When Al Kooper was shopping on the King’s Road, Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll’s version of "Season Of The Witch" was playing in all the shops.<\/p>\n
Al Kooper was kicked out of his own band.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not exactly, it was like working for the man.\u00c2\u00a0 They froze him out, they forced him to quit.\u00c2\u00a0 And when he was free, Al approached Clive Davis, offering his skills as a staff producer.\u00c2\u00a0 Clive bought, to the tune of three hundred bucks a week, plus an office, a secretary and an expense account.\u00c2\u00a0 Only one problem, Al had nothing to produce.<\/p>\n
Al met Mike Bloomfield at a Dylan session.\u00c2\u00a0 They played Newport together.\u00c2\u00a0 Then they led strangely parallel lives.\u00c2\u00a0 They both went on to play in blues bands, Al in the Blues Project, Mike in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.\u00c2\u00a0 Then they each founded horn-based acts, Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Electric Flag respectively.\u00c2\u00a0 Then they both quit.<\/p>\n
Al felt that live Mike was jaw-dropping.\u00c2\u00a0 But that no one had captured his magic on vinyl.\u00c2\u00a0 So he decided to make a record with him.<\/p>\n
They’d both played on Moby Grape’s "Grape Jam", the jam session record that accompanied "Wow".\u00c2\u00a0 Al envisioned a similar project.\u00c2\u00a0 Mike said fine, as long as they did it in California.\u00c2\u00a0 Al said sure, and rented a house on Columbia’s dime, having been taught how to do this by San Francisco producer David Rubinson.\u00c2\u00a0 Al told Mike to pick a drummer, and he’d bring a bass player.\u00c2\u00a0 Mike chose Eddie Hoh, whom Al was completely unfamiliar with, and Al brought his old buddy from Queens, Harvey Brooks.<\/p>\n
Booked into the Columbia studio in L.A., they spent a night recording, they got half an album.\u00c2\u00a0 When Al went to wake up Mike for the following day’s session he found his bed in the rented house still made, with a note upon it stating that Mike had been up all night and had decided to go home.<\/p>\n
HOME?\u00c2\u00a0 What did that mean?\u00c2\u00a0 It was still early in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 Al combed the abode, looking for Mike.\u00c2\u00a0 And when he couldn’t find him, when he realized he truly had gone back to Marin, he started to freak.\u00c2\u00a0 Who was going to play at that day’s session?<\/p>\n
He picked up his black book, called three guitarists, but only Stephen Stills responded.\u00c2\u00a0 He came down to the studio with a brand new Marshall stack and finished the album.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they were one cut short.\u00c2\u00a0 Harvey Brooks said he had a tune.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s how "Harvey’s Tune" ended up on "Super Session".<\/p>\n
The album went on to sell millions.\u00c2\u00a0 I told Al that the formula could be REPLICATED!<\/p>\n
But Al didn’t believe it.\u00c2\u00a0 You see "Super Session" wasn’t premeditated, it was spontaneous.\u00c2\u00a0 He just wanted to get Mike’s guitar down.\u00c2\u00a0 He figured the album would sell 15,000 copies.<\/p>\n
This was back when albums weren’t made for the masses so much as fans, those bitten by the music bug.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there was a Top Forty, but there was a definite shift.\u00c2\u00a0 To FM.\u00c2\u00a0 Where it wasn’t about hits, but stretching out, fulfilling your vision.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the 11:07 version of "Season Of The Witch" laid down by Kooper and Stills.<\/p>\n
The Internet is today’s FM radio.\u00c2\u00a0 The usual suspects are playing to Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 Executives equivalent to Mitch Miller are delivering nothing out of the ordinary, just variations on what has come before.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re playing it safe.\u00c2\u00a0 While unsigned acts are testing the limits in their basements and posting the results all over the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 In the late sixties, the labels woke up and followed the musicians, they realized there was money in those aural adventures cut by twentysomethings who followed their muse.\u00c2\u00a0 And the modern record business was born.\u00c2\u00a0 The one everybody hearkens back to.\u00c2\u00a0 The days of Mo Ostin and Warner Brothers.<\/p>\n
Actually, Mo passed on Blood, Sweat & Tears.\u00c2\u00a0 As did Jerry Wexler.\u00c2\u00a0 But Clive’s predecessor at Columbia bit, and when Clive took the reins, Al convinced him a deal was already in place and he should honor the commitment.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how you get ahead, with people, with musicians.\u00c2\u00a0 You see a spark, you nurture it, creating an environment where it can grow, and you ultimately harvest a great crop.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not always.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’re investing in the usual suspects, the same hack songwriters and producers, you’re not going to grow anything.<\/p>\n
There’s no culture at labels today.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve lost control of the game.\u00c2\u00a0 You start with love, then comes the money.\u00c2\u00a0 Acts that love to play, fans who love the sound.<\/p>\n
I disagree with Kooper.\u00c2\u00a0 I believe there’s an audience for great playing.\u00c2\u00a0 Start with Eddie Van Halen.\u00c2\u00a0 Or another guitarist with innovative chops.\u00c2\u00a0 Add a drummer, a full band, and a producer with knowledge of musical history.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be cheap to record, and the truth of the music would resonate with the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 If there was truth.\u00c2\u00a0 If there were no superfluous rappers, no three minute radio edits, no safe moves.\u00c2\u00a0 People recognize greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 "Super Session" still sells today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s in the grooves.<\/p>\n
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When Al Kooper was shopping on the King’s Road, Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll’s version of "Season Of The Witch" was playing in all the shops. Al Kooper was kicked out of his own band.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not exactly, it was like working for the man.\u00c2\u00a0 They froze him out, they forced him to quit.\u00c2\u00a0 And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-cR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}