The Invisible Genius: The five best songs that Al Kooper played on
The session music scene tends to be the most underrated job in the music industry. Everyone might be able to hum the melody lines of some of their favourite tunes, and yet they’ll never know that no one in their favourite group actually played the main hook of the track on record. Although Al Kooper eventually overcame the dark shadow of session work with Blood, Sweat and Tears, his work behind the scenes may still be the finest keyboard lines in classic rock history.
Sticking mainly to piano and organ throughout his career, some of Kooper’s accolades include him working his magic behind the scenes for the best groups in British music, including everyone from The Rolling Stones to The Who. While the main band was out front for a reason, his style is more felt than heard on record, usually buried deep in the mix to fill out the rest of the track.
Even when he hit it big with his own outfit, working alongside people like Roy Orbison and George Harrison in his later years still kept him paying the bills for the rest of his life. Some of them might have been more paycheck jobs than anything else, but adding his certain spice to any track is half the reason why session musicians work so well.
So, looking through his back catalogue, Kooper’s reputation as the unknown face of classic rock has led to him building up a resume that most musicians only dream of. Most people don’t recognise his face, but it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll know one of his sessions.
Five best songs Al Kooper contributed to:
5. ‘Free Bird’ – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Not every production job is meant to be a walk in the park. By the time Kooper graduated to the producer’s chair when making Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut, he was known for butting heads with the group regarding which tracks would make it onto the record. While vocalist Ronnie Van Ant allegedly locked Kooper in a car when they knocked out ‘Simple Man,’ the Southern rock legends didn’t need to worry about him jamming on ‘Free Bird’.
Though the tune’s calling card is the outro guitar solo to end all guitar solos, Kooper is a big part of building the atmosphere in the beginning. As the slow-picked acoustic guitar starts everything off, Kooper plays right alongside Billy Powell’s upright piano to add a layer of colour to the sound. It’s hard to really describe what it adds to the mix, but once Kooper is taken out of the main track, a little piece of the magic is suddenly gone.
4. ‘Rael 1’ – The Who
Pete Townshend didn’t really need many session musicians when working with The Who. A lot of the best material that the group made could have just been them interpreting what Townshend put together on his demos for the group, so there was no worry that he was capable of making a killer hook. With ‘Rael 1’, though, Kooper took the basis of what Townshend was doing on the demo and brought it to gigantic proportions.
Being the second time that Townshend used a massive runtime to tell a story, Kooper’s tone is the perfect soundtrack to this kind of adventure, complete with strange sounds that predicted what Townshend would be doing later when working on Who’s Next. Kooper may have been around when working on rough demos of ‘Behind Blue Eyes’, but in terms of influence on the group’s sound, ‘Rael 1’ could have given Townshend the confidence to work on something as ambitious as Tommy.
3. ‘Long Hot Summer Night’ – Jimi Hendrix
Anyone playing next to Jimi Hendrix usually just knows to get the hell out of the way. During his lifetime, Hendrix was opening doors that most musicians thought were permanently locked, and Electric Ladyland was bound to be his opus where he stretched himself the most musically. Every session seemed to morph into a jam, but ‘Long Hot Summer Night’ had the most radio potential due to Kooper’s piano.
Although his playing isn’t nearly complex enough to compete with Hendrix, Kooper is tasteful throughout the track, taking the basic progression and adding ever-so-slight sonic touches to make everything sound that much more engaging. Kooper had already played on countless sessions before then, but if anyone else had nothing but Hendrix on his resume, they could die happy.
2. ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ – The Rolling Stones
Towards the end of the 1960s, it looked like all of The Rolling Stones and Beatles comparisons were officially starting to die down. No one could deny that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were a force to be reckoned with, and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ was the kind of track that could give ‘Hey Jude’ a run for its money. And leading the charger behind Charlie Watts was Kooper, delivering some of his bluesiest touches on keyboards.
Compared to every other Stones track, Kooper’s performance makes this seven-minute extravaganza feel like a living, breathing entity throughout its runtime, especially towards the end, when the energy picks up and the speed increases ever so slightly. Whereas most musicians are focused on getting everything sounding perfect when they go into the studio, Kooper was a fly on the wall during a magic moment that happened to have tape rolling.
1. ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ – Bob Dylan
It was going to take a lot more than just an electric guitar to introduce Bob Dylan to rock and roll. He had tried his hand at making harder tunes on Bringing It All Back Home, but ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ deserved something a lot bigger than his meagre attempts at making rock on his own. Mike Bloomfield was definitely an upgrade on guitar, but the chilling organ notes Kooper laid down had the audience by the collar as soon as he started.
Despite only leaning on a handful of chords throughout the intro, Kooper makes the track feel like it’s floating in the air before Dylan brings us all back down to Earth with his lyrics about waking up from the revolutionary dreams his generation had been having. Bruce Springsteen had always said this track kicked open the door of everyone’s mind, but Kooper’s keyboards were the balm after the opening shot.
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