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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