A Conversation with Al Kooper about Michael Bloomfield – HuffPost 2.25.14

Mike Ragogna: Al, From His Head To His Heart To His Hands, that’s pretty much how Mike Bloomfield did it creatively, right?

Al Kooper: Yeah, that’s what I thought.

MR: You and Michael recorded much together and you were good friends. What was the relationship like with him, both musically and personally?

AK: Personally it was very nice. We laughed a lot, we didn’t get to see each other that often, but when we did we were deep in it. Musically, it was extremely unique for me. It was an experience that I had never had before where we never discussed the music, we just instinctively knew what to do in terms of anything that you would normally talk about. I had never had that with anyone before, so that was a very unique experience for me. I’ve only had it with one other person and I just turned seventy. That’s a long time to have that unique experience with someone.

MR: What would a typical session with the both of you guys be like?

AK: The thing was that we said, “Okay, let’s do this song,” and then we both had enough background to know the correct things to play, so we did that and we knew that the other one would know. That was a great thing and a unique thing.

MR: Nice and perhaps that also applies to how you curated this box set? What was it like going through the process?

AK: That was done with the executive producer Bruce Dickinson. He came up to Boston where I live and we spent a week together and we listened through everything and decided what to include and what not to include.

MR: Were there any tracks that especially made you miss Mike?

AK: I’m past that. I’ve heard all of his stuff a lot of times. But there’s just something that rings in my heart for some of the things that we did together that were really special, like “Albert’s Shuffle.”

MR: And although each disc of the box is titled, it’s chronological?

AK: It’s primarily chronological. The first record starts with his earliest recording and the last record ends with his final recording.

MR: I noticed there’s a lot of live material represented in that middle area. That was his supertalent, wasn’t it?

AK: Yeah, he was an extraordinary player live. As a matter of fact, the reason that I did Super Session was to try to get better playing out of him in the studio. I was unhappy with the comparison between his live playing and his studio playing.

MR: Ah. When you look at some of the experiences that he had–The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Electric Flag, helping out with Moby Grape, did he ever share with you what some of his favorite times creatively were?

AK: No, he’d share with me his un-favorite times.

MR: [laughs]

AK: Which I won’t mention.

MR: When you look back at his work, what do you think Michael Bloomfield’s legacy should be if someone were to write about it?

AK: Well, I tried to do that, I wrote an introduction in the box set and that was my space to do that. Then, of course, Michael Simmons wrote an excellent bunch of liner notes for the box as well.

MR: How do you think people will remember him?

AK: I have no idea. I just know how I remember him and what I attempted to do was to put together an outpost where people could go if they wanted to try and understand what he did and who he was and what’s special about him. That was the point of the box set.

MR: Al, about the story of how you ended up on “Like A Rolling Stone.” I heard you were hired as the guitarist but you after heard Michael play, you somehow ended up as the organist. What was the true story?

AK: I was just invited to observe the session, I wasn’t hired as a guitar player. I’ve told the story a million times. In fact, it’s in the Martin Scorsese movie, so now I don’t even tell it anymore. I just say, “Watch the Martin Scorsese movie.” It’s a great story, but like I said, I’ve told it a million times. I was not hired as a guitar player, I was invited to watch.

MR: I guess that’s the story through the game of telephone.

AK: I would say that all of the major events that I was fortunate enough to be involved with have all been misrepresented in print. Every single one.

MR: Let me ask you, then, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Lynyrd Skynyrd were two major groups you fathered into existence as far as I’m concerned. How do you view your stamp on music, what you’ve contributed all of these years?

AK: I was very lucky, I was very ambicious, and a combination of those two things worked out very well to me.

MR: Right. And there were things that happened as a result that have almost turned it into a family tree. Are there some projects that you’re very fond of?

AK: I thought that first Tubes album was probably the best record I ever produced for somebody else.

MR: Your own legacy is pretty unforgettable, with classic songs like “John The Baptist” and “Bury My Body.” What about your own work?

AK: Nobody but you knows about “John The Baptist.”

MR: [laughs] I say not. There are lots of songs that mean a lot to people. I would say you’re one of the most important contributors to popular music.

AK: Well there are a few of you and then there are a lot of the others. [laughs]

MR: [laughs] Al, what is your advice for new artists?

AK: My advice is before you get too deep into it, go to plumbing school so that you can make a living if it doesn’t work out.

MR: [laughs] What about a creative suggestion?

AK: No, I’m really serious. The odds are against you.

MR: It’s a different time now, isn’t it.

AK: No, not really! The odds are against you. You have to have a certain amount of amibition and not be in it for the money, because you’re going to get screwed.

MR: Now when you got into the business it was purely for the love of music, right?

AK: It’s always been for the love of music.

MR: And that’s never going to change, huh?

AK: Not really, no.

MR: Are you working on anything right now?

AK: For the past three years I’ve written a weekly column on the internet called New Music For Old People. That takes up a great deal of my time nowadays. I have one more project to do in the music business and then I won’t be doing anything else.

MR: So even if some great, exciting artist comes your way you wouldn’t be tempted to jump in there again?

AK: No. My vantage point is now that if I heard a great new aritst I would just write about them in my column. That’s what I do.

MR: From His head To His Heart To His Hands has to be one of your favorite projects that you’ve worked on, right?

AK: I had to do it.

MR: Because you knew best what needed to be on the box?

AK: I wanted to do it, I thought, “Well, somebody has to do this.” I had tried two other times that were unsuccessful for various reasons before they came to fruition. But this time, the record company came to me, and that was different. That helped. But it really took a long time, it took a year and it was a lot of hard work. People would say, “Well, you’re going to have a film in there, is that okay with the record company?” and I would say, “I don’t work for the record company, I work for Michael Bloomfield.” That’s the way I felt about it.

MR: Al, when you listen to this top to bottom, how did you feel at the end?

AK: I couldn’t listen objectively, because I did much more than listen to it top to bottom, I mastered it. That’s a whole other tehcnical thing. That’s like listening to it times ten.

MR: When you held the box in your hands was there a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction?

AK: Yeah, because I’d spent a lot of time on the look of it as well, so when I got the first copy of the box of it at the house I was very happy. I thought it worked great. It was just a lot of work, and sometimes you do that and it doesn’t work out, so I was really glad that it did work out, especially for him.

MR: Nicely said. What does the future hold for Al Kooper?

AK: Well, I’m telling you, it takes most of the week for me to do the column. Tuesday, the new releases come out, and I have to go through all of that and that takes a few days, and then I usually pick more than ten songs and I have to whittle it down to ten. Then they have to be in the right order, two songs that are next to each other can’t be in the same key; I have all of these rules. So that takes a long time. Really, the last thing that I do is write about it.

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne