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Blood, Sweat & Chutzpah
Berklee honors the talent and gutsy career moves of rock great Al Kooper as the Class of 2005 arrives.
By Brett Milano
Berklee.edu Correspondent
(September 7, 2001)
Before Al Kooper came to Berklee, teaching was about the only thing he hadn't done. Over the course of a four-decade
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Kooper accompanies himself on organ during a Berklee concert in1998 with The Rekooperators. |
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Photo by Justin Knight |
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career, he'd been a bandleader, studio musician, solo artist, songwriter, talent scout, and producer. Fronting the Blues Project; forming Blood, Sweat & Tears; playing sessions with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones; discovering Lynyrd Skynyrd; producing the Tubes; and authoring the memoir Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards were just a few of the stops that he made along the way.
But if one moment changed Kooper's life, it happened the day he sat in on a Bob Dylan session in 1965. Dylan was working out a new, five-minute song with a lot of words; Kooper was determined to get himself on the record and swore he had the perfect organ part. Even though he wasn't yet an organist and had no idea what he'd be playing, he sat down at the Hammond and went for it. The result: "Like a Rolling Stone," with some of rock's most recognizable organ licks.
"Chutzpah is good, but have to know when to wield that particular weapon," Kooper says. "Fortunately, I was able to deliver the goods on that particular day. If I hadn't, I'd probably be jerking sodas in some candy store today. What I played was totally spontaneous, but I knew I could do things like that because I'd played guitar on a lot of sessions. But 'Like a Rolling Stone' was unique because I wasn't playing the instrument I was a master of. I was in pretty unfamiliar territory, just fighting for my life out there. I was really at the mercy of [producer] Tom Wilson. Through his good graces and trust in me, I wasn't eternally embarrassed."
Something similar happened when Kooper came to Berklee in 1997: He'd never taught before, but wound up leading popular classes in songwriting and record production. Now back to making music full-time, Kooper returns to Berklee for an honorary doctor of music degree at this year's Convocation; he says he's especially honored to be receiving the award alongside jazz drummer Elvin Jones.
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Kooper accompanies himself on organ during a Berklee concert in1998 with The Rekooperators. |
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Photo by Justin Knight |
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One unexpected perk was that most of his students weren't familiar with his career. "Most of them were 17 to 21, so if any of them knew me it was 'Yeah, Al Kooper, my parents knew about him'. It's actually better that way, because you can get right down to business. Teaching a class is like producing an artist; the common thread is psychology. You try to anticipate what they're thinking. One of my strong suits is a sense of humor, so I try to work that for all it's worth.
"The class I taught about the history of record production was probably the most like high school of any in the curriculum. I spat it out, and they spat it back to me. There was quite a dichotomy with the students. You had your diehard music fans, and you had your slackers. If one thing surprised me it was their lack of history, and I tried to fill that in for them. So I played them a lot of things they might never have been exposed to, like Little Feat and Laura Nyro."
Unfortunately, Kooper has suffered visual degeneration that makes it impossible to continue teaching. "I've lost two-thirds of my sight, so it would be difficult. But thank God that if I had to lose something, it would be the least destructive to my performing. As long as I've got my hands and my ears, I'm happy."
His band the Funky Faculty—featuring Professor of Contemporary Writing and Production Bob Doezema, guitar; Associate Professor of Ear Training Daryl Lowery, flute and saxophones; Associate Professor of Brass Jeff Stout, trumpet; Associate Professor of Percussion Larry Finn, drums; and Associate Professor of Professional Music Tom Stein, bass—continues to play locally and nationally (they're at Scullers in Cambridge on September 9, two days after Convocation, and will play in New York and Detroit later in the month); and he's about to release a retrospective double-CD. Titled Rare & Well Done, it's half greatest hits and half rarities; ranging from his first 1965 single to a new version of Blood Sweat & Tears' "I Can't Quit Her," recorded just this year.
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| Al Kooper and the Funky Faculty, from left to right: Daryl Lowery, Jeff Stout, Larry Finn, Kooper, Bob Doezema, and Tom Stein. |
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Is it even possible for someone in today's music industry to wear as many hats as Kooper has? "Well, Rodney Jerkins is a pretty busy guy, and he's about 12," he jokes (referencing the hot urban-contemporary producer, who's actually in his early 20's). But though Kooper's keeping his reference points up-to-date, he has no intentions of crashing the music industry again.
"The music is totally different now, but it has to be. Each generation has to confound its parents with its musical taste because that's just history; the cycle plays itself out every 15 years or so. When I was young, you were the enemy if you had short hair. Now you're the enemy if you have long hair. From what I hear from people in the trenches, nobody in the record companies is over 23 right now. That wouldn't help my chances of getting a record deal. Unless they were in my classes," he laughs. "In which case, they definitely wouldn't give me a record deal."
Brett Milano also writes about music for the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Herald.
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