LOWELL GEORGE April, 13th, 1945 - June, 29th, 1979 (his ashes were dispersed into the Pacific Ocean)
LOWELL GEORGE TRIBUTE ALBUM "Rock And Roll Doctor" on CMC International Records
From LOWELL GEORGE interview by Andy Childs in "ZIGZAG The Rock Magazine" (March 1975, Issue #50) [London, England]:
Lowell George: Huge Stars Big Hearts And Little Feat
Andy Childs, ZigZag, March 1975
AFTER THEIR PHENOMENALLY successful visit to this country, the name Little Feat must be on the tip of everyone's tongues and in the heart of every rock loony.
After years of wallowing in semi-obscurity, and with only a hand-to-mouth existence and the respect of most people in the 'business' to keep them going, they've finally made it. Little Feat maniacs could tell you how good their albums are, but I doubt if even the most enthusiastic and hopeful of their admirers could have foreseen how absolutely brilliant they would be 'live'. They just about blew my head off....twice! An incredible band.
In the wake of the enthusiasm that they generated, there were promises made of a return visit during the summer, not as part of another Warner Bros. package with the likes of the dreaded Doobies, but as headliners in their own right. Which brings up the ever-so sore point of the whole 'Warner Bros. Music Show', its organisation, and lack of adventure. Obviously with such a vast and expensive operation, the risk of losing too much money must be kept to a minimum, but I don't think there's any excuse for limiting a band of Little Feat's calibre to just two performances, one in Manchester and the other as second-billing to The Doobie Brothers on a Sunday afternoon in London. And without wishing to be too vindictive against The Doobies, why oh why were Londoners expected to have to sit through them four times in order to see all the other bands? Such was the stifling over-cautiousness behind the whole scheme, that I think it did the Doobies a lot more harm than good. But let's not dwell too much on inconsequential griping, let's be thankful that Little Feat actually made it over here.
On the Wednesday, January 15th around 1pm, the Zigzag office was suddenly deserted as we made what could loosely be described as a pilgrimage to Manchester for what we expected to be a treat of epic proportions. But the evening's entertainment started as badly as one could have feared – with Montrose, who sadly came across as a tenth-rate amalgam of every loud, heavy rock band that you could think of. They were far worse than their albums which do in fact contain some degree of musical value. Next were Tower Of Power whose albums I've never really enjoyed, but whose backup work with people like Mickey Hart is quite excellent. They were rigid, stereotyped, wooden, and boring. Up until the point when they left the stage, the best entertainment had been the cartoons that were shown between acts, but as soon as Little Feat came on, everything that had gone before, good and bad, was forgotten. Electrifying would seem to be the most suitable adjective to describe their performance (does that mean anything to you?) as they played for over an hour a selection of songs from their last three LPs. Kicking off with 'A Apolitical Blues' (humourously dedicated to Howlin' Wolf), they worked their way through 'Two Trains', 'On Your Way Down', 'Wait Till The Shit Hits The Fan', 'Walkin' All Night', 'Skin It Back', 'Fat Man In The Bathtub', 'Sailin' Shoes', 'Rock'n'Roll Doctor', 'Oh Atlanta', 'Cold Cold Cold', 'Dixie Chicken', 'Tripe Face Boogie', and for an encore, 'Willin" and 'Teenage Nervous Breakdown'. If you're not familiar with many of the songs there, believe me the choice is impeccable; it represents most of the best material that Little Feat have recorded. Despite a comparatively dull few minutes early on in the set, they were quite magnificent. Every single member of the band made a significant contribution to the overall sound, and to watch six uniquely talented blokes work out those great songs with fluent ease and obvious enjoyment was quite something. I left wishing they'd played for longer and impatient to see them again at the earliest opportunity....which was four days later on sunday afternoon at the Rainbow. Even though they'd been billed second to the Doobie Brothers, it was refreshingly apparent to note that the overwhelming majority of people had primarily come to see Little Feat, and I can't imagine that anyone left the Rainbow that evening without the feeling that they'd seen one of the best bands in the world. I'd have been more than satisfied if they'd played as well as they did in Manchester, but somehow, playing much the same numbers and with an irresistible display of class and sheer ability, they topped it; they were just magic. No way could I even begin to think of watching another band after that performance, and I genuinely felt sorry for the Doobies who clearly found it impossible to follow them, and ended up playing as meekly and politely as they could. I went long before the end, my head still reeling and my estimation of Little Feat higher than ever before. They're probably the best performing band in America today, and there's no-one who knows their rock'n'roll onions who'll tell you otherwise.
But of course such fame and glory represents only a small part of Little Feat's erratic, stumbling career. For years they have suffered the traumas and anxieties of semi-obscurity and mediocre record sales, and at one point it seemed that they'd finally been overwhelmed by the chronic apathy around them and decided to chuck it all in. One would therefore not unreasonably expect Lowell George to be a bitter man, hell bent on vengeance and disillusioned by the whole 'business'. But fortunately, that's not the case. George, as you no doubt know, is lead singer, slide guitarist, and spokesman for the group, and when I interviewed him he spoke modestly but with great enthusiasm about Little Feat, and seemed to bear no malice or ill-feeling whatsoever towards those who had conceivably given him a hard time. In fact Lowell George was just about the perfect interview....more than willing to talk freely about the ups and downs of his own illustrious career, which is basically what this article portends to describe. So we'll start with Lowell's first venture which was....
The Factory
"I was in a group in Los Angeles called The Factory that didn't do anything. We made some demos with Frank Zappa, and one of them is appearing on a bootleg album right now....a tune called 'Lightning Rod Man' that Zappa produced. He did a fantastic job. It's a cross between 'They're Coming To Take Me Away' and Ian & Sylvia – somewhere in the middle there".
As The Factory were a phase in Lowell's career that he'd obviously rather forget, details of its personnel are still a little obscure. But it did serve to introduce him to Richard Hayward, who is of course Little Feat's dynamite drummer.
"In The Factory, we were looking for a drummer and Ritchie came to a gig we played. We had Dallas Taylor playing drums in the band at that time, and he had just come from Texas or somewhere and had had an appendix operation. I didn't know anything about it, but he was ripping his stitches while he was playing the drums. He was dropping the beats and slowing down, and I thought 'wow, this guy's terrible, I've got to get another drummer'. He was actually very good, but he was just ill. And I didn't find out until years later that he was bleeding through his shirt, I mean he needed the money real bad and he was so honorable that he wouldn't cop to the fact that he was sick. And Ritchie came up and said 'that guy's no good, you need a good drummer. I'm your drummer, huh? Let me in the band'. He was with a girl, Animal Huxley was her name – a relative of Aldous Huxley. Animal brought him to the concert, it was a Mothers concert – a Freak Out. So Ritchie joined that original band with the guys who were in The Fraternity Of Man....Martin Kibbee, who is also the author of 'Rock'n'Roll Doctor', 'Dixie Chicken' and 'Easy To Slip' (all Little Feat classics). I've known Martin since High School....we palled around together for years".
As he said, The Factory didn't really achieve anything of note, and they eventually evolved into The Fraternity Of Man but without Lowell, who next found himself in the dubious role of lead singer with....
The Standells
"I was in The Standells for about two months. I replaced Dicky Dodd, the lead singer, and then I found out that I feared for my life. All these young girls that he had gathered as an audience came looking for me after a gig one night to do me in. They thought that I was responsible for his demise, when in fact he quit because he couldn't stand it. And I finally quit because I couldn't stand it either. It was a very unusual organisation. Actually I'm not very proud of that period, but it kept me out of school y'know. One would say that it kept me off the streets, but I have to say that it kept me out of school.
"In a way it was enlightening because it was a band that was on a real decline, and I was watching all the guys that had made all the money. Ed Cobb, their producer, was more responsible than anybody else for their success, by gathering all the material, putting the band into shape, and creating the sort of circumstances whereby the band could make the sort of money they did. And then as it began to decline I was watching the other guys in the band bring their hairdryers and their magnifying mirrors along to gigs – they used to fluff up before the gig. I was stunned. I couldn't imagine it and I still can't imagine it to this day. I mean many's the time I've caught a cold stepping out of the shower and walking to the gig or getting in a cab. I mean I know where a hairdryer fits in at this point, but for some reason I still haven't been able to take one with me on the road. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but it was very interesting to see that band on its last legs, and the things that they went through. They also had a little money disappear from them for unknown reasons. People were wondering why the contract read $2500 and the band got paid $1800, A little shady. I didn't like that, and I think I precipitated the events that got the band to say 'oh forget it'. See I'd known the bass player from Hollywood High School and he knew that I wrote and sang and all, so he called me up and I auditioned and they liked the way I sang so I got the job. And then after I got it I didn't really want it".
Despite Lowell's comments, which I don't for one minute doubt to be perfectly valid, The Standells, in their heyday, were one of the great 'punk-rock' bands. Singles like 'Dirty Water', 'Animal Girl', and 'Riot On Sunset Strip' are classic punk records, and if you wish to learn more of The Standells and other groups musically related, you can do no worse than pick up the summer 1974 edition of Greg Shaw's Who Put The Bomp magazine, which is choc-a-bloc full of such fascinating grist. The aforementioned 'Dirty Water' is, you'll be delighted to know, available on the famous Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 album (Elektra) which is again strongly recommended, firstly because of the music, and secondly because of the intelligent and careful way in which it has been put together. And if you see any Standell's singles knocking about, grab 'em'. Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, Lowell George never recorded with The Standells, so we'll never know what we missed.
The Fraternity Of Man
The next stage in Lowell's career concerns a brief spell in the studio with The Fraternity Of Man on whose second album, Get It On (Dot) he played on, along with Bill Payne, now Little Feat's keyboard wizard. Apparently, the Fraternity Of Man, besides being a very funny band, were shall we say, er, a little eccentric...weird even. Especially their guitarist Elliott Ingber (the famous Winged Eel Fingerling).
"The guitar player was trying to play 'Rumble' and on about take 54 they still couldn't get through the first verse and the guitar player started talking to his amplifier. And then his amplifier started answering, it really did answer him. He spoke something to the amp and the amp spoke back, and it's on tape. Yeah, it was very strange. But that band had such poor management, and the story goes that at a convention the lead singer, during his Mick Jagger imitation, threw the maraccas and hit the boss of the record company's wife in the head and knocked her cold. And the president of the record company said, while he flicked his cigar ash onto the floor, 'lose those jerks, they're through'. And that was the end of the Fraternity Of Man. I worked on their second album, Tom Wilson produced it, and Tom was at the end of his rope because he had like 19 groups to produce in 3 weeks and he couldn't do it all. And he got a telephone call – he has a little briefcase with a phone in it, and he got his first and only telephone call on the thing and he nearly got a seizure, 'cause it never happened before, and he went 'what is it? Oh my phone, oh my God someone's calling me on my phone'. And it blew the whole session right out of the water. They were interesting days. The group was very funny. Their career was such a Zap comic. I mean it was hard to believe that all those terrible things could happen to a group; they were so accident prone. For instance, Jim Morrison dropped his pants in Tucumcari or somewhere, and a week later the Fraternity Of Man showed up and they were opening the show for Arthur Brown. And one of the tunes they did had a section in it with some four-letter words, those being 'f**k her, forget her, I don't need her anymore', and it was a chorus that repeated. The DA was there with a tape recorder, recorded it, and immediately got the judge out of bed. They issued an indictment and a warrant for the arrest of everyone concerned with the band. And they put up road-blocks. But the band were so 'out to lunch' anyway, they were sort of not all there, that they took the wrong road out of town by accident and there was no road-block. You know the sheriffs had got together and said, 'well it's either the east road or the west road, nobody takes the north road out of town'. So they immediately drove out on the north road, and drove back into Los Angeles with headlines in all the trade papers – 'FRATERNITY OF MAN INDICTED'. That's what they came home to, I mean this was typical. They did stuff like this all the way up and down the line. Do you wanna hear another one They were arrested for smoking a joint in the parking lot of a high school which was next door to the auditorium they were playing in Pasadena, California, and the law says you cannot be in the room or place where marijuana has been smoked, but they weren't caught with anything. However, one of the guys in the group had a chunk of hashish, very hard Nepalise or something – Temple Ball, I think that's what they call them, and it was like a rock, y'know. So they emptied all their pockets out in front of the officer who arrested them and he didn't think anything of this ball and put it in the bag and sealed it up. And they fingerprinted them and threw them in the slammer. They were bailed out a few hours later, came back to get their stuff, and they were really sweating it. So the guy poured their stuff out – it was a new cop this time – he looked at it and said 'what's this?' And one of the guys in the band holds it up and says 'oh that's my lucky pebble'. So the cop says 'oh, one lucky pebble, check'. The band got outside and immediately went 'WHAT!!' and they smoked it up immediately, which was typical. I mean they were on the verge of getting killed....destroyed....here's another one. They were in Chicago. They went to Pepper's Lounge, a blues club, to see Junior Wells. Well they went into the club and some black guy said: 'why don't you come out and we'll go in the car and smoke some pot.' So they went out to the car to smoke a joint and the guy pulled a gun and said: 'I want all your equipment, get out of the car or I'll shoot your arse off!' Well the roadie talked him out of it, he was a really sweet, nice man, and he explained that the band had no money, and that this was the only stuff they had in the whole world, and the guy said: 'shit, OK'. So he puts his gun away and they go back inside and have a drink. Then the guy comes back the next night, and someone from the band comes back as well, and the guy says: 'hey man let's go out and have a joint, what the f**k'. So they go out to the car and the guy gets out a gun and says: 'get the f**k out of the car, I'm taking this stuff. I can make a mistake once, but twice, never'. And he took all their stuff. Terrible. Crazy group. I loved them. I thought they really had potential. They sold like 50,000 records without any promotion at a stage in the game when it was very hard to do that, and they were lost. The group was lost – no management, no direction, no help from the business world whatsoever. They were very hard to deal with but they really had something to offer. I thought 'Last Call For Alcohol' was a classic, and so was 'Don't Bogart That Joint'."
However unlikely it may now seem, those sessions for the second Fraternity Of Man album utilized the talents of three of the original four members of Little Feat, but as Lowell was never actually a fully-fledged member of that zany outfit we won't dwell on the Fraternity Of Man in any more detail. Instead, we'll move on to.....
The Mothers
...which was Lowell's next move. He was brought in to replace singer Ray Collins, and even though he was only with the group for a matter of months, he appeared on both Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Hot Rats (the latter for which he's not credited).
"I got in The Mothers to replace Ray – an impossible job, because no-one can replace Ray. He's a singer par excellence and has a sense of humour that I couldn't hope to get near. He did amazing things, very very funny things. Well I wound up playing more guitar than singing. I was initially hired to be the singer because I guess Frank thought I could sing, but I really ended up playing more guitar than singing. We wound up doing a lot more instrumental stuff. I appeared on a couple of the albums although I didn't get credited for the albums I appeared on, I got credited on other albums, because at that period everything was sort of in a state of flux that those moments were never chronicled. No-one ever scribed who did what and when. I sang on 'WPLJ' (from Weasels), and I played on Hot Rats, and I sang on something else. I wasn't on Uncle Meat although my photograph was. Very strange things occurred at that period. I'm also on that 12-album set that Frank planned to release. I think I have half a side. I do a border-guard routine. I'm a German border guard interviewing people as they cross the border. And I think I play one long relatively lame guitar solo, almost half a side. One of these days Frank will put that thing out – the Xmas album – that was what it was supposed to be for awhile. But nobody will take it. Nobody wants a 12-album set. It'll probably cost 30 bucks or something, and not many people will want to spend 30 bucks on a 12-album set of the history of The Mothers Of Invention. What he might do is make it a limited edition".
While so obviously engrossed in the subject of The Mothers and their peculiar and unique abilities, I asked Lowell if, like many ex-Mothers, he bore a grudge against Frank Zappa.
"I did for awhile. I remember there were bits and pieces of information that I created that wound up being used and I never got credit for. I made that known at one point in a book called No Commercial Potential (by David Walley). And basically Frank eradicated my gripe – he did something about it. It was like people involved in long solos, like the 5-minute Ian Underwood horn solo – that's Ian Underwood's music, it's not necessarily Frank's. Ian should have co-authorship at least. Frank changed and did that after the book came out. It really hurt him. He was hurt, and I can understand why....I was hurt for some of the same reasons by my own band, maybe because I was overly sensitive. But In Frank's case he was difficult to talk to, difficult man to get close to, because he worked so hard. He worked all the time, every minute. A tireless man. I mean he would wake up and go to work, take a little time for a burnt weeny sandwich, work some more, and drink cup after cup of coffee to the detriment of his health. And it was hard to get close to him; it was hard to get him to loosen up and get down to earth. He never wanted to look bad. I think that's changed. I think he's quite different now. But everybody was under the impression that he was stealing from everybody else, but that's not really true. It's just that the status quo of the music business has been such that y'know he's supposed to be the revolutionary. But he never really copped to being a revolutionary except in his music. The FBI came looking for him because the Watts riots broke out two days after his album (Freak Out) came out, and they thought he had something to do with it. And he was always very paranoid that the band was always going to get busted for pot possession, so he never got high, and he always made a point of saying: "you guys cannot get high", although something other than that was expressed in the intent of his music. Freak Out was really high music.
"Frank was a very demanding man to work for. He wrote some great charts. There was this big joke....all these session players in Los Angeles, who were very accomplished, were going to a Mothers Of Invention session, and they thought it was a big laugh, so they dressed funny. They wore Bermuda shorts, funny socks, and put tennis shoes on the wrong feet and stuff. And they got to the session and the charts were so hard they couldn't play them. They couldn't play the music that was written for them. It scared them to death, and they all came out of there saying: "this guy's no slouch". And it changed everybodys' attitude at that point. Shortly thereafter I think Frank received a Grammy for the most unusual, precocious musician of the year".
Little Feat
Before the end of Lowell George's stay with The Mothers, the seeds that were to eventually grow into Little Feat had already been sown. Lowell had been writing songs throughout this period, and he recorded a demo of one of them, 'Willin'' which featured Ry Cooder on bottleneck guitar.
"Russ Titelman was starting a publishing company and he asked me if I wanted to co-publish the tune ('Willin'') with him and see what he could do with it. So I recorded it and went on the road the same day with The Mothers and was gone for about five weeks I guess. Then I came back and nothing happened, but somehow a demo of the tape got out and it was the rage of the Troubador. People like Linda Ronstadt heard it and The Sunshine Company. All these people heard the tune and cut it. Then we did 'Truck Stop Girl' at some sessions, and Clarence White covered that, and I thought he did a fantastic job. And so from some of those demos we got signed to Warner Brothers and went and did the first album".
The story of how the band arrived at its provocative name is, I would think, quite well-known by now, but we'll mention it just the same. According to a press release at the time, "Little Feat was named by Mothers' drummer Jimmy Carl Black, who sidled up to Lowell one day at a Mothers' rehearsal, and pointing to his size eights, sneered 'little feat'. Something about the spelling of the remark caught in Lowell's mind, and when the Mothers disbanded and he formed his own group, he remembered it as being catchy. Hence the derivation of the band's name". Well I suppose it's original if nothing else.
The line-up of the first Little Feat was Lowell George (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Bill Payne (keyboards, vocals) Richard Hayward (drums), and Roy Estrada (bass). We already know of Hayward's background with the Fraternity Of Man, but Bill Payne was born in Waco, Texas, lived in California for most of his life, and played in numerous obscure bands developing a piano style that was nurtured in southern Baptist churches playing gospel/blues.
"Bill came to Los Angeles and I took him up to Zappa's house to audition for The Mothers, but Frank was editing a trailer for 200 Motels and didn't have enough time to talk to Bill. So we drove back to my house where he was staying, and I said: 'why don't you join a band?' He said: 'OK, what the heck'.' and that was five years ago. And we've been doing it ever since".
Roy Estrada was the last to join after Zappa disbanded the Mothers with a stunningly eloquent flourish in October 1969. Estrada had been with the Mothers right from the beginning and previous to that had spent ten years playing in various Los Angeles r'n'b bands.
Now I'll never forget the first time I heard Little Feat....we were driving along on a warm saturday afternoon listening to Top Gear, (I can't remember who was driving or where we were going), but suddenly John Peel played this brand new American single called 'Hamburger Midnight' by a band called Little Feat. Well it sounded glorious....a real moody, sizzling rocker with some fabulous guitar playing. Ed Ward, who has admirably championed the cause of Little Feat from the word go, wrote in Rolling Stone that it's 'a masterpiece.....perhaps the best record I've heard in several months'. The impression that the record made on me at the time, coupled with the fact that I was unable to get hold of the single, left me in eager anticipation of the day their album was to be released. I naively expected it to be put out in this country (in fact it was shamefully released only in January of this year), but nevertheless I bought an import copy, Little Feat (WS 1890), and played it for months on end. Many of you probably did the same thing and, like me, found it difficult to believe that it was only a debut album; the maturity and variety of styles it displays is impressive to say the least. Lowell George wrote three of the eleven tracks, and co-wrote another five, four with Bill Payne and one with Roy Estrada. 'Willin'' is on here, and is in fact the very same demo that George made while still with The Mothers, and so is 'Hamburger Midnight', and its b-side as a single, 'Strawberry Flats' which in retrospect might have made a better a-side. 'Willin'' and a song called 'Truck Stop Girl' illustrate George's frequent preoccupation with that modern-day American tradition – truck driving. His handling of such material is romantic, yet down-to-earth, and it's truly evocative of the subject in the same way as The Band successfully conjure up images of the Old West. Besides Ry Cooder who as mentioned before plays bottleneck on 'Willin'' and also guitars on 'Fourty Four Blues'/'How Many More Years', Sneaky Pete Kleinow (pedal steel on 'I've Been The One'), and producer Russ Titelman (piano on 'I've Been The One' plus background vocals and percussion) are also featured. As I've said, the album is now released over here (K 46072), and the only advantage it has over the American copy is that the lyrics are printed on the back of the album sleeve. The beautiful, Unmistakable front cover thankfully remains intact.
If that first album alone established Little Feat as one of America's top bands, then their second album, Sailin' Shoes (Warners K 46156), confirmed their status beyond any shadow of a doubt. It remains to this day my own personal favourite Little Feat album. The whole of the first side is just magnificent, opening with 'Easy To Slip', followed by 'Cold Cold Cold' – quite one of the most powerful songs Lowell George has ever written, 'Trouble', 'Tripe Face Boogie' – one of two out-and-out rock'n'roll tracks ('Teenage Nervous Breakdown' being the other one), 'Willin'' – a re-recording because Lowell wanted a group rendition, and finally 'A Apolitical Blues'. Perhaps because of the critical success of the first album and a very healthy reputation in the States, Sailin' Shoes was dutifully released over here although it didn't receive anything like the promotion it deserved, and consequently didn't sell too well. To pick a favourite track from the album is a hard task indeed, but I think I might plump for the title track, which to be super-critical, they didn't perform as well as I'd hoped they would on both the occasions I saw them. The lyrics are elusive and imaginative, and the playing is brilliantly tense but subdued. Superb. Sneaky Pete is again featured on a couple of cuts, and other additional personnel include Ron Elliott on electric guitar, Milt Holland (percussion), and Debbie Lindsey (vocals). If you haven't already got Sailin' Shoes, don't wait a minute longer; it's definitely one of the best records from any American band ever!
But paradoxically, as critical acclaim spiralled, public reaction in terms of record sales remained unimpressive. Nothing much was heard from the band until the news came that Roy Estrada had left and that they were now a six-piece.
"Captain Beefheart invited Roy to play with him and he immediately jumped at the chance because it was more in the concept he was accustomed to. We found Ken Gradney and Sam Clayton as a sort of package deal – they'd worked with Delaney & Bonnie. So they joined the band together. Also, Paul Barrere joined the band at this point, and the first gig the new line-up played was in Hawaii – for the Easter Festival. And at that point, that's what everybody imagined it would be like for the rest of our time together. As a first gig, I must say that it was one of the best gigs I've ever played. But a few months later they got wise to the fact that it was a little bit more uphill than that one job".
Around about the same time, rumours started to spread claiming that the band had broken up, and that Lowell George had gone off to form a group with John Sebastian and Phil Everly.
"There were rumours weren't there? It was proposed, but I don't think that Phil Everly and I could share a stage. I mean I'm 20 pounds overweight and he's 20 pounds...er...over the hill. I don't know...he's actually a good singer. He's been doing what he's done for so long that I don't think he'd be prepared for anything I'd want to lay on him. I don't think I'd want to be in a group unless it was possible for me to venture an opinion and/or a musical presentation of one sort or another. This is all conjecture, but Jackson Browne invited me to join a group with him – an LA group – folks from LA that had had a hard time of it. But he's one of my favourites. God, he's a great character. He really is Mr. LA. He really sums it all up. I love the way he sings and the way he plays, and David Lindley is an exceptional lap-steel player. But right now Little Feat is happening and we're having a lot of fun playing anywhere."
So Little Feat, far from breaking up, emerged with a new expanded line-up, and a third album, Dixie Chicken (K 462 00). As stated, the new members were guitarist Paul Barrere who is supposedly the grandson of a famous flautist and veteran of an LA group called Lead Enema "that never made it out of the basement", bassist Ken Gradney who's played with countless people from Delaney & Bonnie to the Shirelles, and Sam Clayton (brother of Merry) on congas. As a result, Dixie Chicken is a much fuller-sounding album, less stark and raunchy than previous ones, and more soulful. It's reminiscent of some of the more successful efforts from Stoneground (remember them?), and other bands of that ilk. A fabulous album, especially the title track, which John Sebastian covered on his last album.
"Both Phil Everly and John Sebastian sang on the original version of the track 'Dixie Chicken'. It was re-cut later on and changed around. We redid it completely with a new rhythm section about three months later. But they sang well. John played me a cassette of him and Phil, and Phil had this beautiful high voice and John had a contralto, and I had a tenor that fit right in the middle. It was a nice vocal blend. But in fact money was the prime motivation for that little scene and I don't think I could have handled it. Money moves me but it doesn't move me that far. I think of all those pop groups who hate each other making fortunes every night, and I can't imagine doing that. I wouldn't last a week. The only thing that moves me is the ability to further the work I'm doing, and most recently that turned out to be our recording studio. We have our own recording studio in Maryland, and that moved me a great deal. That takes money of course, but in fact the idea of accumulating wealth has never appealed to me."
Around about late-1973 the band acquired a new drummer, Freddie White, who joined from Donny Hathaway's group.
"When I get back to California I'm going to try and get Freddie in the band too, so that we have Freddie and Ritchie. I've always loved listening to two drummers, it's always amazed me. It'll be polyrhythmic. Freddie will play all the down beats and Ritchie will play all the other notes. It's amazing what both those guys are capable of doing, but in totally different areas".
White was with the band for just a few months when the rumours of a breakup once again started flying thick and fast. This time, however, there was an element of truth involved.
"We broke up for about two days. I think I called Bill on the phone and called him a son-of-a-bitch and said 'f**k you' and hung up. And two days later I called him back and said 'hey man, I'm sorry'. It wasn't actually like that, I'm exaggerating the state of affairs. What really did happen was that it was a great hobby, but we weren't making any money. We really weren't surviving. So I suggested to everybody that we try and find employment while we either figure out a new hustle or get all the people involved with the management and the record company together under a banner-head, that being Little Feat. I was working with the Meters and Robert Palmer and I got a call from Bob Cavallo saying: 'hey, I've got a studio, would you like it?' And I dropped everything and said 'yikes, that's it!' – that's basically all I wanted from the whole thing anyway.
"The blame for our past lack of success is equal one way or another. We never presented ourselves in front of an audience at the right opportunity. We'd make a record, the thing would come out, and then three months later we'd go on the road. And then the sales of the album would never equate because the initial push would be lost. There was no chart position, so the buyers out in the boondogs wouldn't buy. The record company's a business. It's like if you have a product and it's not doing well, there's not much you can do about it unless you do a million dollar push. And everybody was afraid that we were going to break up".
Towards the middle of last year however, the band once again rose from beyond the grave with an album that was recorded at their own Blue Seas recording studio in Hunts Valley, Maryland. Aptly titled Feats Don't Fail Me Now (K56030), it maintains the extremely high standard set by its predecessors right from the opening cut, 'Rock And Roll Doctor' to the medley of 'Cold Cold Cold' and 'Tripe Face Boogie' – both tracks on Sailin' Shoes you'll remember, which closes the album out. You'll notice that I've deliberately avoided dwelling too long on the last two albums, not because I think that they are in any way inferior, but because 1) the same qualities and distinctions generally apply to all of them, and 2) the best way to find out what they're like is to hear them for yourself.
A set of their four albums is something that anyone who is moved and excited by great rock music should possess, and if, as promised, they come back over later this year, you must take the opportunity to go and see them. If for some reason you're not totally amazed then my name's not Andy Childs.
Copyright Andy Childs, 1975
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