Bloomfield Rockwell & Kooper

The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper

How did the album cover for "The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper" come about?

"We were doing the live "Super Session" in San Francisco; we shot 40 rolls of film but we still didn't have a cover. I was rackin' my brain. Then I'm watching the football game and thinking about guys every Sunday with a beer in front of them watching the game, even freaks like me—it's almost like Norman Rockwell. I went, boing! Norman Rockwell should paint me and Bloomfield! Just to have him paint someone who looks like us.

He came to the Columbia [Records] photo studio and he shot us— he would paint from the photograph. Bloomfield was stoned and wouldn't leave him alone—he was a big fan: "Oh, you should come to San Francisco; it's like ancient Jerusalem; women nursing babies in the streets—you'd have so much to paint." Norman just smoked his pipe and listened to him. He was very calm."

 

What happened to that painting?

"I know it cost $5000 because Bloomfield and I paid for it; it came out of our royalties. Somebody at the label took it home with them, when he retired. The last I heard, the brother of a disc jockey had it."

From The Wall Street Journal - April 10,2014
Al Kooper Rocker of Ages

 

"How on earth did this bizarre cultural collision ever come to pass? Kooper, in his 1998 memoir, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock ‘N Roll Survivor (reissued in paperback last year by the Hal Leonard Corporation), says it was his idea. Watching the New York Jets play the Denver Broncos one Sunday afternoon in 1968, a funny notion popped into his head. Yes, he was a long-haired rock musician with naughty proclivities and druggy acquaintances, but here he was, passing his time watching a pro-football game like any other normal American guy. The scene, he thought, was “like a Norman Rockwell painting.” And so it transpired that Kooper and Bloomfield found themselves petitioning CBS Records, their label, to get the 74-year-old artist to paint their portrait for the cover of their live album. To their delight, Rockwell accepted the commission. As Kooper relates, Bloomfield (who died of an accidental drug overdose in 1981) was the more ardently moony fanboy, his reputation for nonchalant cool notwithstanding:

Michael and I were sitting in a photo studio at CBS waiting for Norman to photograph us so he could paint our portrait. In he strolled, right on time, and Bloomfield, a closet Rockwell groupie, just gushed all over him. As it turned out, Michael was wearing his brother’s coat, found a pill in the pocket, and popped it. It was STP (superacid) and he gooned out all over Norman: “Oh man, you’re the best. You should come to San Francisco, man, you would see such sights there to paint. You wouldn’t believe it. People in robes in the street, mothers suckling their young, I tell you it’s just like Jerusalem, Norman, so whaddya think?” Norman, who was listening intently, just puffed on his pipe and was… together. He took our pictures and chatted amiably with Michael, thanked everyone, and then was gone like a cool breeze.

Acid, Haight-Ashbury reveries, football-watching, blues-rock choogling, and Norman Rockwell. What’s not to like? Kooper says that the final painting arrived several weeks later with a note from the artist that read “Here is The Blues Singers. These boys were the most interesting-looking people I’ve ever painted. Thank you. Norman.”

Vanity Fair - Rockwell actually did Rock-well