Barry Goldberg, Electric Flag Keyboardist And Dylan Collaborator, Dead At 82

Barry Goldberg, the blues and rock keyboardist, songwriter, and producer who worked with artists from Percy Sledge to the Ramones to Bob Dylan, is dead. Goldberg died in hospice care after 10 years battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a rep confirmed to Variety. Gail Goldberg, his wife of 53 years, and Aram, their son, were there at his bedside. Goldberg was 82.

Goldberg’s work with the Butterfield Blues Band in the 1960s led to several collaborations with Dylan; he was onstage when Dylan famously “went electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, as dramatized in the recent movie A Complete Unknown, which he described in an article for The Forward in 2022. Goldberg’s 1974 self-titled LP also marked the only time Dylan produced for another artist. He later returned the favor by producing Dylan’s “People Get Ready” cover for the 1990 Flashback soundtrack.

Goldberg was also a founding member, alongside the Butterfield Blues Band’s Mike Bloomfield, of the blues-rock band Electric Flag, whose accomplishments include the soundtrack to the Peter Fonda film The Trip. He did songwriting, production, or session work for artists including Steve Miller, Gladys Knight & The Pips, the Ramones, Leonard Cohen, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Mitch Ryder, Stephen Stills, Rod Stewart, Bobby Blue Bland, Percy Sledge, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Later in life he teamed with Shepherd and Stills in the supergroup the Rides.

Born in Chicago on Christmas Day 1941, Goldberg later became one of the subjects of Born In Chicago, a Chicago blues documentary narrated by Dan Aykroyd.