He would produce six of Dylan’s albums – Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, Self Portrait and New Morning.
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“After he brought Dylan here, the floodgates were opened”, McCoy said in an interview. ‘It’s something Al Kooper wrote down, it’s overdubs.’ I said, ‘If you keep doing that there won’t be anything left.’ ‘I’m gonna cut live.
Johnston was born to a musical family on May 14, 1932 in Hillsboro, Texas; his mother Diane Johnston wrote songs for Gene Autry as well as the single “Miles and Miles of Texas”, which became an Asleep at the Wheel hit in the Seventies. As outlined in this Rolling Stone review of the taping, it was one of Dylan’s first public performances in three years, and it marked one of the earliest glimpses that the American public got of Dylan inside a city that was unsure of what to make of the famed folk-turned-rock “n” roll star who had made a pilgrimage their way. “He should have been wearing a wide cape, a plumed hat, and riding with his sword held high”. As a staff producer at Columbia Records, he’s credited with Johnny Cash’s 1968 breakthrough At Folsom Prison and its 1969 follow-up, At San Quentin, plus Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate, and a number of records for Flatt & Scruggs.
“So I went over to the studio that afternoon and Dylan said to me, ‘Listen, I’m getting ready to record this song”. I don’t know if you knew, but I was using you as bait: “I want Dylan to come record in Nashville but, he isn’t too keen on the idea”. He says to me, “I have a castle in Crowborough”.
“My job wasn’t to be a hero and to tell Paul Simon or Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson what the f-k to do!”
In 2011, Johnston talked about his successful hands-off approach to working with the artists and how he never told them what songs to include or not include on their albums.
Later, McCoy remembered, Mr. Johnston called him and said, “Thanks for coming”. Once he was confined to bed and connected to machines, hospice only gave him a few days to live.
Friends of Johnston tell the Chronicle that he was in hospice for much of the past week.
“For several days before, singing, swaying and waving around his hands, telling stories out loud, entertaining and consuming all those that saw and heard him”.
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It is an especially timely look back at Dylan’s journey to Nashville this week as we also received news of the death of Bob Johnston this past Friday. “The grand master waved his magical wand for the last time, then disappeared off into the night”.
