Tonight's The Night
I loved doing this Rod Stewart recording.
I did it in L.A. with Jeff Pacaro on drums.
He played with the killer group Toto plus many other things. What a great drummer. Tom Dowd was producing. What a great producer...
I layered two electric guitars most of the way through the song.
I remember going with Rod to his mansion I think once owned by Greta Garbo. Brit Eckland was there and she came prancing down these long stairs.
On this version she does the sexy french whispering at the end over my guitar arrangement. I think it gives it a great sound and feel. When Rod broke up with Brit he took her off of the record when it came out on the greatest hits CD. I think he should have left her on it myself but I heard that he and she had a pretty nasty break up so....
Something About You / Falling
These two songs are off of an album that
I producuced called Leblanc & Carr.
It was Lenny LeBlanc and myself.
I had already produced a solo album on Lenny
but the record company wanted me to be on
the second one as artist also. I agreed even though
I wasn't thrilled about going on the road to promote
the record etc. We got Peter Rudge to mangage us.
He had managed the Rolling Stones and was now
managing Lynard Skynard who were old friends
of mine from Florida. We got on the tour with them
as the opening act and it was going well until the
fatal plane crash. It wasn't too long until I decided that
I would rather be back in the studio producing and playing guitar.
This video is not of very good quality. It should be viewed in
a small You Tube size video window.
Ronee Blakely _ MSS Group
Ronee Blakely came south to Alabama
to record at Muscle Shoals Sound soon after
she did a movie called Nashville where she was critically acclaimed. She was very pretty, sweet and fun to work with.
She was and is a very talented artist in many ways.
This is also one of only two or three videos with us
Muscle Shoals Sound guys in it that I know of.
This is the section that Barry Becket said was together
during the Muscle Shoals hey day as he put it to me.
Roger Hawkins was playing his butt off as always.
Great drummer. I seen him for the first time in years
about a week ago. I went to his house and stayed
and visited him and his wife until well after midnight.
He isn't able to play anymore because of arthritis and tinitus.
He went through a very hard time for years trying to accept it all.
David Hood on bass, Jimmy Johnson on accoustic guitar were great as usual also. Very cool section we had there for a long time that played on some of the best records to come out of the south I think.
As with the rest of these videos it needs to be viewed in a small window.
Hank Williams Jr - Tammy Wynette
This is live at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville Tennesse. I had just finished my first album with Hank Williams Jr. and we did this show to follow it up. This is right before Hank started a little different style that would lead him into being his own man musically and not his fathers song singer etc. We had two guitar players in the band and we were stepping all over each other and over playing but its ok.
But I really enjoyed the Hank and Tammy duo here where they did a Medley of his Fathers songs. A historical moment in country music as far as I'm concerned. The next album I did with him, called Hank Williams Jr. and Friends, had a few Souther Rock artists on it with us also. That album took Hank on into a great career where he became the biggest new century country star of the time for a while. I really liked Hank and still do. I remember a time when Hank and I were at a Phil Walden Capricorn picnic in Macon GA and got into a pickup truck with Dicky Betts from the Allman Brothers. We started down this four lane highway and after a mile or two Dicky, who was driving with me in the middle and Hank sitting shotgun, all of sudden ran off the road onto the center median for quite a while. I looked over at Hank like "Are we going to die"? Well, Dicky finally pulled the truck back onto the hiway in the lane where he should be. He acted like nothing happened and so did we. Sounds like something I pulled a few times in my life.....
Mary McGregor at Muscle Shoals Sound
Peter Yarrow, who heard of us from Paul Simon, brought in a young lady named Mary McGregor which he and our piano player Barry Becket were to produce. Peter narates the video and we studio guys go through our usual setup, tuning, working out the song and recording etc. You can probably tell we were nervous with cameras on us the whole time. It is a little intimadating when you are trying to work and don't want to make a fool out of yourself. It all turned out very well I thought. I good one look in the studio where we made hundreds of records but just a small look at the varied styles of music we could do from week to week.
