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Michael Bloomfield onstage with Nick Gravenites and the Electric Flag at the Fillmore Auditorium on April 25, 1968. Photo by Carmelo Macias, courtesy of Frank Macias
An American Music Band, cont.
The interview In anticipation of the imminent release of the Electric Flag’s Columbia album, an in-depth interview for Michael Bloomfield was set up with Rolling Stone. As mentioned, the interviewer was the underground bi-weekly’s publisher, Jann Wenner. Wenner came to Michael’s home in Mill Valley in mid-February and the two spent several hours together taping a wide-ranging conversation. Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wolman snapped pictures while Bloomfield talked about his early days in Chicago, his time as a member of Paul Butterfield’s ground-breaking blues band and his musical influences. Michael displayed an authoritative knowledge of the blues and its masters – many of whom he had known and worked with personally – and he offered insights into the contemporary music scene. He discussed the evolution of the Flag and expressed his deep admiration for Buddy Miles. He also praised the artistry of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, calling the latter “monstrous. Really talented cat, super together cat.” But Michael also talked about race in America and – as he had done six months earlier in the Los Angeles Free Press – complained about white audiences’ reaction to black music. “You gotta know what’s going down. In an Indian thing you’ve got to know when a cat played a good way. If you were at a fuck-a-thon, you’d have to know when a good fuck went down to know what’s happening. These kids don’t know …” He then offered strong opinions on the prickly subject of whites playing black music, seemingly unaware of how his own position vis-à-vis the topic might raise questions for those unfamiliar with his deep experience with and commitment to black music. “It’s really hard to put into words what the real blues is and what it isn’t … you’re not studiously trying to cop something, you’re not listening to a Robert Johnson record and trying to sound like it, you are merely playing the most natural music for you …” Paul Butterfield was an exemplary white blues player because, as Michael put it, Paul had learned the blues “by adapting himself to that environment, that he turned over, that he transformed, changed and anything that’s in his background, is completely dissolved …” In other words, anything less than total commitment from whites was just imitation – bad imitation. Bloomfield then strayed onto the subject of music from Rolling Stone’s home turf. “I don’t dig San Francisco groups … I think San Francisco music isn’t good music. Not good bands. They’re amateur cats.” He took a shot at one of Wenner’s favorite groups, the Grateful Dead, with words that would come back to haunt him. “I don’t dig Pigpen trying to sing blues; it don’t sound like blues. It sounds like some white kid trying to sing blues. It drags me …” Wenner protested, defending the Dead as the essence of San Francisco. Bloomfield agreed, but dismissed them with faint praise. “[The Dead] are San Francisco, everything that is San Francisco. They’re hip. Really, and I like them for that. Just like the Stones for those uptight meth-y little teenagers …” The interview, when published in two parts in the April 6 and 27 editions of the magazine, would cast Michael Bloomfield squarely in the roll of a blues/rock pedagogue, a master player who had confidence in his own talent and profound respect for those from whom he had learned. It would also alienate those rock critics and fans who were becoming enthralled with the new wave of costumed, posturing guitarists whose flashy displays and whiz-bang technique had evolved from Bloomfield’s groundbreaking work of years earlier.
Back to New York By the third week in February, the Electric Flag was on the road again, heading to New York for a stay at the Café Au Go Go. Michael Bloomfield was due in the city on February 20 to produce another James Cotton album, the harp player’s second for the Verve label. While he assisted Cotton in getting the session going and played guitar on several tunes and organ on another, it was John Court who was credited with producing the recordings. Court was Albert Grossman’s partner and, though Bloomfield considered him “not that hip to rock,” John would be given producer credit for the Flag’s Columbia release too. Jimi Hendrix had also come east following his Shrine appearance and was performing at The Scene in New York. On February 20, Buddy Miles along with other Flag members – probably Herbie Rich and Harvey Brooks – jammed with Jimi at the club. How Bloomfield felt about his band mates seeking out opportunities to play with the other great American guitarist is not known, but it almost certainly must have irked him. That Buddy – who was by March 1968 the defacto leader of the Electric Flag – seemed so enamored of Hendrix must have aggravated Bloomfield’s bouts with insecurity. It also widened the already growing rift between the guitarist and his flamboyant drummer. The Flag did two nights at the Anderson Theater on February 23 and 24. 1,200 fans crowded into the theater to see the band open for Chuck Berry; also on the bill – an odd choice – was the ethereal folk-rock amalgam called Pearls Before Swine. Robert Shelton of the New York Times attended the Friday show and commented that though the Flag had “technical problems,” there were “some excellent guitar flashes by the leader and generally excellent arrangements broke through the static.” The Electric Flag then headed to Philadelphia on March 2 for a night at the Electric Factory and may have also performed at the Second Fret in that city later in the week. They had added a new tune to their repertory, and they performed it for the first time on the Philadelphia junket. Written by an obscure California-based folk singer named Billy Roberts, “Hey Joe” had been a minor hit for Jimi Hendrix when his first album was released in May 1967. The Flag probably worked up its version at Buddy’s suggestion – he had no doubt played “Hey Joe” with Hendrix during their numerous jam sessions. The Flag’s version was achingly slow and featured Buddy’s impassioned vocal and some marvelous Spanish-tinged horn charts. But mostly it centered on Bloomfield’s guitar work, a circumstance that afforded listeners a chance to compare the two guitar greats. And Michael was no doubt aware of that. Back in New York, the Electric Flag began their eleven-day run at the Café Au Go Go on Thursday, March 7. It was to be their last extended gig in the East. On March 17, their final night at the Café, the Flag was joined on stage by Jimi Hendrix once again. Miles, Brooks and Rich improvised with Jimi, and then Paul Butterfield and his guitarist Elvin Bishop came up for an extended blues jam. Though it must have been a remarkable musical moment, Michael did not participate. Seeing his current and former band mates playing with Hendrix probably was too much for him. Interestingly enough, though, Jimi Hendrix gave a party for Michael during the Flag’s March stay in New York City. The shindig, attended by Truman Capote among others, was a wild enough affair to get the host guitarist tossed out of his rooms at the Warwick Hotel where it was held. While in New York, Michael also was a guest on the Murray the K radio show. Bloomfield talked with impresario Kaufman about the Flag and then raved about an album that had been released at the end of February by a new group called Blood, Sweat & Tears. Led by Al Kooper, a keyboard player whom Michael knew from Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” sessions, the band combined rock rhythms with a horn section much as the Electric Flag did. Kooper had been inspired by Bloomfield’s experiment in fusion and, ironically, had gotten his band’s Columbia record out before the Flag could complete theirs. The Blood, Sweat & Tears album featured sound effects and spoken word samples on a number of its tunes. No doubt Kooper, a talented producer with an ear for innovation, had heard what Michael was up to during his sessions in Columbia’s Mixing Room and had scooped the guitarist by adding samples of his own to BS&T’s music. Bloomfield had run into Kooper in the studio again while he was in New York when the two band leaders participated in a jam session with another of Columbia’s new groups, Moby Grape. Michael knew the members of Moby Grape from San Francisco and thought of them as capable players, so when Columbia requested that he sit in, he agreed. Al Kooper was also recruited to play and the two performed on separate tunes during an afternoon of extended jamming. Much as he had done three years earlier on a John Hammond session, Michael confined himself to piano and clearly enjoyed the date. Though the resulting LP – “Grape Jam,” a premium included free with Moby Grape’s second release called “Wow” – was uneven, it sowed the seeds for what was to be Bloomfield’s sole commercial success. Al Kooper would be thinking of the Moby Grape date when he would ask Michael to come play in a Los Angeles studio several months later. He wanted to capture the guitarist in a real jam session – a “Super Session.”
Reality sets in After they closed at the Café Au Go Go, the Flag headed back to San Francisco. On the way they did a number of one-nighters, including one ill-fated show in Detroit. The story goes that in attempting to make a drug connection, the band was ripped off by unscrupulous dealers. The thieves made off with Michael’s money and, adding insult to injury, took Buddy Miles’s clothes and Herbie Rich’s wig. Apparently Albert Grossman had to wire them cash so they could catch a flight home. The Electric Flag came back to a two-day stand on March 31 and April 1 at the Cheetah in Santa Monica. That was followed by a Wednesday, April 3 show at the Winterland and a return to the Earl Warren Show Grounds in Santa Barbara on Saturday, April 6. By now, the Flag’s repertory had become routine with highlights that were an unvarying mix of Michael’s guitar pyrotechnics and Buddy’s overwrought stage show. It began to dawn on band members that they were a mid-level act and likely to remain a mid-level act. Whether due to a lack of a record on the market or – as Bloomfield had asserted in his Free Press interview – to white audiences’ general indifference to black music, the Electric Flag had not achieved the popular success that everyone from Clive Davis and Albert Grossman to Michael Bloomfield himself expected it would. “We were stuck at that middle rhythm & blues level, and we were doing a lot of marginal gigs,” Nick Gravenites told Wolkin and Keenom. “We weren’t pop stars or anything like that.” Jimi Hendrix, the unknown who used to play at the Café Wha as Jimmy James, was now filling stadiums to capacity. Eric Clapton and Cream were touring constantly. Even the Jefferson Airplane, whose guitarist Jorma Kaukonan had been inspired by Michael, was headlining everywhere. The Flag, by contrast, was performing in small clubs and opening for lesser bands on college campuses and in civic auditoriums. Bloomfield’s reluctance to capitalize on his burgeoning superstar status, his suspicion of Monterey-style hype and his difficulty with his role as leader of the band further hindered the Flag’s potential. Drugs continued to be a problem as well. “… there was a lot of heroin in the band. Trumpeters wouldn’t blow their trumpet, cats would be late, fucked up on the gig. It just got to be too rank,” Gravenites went on to say. Buddy Miles was a continual source of stress, too. His ebullient showmanship made his performances unpredictable, and often he would deviate from a tune’s arrangement. The band had to stay on its toes to keep up with him, and sometimes they didn’t. Michael disliked unrehearsed digressions, and he hated the “show” aspect of Buddy’s routine. Things were beginning to unravel for the Electric Flag.
A long time indeed The various personality conflicts and general disillusionment among the Electric Flag members could not have come at a worse time. Their first release for Columbia Records was in record store bins by the end of the first week of April 1968. Appropriately titled “A Long Time Comin’,” its cover (the cover Michael Bloomfield was at pains to get just right, according to the Columbia Features interview) was festooned with fuzzy photos of various band members in live performance. Those images surrounded what appeared to be a stock shot of an attractive female model. The music itself was an at-times uneven amalgam of styles and performances. While some tunes were adventurous and innovative, others sounded curiously dated. In some places the record had an over-produced, flat sound that stood in stark contrast to the band’s live presence. Bloomfield’s guitar shone on some cuts – notably “Killing Floor,” “Another Country” and “Texas” – but fans who knew his work with Butterfield were left wanting more. Overall, however, the album did succeed in capturing the American music “you hear in the air, on the air, and in the streets …,” as Michael put it in his brief liner notes. And its innovations – the use of an early form of sampling, the skillful blending of soul, rock and jazz idioms, the use of electronics and the combining of horns with a rock beat – elevated the record to historic status despite its various flaws. Reviews, though mixed, were generally positive. No less a person than Miles Davis praised Bloomfield’s “Over-Lovin’ You” in a Downbeat magazine Blindfold Test. Rolling Stone considered the album an overall success, while John Wilson of the New York Times complained that rock bands – particularly the Electric Flag – had no idea how to utilize horns effectively. Pop/Rock magazine, on the other hand, declared, “It’s the kind of real-thing soul blues that is actually succeeding in rewiring the diverse forms of solely American music …” Airplay again was limited to college and underground FM stations, and sales behind lukewarm promotion from Columbia were moderate. “A Long Time Comin’” did briefly reach number 31 on Billboard’s charts, but no special arrangements were made for the band to tour in support of the album. Quite possibly Bloomfield wasn’t up for another road trip. That same week, the first part of Michael’s interview with Jann Wenner appeared in the April 6 issue of Rolling Stone. While he didn’t make the cover (a story about the Monterey Pop Festival was featured on page 1), he was given five full pages. Across the spreads were photos of an animated Bloomfield smiling, grimacing, laughing and looking serious. The overall impression was one of a young but earnest musician who spoke with authority and didn’t have a wishy-washy bone in his 24-year-old body. What he did appear to have was an opinion on nearly everything. A letter printed in a subsequent edition of Rolling Stone noted that Michael had quite a lot to say in his interview, and that perhaps he shouldn’t have said quite so much. The reader was not alone in her irritation at the strength of Michael’s convictions. Rolling Stone columnist, jazz critic and San Francisco icon Ralph J. Gleason sensed Bloomfield’s apparent contradictory stance on race and music and decided he needed to respond. His column highly critical of Michael would appear in early May, just when the Electric Flag was coming apart.
Groovin' isn’t so easy A trip to Los Angeles in mid-April had the band performing once again at the Shrine Exposition Hall on the weekend of April 12-13. Back in San Francisco, the Flag played a Sunday show at the Carousel Ballroom on April 21. Also on the bill was Erma Franklin, Aretha’s sister, and the Flag consented to act as her backup band. A tape of the Franklin’s set reveals that Bloomfield sat out, replaced by another guitarist, and that the band’s performance was not terribly together. The Flag’s own set featured the usual blues and soul tunes, but also included an extended version of Miles Davis’s composition “The Theme.” Clearly the horn players (including guest baritone and flute player Virgil Gonsalves) were eager to play something a bit more challenging. On the recording Bloomfield can be heard off mic discussing the next tune with band members and his suggestion of a “slow blues in A” elicits groans. That they would play a piece by Miles Davis shows just how musically advanced the Electric Flag was for a pop group of the time. It was also a measure of how restless the band’s players were becoming. As Michael later told Dan McClosky, “We were getting stale; we were playing the same shit over and over … it began to be un-good.” On April 25, 26 and 27, the Flag did Fillmore and Winterland shows for Bill Graham, and then performed as part of San Francisco State College’s Folk Music Festival on April 28. Also playing at the eclectic festival were Gordon Lightfoot, Merle Travis and a cadre of Navajo Indian dancers. “… the [Electric Flag] rocked, moaned and wailed itself into a frenzy, much to the delight of the near capacity audience,” proclaimed the San Mateo Times of their festival performance. “The group, which is seven units of explosive musical joy, mobbed the audience with incandescent sounds for over an hour.” Overheated prose aside, the band still could put on a bang-up show when things were right.
The final days The month of May saw the Electric Flag performing more than ever, probably at the insistence of Albert Grossman and the Columbia A&R people. The band may have begun the month with an appearance at San Diego State University Folk Music Festival, though posters for the show only mention Bloomfield’s name. The full Flag appears to have then played both the Cheetah in Santa Monica and the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles on the weekend of May 10 and 11. They remained at the Whisky through May 16 while making an arduous day trip to San Mateo for the College of San Mateo’s Pops Festival ’68 on Sunday, May 12. A small outdoor festival, Pops ’68 also featured Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Mama Thornton and jazz artists Bobby Hutcherson and Harold Land. On May 11, Rolling Stone published an interview with Cream guitarist Eric Clapton. Clapton was much less assertive about music and his role in it than Bloomfield had been, but he did name Michael as one of two major influences on him “as a person.” Bob Dylan was the other. “[Bloomfield’s] way of thinking really shocked me the first time I met him and spoke to him. I never met anyone with so many strong convictions,” said Clapton without exaggeration. In the same issue, ironically, was Ralph J. Gleason’s commentary on statements Bloomfield had made in his Rolling Stone interview. It was provocatively titled, “Stop This Shuck, Mike Bloomfield.” “No matter how long he lives and how good he plays, Mike Bloomfield will never be a spade,” Gleason began. “When I first heard Paul Butterfield’s band, I was disappointed. Here, I thought, were good white musicians trying to sound black and a great guitar player trying to sound like a black man.” Gleason went on to classify the Electric Flag’s music as imitation and to chide Bloomfield for aping Stax and Motown soul rather than finding his own voice. “Originality is the key. If this nonsense continues, Michael Bloomfield, one of the best guitar players in the world when he is playing guitar, will end up the Stan Getz or Chet Baker of rock,” Gleason declared. He concluded by speaking directly to Michael: “Play your own soul, man, and stop this shuck.” Though his racial statements were off the mark and bordered on offensive, Gleason had a point. The Flag had largely become a soul and blues cover band by the late spring of 1968, and they knew it. The critic’s broadside, however, came off as a very public personal attack on Michael Bloomfield, and it could only have exacerbated Michael’s growing ambivalence about continuing with the Flag and about the music business in general. Nick Granvenites came to Bloomfield’s defense in the next issue of Rolling Stone in an article caustically titled “Stop This Shuck, Ralph Gleason!” Though he valiantly pointed out that blues was part of the musical environment for all Chicagoans – not just those from the black community – and that Michael had been playing as an equal with black musicians for most of his musical life, it was too late. The damage had been done. Rumors had begun to circulate that the Electric Flag was about to break up, but the band continued to perform intact throughout May. On May 17, the Flag did a weekend at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco, and played their last big show at a huge two-day outdoor festival on Saturday, May 18. Called variously the Santa Clara Pop Festival and the Northern California Folk Rock Festival, it was held in the Family Park at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds and featured the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, the Animals, Big Brother and dozens of lesser-known bands. The Flag was scheduled to play on Saturday at 3 p.m. One concert attendee recalled the band’s appearance this way: “In the mid-afternoon onstage came the Electric Flag, a group I was aware of but had never heard. I didn't know what to expect as the bunch of them hemmed and hawed and fumbled around the stage for a bit, distractedly looking around and mumbling with each other. “After a few minutes of this, [Nick Gravenites] came downstage and announced from a vocal mic, ‘Hey, Mike, if you can hear me, come on, man! It’s time to play. Drop the chick and get your ass up here ... now!’ Another minute went by [and] all of a sudden this lanky, frizzy-haired freak came running onstage, laughing and grabbing up his guitar. He then proceeded to burn his memory into my head forever.” Judging from a recording made by an audience member, the Flag’s performance was quite good. The band opened with a new tune by Buddy Miles, a stomping instrumental called “Soul Searchin’,” and when they played “Groovin’ Is Easy” some in the crowd could be heard to sing along. Clearly the FM radio exposure was having some effect – in the San Francisco area at least. Their set also included “Goin’ Down Slow,” a Gravenites variation on Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” and the adventurous “Another Country.” They concluded with a rousing rendition of “Wine” and left the audience cheering for more. Immediately following the Santa Clara appearance, the Flag headed up the peninsula to San Francisco for a late afternoon set at the Carousel Ballroom. Bloomfield was late in arriving and the band started without him, causing him to tune at length on stage. The Carousel appearance also had a second evening show during which several other horn players sat in. On May 19, the Electric Flag did a second night at the Carousel after playing an afternoon set at San Jose’s Folk Rock Café. The hectic pace continued the following weekend as the band headed to Los Angeles for a frenetic series of concert performances and a television taping session for the John Gary Show. Emanating from Miami, singer Gary’s 90-minute variety program was in its second series and had recently begun taping acts in LA. The Flag’s appearance, no doubt arranged by Albert Grossman, was scheduled to air on network stations June 2. On Friday, May 24, the band opened for Cream at UC Berkeley’s Robertson Gym and then headed to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for a show featuring Dr. John and the Velvet Underground. On Sunday, May 25, they again played the Shrine and also did a set at the Selland Arena in Fresno. Stories of the Flag’s pending breakup followed them wherever they went. “Gossip had it that singer Nick Gravenites, drummer-singer Buddy Miles and the four-piece [sic] brass section no longer were a part of Bloomfield & Co., but all were there, joyfully active,” reported the Los Angeles Times of the Shrine appearance. Oddly, it seemed that the band was about to leave Michael, and not the other way around. The reviewer went on to say, “[Bloomfield] bounces around the stage in a perpetual state of excitement, seemingly too in love with the sounds of his guitar to remember to face the audience.” The band, despite its internal woes, continued to give exceptional performances.
The end The weeks of constant performing capped by the back-to-back Los Angeles-area shows were too much for Michael Bloomfield. He had lost weight in the preceding months and wasn’t sleeping well when he was sleeping at all. His drug use had become habitual and was exacerbating the problem. His wife had left him and his home life was in a shambles. He had let Albert Grossman know repeatedly that he was unhappy, but the avuncular Grossman had always been able to cajole Michael into continuing. Now the star guitarist told his manager he was through. It was a scene reminiscent of his departure from the Butterfield Blues Band only 15 months earlier. “I stone quit, man,” Bloomfield later told Ed Ward. “I’ll never forget the night I quit. We had been booked into three gigs in three states in one night. It was the fault of some booking agent who had obviously forgotten that these are people and we can only make so many gigs. So I flew home. That was it. I said, ‘I ain’t gonna do it no more.’” Exaggeration aside, Michael clearly had reached the end. But there were obligations outstanding. The Electric Flag – Michael Bloomfield’s Electric Flag – had booked performances months in advance. And there was the question of finances. In describing the breakup, Rolling Stone reported that “it cost [Michael] dearly” to quit the Flag. Presumably there were substantial advance monies and other band-related expenses that were owed Grossman and Columbia. Michael had to make amends and fulfill some of those obligations if he wanted out. But first there was a call from Al Kooper.
“Super Session,” super sales By the late spring of 1968, Al Kooper had left Blood, Sweat & Tears and had taken a position with Columbia Records as a staff producer. In casting about for a project to work on, he had been thinking about the jam session that he and Michael Bloomfield had done with members of Moby Grape in March. He had heard that Bloomfield was on the outs with the Flag and it occurred to him that Michael might be amenable to getting together for another ad-hoc session. It would be a casual, two-day get together in the studio with musicians of their choosing, with no expectations and no commitments. It was an approach that was common in jazz circles, and Kooper thought it might work for rock players as well. With a little cajoling, Al got Bloomfield to agree to the date. Michael asked Eddie Hoh, drummer for the Mamas and the Papas, to join them and Kooper selected the Flag’s Harvey Brooks as the session’s bassist. Both Michael and Harvey were already in Los Angeles playing dates with the Flag, so Al Kooper borrowed a home rented by producer David Rubinson while recording Taj Mahal for a few days to give the musicians a comfortable place to stay. Brooks and Bloomfield finished their Selland Arena show and had Sunday and Monday off before joining Kooper for the impromptu session on Tuesday, May 28. The first night in the studio went smoothly with the musicians working well together and logging six hours of recording time. Barry Goldberg, who was also in Los Angeles with his new band, the Barry Goldberg Reunion, came by to sit in on piano for a few numbers. Photographer Jim Marshall took pictures and singer Linda Ronstadt stopped in to watch the session’s progress. By late in the evening, the musicians had a couple of blues, two soul tunes and a lengthy modal piece in a waltz tempo in the can. They drove a rented car to their lodgings and turned in for the night. In the morning, Al Kooper awoke to discover that Michael had disappeared in the early hours of May 29. He had left Kooper a note saying, “Dear Alan, Couldn’t sleep well … went home … sorry.” Bloomfield’s insomnia and anxiety had been building for weeks, and it had finally overwhelmed him. He had waxed some of his best studio playing ever under Kooper’s guidance, but he couldn’t continue. He could no longer cope with the stresses real and imagined. Al Kooper later speculated to Keenom and Wolkin that Michael hadn’t been able to score any heroin while in Los Angeles and that had pushed him over the edge. Apparently Bloomfield had made numerous phone calls from his room in the rented house before deciding to leave. It seemed obvious that, though he had never said anything to Kooper, Bloomfield was desperately trying to make a connection. Kooper hastily found a replacement in Steve Stills and salvaged what remained of their studio time to compile enough material for an album. When released in August 1968, “Super Session,” as Kooper prophetically named it, would climb to number 13 on the Billboard charts based largely on the appeal of Michael Bloomfield’s superb guitar playing, and Stills’ and Kooper’s lengthy version of Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.” Ironically, Michael had achieved his first and only hit record with a session that nearly hadn’t happened and that had little planning and even less thought put into it. Michael Bloomfield considered it to be a musical scam of the first order.
One last show That Wednesday, the day of Michael’s abrupt departure from Al Kooper’s super session, the Electric Flag was scheduled to appear at an evening show at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Harvey Brooks spent the afternoon finishing up the Kooper date with Stills now on guitar and then joined the other Flag members at UC Santa Barbara. Bloomfield almost certainly didn’t make the show. He had retreated to San Francisco and was probably recuperating from his days on the road and his nights of no sleep. But his obligations to Columbia and to Albert Grossman remained. Even if he was no longer a part of the band he had created, he had to meet those. One was a date scheduled for the second weekend in June at Bill Graham’s newly opened Fillmore East in New York City. Graham was expecting the Electric Flag with Michael Bloomfield to appear on June 7 and 8, and that meant one more road trip for Michael. The weekend shows at the Fillmore would also include Quicksilver Messenger Service and a new, up-and-coming band called Steppenwolf. By now, those who followed the ebb and flow of pop music knew that the Flag was losing its star guitarist. The New York show was to be the last gig Bloomfield would do with the Electric Flag, and there was considerable interest. Even the New York Times took notice. Robert Shelton caught the June 8 performance and reported in the Times that Bloomfield was making “his final appearance” with the Flag, and that it was “a sentimental moment and crossroads event, for the band was just coming into its own as a cohesive unit.” He added that “Soul Searchin’” and “Killing Floor” drew the greatest response from the capacity crowd. John Kay of Steppenwolf recalled that Saturday was the Flag’s “last night with Mike Bloomfield and the first night for their new guitar player – they were both playing that night.” Though there is some question as to who that second guitarist was, Hoshal Wright, another friend of Buddy’s from Omaha, would be hired to replace Michael. Photos from those final nights show the band on the Fillmore’s stage, dwarfed by the huge light show images on the screen behind them. Bloomfield, looking bushy-headed and wild, is shown soloing with closed-eye intensity. In a final irony, Jimi Hendrix sat in with the Flag after their late show performance on Saturday. The symbolism must have been obvious, at least to Michael – if Bloomfield could no longer cut it with the Flag, Hendrix certainly could. Reports are that Michael left the stage before Jimi came up to jam.
The aftermath The Electric Flag soldiered on, despite the departure of its founding member. They were back in Los Angeles the following week, playing at Huntington Beach’s Golden Bear on June 14 and 15, and at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood on June 28. It had been almost exactly a year since the Flag had made its debut at Monterey, and much had happened since then … and not happened. Michael Bloomfield returned to the comforts of Mill Valley. He may have made a guest appearance or two with the Flag before the end of the summer, but his relationship with the band was finished. Instead, he would go on to assemble a loose group of friends who would play with him on and off in casual settings right up until his death in 1981. He would never organize a permanent band again, and he would forever shun the spotlight that had been focused on him at Monterey. The success of the “Super Session” album would bring him some lasting fame, but it was fame that would eventually drive Michael to distraction as audiences demanded over and over that he play “Season of the Witch.” In his last decade, Bloomfield continued to explore different forms of American music – country, R&B, classic jazz, ragtime and the blues – always the blues. He produced recordings on small labels with his friend Norman Dayron, played small clubs when he was into playing and even gave college-level lectures on American music. The Electric Flag never lived up to its potential. But while it existed, it showed the way for many other bands, and it opened the ears of anyone who cared to listen. The Flag was the first rock band truly to mine the treasures of America’s rich cultural history. It deserves to be remembered for those reasons alone. But the Flag also captured the essential elements of American music – the energy and innovation, the joy of freedom, the risk-it-all panache. No other group succeeded in merging the various currents of the great American musical river as the Flag did. Few other groups could so amaze and delight listeners, wowing them with their big sound, technical virtuosity, encyclopedic knowledge of musical style and showmanship. Buddy Miles summed up his time with the band this way: “There were many bands that were a part of my life, but to me, the Electric Flag was the epitome. [It] was everything to me. But then I went on and played with Jimi, and that was fantastic. But what was strange was I felt more at home playing with Michael.”
Epilogue There is truth to the saying, “You can never go home again.” The Electric Flag was hoisted again in an ill-fated reunion organized by Barry Goldberg in 1974. Despite serious reservations (and perhaps because of a need for some quick cash), Michael Bloomfield agreed to join. Nick Gravenites and Buddy Miles also signed on, and Roger “Jellyroll” Troy, a gifted bass player and singer who was an integral part of Michael’s working band, stood in for Harvey Brooks. The ensemble signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records, the label they had originally favored back in 1967, and arranged to have the legendary Jerry Wexler produce them. Recording sessions were slated to take place in Miami in the summer of 1974. After personality issues and old conflicts disrupted the July studio efforts, the remainder of the recording was completed in overdubbing sessions. A disgusted Bloomfield added his lead tracks at a studio in San Francisco, a horn section was grafted on by contract players from Muscle Shoals and various studio musicians were added on guitar and keyboards to fill in the blanks. The resulting album, erroneously titled “The Band Kept Playing,” was released in November 1974. The critics were not impressed. Ironically, the band did perform in concert numerous times between July 1974 and January 1975. Though most histories of the Flag give the impression that the band disintegrated immediately following its recording debacle in Miami, the band actually lasted six months and even made a television appearance. Michael continued to be involved despite his misgivings most likely because he was being dunned by the IRS for back taxes in 1974 and desperately needed the money. The reunited Flag’s first public performance came at the notorious Ozark Music Festival in Sedalia, MO, on the weekend of July 19. Now nearly forgotten, the Ozark extravaganza rivaled Woodstock in size and scope but, unlike Woodstock, devolved into a weekend of debauchery and hard drugs. The resulting property damage engendered lawsuits and legal action that tied the festival promoters up in the Missouri state courts for years. The Flag did indeed play amid the chaos, however, and even received a flattering review in one local paper. Ensuing appearances included shows in such disparate locations as Decatur, IL, Allentown, PA, New York City and Honolulu during the fall and winter. The band also did numerous gigs in California and recorded a segment for ABC-TV that appeared on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert in April 1975. By that time, however, the group had ceased to exist. Bloomfield left the reconstituted Electric Flag to take on an even more onerous project – a commercial “supergroup” called KGB. And this time he stated clearly that he was only in it for the money. That endeavor never even succeeded in touring and fizzled before its eponymously titled album was issued. One positive result was that Michael, feeling the need to do something with integrity, went into the studio to record a remarkable folkloric album for Guitar Player magazine. But the Electric Flag – the original band – still stands at an apex in Michael Bloomfield’s remarkable career. Its music and the music of Michael Bloomfield should be given their proper place in pop music history and deserve to be heard by a wider audience. With time, it is hoped, those things will come to pass. Page 1 • Page 2 • Page 3 • Electric Flag on CD • Previous • 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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