Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards

by Al Kooper

  Not long after I joined the Blues Project, Tom Wilson left Columbia Records for MGM-Verve. Columbia waived its claim to us, so we moved with him and signed with Verve-Folkways, MGM’s answer to Elektra. It was also around this time that our manager was able to secure a week’s berth for us at a Village jazz joint called the Cafe Au Go Go. This club had gained fame for hosting the likes of Stan Getz and Lenny Bruce (actually what it gained was infamy—the owner, Howard Solomon, was brought to trial on Bruce-induced obscenity charges but was later vindicated) and for being the location of Stan’s popular Getz Au Go Go live album. I don’t think the place had ever booked a rock band (that’s us) before, but business stunk and Solomon was desperate. God knows, he must’ve been!

  To put it diplomatically, we were green. Our hair was somewhere between short and growing long, nobody but me thought to “dress” to go onstage, and, most of all, we were still learning. Hardly headliner material. Hardly even support band material.

  Then a funny thing happened. After we played the week, he hired us for three more. I don’t think it had anything to do with the business we did (there wasn’t any); he was probably just fascinated because he was so unaccustomed to seeing acts survive. We’d take each night’s proceeds and adjourn to the bar across Bleecker Street called the Dugout. In an hour we’d be as broke as we’d been earlier that evening, but too drunk to care. The ironic part was that all through the early stages of the band’s career, I waived taking a salary, due to my outside income. And, because of my ulcer, when the take was squandered on alcohol I didn’t get to participate on that level either. (Another illustration of the band’s poverty was that Tommy would show up at your house, ask to use the bathroom, and then tie it up for an hour or two by taking a shower. He could only get away with this once at each band member’s apartment!) As our Au Go Go residency wore on, a few brave faces reappeared. Fans! They helped us gain a little confidence, and I think, experience aside, that’s what we really needed.

  Meanwhile, Tom Wilson and Verve were trying to figure out how to record (or relate to) us. They didn’t know whether we were Paul Revere and the Raiders or the Mothers of Invention. Neither did we, really. Based on our emerging local popularity, Howard Solomon was planning a Thanksgiving holiday all-blues show that would feature some of the more accessible blues greats. Looking to subsidize his advertising campaign (that means get somebody/anybody else to pay for it), he turned to Jerry Schoenbaum, then president of Verve-Folkways.

  The original concept Solomon had envisioned was to get some money to promote this potential Thanksgiving turkey starring his house band, Verve Folkways great white hope, The Blues Project. Schoenbaum took it five steps further by having Verve underwrite the entire week in exchange for the recording rights. Because the majority of the artists were either signed to Verve or unsigned altogether, this was a way of assuring at least three or four albums to amortize the initial investment.

  “The Blues Bag,” as it was so trendily baptized, was advertised extensively both over- and underground for Thanksgiving week of 1965. It featured Muddy Waters, Big Joe Williams, Otis Spann, John Lee Hooker, and the band of white Jewish kids who taught them everything they knew, The Blues Project. Prior to this, nobody had been adventurous enough to bankroll a blues package in a small club on the white side of the tracks. However, Solomon and Schoenbaum (attorneys at law?) found themselves with sold-out, standing-room-only performances for the entire week. And twenty minutes after Muddy Waters had brought each capacity house to its feet, The Blues Project would take the stage.

  I think they picked us to close the show strictly by virtue of the fact that we were unquestionably louder than anyone else on the bill. It was embarrassing, our heroes having to warm up for us; the first few shows we used to go in their dressing rooms and apologize to them! Someone recently interviewing me asked why we played so loud on a bill with Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, who were masters of dynamics. “Probably to compensate for our penis sizes ...,” I honestly replied.

  While we were hanging out in Muddy’s dressing room the first night, I took Otis Spann aside. I had a plan that was even ballsier than my first Dylan session: “Maybe one of these afternoons you could teach me some stuff. I think you’re the greatest pianist who ever lived, and it would be an honor to learn from you.” He miraculously agreed to meet me the next afternoon. What a sweet man. We were scheduled for four o’clock. I got there at three-thirty, he at four-thirty. My “lesson” lasted two hours, and we adjourned to the Dugout, the restaurant across the street, where I bought him dinner. This went on for two more days. Piano lessons paid for by dinner and drinks. What a bargain! Now I had the blues piano playing basics

  Backstage at the Cafe Au Go Go, 1965: Inadvertently and sadly aiding and abetting mentor Otis Spann toward an early grave; he died of lung cancer shortly thereafter. (Photo: Don Paulsen.)

  down I so desperately needed, as taught by the master!

  These days it’s not unusual for B. B. King to play a sold-out show with nary a black face in the audience, but in 1965 it was quite a novelty. We looked out into a sea of faces that we had all seen in the next room in the college dorm, ahead of us at the draft board, and sitting behind us in temple. These kids were just younger versions of us, and not much younger at that. And they knew it. We were theirs! We didn’t have the cool assurance of a Muddy Waters, the natural instincts of a John Lee Hooker, or the sheer talent of an Otis Spann, but now we had an inkling of what they felt like when they faced a packed house at the Apollo or the Regal.

  In later years, I had an interesting experience. I went to see The Cars at the dawn of the eighties, when their star was just beginning to rise. They were headlining at Universal Amphitheater and I went backstage to meet them. Turns out they were huge Blues Project fans, especially guitarist Elliot Easton. They regaled me with stories about different gigs they had attended that even I had forgotten. Then it was time for them to go onstage. I was actually growing quite fond of them and I had enjoyed their album as well. I stood in the wings and watched the first half-hour of their show. For the life of me, I couldn’t see any Blues Project influence in what they were doing, and their musicianship was far inferior to their album. Why did they like The Blues Project? I stood there perplexed and then a bolt of thought-lightning hit me: This was probably the way Muddy Waters felt when he saw The Blues Project the first time. “Why do they like me so much? I can’t hear any of my music in there!” I groaned to myself and walked away. It was a troubling realization.

  Returning to the sixties, our band came out fightin’, trying to stay alive and get our point across any way we could. It wasn’t like we sat down at a conference table one day and said, “OK, Danny is gonna jump up and down and make all these faces, and Al is gonna wear a cape and a taxi-driver’s hat, and Steve, you get a Beatles haircut, and Tommy you do splits while we’re playing solos.” We were real in our own way, McLuhan’s media children flexing their newly acquired muscles. We may have borrowed our music, but our demeanor was strictly our own.

  In the face of all the talent and roots that surrounded us, we stole the fucking show every night! In retrospect, it’s easy to see why. It was our audience’s equivalent of when we sat in dark theaters watching the knife fight and the chickie-run in Rebel without a Cause. We sat in those seats and we squirmed; relating even though we weren’t always able to duplicate. When we left the stage, the audience was sweating as heavily as we were and was probably just as exhausted. Our idols played with dexterity and dignity. We got ’em with energy and volume. The music would catch up soon enough.

  The whole time Verve’s tape machine was rolling, getting our first album down. Robert Shelton, the staid New York Times’ music critic, applauded our efforts in print, and when The Blues Bag reached its delirious finale, it was only natural we should remain in residence at the Au Go Go and fill the joint ourselves. This little, unkempt, former jazz club came into its own right then and there. In later years I found out that Al Pacino, Peter Boyl
e, Rob Reiner, and Peter Riegert, to name but a few, were regular faces in the front row. There was an actor’s studio around the corner, and the fledgling thespians would check us out after class. Procol Harum, Moby Grape, Jimi Hendrix, and every up-and-comer felt obliged to serve time at the Au Go Go. I remember nights when, just as we finished our last song, Dylan and Neuwirth would lunge out of the darkness, grab me by the arms, and drag me across the street to the Dugout for some late-night hi-jinks. This would usually leave the audience with something to chat about on the E train home.

  It was a small fame we had achieved, but it put spending money in Howard Solomon’s pocket. The band, of course, was still starving because we maintained the same overhead, and the money hadn’t improved dramatically enough to affect our paychecks. And we had our problems. We needed new equipment; so it was decided that we’d pool each weekend’s take for that purpose, leaving the rest of the week’s gross for rent and food.

  Tommy didn’t go for it. He felt that he was a separate case in that he was the singer and we were the band. He paid for and looked after his axe (his throat) and would we please pay for our own instruments because he didn’t know how to play them, so why should he be party to buying them? Also, Tommy didn’t happen to be Jewish, and that was the only thing the rest of us had in common. Whatever the reasons, there was a showdown, and Tommy, bless his heart, stood his ground. The man had the courage of his convictions, and I respected that. It cost him his gig, though, and it shook us bad, because a lot of charisma walked out the door when he did.

  Tommy’s departure automatically consigned Steve and me to singing chores, whereas previously only Danny had shared Flanders’ field. We weren’t gonna pick up any new charisma with this plan, I thought. I picked a Chuck Berry tune, “I Wanna Be Your Driver.” Steve took over a song he’d written that Tommy had been singing, called, strangely enough, “Steve’s Song.” I took a gospel song I knew and rearranged it for a Jewish blues band, and that’s how we started doing “Wake Me Shake Me.” One night, Roy broke a bass drum pedal in the middle of a show, and Steve pulled out Donovan’s Top Forty folker “Catch the Wind” and did it percussionless while Roy fixed his pedal, so we kept that in the show. Little by little we fashioned a new repertoire. Danny, however, remained the chief lead singer and band leader. Soon after, Jeff Chase signed us up with the William Morris Agency (ta-da). An international booking office saw potential in, of all things ... us!

  We cautiously stepped outside the confines of the Cafe Au Go Go to test our stuff in other locales. Our first out-of-town gig was as opening act for Stan Getz in the gorgeous vacation retreat of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the dead of winter. We had no cars, trucks, or roadies, and certainly no money to rent any of the above. So we self-schlepped all our amps and equipment down to Pennsylvania Station and hopped the train.

  Boy, it was surreal. Dirty hippie kids lugging all these guitars and crap onto a train populated primarily by old ladies and sailors on shore leave. And, of course, the train was delayed and we got there real late; Stan Getz had already gone on and was pissed off that he had to. The audience was there for one reason only: Stan Getz. It was actually quite considerate of them to wait a few minutes after he’d finished while we set up. Halfway through the first number, however, they unanimously agreed it was too loud (not enough rockers present, too many jazzers) and most of them left. We played with all the gusto a train ride to Pittsboig can inspire, and, mercifully, it was over. Once again, we packed up our stuff, headed for the train station, and caught the late flyer to New Yawk. God, it was depressing. No reward, no relief, no standing ovations, no encores. Just old ladies and sailors.

  Our next “road trip” was different: We had two gigs booked. The first was a Friday night at Swarthmore College, the second Saturday night at Antioch College. This time we tried it with two cars and one roadie, the band in one car and the roadie and all the equipment in another.

  Swarthmore’s a neat little school tucked somewhere out of my memory in rural Pennsylvania, and it was holding its first Annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Festival, so we knew that volume would not be a problem. Swarthmore was probably the breast at which rock journalism suckled. It was here that the first rock mag of fairly intelligent criticism was born. A mimeographed two-sheeter called Crawdaddy, completely authored by student-journalist (not the singer) Paul Williams, made its way around the campus and eventually matured to press. This was a good two years before Rolling Stone debuted its first issue.

  As we pulled into Swarthmore, the students welcomed us with open arms. We were surprised; they actually knew who we were! We availed ourselves of their dorm showers after the grueling drive and hit the stage only ten minutes late. It was no contest. The Energy-plus-Volume Machine trampled ’em and, two encores later, we piled into the cars and began our comparatively long trek toward the hinterlands of Ohio and our next victims.

  In the car, there was exhilaration (and opium). We had carried our sound out of New York, made it portable, and it had worked on ’em out-a-town. Our enthusiasm soon gave way to tedium as we plowed toward our destination. We drove all night and it seemed that we hadn’t even put the slightest dent in our mileage. We drove all the next day as well, but by sunset we were still hours from Antioch. Finally, at who knew what time, we staggered into Yellow Springs (that’s what we felt like), Ohio, and pulled up in front of the auditorium.

  Talk about cuckoo. No sleep, lots of drugs, and a few of our women (allowed to come along for the ride out of inexperience; road virgins complaining and misunderstanding all the way). It was two hours after we were supposed to have played; but was the audience uptight? No way. They were just glad we were there. The auditorium was jammed with people who wanted to, as they used to say, “boogie.” We made it to the now-familiar dorm showers and mounted the stage on by-then shaky legs.

  Antioch was one of a handful of “progressive” institutions that was totally into psychedelics at the time. The entire first two rows were watching us through kaleidoscopes ! No one in the band felt much like being awake, much less playing, but there wasn’t even time to vomit. Because of the epic proportions of our journey, we did not play well. But did they give a shit? Could they even tell the difference? Not two, not four, but five encores! I couldn’t believe after each one that we were going up there again.

  This was one of the major weirdnesses of being on the road. Sometimes you could play the best music you’d ever played, and they’d just sit there on their hands; no encore, no nothin’. And then, as on this particular occasion, you’d shovel an hour’s worth of elephant shit on ’em and get standing ovations and twenty encores. This usually helped to temper our respect for the people we played for.

  They put us all up at the school and we slept like rocks for the first time in two days. Sunday afternoon everyone woke up refreshed and the plan was to fly back to New York; fuck this stupid driving shit! Monday afternoon, however, I was committed to be in Nashville to play on some Dylan sessions (for the album Blonde on Blonde); so I had planned in advance to stay over at the school one more night and fly directly from Columbus to Nashville. I tagged along while some school kids drove the whole entourage to the airport, gave the boys five, said, “See ya in a week,” and hopped a ride back to the school with two women on the concert commitee.

  They were the first “dedicated fans” of The Blues Project (it being too early to call them groupies). I never made it to the school. I just barely made the plane the next morning. It was the first time I had ever been with two women at once and only the clarion call of Bob Dylan could’ve got me to that airport on time. Well, almost on time. When I got there, the plane was taxiing toward the runway and it was snowing like in Dr. Zhivago. All of a sudden the plane stopped and this tiny jeep pulled up carrying yours truly, looking a little worse for the previous night’s shenanigans. They dropped the stairs down and I, unaware that the flight had originated in New York City, boarded the plane only to be greeted by much laughter and fingers pointed in my direction. M
any of the passengers were music business people that I knew from New York: Al Gallico, the publisher, Bob Morgan, the producer, and Bobby Vinton, the Polish person. And they couldn’t understand what I was doing in a jeep on the runway during a snowstorm in Columbus, Ohio, at nine o‘clock on Monday morning. And I wasn’t tellin’ either. I believed in the magic of rock ‘n’ roll!

  Bob Johnston, a Southerner, who had replaced Tom Wilson as Dylan’s producer at the time, suggested that Bob try cutting his next album in Nashville with some of the best musicians that town had to offer. Bob agreed, but stipulated that Robbie Robertson and I join whatever cast was assembled. I had never been down south before and was not particularly looking forward to it based on various accounts I had perused in the papers. However, Johnston met me at the airport and had secured the services of one of Elvis’s bodyguards for the duration of the visit just in case Nashville folk weren’t “ready” for Dylan, Robbie, or myself. Mr. Lamar Fike was introduced to us, and he spent the two weeks we were there telling us what life was like with Elvis. Actually, Lamar was a great guy with a nastysense of humor.

  The great Lamar Fike story, as Bob Johnston told it, started with Elvis’ love of throwing darts. Lamar would sit to the side and read the paper while Elvis threw the darts. On a few occasions, the darts would bounce off the target and stick in various parts of Lamar’s anatomy. He wouldn’t even look up from the paper as he pulled the darts out and handed them back to El each time. Not even a grunt.