Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards

by Al Kooper

  Cheech Marin directs me in a difficult role for his Born in East L.A. video, 1985. (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)

  With the investment that MusicMasters was making in this event, this was definitely a boulder in their passageway. The shows went on in the face of this controversy, but bad feelings abounded. I got the flu the night before the first show and had to play the entire three-day event sick as a dog. The last night Roy Blumenfeld, the Project’s drummer, got the flu too. In spite of all this in-fighting, there were some wonderful moments captured on audio and video. Danny Kalb’s incredible version of “Two Trains Running,” a high-powered trumpet duet between Randy Brecker and Lew Soloff during “My Days Are Numbered,” and a great spontaneous rendition of Pat McLaughlin’s “Don’t Tell Me” were just some of the high points. Guest appearances by Stephen King, Dave Barry, Peter Riegert, John Sebastian, and Johnnie Johnson rounded out the shows each night.

  After the smoke cleared, Steve’s brother, Dennis, renegotiated the paper with MusicMasters, and those that had taken Steve’s offer signed off on it. Twenty-four musicians had now signed the contract and still no Steve Katz signature. Finally, he asked for twice as much money as each of the other twenty-four musicians had agreed to be paid and a gratis shopping spree of the MusicMasters classical catalog.

  He was turned down cold.

  It then became my responsibility, since Steve would not sign the contract everyone else signed, to clear out his tracks on the album and replace them. This was extremely costly and time-consuming and, in some cases, seemed impossible because of leakage. Even when his tracks were erased, occasionally you could hear his parts or his unintentional screams of feedback being captured by other microphones. Somehow, though, it all got done. For awhile it looked like “Two Trains Running” was unusable because of said leakage, but harp player Mike Henderson from Nashville came in one afternoon and painstakingly worked with me covering all the leakage in that song with some masterful harp-playing.

  Jimmy Vivino replaced most of Steve’s guitar parts, as he had been playing those songs with me for over ten years anyway and was totally conversant with them. Jerry Douglas played some amazing lap-steel on “I Can’t Keep from Cryin’,” and the over-all quality level of the music went up a notch or two. We got a better CD. However, because Steve appeared in two out of the three bands, we lost the video. I’m doomed never to have a video, I guess.

  Naturally, this closed the door on any future relationship with Steve. The other members of The Blues Project could not really defend his behavior on any level. We were never really great friends, and I think he saw this as a chance to really fuck with me (which he did not—it was actually MusicMasters that bore the brunt of his behavior and had the most to lose) and he played it out to its illogical conclusion. Love ya, Steve.

  The album came out on Valentines Day, 1995. It’s a two-CD set titled Soul of a

  Man, accompanied by a forty-page booklet and with intensive liner notes written by Goldmine ex-editor Jeff Tamarkin. In theme it is the musical equivalent of this book—its soundtrack, in effect. So if you’ve enjoyed the reading so far, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy the listening. With God’s help, the album will still be available in stores as you read this.

  The Mighty Rekooperators, 1994. (Left to right) Harvey Brooks (recently retired to Scottsdale, Arizona, and currently replaced by Mike Merritt), Al. Jimmy Vivino, and Anton Fig. (Photo: Steve Eichner—Al Kooper Collection.)

  In the summer of 1995, Jeff Rosen, who runs Bob Dylan’s office, called me out of the blue. Bob was scheduled to play in London the next week at The Prince’s Trust Concert in Hyde Park, and he had requested that I join the band for that show. The show’s line-up included Alanis Morrisette, Bob, The Who performing Quadrophenia, and Eric Clapton closing out the festivities. I had studiously avoided “crossing the pond” to England ever since I had lived in London in 1979. I had to make a quick decision because of the time frame, and I opted to attend. I figured I knew everyone on the show except Morrisette, and it would be nice to see them all again, including Bob.

  The plan was to warm up with two theater shows in Liverpool and then play the big London gig. I soon found myself winging eastward to meet up with the troops, and got to Liverpool the day before the first show there. I walked around Liverpool (first-timer) and took in all the Beatles tourist crap. The next day, we sound-checked in the afternoon, and I played the show pretty much with that soundcheck as my only rehearsal. Well, at the next day’s soundcheck I was asked to change the parts I had played the night before. I was basically recreating the riffs I played on the original records because I thought that’s why Bob had hired me and because that’s what I would naturally play anyway. But Tony Garnier, the bassist and leader of the band, admonished me: “Those parts are being played by other instruments in the band now, Al. Find something else to play.”

  Now I have to say, I found that request insulting and unprofessional. If Keith Richards sat in with my band and we played “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” I wouldn’t say: “Hey Keith, lay out at the top. I got it covered on the organ!” Ludicrous, actually. But seeing that Bob rarely attended soundchecks, I couldn’t just look him in the eye and say: “This is what you flew me here for?” So, with the benefit of the wisdom of my years, I followed orders and complied with Tony’s bizarre request. This took most of the fun out of playing the gigs for me, but I knew how to behave and it seemed I had no choice. At the soundcheck for the Hyde Park gig, Bob’s old friend, Rolling Stone Ron Wood, joined us on guitar for the whole set. It was nice to see Ron again, but with two guitars jamming away in there already, he was basically in the same playing position I was.

  Day of show in London arrived, and we rode in vans to the venue. It was so people-dense around the park that we had to enter through the handicapped area; an ironic but fitting omen when one has to perform in front of two hundred fifty thousand people. I am not one who is disarmed by crowd size. Hey, I’ll play to a hundred people or one million people and not bat an eyelash. But believe me, I’d prefer a hundred. Big shows like that rarely make it possible to connect with the audience, and the feeling onstage is abnormally surreal. This is not to say you can’t pull off a great performance every now and then in that situation, but chances are, you won’t.

  Bob stuck with the odds that day. He walked onstage with a scowl on his face, and it remained there the entire show. Ron Wood, trying desperately to have a good time, kept smiling at Bob, who just returned his glance with the perennial scowl. HBO taped this event and, with due respect to whoever mixed it, the balance was way off. This did not help one’s appreciation of the show when it was reduced in size to fit the home TV screen format. But I enjoyed the look on my face the rare times I could see it. I look like I was thinking, “BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY!!! ON THE DOUBLE!!!” as I tried valiantly to invent new parts while the pedal steel played all my licks.

  They showed this program on TV on New Year’s Eve that year, and I didn’t know it was scheduled to be on. I was sitting curled up on the couch, channel surfing with some new Nashville female acquaintance, when my face appeared on the screen. “Look!!!!” she squealed. “You’re on TV!!! Turn it up louder!!!” I must have appeared to be the most blase guy she had ever met, as I aggressively convinced her we should watch something/anything else. That was my last date with her (her choice) as I recall.

  Coincidentally, it seemed that my self-imposed “retirement” was rapidly coming to a conclusion. I had basically—except for a few and far between gigs—just dropped off the face of the earth for seven years. I had never taken any kind of sabbatical before this, and it was thoroughly enjoyed by me in Country Music City. But restlessness was rearing its head again. What could I do, now?

  1996-1998

  THE GREENING OF

  NASHVILLE,

  DOCTOR AL,

  BOSTON,

  BERKLEE,

  THE NEW OLD BOOK, AND

  THAT’S ALL HE WROTE

  As the years went passing by i
n Nashville, the town began to erupt and metamorphize into something that was more akin to California than Tennessee.

  Originally, when I moved there in 1990, I admired the cunning stunt the city fathers had pulled off: They took all the tourist attractions and put them in a giant amusement park/hotel/concert hall complex called Opryland. Geographically, it was totally out of downtown Nashville, over by the airport. When tourists came to town, most of them convened out there, and the locals could move along with their everyday lives without fear of being overrun. The downtown area still reeked of the forties and fifties, and was a wonderful trip down memory lane to anyone raised in that era. I always found it very comforting and retro-nurturing.

  Then in the early nineties, some geniuses thought it would be great to gentrify the downtown. Bad idea. All of a sudden: POOF! There was a Hard Rock Cafe. BAM! A Planet Hollywood. BOOM! A Hooters and a Wildhorse Saloon. The streets crawled with people who craved buying commemorative tee shirts in shitty souvenir shops disguised as restaurants. KAPOOWIE!! A twenty-thousand-seat arena went up right in the heart of downtown, with no added mass transit to accommodate it. Traffic became ugly. Gone was the original ambience. You can struggle down Second Avenue today and not even be able to tell what city you’re in. Clubs began to open that charged exorbitant cover charges and booked big name acts. The people I had moved away from L.A. to avoid began to move to Nashville in droves. I knew it was over for me, but where to go???

  Over the course of the years covered in this book, I had lived in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, London, Austin, and Nashville. My tenure in Nashville had been seven years of self-imposed vacation-like retirement. I knew I did not wish to return to the music biz per se. But I really felt like getting back to work. So what to do?

  Beverly Keel, a close and scrumptious (I don’t think that word is in the dictionary; use your imagination) friend of mine and a native Nashvillian, had given up a full-time job as a journalist at the now-defunct local paper, The Nashville Banner, to work in publicity for PolyGram Records. In no time at all, she was miserable and longed to be back at the paper, where her job had unfortunately been snapped up immediately. She decided to join the Music Business program at Middle Tennessee State University and teach publicity and artist management. I monitored a few of her classes and spoke at a few. She was really happy in her new job, and a light bulb went off in my head: “Why not dispense all this information I’d learned over the past forty years to people who could really use it now?”

  I wanted to be at a school where the learning curve was high and the classes small, and the students would “get” what I was teaching. The first place that came to mind was the Berklee College of Music. This institution is located in Boston, a city I hadn’t lived in yet. That was a perk. There were, however, a few minor problems:a. No one had asked me to teach at Berklee.

  b. I did not possess a teaching degree.

  Pshaw! I could deal with those obstacles. I called an old friend of mine who was now a department head at Berklee. Here’s how the conversation went:ME: Hi! It’s Al Kooper. Remember me? How ya been?

  HIM: Al. It’s nice to hear from you. What can I do for you?

  ME: Well, actually, I’ve reached that time in my life when I was thinking

  about teaching at Berklee....

  HIM: Ohhhh.... [Incredibly loooooooooooong pause] Do you have any

  ... uhh ... teaching degrees, Al?

  ME: Uhhhh.... [Incredibly loooooooooooonger pause] No, actually I

  don’t. But Freddie Lipsius, who was with me in Blood, Sweat & Tears,

  has been teaching there for many years, and he never had a teaching

  degree.

  HIM: Yeah, it used to be like that, Al. But nowadays, they’re more critical

  about your qualifications.

  ME: [Beginning to get very depressed] Well, it was nice to talk to you

  again. Say hi to the wife and kids for me.

  HIM: Okay. Bye, Al.

  Maybe this wasn’t the way in. Perhaps he thought I wanted a full workload and a high salary, etc. All I really wanted was maybe two classes a week to get my feet wet and the money was of no consequence whatsoever. Then, if all went well, maybe two years down the line, I would consider joining the faculty full time. Undaunted, I called the President of the school, Gary Burton. Gary and I had come up together in the Greenwich Village music scene. He is a highly respected jazz vibraphonist, and we might have even played on the same bill back in the sixties. He was much more encouraging, and when he found out I was only interested in part-time work initially, he virtually guaranteed me a position. Soon I had a letter from Berklee offering me employment.

  Shortly thereafter, Five Towns College, a music school located on Long Island and not related to Berklee, called out of the blue to inform me I had been selected to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Music from their school and speak at their commencement exercises. I accepted gladly and was now Doctor Kooper. I took this as an omen that everything was falling into place.

  I remember the first day of teacher orientation at Berklee. I was nervous. I was in over my head as usual, and I humbly sat down to learn a thing or two. By the end of the day, I had been offered many wonderful teaching tips, and was made aware of all the help and assistance that was available to me should I seek it. The next week I faced my first class, and two hours later I was virtually unscathed. Hell, I had learned a lot in the last forty years, and I genuinely wanted to pass this knowledge on. When the students were willing to share in my knowledge and began to ask great questions, I was reassured. To my advanced record production class, I brought twenty-four-track master tapes from my home library. We played them in the studio/classroom and dissected them to find the heart and soul of a record production. The class was fascinated. I was ecstatic. My songwriting class had never heard of Laura Nyro. I sat and watched the expressions on their faces as I played them their first taste of “Poverty Train” and “Eli’s Coming.” This was energizing.

  A Doctor of Bluesology accepts his degree. Lawn Guy Land, 1997. (Photo: Barbara Torre).

  As the semester moved on, I began to look at certain classes like a chess game. In two hours I had to take their Queen. They knew it when they walked in and sat down, but I had to do it surreptitiously, and when they were checkmated, I needed smiles. I had to get them from point A to point B and make it an enjoyable journey as well. It’s a stimulating exercise. As each semester ended, I hated to let my classes go. I had developed a genuine affection for them and I never felt like I was finished. The last question on the first midterm exam I authored was: “I did well on this exam—True/False.” I warned the students as I handed out the tests, “You can get that last question wrong, so be careful!” I look forward to each semester now, glad to be giving something back and getting something back myself.

  I decided to edit, revise, and update my book from 1977, Backstage Passes. Twenty years had passed, and a lot of new, interestiing events had transpired that were worth writing about. Bob Nirkind, senior editor at Billboard Books, had been a big fan of the original book. When he saw the first draft of the new version, he snapped it up for publication and I then had a serious deadline to add to my regular workload.

  It took me four months to find a house in Boston. Initially I looked in Cambridge, but settled on Somerville, a dense blue-collar town right next to Cambridge. That’s usually the drill. People all come to Boston wanting to live in Cambridge. When they quickly find out that they’re about $400,000 short to be buying a home there, they quickly pick someplace adjacent like Somerville and quietly settle down to reality. There is currently a renaissance going on in Somerville. The Utne Reader called it one of the top up and coming communities in the country, something like “... the Paris of the Nineties.” Those of us that live here don’t really dispute that. We just know the author of that statement meant Paris, Texas.

  It is here in Somerville that I now sit pounding out the final draft of this opus de funk. I have already taught an
advanced record production class and an advanced songwriting class at Berklee. In my second semester now, I am teaching the history of record production, and the history of American popular song writing. I can safely say my vacation and retirement are over. What I actually did was take an early retirement at an age I could enjoy it. Seven years later, I was ready to return to work. Most people end their retirements in the boneyard. That will not happen here—like my heroes, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, and Ray Charles, I will play the blues until my hands can’t move anymore. The most wonderful thing is that while I’m very busy, I am not a card-carrying, full-time music business lifer. Now I can take the time to pursue things that are music-related, but far removed from the record business—teaching, free-lance writing, dee-jaying, graphics work, etc. Things I always wanted to do but never had the time for in my past lives.

  I feel blessed to have an almost normal life now, with some terrific memories that I hope you have enjoyed sharing with me. I wouldn’t trade the ups and downs of the last forty years for anything. Seeing the transformation of my students over the course of a semester is as rewarding as any gold record on the wall. On the other hand, the house would really smell if I started putting the students up on the wall.