still assaulted and set dogs on fans who were
too demonstrative. Poland was more uniform-
ly positive, with a more sophisticated audience
and concert facility.
“The thing that really got to me was these
people really loved what we did, and we made
thousands of people very happy. That was our
silver lining,
” Katz acknowledges.
MAKING THE FILM
The BS&T entourage — including other
Jewish members Fred Lipsius, Lew Soloff
and Jerry Hyman — was also invited to tour
Auschwitz during its time in Poland; filmmak-
er Scheinfeld says some went, but Katz recalls
the band declined.
“I really wanted to go,
” he says, “but then I
remembered they were making a film of this,
and I could see them putting ‘Spinning Wheel’
under that scene or something. I didn’t want
to show us going to Auschwitz with ‘Spinning
Wheel’ playing underneath it, you know?”
The documentary marks the first time foot-
age from the trip is being seen. A crew led by
Donn Cambern accompanied the band and
captured 65 hours of footage for what was
supposed to be a feature film. That was later
recast as a one-hour TV special and eventually
shelved altogether, with no record of where the
footage was stored.
“I’m always up for some good detec-
tive work,
” says Scheinfeld, whose
interest was piqued during an early
2020 lunch with Colomby, when the
drummer told him about the tour
and the circumstances behind it. “We
cast a very wide net looking for this
footage,
’ he adds, an arduous task because
the original production company was long
gone and there was no record of the footage
in scores of storage facilities. Eventually, how-
ever, two “pristine” copies of the 53-minute
television version were found, about to be
destroyed, and gave Scheinfeld “the foundation
of the movie.
”
What the Hell... includes a trove of additional
unseen footage as well as government docu-
ments housed at the University of Arkansas.
There are interviews with some of the band
members and others in the entourage, as well
as concert-goers still in those countries and
historical commentators. Audio recordings of
the concert were discovered in the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret
Herrick Library and will be released as a
soundtrack on April 21, along with a digi-
tal-only version of a score Colomby co-wrote
and recorded with the current BS&T lineup.
Scheinfeld’s team also located a memo from
then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to
Nixon about the trip; Katz, who didn’t know
about it until he saw the film, chuckles as he
says “the ironic thing is Henry Kissinger lives
about a half a mile down the road from me
(in Connecticut). I should really knock on his
door — ‘Hey, do you remember this memo …
’
“The story absolutely broadened as we were
doing this,
’ says Scheinfeld, whose great-grand-
father was a prominent rabbi in Milwaukee.
‘We learned a lot more about what was going
on both here and on the ground in Eastern
Europe. I mean, we had no idea that the activ-
ities of a rock band would make it to the desk
of the president of the United States, right? So
we were able to piece together a multi-layered
story, most of which had never been told.
”
CONCERT BACKLASH
It’s not a story with a happy ending, either.
BS&T returned to the U.S. to face backlash
from all sides — conservatives who didn’t like
rock ’n’ roll in the first place or the group’s
leftist stance, and a left wing that slammed the
group for working for the government. Abbie
Hoffman and the Yippies labeled the band
Blood, Sweat & Bulls*** while protesting a
concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Katz, Colomby and Clayton-Thomas had
inadvertently made matters worse during an
“ambush” press conference upon their return,
talking about what they’
d learned from being
in those countries.
Even playing an ACLU show later that year
to benefit victims of the Kent State University
shootings didn’t help redeem the band.
“It was really terrible,
” Katz says. “We lost
a huge part of our audience. That Eastern
European tour really stuck the nail in our cof-
fin, or career.
”
Scheinfeld says, “They were anti-Nixon,
anti-Vietnam war, like a lot of people under
30 years old. And then they go on this tour
and they see what it really is like under
authoritarian regimes and Communism.
They came home with a whole different per-
spective: ‘Yeah, we don’t like the war. We don’t
like Nixon. But if you’re thinking that over
there is better than we have — not so. We saw
it. We know.’ You have to admire those guys
that they could experience this and change
their thinking, and yet it caused them some
significant problems.”
Despite the aftermath, Katz says now that
the tour “really opened my eyes — it opened
my eyes, for sure. It didn’t make me any more
conservative or pro-America — probably the
opposite. But it was pretty incredible to be
in those communities and see what a REAL
authoritarian government was like.”
What the Hell... opened March 24 in New
York and Los Angeles and is rolling out
to other cities during the next few weeks.
Scheinfeld says it will then move to a
streaming service, which is currently being
negotiated.
“I was totally surprised at how good it is,”
Katz says. “John was like a detective, uncov-
ering all this stuff. There were things about
this tour I didn’t even know about till I saw
the movie. It’s something nobody really
knew about, so I’m happy the story is being
told, finally.”
APRIL 6 • 2023 | 55
Steve Katz in Belgrade.