Mark Doyle

As the song goes, “Regrets. . . I’ve had a few”. You could write a book about these sessions (and maybe someday I will).

We were babes in the wood hitting the big city. At first the record company put us up at The Chelsea Hotel, and when we checked into the rooms and saw cockroaches scurrying up the walls, we freaked out. The hip cachet of Dylan writing “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowland” there ceased to matter. We gradually got moved uptown to The Alamac Hotel, across from Needle Park (immortalized in the Pacino movie, “Panic In Needle Park.”) Junkies used to set fire to the floor we were on so that we would hear the fire alarm , smell the smoke, and start scrambling down the stairs, at which point they would sneak into our rooms (left open in panic) and steal all of our stuff (usually limited to our cash and our stash!)

The sessions weren’t much better. It was somebody’s bright idea to record us “live” at Electric Lady Land by having us set up like a gig, with a PA system, and invite burned out hippies in off of 8th Street and offer them the buffet of cocaine and bourbon we had laid out for audience, band and producer. Needless to say, after an hour or two the sessions degenerated into drunken revelry, with the band out of tune and oblongatto. Even Stevie Wonder’s surprise entrance and resulting jam session with us wasn’t able to rouse us from our stupor. And that became the recorded “legacy” of one of the greatest live acts ever. Our fans were hugely disappointed.