Al Kooper & Duane Allman on Free Concerts: Point/Counterpoint

On June 24, 1969, Don Speicher of The Great Speckled Bird interviewed musician/producer Al Kooper prior to the first Atlanta International Pop Festival. Kooper was one of the performers booked for the July 4th weekend event. 

Their conversation included discussion of ticket pricing, corporate sponsorship, and their divergent attitudes regarding free concerts.

DS: There's some talk of sometime during that weekend trying to do a free thing in the park, with some local people and anyone else who might be interested.

AK: No one will do it. No one will do it just because they can't. I mean really. If I'm in a big group and I'm sitting in New York and someone wants us to do a free gig in Atlanta in the park and you're gonna reach about a hundred thousand people I'd say groovy, how are we gonna get there? Where are we gonna stay? Who's doing the sound? How are we gonna transport the equipment? You can't just go up.

...

DS: ...to me, free things in the park, with local bands, are much more of the whole total experience and a lot more overwhelming a lot of times than like a rock festival.

AK: Yeah, but you don't understand that we can get Coca Cola to foot the bill for Blood, Sweat & Tears to come to town. And they got to be groovier than any local band you got. And they're paying the bill for you to lie in the grass and get high and have a good time. Now if that's wrong, then you're wrong.

...

DS: Yeah, but there's this really big hangup about hitting Coca Cola to give us some music because Coca Cola....

AK: You already got the wrong approach. 

DS: I'm not so sure. Coca Cola is like all the evil there is, sitting on Atlanta, Georgia.

AK: You got to trick them. Now, what you're saying is that you want Coca Cola to bring you some music. 

DS: No. No, we don't. I dig that, but it's whether you want to play that game at all.

AK: That's not a game, man, that's a means to an end.

Atlanta disproved Al Kooper's theory on the Monday after the pop festival, when the festival's promoters staged a free concert in Piedmont Park. The Grateful Dead, Chicago Transit Authority, Spirit, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Allman Brothers Band, and Hampton Grease Band played for free for a huge crowd of fans. [The park by that time had become a popular venue for local and regional musicians. The Allman Brothers were major forerunners.] Duane Allman gets the last word on the subject:

"Playing the park's such a good thing because people don't even expect you to be there. About the nicest way you can play is just for nothing, you know. And it's not really for nothing. It's for your own personal satisfaction–and other people's–rather than for any kind of financial thing."

Sources: 
The Great Speckled Bird, Vol. 2 Nos. 10, 17
Skydog, The Duane Allman Story, by Randy Poe, published by Backbeat Books, 2006, 2008.