What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat and Tears

In 1970, Blood, Sweat & Tears was one of the biggest bands in the world. They had exploded on the scene with both daring and promise, selling millions of records, winning multiple Grammy Awards including Album of the Year (beating out The Beatles’ Abbey Road) and one of the headliners at the legendary Woodstock festival. In demand for concert and TV appearances, BS&T was a darling of the mainstream and rock press, icon of the counterculture and inspiration for a generation of horn-based bands. Their future was limitless. And then it all went wrong.

Created with the full cooperation of Blood, Sweat & Tears, the film will overflow with great music, international political intrigue, compelling human moments, humor and fresh insight into this strange never-before-told story.

“John Scheinfeld is a unique combination of filmmaker, historian and detective,” says BS&T’s Bobby Colomby. “He asked me a simple question: ‘What the hell happened to Blood Sweat & Tears?’ My convoluted answer somehow ignited an engine inside of John that was the beginning of an unexpected adventure: creating a documentary film to reveal the answer to this decades old question. This won’t be your typical music doc, in any way, shape or form.”

A key element of this untold story is that a film crew accompanied the band on their U.S. State Department-sponsored 1970 tour behind what was known as the Iron Curtain, shooting 65 hours of footage and recording many of the group’s concerts to raucously adoring crowds in Communist Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland. The intent was to produce a documentary to be shown in theatres around the world. But the film was never released and the raw footage disappeared. What happened?

During the first months of the COVID-19 quarantine, Scheinfeld began to dig for answers and recently unearthed a 53 minute version of the tour film that raised more questions than answers. Questions that involve the FBI, CIA, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Republicans and Democrats and the secret police of three nations.

What The Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? will reveal how BS&T found itself victim of the significant societal upheaval and culture wars in an America that was divided as it had not been divided since the Civil War. This toxic environment, fostered by a rogue Presidency intent on quashing dissent and winning an election, found the band in the crossfire between the Right and the Left and suffered greatly as a result. Although rooted firmly in the past, what happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears has surprisingly strong parallels to the present.