by Don Felder
The other players in the band’s various incarnations included a drummer named Jeff Williams, a freshman at the university who fixed us some great bookings for fraternity parties (we lied about our age); Lee Chipley, a sax player; and a guitarist and singer called Joe Maestro. The most itinerant of all was a young man who arrived in Gainesville out of the blue. He met Jeff at a gig and asked if he could recommend somewhere to stay.
“I ran into this kid at a frat party, and he sings and plays real good rhythm guitar. I think he should be in our band,” Jeff told us one day.
“Great! What’s his name?” I asked.
“Stephen,” Jeff replied, “Stephen Stills.”
Jeff was right. Stephen had one of the most distinctive voices I’d ever heard. He was fifteen, with short, blond hair, incredibly funny, outgoing, and confident—the type who’d sit with a guitar and play and sing by himself without any qualms. He had a rebellious, independent streak in him, but he wasn’t off the tracks. I don’t think he’d been especially bad to warrant being sent to a military academy; he was just caught more often than the rest of us. He lived at Jeff’s house for a while, and we wound up doing some shows together, with him as the newest member of the Continentals.
One night we did a gig at the Palatka prom and stayed overnight in a hotel room with two double beds. I think we got a lift to the gig in the back of someone’s pickup truck. Somehow, even though we were underage, we managed to get hold of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Stephen and Kenny and Jeff and I ended up jumping up and down on those double beds, screaming at the tops of our voices, like kids who’d been left alone in the house by themselves. We were laughing and bouncing around, breaking bedsprings, and having a gas. It was probably one of my fondest memories of that whole time.
Next thing I knew, Stephen was gone. He just disappeared, without an explanation or a good-bye. I always assumed his trail had started getting hot, but I heard later that he took off for Tampa and then Latin America when his family moved there. Whatever the reason, he just evaporated. I didn’t think I’d ever see or hear from him again.
In the summer of ’61, Dad drove me to Daytona Beach to see “Mister Guitar,” Chet Atkins, in concert, a legend of Nashville and later a guitar designer for Gibson and Gretsch. Dad and I went alone, on a rare outing together. The gig was amazing. I sat open-mouthed as Chet captivated an audience of two or three thousand fans, just him and his guitar. Not only did he use an incredible syncopated thumb and finger technique, but he’d developed a routine of playing different tunes with his left and right hand simultaneously. On the lower strings he’d play “Yankee Doodle” and, on the upper, “Dixie.” It was like the North and the South finally reunited. I was dazzled and started borrowing his records from friends, copying them religiously. I learned by ear, listening where each note was, guessing the fingering. I couldn’t afford sheet music.
I figured that if I recorded stuff on Dad’s tape machine at seven and a half inches per second and played it back at three and three quarters, it would be an octave down but the same key and the same tonality, just half as fast. That way I could listen string by string, pick by pick, finger by finger. I tried to get my speed up to where I could actually play it in unison with Chet. I must have struggled with that “Yankee Doodle”/“Dixie” piece for over a year, working on it for a couple of hours every day, but I still couldn’t figure it out. One night I’d had enough and threw my guitar down on the bed in disgust. I went off to sleep, and somehow, during the night, my brain ran the sequences and came up with the solution. In the morning, I picked up the guitar and, to my complete amazement, I had it, note-perfect.
Not that my entire life revolved around music. There were plenty of other distractions for a boy teetering on the brink of manhood. First, I had to earn some money to pay for tapes and guitar strings. Along with paid chores for the neighbors, I took a Saturday position working for Sharon Pringle’s father in his shoe store, on the corner of Main Street, right opposite the five-and-dime. It was an absolutely miserable job for a horny young guy to be in—kneeling at the feet of all these pretty young girls, inhaling their scent as they tried on shoes, my face coloring scarlet every time they spoke to me. I didn’t last long. The pain was too much to bear.
My next job was working at the new music store in town. Lipham Music opened in the shopping center just down from the old drugstore, the only place I could buy guitar strings previously. Run by old man Lipham and his son Buster, the new store was revolutionary for Gainesville and its big-band fans. There wasn’t a saxophone, trombone, or piano in sight—just guitars and sheet music. It was truly a symbol of the new rock-and-roll era.
Walking past one day, I stopped in my tracks and stared hard into the window. There, almost as if it were waiting for me, was a Fender Stratocaster, just like the one Buddy Holly played. Right in front of my eyes. In Gainesville. It was pretty beat up, and could do with some work, but it was for sale and I simply had to have it. Pushing open the door, I hovered around the edges of the shop until Mr. Lipham finally approached.
“Can I help you, son?” he asked, a bemused smile on his face.
“I’d like to buy the Fender Stratocaster in the window,” I said, all in a rush. “I have a Fender Musicmaker to trade, in its original case, and I don’t have any money right now, but I could pay you something every week.”
Mr. Lipham rubbed his chin with his hand and looked me up and down. “Can you play?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Yes, sir,” I volunteered, confidently.
“Show me,” he replied, reaching for a used guitar from the rack. I slung the strap around my neck and duly gave him a sample of my rapidly expanding repertoire.
“Hmmm. How about paying me off at the rate of ten dollars a month?” he asked, when I’d finished. Seeing me falter, he added, “You can work here when you can, tuning and cleaning the guitars, clearing up, and showing people how to play. I’ll pay you a dollar fifty an hour.”
“Sure,” I beamed, and within an hour I was back home in my room banging the life out of that old Stratocaster.
My job in the store soon extended to that of music teacher. Mr. Lipham recommended me to some of his customers, and before I knew it, I was teaching ten-year-old snot-nosed kids who whined all the time because their fingers hurt and they thought they’d be able to play like Elvis the minute they picked up the guitar their parents had just bought them. My salary doubled, and I’d soon paid off the Stratocaster, even if the price—working with children—often seemed too high.
One of my students, however, showed real promise. His name was Tommy Petty, and he was my star pupil. Tommy was three years younger than me, skinny, with buckteeth and an awful guitar. I went over to his house to give him lessons, and he had a microphone set up and was belting it out, standing in his living room, singing and playing for all he was worth. I was impressed.
Tommy wasn’t an outstanding guitar player, but he had a voice somewhere between Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan, and a whole lot of nerve. Not long afterward, he became the lead singer with a band called the Rucker Brothers. I remember telling Tommy that one day he might even make it.
I advised his band on improving their guitar techniques and helped put together some of their arrangements. Sometimes I’d even travel out with them on a gig, standing in the audience to hear them play. Tommy was very good looking, with long silky hair he used to flip, which attracted the girls. While I was standing watching him perform in a Moose lodge one night, a really cute chick came up and started talking to me. She’d seen me help unload the band’s equipment and knew I was with them. To my surprise and delight, she invited me to go for a ride in her car during the break, and of course, I agreed. She drove down the road a little bit and pulled over, and we started kissing. But before anything serious happened, a car pulled up beside hers and a young man, as drunk as he could be, started yelling at us.
“Oh, Lord, it’s my boyfriend!” she screamed, pushing me away from her.
Ashen-faced,
I watched as this linebacker pulled up in front of us, stepped out, and walked back along the asphalt road in the middle of nowhere, a murderous expression on his face. Happily for me, he was so drunk, he suddenly tripped and collapsed facedown in the road.
“Quick! Start the car!” I yelled at the girl. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“We can’t just leave him there,” she whined. “He’s lying right in the middle of the road. Someone’s gonna hit him. We’ve gotta pull him to the side.”
With severe doubts about my sanity, I climbed out of the car and helped her get her boyfriend to his feet. As we pulled him up, he belched foul beer breath. Reluctantly, I placed one of his arms around my shoulders and one around hers, and we started dragging him back toward his car. We were only a few feet from safety when he came to.
“Get your filthy hands off me,” he said, throwing back his arms with a violent jerk, completely dislocating my left shoulder. Letting out a primal scream, I grabbed my arm and jammed it back into its socket.
“Take me back to the gig,” I gasped at the girl. She took one look at her boyfriend, now slumped over the hood of his car, and another look at me, doubled up in pain, and agreed.
I staggered back into the Moose lodge, halfway through the second set, holding my shoulder, which hurt real bad, and tried to make my way up to the stage to ask one of the guys to take me to a hospital. A few steps behind me was the drunken boyfriend, who’d regained consciousness and followed me back. “Hey, you little jerk!” he yelled, shoving me hard in the back. “What the hell are you doing with my girl?” I couldn’t defend myself. My shoulder was all swollen, and I was in so much pain, I could have cried. The Rucker brothers, though, were big, bad, mean, tough-ass Florida rednecks whose father owned a garage. They saw me being harassed, threw down their instruments, jumped down off the stage, grabbed this guy, and dragged him outside, where they gave him a good whupping. That was probably one of the most memorable Tom Petty gigs I can recall. Even today, if I pull my shoulder back a little too far, I get a painful reminder of that night.
My schoolwork undoubtedly suffered from all the extracurricular activities I was involved in. In addition to my weekend jobs selling shoes, tuning guitars, and trying to teach tearful little kids how to play “King Creole,” I also started doing solo gigs, just me, my Fender, and my little amp, playing in town and at venues farther afield, which I rode to on a Greyhound bus.
“Don Felder, Guitarist,” I billed myself, taking lowly paid jobs at women’s social clubs and kids’ parties, playing anything from movie themes to Elvis. I also played drums at a bar called Gatorland, which was right across the street from the University of Florida, and lead guitar in a band at Dubs Steer Room, a smoke-filled steakhouse that served meat and beer. You could shoot pool, dance the “Gator,” or just watch the wet T-shirt contest every Friday and Saturday night. Man, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Jerry didn’t like me playing in such places, and when he found out, he threatened to tell our folks. “It ain’t right,” he’d tell me. “You’re underage and shouldn’t even be in those dives. Besides, it’s embarrassing having my kid brother on the stage.” But I didn’t care. I was happy playing music and having fun. Ever since I’d stepped on the stage of the State Theater, this was what I’d wanted.
I still loved black music, after my early contact with the church soul singers and my love affair with late-night radio stations, but during the late fifties and early sixties, there weren’t any concert halls for black artists. Racism was rife in the Deep South, and that’s just how it was. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t understand it. My father worked with “coloreds” and got on well with them. One of Dad’s friends, known to all as “Pig,” had a sugarcane farm outside town. We’d sometimes go there on weekends and work alongside his men cutting the cane. Pig’s mule would pull the grindstone, and the coloreds would cook up some of the sugarcane to make syrup for our pancakes. Dad lent money to one man in particular, who was a regular visitor at our home. I was always mystified as to why, when he came to call, he had to use the back door instead of the front.
There was a part of Gainesville that everybody called Colored Town. Whites didn’t go there, but I did. I’d sneak out as a young teenager and run down to the bars to jam with the musicians. My parents would have had a fit if ever they knew. My father was still taking his belt to me, and I dread to think what he’d have done if he’d ever found out I wasn’t sleeping over at a friend’s house, after all, but hanging out with the coloreds.
One of the musicians I played with down there, a drummer called John, told me that B.B. King was coming to town as part of what was known as the “Chitlin Circuit” for black performers. He’d be playing in an illegal bar in a barn out on somebody’s farm. Back then, promoters would find a building in the middle of cow pastures and simply move the haystacks out of the way for the gig. They’d set up tables and chairs made out of crates and put down a few kegs, sell beer, and charge five dollars admission. Five bucks to see B.B. King. It was a small fortune.
I was completely starstruck about B.B., whom I’d heard on WLAC a hundred times, and I badgered John to take me with him. “Please can I go, please, please, please?” He eventually agreed, much to my delight, and so, one night I sneaked out of my house, ran to his Jeep, and drove off with him to the barn.
The place was steaming. I was the only white person for miles. I couldn’t afford to go in, so I stood outside, peering through the window. B.B. absolutely blew me away. Men were hollering and women were crying, just listening to him play. I watched him, wide-eyed, and knew that I wanted to be like him more than anything else in the world—standing at the front of the stage, eyes pressed shut, making women weep with my guitar.
When he was done, he set down his guitar in a horse stall and took a seat on a hay bale, along with everyone else, to drink some of the illegal booze. My heart pounding, I burst in through the door and rushed across the crowded barn to where he was sitting.
“Mr. King,” I said breathlessly, “I just wanna shake your hand.”
His face lit up like a candle, and he flashed me a mouth filled with dazzlingly white teeth. “Well, OK, boy,” he replied, his eyes bright, “here it is.” He extended his huge hand and I took it in mine. His fingers were the size of sausages, and his breath smelled faintly of whiskey. Unable to say another word, dumbstruck as his gaze cut straight through me, I backed away and walked home that night in a daze. I don’t think I washed for a week.
For the next few months, I saved every penny until, finally, I could afford what I wanted. The first album I ever bought was Live at the Regal, by B.B. King. I bought it mail-order from Randy’s Record Shop in Gal-latin, Tennessee, advertised on WLAC in Nashville as “the world’s largest phonographic record shop.” The album cost $2.98, which I painstakingly saved and sent off in the mail. It was one of the greatest blues recordings ever made. I learned every note.
World events largely seemed to pass Gainesville by, but some, like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy, were unavoidable. I was in high school when JFK and Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev faced off over nuclear warheads being located in Cuba in the fall of 1962. The name Castro became as synonymous with evil as Osama bin Laden is today. There was a small speaker on the wall in the corner of each classroom, through which we’d hear the latest news reports on the radio. During daily air raid drills, we’d hide under our desks when a siren went off. The announcement would say, “This is a test. This is just a test. In case of a real emergency, go to your designated area,” and it would be followed by a series of loud blasts on a horn.
The teacher would say, “OK now, children, remember the procedure. Hats on, heads down, eyes shut.” As if our plywood desks and tin hats would have saved us from a nuclear holocaust. I remember wondering how long it would take me to run home if a missile hit Florida. It was a time of national fear, and the first casualty was logic. Some people in our neighborhood tried
to build bomb shelters, but with the water table just three feet under the soil, they quickly realized they’d drown before they’d be nuked. The threat of war seemed unreal and almost fun, as though we were being involved in something fantastical, not about to disappear under a giant mushroom cloud.
The following year, JFK was shot. That felt entirely different. The news was so unbelievable and earth-shattering, I remember our teacher broke down as she told us in the schoolyard. Everyone seemed suddenly afraid, paranoid even. Adults cried openly on the street, something I’d never seen before. It was as if the whole of Gainesville had suddenly been jerked awake from its rose-tinted dream by the firing of that bullet. Nothing felt safe or sure any more. The apple-pie sweetness had gone sour.
