Before Al Kooper sat behind the Hammond organ during the Like a Rolling Stone sessions, he first tried out on guitar. After all, he was a guitarist, not an organ player.
But then Mike Bloomfield arrived and Kooper abandoned any hope of being Bob Dylan’s new guitarist. 🧵
As soon as Bloomfield started to play, Kooper realised that The Paul Butterworth Blues Band guitarist was streets ahead of him.
So Kooper retreated back behind the glass and waited for his next opportunity, while Bloomfield impressed more than just the hopeful usurper.
Bob Dylan was very excited about Mike Bloomfield.
In an outtake for the unused song Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence, he sings “she ain’t as good as this guitar player I got right now”.
Bloomfield proved his worth on Like a Rolling Stone and even relegated another guitar star, Bruce Langhorne, to playing tambourine.
Dylan then recruited Bloomfield for his electric Newport band before inviting the guitarist to join the sessions for his next album.
Though Highway 61 Revisited is Dylan’s first true rock’n’roll album, guitars are rarely the star.
Even the most straightforward 12-bar blues song, From a Buick 6, is largely driven by Harvey Brooks' incredible bass line.
Bloomfield’s guitar solos are overpowered by Dylan’s harmonica but he’s doing sterling work throughout.
From a Buick 6 is about a strong, dependable, earthy woman - likely Dylan’s future wife, Sara Lownds, who may not have appreciated her walk being compared to Bo Diddley’s.
Bloomfield does get his chance to shine on the album’s second song - the one unenviably tasked with following up Like a Rolling Stone.
This is not a problem for the guitarist whose unleashes scorching solos after each chorus of Tombstone Blues.
Bloomfield is more than aided by Bobby Gregg’s drums, which are military-tight and relentlessly propel Tombstone Blues forward.
Dylan would later say that nothing like the song had ever been done before.
I had certainly never heard a sentence as acutely oblique as “The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone”.
Or as comically Orwellian as “the sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken”.
And I just adore that final verse about easing “the pain of your useless and pointless knowledge”.
Dylan asked Mike Bloomfield to join him on tour but the guitarist decided to stick with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
He soon grew weary of that band’s relentless schedule and left to form his own group, Electric Flag, which included Harvey Brooks on bass.
Electric Flag didn’t last long and Bloomfield spent the next decade flitting between various short-lived projects.
Plagued by insomnia and increasing drug use, he became erratic and unreliable, walking out on an Al Kooper collaboration after just one session.
By the late 70s, this prodigious talent was a recluse reduced to writing porn movie scores.
In 1981, less than a year after rejoining Dylan for a live show in San Francisco, Mike Bloomfield was found dead in his car after an accidental overdose of cocaine and methamphetamine.
Dylan would move on to longer lasting collaborations with other great guitarists.
Join me tomorrow for an unexpected encounter with another six-string virtuoso, who would amplify the allure of Highway 61 Revisited’s extraordinary closing song.
Image via @TimSmith2021
@TimSmith2021 Here's part 4 of my revisit to Highway 61 Revisited:
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