{"id":2445155,"date":"2019-06-10T09:13:50","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T15:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=845876"},"modified":"2019-06-10T09:13:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T15:13:50","slug":"bob-dylans-best-friend-louie-kemp-breaks-silence-with-new-book-dylan-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/music-news\/bob-dylans-best-friend-louie-kemp-breaks-silence-with-new-book-dylan-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan\u2019s Best Friend Louie Kemp Breaks Silence With New Book \u2018Dylan And Me\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly before Bob Dylan<\/a> took the stage at The Last Waltz in November 1976, he turned to concert promoter Bill Graham and told him he\u2019d only play if Martin Scorsese\u2019s camera crew agreed to film just two of the four songs he planned to play during his set. \u201cI\u2019m going to put Louie on stage next to you and Marty,\u201d Dylan said. \u201cHe will tell you when you can film me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cLouie\u201d in reference was Louie Kemp, Dylan\u2019s best friend since they met at Hertzl summer camp in the summer of 1953. Kemp had recently criss-crossed America with Dylan as the producer of the Rolling Thunder Revue and now he had to tell the most famous concert promoter in history and one of the greatest directors of all time that they could only film half of the climax of their movie, causing them no small degree of horror. The cameras were indeed dark during \u201cBaby Let Me Follow You Down\u201d and \u201cHazel\u201d and rolling for \u201cI Don\u2019t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met) and \u201cForever Young,\u201d but when Dylan unexpectedly went into a reprise of \u201cBaby Let Me Follow You Down,\u201d all hell broke loose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was one of the songs Bob didn\u2019t want me to record,\u201d says Kemp. \u201cI screamed, \u2018Stop the cameras!\u2019 That\u2019s when Bill Graham lost it and started shaking me. I grabbed him back and we\u2019re screaming at each other while Marty just ignores us because he wants the footage. It was quite the scene.\u201d (The song did wound up captured for posterity by Scorsese\u2019s crew, and Dylan didn\u2019t realize Graham had another camera rolling in the back<\/a> the whole time.)<\/p>\n

The insane moment at the Last Waltz is just one of many stories that Kemp has been telling to close friends for decades, but he\u2019s finally documented them for his new book Dylan & Me: 50 Years of Adventures<\/em><\/a>, which comes out on August 15th. \u201cThis book shows you Dylan\u2019s down-to-earth side,\u201d says Kemp. \u201cTo me, he has always been Bobby Zimmerman and these are all Bobby Zimmerman stories. Bob Dylan is his commercial side. I wanted to show a totally different perspective on him than anyone has ever heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan biographers have been approaching Kemp for decades to tell his stories, but he\u2019s turned all of them down. \u201cI had it in the back of my mind that one day I\u2019d write my own book sharing all these stories that were so interesting and meaningful to me,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I always put it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

That changed a couple of years ago when his close friend and Grammy Awards producer Tzvi Small was diagnosed with lung cancer. He\u2019d been pushing Kemp to write a book for years, and when he visited him in the hospital, his pleas became more urgent. Kemp promised him that he\u2019d call up Kinky Friedman, his buddy since their days on the Rolling Thunder Revue, and ask him how to go about writing a book. \u201cHe said to me, \u2018Call him now right in front of me,\u2019\u201d says Kemp. \u201cKinky said to me, \u2018You\u2019ve got the best stories. You have to write this book.\u2019 He then told me how to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small died six months later and Kemp was determined to honor his word to him and finish the book. With Friedman\u2019s guidance, he wrote down his memories and started talking to a publisher, but that deal fell apart when they insisted he share details about Dylan\u2019s private life. \u201cThey kept asking me to write about things that I didn\u2019t think were pertinent,\u201d he says. \u201cAll the stories I\u2019m willing to share in this book are stories that don\u2019t violate our friendship. They are stories that show the human side of Bob. They make him look like one of the boys, which he always was to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kemp ultimately decided to self-publish the book to avoid outside interference. Friedman wrote the intro and helped edit the early chapters, but Kemp says he wrote the vast majority of the book on his own. It begins with his first meeting with Dylan at Hertzl. \u201cWe both came from Northern Minnesota,\u201d he says. \u201dWe both came from middle class Jewish families in the same surroundings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two formed a tight bond with fellow camper Larry Kegan and ran wild through the camp, even barely dodging expulsion one night when they stole a counselor\u2019s car and tried to escape. In 1954, Kemp witnessed what he considers Dylan\u2019s first public performance when he played Hank Ballard\u2019s \u201cAnnie Had a Baby\u201d at Talent Night with Kegan. They stayed tight through college, but lost touch in January 1961 when Dylan took off for New York City. Kemp became successful as the president of a fish company famed for its imitation crab meat and reconnected with Dylan in New York City in 1972. <\/span> Two years later, he was invited to join him on the 1974 reunion tour with the Band where he watched every show from a rocking chair just feet away from drummer Levon Helm. \u201cBob liked that I was successful on my own,\u201d says Kemp. \u201cI didn\u2019t need anything from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dylan enjoyed traveling the country with his old friend and asked him to produce the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. \u201cYou\u2019re a successful businessman,\u201d Dylan told him when he expressed shock at the idea. \u201cAnd you can\u2019t deny that you\u2019ve seen it all from the inside. If anybody can put this together, it\u2019s you.\u201d<\/p>\n

A great deal of the book focuses on their adventures on the Rolling Thunder Revue, but Dylan fans will be fascinated by Kemp\u2019s account of Dylan\u2019s religious conversion in the late Seventies and his return to his Jewish roots in the Eighties. It was Kemp himself who played a major role in reintroducing Dylan to his original faith. The book moves very quickly through the Nineties (where Kegan and Kemp were the only non-family members invited to his 50th birthday party) to 9\/11 when Kegan, who was paralyzed in a teenage diving accident, suddenly died of a heart attack while driving to buy Dylan\u2019s new LP Love and Theft.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dylan and Kemp talked on the phone that day, but it\u2019s the most recent interaction documented in the book. \u201cLike most friends, we had our disagreements,\u201d he writes in the book. \u201cWe worked through most of them, and ultimately they made our friendship stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about the current state of their relationship, Kemp gets a little vague. \u201cWe\u2019re still friends, but we\u2019re not in touch like we used to be,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s been over 10 years [since I\u2019ve seen him in person]. [What happened] is not something that I would talk to anybody about. That\u2019s between Bob and I.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly before Bob Dylan took the stage at The Last Waltz in November 1976, he turned to concert promoter Bill Graham and told him he\u2019d only play if Martin Scorsese\u2019s camera crew agreed to film just two of the four songs he planned to play during his set. \u201cI\u2019m going to put Louie on stage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2445155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 15:42:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2445155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}