|
The Doobie Brother
tour was playing in all the large arenas. I became good friends with Pat
Simmons. He and I played Gibson 335's and he had a collection of about
ten guitars on the road. One night backstage at Madison Square Garden he
gave me a beautiful 1965 red 335 as a token of our friendship and a
gesture of generosity. I refinished the guitar white and still have it
to this day. One of the perks of selling some records was we moved out
of our van and into a tour bus. On the day of Hughie's wedding we were
presented with our first bus. It was a GMC 4104. Low tech by rock star
standards by way up town for a bunch of local Tampa Bay upstarts. Our
Driver was a great guy named Gene Key. He was Hawaiian and his nick name
was 5-0. He and I became best friends and still remain close to this
day. 5-0 was a bad ass and helped get us out of some tight spots over
the years but we'll get to those stories later. While I'm on the subject
of the crew I want to discuss the members of our crew and where they
came from. Our sound engineer who was with us from the beginning was Rex
Ray. He was the crew chief and the best audio engineer out there.
Freddie Cullaro was the stage manager and a jack of all trades.
Ronnie Ripple was a guitar tech and Jimmy Paterson was our drum tech. Rex
Freddie, and Ronnie were from Tampa and Jimmie was from Tuscaloosa Al.
and he was 19 when he joined. Just before we recorded our first
album we had a man on the crew who was like our first road manager. His
name was David Cloud and he was from Wauchula Fl. Jack Daniels was
Hughie and my drink of choice. Billy and Monty liked vodka and Frank
liked Mateus rose' wine we all liked Budweiser and Coors beer. Yeee ha!
After the first year of touring with an album on the charts and a show that found an audience things changed. Not to sound like I'm making up excuses but the pressure to deliver a great show every night can create habits that catch up to you pretty quick. It's funny looking back, how we went from eager want to be's to hard assed players in the game. It never wasn't fun but it got a little hard at times to get it up. We were also running the wheels off our bus trying to keep up with the schedule and that alone will make you absolutely crazy. I know there were alot of people benefiting financially from us being on the road and they kept the heat on all the time. The truth is for me all I wanted was to make an album...That's it just make a record to say I did it.... I made it....That's all I really had for a dream, but that changed and years turned into decades and sometimes it all seem just like yesterday.
After the first album and the first
year touring as new stars everything was going in fast forward. The
label put pressure on us to record a new album and management
kept booking tour dates which pulled us away from the time necessary
to write a new album. Everyone started going in five different
directions seeking shelter from the storm. We went into the
studio in Miami with Paul Rothschild to start recording our
second album with songs we had laying around. Although there were many
good songs cut on "Lady In Waiting" they were
really leftovers from the first record. It happened that way
years later with BlackHawk and it's a pattern in the record business.
At this time Frank started to crack under the pressure and although his musicianship was never an issue, he just couldn't keep up with the pace of our professional obligations. By the time the second record was done so was Frank's place in the band. No one knew then that messing around with the original line up of our group would prove to be so damaging. Looking back I think we should have taken more time to help these people instead of just replacing them. We just didn't know that the success of the band was dependent on the unique dynamic of the original personalities involved. There would be many more great shows and many more years of good music but changing the original line up of the band was a critical mistake. One that would repeat itself again and again.
For the Lady in waiting album there wasn't much time with our
touring schedule to write so we went to the well for material.
One of the original songs I brought was "Girl From
Ohio". This is a song that was written in New York in the
early 70's. It was written for my high school girlfriend who I
lost touch with and like the song "What Might Of
Been" the questions were a creative driving force for many years.
This is one of my favorite songs and I'd love to rerecord it
some day. It was recently featured in a motion picture staring
Kiefer Sutherland, but the name of the film escapes me.
Story Behind the Song: Freeborn Man
On the "Lady In Waiting"
album we cut a song I brought to the band called "Free
Born Man". This is a song that Jim Fish brought to my
attention off a Freddie Weller Album. The album was cut in L.A.
and Clarence White played guitar on the session. Jim being a
Clarence White disciple had every record he played on. The
arrangement was something that Jim and I worked up in Sienna and
it was modified in the Outlaws. This was always a favorite in
the bars and on the concert stage as well. It was one of the
last things we cut for the album and wound up being one of the
most popular.
Story Behind the Song: South Carolina
"South Carolina" was
another song I wrote and recorded on the Lady In Waiting album.
My wife at the time Jeanne was from Spartanburg and this was a
song written for her. Her Dad was a doctor in Spartanburg and
his practice included members of the Tucker Band as patients. As was
often the case at this point in our career, being on
the road and spending alot of time apart from our
loved one's was the theme. I especially liked Hughie's outré
solo on this song.
|
