Larry Campbell Goes Deep on His Eight Years with Bob Dylan

1997-03-31, Memorial Stadium, St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada

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Photo by Alan Cuenca

Update June 2023: This interview is included along with 40+ others in my new book ‘Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members.’ Buy it now in hardcover, paperback, or ebook here!

In 2013, Bob Dylan fan site Expecting Rain ran a poll to pick the best guitarist among the dozens who have backed Bob on the Never-Ending Tour. The winner? Larry Campbell. In 2016, they ran another poll. The winner? Larry Campbell. And then a third poll in 2018. Who won that time? Charlie Sexton…in a tie with his erstwhile bandmate and guitar-dueling partner Larry Campbell.

Larry Campbell played with Dylan from 1997 through 2004, and it’s a testament to Campbell’s career that’s probably not even the thing he’s best known for at this point. That would be his decade-long relationship with Levon Helm, producing his records and playing in his band alongside Campbell’s wife Teresa Williams. Since Levon’s passing, Larry and Teresa have continued backing up friends like Jackson Browne and Hot Tuna while beginning to record their own albums as a couple.

A new ten-part documentary called It Was the Music traces the path of their careers apart and together. I highly recommend it even if you mostly know Larry for his work with Bob or the couple for their work with Levon. Relix called it “a profound and moving work” and Americana UK a “fascinating and detailed look at the lives of two support musicians who take front of stage.” It’s available via Amazon and Vimeo. Here’s the trailer:

Today marks the 24th anniversary of Campbell’s first show with Dylan, and he recently got on the phone with me for an extended conversation about his eight years in the band. It’s a subject he’s been reluctant to talk too much about in the past, but he was willing to open up and share an inside look at what his world was like playing next to Bob all those years. Our conversation lasted so long that I’ve broken it into two parts. Here’s the first.

Photo via IndyRock Magazine

One thing the documentary makes clear is how deep in the roots music world you were before getting connected with Dylan. How did you transition from that career to playing with Dylan?

As concise as I can make this… There had been so much great music going on through the '60s that really spoke to me, from the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show all the way up through the FM radio, psychedelic music, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, all this fertile stuff in the world of rock and roll and popular music. I was really entranced by this music. I'd buy these Beatle records, and there'd be a song there by Chuck Berry. Who's Chuck Berry? Then I'd find that out. From Chuck Berry you go to BB King, from BB King you go to Albert King, from those guys you go back to Robert Johnson and all the country blues guys, and just keep going on that path. [The Beatles] did a tune by Buck Owens. Who's Buck Owens? From there you go to Hank Williams and George Jones and way back to the Carter Family. All this was overlapping with the folk boom. I couldn't get enough of this stuff. I was insatiable.

By the early '70s, I started to get a little bit disillusioned about what was going on in rock radio. I was really leaning towards the rootsier end of music. I decided New York City is not the place for me right now. I just packed up and moved out to California with some blind ambition. Long story short, ended up touring with a band, ended up settling in Jackson, Mississippi for a couple of years, where I really absorbed the culture of this music that spoke to me the most.

I ended up coming back to New York in the late '70s, just in time for this urban cowboy boom where country music was fashionable. It turned out to be a really lucrative situation for me because I was finding work in the studios and playing at clubs every week, the Lone Star Cafe, City Limits, all these places where this type of country music, the roots music that people were attracted to, was able to be performed.

One of the guys I had met in California - and we became very close in New York, he was on the same scene as me - was [longtime Dylan bassist] Tony Garnier. When I met him in California, [he] was the bass player with Asleep at the Wheel. He moved to New York just about the same time I moved back. We would play a lot of gigs together and studio work and all that. I just continued trying to be a New York City musician. I was playing in the clubs and touring with people like Doug Sahm, Rosanne Cash, kd lang, Cyndi Lauper. There's a long list.

So it’s the end of 1996 and I've decided I'm not going to tour anymore. I had just finished this tour with kd. I just wanted to be a New York studio musician and get more into producing records. A few months later, I get a call from Jeff Kramer, Bob's manager, saying Bob was interested in hearing me play and could I come down and hang and do some playing together? Bob's awareness of me came through my association with Tony Garnier.

I initially turned it down. I had made this decision, I wasn't going to tour anymore. Then I woke up the next day and remembered what my impetus for being in music was in the first place. It was the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. I thought, "Wait a minute, I'm going to turn this down, this opportunity to work with this guy?" I called Kramer back. We worked it out. I came down, we played for about three days, and then the next thing I'm on tour for eight years with Bob.