Page 157 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

148 ACCIDENTAL GENIUS

scientist was working with microwaves in a laboratory, when he felt
something warm and sticky in his pocket. His chocolate bar had
changed viscosity thanks to the heat generated by the microwaves as
they churned the nearby atoms into a minor riot of molecular propor-
tions. And, thus, a new way of cooking was born.

DYLAN’S OPEN EAR

There’s a story that rocker Al Cooper tells about some accidental
genius that catapulted his career in the mid-1960s. Cooper had been an
average guitar player and singer as one of the creative forces behind
The Blues Project, one of the first American bands to bring blues to the
rock audience. When he was invited to accompany Bob Dylan in
recording Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan’s first plugged-in recording,
Cooper naturally brought his guitar to the session. During the record-
ing of Dylan’s classic, “Like a Rolling Stone,” when the great guitar
player Mike Bloomfield, also invited to the session, sat down to play,
an accident of sorts occurred in the recording studio that led to an
unexpected birth of genius.
Feeling a bit outclassed by Bloomfield’s superior guitar playing, a
self-conscious Cooper put down his own guitar and slid behind the
electric organ, which he barely knew how to play, hoping he could
blend in by simply throwing in a few chords occasionally.
After the first couple of takes, the recording engineer pulled Dylan
into the listening suite and pointed out the strange sounds coming
from Cooper trying to fake his way through the song on organ. Dylan,
on hearing an organ played like he had never heard it played before,
proceeded to ask the engineer to bring the instrument up in the mix,
thus giving his first electric hit the unique organ sound that became its
signature.
Cooper later went on to enjoy an illustrious career as an organist
with a sound that was far from conventional. He then got offers to be a
studio musician on the organ. Cooper credits the strange circumstances
of that first recording session and Bob Dylan’s open mind for discover-
ing his accidental genius.

WHO’STHE DUMMY NOW?

One of the first TV spots I ever wrote had Steve Allen—comedian,
musician, songwriter, philosopher, and all-around creative genius—