Backstabbing bastards, Bob Dylan, and the blues: The overlooked legacy of Al Kooper
It’s fair to say that session musicians tend to draw the short end of the stick a lot of the time – what do you mean, you played the organ for Bob Dylan, but no one really knows who you are?
That was the fate bestowed upon Al Kooper – but even despite this, it was difficult to tell whether he enjoyed or begrudged that state of affairs. On one hand, he didn’t have to deal with all the stress and outright faff that came with being a somewhat reluctant star like Dylan. But on the other hand, he sometimes seems like entering into the musical foray was his worst ever mistake.
Although that sounds like a harsh way of putting it, there is more than a hint of truth to the statement, as Kooper’s legacy is one of both underappreciation and a level of resentment towards the industry at large. But then again, it’s easy to see where he learned his complicated character from: he worked with Dylan, after all.
Kooper’s big break came in the mid-1960s when he played the iconically clunky sounds of the organ riffs on Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. To all intents and purposes, this was the secret ingredient to launching his career, except it wasn’t in the way that he wanted. The organist later admitted that when a whole slew of musicians wanted to book him for his distinctive tone of playing, the real reason it sounded clunky was that he couldn’t really play the organ at all.
It was possible that this put more than a sour taste in Kooper’s mouth, and as such, he subsequently pivoted into a number of blues groups in the years that followed, including forming Blood, Sweat and Tears, although he left due to creative differences before they ever garnered success.
In a lot of ways, Kooper really did see the blunt end of the industry over the years, so much so that he eventually just threw all caution to the wind and wrote his truth in his 1998 memoir, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Survivor. He pulled no punches, simply laying the truth out about the industry, whether the people liked it or not.
All of this combined to make him a rather unstoppable and inimitable force in his own unique way, discovering bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Tubes without ever receiving the acclaim for it. Given his overall disdain for the way the business operates, this was probably for the better, but it still leaves a legacy often unsaid.
For his own part, Kooper was instrumental in kickstarting the career of Carlos Santana, with the guitarist describing him as “a very, very important musician”. That statement alone stands to reason just how powerful the man truly was and still remains, even though he might do so with a certain grumpiness in his demeanour.
Even still, Kooper remains one of those people who you could definitely sit with over a beer and get a fair few incredible stories out of, purely by virtue of his being unapologetically himself. He may hate the industry, never getting his appropriate recognition, and forever cursing the day he fucked up by playing the organ for Dylan – but in terms of a legacy, that’s just the way he likes it.
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