The Dylan Review spoke to “Steady Rollin’” Bob Margolin, guitar player in Muddy Waters’ band from 1973 to 1980, about the Last Waltz and his memories of meeting Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Dylan Review: When did you first hear Chicago blues music?
Bob Margolin: In the mid-60s, around the time I started playing guitar, which was in 1964. I was really inspired by Chuck Berry, and then I followed the path of his inspiration back to Muddy Waters and deep Chicago blues. I fell in and I haven’t crawled out yet.
DR: Did you listen to the Stones, and the British blues bands growing up in Boston?
BM: Yeah, I saw the Stones in 1965 in Boston. And again in 1969.
DR: In Boston, you were part of what later became known as the “Bosstown” scene, in the psychedelic garage band The Freeborne. Did you prefer blues or psychedelic rock then?
BM: Freeborne was mostly psychedelic. We started as 17 and 18 year olds. But, on an album that we did in 1968 [Peak Impressions], I had written one blues song. And that’s where I was headed afterwards.
DR: I’ve read that Freeborne once opened for the Velvet Underground. Is that true?
BM: Yes we did. It was interesting, because they were pretty progressive. They were doing a lot of things with feedback. I was torn about that gig because The Doors were playing in Boston that night and I had intended to go. And then this opening gig for the Velvet Underground came up. It was interesting to meet Lou Reed and watch the band and listen to them being “artistic.”
DR: Did you encounter Van Morrison when he was living in Boston in 1967?
BM: I didn’t speak with him, but I do remember when he was in the area. It was around the time he was making that Astral Weeks album and I saw him play two or three times in the scene that we were in. But I first heard about him in the fall of 1966. A band I was in played a song by Them called “Mystic Eyes.” That was before he was suddenly around the Boston area. I was very moved by his music. He’s an exciting performer, and what a soulful voice.
DR: So how do you go from Boston’s psychedelic scene to backing Muddy Waters, still in your early 20s?
BM: Every band I was in after Freeborne was either a blues band or trying to be a blues band. So I went deeper and deeper into that style of music. There were many young musicians living in Boston that enjoyed blues. I learned from them about what was happening and I got to see a lot of musicians coming through. And by the early 70s I was in blues bands that opened up for Muddy Waters.
Muddy could see I was playing old school Chicago Blues. The band I was in was just smart enough not to play Muddy Waters songs in a gig opening for Muddy Waters. But he could see that I was playing Elmore James-style slide guitar, and Jimmy Reed songs. He liked that and encouraged me.
DR: Did you learn that slide guitar style by listening to records?
BM: Mostly from records, but I saw people. Whenever Muddy was playing in town in the early 70s, I’d be right in front of him, at the front table trying to learn, taking it in with the deepest respect. It was the best music that I ever heard in my life.
DR: How did Muddy Waters ask you to join his band?
BM: One night, in August of 1973, Muddy was playing in Boston and I was the first one in the club. I wanted to get a seat right in front of him and watch him. It was on a Tuesday night and the band was starting.
I saw George “Mojo Dreamy-Eyed Good-Lookin’” Buford, the harmonica player, and he asked me the fateful question: “got any reefer?” And I did, because that’s what you do for a band on the road. So I gave him a bag. And then he said, “Oh wait, Muddy fired Sammy [Lawhorn] last night. Wait right here.” Then Muddy came out of his dressing room, and said, “Come to my hotel room tomorrow and bring the guitar.”
He presumed that I would take a chance to change the rest of my life, which I did. He was absolutely right. I saw the whole of my life right in front of my eyes, standing with him and nobody else in that club. I said, “If I can do this, hell yeah, I’m gonna do it.” What better way to learn about this music that I love than from my favourite musician who created it? It was really obvious in one second.
The next day, I showed up at his hotel room. I did not have an acoustic guitar, but I brought a very small amplifier, which I still have, a Fender Tweed Deluxe. I set it up in the room and he said, “Play it.” I knew he was going to ask that, so I played a Chicago style slow blues and he started singing along with what I was playing.
It’s not that he thought I was great. He recognized that I was trying to play the old school style, and liked it. But it was more to him like a puppy doing a trick: “Oh wow, I found a great guitar player!” He called his girlfriend into the room, “Hey listen to this kid playing my shit.” And, I did. So he said, “Let’s give it a try.”
Muddy then called his drummer into the room – Willie “Big Eyes” Smith – and told him I was going to be in the band. He gave me a big smile and held out his hand and said, “Welcome to the club.” So that put me on the road.
DR: In 1975 you recorded The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album with members of The Band and Paul Butterfield. How did it compare to other albums you played on with Muddy?
BM: The Woodstock album was a whole different thing. Instead of recording it in Chess Studios, in Chicago, we went to Woodstock and did it at Levon’s home. He and Henry Glover produced it. Muddy brought me and [piano player] Pinetop Perkins so he would have something familiar behind him. But it was a thrill working with Levon Helm and Garth Hudson. I was already into their music pretty deep. I was happy to get to do that.
It was also a thrill to get to play with Paul Butterfield. He was a big deal to me ten years before the Woodstock album, when the Butterfield Blues Band broke out. I was very deeply influenced by them in 1965, 1966. I loved Mike Bloomfield’s playing. It was over the top and in-your-face. Just amazingly powerful and very musical. It wasn’t just a lot of shredding.
DR: Did you ever play with Mike Bloomfield?
BM: No. But in March 1974, we both played on an educational TV special. The first couple of songs Muddy played with his band, and then guests joined him. Mike Bloomfield was going to borrow my amplifier.
He said, “I really like your playing. Look man, you got your guitar set up like Jimmy Rogers did. That’s the old school stuff. You don’t know how good you are, man.” It was very intense. It was a thrill to meet him and have him be that nice to me.
DR: What was Muddy’s relationship like with Levon Helm?
BM: He enjoyed playing with Levon. He’d say, “I like this. This is going good, we’ll have some fun.” And they did! Levon just loved him. He really wanted to make it a great album, and I think he did.
DR: Later in 1975, you first met Bob Dylan at the Bottom Line club in New York, when he sat in for a Muddy Waters set. How did that happen?
We were playing at the Bottom Line regularly, two or three days at a time. It was a showcase club in New York City. But on this night, somebody said that Bob Dylan was coming down.
I was in this tiny dressing room when Dylan entered with an entourage and sat down. He had a lot of people with him. And everybody was very excited because he wasn’t out in public all that much at that particular time. The room was electric. Muddy could tell this guy must be a big deal, but I don’t think he knew anything about him.
Dylan asked me a couple of questions about how Muddy set up his guitar; I told him it was kind of like an acoustic with heavy strings, except it’s an electric guitar. That’s the way he likes to play. He’s got big strong hands and he hits the guitar like an acoustic. The way he learned in Mississippi. And I think Dylan found that interesting, but people kept coming up to him and wanting to talk to him and say thanks to him. Even if it was just so they could say, “Well I was talking to Bobby the other day…”
I said to Dylan that it was amazing to sit here and watch this whole scene around him. And he said “I wish I could just watch.”
DR: Dylan eventually joined Muddy on stage, playing electric harmonica. Did you persuade him?
I didn’t persuade anybody! But I did ask Dylan if he wanted to sit in. I told Muddy, who said to bring him up after a couple of songs. And someone gave him a harp and an amp. There is a picture of [harmonica player] Paul Oscher, who had been in Muddy’s band, but was not at the time. He had been sitting in earlier. There’s a picture of him giving Dylan the microphone.
DR: What songs did you play together?
BM: One that Muddy did called “Can’t Get No Grindin’,” which is a Memphis Minnie song that he had cut on an album in 1973, with a very exciting arrangement. I remember us playing that. I can’t remember if we did more or not.
I do remember that when Muddy introduced Dylan, as he was bringing him up to the stage, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a young man gonna come up and play some harmonica. Give a nice round of applause to John Dylan.” I whispered to Muddy, “His name is Bob Dylan, like my name. Bob.” And as though he was just repeating himself he added, “Bob Dylan.” And the whole place goes apeshit. They just went crazy. And Dylan came up on the stage and played along.
And then Dylan brought some other people with him: a clarinet player named Perry, Scarlett Rivera, and probably one or two other people. Dave Brubeck opened the show. He had a band with his son, so Chris Brubeck was up there playing trombone. There’s a picture of Muddy, Chris Brubeck and Dylan together.
DR: What was it like playing with Scarlett Rivera? I don’t think I’ve heard violin on a Muddy Waters record.
BM: Actually, there is violin on some of Muddy’s very earliest records, [later compiled] on the album Down On Stovall’s Plantation. He was playing with a violin player who was much older than him, named Son Sims. So it wasn’t like we were breaking new ground. Though we didn’t run into clarinets often.
DR: You met Phil Ochs that night too?
BM: He was there with Dylan, and he seemed troubled. He was starting shit with people. He looked at me. I was wearing a suit that I bought that afternoon. I had gone window shopping in New York City and I saw a suit that I liked, so I bought it and I wore it that night.
Ochs said, “What are you doing wearing a suit, man? Bobby don’t need to wear a suit.” And I said, “Hey, there’s Muddy Waters over there. Why don’t you go and give him some shit about his suit. At which point he looked at Muddy and Muddy’s friend, who was his driver and bodyguard from Mississippi. Muddy’s friend looked at Ochs like he was somebody that was about to give Muddy some shit. This guy did not have white around his eyes. He had red around his eyes. He was one of the scariest looking people that I ever saw.
And Dylan saw this guy looking at Phil Ochs and he said, “Telephone call for Phil Ochs! Take it outside Phil.” And that diffused the situation.
DR: I noticed in photographs that blues great Victoria Spivey was at the Bottom Line that night. Dylan played harmonica in the studio for Spivey in 1962.
Dylan was clearly thrilled to see her. They weren’t on stage at the same time, which I guess could have happened, but it didn’t. I’m told that a bunch of them went back to her house afterwards and hung out all night. I wasn’t there.
In this period, Dylan was recruiting acts for the Rolling Thunder Revue. Was there ever any question that Muddy might play one of those shows?
Nobody said anything like that. We did not see Dylan again until The Last Waltz.
DR: What are your memories of The Last Waltz?
BM: We had made Muddy’s Woodstock album in early 1975. It had already been recorded before the Bottom Line. But the next year, Levon arranged for Muddy to come to The Last Waltz. And again, Muddy brought me and Pinetop with him.
It came up very quickly. I didn’t have the Stratocaster that I usually use. We’d been on the road playing in small clubs, and I had a big archtop guitar with me. And so I brought that to The Last Waltz.
We flew into a pretty interesting scene. All the other musicians knew who Muddy was. They were excited to see him and be around him. But he didn’t know who they were. He didn’t know the rock stars of the day. I don’t think he was around Bob Dylan at all, but I was in dressing rooms with him before he played.
After the show, the musicians went back to the hotel and jammed, in a conference room that The Band used for rehearsals. I played “Hideaway” with Eric Clapton. Stephen Stills borrowed my guitar to play for a while. They all liked that archtop guitar. I’d been there for a few hours and I was packing up the guitar to leave, and Bob Dylan walked into the room and said, “I thought we were going to play together?”
I said, “I’ll stay.” So, he put together a blues jam that he led, with me on guitar, Eric Clapton and himself. And Dr. John on piano, Levon on drums, Paul Butterfield on the harp. Nobody was playing bass, so I said to Ron Wood, “I’ve seen you play bass with the Jeff Beck Group. Why don’t you play bass?”
We played a few Robert Johnson songs. I remember him doing “Kind Hearted Woman Blues” in particular.
DR: It’s funny that you mention your Gibson archtop guitar – I always notice it when I watch the film. Everyone else is playing Stratocasters. It really makes you stand out.
BM: If I’d been able to do it deliberately, I would have brought a Strat’ too – I had a 1956. But I think that archtop guitar impressed people. A lot of well-known musicians watched the rehearsal, the day before The Last Waltz. They saw me helping to arrange “Mannish Boy,” telling the other musicians what Muddy wants. It wasn’t complex or anything. But people were interested in me, and they seemed to appreciate that guitar.
I’ll tell you a real quick story. I sold that guitar in 2016. I was making an album and needed all the money that I could get. And so, I sold that guitar to a nice young man from New York City.
Later, in 2022, I was playing a Last Waltz [tribute] show in St. Petersburg, Florida, and he brought the guitar so I could play it again for the night.
It was wonderful to be with that guitar. I owned it from 1975 to 2016. I was really familiar with it and it meant a lot to get to play it again. At the end of the night, I packed it up in a bag and thanked him.
I went out to the bus to go back to the hotel, and I got a call from the promoter. He said, “Bob, can you come back?”
Two of the musicians on that Last Waltz show bought the guitar back from the guy and gave it to me for a present. We’re talking about a lot of money. But they had the kindness to do that. I have it in the room I’m in right now. I made a whole album with it called Thanks. I was so happy to have it back.
DR: Muddy’s performance in The Last Waltz really steals the show. Do you remember seeing the film in the theater?
BM: Yes, I saw it in Brookline, Massachusetts, at the theater I’ve been going to since I was a little kid.
Something I’ve noticed about The Last Waltz is that it’s meant to be seen in a theater, with the interviews loud enough to hear but then the actual music extremely loud. If I watch The Last Waltz now, I have to keep my hand on the volume control the whole time. Because if you want to hear what they’re saying in the interviews, you have to turn it down as fast as you possibly can when the music comes in. And that’s the way they chose to present it, but it was being mixed and presented in movie theatres. Not home video.
DR: Is it correct that there’s no overdubs on the performance of “Mannish Boy?,” unlike some of the other performances in the film?
BM: Probably not. Muddy didn’t need to do it and I didn’t need to do it. None, as far as I know. What you see is what happened on stage.
DR: Shortly before The Last Waltz, Muddy recorded the album Hard Again with Johnny Winters. Was that album as enjoyable to make as it is to listen to?
BM: It was a band in a room having fun, and Johnny Winter very deliberately captured that. He knew how to make that happen. He used a lot of room mics – mics suspended near the ceilings to pick up the ambience of the room, which was a warm-sounding large wooden room. Johnny Winters used the sound of those mics more than most producers would, so it sounds like exactly what it was. We were all sitting there having fun, playing and enjoying it. And you can hear it. It comes through. People love the sound of that album and all credit to Johnny Winters.
I got to produce a reissue of Hard Again and there was no way we were going to change his mix and that sound, maybe just remaster it for a touch more clarity. That’s all.
DR: You’ve covered Bob Dylan several times on your solo albums, including “Not Dark Yet,” “I Shall Be Released,” and “Tears of Rage.” Why did you choose to record these songs, rather than Dylan’s more traditional twelve-bar blues songs?
BM: These are the songs that moved me, and I just play the way I play them. Honestly, when I heard the song, “It’s not dark yet / but it’s getting there,” I loved the song. But I did not like the production of it. It seemed very amorphous. Little guitar parts were just emerging for a second and then falling back into this really soupy mix. Maybe Dylan liked that, I don’t know. But I sure didn’t.
So I just made the song clear when I recorded it. I started with one guitar, adding a second acoustic guitar and bass. Each verse, I’d add something to it. That’s the musical approach I take.
DR: How did you come up with the arrangement for “Tears of Rage?” You play a beautiful Muddy Waters-style slide guitar. It takes it in a different direction from The Band’s version, and it works brilliantly.
BM: It was just an idea I had to punctuate my vocals, while playing an acoustic guitar part behind it.
DR: Your new album is called Thanks. Besides your returned archtop guitar, what else inspired you to be thankful?
BM: While it’s a thanks to that specific guitar that came to be mine again, it’s also a thanks to Muddy Waters, and all the wonderful musicians that I met through him. And definitely thanks to The Band for their music, and the small part I got to play in it. And the friendship that I had with Levon Helm over many years, and the rest of The Band.
I last saw Robbie Robertson when I played a Last Waltz show in Nashville in 2019, and he was a guest. He came down a day early to rehearse, and he came over to me and said “we don’t look like that anymore.” And that was certainly true!
We talked about the performance at The Last Waltz, and the rehearsals for it. Robbie remembered a lot of things that I didn’t remember. He was talking about Paul Butterfield’s harp on “Mannish Boy,” a part that he played way behind Muddy. Instead of just playing the riff that Muddy sings, bah-bah-bah-dah-bah, he would go bah-bah-bah-dah-bah-wowww! He would keep this warble going.
He would use circular breathing to do that. So it would sustain like an organ. Muddy always loved the way Paul Butterfield played. He’d say, “That holds up my voice. I really like that.” But Robbie remembered that circular breathing part, which I didn’t.
That night in 2019, I played “Mannish Boy” and Robbie came out for the encore. It was amazing to be standing on stage with Robbie, looking over to see him playing “The Weight” and “I Shall Be Released.
