Jim Keltner
Jim Keltner drums for the sort of artists who can be referred to with one name. Neil. Joni. Mick. Elton. Willie. John...and George...and Ringo.
And, of course, Bob.
In fact, there are few musicians who have worked with Bob Dylan over a longer period of time than Jim Keltner. Their relationship began at a 1971 session where a Leon Russell-led band backed Bob on “Watching the River Flow” and “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” recorded for Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II (a different session than Happy Traum’s). It’s continued into the 2000s, when Keltner toured as a sudden fill-in when Dylan’s main drummer suffered carpal tunnel injuries.
And they worked together quite a bit in between. Keltner played drums on tour during all three of Dylan’s “gospel years” from 1979–1981. He played on a wide array of Dylan albums — Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Saved, Shot of Love, Empire Burlesque, Time Out of Mind — plus other assorted tracks throughout the decades. He even became Bob’s go-to drummer for strange one-offs, from the Letterman 10th anniversary special
to the who’s-who of stars at Dylan’s 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (a.k.a. Bobfest).
Oh, and did I mention Keltner was the sixth Traveling Wilbury? George Harrison even asked him to become an official member, and Jim said no. He still got his own Wilbury moniker: Buster Sidebury.
So there was a lot to cover. We didn’t hit it all, but over the course of a long, discursive, and fascinating conversation, I tried to touch on as many of his times playing with Dylan as we could get to.
Was the first time you met Dylan the ‘71 session with Leon Russell?
Yeah. I was over in England with my family and got the call from Leon to meet up in New York with Carl [Radle, bassist] and Jesse [Ed Davis, guitarist]. I didn’t realize at the time how important those guys were in my life. We were a rhythm section. I hadn’t really done a tremendous amount of stuff yet at that point, but I was doing sessions, and they would be on a lot of them. I always loved the fact that we were all from Oklahoma. There was that little bond.
My memories of that session, they’re like a dream, really. Leon was playing and we all joined in. I looked over and saw Bob standing facing the wall. I could see his lips moving. He was writing on a tablet. I thought, “Wow, he’s writing the lyrics as we’re playing.” Adjusting some of the lyrics, rearranging some things to fit the groove. That blew my mind.
His phrasing and stuff is so unique. I just did an interview about Willie Nelson, and we were talking about phrasing being completely original and very much like a jazz player. As I was speaking of Willie, I felt like I was speaking about Bob. There’s such a similarity in that they both are completely unique with their vocals, the way their voices sound, and the way they phrase. I put them both in a jazz category. They don’t sing like the typical rock singer.
Hearing the playback was just extraordinary. It was like an out-of-body experience for me. That little song was “Watching the River Flow.” Even today when I hear it, it just thrills me. It takes me right back. Years later, I always wondered, what would have been if we had been a rhythm section for Bob on many, many things? That’s not the way it worked out.
You mentioned him as almost a jazz vocalist. I know you started out doing jazz stuff. Do you think that’s one way that you connected working with his music?
That’s a strong possibility. It wouldn’t have been a conscious thing. For me, playing with Bob has always been one of the most natural things I could do. Maybe you have hit on it. It may be this free feeling that you get when you’re playing jazz, like you just need to know the song, know the form, and then go for it. Don’t be afraid.
The thing that I love about Bob is his fearlessness. There’s a fearlessness from some artists that translates to the musicians playing. When that happens, you get the best from the musicians, because the musicians are not worried about tempo or about whether they’re rushing or they’re dragging or whether they’re not in the pocket. It’s not about finding a pocket. It’s more about searching for the vibe, searching for the thing that makes the song have life.
I love being able to find a pocket and sit in it, but I also love the exploratory thing where you’re letting the song bump you along instead of you bumping the song. It’s a great thing that doesn’t happen often enough.
For instance, the other day I was talking to my good friend Matt Chamberlain, who’s playing drums currently with Bob.35 He was saying
that Bob told him one time before they were recording, “Just play. Don’t try to find one thing and settle on it.” I may not have gotten that exactly the way he said it, but basically what he was saying was what I’ve been telling you. Just let the music happen. Don’t be trying to find “a part” for the song. That’s pretty jazz-like. That’s the Bob Dylan that I’ve always known.
A couple years later you did “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack. How does doing a session to soundtrack a movie differ from that first session?
In those days playing a song in a movie meant watching the film while you’re playing. I don’t think there’s so much of that anymore. The composer usually has everything mapped out.
With Bob, [“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”] was meant to hit your heartstrings hard, because it was a death scene. The shot would go back and forth from this great Mexican actress Katy Jurado to her soulful big brown eyes. She’s crying because her husband is dying at the edge of the river. To watch the scene unfold while you’re hearing Bob’s voice is just— I cried. That was the first time I ever cried [while playing]. I thought, “Jesus, I’ve got to be careful. I’m going to blow this take.”
To be moved to tears while you’re playing your instrument is a gift, I think. Now, conversely, I did a session years later with Randy Newman where the lyrics hit me so hard and I couldn’t help but laugh. I couldn’t laugh out loud, but I was laughing so hard inside that it scared me again in the same way: “Oh, I’m going to blow this take.”
Jumping forward a few years again, to the gospel tours, your most extended time with him. I read that you had resisted some invitations to tour with him earlier. Why did you decide to sign on for those?
Bob had asked me to join his touring band a few times, and I was always afraid to for various reasons. Plus I was working so much in those days in the studio that I didn’t want to miss things. I always figured, if I don’t go on the road with him, it would be okay because I’ll meet up with him in the studio at some point.
When I’d get a call to go tour with him, it would always be an invitation to come down and play. It was like almost like an audition, except that I knew that I had the gig if I said yes.
I went down this time, and it was a little different. The suggestion was that I come down and sit in the room by myself and listen to his new record [Slow Train Coming]. Then, when I’m done hearing it, come upstairs and see Bob. I thought, well, that’s interesting.
I got to his studio on Main Street there in Santa Monica and went in the office. The girl turned the music on, and I sat there. One song after the other just started banging me in the head, pulling at my heart. All the corny things you can possibly imagine, they all started happening to me. Here’s Dylan again, making me cry — and it was uncontrollable! By the time the whole record was done, I had gone through half a Kleenex box.
I went upstairs and opened the door, and he’s sitting there at his typewriter. I said, “Bob, I don’t know what you’re going to do, but whatever it is, I want to go do it with you.” That was it.
We rehearsed a bunch. It felt real natural. He had really great musicians. He had Tim Drummond on bass, and Tim was a great natural player. There was no tidiness about his playing. He was exactly the kind of player that Bob loved, in that he wouldn’t figure anything out and then stick with it. He just played according to what was going on at that moment. Then he had Fred Tackett playing guitar. Fred I’d known from Little Feat. We had played on a few sessions together before and he was always really easy and fun to play with. Fred and Tim were incredible. Then he had Spooner [Oldham] on the B3, and Spooner was everybody’s hero. The man that played the Farfisa on “When A Man Loves a Woman.”
The guy’s a legend.
Muscle Shoals legend. But maybe the sweetest person in the entire world. That was the core rhythm section. Oh, and Terry Young the piano player. This guy had chops that were unbelievable.
I just felt surrounded by soul. It was such a soulful band, soulful people. The gospel singing behind him was just absolutely unreal. To me, I was right where I belonged. Because of the nature of the music, I started having kind of a prayer life. And the more you pray, the more confidence you have. Which is part of what prayer is about. It increases your faith.
We hit the road and got to San Francisco, Bill Graham’s place, the Warfield. It’s a great place to play. The stage is very close to the audience. The way it’s set up is that it goes up in a steep way, so that when you’re on the stage, you’re almost looking at a wall of people, rather than a sea of people.
I’m sitting there playing behind Bob and looking out at faces. I’ll never forget this one guy with a red bandana around his head. I think he was smoking because he had something in his hands, and it probably wasn’t a cigarette. He would stand up and say, “Fuck you, Dylan! Rock and roll!” Then right next to him — man this is my memory, clear as a bell — right next to him was a guy sitting with a little sports coat on. He had his wife or his girlfriend and a little baby. He stood up after the “Rock and roll!” guy stood up and said, “We love you, Bob! We love your music!”
It was like that ‘til the end of that tour. Like a fight in the audience. Not a literal fight, it was a lot of hollering and carrying on. I just got the impression that Bob loved it because he knew he was hitting a nerve.
Like back when he went electric and caused some of the same reaction.
Exactly. Not that he was trying to. I never get the impression that he was trying to make waves just so that he could get attention. He was doing what he intended to do, and his audience was either going to love it or they were going to hate it.
As we went along, I think people realized that the music is speaking for itself. It’s not just that he was talking about Jesus. I think people — nonbelievers, I should say — started realizing it’s brilliant music. Because it was brilliant music. Those gospel songs are some of the greatest ever written, as far as I’m concerned. You can imagine how much fun it was to be a part of that whole thing. That was the longest I’d ever been with anybody in a band.
We had a night in Seattle that I will never forget. It was a good concert, everything was going well, hitting on all cylinders. We got to the song “Solid Rock,” which I loved playing because it was fast and it had a ferociousness to it. Bob was on fire that night, and the words were hitting hard. At the end of the song, there was applause like you’d expect, but it went on for— I think I clocked it at almost five minutes. That can be proven; I have a copy of a board tape. That was an extraordinary event for somebody playing in a band. I can’t imagine what it was like for Bob. Five minutes standing ovation for one song that wasn’t at the end of the concert. There were moments like that.
That’s a long way from some guy in a red bandana yelling “Fuck you.”
I guess you’d have to call that a highlight of my playing career. It’s just one of those things that you never forget. There were other moments similar during that whole time.
Did you feel the tour changed over the three years? I know a few people came and went, especially among the singers, but did the vibe change?
Yes, it changed. One of the things that changed, that made things easier on the audience, [is that] they were given some of his older songs. The first tour, we played only the songs from Slow Train. At each succeeding tour, it seemed like we added more of his classics.36 The night that we played “Like a Rolling Stone” for the first time, I remember getting chills, because the audience went crazy.
The next thing you did with him after the gospel tours was Empire Burlesque. At this point, you’ve done a number of albums and you’ve done a lot of touring. What’s the difference between playing with him in the studio or on a stage?
With most other artists, playing live with them and playing in the studio is pretty different. When I’m playing on a record, I normally am trying different things. Playing in the studio is a fun adventure kind of thing. Going on the road means rehearsing and learning songs.
Playing with Bob live was not really that different than being in a studio, because the adventurous part was still intact. Like what I told you earlier, he doesn’t want to have to hear the same thing over and over, just like I don’t want to have to play the same thing over and over.
There are times when you must play an arrangement exactly the way it’s been rehearsed and fleshed out all the time. I did that on the Simon & Garfunkel [reunion] tour, Old Friends. If the music is really good, then it’s not a job really. It’s fun, but it’s a disciplined fun.
How did you get involved in the Traveling Wilburys? Was that through Dylan? I know you'd worked with Harrison by then.
That was George completely. George became like a brother. He liked having me around all the time for different things. When he was working on something, I’d be there.
I think it was [Harrison’s 1987 album] Cloud Nine that preceded the Wilburys. I was at his studio. H.O.T. Studio, we called it — Henley-on- Thames — and we were having a ball. We always had such a ball playing, and especially there at the studio because it was in his home. His home was a massive monastery, Friar Park. Talk about a dream; it was always dreamlike.
Jeff Lynne was working with him on the Cloud Nine record. Jeff and George had very similar senses of humor. The crazy English Monty Python humor. The more beers they had, the sillier they would get. We were sitting around one night. I think we had just cut my favorite song on the record, “This Is Love.” They’re being funny and started making up names for a band. They kept going and going. Finally, they settled on the Traveling Wilburys. They thought that was just hilarious.
Then, after we were done, I heard from George that they had gone to Bob’s house and cut this song [“Handle with Care”]. The very next thing I heard was, “Hey, we’re going to start a band. We’re going to be the Traveling Wilburys. We’re going to do a record.” So then we started recording.
Speaking of funny names, did one of them give you the nickname Buster Sidebury?
That was George. They expected me to be a Wilbury.
At that time, I was thinking you got Roy [Orbison], you got Bob, you got Tom [Petty], you got Jeff, and you got George. That’s five guys. One in the middle, two on the sides. If you put another Wilbury in there, then it’s unbalanced. Which side would I be on? It is a funny way to think, but I was thinking like that. Plus you’ve got five icons. I may be considered an icon in the drum world, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. [laughs] It was natural for me to say no.
Then it came to me: I’m a Sidebury. George laughed. He loved that. I said, “I’m a Sidebury cousin, your first cousin.” I was so close with Tom. He liked that I did that. He always made a big deal out of that in interviews. That’s how I became Buster Sidebury.
The other guys all smoked cigarettes. I had quit. To be in one of those RVs that they have on the studio lot for shooting videos, four guys all smoking cigarettes, it was too much for me. During one of the videos, I jumped off the bus and I went over to Roy. Roy was sitting by himself because he was instructed by his wife, Barbara, “You better not be smelling like smoke when I come to the set!”
We started talking. He said, “This is really fun, isn’t it Jim?” I said, “Man, it’s incredible. You know, Roy, the guys are all here only because of you, really. They all just want to hear you sing.” He said, “Well, I’m the only real singer in the band. The other boys are all stylists.”
I had to suppress a laugh. It was so true, but it was just so funny the way he said it. Just matter of factly. The first freaking thing I did when I got a chance was tell George. He cracked up and then I told all the guys. “I’m the only real singer in the band. The other boys are all stylists.” It’s absolutely true.
Was there ever any talk of playing live?
Oh, absolutely. There were plans, big plans to go on the road. We were going to go on a train tour. We were going to take a train across the United States.
What’s funny is that everybody assumed that it would be Bob who would nix it. But Bob was on board fully. It turned out to be George. I don’t care to speculate on why he didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t want to.
Too bad.
It certainly is. I think Roy had passed already. That may have figured into it a little bit.
I haven’t really spent a lot of time thinking about what a Wilbury tour would have been. I think George’s passing has overshadowed that whole thing to me. With George gone, it took a lot of the wind out of it for me. George is younger than me. George should be my little brother that I see all the time. He loved LA [where I live]. He loved Friar Park. We should be going back and forth like we did all those years. It wasn’t meant for him to hang around.
Bob is still here, and I’ll tell you another thing: George Harrison was Bob Dylan’s biggest fan in the world. There wasn’t anybody that I’ve ever known that was a bigger Bob Dylan fan. He knew the lyrics to every Bob Dylan song, old and new.
Moving forward to your next Dylan gig, how did you get involved with the 30th anniversary tribute, known as “BobFest”?
It might’ve been Bob that asked me to do it. It was either Bob or George. Or both. Let’s see. [Jim flipping through datebook] On the 7th [of October], we had a rehearsal with Tom Petty. On the 12th, we had a rehearsal with Sophie B. and the O’Jays, and Johnny Winter. On the 13th, we rehearsed with Clapton and Stevie Wonder, Sinéad, Bob, and the band. Then the 14th we rehearsed with Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin, George Harrison, and Lou Reed. Then on the 15th, we rehearsed with Neil Young. Then on the 16th was the gig. On the next day, I started an album with Willie at the Power Station.
Does anyone on that list jump out at you, that you particularly remember?
I remember rehearsing with Neil, then the delight of rehearsing with Stevie. Stevie Wonder was like from another planet. And Clapton. I always loved Eric.
What is it about those three?
Imagine what it would be like: You’re at this big deal thing honoring Bob Dylan, and then suddenly there’s everybody, the biggest artists of the day. You’re playing Bob’s music with them. To see them all come together for Bob, that’s what knocked me out.
That was the beginning of us playing with Neil Young. Me and [Steve] Cropper and Duck Dunn [both also in the BobFest house band], we went on tour with Neil [the following year]. The band was half of the MGs. Cropper and Duck. It was unbelievable to be playing with those guys live.
Neil is another artist that’s very much like Bob. There are just a few of them. Neil is definitely one. Neil, he just wants you to interpret his music. He wants you to listen to him and get with him. That’s what we did.
Playing with Duck Dunn on bass was like a dream. Then Cropper’s rhythm was unreal. There was a little tension there once in a while. I mean in the music, because Cropper is so strong with his groove and Neil really likes to swim. I was in heaven. I was being able to be as expressive as I wanted to be and float in and out of this incredibly pocketed thing and [then] into the deep part of the water and swim with Neil. It was a great tour. It came together because of BobFest.
One more session to hit on, Time Out of Mind, one of the great latter-day Dylan albums. Both Bob and Daniel Lanois have talked about the tension between them. Were you one of Bob’s people he called in to help?
Yeah, I was definitely there for Bob. Bob and Lanois were not seeing eye- to-eye on everything. There was a tension there. I’ve got to say, Bob is not alone in being like this, but I think there are some people who feed off of
tension. I’m one of those people. I didn’t have any problem with Lanois at all. It was actually more fun for me in a sick kind of way.
What I always loved about that record is the voice was so big. There were a lot of musicians playing all at the same time and, the way it was mixed, so that the music was all in the back, almost blurry in a way, and with the voice really big up in the front, I’ve always marveled at that.
I remember that Bob asked a question one night when we were all standing around. He said, “Do you like the bits or do you like the overall thing?” What he was referring to was there were so many individual pieces to the music. That’s what I think Bob meant about the bits. There were little things musically that were really cool. I said, “I like the bits.” Later when the record came out, I knew what had happened. He got the bits that we were referring to. The little musical bits all became like this wall, this background for this huge voice so that the lyrics stood out beautifully.
Eric Clapton, not long ago we were playing together, and he said one of his favorite songs ever is “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven.”
David Bowie covered that one too.
Oh yeah. That record is very much loved by a lot of artists. The way it was mixed, his voice so big, it’s one of my favorite things. When I first heard it, I thought, “Wow, Bob got what he was looking for.” Only it didn’t happen until later. In the mix, they made it work.
The last tour you did with Bob seemed pretty spontaneous. In 2002, George Receli, Bob’s drummer, came down with an injury and you pinch-hit for a few weeks.
He got a serious carpal tunnel problem. Bob wanted me to be in Milan tomorrow. I said, “Wow, I don’t think I can get there that soon.” I made it the day after. My first gig was April 21st in Zurich with them. George, a great drummer and really good friend, stayed so that I could— Let’s see, what happened? Maybe he played at the sound check.
It looks like for the first show you were at, he played half the show and you played half the show. Then subsequently you just took over.
Right, that’s what it was. He played half the show, so that I could get a feel for what they were doing, just the vibe of the whole thing. Then I finished it. That’s right.
Even still, it’s not like he’s playing the same songs you’re going to play. You’re just thrown on stage to play other stuff.
There again, that’s the faith Bob had in me. The trust Bob had in me that I could do the thing that he really loved, which is to just play the music. Just fit in with the music somehow. Don’t worry about trying to find a part to play and all that other kind of stuff. Don’t worry whether or not you’re totally accurate with everything. That doesn’t matter. Bob is a real champion of that kind of thinking and so that’s why it was easy for me.
Had you ever had to do something like that before with anyone where you had literally no rehearsal?
No way. Like I said, that’s Dylan. That was incredible, man, now that I think about it. Those guys all took real good care of me. They would give me signs.
In typical Bob fashion, every night, there’s new songs you’re being thrown into. It’s not like you get through the first show and smooth sailing after that.
That’s right. With Bob, you didn’t know a lot of times. That’s the way it should be, really, if you think about it. There’s nothing wrong with having a real good, well-rehearsed show. But I think real artistry is a little more than that. I think that putting the little element of danger or tension or whatever you want to call it into the situation is a good thing in some cases.
Again, that’s that fearless thing. If you’re not fearless, you’re going to be afraid. A lot of the musicians I know, we can smell fear. I know that sounds funny, but that comes from being in a studio with artists, making records where everything is on the line. Time is money, people’s careers are being
shaped or created. There’s a lot of responsibility there. If you sense that somebody is afraid or reticent in some way, then you put that other hat on. The fun ones, the really, really fun ones, like Bob, Willie, Neil, Clapton, they’ve got that fearless kind of thing. That really makes it fun for the musicians.
The playback is what I’m in the game for. I love hearing the playback to see, “Did we do good? Well, let’s try it again” or “That’s fantastic, we’ll never be able to do it that good again.”
Is that how it works at a Dylan session, typically? You’ll do a take or two, then everyone goes into the control room?
They’re all a little bit different. With Bob, he’ll be a little more conventional. The most unconventional is Neil. There’s what’s called a rundown of the song, and then the first take. Before the rundown, you were just messing about. I have played with Neil Young on records where the messing about is the take! You don’t even get to the rundown. That can be a little shocking.
Your most recent time playing with Dylan to date comes full circle, because we’ve talked about Willie Nelson a lot. It’s you performing with Dylan and Nelson at the same time, twice. You recorded “Heartland” with them in the ‘90s and then a decade later, there was this TV special where Bob came out and they do “You Win Again” together, May 2004.
That’s a great pairing. In this [Willie] interview, the interviewer had asked me, “Did you play on ‘Heartland’?” I said, “ I’m not sure. I don’t know if there’s any drums on that.” When I got home I listened and sure enough, there’s the drums. I’m going, “I’m a freaking idiot.” If you’ve been playing for 50 years making records, there’s certain things just pass through and you just can’t remember.
Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan are two of the most distinctive voices in the music business. You know immediately when they’re singing and to hear them sing together is beautiful. I love how they sound on “Heartland” together. I don’t think they did enough of that. I wish they’d do it again. They’re both here, man. They’re both on this planet, still commanding all
the attention they’ve ever commanded. Somebody needs to— I’ll tell [Dylan manager] Jeff Kramer that. In fact, I’m going to call him as soon as we’re done.
You’re in a small group of musicians who Bob calls back again and again, over decades. Why do you think he keeps calling you?
I think it’s because of our track record together. The very first time meeting him, playing on — it wasn’t a gigantic hit, but it certainly was one of his memorable songs — “Watching the River Flow.” Then “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was iconic. Then the gospel years. I think with that kind of track record, he’s always going to be thinking of me like that.
One of my favorite times with Bob was during the Wilburys. He was so funny. I wish that people like you and other people who are big fans of his, I wish they could see that side of Bob, but you’re never going to have that without special times like that. He used to crack me up like. I told him one time, I said, “Man, you’re like a Lenny Bruce throwback.” He’s just way more personable than what people get to see.
For me, I always feel as long as I’m there for Bob, I’m there for Bob and that’s it. I know why I’m there and I know what I’m going to do, which is I’m going to feel Bob out. I can feel it through the playbacks, through whatever he might say, but I’m there because Bob Dylan wants me to be there.
