The Rolling Stone Interview: Mike Bloomfield
It’s hard to put into words what the real blues is and what it isn’t. It’s when there’s an absolute confidence about it and 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, the music you can play. If Paul opens his mouth to sing it would have to be blues, because that’s his thing. That’s the most natural thing for him to play. It’s like breathing for him. He picked it up fast and just got better and better. And that’s why I say there’s … its a very entertaining sight. That’s why I dig Otis, or the Vanilla Fudge, they work very hard. That’s one thing white people who have seen us really dig: when we are playing good, we play our asses off. And it sounds good. We’re really digging it, and digging it is a neces-no white bullshit. It’s just competely natural. At one time maybe it wasn’t but by completely immersing himself in the environment, and in the competition of the environment, now it is.
How did you come to join his band?
Oh, well, I went to Magoo’s and Butter was going to make a record and he wanted someone to play slide guitar on the record and I could play slide. He brought Paul Rothchild to listen to me and I played on the record.
I didn’t dig Butter, you know. I didn’t like him; he was just too hard a cat for me. But I went to make the record and the record was groovy and we made a bunch more records. One thing led to another and he said “Do you want to join the band?” And it was the best band I’d ever been in. Sammy Lay was the best drummer I ever played with. But whatever I didn’t like about Paul as a person, his musicianship was more than enough to make up for it. He was just so heavy, he was so much. Everything I dug in and about the blues, Paul was. There he was: a white cat as tough as he could be and it was a gas. So we went to Newport right after that and I was going to play with Dylan, you know it was a choice between Dylan and Butter and I chose Butter because that’s where my head was. That kind of music.
Who do you think are the best blues musicians? The top two or three cats?
Ray and B.B. I mean I could name a million cats, but there’s no one better than Ray Charles or B. B. King. They are the last word.
Do you consider yourself primarily a bluesman or a rock and roll star?
In my own head, I’m a bluesman, because that’s what I play the best and that’s what I dig the most and can play the most authoritatively. I think finally, at last, I’ve reached an understanding about and with my guitar. I just know all about it now. I finally know all about it. As a music form and as a social scene, man I just know it, it’s in my heart. But yeah, I am a rock and roll star.
Why did you leave Butterfield?
I flipped out. And like Elvin was uptight. So I left and when I went home, it was even worse. And besides, I wanted to get a band of my own. I had a lot of ideas that are mine. I saw cats like Buddy who is so heavy I was content to do Buddy’s thing. It’s such a pleasure. It was a delight just to play that music. Like I really didn’t know shit from soul music. I didn’t know anything about it. I never even listened to it before. I just dug blues.
You’re of course hip to Aretha. She’s operating in the same area as your band.
I don’t think she is really. She’s more New York than she is Memphis because her records don’t sound like the Memphis sound. They are a little more complex. She’s very gospely. Aretha is the last word. She’s the best female R&B singer. The Supremes have syrupy voices and Martha’s all right … but Aretha will sock it to you; she’s the hardest of them all. She has the most dynamic voice, the most engaging style. She’s sexy, she’s a red hot mama. She’s not slick or anything; She’s just soul. In a way it’s kinda unhealthy, it’s kinda Uncle Tommy. When she sings Dr. Feelgood, that’s where she’s at. While the Supremes are the other thing, you know they’re the urban Negro, airline stewardesses or something like the Kim sisters. So like its a very weird sociological thing.
Soul music is more popular now than it ever was before. Do you think this will be the direction of rock and roll and dominate all styles?
No. Just as important are long head pieces. Soul music is heart music, it’s not head music. Just as happening are Simon and Garfunkel.
Then there’s the hybird. There’s the English soul, you know, Procul Harum with their soulful voices. No, I don’t think it’s going to be the trend; I don’t think it will ever get to the white heart, the big record buyer, the white adolescent heart. He just can’t amplify his movement enough. You know, he can dig it and love it and buy it, and dance to it and boogaloo to it, and shake himself, and come with his girlfriend to it. But that’s not where his head is. Because when he goes to bed, when he or she goes to bed, at night, it’s Herman who she wants to be fucking. Certainly not Sam and Dave or Albert King. And I think that basically that’s where they identify. You know, kids can identify with wild funky shit. They much more readily identify sexually and personally with a white person than like with Otis…
What you’re saying is that it comes down to a racial thing.
I think yeah, it’s definitely a racial thing. I think kids are to the point … like kids around today are very much more enlightened, they smoke pot you know and they’re enlightened to a great deal more sounds, sonority. They can be moved by many other things. It’s musical value; like many kids wouldn’t listen to spade groups a few years ago, “Why listen to a spade group? Let’s go listen to beautiful Frankie Avalon.” Now they’ll listen to a lot of things. I think it’s racial, but America is racial. It’s a basic problem of identification. You must identify with something you can identify with. Kids can identify with the Beatles very easily.
Are bands like yours, Steve’s, and even Paul’s headed in an electronic direction?
They are headed in the direction of the amagamation of the personality between the bands. We’ve all heard the same licks; Steve, me, Paul, the English cats, we’ve all dug the same things, we’ve all dug the same records. If you question me or Steve Miller or Butter, or Eric, we probably all have the same favorite records basically and we’ve dug the same thing. It’s the same influences that have come out.
Each cat has its own way of saying the same things. Whoever has dug more of different type of things, that’s going to be where he’s at. You take a little baby and put him in a white cotton box and he’ll have a very limited horizon. You take someone who’s dug a lot of ways and that’s going to come out in his music. He’s going to come on with a lot more than a cat who’s only been listening to one kind of music. So it’s very hard for me to predict.
There’s a whole host of white soul bands that are completely unheard of. No one has ever heard of them. Like Lane Cochran and the C. C. Riders. Millions of them, all over the south and the mid-west, who play nothing but Top-40 soul music, with horns and singing it just like the record.
Like Mitch Ryder?
Exactly, but heavier than Mitch, way better than Mitch. Years, man, this has been happening in America for years. Bill Haley was one of the first of those type bands, like Joe Turner sort of. Those cats play the same circuit of lounges in Vegas and Miami. I don’t know, I run into them and they play fabulous. Really professional, but they play that Top-40 shit. They stay with whatever is happening at the time because they really don’t have it. I mean, like once in a while you hear a group like the Vanilla Fudge, you know just these guys from New York, who can really follow that New York Italian pattern, you know Dion and the Belmonts or Jay and the Americans, who are Jewish, but fell into that same pattern. Sort of a Four Seasons type of thing but they didn’t. They took after the Rascals, they took a litle of their own personalities.
Do hear much of interest in jazz?
Sort of. I tried. I didn’t dig it. I mean it’s fantastic musicanship, very heavy, but I really don’t dig it that much.
The thing that strikes me is that it’s so “tired.”
Yeah, it’s over. I’m much more folk-oriented —– I want someone to speak to me on clearly definable terms, that I understand with very little oblique shit.
Do you do much song-writing?
Yeah. I write sometimes like Stax songs. I wrote one we did on our album. It’s for Steve Cropper. I do all kinds of song writing.
How did you end up doing the sessions on Highway 61?
Well, I met Dylan at this funny little club called the Bear in Chicago just after his first album came out. The liner notes described him as a real hot shot, you know, a real great guitar player. And I heard the album and it sounded just shitty. He came to Chicago and I welcomed the opportunity to go down there and cut him. So I went to see him in the afternoon to talk to him and he was really nice. He was just so nice. I saw him at a few parties and then out of the clear blue sky, he called me on the phone to cut a record which was “Like a Rolling Stone.” So I bought a Fender, a really good guitar for the first time in my life, without a case, a Telecaster, And that’s how. He called me up.
And then?
Then I went with Butter and it was over until the next session. Dylan is very weird about loyalty you know. Like he sort of felt I belonged with him and I did too. But I didn’t. He’s a very weird cat. Albert manages both of us. Like when I played with Bob, I didn’t know anything about that kind of music. But I think I could play with a him a lot better now.
The Rolling Stone Interview: Mike Bloomfield, Page 5 of 5