Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards

by Al Kooper

  I didn’t know what to do for the cover, so I dumped it in Art Director John Berg’s lap. He came up with putting my face on the Statue of Liberty. I thought it would be hysterical to see this freak representing Amerika, and made them add a shot of me up in the torch laughing just so everyone got the joke. The inside was a photo collage, the track information, and a poem I had written when I was in The Blues Project that miraculously explained why I was recording a solo album.

  The album, I Stand Alone, was released to mixed reviews, but a much more negative phenomenon took place at the same time. Coinciding with the release of the album, BS&T had thrown some quotes out in the press about why I had left the group, and they depicted me as some demonic egomaniac with whips and chains who kept them all in cages. Prior to all this, I really had no press image; I was neither black nor white, just a grey type of fella. When critics wrote about me, there was no personality mentioned. It would just say here’s a good record by Al, or on this one Al turns in a mediocre performance, or would just comment about the musicality of it all as opposed to the person himself. This was fine with me, ‘cause that’s all I was selling. I mean, you can hate or enjoy my music, but me the person is usually not revealed, except through the lyrics occasionally. Somehow, probably because of BS&T’s meteoric popularity and the release of my solo album, I got nailed with one of those unfortunate press images. Then everything I had done was tied into the ego thing. People said: “When he says ‘I Stand Alone,’ he means there is no one comparable to him, that he’s got an ego as big as the Statue of Liberty,” etc. Reviews were taken up with this Downtown Julie Brown gossip shit instead of talking about the music itself.

  Not being a thin-skinned person, I was surprised this stuff got to me. But it did. I hired a public relations firm to try and set up interviews where members of the press could meet me face to face and decide for themeselves what I was like. I remember words from one article about me from that time period: “... In the studio, joking around and at ease, he doesn’t seem like the monstrous prick others have made him out to be....” There’s a left-handed compliment for ya. So this was the beginning of my interest in stepping permanently into the background. As Orson Welles once said in the middle of doing a frozen-food commercial, “No money is worth this!” I had achieved many of my goals, and now I felt like blazing new trails.

  I was twenty-five years old, had been in two successful bands, and now held a respected A&R position at one of the top record companies in the world. I was drawing three hundred dollars weekly plus expenses, and on the weekends was making between five and ten thousand dollars per gig playing personal appearances. I had four albums in the Billboard Top 200, but I was looking for something new to do.

  1969-1972:

  SCORING A FILM.

  LOSING A WIFE.

  ELTON JOHN,

  ADDICTION,

  TOURINC,

  DEEP PURPLE,

  NEW MORNING.

  SMOKEY ROBINSON.

  MILTON BERLE, AND

  BATTLES WITH CLIVE

  Hal Ashby, who had been famed Canadian film director Norman Jewison’s Academy Award-winning film editor, had just directed his first film. For some reason I never quite understood, he felt that I was the perfect person to write the musical score for his cinematic debut. I guess he was a fan, and so I was flown to Hollywood to screen a rough cut of the film. It was called The Landlord and starred Beau Bridges, Lou Gossett, Jr., Lee Grant, and Pearl Bailey. It had an interracial theme and plenty of room for good music. I really enjoyed the screening and felt that I could conceivably do a credible job scoring it, although in that capacity it would be my debut as well. I recounted this to Ashby at the screening’s conclusion. He told me that someone else was competing with me for the job, and asked that I indulge him and stay another day while he made his decision overnight. I told him that was aces with me and called up some friends to spend the evening with.

  Denny Cordell, as you recall, was a close friend from London who had recently immigrated to Hollywood. Teaming up with session pianist Leon Russell (who had arranged the Gary Lewis record of “This Diamond Ring” in his younger days), they formed a new label called Shelter Records. Leon was to be the first artist on the label and they were currently embroiled in recording his debut album, tentatively titled Can a Blue Man Sing the Whites or something like that. Denny invited me down to Leon’s session that night, and I was glad to see some old friends and just kick back. They asked what I was doing in town, and I told them about the movie and how I had to wait for Ashby’s decision in the morning. I quietly watched Leon work on one of his tracks and just generally enjoyed the company. I bade my farewells about 2 a.m. and drove back to the hotel for a good night’s rest.

  I arrived at Hal Ashby’s office about 11 a.m. the next morning and was greeted warmly and told that I did, indeed, have the job. I was ecstatic, but curious.

  “Hal, can you say who the other person was that you were considering?” I asked.

  “Oh sure,” he said. “It was Leon Russell.”

  That fucker! I told Hal how I had spent the last evening and we both were hysterical laughing. I had to get to a phone. I called Denny and told him that I had gotten the job. He sheepishly congratulated me and then I read him the riot act for playing dumb the night before and not telling me about Leon’s involvement. In fact, I was convinced that if they had told me, their karma would have shifted and I would have been the one sheepishly congratulating them this morning. Anyway, we did laugh about it and no harm was done, though somehow I think Leon wasn’t too thrilled about it. Frankly, this movie was set in modern-day New York City, not Tulsa, and that was my town, buddy!

  Meanwhile I had just agreed to score a major Hollywood motion picture and I didn’t have the slightest idea even how to begin. I needed help; that much I did know. I enlisted one of my favorite gurus—Charlie Calello. Charlie was the arranger on all The Four Seasons and Lou Christie hits, and had been involved on I Stand Alone. We had a wonderful working relationship, and most of all, he knew how to score films! I went off to Los Angeles and rented a bungalow at the very bohemian Chateau Marmont (a big movie-star hideout in the forties; the bungalow I chose would later serve as the location for John Belushi’s last night on earth) for a month. I wrote music there every day and had access to a screening room to make notes and refer to the film for reference. There were no VHS machines in those days! I then returned to New York to record the score. After all, the film took place in New York City. The music was to be organically extracted from musicians who had that “New Yorkness” in their approach to playing. Paul Griffin on keyboards, Chuck Rainey on bass, Eric Gale on guitar, and Bernard Purdie on drums were the core members of the band.

  I had written a song about the sociological changes in America at the time that seemed appropriate for the film. The song was called “Brand New Day” and I thought it would be wonderful if it were sung in the film by the Staple Singers. A family group formed in the late fifties by patriarch Roebuck Staples, they embodied the power and honesty that brought them to the top of the gospel world in a short time period. Initially signed to Chicago’s famous Vee-Jay Records, they passed uneventfully through major label Epic, and then found total crossover acceptance on Memphis’ Stax label in the late sixties and seventies. Initially led by Roebuck’s velvet tones and his pioneeering tremoloed guitar sounds, he was complemented by daughter Mavis’s powerful lead vocals. I had a casual friendship with them, and when I called to ask if they would participate, they were happy to oblige.

  On my way to New York from Los Angeles, I stopped in Chicago to visit them at home and teach them the song. I had a four-hour layover at the airport, so a limousine was charged to the film budget, and I was whisked to their home on Chicago’s South Side. The limousine was to wait and then speed me back in time to catch the New York leg of my flight. Unbeknownst to me, they had a home-cooked soul food dinner waiting when I arrived. It was so thoughtful that I didn’t have the heart to tell them my ul
cer precluded me eating practically anything they had prepared. I just politely filled up on stuff that I could eat (cornbread), and we laughed our way through dinner anyway. About ten minutes after I arrived, the phone rang and Pops went to answer it. He came back moments later, in tears, laughing.

  “What’s so funny, Pops???” we all inquired.

  He could barely speak between guffawing spasms, but managed to reply: “Mr. Lincoln, the neighbor from across the street, saw Al’s limousine parked out front ... and called to see if I had died!”

  He hadn’t. But we did. Of laughter.

  Borrowing Pop’s guitar after dinner, I played them the song, and just as I had anticipated, they assimilated it in five minutes as if they had been singing it all their lives. Mavis sang the verses and Pop sang the choruses. It was wonderful. Off I went, back to the airport, full of too much cornbread, with a huge smile on my face.

  Recording the score went quite smoothly with Charlie’s help. We decided to time the cues with a stopwatch, and specifically not record with the picture screening in the studio so that the musicians could concentrate on the music and not be distracted by the film showing. The detailed on-the-mark cues would be completed later on a soundstage in California. For some source music cues (radios and records blaring out of ghetto windows and car speakers) I decided to use one of my favorite singers, Lorraine Ellison. My friend and mentor Jerry Ragovoy had produced one of the great soul records of all time with her (“Stay With Me Baby”), and I had always wanted to work with Lorraine. Since we were working at Jerry’s studio (Hit Factory), it was an easy task to bring her into the fold. This brought parts of my life full-circle. When I was in The Blues Project, I learned our signature song, “Wake Me Shake Me,” from a gospel record by the Golden Chords that featured lead singer Lorraine Ellison. Now here I was producing her. This was a good life, it was.

  While recording background vocals one day, an amusing incident occurred. One of Lorraine’s tracks needed backup singers, but neither Charlie nor I could come up with any ideas for specific parts. We asked the backup singers, Tasha Thomas, Carl Hall, and Melba Moore (three fabulous African-American artists in their own right) if they could work with the track to see if they could develop any ideas, while Charlie and I took a break for a few minutes. When we returned to the control room, they were ready to go. Showing complete confidence, we recorded them immediately without even hearing the parts they had created. Needless to say, the parts were wonderful and they got it in one take. When recording was done, Charlie pressed the talkback button:

  “Hey! That was fantastic! You guys are the best, and I really appreciate you getting us out of that jam. That’s a wrap and thanks again. You were brilliant!”

  Tasha stepped up to the mike on that 1969 afternoon, and without missing a beat replied: “Why, thank you, Charlie. We’ll remember that when we come burning houses down!” A prophetic and yet humorous capper to another day in the studio.

  The score was completed, the film mixed, and United Artists allowed me to host my own screening in New York. I remember that I was sitting behind Clive Davis, then-president of Columbia Records, and anticipating some fun. In one scene in the film, I had created a radio commercial for “... 200 current underground hits for only $14.95. Yes, incredible as it sounds, 200 underground hits as played by the exciting, dynamic, Ca-live Davis Band....” Well, when this snippet came over the speakers, he stiffened up as if a steel rod had been inserted in the base of his spine, while his cronies cracked up and slapped him on the back. I shrank down in my seat and did my best Claude Rains imitation. His reaction did not prevent me, however, from including that commercial in the soundtrack album on United Artists Records, of which he was not the president. The film came out to mixed reviews, but for Hal Ashby, Kooper’s reverse curse prevailed. Every film Hal directed after The Landlord was a box office smash or a classic: Harold & Maude, Shampoo, Being There, etc., etc., etc.

  Hal was an interesting guy. He was rail-thin, had shoulder-length white hair, seemed like he married a new woman every time he made a film, and smoked pot incessantly. Once, I got two front-row tickets for a Band concert in Long Beach. I invited Hal as my guest, provided he would drive, as I did not know the way there. When we arrived, he parked his Ferrari illegally in the backstage parking area and we went in and enjoyed the concert. Hal sat to my left and sitting on my right was a portly gentleman I had never met wearing a beret. He nodded out on my left shoulder shortly before the end of the concert. After the show he was introduced to me as Mac Rebbenack, and that is how I first met Dr. John. Asleep on my left shoulder.

  Film Director/Editor Hal Ashby and I pretend he is editing The Landlord for the benefit of the camera. (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)

  Hal and I exited the concert through the backstage door, and the moment we stepped outside, he fired up a joint. I was a little nervous.

  “Hal,” I said, “there are cops all over the place and we’re illegally parked here. You think it’s a wise decision to walk around getting high?”

  Just as he sucked in a lungful of smoke, he replied, “Well, what’s the worst that can happen? They’ll beat the shit out of us and throw us in jail.”

  I guess you really can’t argue with logic like that. We motored back to Hollywood unscathed and with our freedom intact, so I guess he made his point. Still, that train of thought never rubbed off on me.

  Recently, I was introduced to Lee Grant at a party. She had been nominated for best supporting actress for her role in The Landlord back when the film was in release. I told her I had done the music for that film, and her eyes lit up. “You know,” she recounted, “that was my favorite film appearance ever, largely due to working with Hal Ashby. He was an incredible director.” We concurred on that and spent the evening trading Hal stories. I told her this book was coming out and that Hal was mentioned a few times. When she asked the title of the book, her eyes lit up again. “I’ll definitely pick that one up when I see it!” she laughed.

  Back in New York, I got a call from Dylan to meet with him at his house on MacDougal Street. He had been asked to write the score for a Broadway musical production of The Devil and Daniel Webster. He was going uptown to meet with some of these people and wanted me to come along for some reason (sometimes I thought he regarded me as his Charlie Calello). Bob was usually interesting company, so I tagged along. After the meeting, in the cab going home, he confided to me that he was considering yanking the songs from the show and making them into a new album right away. His last effort, Self-Portrait, had been mutilated by the critics, and had only been out two months. He asked me to help him with this project. I really liked the songs he had played me, so I was completely into it. This was the album that came to be known as New Morning.

  For the project, Bob Johnston, Dylan’s producer, assembled a cast of players at the studios in New York including Ron Cornelius on guitar, Charlie Daniels on bass, and Russ Kunkel on drums. But after about two or three sessions, Johnston stopped showing up. Just like that. When things were disorganized in the studio, I used to jump into the fray instinctively in hopes of pulling a runaway session together. And that is what I did here. I called some more musicians in, rearranged some songs, and even had one sweetening session with horns and strings (never released). I brought in Buzzy Feiten and David Bromberg on guitars, Harvey Brooks on bass, and Billy Mundi on drums. I also hired my usual female backup singers, this being perhaps Bob’s first recorded instance of using this type of accompaniment.

  Unfortunately, poor Joan was in a hospital nearby, miscarrying, while these sessions were going on. I would cut a few tracks, go to the hospital, come back, cut more tracks, go back to the hospital, etc. I was pretty stressed out. One night after the sessions ended, I was booked to play a high school prom in New Jersey. I ended up crawling inside the piano and playing the strings with a guitar pick during a thirty-minute version of “La Bamba.” I think we actually cleared the house. As I said, I was very stressed out.

  Bob had t
his kind of beat poetry number called “If Dogs Run Free.” I suggested having Maretha Stewart, one of our backup vocalists, scat-sing in between his recitations to give it a fifties’ jazz-beatnik feeling. Maretha stepped up and did a fantastic job, while the rest of us pretended we were wearing berets and goatees. I especially enjoyed playing lounge-type, tongue-in-cheek piano on that song. Bob played some terrific piano on “Sign in the Window.” When we had recorded everything, Bob pulled out some random tracks he had cut in the last year and added those to the oversupply we already had from the current sessions. Then we began to select and sequence. He changed his mind daily and the weeks began to drag on. This drove me nuts. We had a final title and cover artwork, but we had a new sequence and songlist every day.

  Finally, I said: “Look, Bob, I am done here. There’s nothing else I can really do. When you decide for sure what you want, put it out!” and exited the proceedings. Soon after he called to ask: “What credit do you want on the album? It can’t be producer because of a contractual hitch with Johnston and CBS.”

  Oh great. All that work and no credit.... (This was back in the days when I still coveted credit.)

  “How about Special Thanks?” I said.

  “That sounds fine. See ya, Al.” And that was that.

  For the time being.

  Three days later, Bob called back.

  “The album is supposed to come out on the tenth, but they screwed up and left your credit off. If they put your credit back on, it won’t come out until the twenty-fourth. What should I do?”