ARTS&LIFE
FILM
54 | APRIL 6 • 2023
was the rare band that straddled
the generation gap, appealing
to youth and to their parents,
as comfortable at the first
Woodstock festival in 1969 as it
was in a Las Vegas showroom.
A DEAL WAS MADE
The so-called Iron Curtain Tour
was pitched to the band with an
insidious undertone. Its singer,
David Clayton-Thomas — who’
d
replaced Al Kooper in 1968 —
was a Canadian citizen and about
to lose his work visa due to a
police record back in his home-
land. That would have rendered
BS&T unable to perform in
the United States, which would
be a serious setback. So, Larry
Goldblatt, the band’s manager
at the time, brokered a deal that
was not widely known to get the
singer his green card in exchange
for the band’s compliance with
the tour.
“I didn’t know we had made
the deal,
” Katz says. “If I knew at
the time, then I would’ve said,
‘Don’t make the deal. Let’s play
hardball with them because it
would look a little bit stupid if
they kicked them out. It would
be bad publicity. But Larry went
ahead with the deal without noti-
fying us.
”
Colomby adds, “We were
screwed. I don’t know if it was a
conspiracy or whatever, but look-
ing back we really had no choice.
So, we did it. I would do it again
today, even knowing all the reper-
cussions.
”
Katz, in fact, was against the
tour strictly because of politics.
“They were trying to get us to
represent the Nixon administra-
tion and American youth,
” he
explains. “We certainly didn’t rep-
resent American youth and cer-
tainly didn’t represent the Nixon
administration. I was very, very
anti-(Vietnam) war, anti-Nixon
administration. I did an interview
with the New York
Post at the time, and I
said what the govern-
ment should do instead
of paying for the trip was
give money to the Black
Panthers — which didn’t go
over very well.
”
The trip itself was an
adventure, as you’
d expect.
A concert in Zagreb went
wrong due to technical
problems, but Bucharest was
too successful; after a wild
response to the first show,
authorities issued restrictions
on the band’s dress, move-
ments and songs selection and
“[THE TOUR] IS SOMETHING NOBODY REALLY
KNEW ABOUT, SO I’M HAPPY THE STORY
IS BEING TOLD, FINALLY.”
— STEVE KATZ, BS&T FOUNDING GUITARIST
Blood Sweat & Tears,
March 1984
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