Blood, Sweat & Tears were the biggest band in America in 1970—but became pariahs after a State Department-sponsored tour during the Vietnam War. 'We were blackmailed,' says guitarist Steve Katz. 'We had to do this, or we wouldn’t have had a lead singer.'
were always entwined for Steve Katz. As a teenager in the Sixties, he’d travel from his apolitical family’s home on Long Island to Greenwich Village, where he’d watch radical folkies like Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Dave Van Ronk play. He grew especially close with Van Ronk, who taught Katz guitar — and took him to socialist party meetings.
So it was frustrating and difficult when, in 1970, the U.S. State Department announced that Blood, Sweat & Tears – the band Katz had co-founded in 1967 — would embark on a government-sponsored tour of three Soviet satellite states, Romania, Poland, and the former Yugoslavia.
Blood, Sweat & Tears’ Iron Curtain tour remains one of the strangest decisions in rock history. At the time, they were one of the biggest bands in the country: Their 1969 self-titled album spawned three hits and won Album of the Year at the Grammys, beating out the Beatles’alongside classics by Johnny Cash, the 5th Dimension, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.
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