, there goes my chance of being on this record. Next time I saw Daniel was at the Academy Awards, [Grammys..?] because we had performed that night, and all of a sudden, Male Vocal Performance of the Year, came from that song – the one that Dan was adamant wouldn’t get on the record. So even he’s capable of making mistakes.

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