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Harvey Brooks, Herbie Rich and Mike Bloomfield rehearse in their Sausalito Heliport practice room as Buddy Miles conducts in the fall of 1967. From "The Photography of Rock," Bobbs-Merrill 1972
An American Music Band, cont.
In the studio After the performance at Monterey, it was time for the Flag to work on its material. The band retreated to San Francisco and began rehearsing tunes, first at Mary Ellen Simpson’s home in Mill Valley for a few weeks. Simpson was a friend of Nick Gravenites and a member of the Ace of Cups, an all-female singing group that gigged around San Francisco. The Flag eventually found a permanent home at the Sausalito Heliport where other Bay Area groups like Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Sons of Champlin had practice spaces in the facility’s unused hangars. In the last week of June and in early July, the group was in the studio to record as the Electric Flag for the first time. They journeyed to Los Angeles to lay down tracks for the Columbia label, for it was Clive Davis who had won the nod from Albert Grossman to produce the band. Most of the members of the Flag had assumed that Jerry Wexler would acquire the band for the Atlantic label. Atlantic had produced many of the R&B and soul hits that Bloomfield and company admired, and it seemed only natural that the Electric Flag would sign with them. But apparently Grossman thought otherwise. According to Wexler, Michael told him after Monterey that Albert wanted the band on Columbia because Atlantic “steals from the blacks.” Not surprisingly, Wexler was deeply offended and declined any further negotiations with Grossman. While recording at Columbia’s studios in Los Angeles, Buddy Miles took part in a marathon jam session with Jimi Hendrix and Steve Stills at a Malibu beach house rented by Stills’ group, the Buffalo Springfield. A post-Monterey party, the ad-hoc June 26 gathering also included trumpeter Hugh Masekela. But it was Hendrix who intrigued Buddy. The Seattle guitar wizard’s Monterey pyrotechnics had made a deep impression, and Miles began cultivating a relationship with Hendrix that would grow over the next year. Buddy wasn’t alone in his fascination with Jimi. The rest of the Flag members took in Hendrix’s performance at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood on July 2. Hendrix, who had spent a week at the Fillmore immediately following Monterey, was playing a one-nighter at the Whisky prior to taking the Experience on the road as a supporting act for – of all bands – the Monkees. In the studio, the Flag recorded the parts to “Groovin’ Is Easy” and set to work developing their arrangement of “Over-Lovin’ You.” Herbie Rich, a talented reed and keyboard player – and friend of Buddy’s from Omaha – was added to the group to fill out the horn section. Impressed by the Flag’s performance at Monterey – and enthralled by Michael’s charismatic energy – Mama Cass joined Miles in singing backup vocals on “Groovin’.” It was the end of July, and in the heat of the summer of 1967 – the Summer of Love – the Electric Flag was ready to play. It seemed all things were possible.
Playing out The band’s first performance following Monterey, according to some sources, may have taken place as early as July 12. The venue was the familiar Winterland Ballroom, one of several spaces used by promoter Bill Graham. If the show did take place, it was most likely a Wednesday evening guest appearance – a warm-up for the band’s first official engagement at the Fillmore Auditorium. That occurred about a month later and ran for six days from Tuesday, August 8, to Sunday, August 13. By August, the Flag had a healthy repertory of soul and blues covers. They were also working on several new originals, including Barry Goldberg’s “Sittin’ in Circles” and Nick Gravenites’ “She Should Have Just.” Both tunes were solidly in a pop vein and both featured Nick’s clear baritone. The band headlined their Fillmore shows, and though Bill Graham – distressed that Bloomfield had left Butterfield – did not much like this new group of Michael’s, business must have been good enough to warrant a return engagement two weeks later. The Flag played another six-day stint at the Fillmore, from August 29 to September 3, and this time a new group from England was the headliner. Called Cream, the soon-to-be-famous British power trio was making its West Coast debut and its guitarist, Eric Clapton, was clearly a master of electric blues, too. Michael Bloomfield had first heard Clapton’s music two years earlier when both guitarists were included on the Elektra album “What’s Shakin’” – Eric as a member of the group Powerhouse and Michael as Paul Butterfield’s featured guitarist. He had first seen Eric perform while Michael was on tour in England with the Butterfield Band in November 1966. Bloomfield had been more than impressed with Clapton’s mastery of the idiom and had the highest praise for Eric’s work with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Now San Francisco audiences had a chance to catch two of the world’s greatest blues-rock guitarists on the same stage. But there were clear differences in how each band approached the blues. While the Electric Flag favored tight arrangements and solos lasting only two or three choruses, Cream indulged in half-hour jams and cranked out lengthy improvisations that could reach a fever pitch. And though the Flag could be loud when both Buddy and Michael dug in, Cream with its Marshall amplifier stacks was earth-shakingly loud. The Flag was following the Stax model in all but the way they dressed. Cream, on the other hand, was exploring new territory, and the audiences loved them. “We got creamed all over the place by the Cream,” Buddy said later in an interview, referring to that Fillmore gig. After their shows at the Fillmore, the Flag headed south to Los Angeles to spend some more time in the studio. The band was scheduled to make an appearance with the Mamas & the Papas at the vocal quartet’s Hollywood Bowl concert on Friday, August 18, most likely at the request of Mama Cass. But Albert Grossman was unable to come to terms with the concert’s producers and the Flag cancelled their appearance. It’s very likely that Michael was also uncomfortable performing at yet another huge pop concert where the hype would probably overwhelm the music. He may have also been somewhat unenthusiastic about sharing the stage with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Having cut short their disastrous tour with the Monkees, Hendrix’s trio was to be part of the Hollywood Bowl show, too. The unavoidable comparison between the star guitarists probably was a deal breaker for Bloomfield. Instead, the Electric Flag did four nights at the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip beginning Thursday, September 10. But the audiences at the Whisky weren’t as free-spirited as those in San Francisco, and while the patrons there were familiar with the soul sounds of Sam & Dave and Otis Redding, the Flag didn’t get the kind of reception it wanted. In an interview by Bill Kerby published in the September 22 edition of the Los Angeles Free Press, Bloomfield took them – and white audiences in general – to task. “… blues is a language … it’s a call-and-response thing. When I speak the language, I expect a response,” Michael asserted in the article, provocatively titled “Mike Bloomfield: Honkies Can’t Dig Soul Music.” “White people just don’t know, they just don’t know about anything.” Bloomfield also offered an observation that indirectly referred to the crowd’s enthusiastic response to Cream’s excesses at the Flag’s recent Fillmore gigs. “Freaking out the kids is not where my head’s at … I’m glad that they’re freaked out, I’m glad that they’re enjoying themselves, but it’s not where I would like to be, you know.” He went on to imply that white racism would likely prevent the Electric Flag from “making it” economically. Whether that failure would result from prejudice or from a simple matter of taste, the doubts instilled by the hype at Monterey were clearly festering. Michael Bloomfield was beginning to suspect that America was perhaps not quite ready for the Flag’s brand of American music. Columbia’s recording engineers were certainly not ready for Bloomfield’s studio session ideas. Right away, Michael began to have trouble with the label’s traditional approach to capturing sound. He had been free to experiment at Capitol when producing “The Trip” soundtrack, but at Columbia’s studios in Los Angeles he was stymied by the company’s older, more conservative technicians. And the fact that they were all union engineers further hindered Michael’s getting involved. He later told interviewer Tom Yates, “It was now possible to play a studio like guitar players had learned to play their guitars, to get every possible sound out of it.” But Columbia’s people only wanted clean sound; they weren’t interested in a young kid wasting their time experimenting. Nevertheless, the band did lay down tracks for “Sittin’ in Circles” and “She Should Have Just.” They also worked up an arrangement for a new Bloomfield tune that would later be dedicated to Stax recording artists Steve Cropper and Otis Redding. Called “You Don’t Realize,” it gave Buddy Miles a chance to display his considerable talents as a soul singer. In addition, they recorded the rhythm and vocal portions of “Goin’ Down Slow,” a blues originally recorded by St. Louis Jimmy Oden. While getting those pieces on tape, the Flag returned home to San Francisco to do three more nights at the Fillmore Auditorium starting September 14.
Drugs and the bust It was while they were back in Los Angeles at the end of September, continuing to record and in the midst of a 10-day stint at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, that the Electric Flag ran afoul of the authorities. After their show at the Bear on the evening of September 30, Bloomfield, Harvey Brooks and Nick Gravenites joined Barry Goldberg in his room at the Huntington Beach Motel where the band was staying. The four listened to records and tapes – presumably mixes of their recent studio efforts – and passed around a few joints. At about 3 a.m. on October 1, a neighbor called in a noise complaint to the Huntington Beach police. Two officers responded and, though the motel manager offered to handle the situation, they insisted on personally confronting the motel guests who were disturbing the peace. The officers knocked on the door to Room 12 and after a moment it was opened by Michael Bloomfield with Barry Goldberg in tow. One of the officers – “qualified to detect the odor of burning marijuana,” as the court report put it – sensed that Room 12’s occupants were involved in a “narcotics violation” and he arrested all four Flag members. A search of the suite yielded a marijuana “cigarette” in an ashtray in the bedroom. Barry, who was described as “having difficulty maintaining his balance” with “slurred speech” and “eyes that were bloodshot and watery with pupils dilated,” was to bear the brunt of the drug charges. After spending the night in the Orange County jail, the Flag members were given a preliminary hearing date of October 20 and were likely told not to leave the state. Their run-in with the cops was reported in a new underground tabloid that appeared in San Francisco and around the country in November. Called “Rolling Stone,” it had been started by a young journalist named Jann Wenner and was intended to cover politics, music, film and art from a counterculture perspective. In its debut issue was a six-inch story on the Flag’s drug bust along with a reversed picture of Bloomfield and Brooks on stage at Monterey. Gravenites was quoted as saying of the experience, “We’re in the hands of fate. It’s a whole different scene: lawyers, police, the government. The whole Lenny Bruce riff.” Certainly an arrest for drugs was a whole different scene in 1967. Intimating that the authorities were cracking down on musicians, Rolling Stone mentioned that the Grateful Dead and Moby Grape had also recently been brought up on charges. War protests, civil rights, the youth culture – these had created an atmosphere of growing tension between those in authority and those seen as rebelling against authority. And because marijuana was lumped together with serious drugs like opium and heroin in the eyes of the law, the penalty for possessing even a small amount carried a threat of real jail time. Of course, marijuana was by now the least of the Flag’s drug problems. Marcus Doubleday had come into the band a hard heroin user; Peter Strazza was next to acquire the habit. Doubleday’s addiction was serious enough that he occasionally stashed his works in the bell of his horn. Barry Goldberg, who had tried heroin once before joining the Flag, now was struggling with the narcotic and had had a previous run-in with the law. According to Michael’s wife, Susan, the road manager they had hired made a sideline of selling junk to the band. And though Michael had tried heroin in his Chicago days, he was always open to new experiences and was soon sampling the stuff in earnest himself. The Huntington Beach episode created an atmosphere of paranoia. An arrest for grass was serious enough, but to be apprehended for heroin was something all together different. Many jazz musicians had done hard time for narcotics possession. The Flag knew they had been lucky this time. The band finished its ten days at the Golden Bear on Sunday, October 8. They had made one side trip to Santa Monica to perform at the Civic Auditorium on October 5 and had been scheduled to head to New York soon thereafter, but the arrests caused them to delay their first road trip. Because they were probably prohibited from leaving the state, two days of shows at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, OR, had to be cancelled. After their hearing on October 20, the band started a three-night stand at the Cheetah in Santa Monica. The case against the four Flag members would drag on in court for nearly two years and would eventually result in three years probation for Barry Goldberg (after winning an appeal on an additional sentence of a 90-day stint in the Orange County jail). Because the illegal activity had taken place in Barry’s motel room, charges against Bloomfield, Brooks and Gravenites were eventually dropped.
On the road By the end of October 1967, the Electric Flag was cleared for its first trip east. Its first Columbia release, a single of “Groovin’ Is Easy” backed with “Over-Lovin’ You,” had appeared in mid-October and was garnering generally favorable reviews and some FM radio airplay. Rolling Stone called it “heavy” but noted with a hint of disappointment that Bloomfield’s guitar remained in the background. Albert Grossman was undoubtedly eager for the band to begin to generate sales and more engagements behind the release by taking their powerhouse act on the road. New York City and Columbia’s production studios there were the Electric Flag’s ultimate destination, but the band first detoured to Boston for an extended stay at the Psychedelic Supermarket near Kenmore Square. On the way they played a one-nighter at a club called The Factory in Madison, WI, and then performed at Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA. A small Catholic school known for its fine football team, the place put Bloomfield ill at ease. He later told Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner, “… there was nothing there but goyim. That really put me uptight. It was wrong, I didn’t see any Jews.” While in Worcester, the band met a sympathetic soul who advised them to look up some friends living near Kenmore Square in Boston. Those friends were blues musicians too, he said. After they arrived in Boston on November 1, Bloomfield and Gravenites paid those musicians a visit one evening following their show at the Supermarket. The friends turned out to be John Geils, Richard Salwitz and Danny Klein, soon to be better known nationally as members of the J. Geils Band. Michael, Nick and their hosts got on so well that eventually there was a noise complaint from neighbors. Geils told Jan Wolkin and Bill Keenom in “If You Love These Blues,” “Mike was completely freaked out because he’d been busted not long before, in California …” Before leaving, Bloomfield characteristically invited Geils and company to sit in with the Flag during a set on the following evening. The Electric Flag’s two week residency at the Psychedelic Supermarket went well, with the band sounding tight and fresh. Their repertory had expanded to include a rocking blues by Howlin’ Wolf called “Killing Floor” and the Roosevelt Sykes tune “Drivin’ Wheel.” Made popular by Junior Parker, “Drivin’ Wheel” offered Buddy Miles another opportunity to display his considerable prowess as a soul singer.
On to New York The Electric Flag finished up its first big road gig on November 12. It had gotten its show together in Boston and now had a substantial set list of originals, current soul covers and classic blues. It was time to move on to New York for the band’s official East Coast debut. Michael hadn’t been back to New York since the spring. He had scheduled time in Columbia’s studios to work on mixing the Flag’s Los Angeles recordings, and was hoping to find an engineer sympathetic to his innovative ideas. The band camped out at the Albert Hotel, a common stopover site for visiting musicians. It conveniently had practice rooms available in its basement. The Flag’s first New York gig was a weekend stint at the Village Theater on 2nd Ave. Scheduled for November 17 and 18, the shows featured the Charles Lloyd Quartet as well. The band also had to drive to a November 18 afternoon performance at Swarthmore College outside of Philadelphia. The concert marked the start of the school’s Thanksgiving week break. They were also scheduled to do a week at one of New York’s premier night clubs, the Bitter End, at the end of the month. But first, the Flag had to return to California for three days of shows at the Cheetah in Santa Monica. The band flew cross-country, performed at the West Coast venue from November 20-22, and then returned to New York. The trip must have been grueling, considering that additional shows probably were squeezed in along the way. Back in the Apple, the Electric Flag opened at the Bitter End on Friday, November 24. They were originally to start on the previous Wednesday, but the Santa Monica junket caused them to delay their debut at the Bitter End for two days. Things started well, though, with a flattering preview that appeared in the New York Times that Friday morning. Reviewer Alfred Arnowitz hailed Michael as “probably the flashiest guitar player in the country” and described the band’s sound as “big band-style blues.” Buddy Miles garnered praise for putting on “his own 200-pound spectacular – shouting, screaming, wailing, singing and using his drumsticks as batons to conduct the drama …” Bloomfield’s connection with Dylan was mentioned, as was his tenure with Butterfield. The article no doubt ensured a good turnout for the Flag’s official New York debut. And business was good. Among the friends in the audience during the Bitter End engagement were Bloomfield’s former Butterfield band mates, Elvin Bishop and Mark Naftalin. Muddy Waters sideman, guitarist Sammy Lawhorn, was also there. The Waters and Butterfield bands were both performing in town that Friday and Saturday, making it an all blues weekend in the Apple. Photographer Don Paulsen captured Naftalin, Bishop and Lawhorn on film at the club and caught the band in performance as well. Buddy is shown wearing a newly-acquired American flag shirt, and Michael can be seen joking with Nick Gravenites and soloing with trance-like concentration. Unfortunately, no recordings from the Bitter End shows exist. Interestingly, Michael is captured in Paulsen’s pictures playing a goldtop Les Paul like the one he’d used for a year-and-a-half with the Butterfield Band. He’d traded that guitar to guitarist and technician Dan Erlewine for the famous 1959 sunburst model before performing with the Flag at Monterey, so this Les Paul must have come from another source. Indeed, it was Naftalin’s. Mark had purchased it for $85 earlier in the year from a kid who had come to a Butterfield performance wanting to sell it to Elvin Bishop. It’s possible that Michael’s sunburst Les Paul was in the shop being repaired (he was notoriously indifferent to the condition of his instruments) and Naftalin obliged by lending the guitarist his goldtop. The Bitter End gig was originally to have been a five-day stand, but the Flag did well enough to merit an extra weekend. The band played at the venue through Saturday, December 2. During the day, Bloomfield spent time at Columbia’s studios working on mixing tapes from the band’s September recording sessions. He’d finally found a sympathetic engineer. “I was really lucky,” Michael later told Ed Ward. “I got a guy named Roy Segal …and we mixed it in a little room called the ‘Mixing Room.’ He was very open, and whatever engineering ideas I wanted to pull off … he allowed me to pull ’em off.” The two worked together on the record through March 1968.
Changes in the Flag Though the band was playing at the top of its ability, there were problems. Albert Grossman felt that the group lacked a certain eye-appeal. The Flag was notable for its big sound – and for its big size. Buddy, Nick and Harvey were all large men, and while they had talent in abundance, they did not really fit the image evoked by “rock star.” Grossman knew that an attractive female presence might enhance the band’s box office and urged Michael Bloomfield to explore the possibility of adding another singer to the band’s line-up. Michael obliged by asking Debbie Danilow, a pretty young vocalist from Fort Worth who was turning heads in San Francisco, to join the Flag sometime in late November. Danilow declined, preferring to remain in the Bay Area, and though the search faltered there were other possibilities. Gossip columnists reported that Cass Elliot, who had just left the Mamas & the Papas, was considering joining the band. But the Electric Flag was also facing other more serious issues. Michael had suffered for many years from insomnia, and his condition was always aggravated by being on the road. His split from the Butterfield Band had come about in part because he couldn’t sleep. Now, as his anxieties grew, he slept less and less, and he began medicating himself with heroin. Hard drug use had become prevalent in the band, and Barry Goldberg was also struggling. He felt he was slipping back into old habits and losing control. The bust in Huntington Beach was a foretaste of what might lie ahead and Goldberg did not want that. At a band meeting with Albert Grossman, he raised the issue of drugs. “Albert was aware of the problems,” Barry told Wolkin and Keenom. “But his outlook was ‘Hey, you guys are responsible for yourselves. And if you want to make a lot of money, just listen to what I say and get yourselves together.’” That wasn’t good enough. Goldberg decided he had to quit the Electric Flag. By the end of November he was gone. It was the first indication that things for the Flag might not go as smoothly as initially expected. A keyboard player from Ontario, a friend of Buddy’s named Mike Fonfara, was in New York after having left the Toronto-based group, John and Lee & the Checkmates, in September 1967. He had been playing in David Clayton Thomas's band at the Scene, and when Flag members went to see him perform at Miles’ suggestion, and they were impressed. Fonfara was recruited to replace Barry. After the Bitter End engagement finished, the band again headed west, this time to San Francisco, with Fonfara on board. They likely played a series of one-nighters on the way, making the journey another difficult one. But on December 7 they were back home in the familiar Fillmore Auditorium, and – even without Goldberg – they were never sounding better. Their three-day stint at Bill Graham’s Fillmore and Winterland venues must have been perceived as the triumphant return of San Francisco’s hometown heavies. Headlining the shows were the Byrds, but they had been limping along after the recent departure of David Crosby and, by most accounts, sounded thin and unconvincing. Bloomfield’s idol, B.B. King, was also on the bill and was slated to open the program. But in deference to the master bluesman, Michael insisted that the Flag go on first, and took great pleasure in introducing the older guitarist to the Fillmore’s audience. Those who were there say it was the Electric Flag that created the most memorable music during the course of those three days. They debuted several new tunes, including a powerhouse blues pas-de-deux by Bloomfield and Miles called “Texas,” the soul ballad by Bloomfield and Goldberg from their single’s B-side, “Over-Lovin’ You,” and a high-octane cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight.”
Changes at home Despite the fact that things were going well for the band, the winter months of 1967-68 were pivotal for Michael Bloomfield. His marriage to Susan Smith, his wife of four years, had been under a strain since the couple had moved to San Francisco. Preoccupied with organizing the Electric Flag and then with recording and performing, Michael had rarely been home longer than a few days at a time and then usually just to catch up on his sleep. And there was the continual temptation of romantic liaisons when he was on the road. Michael and Susan had grown apart and, though still close as friends, had lost the bonds essential to a successful marriage. Over Christmas week they decided to separate. Susan went back to her family in Chicago, leaving Michael to fend for himself. The split was not an easy one, and Michael became profoundly depressed. He began to have regular therapy sessions. For the remainder of December and into January 1968, the Flag was in Columbia’s studios in San Francisco, struggling to complete their first recording. The label’s money men were eager to see some return on their investment and pressure to complete the album was mounting. Albert Grossman was also hoping to have product for the band to tour behind and generate more concert dates. Though their single had been favorably reviewed in the alternative press and was receiving steady airplay over college and “underground” FM radio stations, it had made no inroads into the lucrative AM singles market and had not registered a hiccup on Billboard’s charts. Everyone knew it was time to get serious. In addition to working on new material, Bloomfield and company had another film project presented to them. In the fall of 1967, Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary and film director Barry Feinstein had begun work on a counterculture extravaganza titled “You Are What You Eat.” A who’s-who of period “grooviness,” it consisted of a stream-of-consciousness montage of hippie and beat personalities ranging from Tiny Tim to Father Malcolm Boyd to the members of San Francisco’s Family Dog. Because Albert Grossman and his partner, producer John Court, were involved, the Electric Flag was enlisted to provide music for its soundtrack. This time, though, the band didn’t put much effort into the project. Some of the material used in the film probably came from their sessions from “The Trip,” but they also quickly created a number of new improvisations with producer John Simon on synthesizer. One was a feature for tenor saxophonist Peter Strazza. When “You Are What You Eat” opened in September 1968, the Electric Flag received top billing although their contribution consisted largely of brief snippets of music throughout the film. They did play a five-minute segment at the end of the movie – during the “freak out” section – but on the screen audiences saw Frank Zappa and the Mothers performing as Vito’s troupe of San Francisco dancers writhed at the Fillmore. Work continued on the band’s Columbia release. In January, the Flag recorded tracks for “Killing Floor,” “Texas” and Bloomfield’s reworking of “Wine.” Michael added to these blues a modest, traditional 12-bar called “Easy Rider.” Recorded with footsteps providing simple rhythmic accompaniment over the sound of gently falling rain, the piece would be edited down to less than a minute when released on the Flag’s album. It would, however, capture the essence of Bloomfield’s bluesy soulfulness perhaps better than any other cut on the record. A more ambitious piece was also recorded during these January sessions. Ostensibly written by Gravenites’ friend Ron Polte and called “Another Country,” the tune was a mid-tempo rocker with lyrics typical of the politics of the day. But it was Bloomfield’s arrangement that brought the piece to another level. To its several choruses he added a dissonant “free” section interspersed with spoken word recordings and sound effects. That was followed by a breezy guitar solo over rhythm that featured some of Michael’s best playing on the album. “Another Country” in its resulting configuration was remarkable for its fluid transformation from rock to soul to sound improvisation to jazz and back again. With his Chicago friend Norman Dayron’s assistance, Bloomfield also added excerpts from a speech given by then President Lyndon Johnson and a laugh track to the opening moments of “Killing Floor.” The effect was sardonic, offering a biting commentary on the troubled president and his “killing floor” in Vietnam. It was also an uncharacteristically political moment for Bloomfield. These two tunes stood out in 1968, but not for their politics. Using actual sounds in contemporary music was not unheard of at that time, but the inclusion of spoken word effects in a pop tune was something new. The Beatles would famously do it with “Revolution #9” and other tunes, but not until later in 1968. The Electric Flag appears to have been one of the first groups to experiment with “sampling.”
San Remo By the end of January, Columbia began a media campaign in anticipation of the completion of the Electric Flag’s album. An interview with Michael Bloomfield was arranged with Kurt Lassen, a columnist for the newspaper syndication service called Columbia Features, Inc. It was published in local newspapers around the country at the end of January and, though few readers had likely heard of the Electric Flag, it promised that “the group, though together for less than a year, is on the way.” Michael was quoted as saying that he was working hard on, of all things, the album’s cover. “I want to check the pictures and the liner notes. Because it is our first, it has to be very special.” While Bloomfield may have been involved in the details of the Flag’s album jacket, it’s hard to believe he expressed himself in quite those words. Given Michael’s distaste for self promotion and hyperbole, he must have looked on the idea of working with the PR department at Columbia with open disdain. It was likely that he treated the process as a joke, and the fact that he was goofing on the Columbia “suits” became evident when Lassen’s interview mentioned that the Flag would be appearing at Italy’s prestigious San Remo Festival in February 1968. Europe’s premier song-writing festival, San Remo was a by-invitation contest to determine the world’s best song – a song that, by the competition’s rules, had to be sung in Italian. It was a serious enough event that a renowned singer had committed suicide after losing the competition, and in 1968, Louis Armstrong and Eartha Kitt were the featured American performers. That the Flag would perform at such a festival was ludicrous – Bloomfield knew it, and he knew that the PR people would be clueless. As expected, the festival “appearance” was dutifully included in the Columbia Features puff piece. The idea that Nick would do a version of “Groovin’ Is Easy” in Italian probably sent Bloomfield and his musicians into paroxysms of laughter. The band did actually appear locally for a few gigs while it was busy in the studio. They did several nights at the Cheetah in Santa Monica, and beginning January 25, did a weekend for Bill Graham at the Fillmore and Winterland once again. Those nights the Flag opened for Janis Joplin and Big Brother. Buddy Miles was not idle in between engagements either. Always eager to make connections, he had joined Stephen Stills in a Los Angeles studio to record “Special Care” on January 3 and 20. Stills overdubbed all the parts while Buddy played drums. The tune was later issued as by Stills’ group, the Buffalo Springfield.
More changes Probably in mid-December 1967, Michael Fonfara was asked to leave the band. That he was booted for using drugs seems hard to believe given that half the band by the end of the year was seriously into heroin while the other half was habitually tripping, and Bloomfield was doing a bit of both. But Fonfara had been busted at the Tropicana Hotel while the band was in L.A. working on its album and the usually hands-off Grossman stepped in to do the firing. Fonfara was a non-citizen, and the complex legal hassles that might ensue were the last thing Albert wanted for the already struggling band. By January, Michael Fonfara was gone and saxophonist Herbie Rich had taken over organ duties. Rich turned out to be an impressive keyboardist. While playing alto and baritone in the band, he had been thought of primarily as a saxophone player. But given a chance to sit down at the keyboard, Herbie’s real musical genius became evident. Bloomfield was impressed enough with his abilities to compare his talent to that of Jimi Hendrix. Rich’s soulful sound and his enthusiasm for jazz helped move the band in a decidedly narrower direction. Buddy Miles now had a compatriot who would help ensure that the Electric Flag played only certain types of American music – primarily jazz-tinged soul and R&B. Bloomfield’s original concept – a horn band that would play an amalgam of indigenous and experimental styles – had vanished with the Summer of Love. More and more Buddy’s music – and Buddy himself – became the focus of the band’s live performances. But after a bit that was all right with Michael. “The band sort of fell into the bag of a soul band because of Buddy’s dominant personality. I kinda didn’t dig it, but now I really dig it,” Michael told Jann Wenner in an extensive Rolling Stone interview done in February. “The band has become a really good soul band.” They were a good soul band, but they weren’t the best. They weren’t as good as James Brown’s band or the Stax session players Michael admired. And they were a good blues band, but they weren’t as polished as B.B. King’s band. What they were very good at was blending a variety of musical styles – merging soul, blues, jazz, traditional and experimental influences with a rock beat to create an exciting hybrid. Onstage, though, that seemed to be happening less and less. The majority of tunes the Electric Flag was performing in concert by February 1968 were soul and blues covers. They had created only nine originals in their eight months together, and they often played just a few of them on a gig. With no record to familiarize audiences with their tunes, the band got a better response from Buddy’s histrionics on familiar soul numbers and Michael’s scorching blues solos. The Flag’s arsenal of other people’s music had expanded to well over thirty songs by February. The group performed at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco from February 2-4, played a Thursday night show on February 8 at the Earl Warren Show Grounds in Santa Barbara and rocked the Shrine Exposition Hall in Los Angeles with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Soft Machine with Andy Summers the following weekend on February 10. Harvey Brooks and Buddy Miles jammed with Hendrix during the guitarist’s sound check for the Shrine show, and some sources suggest that Jimi was joined onstage during his performance by Brooks, David Crosby and Michael Bloomfield. That Michael might have played with Hendrix in public was unusual, as he seemed most often to shun opportunities to trade licks with the guitar superstar. By mid-month, alto player Stemziel Hunter, another friend of Buddy’s from Omaha, had joined the band as Herbie Rich’s replacement in the horn section after Herbie moved over to organ. He was part of the group when they did a weekend at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom, another of the city’s rock venues, probably on February 17-19. Buddy’s contingent in the band was now the dominant musical force, and the transition from “The Mike Bloomfield Thing” to the “Buddy Miles Express” was well underway. Continued on page 3 Page 1 • Page 2 • Page 3 • Electric Flag on CD • Previous • Next • Printable version © 2008 David Dann |
Michael Bloomfield Discography & Performance History • Sources
A selection of remembrances of Michael Bloomfield from contributors to this site
A detailed look at the studio and live versions of the Butterfield Blues Band's "East-West"
An interview with producer Norman Dayron by Ralph Heibutzki
A check list of currently available recordings by Michael Bloomfield © 2008 David Dann |
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