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As far as I can figure out, Empire Burlesque was the first time synthesizer was played on a Bob Dylan record. And that oil-and-water-seeming mix describes a big part of the reason the album was so controversial. Synthesizer? On a Bob Dylan record???
So, for the fourth part in our weeklong interview series, I spoke to two of the synth players on Empire Burlesque. Though they played the same instrument (instruments plural, really, as several different keyboards and synths were employed), they ended up on the album in two very different ways.
The first, Vince Melamed, was brought in by bandleader Ira Ingber for the early sessions out in LA, playing live in the studio with Bob and the band. He appears on “Something’s Burning Baby” as well as a number of songs left on the cutting room floor that resurfaced later (most notably “Brownsville Girl”).
The second, Richard Scher, was brought in by mixer Arthur Baker to overdub synth parts in New York when the record was already nearly finished, to make it sound more contemporary. He appears on five tracks on Empire Burlesque, quite prominently on a song like “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky.”