by Paul Zollo
I said, ‘It’s the set list for the gig.’
And he said, ‘You know that many songs?’
I said, ‘Yeah.’
And he said, ‘That stands to reason to me because when you were really young, I used to read you this series of books that were full of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. And you memorized them all when you were two and three years old.’ So he said, ‘I’m sure that’s where you got the ability to know all these songs.’ And he was blown away that I knew all these songs.
And damn if I didn’t see him that night at Dub’s. I’d see him in the back of the room. He watched from way back for a while. And then he’d disappear. And then a day or two later he told me he thought we were really good. He said, ‘This is a really good group you’ve got.’ This was like the early Seventies. So he appreciated it on some level.
Did The Sundowners have matching uniforms?
Yeah. We went to the self-service shoe store and bought Beatle boots. It was the only place you could buy Beatle boots. With Cuban heels. We all wore Beatle boots everyday. [Laughs]
To school?
All the time. And we had the peg trousers, the real tight pants. And Dennis Lee’s mom made us our first set of uniforms, and they were collarless jackets, like The Beatles wore. But they were pink, with black trousers. We looked pretty sharp. Then we got ruffled shirts, because we saw The Kinks, and they had the ruffled shirts. She made us all ruffled shirts. So in those days a band had to dress alike, or you weren’t really a band. It was in those days that bands dressed alike. Around 1965. And then the Stones were the first people that I remember who didn’t wear uniforms. And that was kind of a uniform in itself. That was kind of their thing. But it took awhile for everybody to go that way.
Was The Sundowners a name you invented?
It may have been. But it may have been one of the other guys. But we all liked it, and it stuck.
They were great days. It was 1965, and The Beatles were huge, and music was exploding, and we just couldn’t wait to rehearse and to play.
So your lineup for The Sundowners became bass, two guitars, and drums?
Yes. And I was the lead singer. We rehearsed in my house in this little tiny room that had been a storeroom out back that my dad had built onto the house. It was really tiny. The drummer’s house had just been re-carpeted, so we took all the old carpet and literally nailed it to the walls and the ceiling. We just had enough room to cram our gear in there, and then we’d stand in there and play for hours. And the cops would come daily. From complaints. They were really nice. They’d say, ‘You can play another hour, and then you’re gonna have to knock it off.’ This would go on every day. [Laughs]
Now it’s funny to me how many neighbors take pride in it, and say, ‘Oh yeah, they used to play just down the street from us.’ But in truth, they’d call the cops on us.
Did you have your own mikes?
We had one. We had the Electro-Voice 664. [Laughs] That was the popular mike at the time. My first microphone [Laughs] was a speaker wired backwards, taped to a music stand. And we’d sing through this speaker. And we knew that wasn’t going to work very long. And I actually mowed lawns around the neighborhood, for two dollars a lawn, until I had enough to buy a Shure microphone on an installment plan at the music store. And that was really the first microphone we had. And we all got together and bought a little PA system. It wasn’t very big or very powerful. And that became a constant thing for bands, to have a PA loud enough to get over the amps.
Then we got another mike, so we had two 664s. And when we’d sing harmonies, two guys would sing on one mike and I’d usually sing the lead on the other.
So you learned how to sing harmonies?
Slowly. It was a little tricky because I didn’t even know what harmony was. We’d just all start to sing. [Laughs] Sometimes it just sounded like shouting. So slowly we figured out that this guy sings this part, and this guy sings this. And you could never hear yourself. There were no monitors. I guess they heard it out front, but we never heard it.
Was there another singer besides you?
The other guys would try to sing the backgrounds and the harmonies. Like in “Twist And Shout”—“Shake it up baby…” Two on a mike, like The Beatles did.
We worked constantly. Every weekend. And in the summer, more than that. Fraternity gigs and high-school dances. We would always have at least one gig per weekend, and sometimes two. Sometimes three. Gainesville had so many opportunities to play. And really a lot of bands.
There was a fraternity row where they had parties every Friday and Saturday. And they had money, and you could play there. And they had socials that you could play in the afternoon. It would be only an hour gig. So if we were really lucky, we’d have a social in the afternoon and then we’d do the show that night and maybe a dance. You’d usually play four or five hours. We were working guys. We were either practicing or playing all the time. We were obsessed with it. Completely.
I have never been to a prom in my life. It cost me a girlfriend at one point. Her name was Jackie Taylor. I couldn’t go to the prom because I was playing another prom. So the only prom I ever saw was from the stage. I never had that kind of life. I wasn’t taking part in high-school activities. I was in a band. I was never in the in-crowd at school. I always saw it as irrelevant after I started to become a professional musician at the age of fifteen. The whole social circle seemed completely irrelevant to me. By the time I was sixteen, I was playing with guys that were several years older than me, and to give a shit about who was in the incrowd at school just seemed completely useless to me. I still suffer that today, because, like my wife and her friends, they’ll get out their school albums, and they’ll talk about school, and I have nothing to relate to. I didn’t have much of a school experience. [Laughs]
Didn’t it make you somewhat of a star in school, being in these bands?
It did and it didn’t. There was a certain kind of girl who went for that. And then there was a certain kind who didn’t. And the ones who went for it—well, the word ‘groupie’ wasn’t around yet—but they were the more fast, heavy-mascaraed girls. [Laughs] A lot of eyeliner.
I heard you once sold corsages out in front of a prom to make money.
Once or twice I sold corsages at University of Florida football games. I’d stand outside of the stadium and sell them to guys who wanted to buy them for their girls. I also sold Cokes a few times. I went around with racks of Coca-Colas, selling them in the stands. But I only did that a few times. I never did that regularly. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. And there was a lot more money in the music.
[Laughs] But there was never enough money. There never seemed to be enough. Enough for what?
For everything. For records, and things you do as a teenager.
Did you ever write songs for girls? Did you write one for Jackie?
No. I wasn’t thinking that way. I was just trying to write songs, but I didn’t have any kind of crush on anybody where I wanted to write something for them.
Did you hear Dylan back then?
Yeah, we heard him. But not until “Like A Rolling Stone.” That’s when I first heard him, when that came out as a single. And we loved that right away. We learned that, did it in the show. We learned all his singles. But I didn’t have Dylan albums until Blonde On Blonde [1966]. I heard Highway 61 Revisited [1965]. A friend of mine had that. But I actually bought Blonde On Blonde. That’s where I really got into Bob. And I started to really dig his thing.
Did you perform songs from Blonde On Blonde?
Quite a few of them.
Did you hear the Byrds then?
Oh yeah. The Byrds was where you first heard of Dylan. When they had “Mr. Tambourine Man.” And they did quite a few Dylan songs. So there was that awareness, and it seemed like almost at the same time that he came out with “Like A Rolling Stone.” And then he was having hit singles. “I Want You” and “Rainy Day Women.” “Positively 4th Street,” that was another one. So
it was kind of odd later on to play them with Bob. [Laughs] And we sort of played them exactly the same as we played them back in ‘65.
Did he influence your songwriting?
He influenced everybody’s songwriting. There’s no way around it.
Did it change the way you wrote? He wrote expansive songs—did you start writing long songs?
Not really long songs, but no one had ever really left the love song before. No one had lyrically left that. So in that respect, I think he influenced everybody, because you suddenly realized that you could write about other things.
From The Sundowners, you joined The Epics. Did you audition to get into The Epics?
I filled in a few nights. On bass. Their bass player couldn’t make a few gigs, and I filled in. Then they started campaigning to get me to join their band. And I kind of felt this loyalty to The Sundowners. And then me and The Sundowners’ drummer really had a huge disagreement, didn’t like each other. I left and went into The Epics. On my sixteenth birthday, I remember it. October 20, 1965. I remember because I got my first driver’s license that day, and I joined The Epics. As bass player and also lead singer?
The Epics had another guy who sang too, the rhythm guitarist. So we shared lead vocals.
And they were older than you?
Two of them were out of high school, and one was two years older than me. I was in the tenth grade and he was in the twelfth. The lead guitar and the drummer had graduated the year before. So they were older guys. Drove their own cars and stuff. [Laughs]
Was it a good change for you, to join that band?
Yeah, it was kind of mind-blowing. Because they actually traveled quite a bit. They worked all up and down Florida. And Florida is a big state. And they had a van, and we would go. That’s when we first started to go on overnight gigs. You’d go and stay in a motel room. And these guys were like The Faces or something, they were crazy. [Laughs] They were really into girls, and really into bringing them back to the room. And I just kind of sat around and watched all of that with wide-eyed amazement, [Laughs]
You weren’t into bringing girls back to the room yourself?
I was just a kid. I wasn’t quite that fast a mover. But I learned. [Laughs] That’s where I kind of grew up, in The Epics, watching these guys. They were nuts, just nuts. Just completely bonko, wild, partying, drunk. These guys were just crazy. But they had a really good drummer. [Laughs] I bet he’s still really good. Dickie Underwood. The guy just played the most solid beat. He could just keep time all day lone. He just played great. I loved playing with him.
Were the other guys good?
They were pretty good. But, eventually, I think their interest waned. Partying took over. To where they would rather party than practice. So that’s how I drifted away from that, because they weren’t as committed to the music as I was. When it came down to, ‘Look, I want to write songs, and try to get a record contract, and really go pro,’ they weren’t that committed. They just wanted to go out and party.
And partying was drinking then?
Yeah. This was before pot. There wasn’t much pot around. Though pot did show up before I left. It was mostly drinking. I think the first drugs we had were amphetamines. Speed. Diet pills. We used to take those, stay up, and drive home.
A six-hour drive home. But we didn’t have much pot or LSD or anything till years later.
And I just kind of walked around as the kid in all this, as the kind of junior guy in the band and stared at it wide-eyed. Then they added on another guitar player, after I was in it for a year, Tom Leadon, who was Bernie’s brother and he was actually a year younger than me. We got very tight, because we were the youngest guys in the band. And Tom was a good musician. Still is.
We played in that band until it became Mudcrutch. And when it became Mudcrutch, Tom and I stayed, and I think a couple of The Epics stayed, but then they quit. They decided they didn’t want to take this so seriously, so they quit; they wanted to party and have a teenage life. They quit, so we put an ad down in the music store. The center for all activity in Gainesville was a place called Lipham’s Music.
Did you work there?
I did work there briefly.
Don Felder, who later went on to be a member of The Eagles, worked there too?
Don Felder worked there, and so did Bernie Leadon [who went on to be a member of the Flying Burrito Brothers and The Eagles].
Did Felder show you how to play piano there?
Yeah. He would sit down with me when business was slow and show me the chords on the piano, and that’s exactly how I learned to play it. I didn’t have a piano at home, but I bought a cheap organ. I took the organ home and I would practice.
That store was kind of the hub of everything. That was where all the musicians went and hung out, and they had this great inventory of instruments and amplifiers. People would come from all over North Central Florida to go to Lipham’s. You’d see the Allman Brothers in there. You’d see everybody. And their gear.
So we put an ad there for a drummer, and this guy named Randall Marsh responded to the ad, and we went out to his place. And that’s where I met Mike Campbell. Mike was his roommate. And we went out there to jam.
We said to Randall, ‘It’s a shame we don’t have a rhythm guitar,’ and he said, ‘My roommate plays guitar.’ And Mike came in with this Japanese guitar and I said, ‘I have my Rickenbacker guitar with me, and you can play my Rickenbacker.’ And he said, ‘I think I’ll just play this.’
He kicked off “Johnny B. Goode” [written by Chuck Berry in 1958], and when the song ended, we said, ‘You’re in the band, man.’ He had to be in the band. And he didn’t necessarily even want to be in the band. He hadn’t asked. Somehow we convinced him to stay in the band. And that became the Mudcrutch that people know. I still meet people all the time from Florida who were around there in those days. And they knew Mudcrutch. Mudcrutch got to be very popular in Gainesville. That band really worked.
What was the lineup of Mudcrutch then?
There were four of us, and sometimes five when Benmont [Tench] was in it. Benmont came later. He played a summer with us, but he was in school in New Orleans and had to go back to school. And we’d become a four-piece again. Until we just really talked Benmont into leaving school. And he stayed in the band a long time.
Where did the name Mudcrutch come from?
I don’t actually remember. I just think it was the era of psychedelic names, like Chocolate Watchband and Strawberry Alarm Clock. Things that didn’t make any sense. So somebody came up with it one night, and we all thought it was a funny word, and we stuck with it.
Benmont was playing organ in the band?
At first he just had a Farfisa organ. Then he got an electric Wurlitzer piano.
Do you remember when you first met him?
Yeah. I remember when he was very young, when he was about twelve or thirteen years old. He came into Lipham’s one day and sat down at an organ and played an entire Beatles album. I think it was Sgt. Pepper. He played the whole thing. I remember, because he did all the organ stops, and I remember him getting the harpsichord sound for “Lucy In The Sky.” And it kind of drew a small crowd who just drifted over to watch him. It was amazing.
Did he sing too?
No, he just played it all instrumentally. He could do things like that. He can play anything. When we’d be really bored, we’d play “Stump Ben.” Like you’d name a song and see if you could stump him if he couldn’t play it. And it was very rare that you could stump him and he couldn’t play it. At least most of it. He’s an incredible musician. I’ve never ever encountered a musician any better, and very few on his level. He’s really an extremely good musician.
We were all on the other side of the store, and we said, ‘Can you believe this kid?’ I remember meeting him then and being aware that there was this little kid who could play like you just can’t beat. But I never saw him again until, God, about 1970, and my roommate came in the door one night with this guy, a
nd he was all bearded and had really long hair, and a stack of records under his arm. In those days you’d bring records over to turn people on to them.
Slowly I realized it was Benmont. It was like, ‘You’re the kid!’
And he said, ‘Yeah, I have a band in New Orleans and we play…’
I said, ‘We have a gig tomorrow night, do you want to play with us?’
He said, ‘All I have is my Farfisa organ.’
I said, ‘Okay, you’re in.’
And he went down, and he played five sets with us with no rehearsal. And he played incredibly great. Then our mind was made up that he would be in the band. We just had to wait it out for him to finish going to school. Until we had a record contract. And once we had the record deal, I had to go to his dad, and talk his dad into letting him drop out of school and go with us.
His dad was a judge?
A judge, yeah. It was a scary moment, going into his office and sitting there talking to him about letting Benmont go with us to California. But he did. I think he was wise enough to know that he needed to let Benmont get it out of his system. He gave in. Ben wasn’t even old enough to sign the record contract; they had to sign for him. So that’s how Benmont came in.
You mentioned you mowed lawns in Gainesville. Did you have any other odd jobs? I heard that you were a gravedigger.
For a short spell I did it. Yeah, it came back to hair again. You couldn’t get a job with long hair. Digging graves you could. It was a city job. They were governed by rules where they couldn’t tell you to cut your hair. There was very little actual grave digging. There was mostly just mowing the grounds and that stuff. I didn’t do it too long, but I did it for a while, because money was tight, and I needed to do it. I would do that, and play that night. We had a club gig at the time, I remember. I’d do my graveyard thing, and then go to the gig and play that and have to get up at seven in the morning, so I was really wasted all the time. But it didn’t last long. I think I only did it long enough to get a little grub stake, a little nest egg.
