Barry Goldberg, R.I.P.
One of the all-time great blues piano players - and a great mentor to me
I just read that Barry Goldberg passed away at the age of 82 - this news came to me by way of a GoFundMe update, raising money to help him with medical and other expenses. You can view it (and contribute) here. This is a repost of something from one of my old blogs.
I’m pretty sure I’ve written about Barry Goldberg in these pages before, but just in case I haven’t, here are just a few highlights from his 50+ year musical career.
Original member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (kicked out when the producer decided he didn’t want keyboards on the first album)
Backed up Bob Dylan when he went electric at Newport
Formed the Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield, Buddy Miles and Nick Gravenites
Discovered Steve Miller (Miller’s first recording was as a member of the Goldberg Miller Blues Band).
Recorded numerous solo albums including the only non-Bob Dylan album ever produced by Bob Dylan and Two Jews Blues, which featured Duane Allman as well as Mike Bloomfield.
Session man extraordinaire, a Phil Spector regular recording with everyone from Ike & Tina Turner to the Ramones
Co-writer with Gerry Goffin of hits like I’ve Got to Use My Imagination (Gladys Knight) and It Ain’t the Spotlight (Rod Stewart).
and he is currently keyboard player for The Rides – the band featuring him alongside Stephen Stills and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, their second album just released.
I just came across this video on Youtube of Barry and his wife Gail talking about their relationship with Mike Bloomfield and the new book Two Jews Blues, written by Barry with Stephen Roeser. Here’s that clip:
Watching that clip brought back a lot of memories for me.
It was around 1971 I guess. I saw an ad in the back of the Village Voice from Barry for piano lessons. I’d been playing piano for I guess 8 or 9 years but was really frustrated by a succession of awful teachers who taught me to play what was on the sheet music in front of me but little else. I convinced my parents to give me some money for weekly lessons and I convinced Barry to take a little bit less per hour than he was asking for and our friendship began.
(Barry and Gail in their living room, probably 1972, I think I shot this photo but can’t really recall.)
I say “our friendship” because I was at best a barely passable musician. And at some point during that first year that I knew him, I totaled my parents’ car, smashed my head on the steering wheel, had a severe concussion, and I was convinced that I could no longer play different things on the keyboard with my right and left hands. Was that true? I don’t know. I convinced myself that it was.
So my “piano lessons” soon became Barry educating me on the history of the blues, playing me the records that were important to him as well as sitting at the piano week after week effortlessly playing things on the piano that left me continually astonished (and probably also a bit discouraged). I think more than anything else, Barry taught me about life. By 1971 he’d seen huge success and also completely bottomed out. He and his wife Gail were so nice to me, so patient with me, it was the kind of kindness that 45 years later I still remember on a daily basis.
One time I showed up at his apartment on the upper west side and sat alone in his living room for what seemed like a couple of hours. Finally he came out of the bedroom, saw me and said, “Oh maaaannnnnnn, I didn’t know you were here! I was on the phone with Bob. I would have put you on to say hello!” Thank goodness he didn’t know I was there. What the fuck would I have said to Dylan on the phone?
But another time I walked in and Mike Bloomfield was sitting in his living room. Barry lied and said something about me being a promising student. Bloomfield sat down next to me at the piano and we did some four-handed blues stuff. What I remember about Bloomfield all these years later was how genuinely sweet and normal he seemed. No ego. Completely relaxed, open and friendly. I wish I might have had the chance to get to know him better, but I would only get to meet him one more time (backstage at the Bottom Line after an Electric Flag reunion show). I think Michael had this quality that drew people to him. When he died in in 1981 (at the age of 37), I was devastated.
Another time I walked in to Barry’s apartment and Gerry Goffin was sitting there. He and Carole King had co-written The Loco-motion, Up On the Roof, One Fine Day, Pleasant Valley Sunday, A Natural Woman. He and Barry were neighbors and they were collaborating on songs that would end up on Barry’s Dylan-produced album and Goffin’s own It Ain’t Exactly Entertainment.
I wrote a long bio/interview piece with him for the NYU magazine and did a documentary on him as a student project. (A really crappy one. We didn’t have access to sync sound equipment and there was no Youtube so I essentially made an audio documentary based on his records and the interview we had done, and used photos of his albums and singles and some silent footage of him playing the piano at home. I still have it sitting in a box somewhere though.)
Barry and I gradually lost touch after I moved to Boston for a couple of years. I saw him at the Electric Flag reunion in ’74 and about ten years later (he had moved to L.A. and I was out there for a few days doing the tourist thing). Years later we’re in touch again via Facebook. He wrote to me, “You were one of my most soulful students.” Barry was always a very generous person.
Anyway, check out Barry’s latest album with The Rides, Pierced Arrow. It’s really good.
Aside from Stills, Shepherd and Barry, the drummer is Chris Layton, formerly of Double Trouble (as in Stevie Ray Vaughan and …). Here’s a mini-documentary promo made for the album:
UPDATE:
Barry released another solo album in 2018, In The Groove.
Here’s a shot of Barry circa 1972 at his home - I think I took this.
