An American Music Band - Mike Bloomfield: An American Guitarist

An American
Music Band
Michael Bloomfield’s Electric Flag
AT THE END OF FEBRUARY 1967,
the Paul Butterfield Blues Band
returned to Boston for the second
time in just over a month. The band
had been on the road constantly
since returning from its first tour
abroad, a 30-day whirlwind tour of 28 different venues in England and Scotland in November. Since
their arrival back in the states, the Butterfield Band
had played New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles
and numerous places in between. Now they were
back in Boston.
They were scheduled to play three
BY DAVID
colleges in one day – a chilly Saturday,
DANN
February 25. The shows were to begin
at noon with an appearance at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and the guys
had to unload the van and set up the equipment first.
Butterfield’s star guitarist, Michael Bloomfield, lost it.
In a state of agitation, the exhausted Bloomfield
had been suffering from insomnia for weeks. His
was a hyperactive personality under the best of circumstances, and now the band’s non-stop gigging
had thrown his system into disarray. He could no
longer stand the demands of performing night
THE FLAG UNFURLS: Michael Bloomfield’s “American Music Band” opens for Cream at the Fillmore Auditorium in
San Francisco on August 29, 1967. From left, Nick Gravenites, Bloomfield, Buddy Miles (behind drums), Harvey
Brooks, unknown and Peter Strazza. The alto player replaced trumpeter Marcus Doubleday who apparently did not
perform that evening. PHOTO COURTESY OF RICHARD LEWIS
after night.
He decided he had to quit the band that day.
The band that had brought electric, Chicago-style
blues to folk and rock audiences, inspired pop musicians to learn to play their instruments, introduced
audiences to the concept of extended, intelligent
instrumentals that were listened to, and jump-started
the soon-to-be world famous San Francisco music
scene, was suddenly without its featured soloist.
And Michael Bloomfield was suddenly without a
gig.
Bloomfield retreated to his Christopher Street
apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village to rest
up and think things over.
It wasn’t long before he began to think he should
have his own band.
Forgotten Flag
Ask a pop music fan to name a rock group with
horns and you’ll likely hear the band Chicago mentioned. If your interlocutor has been around awhile,
Blood, Sweat & Tears might come up, or maybe
2
Tower of Power.
But that’s likely to be as far as it goes.
Few today recall that there was another rock/horn
band – a band that started it all. Or, if they do recall,
they don’t recall much about it.
The Electric Flag deserves a better fate.
The creation of Mike Bloomfield, America’s first
electric guitar hero, the Electric Flag was a groundbreaker in a numerous ways. In addition to being
pop music’s first rock band to include a horn section,
it pioneered the use of electronic instruments, blended a variety of musical genres, experimented with
sound sampling and was one of the early raciallymixed pop bands. It also had the dubious distinction
of being rock’s first “supergroup.”
Because the Flag has been largely ignored by critics since its dissolution in 1968, its story has never
really been told in detail. A rock ’n roll rags-to-riches-to-rags tale, the history of Michael Bloomfield’s
experiment in American music makes for interesting
reading. But it also foreshadows the growth of
The Electric Flag’s
recordings & bootlegs
The following series of reviews and
analyses attempts to provide the listener
with a guide to the Electric Flag’s music.
Included are most bootlegs that document
the band’s creative output over its 11month existence and give an excellent picture of one of the most innovative rock
bands of the late sixties.
Soundtrack to “The Trip”
Late April/early May 1967
Universal Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Sidewalk ST-5908
During a 10-day period in the spring of
1967, the Electric Flag worked in the studio on the music that would eventually
American pop music away from the narrow confines
of its segregated genres and toward an open confluence of styles and cultures. For that reason alone,
music lovers – especially American music lovers –
should know about the Electric Flag.
An idea
In March, pop singer Mitch Ryder was in New
York working on his next album.
Barry Goldberg, then playing keyboards for Ryder
in the studio, knew Michael
Bloomfield from their days in
Chicago. He also knew Bloomfield
was in New York with time on his
hands, doing occasional sessions as
a sideman for Richie Havens, Eddie
“Cleanhead" Vinson, James Cotton
MITCH RYDER
and others. So he arranged for
Michael Bloomfield to play guitar on Ryder’s session.
Mitch had had a string of hits in 1965 and ’66 with
form the soundtrack to the movie “The
Trip.” It was their first project as a cohesive
band.
The sessions sometimes included the
full group but more often utilized just a few
of the Flag’s players, depending on the
music’s purpose. Some of the more
provocative sounds were created early on
by a quartet comprised of Bloomfield,
Goldberg, Gravenites and Paul Beaver.
Those pieces – “Joint Passing,” “M-23,”
“Synesthesia,” “A Little Head,” “Inner
Pocket” and “Fewghh” – create a richly
diverse series of moods and at times
anticipate John Cale’s Velvet Underground
experiments. Bloomfield uses controlled
feedback, volume effects and overdubbing,
playing both electric and acoustic guitars.
Barry Goldberg augments his organ with
harpsichord, piano and celeste. And
“Little Latin Lupe Lu,” “Devil with a Blue Dress”
and “Jenny Take a Ride.” But now he was trying to
move beyond those high energy soul-rock recordings done with his group, the Detroit Wheels, and he
wanted a really good guitarist to for his first solo
effort. Michael was acknowledged as the best guitarist around, and Goldberg obliged Ryder by bringing his friend to the date.
It was after this session, while in Goldberg’s room
at the Albert Hotel, that Bloomfield told Barry he
wanted to start his own band, a band with horns like
those that recorded for Stax and Atlantic. He especially wanted a band that would play American
music. All kinds of American music.
While he had been on tour with the Butterfield
Band in England, Bloomfield said, he had heard Eric
Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck and other English
musicians play American blues. They played it well,
and they were becoming known in the States. The
blues, it seemed, had to cross the Atlantic to reach a
wider audience in its home country.
Dates included in this review
• “The Trip,” May/June 1967
• Monterey Pop Festival, 6/17/67
• Psychedelic Supermarket, 11/67
• Fillmore Auditorium, 12/07/67
• Winterland Ballroom, 12/08/67
• Carousel Ballroom, 4/21/68
• Santa Clara Pop Festival, 5/18/68
prominently featured in “Synesthesia” is
another instrument unusual for 1967 – an
electric violin. It’s played by Bobby
Notkoff, who is making his recording
debut.
Notkoff uses a conventional fiddle with a
Gerry-rigged pick-up – really a small
microphone modified to fit his instrument
– to produce his sound. His pure tone and
excellent intonation would soon gain him
numerous studio sessions and eventually
secure him a place in Neil Young’s group
Crazy Horse.
After a few days, the other band members were in the studio and the group
began sounding more like the Electric
Flag.
Trumpeter Marcus Doubleday recorded
the curious two-beat march, “Hobbit,” with
Goldberg playing quirky countermelodies
on organ accompanied by a rhythm section
consisting of bassist Brooks and
Bloomfield on spoons. Doubleday also
plays a neo-Mariachi piece (Herb Alpertmeets-San Francisco) called “Green &
Gold” which accompanies the film’s
scenes of Fonda wandering in the woods
followed by a damsel in flowing attire and
two ominous, hooded riders on horseback.
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Michael adds a marvelous harmony part on guitar to
Marcus’ clear-toned, slightly-behind-the-beat attack
which perfectly evokes the laconic pleasures of Mexican
border music.
Buddy Miles makes his first appearance in the studio
on a fractured waltz called “The Other Ed Norton” which
serves to set the mood for the film’s surreal carnival
scene. The piece features drums, a calliope, orchestra
bells, the Moog, a shrill ocarina and Bloomfield playing
suck-and-blow harmonica. After an off-kilter opening
segment, Doubleday enters playing a melody which
sounds a bit like a warm-up exercise for baroque trumpet. Marcus’ fine classical technique is on full display,
lending credibility to superlatives that were often used to
describe his playing back in Seattle.
Miles and Paul Beaver open “Flash, Bam, Pow” with a
furious drum-and-synthesizer duet, a crescendo reminiscent of the collective cacophony sometimes heard in
free jazz pieces. Here it underscores a moment of panic
on screen as Fonda’s stoned character flees – of all
things – menacing coats in a closet. The piece then
kicks into a heavy rock beat driven by a power trio of
guitar, bass and drums and closes with a pastiche of
Beaver’s synthesizer noises – oscillations, hisses, gurgles and the like.
Interestingly, a group of avant garde jazz musicians
from Chicago – Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie and
Roscoe Mitchell – who would later become the famed
Art Ensemble of Chicago had briefly been Bloomfield’s
neighbors on Wellesley Court. Bloomfield knew their
wildly eclectic music, and he knew more than a little
about contemporary jazz improvisation. (Pete Welding, a
writer for Downbeat magazine and a record producer,
had given Michael a crash course in jazz in the early
’60s and the guitarist took inspiration from John
Coltrane’s work in putting together “East-West” with the
Butterfield Band.) So the tumultuous beginning to
“Flash, Bam, Pow” – something unheard of in pop
music – may have been inspired by the music of the Art
Ensemble or by other jazz avants. It was, for Bloomfield,
just another musical color in his ever-broadening palette
of aural styles.
“Home Room” is a pop ditty that featured both horns
for the first time – Peter Strazza having joined the ses-
In fact, nearly all of the music coming from Britain
in 1966 was deeply rooted in American culture. The
Rolling Stones, having taken their name from the
Muddy Waters tune, fashioned a string of Top 40
hits out of American blues and soul forms. Pop
bands like the Beatles and the Who aped Chuck
Berry and Little Richard. British bands had dominated American music charts since their 1964 “invasion.”
Michael Bloomfield felt it was time that the disparate styles of American music – R&B, country,
bluegrass, folk and especially electric
blues – be played by an American
band, a band with horns like those of
B.B. King or James Brown. A band
with a soulful sound like the session
players at Stax Records were famous
for. And Bloomfield wanted to show
the music world how it could be
done.
He would create an American
music band.
have been the drummer for Mitch Ryder’s solo
recording session. Because he couldn’t read music,
however, he had been replaced with Bernard Purdie.
Bloomfield and Goldberg didn’t
encounter him until March 26 when
they went to Murray the K’s Easter
Show in New York, an extravaganza
that featured Mitch Ryder among
others.
Murray Kaufman, a New York
radio host who had billed himself as MURRAY
KAUFMAN
the “fifth Beatle” in the early ’60s,
was a producer of marathon rock ’n’
roll shows that featured bands like
Cream, the Who, Otis Redding,
James Brown and many others.
Though something of a cultural
anachronism by 1967, Kaufman still
played an important role in introducing new acts to wider audiences with
his epic productions. He inadvertently performed that function for
Bloomfield and Goldberg that
The band
Sunday.
It didn’t take much to get
As luck would have it, Wilson
Goldberg to sign on to the project.
Pickett’s group was part of Murray’s
He and Bloomfield went looking
Easter Show and Miles was Pickett’s
for other band members.
drummer. Buddy’s massive sound so
Bassist Harvey Brooks, who had IT WAS AT one of Murray the K’s impressed the two Chicagoans that
played with Bloomfield on Bob week-long Easter Shows that
they took him back to the Albert Hotel,
Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” Bloomfield and Barry Goldberg the story goes, and fed him Oreo cooksessions in the summer of 1965, first heard drummer Buddy
ies and stories of pretty San Francisco
Miles. TWTD.BLUEMOUNTAINS.NET.AU
agreed to join the new group
girls until he agreed to leave Pickett
despite his growing and very successful studio
and join their new group. Bloomfield was elated to
career. Brooks knew of a drummer named Buddy
discover that Miles was also an excellent singer.
Miles through a connection with disc jockey and
Mitch Ryder was asked to be the band’s main
impresario Murray the K. He recommended Miles to
vocalist but he declined, preferring to remain with
Bloomfield and Goldberg and, though they had
the Detroit Wheels. Nick Gravenites, another friend
been considering Billy Mundi of the Mothers of
from Chicago who was living in San Francisco, was
Invention for their rhythm section, they were
Bloomfield’s next choice, and he readily accepted.
intrigued by the prospect that Miles presented.
For the horn section, Bloomfield initially hired two
As Michael told it, the 19-year-old Buddy was to
excellent players.
4
Peter Strazza joined the band on tenor saxophone.
He was a friend of Barry’s from the keyboardist’s
days in Chicago. The two had played together in the
Windy City when Strazza had come west from
Connecticut with a band called Robbie & the
Troubadours.
Trumpeter Marcus Doubleday was recommended
by jazz guitarist Larry Coryell. From Seattle,
Doubleday had done session work with the Drifters,
Jan and Dean, and Bobby Vinton and had a fine classical tone. He was known as something of a jazz
player and was a capable improviser.
The band would be a septet to start.
City by the Bay
Michael decided to base the new band on the West
Coast. He had spent quite a bit of time playing at San
Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium with Butterfield
and knew that the city had a vibrant and happening
music scene. It also had a relaxed, tolerant attitude
toward nearly everything, including drugs. Because
sions on tenor saxophone. Another pop
piece, “Practice Music,” must have sounded dated even in the fall of 1967 when the
soundtrack was released. Based on the
“Louie Louie” chord pattern, the hornless
tune has Gravenites playing rhythm guitar
behind a brief Bloomfield solo and fades
after a theme evoking the Righteous
Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”
It’s heard during the first nightclub scene
while Fonda scores his acid and a rock band
practices on stage in the background. The
band, looking very young and slightly awkward, is the International Submarine Band,
and the trite tune fits perfectly with their
vaguely unhip appearance.
On the appropriately named “Peter Gets
Off,” Strazza is the soloist, backed by a
furiously comping Bloomfield and by
Harvey Brook’s loping bass. A one-chord
jam, the tune eventually gets away from
Nick Gravenites was already there, Michael asked
him to find a house for the band. Michael sent his
wife, Susan, out to the Bay Area from Chicago to
help with the search.
In short order they found a place on Wellesley
Court in Mill Valley, just across the bay from San
Francisco. Bloomfield’s manager, Albert Grossman,
agreed to provide the funds for the rental and for the
group’s daily necessities.
The band members made their way to Mill Valley
during the first weeks of April 1967. Barry was
deathly afraid of flying and drove all the way from
New York with Peter Strazza.
The musicians initially joined Michael and Susan
in the house on Wellesley Court, where a number of
Bengal musicians working with Grossman were also
briefly quartered. Within a few weeks, however,
Bloomfield had individual houses for his men. The
band members – all seven of them – were probably
in place in Mill Valley by mid-April and by the end
of the month were beginning to woodshed on vari-
Strazza whose chops aren’t quite up to the
task. The piece works quite well however as
accompaniment to the bad portion of
Fonda’s trip as he races through the clubhopping crowds on a busy street.
Bloomfield gets a chance to stretch out
on the hornless “Fine Jung Thing,” soloing
at length on blues changes with an altered
turn-around while Gravenites again plays
rhythm. At more than seven minutes, this is
the longest piece the band recorded for the
movie and it serves well to build the intensity of the second nightclub scene. As
Fonda’s dazed character cluelessly banters
with an impatient waitress, dancers writhe
and the ISB is again seen working out (not
very convincingly) on stage.
It’s curious how Michael’s guitar sound
on “Fine Jung Thing” differs from the classic Bloomfield tone. It’s possible that he
may have played whatever guitar was on
ous R&B and soul tunes while developing the band’s
sound. They also set to work on a new tune by Nick
Gravenites called “Groovin’ Is Easy.”
Hollywood calls
In late April, though, an unusual opportunity
arose. Actor Peter Fonda was looking around San
Francisco for a band to replace Gram Parsons’
International Submarine Band on the soundtrack for
a film he was doing in Los Angeles
with Jack Nicholson and Roger
Corman. Titled “The Trip,” the
movie – about the new drug LSD –
was typical of Corman’s quick,
cheaply-made features concerning
lurid subjects. Fonda, however, was
GRAM PARSONS
taking the picture seriously as an
artistic endeavor and wanted the soundtrack to
embody the true counterculture experience.
He may have encountered the nascent Electric
Flag jamming in some capacity at a local venue at the
hand in Universal’s studios, something he
was known to do. Paul Rothchild, producer
of the first Butterfield recording for Elektra,
recalled that Bloomfield had used a studio
Hagstrom to record some of the tunes on
that record.
More of Bloomfield’s guitar talents are
again featured on “Gettin’ Hard,” a heavy
Chicago-style blues based loosely on
Muddy Waters’ “I Just Want to Make Love
to You.” The choice of tune was appropriate, as the insistent beat accompanies the
final love scene between Fonda and co-star
Salli Sachse. Strazza plays both tenor and
baritone saxophones, and he and
Doubleday ran through typical riffs while
backing the soloist. The tune is the first
example of the Electric Flag covering a
straight blues number, a practice that would
provide them with a large part of their concert repertory over the next year.
“Senior Citizen,” a classic jazz parody
with pretty chord changes, lets the horns
tailgate around a simple theme in typical
New Orleans fashion. Featuring Barry
Goldberg playing tack-hammer piano while
providing a subtle continuo on organ, the
piece is comprised of several run-throughs
of a melody and a couple of “oh-foh-deeoh-doh” breaks punctuated by Doubleday’s
trumpet. “Psyche Soap,” also a Dixielandstyle send-up, is the only tune to feature a
vocal. It provides the sound of a commercial
heard after Fonda’s character turns on a TV
early in the film. Nick Gravenites sings about
the title product through what sounds like a
megaphone, accompanied by trumpet,
piano, guitar, bass and drums. The piece
runs less than a minute and provides an
incidental moment of comic relief.
“Peter’s Trip” – the movie’s title tune –
Continued
next page
likewise has no real soloist
but on
brings
5
together all the musicians for a full
ensemble effort. Its form is played
through four times on the soundtrack
album with Notkoff’s electric violin in
the lead on the Eastern-sounding
theme and Goldberg’s harpsichord
lending Baroque touch. Framed at
both ends by Paul Beaver’s tick-tocking Moog, the piece sounds at once
oddly dated and enticingly exotic.
Movie goers, however, could leave
the theater humming its simple but
memorable melody as it recurs
repeatedly throughout the duration of
“The Trip.”
Aside from a few minutes of material from a crash pad scene and parts
of the film’s trailer, all the music used
in “The Trip” is contained on the
Sidewalk release.
The Monterey Pop
performance
June 17, 1967
Monterey Pop Festival, Monterey CA
Soundboard recording
After John Phillips’ introduction, it
appears the first tune the Electric Flag
performs was the one that would
become its first release and its signature number, “Groovin’ Is Easy.”
All the tune’s sections are fully
realized, even at this early date.
Bloomfield’s opening harmonic is
embellished by a horn fanfare as
Harvey Brooks’ descending bass line
ushers in the piece’s initial chords
and melody. The playing is tight,
Miles’ drumming is precise and the
sound balance is good despite
Michael’s guitar’s being somewhat off
mic. This is clearly an arrangement
that the band is thoroughly familiar
with.
After the 10-bar introduction, the
horns punch the downbeat and the
Flag kicks the tune into tempo – a bit
rushed when compared to the studio
version of “Groovin’.” Nick Gravenites
sings two verses with the horns offering crisp support and Bloomfield’s
fills, more felt than heard. A 6-bar
guitar interlude follows, with Michael
plucking the raga-tinged melody over
a bagpipes-like drone from the horns,
organ and bass. This odd section
ends with Bloomfield stretching up to
a high A, and Gravenites returns for
one more verse and a vamp. Sounding
a bit breathless, he overreaches his
range with repeated cries while the
band thunders along behind him.
In later performances of “Groovin’,”
Michael would echo Nick’s vocal
embellishments at this point and then
would extend the vamp with an
intense solo of his own. But here he
merely comps for the vamp’s 16 bars
and then closes the piece on another
fat-sounding stretch – this time to a
high D.
There is thunderous applause and
repeated “Thank-yous” from Nick.
Clearly wound up, he then says,
“Right. Whew!” and Bloomfield begins
to tune. Here the recording stops.
When it resumes, Buddy Miles is
the vocalist and the number is Nappy
Brown’s “(Night Time Is) The Right
Time,” which had been a Ray Charles
hit.
Opening with a standard walking
bass line doubled by the horns, the
medium-tempo blues sounds solid
though a bit thin. Barry Goldberg’s
organ is oddly missing from the mix
and, aside from a few fills,
Bloomfield’s guitar is relegated to a
rhythm function for the first two choruses. Gravenites sings back-up – the
“night-and-day” refrain – and sounds
unconvincing; Michael and Harvey
may have also joined in on the refrain
but, as can be seen in D.A.
Pennebaker’s footage of the Flag’s
performance of the finale “Wine,”
their mics are off.
Buddy, however, is exuberant. He
toys with the lyrics, improvising on
them here and there, and urging the
band several times to “play it one
more time!” On the third chorus he
repeatedly interjects “Baby!” – and
Michael’s guitar is right there echoing
his shouts, engaging him in call-andresponse. The passage offers a first
glimpse of an electrifying routine that
he and Miles would perfect over the
next ten months.
Next Michael solos for two, his Les
Paul cranked to produce the trademark fat Bloomfield tone. He careens
through his first chorus, using sustain
and distortion to push the beat and
jack up the tension. Harvey Brooks
offers support with a series of staccato triplets while the horns continue
their languid bassline riffing.
Bloomfield then burns through a second chorus as intense as the first, but
fails to build to the crescendo set up
by his initial 12 bars. It’s as though
he’s started at the top and can go no
higher.
Miles returns with the revealing
interjection, “Alright … and I’m so
proud!” He then improvises around
the lyrics, riffing and shouting before
returning to the refrain for three choruses. Barry Goldberg’s electric piano
can finally be heard, and Bloomfield
provides heavy chords and fills as the
end of April. They had no official name yet, and they
had no repertory, but the group must have seemed
like an exciting alternative to Gram Parsons’ band.
The ISB’s sound had been deemed
too staid by Corman for the movie’s
controversial topic. Parsons’ close
friend, actor Brandon de Wilde,
had a small, uncredited part in the
movie; it was he who had originally suggested the ISB to Corman.
Ironically, it may have been ROGER CORMAN
Parsons himself who introduced Fonda to the Flag,
for the band had been rehearsing at Gram’s Laurel
Canyon home in April.
Through Albert Grossman, Fonda arranged for
the band to provide the music for the soundtrack to
“The Trip.”
Experimenting in the studio
Bloomfield threw himself into the project with relish. He had been inspired by the work of producers
Phil Spector and Bob Crewe and he knew what
groups like the Beach Boys and the Beatles had done
in the studio. He was eager to experiment.
Michael moved the band temporarily to Los
Angeles and began work on the soundtrack recording in late April or early May, probably at United
Artists’ studios on Santa Monica Blvd. in
Hollywood. The UA facility was one that was frequently used for soundtracks and was outfitted with
excellent equipment. “The Trip” soundtrack was to
be issued on Mike Curb’s Sidewalk label, a Capitol
Records subsidiary.
Peter Fonda arranged for the Flag to camp out in
a huge, Spanish castle-like house in the Hollywood
Hills. The rambling structure, located just a stone’s
throw from another castle domicile that had once
belonged to actor Bela Lugosi, was nearly empty.
Each band member was set up in his own suite of
rooms; Barry Goldberg wound up in the basement,
quarters they called “the dungeon."
Much was going on in Los Angeles in the spring
6
of 1967. Other visitors to the City of Angels included
Andy Warhol and members of his Factory retinue.
They were in the city for a series of performances
and openings, and they were also beginning work
on a film called “Imitation of Christ.” One of its players was to be a Warhol superstar, the German actress
and model Nico.
Nico was spending some time with friends on the
Sunset Strip, and somehow hooked up with the
Electric Flag. She may have known Michael from his
days in New York with the Butterfield band when
Warhol parties were de rigueur for all up-and-coming
stars. However Nico made the connection, one
morning Barry Goldberg awoke to find her standing
at the foot of his bed in the dungeon.
For the time that the band was in Los Angeles
recording the soundtrack, Nico insisted on driving
their van back and forth from the castle to the studio.
Her exotic presence must have made the project
seem even more surreal than it already was.
Corman’s movie had been shot in Los Angeles
band builds to a screaming climax. Buddy
flails at his kit, riding his cymbals and
singing for all he’s worth until the final
chorus’s turnaround. The band pauses on
the sub-dominant and Michael gets off a
last fiery volley before the concluding
flourish. The crowd roars its approval
before the recording quickly fades.
After the Electric Flag’s elaborate
arrangement of “Groovin’,” “Night Time”
comes off as a somewhat perfunctory and
under developed performance. Here perhaps
is evidence for Michael Bloomfield’s dissatisfaction with the group’s Monterey appearance – the tune clearly does not rise to the
standard the Flag set for itself. Though it
does surpass much of the music played by
other groups that afternoon, “Night Time”
lacks the verve and creativity that the members of the Electric Flag thought their music
should have.
WARHOL ACTRESS Nico, seen here at a friend’s home in
Los Angeles in the summer of 1967, spent time with the
Flag during their recording sessions for “The Trip.” LISA
LAW PHOTO; HTTP://SMIRONNE.FREE.FR/NICO
over a seventeen-day period, beginning probably in
mid-March 1967 and finishing up in early April. By
the time Bloomfield and crew began working on the
film’s score, parts of the movie had been edited and
were available for screenings for the musicians. By
The set’s last piece reestablishes that
standard – and then some. Though a few of
the tunes that preceded “Wine” may have
been lackluster, the band’s arrangement of
Sticks McGhee’s 1947 classic fairly crackles with excitement. Counted off by Nick
Gravenites at nearly a shout, the band hits
the ground running. They sail through a
portion of the refrain melody and then
vamp for four bars until Nick comes in with
the first clever verse. The tempo is fleet,
the playing precise – this is one tune that’s
been thought out and well-rehearsed.
Gravenites enters, clearly enjoy himself.
Bloomfield comps jump-band style while
the horns furiously swing the accompanying
riffs. Nick finishes the first verse and goes
on to the refrain with nearly inaudible backup vocals from Brooks and Bloomfield. At
the end of the refrain chorus, the band rears
back for a series of stops before Buddy
the end of May, Corman himself had moved on to
other things and had largely left it to Fonda and
Nicholson to complete the project.
Paul Beaver, a former jazz organist, was at that
time working as a sound effects man for the
Hollywood movie studios and was very interested
in electronic music. Bloomfield learned about him –
probably through Corman’s people – and hired him
to play on the soundtrack. In the spring of 1967,
Beaver acquired one of the very first synthesizers
built by Robert Moog and Michael decided to use it
extensively in the music for the film.
It’s likely that Bloomfield, Barry Goldberg and
Harvey Brooks were the first to lay down tracks
in the studio with Beaver. They worked up a number of improvised, impressionistic pieces that
used the Moog as a fully realized instrument.
Beaver didn’t just create movie sound effects – he
contributed musical elements, raising the Moog
from an electronic novelty to a full-fledged member of the band.
kicks in a chromatic climb to fourth chord.
Then it’s Michael’s show.
He starts out with a sustained note held
for one bar and then fires off a fusillade of
crisp lines to complete the first chorus.
Michael starts a second by stretching up to
a high G and holding it for nearly two bars,
striking the string several times for maximum sustain and volume with his right arm
extended high in the air. It’s a galvanizing
gesture and the central moment in a wonderfully exciting performance. The horns
come back in and Bloomfield takes a final
chorus that begins with a repeated G to D
leap and ends with another stretch to the
high G.
Nick returns with the verse and chorus
and then repeats the chorus two more
times as the band kicks into high gear with
Goldberg’s organ screaming on the off
beats, the horns switching to a scaler riff,
Bloomfield comping high on the neck and
Buddy thrashing his drums. After the second chorus, the band breaks, plays the
opening refrain melody and then walks
through a turn-around at half tempo while
Bloomfield squeezes out a few final licks.
A final flourish and the huge crowd
erupts with cheers and applause.
In 2002, a release of outtakes from
Pennebaker’s footage made available this
ebullient performance of “Wine.” It stands
as the only known performance on film of
the Flag, and it offers one of the few visual
glimpses of Michael Bloomfield’s extraordinary talent – and the only one that shows
him at the height of his considerable powers. By viewing Pennebaker’s edit of
“Wine,” we not only can hear Bloomfield’s
superb solo but we can watch him wrestle
it from his Les Paul, mouthing his lines in
mock agony like some blues contortionist
7
Recording sessions for “The Trip” reportedly lasted 10 days.
The Flag’s first release
The studio sessions for “The Trip” must have been
completed sometime in mid-May 1967. Michael
Bloomfield did the soundtrack’s mixing and production at Capitol through the last weeks of that month,
and probably finished up in June.
The movie was released in early August, opening
in New York on August 8, and received mixed
reviews. Peter Fonda gave a number of controversial
interviews following its opening in which he touted
the revelations afforded by acid trips as an alternative to conventional therapy. Those provocative
statements, and scenes of brief nudity and love-making, would eventually get “The Trip” banned by the
National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures.
But Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper
had forged an artistic relationship that would lead to
the counterculture hit “Easy Rider” several years
afflicted with shuffle tremors.
Unfortunately, the band’s encore was
unrecorded.
The Psychedelic
Supermarket tunes
November 1-12, 1967
Psychedelic Supermarket; Boston, MA
Private recording
The first extant example of the Electric
Flag as a fully-formed, working band
comes from their two week stay in Boston,
November 1-12, 1967. Recorded from the
audience either by a fan or by the management, the tape’s quality varies as the
band’s big sound occasionally overwhelms
the mix. But it’s clear that the Flag is well
rehearsed and very impressive.
The tape starts after the first few bars of
“Killing Floor,” with Bloomfield soloing
later. That film would blend music and narrative in
ground-breaking ways. And the three actors had
been in the studio much of the time while the Flag
was recording “The Trip,” no doubt being influenced in their pop music tastes by the forceful personality of Michael Bloomfield.
The Flag’s music dominated “The Trip” – it was in
nearly every scene. Roger Corman was quite pleased
with the result and felt the soundtrack helped viewers interpret the on-screen action to a much greater
degree than most film scores do. He later said that
the rapid cutting technique used in the psychedelic
portions of the film provided the composer with a
particularly difficult challenge. And Michael
Bloomfield was the composer of nearly all the film’s
music.
The Sidewalk Records soundtrack appeared soon
after the film’s debut. Though it received only modest promotion and little critical notice, it did catch
the attention of some reviewers. One columnist
declared it to be “an album of many moods and
through the first chorus until Gravenites
roars in with the vocal. Michael’s tone here
is fat and his phrasing is faultless – this is
again Bloomfield at the height of his considerable powers. He follows Nick with a
three-chorus solo, the horns entering on
the third chorus with a repeated staccato
phrase for emphasis. That phrase is a variation of the riff that forms the core of Albert
King’s “Crosscut Saw” (1964) and, in the
studio recording of “Killing Floor,” Michael
would use one of King’s trademark lines
over it. Here, though, the King quote is
missing. After Gravenites returns for another chorus, the band vamps on the four-bar
turnaround for another twenty bars while
Peter Strazza solos on tenor. Then it’s
Gravenites for the final chorus and out.
The audience response is immediate and
enthusiastic. At this point in their exis-
SIDEWALK
RECORDS promoted the Flag’s
soundtrack for
“The Trip” by touting the group’s
appearance at
Monterey. The
label released two
selections –
“Peter’s Trip,” the
movie’s opening
theme, and the
neo-Mariachi piece
“Green & Gold” –
as a single.
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many emotions” and added that “the shaking
impact of the movie lies in the music.”
The recording was also something of a musical
landmark. “The Trip” was one of the first records
(perhaps the first) to feature the Moog synthesizer.
Within a year there would be dozens of synthesizer
tence, the Electric Flag was known to very
few outside of San Francisco, and aside
from “The Trip,” their only record release
had appeared just weeks before their stint
at the Supermarket. Many in the audience
had no doubt read about Mike Bloomfield’s
new band, and most knew his of reputation
from his many visits to Boston with
Butterfield, but practically no one had actually heard the Electric Flag. That the band
was getting over as well as it was is testament to the group’s exciting stage presence and fine playing.
After a minute of tuning, Michael calls
for “Goin’ Down Slow,” and with a rhetorical “Ready?,” kicks off the slow blues.
Nick sings two choruses with laconic horn
backing and fiery fills by Michael. Buddy
Miles offers bold rhythmic support with
kick drum and tom-toms throughout
Bloomfield’s searing two-chorus solo,
building and dropping back along with the
soloist. It’s interesting to note that Miles
seems to use his cymbals much more
sparingly than do most rock or blues
drummers – in fact, during this tune he
hardly use them at all. Gravenites sings the
last chorus and brings the song to a close
with one last “Ohhh … yeah.”
More tuning follows while the audience
patiently waits for the next piece. A word
about Michael Bloomfield and tuning –
because of the extreme string bends he
employed, his guitar frequently required
adjustment from one number to the next.
Harvey Brooks told Keenom and Wolkin
that Michael “had a tuning problem …[he]
was a very physical player. He didn’t
change his strings every day, and we never
really had a guitar-tech guy.” In addition,
8
albums by everyone from the Monkees and Beatle
George Harrison to the esoteric music of groups like
the United States of America and San Francisco’s
Fifty Foot Hose, culminating in the huge commercial
success of Wendy Carlos’s “Switched-On Bach.”
Paul Beaver would go on to become a busy session
player, and he and fellow electronic musician Bernie
Krause would create a number of major-label
recordings of their own. But it was “The Trip” that
pioneered the new technology.
The record was also one of the most adventurous
for pop music in 1967, sampling freely from jazz,
rock, blues and classical idioms, and doing so with
wit and intelligence. It very much favored the eclectic approach toward American musical forms that
Bloomfield wanted the new band to embody. That
Michael could create such unusual and wide-ranging pieces said much for his appreciation and knowledge of those forms, and displayed his characteristic
fearlessness when it came to experimentation.
Bloomfield had a singular way of tuning –
one that depended entirely on his sense of
relative pitch. Instead of playing octaves or
unisons and comparing one in-tune note to
the next, Michael would strum a chord up
on the neck, usually from the top down,
decide which note in the cluster was off,
and tune that note by plucking the open
string and adjusting it up or down. He
would often tune by correcting a note that
had no relevance to chord he’d heard the
sour note in. He can be heard using that
odd method here.
Nick counts off the next tune – Junior
Wells’ “Messin’ with the Kid” (1960?) –
and the band charges ahead. The arrangement is dynamic and tricky, with subtle
rhythmic shifts and an energizing chromatic
walk up to the sub-dominant chord in the
third chorus. Michael solos for three with
ever-mounting intensity while the rhythm
“The Trip” would stand as the Electric Flag’s only
full-length recording for more than half a year. The
band members would struggle from July 1967
through March of the following year to finish their
first Columbia album, and during that time would
be performing constantly, mostly around the Bay
area and in Los Angeles, but also on the road in New
York, Boston, Detroit and other cities. It would not
be until April 1968 that the Flag would have another
album on the market.
Debuting at Monterey
Soon after “The Trip” sessions were completed,
Bloomfield’s band played their first official gig – at a
historic three-day music industry showcase.
Oddly enough, The Electric Flag’s public debut
would come not at the Fillmore Auditorium or some
other manageable San Francisco rock venue. Hoping
to create a buzz for the new band, Albert Grossman
arranged for their premiere performance to occur at
section comps furiously. Gravenites returns
for two more choruses before the band
ends the piece with three repetitions of the
theme. The Flag’s version of Wells’ tune is
taken at a fast tempo – perhaps a little too
fast – and comes off like the original’s
sleeker urban cousin. There is a moment of
silence while the audience catches its
breath, and then a torrent of applause.
Next comes the band’s signature tune –
“Groovin’ Is Easy.” Bloomfield counts it off
and the horns come in with their opening
fanfare. The band plays through the
arrangement behind Gravenites singing
precisely as it did in the studio in July. The
balance – aside from Miles’ stomping
drums – is quite good and the parts blend
well. There is no recognition registered
from the audience; it appears the piece is
new to them. Barry Goldberg, whose
approach to comping is often simply on-
the first great ’60s counterculture extravaganza – the
Monterey Pop Festival.
Organized by Lou
Adler and John Phillips of
the Mamas and the Papas,
a group managed by
Adler, the festival had
been on the drawing
board since March 1967
when producers Alan
Pariser and Ben Shapiro
originally proposed the
idea. By June, Pariser and
Shapiro were out and the
event had evolved into a major showcase for new
rock talent, with record industry executives hoping
to discover emerging stars and vying to sign promising acts. The roster for the weekend event favored
West Coast and progressive rock bands, and while
the-beat chords, here has real parts to play.
His organ moves in and out of the arrangement, its in-sync vibrato complimenting
the moderate tempo like some rapidly
beating heart. The Flag thunders through
the composition and, after Gravenites finishes the final verse, vamps while
Bloomfield fires off a brief solo. Here the
studio version fades, but in live performance “Groovin’” has a delightful ending
that has Michael dropping down several
octaves and the horns reprising their opening fanfare.
The audience immediately responds with
shouts and applause – perhaps a few are
familiar with the tune. There is a pause and
then Nick says, “We’re having a bit of trouble setting up Buddy’s mic.” A woman
responds by shouting, “Turn on the flag!”
Clearly the band is using its namesake
prop by this time.
But it’s not Buddy who is up next. The
tape is stopped and when it resumes,
Michael Bloomfield counts off and begins
to sing “Good to Me.” The piece, written
and recorded by Otis Redding a year earlier, is a slow soul burner with rich horn
parts and a bridge. It was just the sort of
thing that Redding loved to perform on
stage, moaning and shouting the lyrics as
the band followed his every dodge – a tour
de force for a real vocalist. But Michael
was a notoriously shaky singer with wavering pitch, no real range and an unruly
vibrato. On certain tunes he could get by,
but a song like this one could be murder in
the hands of an amateur. Why Bloomfield
elected to sing it with Buddy Miles in the
band is anyone’s guess, but sing it he
does. He puts everything into it, as was his
way, and the band recreates the original in
faithful detail. The tempo is excruciatingly
9
there would be plenty of excitement on the main
stage, the real action would take place backstage as
musicians made contacts and record companies
hawked contracts.
Bloomfield and company had almost no time to
prepare for what was clearly going to be a very
important gig. Grossman had arranged for Clive
Davis of Columbia and Jerry Wexler from Atlantic to
see the Flag perform, and it was expected that two of
the country’s major record labels would then haggle
over the right to sign the group. The terms of the
resulting contract with the winning company were
expected to be very lucrative for the members of the
band and for Albert
Grossman. The Electric Flag
Billed awkwardly would need to put on a
as ’The American great performance.
Music Band’ in
But first, they needed a
name. Billed awkwardly as
the film credits
“The American Music
for ’The Trip,’
Band” in the film credits for
the band came
by its distinctive “The Trip,” the band came
upon its distinctive sobrisobriquet quite
quet quite by chance.
by chance.
Gravenite’s Chicago friend,
Ron Polte, had a novelty
American flag on a pole that flapped in the breeze
provided by an electric fan in its base. It may have
been filched from an American Legion hall (as
Bloomfield claimed in one interview) or purchased
from the brothers of a fraternal organization (as
Bloomfield claimed in another), but whatever its
provenance the flag served as the inspiration for the
group’s official moniker. Polte, who at the time was
the manager of the San Francisco group Quicksilver
Messenger Service, gave it to the band. At many of
the Flag’s gigs, it would be placed atop Barry
Goldberg’s Leslie speaker cabinet and would be
switched on at an appropriately dramatic moment
during a performance.
The flag wasn’t used at Monterey, though. And
the band’s name nearly wasn’t used either. The
slow and the piece threatens to fall
apart at moments, but the horns and
Harvey Brooks’ omnipresent bass
manage to keep things on track. Five
minutes later, Bloomfield concludes
the tune with a guitar arpeggio and
the audience rewards him with polite
applause.
Next up is a medley of familiar
blues and soul tunes. Standard elements of nearly every chitlin’ circuit
review, medleys allowed R&B groups
to perform their past hits and comply
with requests all in one quick performance. Here the Flag pays tribute
to its influences in rapid succession,
using a clever arrangement that was
probably concocted by Bloomfield
with help from Miles and Goldberg.
The horns open with the riff from
the film “The Magnificent Seven” and
then kick into Arthur Conley’s current
hit “Sweet Soul Music,” sung with
gusto by Buddy. It was probably Miles
who suggested that the Flag put
together the medley, and he must
have enjoyed the irony that his former
employer – the cantankerous Wilson
Pickett – would be first mentioned in
the tune’s roster of soul greats.
Then, after a drum flourish, the
arrangement moves on to Little
Richard’s “You Keep a-Knockin’”
(1957) and classic rock gets the nod
with Peter Strazza soloing on tenor for
two choruses backed by Barry
Goldberg’s eights on piano. After
Buddy returns with the refrain, the
tempo shifts and the Flag kicks into
Guitar Slim’s languid 1954 shuffle
blues, “The Things that I Used to Do.”
Goldberg switches to organ and
Bloomfield offers masterful fills,
shadowing Miles’ screaming, rococo
interpretation of the lyric. Michael
solos intensely for two, and uses a
technique in the second chorus frequently employed by Albert King to
build excitement. On the second four
bars of the twelve, the band drops out
and allows Michael a solo break supported only Buddy’s bass drum
triplets. After two bars the band dramatically drops back in and Michael
finishes the chorus, inspiring shouts
and applause from the audience. This
solo break technique would be used
by Bloomfield and Miles throughout
the Electric Flag’s existence, but
rarely would Michael use it again with
his later groups.
Buddy sings the final chorus of
“Things” with more searing fills from
Bloomfield and then the band holds
the final dominant chord, about to
launch into what sounds like James
Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New
Bag.” But Miles unexpectedly halts
the proceedings.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute … !”
The band stops, and here things
become a little confused.
“I ... wanna tell you something. I
wanna …” Buddy himself pauses,
and giggles, perhaps realizing the
mistake. Nick Gravenites starts to say
something. It seems Miles has prematurely gone into the call-andresponse section of the Flag’s
arrangement of “Drivin’ Wheel.”
“Uh … I want to tell you ’bout my
baby!”
Undaunted, Buddy punctuates his
call with a drum flourish that brings in
the rest of the band. Then there is
light laughter as someone (Marcus
Doubleday?) says, “Our baby,” and it
seems that Miles has gotten up from
his kit and is coming around to the
mics out front. He can be heard
shouting the call again off-mic while
Bloomfield improvises a “tic-toc”
rhythm and the unidentified voice
says, “Well, folks he was making a
soliloquy about his baby – he does
that almost every night. But I think we
might change the routine tonight and
have him change microphones
instead. Ha, ha, isn’t that funny …”
Here Buddy shouts, “Hey, wait a
minute!,” again off-mic, and then
brings the tittering in the audience
(and the band) to a halt with another
drum flourish. He’s back behind the
drums, apparently having decided
against coming out front.
“I wanna tell you about my old
lady, and Nicholas’ old lady – that
sweet-talkin’ and fast-walkin,’ giveher-a-little-juice-and-turn-her-loose –
her name is, ah, FANNIE MAE!”
Another drum flourish – and the
band is back to the held dominant
chord. The medley was indeed to
have gone into a Brown tune before
Miles got confused. But it’s Buster
Brown’s rollicking rocker “Fannie
Mae” from 1959 that the Flag launches into, with Bloomfield’s guitar
screaming over the cascading beat.
Gravenites sings the lyric, followed by
four choruses from Bloomfield, and
then returns for three more while the
band roars behind him. The tumult
comes to an abrupt halt on the downbeat of another chorus – and suddenly the opening theme from “Sweet
Soul Music” is back. The 12-minute
medley has come full circle. There is
another coda and a pause during
which a few members of the audience
gamely begin to applaud, and then
10
group was billed simply as “The Mike Bloomfield
Thing” in the festival’s program. Apparently the
band’s official name was decided upon only days
before its Monterey appearance.
The material the Flag would perform was decided
upon right before the gig, too. Because almost all
their time together had been spent working on the
pieces for “The Trip,” the band had to scramble to
assemble enough tunes to make up a convincing set.
They had already been practicing Gravenites’
“Groovin’ Is Easy” and Bloomfield came up with an
arrangement of an old Sticks McGhee tune called
“Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee,” but the majority of
the tunes would have to be blues and soul music
covers. Buddy Miles must have had an extensive
repertory of tunes from his time with Wilson Pickett
and likely contributed one or two R&B numbers.
Nappy Brown’s “(The Night Time Is) The Right
Time,” a minor hit for Ray Charles, may have been
one that Miles suggested. He sang lead on that tune
Buddy kicks in a final massive flourish with
a drum roll and a “Hey!”
This performance is a prime example of
the desire by the Electric Flag to dazzle its
audience, to put on an extraordinary show.
As Barry Goldberg later told Ed Ward, “We
had to blow minds, otherwise we weren’t
satisfied.”
The next mind-blower is Bloomfield’s
arrangement of “Drivin’ Wheel.” Using the
Junior Parker chart, the band bumps
through two choruses accompanying
Buddy’s wildly careening vocal. Michael
offers another intense solo spanning two
choruses and backed by Goldberg’s organ
and Buddy’s stomping drums. That Michael
is nearly drowned out by the Flag’s ferocious rendition of the tune indicates just
how loud the group could be. There is a
break after Bloomfield’s solo, and Buddy
begins his “Wait a minute ...” routine. But
while Nick did the Marjorie Hendricks part. The
other pieces included an original soul ballad written
by Bloomfield. Called “Over-Lovin’ You,” the song
would become the B-side of the Flag’s initial single
release.
A not-so-groovy set
The weekend of the Monterey Pop Festival saw
the small beach town inundated with hippies, pseudo-hippies, musicians, hangers-on and gawkers of
all sorts. By Saturday, June 17, the first full day of the
festival, it was conservatively estimated that as many
as 55,000 people were in attendance. There had
never been such a large crowd for a single concert
before.
The members of the Electric Flag reportedly
arrived a few days before the opening of the festival. Producer Lou Adler got them accommodations
in a local motel, and they filled the time by hobnobbing and rehearsing their set – in Buddy Miles’
this time instead of stretching out the calland-response bit as was usually part of the
performance, he repeats it only twice and
then immediately launches into the final
chorus: “Every time she walks …”
Clearly the faux pas made during the
medley has made him cut the usual
“Drivin’ Wheel” histrionics short.
The applause is scattered at the end of
the piece and then there is a pause in the
tape. When the recording resumes, it is a
new voice we hear introducing the next
tune. “A little blues thing by Mr. Albert
King …” This is probably Herbie Rich, the
band’s baritone and alto player at the time.
The Flag then rumbles into “Born Under
a Bad Sign,” guitarist Albert King’s bassladen blues vamp that had appeared on
Atco a year earlier. Written by Booker T.
Jones, the tune is given a straight reading
by the band, though the beat and bass line
room. Norman Dayron, who accompanied the
band to Monterey, recalled that Michael often didn’t plug in during these much-needed run-throughs
– the band simply watched his hands and knew
when to come in.
Filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, hired to create a feature-length documentary of the Monterey Pop
Festival, also arrived early. He
befriended Bloomfield and the
other Flag members and spent the
days leading up to the event hanging out with them.
The Electric Flag was scheduled
to close the Saturday afternoon
series of performances, a program D.A. PENNEBAKER
that was touted as a concert of blues. The show
began with Canned Heat; they were followed by
Country Joe and the Fish, Al Kooper (a last minute
addition) with Elvin Bishop and Harvey Brooks sitting in, Big Brother and the Holding Company with
are much heavier than in the original.
Bloomfield plays fills behind Rich’s vocal
and doubles on the bass part after a short
solo. Herbie is a competent singer but he’s
no Buddy Miles, and his soulful shouts are
more like hoarse yells. He works the
rhythm, repeating “Bad luck! Bad luck!,”
until Bloomfield flails a chord and Rich
suddenly cries, “Who was that you was
sleepin’ with last night?”
Here the band stops. Dead. There is no
sound from the musicians or audience for
nearly five full seconds. The effect is disconcerting. Then Rich counts the band
back in and they resume their “Bad Sign”
riff. The listener is left with the impression
that something that was supposed to happen didn’t.
The vamp continues with the horns and
Goldberg jacking up the beat until there is
another break and Bloomfield interjects that
chord flourish again. He then plays a
snaking line that brings the band back in
on a new tune, Eddie Floyd’s “Raise Your
Hand” (1967), and it becomes clear what
has just happened. Somebody – probably
Buddy – missed a cue during the earlier
break, and the Flag stayed with “Bad Sign”
until it could work up to the “Raise Your
Hand” transition again.
It’s Buddy who takes the vocal now and
the band covers the tune with little variation
from Floyd’s original. Bloomfield comes in
with the guitar interlude while Miles moans
in the background and then counts the
band in with his sticks. Barry Goldberg
solos over the horns riff until the piece
closes on a sustained downbeat. “Yeah …”
says Buddy as the audience breaks into
applause.
Now it’s time for another Flag original,
this time Barry Goldberg’s pop idyll called
11
Janis Joplin, the new Paul Butterfield Blues Band,
Quicksilver Messenger Service and finally the Steve
Miller Blues Band. It was late afternoon before the
Electric Flag took the stage, and anticipation was
high. The band had grown exceedingly nervous.
Michael, Barry Goldberg and Harvey Brooks had
spent a good portion of the afternoon in a small
room backstage chatting with Jimi Hendrix and
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. The famous and
soon-to-be-famous were everywhere. Otis Redding
was making the rounds. Paul Simon and Art
Garfunkel were there, the Byrds were hanging out
and Mama Cass was everywhere. Friends and musicians from the San Francisco scene made it seem like
old home week. Many were tripping, and everyone
was passing joints. The atmosphere was indeed very
groovy.
At one point, Bloomfield went out front to check
out his old employer’s new band – ironically, a blues
band with horns. Paul Butterfield’s performance was
“Sittin’ in Circles.” Worked out and recorded in Los Angeles two months earlier, the
tune has an ambitious arrangement that
opens with Bloomfield improvising delicate
melodies over Goldberg’s electric piano
accompaniment before moving into tempo
behind Gravenites’ clear vocal. The horns
enter after twelve bars and kick the rhythm
up a notch, backing Nick with lush harmonies as he goes into the tune’s melodic
refrain. Michael then offers a brief solo
over a four-bar funk vamp before the opening guitar-piano duet returns. The piece’s
entire form is played through three times
with the refrain repeated for another three
to close it.
The tune’s shifting moods and its flowerchild lyrics would help solidify the Electric
Flag’s reputation with fans and critics as a
“psychedelic” band in upcoming months,
but “Circles” really is a just a well-con-
exemplary, and the addition of horns meshed well
with the group’s Chicago blues sound. Michael was
shaken. Former Chicago resident Steve Miller also
played a solid set. Michael began to wonder if the
Flag would cut it.
The afternoon had been warm, and the combination of the heat, the long wait and the friendly competition took a toll on the band’s confidence. The
musicians who made up the Electric Flag were used
to thinking of themselves as superior players. Peter
Strazza and Marcus Doubleday were as comfortable
playing jazz as they were rock, blues, soul and R&B.
Barry Goldberg was a veteran of the Chicago blues
scene and had been leader of the Goldberg/Miller
Blues Band with Steve Miller. He had recorded hit
tunes with Mitch Ryder. Harvey Brooks was a New
York session bassist who had played on some of Bob
Dylan’s most important recordings. Buddy Miles
was hugely talented, ambitious and consumed with
the desire to be the center of attention. And they
structed pop song that blends a little soul,
a dash of folk and a smattering of rock to
fine effect – an excellent example of
American music, in fact. If it had appeared
on the scene a year or two earlier, and had
been released as a single with proper promotion, it might have had a life on the pop
charts. But by May 1968, when the Flag’s
Columbia album finally appeared, the tune
sounded dated and superficial.
“Another Country,” credited on “A Long
Time Comin’” to Ron Polte but actually
composed by Nick Gravenites, comes next.
A conceptual piece whose lyrics summarize popular sentiments of the time,
“Country” would incorporate many of
Bloomfield’s studio experiments in its final
released form. Heard here several months
before the Flag would record it, the composition is an adventurous tour de force
that includes jazz segments, fiery guitar
were all in a band with Mike Bloomfield, America’s
finest guitarist.
But now they were under-rehearsed, tired and
unsure whether they could meet the audience’s
expectations or, for that matter, their own.
By many accounts, they didn’t. And by many
accounts, it didn’t matter.
Chet Helms, the San Francisco promoter whose
Family Dog concerts at the Avalon Ballroom rivaled
Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium shows, had been
emceeing throughout the afternoon. But now he
gave over introduction duties to festival producer
John Phillips.
“You’re going to hear a man whom I think is one
of the two or three best guitar players in the world,”
said Phillips. “And you are going to hear some people that he thinks are one of the best bands in the
world. And I do too. You’re going to hear an awful
lot of it, and it’s called the Electric Flag.”
The band appeared on stage and Michael grabbed
solos and prolonged dissonance – a sort
of mini suite meant to characterize the distressed state of the country in 1967.
Michael counts off “Another Country”
and the band launches into the piece,
sounding tight and well-rehearsed. The
horn refrain after each vocal line has a
slight ritard that would be absent in the
album version, but otherwise the arrangement is identical. Gravenites sings two
verses and then, with the words “I’m gonna
find another country,” the band does
something surprising – it moves into a
cacophonous section of free improvisation.
Intended to represent the turmoil expressed
by the singer, the noise features moans
from Nick, a firestorm of notes, slurs and
slides from Michael, a fists-and-elbows
keyboard barrage by Barry and shimmering
cymbal work from Buddy. One can assume
that the horns were also going full tilt but
they are lost in the mix as the wave of
sound overwhelms the recording.
This goes on for over a minute. The
audience must have stared wide-eyed, not
quite sure what it was hearing or where the
band was going. While collective improvising was common in jazz by 1967 – and
even had its own category under the rubric
“free jazz” – it was not something that pop
bands did. For the Flag to insert “noise”
into an upbeat horns-and-rhythm anthem
like “Another Country” was something
quite radical, and was another example of
Bloomfield’s fearlessness.
Of course, if the free section had lasted
for 15 minutes, audiences might not have
been so accepting. But as Buddy Miles
signals the end of the section and the
return to tempo with a series of triplets and
Michael launches into a jazzy guitar-andrhythm solo, the crowd showers the band
12
a mic. The excitement and tension of the moment –
and probably not a little backstage indulging – rendered him somewhat less than articulate.
“We’re really nervous, but we love you all, man!
’Cause this is very groovy, man – Monterey is very
groovy, man. This is something, man! This is our
generation, man. All you people, we’re all together,
man! It’s groovy and dig yourselves, ’cause it’s really
groovy.”
With that the Electric Flag charged into its first
number. Bloomfield later painfully recalled that his
first solo note was a clunker after his pick caught in
his Les Paul’s strings. But the audience was charged
up after a long afternoon of blues-rock and all the
hype surrounding the Flag, and they were in no
mood to be disappointed. They cheered at everything the band did.
And the Flag did give it their all. Buddy Miles
beat his drums like a man possessed. He sang with
such wild abandon that his processed hair stood
with a warm round of applause. The transition provides listeners with a delightful
release, one that would be even more pronounced in the studio version of the tune.
Bloomfield solos for some 44 bars,
recreating the feel of the Butterfield Band’s
landmark “East-West” at moments and in
others sounding uncannily like Carlos
Santana would several years later. Then
Miles, with a flourish, kicks in a heavy rock
beat and the horns enter. Michael continues for another for 64 bars, building his
solo in intensity and drive until the tension
becomes almost unbearable – an electrifying performance. Then the opening drone
of the piece returns and, as the audience
applauds, Nick is back for the final verse
and ending. In the Flag’s studio version,
“Another Country” fades amid a wash of
overdubbed sounds, but here we are treated to the piece’s in-performance coda, a
straight up, making him look like a human exclamation point. Critic Robert Christgau reported that
Bloomfield was so excited “he looked as if he were
about to blow up like a balloon.” Harvey Brooks
wore a Cheshire cat grin throughout the set while
Nick Gravenites bobbed and rocked, looking like
he might swallow his microphone. Only the horn
players appeared cool and unmoved by the electricity of the moment.
Of the tunes the band played, only “Groovin’ Is
Easy,” “Night Time Is the Right Time,” “You Don’t
Realize” and the closer, “Wine,” are known.
Monterey’s aftermath
FLAG MEMBERS were some of the few musicians at
Monterey who dressed casually for their performance –
no capes, feather boas or tripped-out hippy garb for
them. From left, a jacked-up Harvey Brooks, Barry
Goldberg and Michael Bloomfield perform “Wine.”
STILL FROM “MONTEREY POP”
rhythmic shift and tag that ends the tune
with fitting gravity. The audience immediately rewards the band with loud applause
and cheers – even though most have just
heard the piece for the first time.
Then it’s back to the soul bag. Jackie
Wilson’s 1967 hit, “Higher and Higher,” is
the band’s next selection, and Buddy offers
a raucous, up-tempo interpretation. The
band is once again tight, delivering a
dynamic and faithful rendition of the original. Beating the drums while screaming,
moaning and shouting the vocal, Buddy
Miles must have been an astonishing
sight. He hadn’t adopted the wig and flag
shirt yet, and his kit had still to be painted
in psychedelic patterns, but the massive
20-year-old was unlike anything most
white audiences had ever seen before. He
was an unstoppable musical force of
nature, and he demonstrates that force
In forty-five minutes it was all over. Seconds after
the final chorus of “Wine” crashed to a halt, the huge
crowd was on its feet calling for more. The band
quickly left the stage, all smiles and waves. They
were clearly relieved.
The Flag had played everything they had pre-
here.
After the tune comes to a crashing completion, the tape is shut off. When it
resumes, the Flag begins another contemporary R&B number, this time one that
opens with an introductory pastiche of soul
and blues snippets. Phrases from “Hold
On, I’m Comin’” and “You Really Got Me”
intertwine before Buddy launches into a
close reading of Otis Redding’s “I’m Sick,
Ya’ll” (1966). The tune is brief, featuring
Miles’ vocal and the robust Stax horn
charts.
Otis Redding again gets the nod as
Buddy then croons the late soul singer’s
“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” (1965).
After a false start – someone isn’t ready? –
Miles massages the lyrics at an achingly
slow tempo while Michael and the band
follow his lead. In tune and right with the
singer, Bloomfield plays Steve Cropper to
Buddy’s Otis. At the break, where the Stax
band would punctuate Redding’s moans
with three beats, Buddy holds the pause
with a cry of “Ohhhh!” As the audience
(and a few band members) laughs at his
feigned faint, he says slowly, “It sounded
so good ya’ll, we got to sock it to you one
more time …” The band repeats the beats,
and then Miles continues the song’s plaint,
in complete control of the moment. He
sings a verse, riffs a bit and suddenly his
drumming ceases and he is singing off
mic. It’s clear he has gotten up just as he
had during the medley, but this time when
he’s back on mic, he is out front.
The band continues in tempo, keeping
the sound large enough to hold the tune
together despite the lack of percussion.
Buddy improvises phrases – “I need you, I
need you so bad … don’t make me stop
now …” – and even repeats a few lines
13
HIGH VOLTAGE: The Electric Flag poses with its namesake for a publicity photo taken in May 1967. From left,
Nick Gravenites, Barry Goldberg, Marcus Doubleday,
Harvey Brooks, Peter Strazza, Michael Bloomfield and
Buddy Miles. ABG/M PROMOTIONAL PHOTO
pared and had nothing in reserve for an encore. So
only reluctantly did they return to the stage for one
final number (one reviewer noted that the normally
ebullient Buddy Miles had to be pushed from the
wings). Reports are that the band, at a loss, simply
repeated one of the tunes it had done during its set.
The audience loved them. Other musicians,
watching from the wings, loved them. David Crosby
announced later during the Byrds’ set, “Man, if you
didn’t hear Mike Bloomfield’s group, man, you are
out of it, so far out of it.” Even the critics begrudgingly loved them.
But Michael Bloomfield was deeply disturbed. He
knew what the Electric Flag was capable of, and he
knew that in their brief set at Monterey they had fallen short of that standard. He saw for the first time in
his career that over-heated publicity could obscure
mediocre artistry. The hype surrounding the Flag’s
appearance became what the performance was
about – the band’s actual playing ran a distant second. And appended to all the hoopla was the name
Michael Bloomfield.
It must have been embarrassing to the man who
considered himself one of America’s best guitar
players.
But that didn’t matter. Not to Albert Grossman.
Not to record executives Clive Davis and Jerry
Wexler. Not even to Barry Goldberg, who later told
author Ed Ward in “Michael Bloomfield: The Rise
and Fall of an American Guitar Hero” that he felt
Mike was unduly hard on the band’s performance.
"I would say it was an average set for us. It was
definitely better than most of the bands that were
there …” And the evidence indicates he was right.
Judging from D.A. Pennebaker’s footage, the Flag
was tight, balanced and very exciting. And many of
the other better known bands that took the stage
that weekend exhibited inferior musicianship and
turned in uneven performances – the Byrds were a
prime example.
But a nagging realization had begun to grow in
Michael Bloomfield’s consciousness for the first time:
celebrity can trump artistry. And apparently he was
now a celebrity.
Oddly, that celebrity didn’t carry over onto the silver screen. D.A. Pennebaker had filmed the Flag’s set
along with most of the other performances at
Monterey for the feature-length movie that Adler
and Phillips had hired him to create. Pennebaker was
aware of the hype surrounding Bloomfield and company in the days leading up to the festival and he
fully intended to include some of the Flag’s performance in his finished movie. Difficult negotiations with
manager Albert Grossman may have played a part in
the band’s conspicuous absence from Pennebaker’s
ground-breaking documentary, but there were other
circumstances involved. It was months after the festival, during raw footage screening sessions at Max’s
Kansas City in New York City, that Pennebaker
decided to cut the Electric Flag from the film entirely.
As he tells it, he was projecting rushes of performances by the Flag and the Butterfield Band on the
screen when author and personality Truman Capote
wandered in.
"Oh, don’t they look tacky!” said Truman, grimac-
from Bloomfield’s earlier interpretation of “Good to Me.”
Miles cries and moans, giving it his best Otis Redding,
and after a few minutes goes off mic again as he returns
to his kit. Then there’s a thunderous downbeat as the
drums reappear and the band pumps the volume, falling
into an eighth-note rhythm for emphasis as Barry
Goldberg pulls out all the stops on his organ. In a
moment it’s all over with one final, massive chord, and
the crowd goes wild.
At over 10 minutes, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”
is the longest performance of the set, and the one that
gets the most enthusiastic response from the audience.
They shout, yell and cheer, they applaud with abandon.
The Supermarket’s emcee is heard saying, “Great job,
Buddy Miles. Really, it was really out-of-sight.”
Buddy Miles was a natural showman. He had seen
Otis Redding’s effect on the crowd at Monterey; Otis
knew how to get a rise out of an audience. Buddy wanted
to do that too. The decision to do “Loving You” was
probably his, and he made good use of the opportunity it
afforded to create an exciting spectacle. That the spectacle was sometimes unpredictable, sometimes excessive
and often had nothing to do with creating music didn’t
really matter as long as the crowd ate it up. Then Buddy
was happy.
But Michael was not. Spectacle was what Monterey
had been about. And that was not what Michael
Bloomfield wanted to be about.
Introductions are next, with the emcee introducing
each member of the Flag in turn. Then it’s back to blues
with Otis Rush’s 1957 shuffle, “It Takes Time.”
Bloomfield takes the spotlight once again on the straight
ahead 12-bar with simple but effective horn parts.
Michael opens the tune followed by three choruses from
Nick that lead to one of call-and-response with the guitar.
Then there are three searing choruses from Bloomfield
and one from Barry before Nick returns for the final two.
The tune is one that Michael had no doubt played many
times since his early days sitting in on the south side of
Chicago, and he knew how it should sound. With the
possible exception of Rush himself, no band in the land
could have played it better than the Flag.
Blues continues with a superb variation on B.B. King’s
“Don’t Answer the Door” (1966), known here as “I Don’t
14
Want a Soul Hanging Around the House.” Bloomfield
opens the slow 12-bar quietly, soloing demurely over
bass, drums and Goldberg’s sustained organ chords.
After one chorus and Buddy’s approving “Yeah!,” the
horns enter with lush harmony. Michael takes another,
and then Buddy begins the vocal, phrasing the clever
lyrics with aplomb – it seems he’ll never finish the back
4-bar line before the band ends the chorus, but they
miraculously come together in time for the next chorus.
Bloomfield fills behind Miles, echoing the drummer’s
cries with dead-on accuracy. After two, Buddy says, “All
right Mike, go ahead my man!,” and the runway is
cleared for Bloomfield’s take-off.
The guitarist builds through the first chorus, eliciting
cries from the audience, and then switches to the Les
Paul’s rhythm pick-up giving his second twelve that fat
Bloomfield tone. He plays a repeated phrase for the first
three bars centered around a high A, the sixth note in
the tune’s key of C. He then repeats the A alone for a
bar as Miles beats out triplets and the band builds to a
climax. It’s the Albert King break again, and what follows
is hair-raising in intensity. Michael gets off a flurry of
unaccompanied notes that in two bars make an old man
out of nearly every rock guitarist of the day. After the
band comes back in, he finishes out the rest of the chorus with equal fervor and inspires cheers and applause
from the audience.
Then Peter Strazza takes three choruses on tenor, getting a rare chance to display his formidable chops. For
the second two choruses, Buddy Miles instigates stops
that let Strazza blow unaccompanied and he more than
rises to the occasion. It’s easy to see here why
Bloomfield enjoyed jamming one-on-one with the
diminutive sax player.
Buddy returns with the vocal amid applause for
Strazza, and Bloomfield again mirrors the drummer’s
vocal lines, using feedback and volume control with
uncanny precision. After a vocal break, the tune ends on
a final flourish. The crowd erupts with cheers and
applause.
“This is the last song of the evening folks, last one
…” says Nick. “Say what? Say what!” shout Buddy and
another band member, and then “Wine” is counted off.
The ebullient shuffle is the Flag’s closer, and it’s clear
AFTER MONTEREY the Flag got its show together. Here Harvey Brooks, Herbie Rich and Michael Bloomfield work out a
tune in the band’s Sausalito Heliport rehearsal space while Buddy Miles conducts. FROM “THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF ROCK” 1972
ing at Bloomfield’s crew on the screen.
“Truman,” Pennebaker replied, “You don’t know
anything about music.”
“I may not know music,” said the caustic Capote,
“But I know tacky!"
Soon thereafter, the Flag’s portion of “Monterey
Pop” lay on the cutting room floor.
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 CLIVE DAVIS
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
15
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 adhoc 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.
everybody is having a great time. Michael
reprises his three choruses from Monterey
and adds a fourth for good measure. Nick
returns with the vocal and the band brings it
down for one while he goes into his rap. It’s
interesting to note that when he mentions
Janis Joplin, he adds “… she sings with
Big Brother and the Holding Company;” it’s
likely that many in the audience didn’t know
who Joplin was in November 1967. The out
choruses are played at full tilt and Buddy
holds the half-time tag’s final ritard until the
last possible second.
The applause is overwhelming and welldeserved.
The Electric Flag at the
Fillmore and Winterland
December 7-8, 1967
Fillmore Auditorium, Winterland Ballroom,
San Francisco, CA
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
Private recording
The unmistakable voice of impresario
Bill Graham introduces Bloomfield and
company at their December 7 Fillmore
Auditorium show with wry inflection: “An
integrated-esthetic American music band,
the Electric … Flag.”
The tape, probably made by an audience
member, has inferior sound quality. In
places it speeds up; in others it cuts out,
possibly omitting tunes. But the quality is
sufficient enough to convey the excitement
and energy of the Electric Flag. They are at
the top of their form.
After Graham’s introduction, the band
roars out of the gate with a cover of Stevie
Wonder’s contemporary hit “Uptight.” The
first time the Flag is known to have performed the tune, they fatten Wonder’s
arrangement with rich harmonies and add a
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 (see
Appendix B). 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.
quick 2-bar break in which the horns punch
out a pair of ascending arpeggios. Buddy
Miles comes in with the refrain and first
chorus, singing as if the tune were his
alone. After a second refrain, Buddy kicks
the boogaloo rhythm into a shuffle beat and
the band plays a 6-bar interlude that runs
through a chord cycle and is tagged with
the arpeggio run.
Then Michael takes the spotlight for a
56-bar solo, working from the middle range
to highest note fretable on his sunburst Les
Paul – a screaming D. The band returns
with the interlude section and then Buddy
is back for the refrain and final chorus. On
the final refrain, Buddy shouts and moans
as the band vamps and Michael Fonfara's
organ takes the melody. They build to a
crescendo and an abrupt stop, capped by a
last sustained D-chord.
“Uptight” sets the standard for the rest of
the performance. The Electric Flag's
reworking of Stevie Wonder’s infectious
two-chord dance tune is not only a measure of the band’s creativity during this period but also further evidence of the Flag’s
desire to blow concert goers out of their
seats (if only they had seats at the
Fillmore).
The audience has no time to catch its
breath because the Flag moves right into
its next tune. It’s a slow blues – something
Bloomfield and Miles had been working on.
They called it “Texas.”
A musical pas de deux between the guitar virtuoso and the mountain of soul
behind the drums, “Texas” would become
the tune most often cited by blues fans following the release of the Flag's Columbia
album. On the record it would be formidable, but in concert “Texas” attained a
dynamism unparalleled by any other rock-
16
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
blues tune of the day. Such is the case
here with its premier before a San
Francisco audience.
Michael opens the slow drag by soloing
quietly over the lowing horns for one chorus, and then taking another with just the
rhythm. He is in full command, making
every note count, displaying his mastery of
phrasing and nuance. He purposely
restrains his attack, saving the best for
later. Buddy enters on the third chorus, and
Michael adds a fourth voice to the horn
harmonies by using his volume control to
bring up chords after he’s struck them.
Buddy and Michael then begin their
dance. Miles sings “I just got in from
Texas, babe” and holds the first word of the
next phrase, “Youuuu …” Bloomfield picks
up that note and plays it back in perfect
imitation. The guitarist inserts fills between
Buddy’s phrases and the horns swell with
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 earthshakingly 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
each chord change, punctuating the
rhythm as the slow blues begins to gather
steam.
Miles’ second chorus is more of the
same. He concludes it with the admonition, “But I don’t wanna do it, baby … but
I got to do it – yeah!” Shoot his old lady’s
dog, he means.
But there are no pyrotechnics from
firearms. Instead, Michael launches into a
double-barreled solo of his own with a
series of long, plaintive notes. Buddy
shouts encouragement as Bloomfield’s
guitar literally begins to wail. The band
punctuates every phrase while Buddy no
doubt conducts from behind the drums.
Bloomfield soars through one chorus
and takes on another. At the end of the first
four bars comes another Albert King-style
break and Michael punches out a cluster of
notes low on the neck while Buddy beats
CREAM –
Jack Bruce,
Ginger
Baker and
Eric Clapton
– embodied
the new
blues-based
“psychedelic
rock” sound.
PROVIDED PHOTO
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 uncom-
triplets on his kick drum. The intensity of
the moment carries over into the next six
bars as the band comes back in and
Bloomfield runs through a flurry of notes
that climbs again to that high D. As the
chorus concludes, the band drops way
down and Michael uses his volume control
to bring his solo in for a gentle landing.
Amid scattered applause for Bloomfield,
Buddy begins the next verse quietly but
quickly builds up to screams and moans.
He holds notes while Bloomfield shadows
him, mirroring his tone and attack. On the
final verse Buddy sings as if possessed
while beating the drums mercilessly.
Bloomfield looses a torrent of phrases in
support as the horns walk the beat right up
to a full stop in the turnaround.
“… treated me like I was a Ringling
Brothers clown!” sings Buddy, and the Flag
comes in on the final flourish with Michael
tossing off one last volley. The applause is
immediate and peppered with cheers.
“Cresting, cresting …” Nick Gravenites
tests his mic, and someone says, “Ready,
Buddy?”
Ready, Miles kicks off another new tune.
This time it’s a rocking version of Howlin’
Wolf’s “Killing Floor” (1965). The horns
open the number with a fanfare and
Bloomfield takes a chorus before Nick
comes in on the vocal. He sings three
while Michael plays rhythm in the style of
Hubert Sumlin and Miles and Brooks tag
the last bar of each chorus with an eighth
note phrase.
Bloomfield then launches into his solo
and reaches the upper end of his guitar’s
range before 10 bars have passed. In his
second chorus, the horns veer into the
“Crosscut Saw” riff and this time Michael
uses the Albert King phrase. He holds and
17
fortable 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
then resolves a note repeatedly as the
horns lend staccato support. By the third
chorus, the band has become a blues juggernaut with Michael at the helm.
Nick returns for two and then the band
vamps on the turnaround while Peter
Strazza solos on tenor. The tape becomes
garbled here, but it seems clear that
Strazza gets more than the 20 bars he had
in Boston to develop his solo. The recording stops and then resumes as Gravenites
sings the final chorus and Bloomfield dispenses ripe fills. The band repeats the
eighth-note phrase three times to finish the
tune as the audience burst into cheers and
applause.
Barry Goldberg’s “Sittin’ in Circles” is
up next. The ethereal opening 4-bars feature a more confident Bloomfield delicately
improvising over Fonfara’s shimmering
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.
arpeggios on electric piano. The tune’s
form is precisely what it was in Boston a
month earlier – three choruses, brief guitar
solos over a four-bar funk vamp, three
repeats of the refrain to end the piece. The
playing is once again tight and well balanced – an indication of how consistent
the band could be when things were right.
There’s applause and then a cut in tape.
We next hear Michael checking his microphone – “Wait a minute, are these on yet?”
– and then he counts off another new tune.
It’s Little Richard’s “Directly from My
Heart” (1954), and Bloomfield opens it by
soloing for a chorus.
Then it’s another difficult Bloomfield
vocal. The tune requires the vocalist to
hold the word “directly” for a full bar, a 5second duration at the number’s slow
tempo here. While Little Richard special-
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
ized in such vocal feats, its rigors stretch
far beyond Michael’s earnest singing capabilities. So as Brooks and Miles move the
rhythm forward backed by riffs from the
horns and triplets from Goldberg’s piano,
Bloomfield strains to put the tune across
for three choruses. His voice falters and
cracks, but he peppers the lyrics with
stinging guitar fills and succeeds on
enthusiasm alone.
He takes two for his solo, offering typical
Bloomfield lines redolent with fat stretches
and fine vocal-like shadings, and then
returns to sing three more choruses. A stop
on the last chorus’s turnaround and a final
guitar flurry close the piece. Mild applause
rewards Michael’s efforts.
It’s on to Albert King’s “Born Under a
Bad Sign.” After some Bloomfield guitar
over Harvey Brook’s blues vamp, Herbie
Rich comes in on the vocal. He sings two
choruses and, as the band vamps, the tape
becomes garbled and cuts. When it
resumes, the Flag is rocking over Brook’s
single-note bass line while Rich improvises lyrics much as he did in Boston. This
time, though, Herbie riffs using a familiar
R&B counting device.
“Late at night, when the clock strikes 3
…” he sings, moving in rhyme through the
hours up to seven o’clock. Then, with a
scream, he brings the band down and,
instead of going into Eddie Floyd’s Raise
Up Your Hand,” takes a different tack.
“… without further ado, I’d like to turn it
over … to … the … ’Lectric Flag.”
Harvey Brooks’ bass booms as Buddy
drops back, keeping time on the rim of his
snare. Peter Strazza noodles on tenor in the
background, and then there’s a smattering
18
of applause from the audience.
One can imagine what has happened. The lights have
dimmed; the band’s prop – its American Legion electric
flag – has been hit with a spotlight. As Herbie introduces
it, Fonfara switches the fan on and the Stars and Stripes
flutters in the artificial breeze.
Then the musical Flag surges as Buddy Miles hammers
his kit over the pulse of Brooks’ single-note line. There’s a
brief pause and sporadic applause from the audience
before the band returns to the “Bad Sign” riff. After a
minute, Buddy and the rhythm section tag the tune with
five bars of staccato eighth-notes followed by a flourish
dominated by Michael Fonfara’s Hammond B-3.
Cheers and applause reward the band, but the overall
impression one has of this second version of “Born Under
a Bad Sign" is that the tune is still evolving. The mid-performance flag theatrics put its repetitive structure to good
use, but without the visuals “Bad Sign” comes off as
overly long and unfocused. As this is the only other version of the tune we have, one can only imagine that
improvements were made in later renditions.
There’s another pause in the tape and then we hear
Michael Bloomfield kick off a sprightly shuffle blues by
B.B. King called “Rock Me, Baby” (1961). As the elder
statesman of electric blues guitar was on the roster that
night at the Fillmore, Michael was no doubt paying tribute
to his mentor. After two choruses of B.B.-inspired blues
lines from the leader, Buddy Miles begins to sweetly sing.
A celebration of the pleasures of connubial love, the
tune’s lyrics are anything but subtle. But Buddy coyly
restrains his delivery while Michael interjects pointed
obbligati throughout the drummer’s two choruses.
Michael then takes four for himself, soloing in solid
Bloomfield style and demonstrating blues substance without flash or excess. This is his longest solo of the night,
and he was clearly at pains to offer B.B his best playing.
The tape begins to speed up in places at this point (the
recorder’s batteries must have been wearing down), and
though Buddy’s voice appears to change key several times
after he returns, he and Michael continue their duet for
two more choruses before ending the piece on the turnaround.
Another version of “Messin’ with the Kid” finishes what
we have of the Fillmore set. Its break-neck tempo is most
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:
Their run-in with lawyers, police, the government. The whole Lenny
the cops was
Bruce riff.”
reported in a new
Certainly an arrest for
underground
drugs was a whole differtabloid called
ent
scene
in
1967.
’Rolling Stone.’
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 pre-
19
vious 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.
likely the result of the recording machine’s
fading power source, but even at the correct speed the tune is a workout. Where the
Boston version of the piece immediately
followed the opening theme with Nick
Gravenites’ vocal, here Michael takes the
first chorus. He improvises around the
melody starting in the second four bars and
burns through the refrain as Nick enters and
the tune takes off at a gallop. The horns
and rhythm are tight even at this tempo and
the sound is balanced – the Flag is in full
blow-them-out-of-their-seats mode. Nick’s
three choruses fly by in less than a minute
and then Michael takes off. He solos for
two choruses with just the rhythm section,
starting at mid-range and slowly building
tension. The horns return on the third chorus and set up the fourth, Bloomfield’s final
statement of the evening. Michael plays
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
these last twelve bars at the top end of the
Les Paul’s range, executing breathtaking
runs with rhythmic precision, pitch-perfect
stretches and vocal-like vibrato. His tone
has the classic Bloomfield fatness and
vocal fluidity.
Those 12 bars last only 15 seconds, but
they stand as Michael’s finest moment of
the evening.
Nick comes back in after the refrain for
two and the Flag then takes it out following
a last repetition of the refrain melody. The
applause starts only after a pause and, surprisingly, is light and brief.
Saturday night the band moved over to
the larger Winterland Ballroom to accommodate the bigger weekend crowd.
The recording of their performance is
again of mediocre quality with dropouts
and speed fluctuations, but it is clear
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 THE FLAG’S single was
Super-market
near released in mid-October
Kenmore Square. On 1967, just in time for its
the way they played a first tour of the Northeast.
one-nighter at a club COLUMBIA RECORDS MAGAZINE AD
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
enough to convey the band’s exemplary
musicianship.
An announcer introduces the show as
“… Saturday night at the Grand Ole’ Opry.”
This snippet has given rise over the years
to the belief that the Flag must have performed at some point in Nashville, but the
statement is only a bit of humor by the
emcee who was making oblique reference
to the country music that was playing over
the Winterland sound system prior to the
show’s start.
After their introduction, the Electric Flag
opens with its cover of Otis Redding’s “I’m
Sick Ya’ll,” a tune just released by the great
soul singer. Ironically, the day after the
Flag’s Winterland appearance Redding
would die tragically in a plane crash in
Madison, WI.
The band doesn’t immediately launch
into the up-tempo soul shouter, however.
As it had done in Boston, the Flag coyly
plays an opening medley of trademark
American music styles. After a 2-bar
gospel melody, Buddy counts the band in
on a 4-bar stomp that abruptly morphs into
a slow blues with a searing solo by
Michael for another 4 bars. Next the band
moves on to the familiar “You Really Got
Me” refrain and then into the horn riffs from
Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” for 8
bars before Buddy brings in “I’m Sick
Ya’ll.” The band sounds tight and energized, and their mini-medley had no doubt
grabbed the audience’s attention.
It’s interesting to note that Bloomfield
had also used this musical collage technique with the Butterfield Band, occasionally opening sets with a rapid-fire pastiche
of familiar blues tunes and styles.
20
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
Buddy Miles’ kick drum and staccato
riffs from the horns begin the tune proper.
A vamp with a turnaround, “I’m Sick Ya’ll”
is one of Redding’s lesser known compositions though it has the Barkays’ trademark
sound with driving bass and rich horn harmonies. Bloomfield can just be heard
weaving little countermelodies in the background, playing the role of Steve Cropper.
Buddy sings two verses, his words all
but unintelligible on the tape but the intensity of his delivery quite evident. A brief
vamp follows with more fills from Michael
and then Miles returns for an extended
third verse with screams and asides leading to a final turnaround. The Flag then
draws out a vamp for 20 bars before reaching a climax with an abrupt stop. The audience breaks out in cheers and applause.
“Thank ya,” responds a winded Buddy.
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,
The drummer then counts off “Drivin’
Wheel.” The medium tempo blues again
has Buddy and Michael playing off each
other as the guitarist drops in lead fills
between the drummer’s phrases. The performance by now is even more pumped
than the one in Boston. Miles seems on
the verge of uncontrolled hysteria as he
deconstructs the tune’s lyrics, moving from
a scream one second to a low growl the
next. It’s astonishing how he is able to so
completely subvert the tune’s rhythm with
his singing and yet keep a rock-steady beat
on his trapset.
After two choruses, Michael steps in
with a slightly off-mic solo. His phrasing is
flawless, the fat sound of his Les Paul filling the Winterland’s cavernous space. He
takes one chorus and then, four bars into a
second, inserts one of those Albert King
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 2022, and then returned to New York. The trip must
have been grueling, considering that additional
stops, something he didn’t do in the
Psychedelic Supermarket version of
“Drivin’ Wheel.” At the conclusion of his
second chorus, the band stops and Buddy
begins his routine.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a
minute!” he admonishes the audience as
they begin to clap sporadically. Here’s
Buddy’s version of the original Junior
Parker asides, delivered this time in the
right tune.
“Got somethin’ wanna tell ya,” he
croons. A band member interjects something unintelligible that’s punctuated by
chord from Bloomfield, and the audience
begins to titter.
“I wanna tell you ’bout my baby.”
Here the band comes on the downbeat
with a flourish and the confused audience
begins to applaud again.
“C’mon, now wait a minute! Give us a
break, man,” ironically pleads Buddy. He
hesitates and the band member now interjects, “Our baby” – no doubt a reference to
Buddy’s confusing his “Fannie Mae” routine with this one during the Boston show.
Buddy picks up the taunt and pretends
to go into the “Fannie Mae” bit.
“I wanna tell you ’bout my too-fine,
ever-lovin’, good-lookin’ …” Here he
laughs and some band members join him,
realizing he’s kidding.
“I wanna tell you ’bout my baby!”
After a final cacophonous flourish drawn
out by Miles, the Flag kicks back into the
tune.
“Every time she walks …!” Buddy
screams, Michael perfectly echoing his
note on “walks.” The final chorus comes
on at full tilt and ends with a stop in the
21
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
turnaround. Buddy holds the pause before
the concluding chord this time for a full 10
seconds.
The tune has clearly evolved from the
version at the Psychedelic Supermarket
into a Buddy Miles mini-drama. The audience roars its approval.
Next up is “It Takes Time,” the Otis Rush
blues. Michael calls out the key and
launches right into the tune without counting the band in and organist Mike Fonfara
comes in ahead of the beat. He drops out
after a few bars leaving Bloomfield and
Harvey Brooks to lock in the rhythm. Nick
Gravenites enters after a chorus of guitar
and offers four of his own.
Then it’s Michael Bloomfield riding high
over a thundering Flag for three before the
band falls back and Michael solos quietly
for one and gradually builds intensity for
THE ELECTRIC FLAG’S “official” New York debut took
place at the Bitter End even though the band had played
at the Village Theater the week before. PROVIDED PHOTO
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
four more choruses – at which point the
tape becomes garbled. Even at an incomplete eight-plus choruses, however,
Bloomfield’s excellent “It Takes Time” solo
stands as his longest of the evening.
Michael then counts off “Groovin’ Is
Easy,” bringing in the horns with a fat harmonic. The band is clearly comfortable
with the complex arrangement by now,
having played the tune for more than six
months. The tempo is a bit brighter than it
was in Boston, and Nick gives his three
verses the full benefit of his clear baritone.
He then vamps on the “so hard” refrain
until Bloomfield enters in full flight, soloing
until he can climb the neck no higher. The
horns return for the fanfare coda and the
audience rewards them with solid applause.
“Goin’ Down Slow” is next, kicked off by
Bloomfield’s gritty guitar and the horns
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.
walking through the 12-bar’s turnaround.
Nick sings again, with Michael contributing
a flurry of fills throughout his two verses. At
the end of the second verse, Gravenites
ushers in Bloomfield’s solo with a request:
“Preach a little for me, Michael!”
Bloomfield’s solo proceeds at a laconic
pace; he even holds a note to the point of
feedback for a full bar-and-a-half. Fonfara’s
electric piano accompanies him as he
builds through two choruses, only to drop
back completely for the third. Michael then
uses his volume control and sustained
feedback to roll out a series of indolent,
languid phrases, culminating in a staccato
brace of upper-octave notes in the final bar
before Nick returns.
“Don’t call no doctor …” Gravenites
wades through the final verse with more
fills from Michael over lush horns, taking
the tune to its final turnaround and out.
While Michael’s playing is less fiery here
than it was a month earlier in Boston, he
has added the third solo chorus with its
engaging and subdued attack, giving literal
credence to the the tune’s “goin’ down
slow” theme.
Bloomfield then counts off “Another
Country.” Only weeks away from recording
the piece’s initial tracks in the studio, the
band here is tight and energized. The slight
ritard played by the horns in the Boston
version of “Country” has been smoothed
out, and Marcus Doubleday can be heard
interjecting attractive embellishments over
the rhythm during Gravenites two choruses.
Then the tune moves into its free section.
In Boston, the din was largely dominated
by Bloomfield’s furious guitar runs. Here,
however, the band appears to have reached
22
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 –
a sort of improvisatory critical mass with
all the players contributing fully to the
“confusion.” Though we don’t hear the full
effect of the section because the tape is
unfortunately edited, by the time Buddy
brings the band back into rhythmic focus,
the Flag is sending up a mighty, bansheelike wail. Bloomfield sounds as if he is
using a slide to create careening metallic
glissandi while Fonfara and the horn players merge to evoke the sonance of a tortured fire siren.
Miles’ drums, accompanied now by
Fonfara’s organ, restore order – this time
using an odd polka “oom-pah-pah” beat.
Bloomfield emerges in jazz solo mode and
the audience responds with wild cheers
and applause. The dissonant passage must
certainly have played as a “psychedelic”
moment for the San Francisco crowd.
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. DEBBIE DANILOW
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 insom-
Michael again solos for 64 bars, adding a
sprightly little melody toward the end of the
passage, a theme that would also appear in
the studio version of “Country.” Buddy then
juices the rhythm and moves the piece into
heavy rock mode and Michael takes another
40 bars before bringing Nick and the horns
back in for the final verse. Bloomfield’s
entire solo lasts 104 bars, a bit shorter than
its duration in Boston, and with its two sections’ length’s reversed.
The coda comes after Nick’s declaiming over a vamp peppered with
Doubleday’s trumpet runs. The final
booming chord is allowed to decay as
Bloomfield tosses of a series of runs
before Buddy closes the piece with a
resounding thump of his kick drum. As
the audience applauds, Miles checks his
mic for the next number.
nia, 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
The final tune that has been preserved
from that evening was the one that comprised the B-side of the Flag’s 45 rpm
Columbia release. “Over-Lovin’ You,” written by Goldberg and Bloomfield, had
been part of the band’s Monterey set but
hadn’t been performed in Boston (as far
as is known). Taken at a breakneck tempo,
the pop song is a feature for Buddy Miles
and has no solos. The ebullient drummer
draws out the tune’s concluding vamp for
52 intense bars before Michael brings it
to a close with a series of arpeggiated
chords. “Yeah!” someone in the audience
cheers as the Winterland crowd applauds.
These shows from the Fillmore and the
Winterland capture the Electric Flag at the
height of their considerable powers.
Though they would give stellar performances over the next five months, they
would never again have the artistic and
musical cohesiveness they exhibit here.
At the Carousel
April 21, 1968
Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, CA
Soundboard recording
This performance likely comes from a
casual Sunday afternoon show at the
Carousel Ballroom. The Electric Flag
shared the stage with Erma Franklin,
Aretha’s sister, and – with the exception of
Michael Bloomfield – provided backup for
her during her set.
The performance opens with Buddy
Miles counting off Stevie Wonder’s
“Uptight.” Though the horns are a bit off
mic, the sound is excellent (after some
early fluctuations in the mix as the
Carousel’s sound man adjusts volumes).
23
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, MIKE FONFARA
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 onenighters 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
The tune’s tempo is a bit slower than it
was four months earlier at the Fillmore, but
the arrangement is essentially identical
with the 2-bar horn riff and the 6-bar shuffle interlude between Buddy’s verses.
Herbie Rich is now clearly the band’s
organist, offering accompaniment that is
closer to the jazz sound of Jimmy Smith
than the more rock-oriented playing of
Goldberg or Fonfara. The rhythm section is
tight as Bloomfield comps Cropper-style,
dropping out momentarily to tweek his
Fender Twin in the first verse. Only the
horns sound somewhat disorganized, running through their parts a bit too loosely.
Aural evidence reveals that the band had
invited baritone player Virgil Gonsalves and
an unknown trumpet player to sit in with
Doubleday, Strazza and newcomer Stemzie
Hunter and that was doubtless the reason
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-dedeux by Bloomfield and Miles called “Texas,” the
soul ballad by Bloomfield and Goldberg from their
single’s B-side, “Over-Lovin’ You,” and a highoctane cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight.”
Changes at home
Despite the fact that things were going well for the
for their less than perfect ensemble sound.
After the first verse, Michael jumps into
his solo. Though a bit shorter and less
pyrotechnic than his Fillmore contribution,
his 40 bars are driving and culminate on a
high G plucked and held for six full measures. After the interlude, Buddy returns for
the final verse – and the band has a surprise in store for the audience.
Miles shouts, “Feelin’ good!” and drums
unaccompanied for a few bars on the
tune’s boogaloo beat before Michael and
Harvey Brooks return with the bass line
from the Beatles’ 1965 hit “Daytripper.”
Buddy sings the opening lines to the tune
and then riffs phrases as the band vamps
on the melody. Bloomfield contributes a
brief solo and the Flag builds to an intense
crescendo as it returns to the refrain from
“Uptight” and the coda. The interjection of
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 record-
the tune feels like a serendipitous moment
though it must have been planned – perhaps the result of something that occurred
during a loose run through of the tune in
rehearsal. In any case, it’s one of the few
examples of the Flag’s performing – however briefly – a purely rock tune.
In full blow-them-away mode, the band
moves right into the next tune without
pause – it’s Junior Parker’s “Drivin’
Wheel.” Michael peppers Buddy’s vocal
lines with amped-up lead fills while Herbie
Rich, though somewhat down in the mix,
backs them with huge, sustained chords on
his B-3. The horns run through their
ensemble parts, suffering a bit from the
loose contributions of the guest trumpet
and baritone. After two verses from Miles,
Bloomfield moves out front.
He takes one chorus with just the rhythm
section and then another with the horns
riffing behind him. At the end of Michael’s
second solo chorus, the Flag comes to a
complete stop – and the listener expects to
hear Bloomfield let loose a fusillade of
notes before being rejoined by the band.
But something completely unexpected
occurs – there is silence for a full six seconds.
Then Bloomfield quietly plays a brief
line, and Buddy responds with a moan.
Michael replies, and the two trade licks for
a minute with uncanny precision. Then
Buddy begins to improvise lyrics and Peter
Strazza’s tenor is briefly heard in the
exchange. After a series of flourishes by
the full band, Buddy again begins to moan
and Michael echoes his utterance precisely
using his volume control. After more
improvised lyrics and flourishes, Buddy
24
ing. 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
returns to the tune with the now-familiar
“Every time she walks …!” and takes it to
the coda.
The unique exchange between guitarist
and vocalist – something added to “Drivin’
Wheel” since the December Fillmore show
– has clearly been sketched out in
advance, but it retains a spontaneous feel
due to Buddy’s penchant for deviating from
the script.
While the audience applauds, Flag
members can be heard discussing the next
tune. The juggernaut suddenly comes to a
halt as they spend a full minute deciding
what to play. Michael suggests “that blues
in F-minor, you know, ’It’s About Time’,”
referring to the Nick Gravenites tune, but
the band instead settles on a piece that
must have surprised the audience – Miles
Davis’ closer “The Theme.”
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
A PSYCHEDELIC Frank Zappa performs on screen in
“You Are What You Eat” with music overdubbed by the
Electric Flag. STILL FROM “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT”
No doubt selected by the horn players
who were eager to provide some solo
space for their guests and themselves, the
jazz tune, while still a 12-bar blues, was an
unusual choice even for the Flag. Though
the San Francisco audience was used to
seeing jazz groups share the stage with
rock acts and was familiar with Thelonious
Monk, Charles Lloyd, Miles Davis and others, there was very little crossover in terms
of material performed. That the Electric
Flag would choose to play a Davis original
in a pure jazz style was indicative of the
depth of the band’s musical skill and
knowledge – and characteristic of its artistic fearlessness.
That said, the Flag’s rendition of “The
Theme” is – as jazz performances go – not
terribly good.
After a loose statement of the melody
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
lead by Doubleday’s trumpet for two choruses, Marcus is the first soloist. The other
horns coalesce in a riff behind the first half
of his statement while he develops a clean,
coherent line. After they drop out, he
seems to run out of steam despite brief
moments reminiscent of his fine Spanishtinged contributions to “The Trip” soundtrack. Marcus’ tone is light and airy,
though, and he is perhaps the best of the
horn soloists.
Organist Herbie Rich is clearly the most
comfortable with the style, sounding a bit
like Jimmy McGriff in his rumbling, Lesliedriven accompaniment. Michael
Bloomfield comps using his best “pseudojazz” technique and Buddy Miles can’t
resist slipping into a shuffle beat, favoring
snare over ride cymbal.
Michael is next up, beginning his solo
on an A-flat and gamely running scales
that evoke his improvisations on “Work
Song” from the second Butterfield album
(another minor blues in F). He builds in
intensity for six choruses, playing flatted
fifths and seconds while worrying the
rhythm in classic Bloomfield fashion. His
sound here foreshadows his playing with Al
Kooper a month later on the date that
would result in “Super Session.”
The second trumpet player jumps in
with his solo on the heels of Michael’s
sixth chorus, appearing to almost cut the
guitarist off. With a distinctive sound quite
different from Doubleday’s, this is clearly
not Marcus as some have thought. The
Flag’s trumpet player has obviously been
influenced by Miles Davis, while this
soloist sounds as if he favors Roy
Eldridge’s hotter, more staccato sound. His
25
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
chops are quite good, and though his
sound is older and bit blatty, he runs
through his six choruses with an engaging
élan.
Herbie Rich then takes center stage and
makes full use of his Hammond B-3’s
expressive range. He solos using his right
hand for nearly three choruses before he
holds a high F and then switches the B-3
off and on, causing the note to “bend.” It’s
a trick he employs in nearly all his solos
and it lends a guitar-like fluidity to the normally fixed pitches of the keyboard. In his
fifth and final chorus, Herbie opens all the
stops and plays a series of extended chords
that demonstrates his mastery of the idiom.
He would clearly be right at home backing
Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis on some after-hours
gig in a Newark tavern.
The next soloist is guest Virgil
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
Gonsalves. A baritone sax and flute player
whose name has also been spelled
Gonzales or Gonsales, he would go on to
become a member of the second edition of
the Electric Flag and then later part of the
Buddy Miles Express. Born in 1931,
Gonsalves was the old man onstage that
afternoon and indeed had been a jazz player of note around the Bay Area for more
than a decade. He had recorded several
albums with his own sextet for small labels
in the late ’50s and had led the first modern big band to emerge from San Francisco
after touring with the bands of Tex Beneke
and Alvino Rey. Gonsalves was an accomplished and respected jazz player – so what
was he doing playing with a bunch of rock
’n’ roll kids?
Like many jazz musicians of his generation, Virgil had developed a heroin habit. By
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
That the Flag
would perform at to check the pictures and
the liner notes. Because it is
such a festival
our first, it has to be very
was ludicrous –
special.”
Bloomfield knew
While Bloomfield may
it, and he knew
have been involved in the
the PR people
details of the Flag’s album
would be clueless. 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
the late ’60s, he had acquired a reputation
for being a severe junkie. It’s likely that by
that time he gravitated to wherever the drug
action was, and there was plenty of it on
the contemporary rock scene. So there he
was, sitting in with the Electric Flag, blowing blues changes on a rock band’s rendition of a Miles Davis tune.
While Gonsalves’ chops sound a bit flabby, his deep, Mulligan-inspired tone lends
gravity to his performance. He runs the
changes for three choruses with nimble
backing from Bloomfield, Rich, Brooks and
Miles, and then evokes the late John
Coltrane with a ferocious free passage at
the start of his fourth. Buddy kicks the
tempo into double-time with fast triplets in
Virgil’s fifth and sixth choruses and the
other horns riff as the baritone player
repeats a phrase to build the intensity. The
band then falls back into straight time as
Gonsalves finishes his final 12 bars to the
applause of the audience.
At this point, the Flag seems uncertain
how to end the tune. The horns play a riff
initiated by the second trumpet player for a
full chorus and then another as Michael
adds fine accents over quiet rhythm. He
continues for another 4 bars and then can
be heard shouting, “Play the melody once!”
The horns then return and run through the
theme to “The Theme” not once but twice
as Bloomfield contributes fills and then
brings the piece to an end on a final Fminor chord and flourish.
Cheers and applause can be heard as the
Flag once again discusses the next tune.
“’Over-Lovin’ You!’” suggests Michael,
but there are no takers. “Let Nick decide,”
he says.
26
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
THE WINTERLAND Ballroom was bigger than the Fillmore, and Bill Graham used it for Friday and Saturday
shows when crowds were generally larger. PROVIDED PHOTO
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 jazztinged 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
Somebody says “Groovin’?” but then Nick picks
“Goin’ Down Slow.”
“Slow blues in A,” says Michael for the benefit of the
guest horn players, and they clearly do not sound enthusiastic. But Bloomfield kicks off the St. Louis Jimmy tune
anyway, using a characteristic lick that leads into the
turnaround, and the band hesitantly joins in.
Michael’s intonation is way off as he plays a number
of stretched notes in the tune’s opening bars. “Wow!”
he comments unhappily. The horns, lead by Doubleday,
stumble into an accompanying riff and sound ragged
and lost for the first few bars. Nick then starts to sing
the opening chorus and Michael plays a riff for a few
bars, clearly demonstrating the bass line for Harvey
Brooks. Though Brooks has performed the piece many,
many times by this point and knows his part well, he
obligingly picks up Bloomfield’s line.
Things begin to gel after a few bars and the Flag
sounds more confident as Michael moves out front with
a series of stinging fills. After Nick’s second chorus,
however, the tape suddenly cuts and then resumes with
an instrumental from the Erma Franklin set that sounds
a bit like Albert King’s “Crosscut Saw.” Unfortunately,
the remainder of the Electric Flag’s performance is lost
and the guitarist who joins the Flag for Franklin’s portion of the show is not Bloomfield.
The Carousel appearance captures the Flag at a
moment when the band was beginning to come apart
from the pressures of commercial expectations, personality conflicts and drugs. Despite its uneven performance,
however, the group displays its exceptional drive and
musicianship – and its penchant for experimentation.
The last festival
May 18, 1968; Santa Clara Pop Festival,
Santa Clara Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA
Private recording
The Electric Flag’s last performance at a large festival occurred in mid-May 1968. An outdoor, two-day
extravaganza, the event – also known as the Northern
California Folk Rock Festival – featured numerous
prominent bands including the Doors, Big Brother and
the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, the Jefferson
Airplane and Eric Burdon and the Animals.
27
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 appeared on Saturday afternoon,
playing to a huge crowd basking in the
warm sun on the Fairground’s vast lawn.
Someone in the audience recorded the
band’s set and captured the Flag in an
ebullient mood, rising to the occasion with
considerable verve despite the band’s
impending demise. The recording, as it has
come down to us, has a few dropout glitches and suffers from distracting crowd noise,
but the overall sound is sufficient to convey
the quality of the Flag’s performance.
The recording opens with the festival’s
emcee introducing the band in carnival-barker fashion. The Flag then launches into a
new Buddy Miles composition, a show-stopper called “Soul Searchin’.” Essentially a
boogaloo vamp on blues changes with an
extended turnaround, the piece features
Buddy’s powerhouse trap work, some Stax-
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
style horn charts and Herbie Rich’s jazzy
organ sound. The ensemble works through
two choruses in classic Flag-juggernaut
fashion and then Bloomfield moves out front.
He lopes through his first chorus with a
fusillade of blues licks and is nearly
drowned out by the band’s huge sound.
Switching to his Les Paul’s lead pickup,
Michael then cranks up and continues soloing, venturing into modal territory for a bar
or two after the horns drop out. The Flag
vamps on the tonic as Bloomfield builds to
a flourish and then Buddy takes over.
Miles beats out the boogaloo beat alone
for a few bars and then each instrument in
turn comes back into the mix in classic
R&B fashion. Michael bemusedly comments, “You got that soul feeling?” as
Harvey Brooks’ bass joins the drums.
Herbie Rich (or is it Stemzie Hunter?)
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.
begins a barely audible narration, introducing each instrument in turn – it seems his
mic may have been off at the start of the
interlude and the soundman only now turns
him up. “A little louder, a little bit louder!”
he earnestly commands.
The band then punctuates the beat with a
repeated dominant chord for 12 measures
followed by a brief drum solo from Buddy
before the final flourish. Applause erupts
from the crowd as the Flag moves right into
its next tune.
The fanfare opening to “Groovin’ Is
Easy” is greeted with cheers and whistles –
the California audience is clearly familiar
with the Electric Flag’s signature number.
With the exception of the organ part, the
tune is just as the Flag has played it over
the past ten months. Here, however, Herbie
Rich eschews Barry Goldberg’s syncopated
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 men-
accompaniment in favor of big, Lesliepowered chords. Bloomfield plucks a high
A for a full 10 bars before bringing the
piece to a resounding close with the familiar fanfare.
Tuning problems have become apparent
in the last moments of “Groovin’” –
Michael is a bit flat – and a quick tune-up
session follows the piece. One of the band
members asks the audience, “Ah, can ya’ll
hear the voices?” – good sound balance
was always an issue for the Electric Flag. A
dialogue ensues between the crowd and
the band member – Stemzie Hunter again?
– and when he asks, “Is the band too
loud?” he receives an emphatic chorus of
“No!”
“This is a tune, uh, dedicated to Jimi the
Fox,” says Michael Bloomfield by way of
introducing “Hey Joe,” the Flag’s next
28
tioned, the interviewer was the underground biweekly’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 dis- JANN WENNER
played 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
selection. Michael has clearly begun to
think of Hendrix as something of a musical
trickster by this point and, in the fall of
1968, he would record a blues with Barry
Goldberg dedicated to Hendrix with the
same ambiguous title “Jimi the Fox.”
This is the first recorded example we
have of “Hey Joe” since the band debuted
it in March at the Electric Factory in
Philadelphia and it is again achingly slow.
After a false start – “Wait a minute!” says
Buddy – Bloomfield counts the tune off
again and begins his guitar line as Rich’s
organ offers sympathetic support. Right
away it is clear that Michael is still out of
tune. Undaunted, Buddy charges ahead
with the vocal.
The tune begins quietly with Buddy
singing over the rhythm section alone.
Bloomfield’s guitar acts as the melodic
– 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
vehicle that moves the song forward
despite the fact that his A and low E strings
are decidedly flat. Based on a simple 8-bar
progression that is repeated to form each
16-bar verse, “Hey Joe” describes a crime
of passion and ensuing escape to Mexico.
Buddy takes full advantage of the lyrics'
pathos as the horns flood in on the third
verse and the band builds to an Ennio
Morricone-like crescendo after the fourth.
Michael begins his solo and climbs ever
higher on the neck as the horns swell
underneath him. Then the tape becomes
garbled.
When the recording resumes, the band
has dropped back and Buddy is crooning
the last verses. He builds in intensity as
the horns come back in and Michael’s guitar – now more in tune – punctuates the
rhythm with sonorous bass notes. Miles lit-
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
’I don’t dig Pigpen home turf.
“I don’t dig San
trying sing blues;
Francisco groups … I
it don’t sound like
think San Francisco
blues. It sounds like music isn’t good music.
some white kid try- Not good bands. They’re
ing to sing blues.
amateur cats.”
It drags me ...’
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 try-
erally screams his way through the final
verse and the tune finishes with an earthshaking flourish.
A lengthy pause follows during which
the crowd can be clearly heard – the tape
appears to have been made somewhere out
in front of the bandstand – and Bloomfield
runs a few fun slow blues licks and then
says, “Here we go – a shuffle into the
singing,” and then appears to say, “What’s
your problem?” He starts a standard guitar
shuffle rhythm and then stops for some
reason, resuming with an opening lick for a
much slower blues. Rich and Miles gamely
join in and Michael switches to chords
briefly to punch up the tempo.
Bloomfield plays one of his standard midtempo solos for a chorus and then drops in
fills between Gravenites’ phrases as the
horns join in. The tune, called “Sweet Home
Chicago” on the various bootleg issues of
the concert, is really a variation on Robert
Johnson’s 1936 original. After singing
Johnson’s first verse, Nick continues with
verses of his own creation. Michael begins
his solo after the third verse, and builds to
the familiar Albert King stop in his second
chorus. This time, instead of a flurry of notes
over Miles’ bass drum, Buddy drops out and
Michael holds a single stretched note to create a Hendrix-like moment of sustained feedback. The band comes back in after two bars
and Bloomfield finishes out the chorus with
a series of hot runs, sounding like he’s concluding his solo.
But it’s a classic B.B. King-inspired
feint. Instead of finishing his statement,
Michael continues, playing softly for two
more choruses as the band drops way
down in volume. At the end of the second,
29
ing to sing blues. It drags me …”
bang technique had evolved from
Wenner protested, defending the
Bloomfield’s groundbreaking work of
Dead as the essence of San Francisco.
years earlier.
Bloomfield agreed, but dismissed
Back to New York
them with faint praise.
By the third week in February, the
“[The Dead] are San Francisco,
Electric Flag was on the road again,
everything that is San Francisco.
heading to New York for a stay at the
They’re hip. Really, and I like them for
Café Au Go Go. Michael Bloomfield
that. Just like the Stones for those
was due in the city on February 20 to
uptight meth-y little teenagers …”
produce another James Cotton
The interview, when published in
album, the harp player’s second for
two parts in the April 6 and 27 editions
the Verve label. While he assisted
of the magazine, would cast Michael
Cotton in getting the session going
Bloomfield squarely in the roll of a
and played guitar on several tunes
blues/rock pedagogue, a master player THE APRIL 6 edition of Rolling
Stone featured a 5-page interand organ on another, it was John
who had confidence in his own talent
vierw with Bloomfield.
Court who was credited with proand profound respect for those from FROM WWW.ROLLINGSTONE.COM
ducing the recordings. Court was
whom he had learned. It would also
Albert Grossman’s partner and, though Bloomfield
alienate those rock critics and fans who were becomconsidered him “not that hip to rock,” John would
ing enthralled with the new wave of costumed, posbe given producer credit for the Flag’s Columbia
turing guitarists whose flashy displays and whiz-
he repeats the tonic note A for the final two
bars of the turnaround and builds to an
intense third chorus, only to repeat the stop
after its first four bars. This time he doesn’t
play a lick – there’s silence for nearly the
full two bars until Michael jumps in at the
last moment with a dissonant cluster and
the band returns to finish out the chorus.
Nick comes back in, singing a verse
about the various soulful neighborhoods in
the Windy City before finishing with
Johnson’s original opening lines. The tune
ends with cheers and applause from the
crowd and someone on the bandstand can
be heard to say caustically, “You gotta be
in Nick’s band to buy a solo.”
Without pause, the Flag jumps right into
“Killing Floor.” Michael opens with a fine
solo for one chorus and Nick follows with
his usual two verses. Bloomfield then steps
up for three hurried choruses – the tempo
seems a bit rushed in this version of
Howlin’ Wolf’s classic. The horns come in
with the staccato “Crosscut Saw” rhythm
on the third chorus and Michael squeezes
out the Albert King lick before finishing his
solo way up on the neck.
Nick sings two more verses and then the
band vamps for a lengthy 48 bars while
Stemzie Hunter solos on alto. Bloomfield
comps furiously, using numerous chord
variations as Hunter gets a chance to display his R&B chops. Then Nick comes
back in with the final verse and the tune
closes on the turnaround.
Without skipping a beat Buddy Miles
brings the band in on “Texas,” and it’s
clear that he owns the tune. The tempo is
languorous and the horns offer lush backing as Bloomfield and Miles engage in
their musical pas-de-deux.
After two verses, Michael takes what is
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
arguably his best blues solo of the afternoon. Using his Les Paul’s rhythm pickup,
he spins out beautifully melodic variations
on his standard phrases for his first chorus
and then moves up the neck for his second.
For the third, he opens with a purring note
created with his volume control and then
drops back to solo very quietly over Rich’s
fat organ accompaniment. “Wow!” one audience member can be heard to say. He
builds back up in volume and finishes the
chorus with a torrent of licks before the band
again pulls back and Buddy returns.
Unusually restrained, Miles sings quietly
while Michael shadows his phrases – Buddy
is clearly setting the stage for a dramatic
exchange between himself and the leader.
But – just as things start to get interesting –
the tape stops. One can only imagine what
extremes Miles and Bloomfield went to on
“Texas” that afternoon in San Jose.
When the tape resumes, we hear the
final moments of the free portion of
“Another County.” Unlike earlier versions
of the piece where the segment concluded
with a wild cacophonous combination of
guitar, horns and organ, here Bloomfield
quietly noodles over ethereal chords from
Herbie Rich. He then strikes a repeated
bell-like chord as Miles creates shimmering backing with cymbals and then brings
the tune back to tempo with the 3/4-time,
oom-pah-pah kicker.
Michael quietly solos over the rhythm as
the crowd applauds appreciatively. He
improvises for a full 48 bars, exploring the
tune’s harmonic possibilities, but isn’t
quite as adventurous as in previous versions of “Another Country.” The horns join
him midway through with a riff that is new
and jazz-based, and then Buddy hammers
his snare to jack up the tempo. Bloomfield
30
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 extend-
continues to solo for another 20 bars
and, though somewhat down in the
mix, builds to a high A that is repeated for an intense eight bars.
The horn fanfare follows and then
Gravenites returns with the vocal for
the final verse. The band vamps as
Nick declaims over the ills afflicting
the country and then closes the tune
with a final extended chord. The audience responds enthusiastically with
raucous cheers and applause and the
Electric Flag moves on to its closer.
Harvey Brooks’ big bass sound
walks the jump rhythm of “Wine” as
ed 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 was also 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
Nick sings the good-time lyric and
Michael gamely joins in on the
refrain. Then it’s Michael’s fiery solo
over Herbie Rich’s great comping for
five quick choruses – the last two of
which consist almost entirely of
another repeated high A. The band
then drops down and Nick returns to
expostulate on the benefits of the
grape. Everybody joins in on the chorus and Bloomfield gets in a final sizzling cadenza that finishes with a
sustained note before the tune comes
to a good-natured end. Applause and
cheers erupt as the emcee shouts
“The Electric Flag!”
Aside from a recording of the
Flag at the Carousel Ballroom from
later that same day (which is not
included with these reviews), the
San Jose tape is the last recorded
example of the band that we have.
Despite the impending departure of
Michael Bloomfield, the drugs and
the various personality conflicts, the
Flag could still put on a bang-up
show. Few in the audience were
probably aware that they would be
among the last to see this version of
the band perform.
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
Where to find these Electric Flag recordings
• Both “Old Glory: The Best of the Electric Flag” (which
has the band’s Monterey performances) and soundtrack to
“The Trip” (in an abridged version of the original Sidewalk
release) are available through amazon.com, Barnes &
Noble and many other music websites.
• The various bootleg performances can most often be
found on eBay by searching on “Electric Flag.” It is recommended that the buyer contact the seller for details
on a particular bootleg’s contents before bidding as
dates and tunes are not always clear in the offering
information.
31
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 Montereystyle 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 (see Appendix A). 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 “OverLovin’ 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
32
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.
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
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
THE FLAG in flight: Michael Bloomfield finds a sweet
spot on his Les Paul while Nick Gravenites looks on at
the Fillmore Auditorium on April 25, 1968.
CARMELO MACIAS PHOTO, COURTESY FRANK MACIAS
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
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,”
33
Gleason began. “When I first heard Paul Butterfield’s
to perform intact throughout May. On May 17, the
band, I was disappointed. Here, I thought, were
Flag did a weekend at the Carousel Ballroom in San
good white musicians trying to sound black and a
Francisco, and played their last big show at a huge
great guitar player trying to sound like a black man.”
two-day outdoor festival on Saturday, May 18.
Gleason went on to classify the Electric Flag’s music
Called variously the Santa Clara Pop Festival and the
as imitation and to chide Bloomfield for aping Stax
Northern California Folk Rock Festival, it was held
and Motown soul rather than finding his own voice.
in the Family Park at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds
"Originality is the key. If this nonsense continues,
and featured the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, the
Michael Bloomfield, one of the best guitar players in
Animals, Big Brother and dozens of lesser-known
the world when he is playing guitar, will end up the
bands. The Flag was scheduled to play on Saturday
Stan Getz or Chet Baker of rock,” Gleason declared.
at 3 p.m. One concert attendee recalled the band’s
He concluded by speaking
appearance this way:
directly to Michael: “Play your
"In
the
mid-afternoon
own soul, man, and stop this
onstage came the Electric Flag,
shuck.”
a group I was aware of but had
Though his racial statements
never heard. I didn’t know
were off the mark and borwhat to expect as the bunch of
dered on offensive, Gleason
them hemmed and hawed and
had a point. The Flag had largefumbled around the stage for a
ly become a soul and blues
bit, distractedly looking around
cover band by the late spring of
and mumbling with each other.
1968, and they knew it. The crit“After a few minutes of this,
ic’s broadside, however, came
[Nick Gravenites] came downoff as a very public personal
stage and announced from a
attack on Michael Bloomfield,
vocal mic, ‘Hey, Mike, if you
and it could only have exacercan hear me, come on, man!
bated
Michael’s
growing
It’s time to play. Drop the chick
ambivalence about continuing
and get your ass up here ...
with the Flag and about the
now!’ Another minute went by
music business in general. Nick
[and] all of a sudden this
SATURDAY afternoon in the sun: a thin, bareGranvenites
came
to footed Bloomfield performs at the Santa
lanky, frizzy-haired freak came
Bloomfield’s defense in the next Clara Pop Festival. GRANT JACOBS PHOTO
running onstage, laughing and
issue of Rolling Stone in an artigrabbing up his guitar. He
cle caustically titled “Stop This Shuck, Ralph
then proceeded to burn his memory into my head
Gleason!” Though he valiantly pointed out that
forever."
blues was part of the musical environment for all
Judging from a recording made by an audience
Chicagoans – not just those from the black commumember, the Flag’s performance was quite good. The
nity – and that Michael had been playing as an equal
band opened with a new tune by Buddy Miles, a
with black musicians for most of his musical life, it
stomping instrumental called “Soul Searchin’,” and
was too late. The damage had been done.
when they played “Groovin’ Is Easy” some in the
Rumors had begun to circulate that the Electric
crowd could be heard to sing along. Clearly the FM
Flag was about to break up, but the band continued
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 90minute 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
34
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 bandrelated 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, twoday 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
35
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.
36
Though most histories of the Flag give the impression that the band disintegrated immediately following its recording debacle in Miami, the group 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.
Bibliography
Special thanks to:
“If You Love These Blues,” Jan Mark Wolkin & Bill
Keenom; Miller Freeman Books, San Francisco; 2000.
Toby Byron
“Michael Bloomfield, the Rise and Fall of an
American Guitar Hero,” Ed Ward; Cherry Lane
Music Company, New York; 1983.
Barry Goldberg
"Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi
Hendrix," Charles R. Cross; Hyperion; 2005.
Norman Dayron
Nick Gravenites
Ralph Heibutzki
Richard Lewis
"Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards:
Memoirs of a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor," Al Kooper;
Watson-Guptill Publications; 1998.
Frank Macias
Interview, Dan McCloskey; KPFA; 1971.
Mark Skobac
Rolling Stone, issues from Nov. 1967-July 1968
Nick Warburton
New York Times archive
NewspaperARCHIVE.com
Numerous personal blogs and websites
Peggy McVickar
Mark Naftalin
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.
David Dann is a commercial artist, amateur musician
and host of “Crosscurrents” on NPR-affiliate WJFF
90.5 FM in upstate New York. He maintains a collection of 7,000 blues and jazz recordings and writes occasionally about music for web publication. An extensive
discography and performance history for Michael
Bloomfield can be found at www.mikebloomfieldamericanmusic.com. For more information, visit the official
Bloomfield Web site at www.mikebloomfield.com.
© 2007 DAVID DANN
Appendix A: Recording personnel
A LONG TIME COMIN’ • Electric Flag • Columbia CS-9597
Release date: first week of April 1968
1. Killing Floor • Chester Burnett • 4:11
Michael Bloomfield, g; Michael Fonfara, org; Harvey Brooks, b; Buddy
Miles, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Herbie Rich, as;
Nick Gravenites, v.
MB overdubbed rthm g; PS takes ts solo.
San Francisco(?), CA; January 1968
2. Groovin’ Is Easy • Nick Gravenites • 3:06
Michael Bloomfield, g; Barry Goldberg, hrpschd, org; Harvey Brooks,
b; Buddy Miles, v, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Nick
Gravenites, v, tamb.
Cass Elliot and BM sing bckup v; MB overdubbed second guitar part
on the “bagpipes” interlude and in places on verses.
Los Angeles, CA; July 1967
3. Over-Lovin’ You • Barry Goldberg, Michael Bloomfield • 2:12
Michael Bloomfield, g; Barry Goldberg, hrpschrd; Harvey Brooks, b;
Buddy Miles, v, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Nick
Gravenites, tamb.
BM plays tympani during the interlude.
San Francisco, CA; September 1967
4. She Should Have Just • Ron Polte (Nick Gravenites?) • 5:03
Michael Bloomfield, Sivuca, g; Barry Goldberg, hrpschrd, p, org;
Harvey Brooks, b; Buddy Miles, v, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter
Strazza, ts; Nick Gravenites, v, tamb, perc; Bobby Notkoff, el vi.
John Court sings layered bckup; MB overdubbed second guitar part;
Sivuca plays the interludes; MD solos on bridge, PS overdubbed solo
on out chorus.
San Francisco, CA; September 1967
5. Wine • Granville McGee • 3:15
Michael Bloomfield, g; Michael Fonfara, p; Harvey Brooks, b; Buddy
Miles, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Herbie Rich, as;
Nick Gravenites, v.
MB and John Court sing bckup; MF overdubbed second piano part.
San Francisco(?), CA; January 1968
6. Texas • Buddy Miles, Michael Bloomfield • 4:48
Michael Bloomfield, g; Michael Fonfara, p; Harvey Brooks, b; Buddy
Miles, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Herbie Rich, as.
San Francisco(?), CA; January 1968
7. Sittin’ In Circles • Barry Goldberg • 3:54
Michael Bloomfield, g; Barry Goldberg, p, org, concert bells; Harvey
Brooks, b; Buddy Miles, d, vbs; Nick Gravenites, v; Marcus
Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Herbie Rich, bs; Julius Held, Leo
Daruczek, George Brown, Charles McCracken, vi.
“Circles” opens with thunder-and-rain sound effects; MB overdubbed
second guitar part; John Court sings bckup.
San Francisco, CA; September 1967
8. You Don’t Realize • Michael Bloomfield • 4:56
Michael Bloomfield, g; Barry Goldberg, p, org; Harvey Brooks, b; Buddy
Miles, v, d; Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Herbie Rich, bs.
MB overdubbed rthm g.
San Francisco, CA; September 1967
9. Another Country • Ron Polte (Nick Gravenites?) • 8:47
Michael Bloomfield, g; Michael Fonfara, p; Herbie Rich, org, as;
Harvey Brooks, b; Buddy Miles, d; Nick Gravenites, v, rhtm g, conga;
Marcus Doubleday, tp; Peter Strazza, ts; Paul Beaver, moog syn;
Richie Havens, sitar; Julius Held, Leo Daruczek, George Brown,
Charles McCracken, vi.
Collage interlude features excerpts of LBJ speech and other spoken
parts over horns, guitar and synthesizer sounds; band plays perc
throughout; MD solos on out chorus; unknown whistler closes piece
with “America the Beautiful.”
San Francisco, CA; September 1967
10. Easy Rider • Michael Bloomfield • 0:53
Michael Bloomfield, g.
Note: MB overdubbed rthm g; sound effects include footsteps, falling
rain, thunder.
San Francisco, CA(?); January 1968
Electric
repertory
(40repertory
known tunes)
June 1967-June
1968
AppendixFlag
B: Electric
Flag
(40•known
tunes) • June
1967-June 1968
ORIGINAL COMPOSITIONS (9)
COMPOSER
NOTES/PERFORMERS
FIRST LIVE
PERFORMANCE
NO. OF LIVE
PERFORMANCES**
Groovin’ Is Easy
Nick Gravenites
Composer listed as Ron Polte on original release
06/17/67
6
Soul Searchin’
Buddy Miles
Not recorded until after Bloomfield left the band
05/18/68
4
Another Country
Ron Polte
05/18/68
4
Michael Bloomfield/
Buddy Miles
11/67
3
Sittin’ In Circles
Barry Goldberg
11/67
2
You Don’t Realize
Michael Bloomfield
01/25/68
2
Over-Lovin’ You
Michael Bloomfield/
Barry Goldberg
06/17/67
2
TITLE
Texas
She Should Have Just
Nick Gravenites
Composer listed as Ron Polte on original release
01/25/68
1
Michael Bloomfield
Unrecorded
Early ‘68(?)
1
Jimmy Oden
St. Louis Jimmy, 1941; also Howlin’ Wolf, 1962
11/67
5
Killing Floor
Chester Burnett
Howlin’ Wolf, 1965
11/67
4
It Takes Time
Otis Rush(?)
Otis Rush, 1957
11/67
4
Granville McGhee
Sticks McGhee, 1947,
as “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee”
06/17/67
4
Junior Wells
Junior Wells, 1960(?)
11/67
3
Roosevelt Sykes
Roosevelt Sykes, 1949; also Junior Parker, 1961(?)
12/08/67
3
Eddie Jones
Guitar Slim, 1954
11/67
2
Booker T. Jones
Albert King, 1966
11/67
2
Riley King
B.B. King, 1961
12/07/67
1
Richard Penniman
Little Richard, 1954
12/07/67
1
Every Day I Have the Blues
Peter Chatman
Memphis Slim, 1954(?); also B.B. King, 1954
Sweet Home Chicago
Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson, 1936
05/18/68
1
?
The Cats & a Fiddle, 1939; also Johnnie Taylor
05/18/68
1
Kokomo Arnold
Kokomo Arnold, 1935
05/18/68
1
?
?
05/18/68
1
My Baby Wants to Test Me
BLUES COVERS (14)
Goin’ Down Slow
Wine
Messin’ with the Kid
Drivin’ Wheel
Things That I Used to Do*
Born Under a Bad Sign
Rock Me Baby
Directly from My Heart
I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water
Milk Cow Blues
Unknown Instrumental Blues
Continued on next page
1
Appendix B: Electric Flag repertory cont.
SOUL COVERS (10)
I’ve Been Loving You
Too Long
Otis Redding/
Jerry Butler
Otis Redding, 1965
11/67
3
Uptight
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder, 1965
12/07/67
3
Sweet Soul Music*
Arthur Conley/
Otis Redding
Arthur Conley, 1967
11/67
2
Higher & Higher
Gary Jackson
Jackie Wilson, 1967; also The Dells, 1967
03/02/68
2
I’m Sick Ya’ll
Otis Redding
Otis Redding, 1966
11/67
2
Night Time Is the Right Time
Nappy Brown
Ray Charles, 1958
06/17/67
2
Hold On, I’m Comin’
Isaac Hayes/Dave Porter
Sam & Dave, 1966
Sweet Talkin’ Woman
?
?
01/25/68
1
Good to Me
Otis Redding
Otis Redding, 1966
11/67
1
Raise Your Hand
Eddie Floyd
Eddie Floyd, 1966
11/67
1
Hey Joe
Billy Roberts
Jimi Hendrix, 1967
03/02/68
4
Fannie Mae*
Buster Brown
Buster Brown, 1959; also Gary U.S. Bonds
11/67
2
Keep A-Knockin’*
Richard Penniman
Little Richard, 1957
11/67
2
Don’t You Lie to Me
Whittaker Hudson
Tampa Red, 1940; also Chuck Berry, 1960
05/18/68
1
Miles Davis
Miles Davis, 1956; other jazz players
04/21/68
1
?
?
05/18/68
1
1
ROCK COVERS (4)
JAZZ COVERS (3)
The Theme
Unknown Jazz Instrumental
*Part of a medley
**Performnance tallies come from the existing set lists from Electric Flag gigs. It is probable that the overall frequency that tunes were played is proportional to their numbers here.
4
11
1
8
15
22
12
19
26
3
10
17
24
31
7
28
Fill 4
CAL
18
25
2
9
16
23
30
6
13 Fill 14
CAL
21
11
20
27
3
21
14
7
Wed
17 Mont
CAL
24
16
22
15
Fill
CAL
Fill
CAL
19
26
24
18
17
24
23
30
22
29
24
25
25
24
31
18
17
2 Bos
MA
9 Bos
MA
16
X
29 Gold
CAL
5 Civic/ 6 Gold
GoldCAL CAL
12
13 Crys
y
OR
19
20 Court
date
26
27
28
21
26
27
20
28
21
RECORDING
19
26
29
22
30
23
4 Bos
MA
11 Bos
MA
18VillSwar
NY PA
25 Bit
NY
2 Bit
NY
9 Win
CAL
16
28
X
30 Gold
CAL
7 Gold
CAL
14 Crys
y
OR
21
15 Fill 16 Fill
CAL
CAL
22
23
3 Bos
MA
5 Bos 6 Bos
10 Bos
MA
MA
MA
12 Bos 13
17 Vill
NY
MA
19
20 Chee 21 Chee 22 Chee 23
24 Bit
CAL
CAL
CAL
NY
26 Bit 27 Bit 28 Bit 29 Bit 30 Bit 1 Bit
NY
NY
NY
NY
NY
NY
3
4
5
6
7 Fill 8 Win
CAL
CAL
10
11
12
13
14
15
1 Bos
MA
8 Bos
MA
15
25
4 Gold
CAL
11
3 Gold
CAL
10
27
20
1 Drug 2 Gold
bust
CAL
8 Gold 9
CAL
15
16
31 Wor
MA
7 Bos
MA
14
5
10 Fill 11 Fill 12 Fill
CAL
CAL
CAL
17
18
19
3
27
30 Fill 31 Fill 1 Fill 2 Fill
CAL
CAL
CAL
CAL
6
7 Whis 8 Whis 9 Whis
CAL
CAL
CAL
23
16
9
2
26
12
13
14 Fill
RECORDING
CAL
29 Fill
CAL
5
25
4
22
21
20
RECORDING
18
13
29
15
14
12 Win
CAL
19
28
8
6
7
5
1
30
27
10 Whis 11
CAL
17
18
25
23
10
9
8
3
2
1
Sat
Fri
Thu
7
14
30
6
13
29
4 Ava 5
CAL
11
12
4
5
28
13 Cafe
NY
20
27
23
30
22
29
6
21 Caro
CAL
28
5
2
1
8
15
30
7
9
14
22
29
5
12
21
28
4
11
4
27
20
13
13
6
30
23
14
7
31
24
15
8
1
25
Gold
CAL
Hipp
CAL
Fill
NY
16
17
26 Soun 27 Soun
CAL
CAL
2
3 Newp
CAL
9
10
20
13
Fill 8
NY
14 Gold 15
CAL
21 Hipp 22
CAL
28 Kal 29
CAL
5
6
Fill 10 Fill 11 Fill 12
CAL
CAL
CAL
16
17
18
19
9
26
25
3
19
18
16 Gold 17
CAL
23
24
12
11
9
10
MB GONE
8
25 Fill
CAL
2
18
12 Whis 13 Whis 14 Whis 15 Whis 16 Whis
CAL
CAL
CAL
CAL
CAL
19 Car/ 20
21
22
23
Folk CAL
26
27
28 Super 29 UC 30
Session
CAL
7
2
3
4
5
6
7
24 Fest
CAL
1
17
Earl
CAL
12 Shri 13 Shri
CAL
CAL
19 Caro 20 Caro
CAL
CAL
26 Win 27 Win
CAL
CAL
3 Fest 4
CAL
10 Chee/ 11 Chee/
Whis CAL Whis CAL
17 Caro 18 Pop/
CAL Caro CAL
24 Berk/ 25 Sell
Shri CAL
CAL
31
1
16
11
15
10
14
Chee 2
CAL
9
Fill
CAL
Ava
CAL
Shri
CAL
Caro
CAL
24
And
And
NY
NY
2
Elec
Wha?
PA
NY
Cafe 9 Cafe
NY
NY
16
Cafe
Cafe
NY
NY
23 Unk?
MI
30
3 Win 4
5
6
ALBUM
CALRELEASED
29
22
15
8
1
29 Wha?
NY
7 Cafe
NY
14 Cafe
NY
21
6
20
13
6
Sat
31 Chee 1
CAL
7
8
10 Cafe 11 Cafe 12 Cafe
NY
NY
NY
17 Cafe 18
19
NY
24
25
26
3
23
22
18 Caro 19 Caro 20 Jam 21
NY
CAL
CAL
25
26
27
28
31
19
12
5
Fri
1968
25 Fill 26 Fill 27
CAL
CAL
1
2 Ava 3
CAL
8 Earl 9
10
CAL
15
16
17
28
24
23
22
4
Thu
21
3
Wed
RECORDING
2
14
Tue
Mon
1
8 Chee? 9 Chee? 10 Chee? 11
CAL
CAL
CAL
15
16
17
18
7
Sun
Appendix
C: Electric
known performances
Electric
Flag Flag’s
performances,
1967-681967-68
28
29
REHEARSING
20
13
6
5
4
Tue
Mon
Sun
1967
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY