The Netherlands, June 1976

Little Feat’s Clubhouse

Over the years we rehearsed at quite a few places around Los Angeles. One of the places we hung out was on Cahuenga Blvd. West in Studio City. We rehearsed in the evenings, as there were businesses operating during the day. It was Little Feat’s clubhouse, in effect. Lowell was rarely there. He didn’t like rehearsing. For the rest of us it was a chance to just play, try things, jam. I had a cassette recorder, nothing special, to document what we were doing. Miles Davis had “Bitches Brew” out and we were doing our version of that kind of thing. The instrumental we came up with was called “The Jungle.” I used to record dialogue and music off of old movies on television with that recorder: The Marx Brothers, “A Night At the Opera,” “A Day At The Races,” and “Go West”(there was a section of music from a song, “You Can’t Argue With Love” that I did a take-off on for the ending of Paul’s classic song, “Old Folks Boogie.”) “The Jungle,” was taken from a movie of the same name with Cesar Romero, Rod Cameron, and Marie Windsor. The script revolved around a search for some elephants that killed Rama Singh’s (Cesar Romero’s) brother, and that Rod Cameron was responsible. Cameron, who had escaped a horrible death, was also frowned upon as a coward. He said that wooly mammoths (thought extinct, so how in the hell….never mind, it’s Hollywood, sort of, filmed in India) had killed everyone.

There was a wonderful score of Indian music accompanying the film. I played some of it for the band. We then took off on our own thing and starting jamming in a really aggressive groove. Paul and I got to one section and started playing a lick out of nowhere simultaneously. We couldn’t believe it! It went on and on. Richie was in a syncopation that I had never heard, Kenny right with him, Sam Clayton had an absolute lock on the groove. There was zero compression on the recording so everything was just huge. This jam was the antecedent to “Day At The Dog Races.” When I went to play it back I was listening to film. I heard Marie Windsor say, “Maybe they know where the wild herd is Rama Singh.” Somehow I hit record again, realized what I had done and let out an OHHHH NOOOO!! I was starting to record over our jam. Thankfully I stopped it in time—the tape is now missing in action.

This was the height of our taking off on instrumental excursions with our music. We simply carried that spirit over to the stage. It might have been why Lowell felt left out, and would literally leave the stage, later when we’d play “Dog Races.” It was our playtime, jamming was fun for us. We tried different grooves every night. In terms of the freedom we felt, particularly Richie, playing in that rehearsal room, I’m not sure it was ever quite the same again. The Alley, in North Hollywood, was another great place to rehearse, but we were a lot more regulated in what we played by the time we got there, and besides, there was a dramatic change about to take place with Richie and Little Feat while we were at that rehearsal hall on Cahuenga.

Lowell had had it with Richie and asked him to leave the band. There was concern about his playing, his attitude was defiant when asked to pull it back a bit and just play a regular groove. It was sad given how much fun we had been having. Lowell said let’s get someone else. We all went with the flow. Freddy White, whose brothers, Maurice and Verdine, played with Earth, Wind, & Fire, came into the band for a brief stint. Freddie was laid back in demeanor, to the point that we called him Mo, for Molasses. He was quiet and humble. He fit in nicely. He held a steady beat, simple but effective, a groove oriented player, very solid. We did at least one tour with Freddy. Back in town at the rehearsal hall on Cahuenga Freddie and I jammed together a few times and fleshed out the groove for “A Day At The Dog Races.” I cherry picked melodic lines listening to a cassette of our one-on-one jams to create and complete the instrumental. Later, a change of mind took place on all sides. Richie came back into the band, while Freddy joined Earth, Wind, & Fire. Maybe things had been running too smoothly, I don’t know. I’ve always thought we thrived on the tension, of which with Richie back in the lineup there was still quite a bit, but a wary truce was in order for the time being. The ups and downs of the band are more than I wish to relate, to be honest. Let’s just say trying times were in abundance.

With the exception of the first year of putting the band together, Little Feat was a launching pad for playing on other artist’s projects. We were, and still are, known as a musician’s musicians band. This is what Lowell and I had discussed from the beginning.

A Slave to the Music

Richie told me a story of working with Ike Turner. I’m not sure of the year; it was either 1974 or 1976. (It very well could have been in the time when Richie was not working with Little Feat.) Richie was at Ike Turner’s studio recording some tracks—Tina Turner was not involved in any of the following. It was a nightmare scene. Lots of blow, a gun on the console, a room where Richie could crash, but with all the drugs he was ingesting he wasn’t getting a lot of rest. Richie had told Ike a few times that he had things to take care of at home. Ike wasn’t letting him out of the studio. The gun next to the blow said it all. This went on for a couple of days or so. Out of sheer exhaustion Richie collapsed in the room provided for him, when someone burst in roughly waking him up and shouted, “We’re gonna play on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, GET UP, LET’S GO MOTHERFUCKER!!”

Kirschner’s show had a huge following. The filming was done in front a large and rowdy concert crowd. Filming is always a pressure situation, but this was through the roof. There wasn’t any time to run anything down. There were at least two other acts on the bill. Richie was completely crazed from lack of sleep, and wasn’t told until they showed up at the taping what song they were going to do. He told me, in fact, he didn’t know the song at all and was asked to count it off. On top of it all, the bass player in the band hated Richie. He had been on his case in the studio the entire time. He didn’t like a white guy from Iowa playing in the band. He was staring darts at Richie while hurling verbal abuse. Nice atmosphere for performing. Richie told me he was so scared he just launched into the song somehow and managed to pull it off. The whole episode sounded incredible to me; but years later, Jeff Porcaro, Toto’s drummer, told me essentially the same story of being held captive in Ike’s studio when he worked for him.

If You’ll Be My Dixie Chicken

In 1972 Paul Barrere joined Little Feat. Richie told me about Paul, a gifted blues guitar player and singer who was playing a concert with his band, The Lead Enema, in a loft in downtown Los Angeles. Richie and I agreed that Paul would make an incredible addition to the band. It didn’t take much to get Lowell on board, as he was feeling he wanted to play less rhythm and more slide. The band was in a major transition following the album, Sailin’ Shoes, and the subsequent tour that followed its release. We had lost Roy Estrada to Captain Beefheart’s Band. Roy needed a break. We needed a break. It was collectively what the doctor ordered, for us, at any rate. We needed a bass player. I was fearful we would be going through the same cycle we had been in the first year the band formed, with bass player after bass player trying and failing. Dolf Remp, one of the owners of S.I.R., heard we were on the hunt and told our road manager Rick Harper about Kenny Gradney. Kenny and I got together to play a bit, try some songs, and the search came to an abrupt halt. He was amazing. The band was rehearsing at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank for a Hawaiian gig, The Crater Festival. Kenny said he wanted us to meet his partner, percussionist Sam Clayton. Both Kenny and Sam had been working with Delaney and Bonnie. Sam fit like a glove from the get-go as far as we were concerned, but he had reservations, which vanished after playing in front of forty-thousand people inside the Diamond Head crater in Honolulu. Our sound was looser, more aggressive, less song oriented, more emphasis on playing. We swung into a new gear entirely.

The next gig was at the Fox Theatre in Long Beach, CA. I was laying down on a hard bench between sound check and the show that night trying to sort out how to arrange “Tripe Face Boogie” and turn it into a jam. What I envisioned was Richie and I, along with Sam, going free-form and then, on my signal, doing a signature lick that was already in the song, bringing everyone else into familiar territory. It was the beginning of years of Richie and my excursions into the known and unknown. Jamming, but with a crucial difference. There were chord and rhythmic changes, patterns that turned familiar surrounding by much that was unfamiliar, evolving each night, each year, through many tours. It was not long after that night in Long Beach that the jam in “Dixie Chicken” materialized, leading to “Day At The Dog Races,” “Day or Night,” “Mercenary Territory” and others. A good formula, that to this day, with Gabe Ford, is still a very much an active part of the show and the way we approached our song writing.

I would like to thank the band for their additions and helpful suggestions to my stories. Thanks to Gary Bays and Bridget Nolan for an attentive eye as editors on multi-levels. Thanks to Michael Simmons for his generous suggestions and fact checks.

***

For more by Bill Payne on Hayward’s life and music, stop by Relix.com.

Pages:« Previous Page