by Al Kooper
I met a beautiful girl at a department store we visited. She came to see us play, and I brought her back to the hotel. She spoke virtually no English, I spoke virtually no Japanese. We handed a translation book back and forth as I tried to seduce her into spending the night. It should have been a scene in a movie; it was hilarious. She ended up paying for her own room at the hotel. A wise choice, in retrospect (for her).
After about a week, Ike’s girlfriend joined the tour. He hadn’t seen her in awhile, and we took him aside. I broke a ‘lude in half and gave him the two pieces. “When you get ready for bed tonight, you each take half,” I said. “You’ll have a great time.” He smiled and asked, “What do you call this stuff?” I said, “They’re called gorilla biscuits,” and gave him a big smile. The next morning Jeff and I were having breakfast in the hotel coffee shop and Ike came walking in. He had a huge grin on his face. “Did you have a good time last night?” Jeff asked. “Uhhhh—you have more gorirra biska?” he inquired. We cracked up and kept him in ’ludes for the rest of the trip.
That has been my only Japanese journey so far, but it was action-filled. All the while, kids trailed behind us and asked for our autographs constantly. They were sooo polite it was a pleasure. I will always remember and treasure my brief time in Japan.
As that seven-thing decade came to an end, my life was in turmoil. Reagan was sure to be elected President, and I began to question the sanity of continuing to live in the United States. I began to fantasize about conquering England. “The heralded American producer moved to London and enjoyed hit after hit as the Britons stood in amazement at his immediate success” was my little fantasy. I was living in a rented house in Sherman Oaks at the time, with a very talented airbrush illustrator, Patti Heid. My landlady was Rene Russo’s mom. Through my music publisher overseas, I made some inquiries, and found that English lodging for us could be secured by phone. They had an apartment there that they would be happy to turn over to us.
I took one more stateside producing job to insure that we had enough moving money. It was a strange one, too. Ronnie Van Zant’s little brother, Johnny, had put a pretty decent band together in Jacksonville and was ready to follow in Skynyrd’s footsteps, according to Stu Fine, an A&R guy at PolyGram in New York. This would entail me going to Atlanta for a month to rehearse and record the band, and mixing would commence in England shortly thereafter. I said okay, and a deal was struck. Patti and I began to pack. Things were changing rapidly all around us. The Record-Plant-as-Rome scenario had peaked and was virtually over, luckily concurrent with the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, and music was going through one of its many metamorphoses. The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Ramones were spear-heading a “punk-rock” movement that didn’t leave much room for my producing skills.
I was thirty-five and scratching my head. The combination of the move and the production forced me to rethink the choreography, and the entire project was moved to Los Angeles. The band came to L.A. for a month instead of me going to Atlanta. I booked into a nearby Valley studio that had just opened called Record One. Val Garay, who had engineered a zillion L.A. hits, was the head honcho there. It was five minutes from my house and state-of-the-art. We rehearsed for a week, and I got to know everyone in the band and was able work out all the arrangement kinks that I had heard on the demos. They were a good little band and more than a little reminiscent of Skynyrd. With engineer Bob Edwards in tow, we cut all the basic tracks at Record One and then moved to the more-affordable Larrabee Studios in Hollywood for the overdubs.
One of the things I hated about moving to England was giving up my phone number, which at the time was 213-PUT-IT-IN. I even used that gimmick for my production company. The credit on the Van Zant album reads: “Produced and Arranged by Al Kooper for Put It Industries.”
I was especially hard on Johnny Van Zant when we did the vocals, but it was necessary to get the proper performances out of him. He had to make that quantum leap to palatability! We finished all the recording on the Van Zant record, took one last look around, and flew off to England. The only tears in our eyes were from the smog!
It was 1979, and the seventies were most assuredly over....
1979-1981
LONDON,
EDDIE & THE HOT RODS,
DAVID ESSEX.
CEORCE HARRISON,
TEXAS FLOODS,
SRV, JOE ELY, AND
LOS ANGELES (SLICHT
RETURN)
As the plane touched down in England, I could instinctively feel that good L.A. weather lingering eternally in the overhead bins as we exited. One of the people from my publisher’s London office met Patti and me at the airport to escort us to our new apartment.
“It’s a cozy two-bedroom place that’s right over one of the most popular clubs in London.” Great, I remember thinking. I hope you can’t hear the disco music coming through the floorboards. Imagine our surprise when we arrived and had to take our voluminous luggage supply to the top of a five-flight walk-up. These were our new lodgings, where the only telephone service was a pay phone in the living room. And there is nothing quite like English plumbing. After all: Why change something from the nineteenth century if it still works?
Our middleman with the landlord was the maitre d’ at Rags, the club downstairs. His name was Santos and he was not unlike Manuel from Fawlty Towers. He enjoyed our discomfort with such relish that he felt anything he could do to increase it was his new goal in life.
Now let us enter in some sociological factoids that were indigenous to 1979 London. Television: we had none in the apartment. Public transportation (buses and subways) closed down at 11:45 p.m. Food? Here’s an interesting quality scale I worked out within our first week there:
Fortunately, only a few mistakes were made working out the above equation, and hospital trips were avoided. The local “superette” carried the staples and was just around the corner, albeit at frightening, exclusive Mayfair prices.
Driving a car was not an option ’cause they drive on the opposite side of the street there, and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. The first time someone like me came to one of those rotaries, I’d take out probably ... oh ... fifteen pedestrians and four cars before I figured out where I was really supposed to be. The laundry was a bus ride away. So one had to locate a Santa-sized bag, go down the five flights, walk three blocks to the bus stop, and then wait a half hour for a bus, travel fifteen minutes to the required stop, walk two blocks and there it was. Simple as that. Of course, reverse the procedure for getting home. I could go on and on. It was the humbling experience I deserved for being an American who was used to cable, Rolls Royces, and orgies. And it worked.
After a month, we bought a TV set. In England you’re required (and I am not making this up, Dave Barry!) to purchase a license to watch television! Don’t ask me! You should be required to have a license to buy a guitar amp there, if there was any justice! So I got the TV, I got the license, I got the TV up the five flights, and what did I really have? Two government-controlled stations (BBC-1 and 2) and that’s it. There was no United States equivalent for most of the programming we saw: darts matches for hours, the sheep dog trials (I could write a chapter about just this), eighty-nine reruns of the English Carry On ... movie series, snooker championships, etc. Not to be believed. And, of course, the television ceased broadcasting at midnight so American insomniacs could contemplate murdering it Elvis-style nightly.
The two TV highlights of the week were Top of the Pops and Dallas. Top of the Pops was a below-average pop dance show with a Top Ten and lip-syncing guests. Dallas, which is something I never would have watched in the States, was somehow engrossing and comforting here. This was the peak of the series; the year J. R. got shot. It was amazing how deep I got into that show.
One rare night, they broadcast a Popfest from Barcelona and it started at about two in the morning, live. I was ecstatic. I bought popcorn and ice cream and set the alarm in case I got engrossed in whatever book was taking up
the slack that week. Sooo, I’m watching this show and the band The Police come on. Somewhere in the first song, they cut to an overhead shot from behind Stewart Copeland playing drums. He had four tom-toms and had written in big black letters using all four toms “FUCK/OFF/YOU/CUNT!” And there it was on BBC-2 at 3 a.m. on Wednesday night. I was beside myself. I’m betting that the Spanish director of the show did not understand English and that Stewart was betting on that too. I’m sure the affiliates rang the phone off the hook, ’cause we never did see that overhead rear shot again during the entire broadcast. But I’ll always be indebted to Stewart Copeland for that.
A week after settling in, Bob Edwards flew over and we set about mixing Johnny Van Zant’s album at a studio called Basing Street that I believe Island Records owned. This went pretty effortlessly, except for the studio cat, who left his bladder’s trademark everywhere. The entire studio smelled of cat urine. Back home in America, Chris Stone of Record Plant would have killed that cat with his bare hands. Here in Blighty, they just giggled about it. We called it Pat’s Kiss.
After we dispatched the Van Zant album, I began post-production with the band called Eddie & The Hot Rods. They were kind of a punky band with two assets: a really good lead singer, and a great drummer. Their area of expertise was second-period Who territory—four-chord stuff like “Happy Jack” with great Keith Moon-type drumming. Patti painted a great cover for their album and designed the entire package. Nepotism. The album was lacking in quality material, but there were some good songs. It was to be their last album, however, and I suspect they went back to Canvey Island from whence they came. But I enjoyed the time I spent with them; Barrie Masters was a great singer and Steve Nicol was a great drummer—so let it be written.
One night we went to the Marquee Club to see a band called The Photos. Patti and I were always checking out woman-fronted groups ’cause we were thinking of starting our own. It was really crowded and we had to stand at the bar without being able to see the band performing in the next room. Now we had gone and heard quite a few bands and not liked any of them. We heard great stuff coming from the next room and it wasn’t The Photos, just some opening band from Ireland. For the first time since I had moved there, I got excited. “I gotta go talk to those guys,” I told Patti, and pushed my way toward the dressing room. At the conclusion of their set I burst in and immediately inquired: “Are you guys signed to a deal?” Well, they were. They were signed to Island Records, this was their first gig in London, and they were called U2. In hindsight, I still had good ears!
What happened after that was extremely bizarre. Herbie Flowers got me a job producing David Essex. David was well known in America for the hit “Rock On,” which he was never able to follow up there. I knew him best from Michael Apted’s great rock film Stardust, which may be the best serious rock film ever made (the other obvious choice being not so serious—Spinal Tap). Anyway, I hooked up with David and we began going over material. His songs were marred attempts at serious subjects. His heart was in the right place, but his songwriting abilities weren’t able to reach as far as his initial vision. I helped as best I could, but that flaw remained. We cut a techno version of “Be Bop A Lula” that was actually quite humorous. The basic tracks were cut at Pye Studios in London, and the overdubs and some other basic tracks were cut at Concorde Studios in Los Angeles. Many notables played on this album, including: Steve Lukather, Rabbit Bundrick, Herbie Flowers (obviously), Jeff Baxter, and Michael Boddicker. We mixed at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. There were a few peripheral stories involved in the production of the album that are worth telling.
One night, David took Jeff Baxter and myself to dinner at one of London’s more exclusive gentlemen’s clubs. Jeff and David drank a few bottles of wine and were feeling no pain. Freddie Mercury and a chap called Paul came over to the table as we (David actually) were paying the check.
“Hello, darlings,” he said. “If you don’t have any plans, Paul, here, and I are going over to the Blank Club [can’t remember its real name—a notoriously gay club a few blocks away], and we’d like you three to be our guests.”
Jeff, who was unaware of any of the sexual proclivities of those assembled or the establishments involved, cast a drunken eye Freddie’s way: “They got any great lookin’ women over at that club, pal?” he innocently inquired.
And Freddie just looked pitifully at all three of us and went off in a huff to the Blank Club with only Paul in tow.
And I can’t leave out this great story one of David’s business associates told in the studio one day. It seems that Mike (not his real name) and his brother Jimmy (not important what his name is) lived in a lovely flat on the second floor in Belgravia (a very nice neighborhood). One night, Mike brought this “great-lookin’ bird” home. In the morning, as Mike made the obligatory coffee, said bird was leaning on the window sill, looking out at the day, with only Mike’s shirt on. This was a temptation that Mike could not avoid. He came up behind her and quickly shut the window down on her at the waist, so she was forced to look outside at the view while he had his way with her. Right in the middle of all this, Jimmy walked in the kitchen. Mike motioned for Jimmy to take Mike’s place behind her. Meanwhile, she had gotten into it and was enjoying this morning much better. She could not see the switch that had just gone on, however. Mike raced into the bedroom, got dressed, hurriedly ran down the stairs, then casually strolled into eye contact with her, giving her a big wave and smile.
That’s how Mike ended the story. But Bob Edwards, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes as he listened, said, “Oh, man! What did she do?” Mike used only four words to conjure up the real end of the story, so to speak: “She went fucking MENTAL!”
David was playing a live show in London one night, and Patti and I were invited along. There was to be a party for invited guests après show at some ritzy club. When the concert ended, David, Patti, and I were rushed by limo to the party site. David had just come offstage, and was still sweating. We arrived at the club in moments and, after David changed clothes, just the three of us were sitting around waiting for his friends to arrive. Patti gave me a wink, and then offered David some chewing gum, which he accepted. We had just bought the gum that very morning at a magic store. It turned the whole inside of your mouth dark blue. Now I myself would not have been this cruel, but Patti, bored out of her mind in London generally, couldn’t resist. We sat there watching his lips, tongue, teeth, and gums all turn this horrendous purple. David was unaware of what was happening, but just as the first guests began arriving, Patti broke down and told him. A handsome, vain devil, he was incredulous. “You’re kidding, right?” he said. He looked at me for support. I smiled and told him, “No. She isn’t kidding. Your entire mouth is fucking dark purple!” He flew into the men’s room, and we quickly left for home in a taxi, another job well done.
At the time there was a soul-revival band playing in the clubs composed of white-kids-obsessed-with-soul-music. They were called The Q-Tips and had a horn section and a great lead singer. I was quite taken with them. They were signed to Chrysalis Records, and I went up there and asked if I could get in the studio with them. They let us go in to see if there was any chemistry between us. I taught the horn section certain blending tricks. English horn players are almost always lacking in skills their American counterparts seem almost born to. With a little work, we were putting down some nice tracks. I also got the opportunity to record them live one night at the Marquee Club on Wardour Street in Soho. That establishment had a functioning studio right in the same building, with tie-lines laid right into the club. I read in the paper that Stax superstar Eddie Floyd was in town, made some calls, and invited him down to sit in. We recorded some great stuff that night, including a duet between lead singer Paul Young and Eddie Floyd on the Stax chestnut “Raise Your Hand.” This live stuff was eventually released in Europe, but our studio sessions remain in the can, unfortunately. Paul went on to become a big star with such hits as “Every Time You Go Away” and “Come
Back and Stay.”
The Al Kooper Look-Alike Contest: Paul Young (left) and The Q-Tips mock the Kooper “style” using sunglasses and electrical tape (actual Al Kooper second from right). (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)
The English lifestyle was getting to Patti and me. On the weekends, about half the cinemas would show cult movies or all-night marathons which were called “the lates.” A weekly listings mag called Time Out would list the lates and we’d venture out to all sorts of weird neighborhoods in search of bizarre film fare. Many’s the Saturday night we’d be in Islington or someplace like that at 4 a.m., praying for a taxicab to materialize. At the apartment, Patti had painted all the walls a super-glossy electric blue, with a few flying bananas sketched in there as well, and we secretly had the pay phone taken out and a real one put in. One day superintendent Santos came in while we were out, ostensibly to check for a gas leak (yeah, sure). He saw the blue walls, the bananas, and the missing pay phone, and we were quickly served eviction papers. It was just the impetus we needed. We found a little side-by-side house in the Jewish community of Golders Green. Now we could walk to the market and the laundry minus five flights, albeit in the dead of winter, which it now was.
Mike Bloomfield called and said that he was seeing a professional dancer (ballet) and that she was gonna tour Europe soon. He wanted me to book some gigs for us together in London to coincide with his girlfriend’s itinerary so that he could “tag along” with her. I booked us into this intimate club called the Venue for an upcoming date about two months later. About three weeks after I had booked the gig, I was sitting home one evening reading the paper and I read that Mike had died. I guess that no one knew how to reach me in London. I was completely shocked and shaken. After sleuthing for a few weeks I pieced together the circumstances of his death. Michael used heroin, but he was a “chipper”—that is, he wasn’t neccesarily strung out, but an occasional user. For a special occasion, he’d drive over to the connection’s house, score, and do it up right then and there. He had recently claimed to me that he was clean and was working out every day. Michael could tell a lie every now and then for no particular reason, however. So I theorize that he drove to the connection’s house, scored, did it up right then and there, and overdosed for whatever reason. The people in that house panicked, put him in his car, drove him to a remote location, and left him there in whatever condition to be found. Happens every day. Just not to one of the most brilliant blues guitarists who ever lived.