Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards

by Al Kooper

  I didn’t even think twice: “Where do I send it, buddy ?” He gave me the address and closed with: “Al, you just bought yourself a band for five thousand dollars.”

  I never worried about that money. Ronnie was a gentleman and a man of his word. He ruled that band with an iron fist, and God help any band member who crossed him. Of course, that was impossible, because they all worshipped him. Possessed of a unique talent for savvy songwriting, a rather pedestrian voice that had its own unique sound, and remarkable leadership skills, Ronnie was the mediator between the rest of the band and myself. As a producer, I offered my artists one hundred percent of my input. What percentage they chose to use was up to them. Of course, it varied from act to act. With Skynyrd, there wasn’t that much to do. They were incredibly well rehearsed (they even composed their guitar solos beforehand), they were the best damn arrangers I have ever worked with, and their musical discipline was everything to them. They understood music organically, not by the book. What I brought to the table was comparatively small, but important. Basically, I showed them how to use the studio as another ingredient in their arrangements. I taught them about the relationship between the bass and the bass drum, and how, if used correctly, it could make certain grooves rock even harder.

  I only had to show them once.

  I introduced them to horns and background singers when appropriate. And because all the guitar solos were composed beforehand, I usually doubled them to give them more strength. I would try to argue out weak songs. When I was right, they were dropped. When I was wrong, I was overridden. It was that simple. One time, I was making a point about something, and they were all groaning. Ronnie said: “Awright. Wait just a second. I think that idea sucks too but I will listen to everything Al says. Maybe once in twenty times he’ll have a great idea, but I will suffer the other nineteen times because that twentieth one will make us sound better, so go easy on the old guy!”

  Yeah. The “old guy” was twenty-nine at the time!

  The band that I signed was Ronnie, Allen Collins on guitar, Gary Rossington on guitar, Leon Wilkeson on bass, and Bob Burns on drums. These were all buddies who grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and taught each other to play. It was that ideal situation that bands everywhere strive for: friends first, musicians second. And believe me, they lived by that. Between the time that I signed them and we went into the studio, Leon had quit the band. I think he was actually frightened of all the responsibilities that would be forthcoming. The band had played some shows awhile back with The Strawberry Alarm Clock and remembered what a great musician Ed King was. They called him and offered him Leon’s bass spot on the recording sessions. Ed accepted and pretty much played Leon’s composed parts on the record, but was able to add those little flourishes, slides, and grace notes that make the difference between bass playing and art. They also brought classical-whiz ex-roadie Billy Powell with them to play keyboards. This was a pleasant surprise for me. It added all the textures I loved to their guitar-driven sound.

  Billy came right out of classical music, though, and tended to overplay with his left hand, causing the band’s beautifully-constructed guitar parts to get lost in the mud. I took to actually tying his left hand to the piano bench leg to make my point, but he was pretty darn stubborn. By the third album, however, he was a grizzled studio veteran. There were many advantages to his classical background. Everyone remembers the intro to “Free Bird,” and the solo in “Tuesday’s Gone,” which is a beautiful little sonata that he wrote himself. His solos throughout the proceedings were truly unique and he was a big asset to the band.

  Allen and Gary had tremendous respect for each other’s playing. Allen had an Eric Clapton-like approach to his playing, while Gary’s was a curious mix between Ry Cooder and Paul Kossoff of Free. He had definitely appropriated Kossoff’s vibrato and it became Gary’s signature after Kossoff’s untimely death. Bob Burns was not a great drummer, but he was one of the “gang” and he took direction well. The drum parts were always composed by committee, and Bob just did what he was told. Somehow, it all worked. But Burns was the least musical of anyone in the band.

  On March 26, 1973, prior to recording their first album, I took them into the studio to record every original song they knew live-to-two-track, so that I could select what would go on the album. There was not a bad apple in the bunch of fourteen songs, so there were many tough decisions. In fact, many of the songs that did not make the first album were taken right off that demo tape and used as B sides for the first few singles and, later, as posthumous album filler. It’s great stuff, and it’s all live with no overdubs. If I were in charge, I would eventually put it all on one CD called The Audition Tapes, even with the demos of the songs that made the first album. It’s a nice piece of history. Perhaps, one day this will happen. Don’t hold your breath....

  The sessions for the band’s first album went pretty well. We only clashed on a couple of points, but there was nothing we couldn’t resolve with clear thinking on both sides. (I lost both arguments!) I had to mix the album three separate times in New York City to bring it up to my satisfaction. When I was happy, I played it for them, and they were happy.

  My favorite story from those sessions:

  One early morning, about 6 a.m., we were still doing vocals and Ronnie was out in the studio with headphones on waiting for us to change reels of tape. He began singing the Johnny Cash tune, “Hey Porter,” a cappella to amuse himself. Unbeknownst to each other, the janitor had entered the studio through the back door and was preparing to straighten up. He hadn’t seen Ronnie yet. As he walked in, Ronnie began singing “Hey Porter, Hey Porter, would you tell me the time?” He nearly died when this guy behind him yelled out “6:08 a.m., son!” Needless to say, those in the control room had a good fifteen-minute laugh as well.

  I had also signed a local Atlanta band, Mose Jones. In my mind, stylistically speaking, Mose Jones were my Beatles, and Skynyrd were my Stones. My fantasy was that each band would sell in the 400,000-record range, which at that time was a good breaking point to do another album. That way, I could keep my house in the woods and earn a decent living. We went in and cut Mose Jones’ album first. The material was not as good as Skynyrd’s, but we had a nice, poppy, Beatlesque product and Sounds of the South’s first release was the Mose Jones single “Here We Go Again.” We got a lot of press and our little label was just about launched. I signed a horn band from East L.A. (hell, it was my label and they were from Southern California) called Elijah. And then there were three.

  We hired Norman Winter Associates out of L.A. to do our press, and this woman named Sharon Lawrence was assigned to our account. She really got into it. Made friends with all the bands and really cared about our little operation. Sharon and I planned this huge launch party for the label. It was to be held at Atlanta’s best rock club, Richard’s. We were gonna fly all the important radio and press people in from all over the country, feed ’em delicious ribs, and have entertainment by Mose and Skynyrd. We actually pulled this off. The place was packed with the most important media people in the country. Hell, even Marc Bolan from T. Rex was our guest that night! Mose came out and played a great set. But Skynyrd stole the show. They mustered up all of their inherent discipline, and put together a show that floored these people. With their album due out in only weeks, they set themselves up brilliantly for press and radio support. The party was a huge success and I think MCA began to understand what great bands they had under their umbrella.

  Early on I begged Skynyrd to change their name. It looked on paper like it was pronounced “Lie-nerd Sky-nerd.” It didn’t make any sense at first glance, and it certainly didn’t conjure up what their music was about. I tried everything, but to no avail. They would not budge. So, I decided if I was stuck with it, I’d make the best of it.

  They were also always getting in fistfights. If they couldn’t find anyone to fight, they’d fight each other. I decided to paint a rough-house image for them. I designed a skull head and spelled their name
out in a bones typeface. I proposed a teaser ad campaign to MCA that cost $100,000, a lot of money in those days. Because of the buzz from the launch party, MCA approved the campaign. It began six weeks before the release of the album with four quarter-page ads scattered throughout the music trade magazines and ten major-city alternative papers (i.e., Village Voice, L.A. Free Press, etc.). The ad said: “Who is Lynyrd Skynyrd?” And it used the bones logo. Each week, the size of the ad grew and a little more information was disseminated. The week the album came out, there was a huge two-page ad. People were buzzing about them and radio kicked in three weeks before the street release. The first two weeks we were the most-added record on radio in the business. The album, intelligently titled Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, began to sell nicely. Then our really big break came.

  Lynyrd Skynyrd being held captive in AI’s home dungeon, Atlanta, 1972. (Left to right) Allen Collins, Billy Powell, Gary Rossington, Bob Burns, Leon Wilkeson, Ed King, Ronnie Van Zant (foreground). (Photo: Al Kooper Collection.)

  I ran into Pete Townshend of The Who and his manager Pete Rudge up at MCA. They were launching a huge tour for their Quadrophenia album (also on MCA), and I gave them Skynyrd’s release and told them how well we were doing and what a great opening act the boys would be for them. Miraculously, the timing was perfect. The Who were looking for a young buzz act that they felt could sell whatever seat deficit was left over from their own fans. Skynyrd fit the bill perfectly.

  I met with Skynyrd and we had this great pep talk. I knew they would rise to the occasion. They always did. So here was this young band from Jacksonville, which had never played to more than a thousand people at a time, and mostly to fewer than that in little Southern honky-tonks, who were now gonna step on stage in front of twenty thousand people every night to warm them up for one of the biggest bands in the world. I wanted this to be really foolproof and I kinda lost control. I insisted on mixing the house sound for the band on the tour. I just wanted it to be great, and while I trusted the band, I was uneasy about their crew. To Skynyrd’s credit, they didn’t balk. And neither did their sound crew.

  And so there I was, mixing live sound on the tour. I used to say, “Let’s see Clive Davis do this!”—referring to a record company president mixing live sound. The only problem was that, unlike normal bands that put the mixing console somewhere in the middle of the hall, The Who had to be mixed from the wings of the stage, so that if Townshend didn’t like something, he could actually stroll over and whack Bob Pridden, their sound guy, across the head. This did not serve me in good stead, however, as I could only use a small pair of monitors or headphones and had to imagine what it sounded like in the house. With an ingenious system of good-eared runners, I eventually worked out a method of sending people I trusted out to various parts of the hall to report in by walkie-talkie. Somehow, it all fell into place, and Skynyrd began to do what no opening band for The Who had ever done—they got encores!

  Pete Rudge stood in the wings with me the first night and was incredulous, saying: “I have never seen this happen with any Who opening band.”

  The boys rose to the occasion. And The Who took them inside their circle and treated them as peers.

  The album took off, but we had no single to hang our hat on. We put out “Gimmee Three Steps” to no avail. The album’s eleven-minute closing track, “Free Bird,” garnered most of the FM airplay, and someone at MCA edited that down to four minutes and put it out, but no cigar. That was OK with me; slow and steady wins the race. Album sales were increasing as our demographics expanded. Radio embraced the album, and we were six cuts deep in formats that accepted them. Skynyrd became the favorite opening act of arena headliners because they sold whatever tickets were left over. ZZ Top, Savoy Brown, Eric Clapton, and even The Blues Project (at Philharmonic Hall in New York City) all enjoyed the benefits of Skynyrd’s immediate fan draw.

  Once, while not sympathetically billed as opening act for Black Sabbath, the audience came at them. I believe this was on Long Island at Nassau Coliseum. Leon had taken to wearing a London bobby’s hat and a holster with a real gun in it containing blanks. Some vociferous fans approached the front of the stage.

  “You guys suck! Get the fuck off the stage! Ozzy rules!” they screamed. Leon pulled out his gun and fired off a blank, but convincing, round right at them that caused a few wet pants in their crowd and an immediate cessation of catcalls.

  My friend David McSheehy, who had managed my former clubhouse, Dr. Generosity’s, in New York, got fed up with New York, threw all his stuff in his car, and drove to the Sounds of the South House to became my assistant. I bought a vintage 1960 Silver Shadow Rolls Royce from a friend in England for nine thousand dollars and had it shipped by boat to Jacksonville. David flew down and drove it back from Florida. It became one of the great toys. Evidently, there weren’t a plethora of Rolls Royces in Atlanta in 1973, and so Governor Jimmy Carter’s office used to rent my car to pick up visiting dignitaries at the airport. I had a livery business going now, plus an open invite to the Governor’s Mansion. The car was European-style right-hand drive, and Skynyrd loved to pile into it and head for the local McDonald’s just to mess people’s minds up. Life was good.

  By now, we had four albums released: one each by Skynyrd, Mose Jones, and Elijah, and a double live Blues Project album, Reunion in Central Park.

  The Blues Project effectively broke up and split into two factions in 1967. I formed Blood, Sweat & Tears with Steve Katz; Andy Kulberg and Roy Blumenfeld moved westward and started Sea Train; and Danny Kalb was institutionalized for awhile as a result of a bad acid trip he took while on vacation. I had my own label and missed playing with the lads. I resurrected the band and booked a mini-tour that would be recorded for a live set. No matter that two out of the three albums in our discography were already live and featured many of the same songs we were currently performing—this was gonna be fun and great therapy for Danny. One of the shows we played on the tour was at an indoor venue in Washington, DC. This was actually the best show of the tour. By the time we got to the last show in our hometown New York’s Central Park, a lot of the spontaneity was gone. But the audience was fantastic. When I edited the album, I used most of the Washington performances. taking the introductions and applause from the Central Park show. Besides, the title Reunion in an Indoor Venue in Washington, DC would not have been nearly as catchy as Reunion in Central Park. But catchy title or not, The Blues Project album sales, along with those of the Mose Jones and Elijah albums, were disappointing when compared to sales of the Skynyrd album.

  After making myriad trips to L.A., I realized that moving there was inevitable as the only way I could stay on top of MCA. My work was done in Atlanta, and as idyllic as life was there, I would’ve been sticking my head in the Georgia clay like a redneck ostrich if I remained. I had given my word to these artists that I would do my best for them, and right then, it meant moving to L.A.

  I located a rental house in the Hollywood Hills and started packing up. Then the day I arrived in L.A., the deal fell through for the rental house! I called the movers and told them to keep everything in storage until I located a place, and I checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, virtually homeless. The first night I was there, I met Dustin Hoffman in the bar. We hit it off instantly, although to this day I’m convinced he thought I was Alice Cooper. He told me his parents were looking to get rid of their place and that I might want to check it out. The next day, on my way to a photo shoot, I met Dustin at his parents’ house to scope it out. I arrived with Sam Emerson the photographer, who I was working with that afternoon, and Dustin arrived with his publicist Paul Bloch. His parents weren’t home, and he had forgotten to bring the key, so he tried unsuccessfully to break into his parents’ house. All this was documented on film by Sam. I thanked Dustin for his kind thoughts and left for the photo shoot.

  Dustin Hoffman picks the wrong time to attempt eye contact with me at a Hollywood party, 1974. (Photo: AI Kooper Collection.)

  Tw
o nights later, Grand Funk Railroad were having a press party at the hotel for their new album We’re an American Band. I was invited and took Dustin as my guest to show him what record business parties were like. He hit the cocktails pretty hard and was feeling no pain as the president of Capitol Records, Bhaskar Menon, got up to make a speech. There were about thirty lifesize blow-up Uncle Sam dolls set up throughout the party area. When Menon got up and began speaking in his Indian accent, Dustin went around and let the air out of the dolls one by one, causing various levels of flatulent sounds to escape from each one, punctuating Menon’s diatribe. People began laughing as they noticed what was going on, and I think Bhaskar ended his speech prematurely due to paranoia. We left the party shortly thereafter, probably just before we would have been asked to.

  Three days later, a real estate broker found me a wonderful rental that David Cassidy had just vacated. It was owned by actor-restaurateur Nicky Blair, and it was the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads. Stained glass, sunken living room, jaccuzzi, original Henry Miller prints, all included. I snapped it up and had my stuff sent over. This was the finest place I had ever lived in to date, and I did not take it for granted. Now I could get back to the business at hand in complete comfort.

  By now, Skynyrd led the pack. With the exception of an ad campaign for the Blues Project album similar to the earlier one for Skynyrd, the company was paying less and less attention to the other acts. In fact, it seemed that MCA had decided to put all its eggs in Lynyrd’s basket and let the other acts fend for themselves. I spent an increasing amount of time meeting with MCA to try and remedy this, but to no avail. We even recorded Skynyrd’s sophomore release in L.A., so I could stay on top of MCA on a daily basis. I had a pretty good relationship with the president, Mike Maitland, and with the head of business affairs, Lou Cook. Everybody was making money, but I could see the inevitable future through MCA’s eyes—and there was no Mose Jones, Blues Project, or Elijah in it. I was getting tired of apologizing to these acts for things that weren’t my fault, i.e., pulled ads, no tour support, and invisible promotion. They had fallen behind Skynyrd, and that much was obvious to everyone in the other acts. But I was virtually powerless.