An early ad, from Featphotos.com
Singing about Football
Little Feat’s first tour started December 25, 1971. We were in Cincinnati, OH, at the Reflections Club. It held about a thousand people. We had two nights booked. The place was packed to the rafters. We figured out very quickly that the crowd was not there to see or hear us but to engage in the raucous singing of football songs. Ohio State was going to the Rose Bowl. No amount of volume from us on stage could drown out their singing. Amazing. Richie had some ideas of his own to try the second night, though.
Same ol’ crowd was hanging out again…. (reminds me of a song). Richie said he wanted to introduce the band. Lowell and I looked at him, shrugged, and said go ahead.
He sauntered up to the mike, unzipped his pants, took out a sausage, cut off the tip, took a bite and introduced us to a thousand crazed Ohioan football freaks singing and screaming the same songs they had sang the night before. Not one of them took any notice. Richie stomped back to the drums, sat down and with a “FUCK IT!!” counted off the first song, hitting the snare as if he was punching everyone in the place out.
Years later, I discovered that a few folks did indeed witness Richie’s introduction, those of which included Craig Fuller, Craig (Sarge) Shertz (who many years later was our front of house mixer for the Let It Roll tour and follow-up tours—I had also worked with Craig on some James Taylor tours in the early eighties), some folks from the sound company Show Co, and a couple of folks from WB, all of whom were prominent in our career. All told about nine people out of a thousand. It was like something out of a Dickens novel. As in so many things in life, there is no way anyone could have scripted it.
(The Ohio Buckeyes, coached by Woody Hayes, lost the 57th Rose Bowl to Stanford, 27 to 17.)
That first tour also took us to Buffalo, NY. I was with Richie in a supermarket, he came around the corner and said, “Think Fast!” He threw a grapefruit right into my stomach, knocking the air out of me, doubling me over. I wondered why the hell he did it, and when I finally got my breath asked him he wasn’t being malicious about it, but he didn’t have a response either. I just figured I would have to watch him from there on out. In an attempt to save money, we had to share rooms. My partner was Richie. This lasted about two nights, as he would leave the TV on at all hours. I couldn’t sleep with it on, and he had no intention of going to sleep until he was damn good and ready, usually around 4 or 5 in the morning. This was not going to work. I later thanked him, as the result of our incompatibility warranted getting my own room, at least on that tour.
I never roomed with him again.
Carole Drive
Off the road I had more than a few times where I couldn’t afford to have a place of my own. Despite the fact we didn’t room with each other, Richie was always generous to me. I lived with him and his family on and off a few times over the years. One of those places was a Spanish-style apartment complex located on the border of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. We were just off the Sunset Strip on Carole Drive, adjacent to the Cock & Bull Restaurant and their parking lot—we had to park on the street. Bing Crosby’s brother, Harry, having consumed more than his quota of drinks, lost control of his vehicle and ran into my car, a 68’ two-door blue Chevy—it looked like something the narcotics squad might drive. I was encouraged mightily by the Hispanic parking attendants to sue him, which I couldn’t do. I felt sorry for him. Just down the street, an easy walk, was the Whisky A Go Go. Still, as close to the action as we were, there was a tangible tranquility to the area. The apartments were spread out and divided on two sides of a pleasant walkway. Hollywood scriptwriters, drug dealers, musicians, occupied the premises. Everyone knew each other. Richie and his family lived in one of the two-story-structures. He was married to Pam Hayward, one of the Price sisters. Pam was a dominant force in his life, and a disruptive one at that. (She had two other sisters, Patty and Pricilla (Prissy), married to Lowell George and Rick Harper, respectively. “Uncle Rick” was a dear friend of the band and our first tour manager. Their mother, Lulu Belle, was a famous session singer, having performed on records with Ray Charles, “I Can’t Stop Loving You;” sang the high part on, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and the theme to “Star Trek.” She was a true Southern belle.)
Richie, Pam, and their young daughter, Rachael, lived in the apartment closest to the front on the left side as you entered from the street. It was tucked just far enough away to provide a realm of privacy. Richie and Pam held court there, night and day. There was round table just off the kitchen where everyone would convene for conversation, the partaking of sacrament (coke) and drinks to take the edge off, along with reefer madness. Lowell used to sneak up on the south side of the apartment, negotiating a narrow pathway between Richie’s and the apartments next door, and press his face against the windowpane scaring the hell out of us. Laughing, we would then encourage him to come around and join us. (On the Let It Roll album recorded in 1988, we made mention of Lowell and his antics in the song, “Hanging On To The Good Times.”)
Despite the high-octane drugs, there was also some of the best guacamole I’ve ever had, served with Richie’s favorite: chicken taquitos. Muy rico. The conversation was incessant. I’m sure we solved the world’s problems ten-fold night after night, day after day. Richie was quite manic a good deal of the time. More than once he wanted to kick in the fireplace in the living room so he could have a real fire rather than the fake, gas log variety. Every time we would have to talk him off the roof. No! Don’t do it! You’ll have to pay for it. Relax!! It got to be a routine scenario we would all play our part in. Clenching and unclenching his fists, he would invariably give up and move off to another room sputtering profanities. Funny thing is, a few years later the apartments were vacated—the owners had sold them, given us notice—and were scheduled to be moved and carted off to another part of town. They literally lifted them off the lot one by one. In the process, the workman had to rip through the fireplace in Richie’s apartment. They found a stash of sixty thousand dollars worth of silver certificates, apparently stolen in a bank heist from the Thirties. When Richie found about this he was apoplectic.
As I pointed out earlier, Richie’s life rotated between the one foot on the brake and the other on the gas, Part of the brake was his family. As crazy as Pam was—and he was right there with her—he would be the one to have to hold it together sometimes—a tough task given his desire to put the pedal to the metal and let it fly. It clearly frustrated him to be in that position. He loved his family, don’t get me wrong, but he clearly needed some help and wasn’t getting any. His solace was playing drums. Whether at a rehearsal or on stage, they formed the environment for his freedom. Sitting behind the drums and playing was one of the few places—other than racing his car around the curves of the canyons or straight-aways in the Valley, or later riding his motorcycle—where he felt he could just be himself. He loved motion. But, to his unending grief, whether playing the drums or riding his motorcycle, he was ultimately held accountable. The laws of human interference and physics were unbending. Richie held to the quick starts and stops, brake and gas, brake and more gas, as a means to deal with the fleeting freedom offered him.
Tripe My Shorts
Richie’s sense of humor was legendary. I’m convinced his irreverence and inventiveness with phrases and words was an Iowan concept—Iowa has many towns with different pronunciations: Madrid (Mad-rid), Cairo (Cay-roh), Nevada, (Nuh-vay-duh), Berlin (Burr-lin). He could take just about anything and turn it into something else. He would chant: Yom Na Ho I want a Pinto!! He wound up with a Mustang years later (I guess it worked to a degree). One of his play-on-words took place at Lowell’s house the first year of the band. Richie was listening to a song I wrote. He thought it sounded good and asked me what I called it. I said, “Thanks For Everything.” He said, “Snakes On Everything?” A nanosecond later I said, yes, “Snakes On Everything.” To this day I’m not sure if he was messing with me or really thought I said it. I never brought up the subject again. The song title stuck and appeared on the first Little Feat album in 1971.
One of the ironies of Richie’s use of words was the lack of them in our songs. He and I wrote one song, “Tripe Face Boogie.” He wrote the lyrics, I provided the music and melody. The curator at the Rock & Roll Museum in Cleveland, OH, eleven years ago, asked me if I had anything I would like to contribute. There were some notebooks I offered that covered the beginning years with Little Feat. Everything from the formulation of lyrics to a general list of ideas, hopes and aspirations, that I documented, some cartoon doodles, legal documents from Warner Bros. One of the items I was looking for was a lined yellow sheet of paper that had a character drawing of Richie’s along with the lyrics to Tripe Face. I was in my garage in Calabasas, CA, looking for it. The place was a mess, boxes and paraphernalia everywhere. I was balanced on some boxes, there was a ladder lying on its side. As I stepped from the boxes onto the ladder my right leg slipped through and I cut myself. I wasn’t badly hurt but the pain more than caught my attention. There was a sizeable gash that took many weeks to heal. All of that and I didn’t find the box with Richie’s lyrics. Later, I finally found it in the one place I hadn’t looked, had in fact said didn’t exist. Cheryl told me to look just inside the door to my studio on the left, there was small door there, and behind it were some boxes. I kept saying there wasn’t a door on the left; there was a door on the right with boxes, too, that I had looked at a few times with no luck. I was wrong, there indeed was another door on the left hand side. It held a treasure trove of lyrics, music, notebooks and day-at-a-glance yearbooks, along with tour itineraries and the accompanying financial results from our accountant. I also found Richie’s drawing and Tripe Face lyrics.
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