Kim Fowley interviewed about Bob Dylan
(a Shoeshine exclusive...)
LA producer/ songwriter/ performer/ scenester Kim Fowley co-wrote and produced the BMX Bandits Shoeshine single "Help Me Somebody" / "Golden Teardrops", and also produced the debut album by Radio Sweethearts, "New Memories". Interviewed about Bob Dylan in Glasgow, 14 July, 1995 by Francis Macdonald, Kim talks about his encounters with Shoeshine's dream signing in LA in 1965. This is the first time this interview has been published anywhere... |
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"The first time Billy James who wrote the liner notes to the first Byrds album introduced me to him at a party that Columbia Records gave for him in 1965. I said to him, 'What's your gimmick?' He said, 'I ask questions and I tell stories.' Then I turned away for a second and he was gone. He was very fast on his feet. He knew how to walk around and talk to everybody and disappear.
A couple
of nights later Bryan Maclean - who later joined Arthur Lee and
Love - said, 'There's a party up the street, let's go in there.'
We were hungry so we climbed in through the back window of this
party and this guy is dragging us through the window and it's Bob
Dylan. He said, 'Hey, you're that guy.' I said, 'Yeah, we're here
for the free food.' He said, 'Here - have all this chicken.' And
there's chicken and ham and we're eating and we said, 'Who's
party is it anyway?' He said, 'It's mine.' Okay, so he got
us in there. 
Another day or so goes by and there's this beautiful woman who, uh, had a baby who was obviously looking for a rich man to take over the baby and her and she was saying, 'Bob Dylan - I fucked him a while back and if he sees me I'm gonna put myself right in his path...' So, Bob Dylan had just finished singing with The Byrds which was the back of the Mr. Tambourine album - whatever that thing was called - and this girl and I are talking and here comes Bob Dylan. So I figure I owe him a favour because he'd fed us, y'know, so I said to the girl, 'Look over there! Isn't that where he is? - he's going over there'. And he looked at me - he wanted to get out of there fast. The girl turned around, 'Where'd he go?' I said, 'I don't know - I thought he was over there'.' 'You pointed the wrong way!' 'I didn't point the wrong way - I don't know where he is. I thought he was over there.' So she goes away with her baby and ... it wasn't his kid, just some girl had a baby by some hippie guy and wanted a husband, I guess.
Anyway, Danny Hutton was with me who later became the founder of Three Dog Night. There's another big party across the street so we went over across the street and, uh, there's several hundred people in there. It's a big condo building with one fancy apartment after another and we're just walking through and there's Bob Dylan. [He] suddenly loses the handlers, the bodyguards, the entourage. He got stranded in this room with a couple of hundred people. Suddenly I look up and there's Bob Dylan and it's 1965 - Like A Rolling Stone. They all got really ugly on him. They said, 'Sing for us!' So I jumped up and I said, 'Fuck you guys! I'll sing for you. I'm better than him.' They threw a guitar up. He [Dylan] said, 'Can you sing?' And I go, 'Sort of.' I said, 'OK, everybody, give me a subject...you, Bob Dylan, give me a subject and I'll imitate you. He gave me 'walls'.
(SINGING LIKE BOB] ' Walls, walls, walls...'
And I imitated him
and he played Bob Dylan chords for me.
[SINGING AGAIN] ' The walls... .uh. . .of the prison...'
Well, everybody was shocked because this other guy - who was me - at that moment in time had his voice. And he's sitting there and he's not having to sing for these assholes. Instead they're waiting for me to fail but I'm not failing and it's the real Bob Dylan playing real Bob Dylan chords.
[SINGING AGAIN] 'I climbed every wall in this city, I climbed every wall in my dreams, The walls were there...'
...or whatever it was. And I can't do it quite accurately anymore but at the time I did and people got disgusted and they all one at a time just left. And then it was him and me. 'You ought to make records', he said, 'you're good.' And I said, 'Well, thank you. You're good too.'
I was a guy who asked him a question on how he wrote songs; I was a guy who he let crash his party and take his food; then I got rid of the woman by distracting her; and then I jumped up when a bunch of hippies would have torn him apart. So that's what happened. All within about three days. I never saw him again. He told Al Kooper that I was an interesting guy to talk to...