I read your autobiography a few years back, and one of my favorite bits is the story of the Jimi Hendrix Stratocaster.
Well, basically he gave me one of his guitars when I played on Electric Ladyland. He wanted to give it to me at the session. I told him he was crazy and, "No." And he said, "Why?" I said, "It's your guitar. What are you giving it to me for?" The next day he had it delivered to my house by his roadie, so I said, "Okay!" Then I had to do stuff to it so I could play it. I had guilt pangs about that. I had it for about 22 years and I sold it in 1991, because people were breaking into my houses in two cities. I made a big noise about selling it so that they would stop breaking into my house.
Did it work?
Yeah. I sold it for $100,000. I knew that if I held onto it, it would hit the million mark, but I couldn't have it around anymore. It was a magic guitar, but I was glad when it went, and I was glad to get that $100,000 for a piece of wood with six pieces of wire on it that I didn't pay anything for.
[laughter] Earlier we were talking about hard drive crashes. Tell me about your film score that crashed.
It was a film I did about four years ago and the director is a friend of mine — Peter Riegert — he's a character actor, or as Dr. John says, "A char-actor". He was in Animal House and Local Hero and a whole bunch of movies — Traffic - and this was his first feature that he was directing. We did a short together, which was the first thing that he directed. It was nominated for an Academy Award so I figured we'd stick together. We actually had a Blake Edwards/Henry Mancini deal — every film that Blake Edwards directed, Henry Mancini did the score. This was Peter's first feature, and initially he started out with a lot of music in mind. So I did all this music and the hard drive ate it — I didn't have it backed up. I'll tell you though, redoing it wasn't as difficult because it was current and it was in my mind. I got it back pretty fast. After I got it back, the producer talked him into using as little music as possible in the film. [laughter] So hardly any of it actually got used. That's what happens when you score films.
Redoing of it was kind of as if you had done fancy demos?
Well, it was instructional. Film scoring requires a whole other head. If you're a great musician and a great composer, that does not guarantee that you're going to be a good film scorer. It takes me two weeks of writing fake cues to warm up for it, because you have to be fluent in breaking rules in order to do the job properly. I am so versed in rules that it's very difficult for me to get in that head, but I can do it. Also, you have to be totally unemotional about what you write, because film directors are notorious for not understanding film scores. So it's a tough one.
How did you learn about syncing to cues and all?
The hard way. I scored my first film [The Landlord] in 1969. There were no computers back then, so I had to do it by hand. The producer of the film, Norman Jewison — a famous film director himself — interviewed me when the director picked me, and he was horrified. I was sitting in front of his desk with the director, Hal Ashby, and he said, "Have you ever scored a film before?" and I said, "No." He went, "Ugh," and then Ashby kicked me and whispered, "Just go along with this." He was not very happy about the choice, but I actually limped my way through and that really prepared me for going ahead. But as you do it, you learn so much more. If I had to give advice to somebody, I would tell them that when you look at a scene that they want you to score you should watch the editing in the scene and see if you can capture the rhythm that the editor was cutting to. A lot of them cut to "dummy" music and there's a rhythm there. If you can make that choice before you write the piece, then your downbeats will land on the edits and it's a very nice thing.
That's good advice.
Yeah. But don't try this at home... I'm a professional. [laughs]
You've accomplished so many diverse things in a pretty short amount of time. It seems like you're a ball of energy and ambition.
It's not such a short time anymore... I'm very much a hermit — I don't leave the house. I'm also an insomniac, so I have the advantage of having more hours a day than most people. I just passed my fiftieth year in the music business. Ambition is key. I've said this very often — When I started in 1958 I was probably 10 percent talent and 90 percent ambition. Now I feel it's reversed.
Where do you think you got your ambition?
Growing up in New York. It's a tough place. If you're gonna do something, you've got to go out and do it. And the music business also — very tough.
Especially at that time.
It was unbelievable. But it was so educational. I worked primarily at the place called 1650 Broadway on 51st Street between Broadway and 7th. What an amazing place. There was so much going on in that building. All the things that they attribute to the Brill Building, which is 1619 Broadway, did not happen in the Brill Building. It happened at 1650 Broadway. Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Neil Sedaka, Dionne Warwick - all these people were in 1650 Broadway. It's called "The Brill Building Sound", but it didn't happen in the Brill Building. That drives me crazy.
Inaccuracies?
I can't stand revisionism.
You produced and mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird". It really hasn't been talked about as the landmark recording it is. For example, the frenzied multiple guitar outro... was it recorded live, an overdub or stacked?
Well, we cut the track. He might have played live (Allen Collins, who played the lead on that). But we knew we weren't locked into keeping it. I think he probably played live so we got the amount of bars correct. The really interesting thing about Skynyrd as a band was that they composed all the guitar solos prior. When they rehearsed and wrote the songs, they wrote the guitar solos and memorized them — they played them exactly the same every time. On the first two albums [Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd and Second Helping] when we would put the guitar solos on they'd step up and each guy would play the solo and it would be exactly the same every take, barring if his finger slipped or something. So how I used that to my advantage was I doubled the solo, usually without bringing that to their attention. I would say, "That was good. Can we do one more?" You can't do that with most bands because they make the guitar solos up in the studio. So that was a very big advantage for me and for them. "Free Bird" is like that. The whole solo is double-tracked and there's a point where he makes a mistake, and the mistake is fabulous. He goes [singing] duh-nuh-nuh! And the other guitar goes duh-nuh-nuh right after it. He missed this one little thing and I loved it. When it happened and they were listening to it back with the two guitars playing everybody laughed instead of going, "Wait stop — that's a mistake." They understood that it was a fortuitous thing. The first album was a really interesting experience for both of us, I think.
I thought I heard Mellotron strings in some of the verses of "Free Bird"?
Yes. I played that.
Working with Skynyrd... it was a culture shock, right? You said in your book, "A New Yorker crossing paths with these guys from the Deep South..."
Naw. Well that is culture, but I would leave the shock out of it. The thing we had in common is we both loved the English band called Free from that time period [1972]. So it didn't really matter where we were from — we both loved that band. On each album that I did with them there was always one track that was a tribute to Free. One of the things I loved about working with them was I learned a lot. It's so good when I can do a project and learn something. They were magnificent arrangers, and that's usually where a band is deficient. Most bands that I produce, I do a certain amount of arranging because they don't do it very well, as a rule. This band was great arrangers. I tried to build the arrangements a little, take what they did and put some bells and whistles on it. A good example is "Tuesday's Gone". There's a lot of synth on that, but all the lines are their lines — although there is a string section in there from a Mellotron where I wrote the line for the strings. That's probably the thing I do best, is arrange — so I was in awe of their arrangements. That kind of music — there is a skill of arranging. Free had it and they learned tremendously from that band. But if you just listen to "Sweet Home Alabama", it sounds like studio guys playing. The parts are very well thought out and very disciplined, like guys that are studio players. The star of "Sweet Home Alabama" is really Ed King — he was in the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
How did that happen?
He was my favorite guitar player because he came from sort of a James Burton place — his sound — and I was a huge James Burton fan. Also he was the Fender guy in the band — all the other guys were Gibson guys. I learned a lot about guitar playing from Ed — things that I didn't know how to do that I got from just watching him. Each record got harder to make, and on the third record [Nuthin' Fancy]we really battled it out and it was getting dangerous in terms of our friendship. At the last day of the third record I told them that I didn't want to produce them anymore — that I would rather be their friend than their producer. I think they had suffered as much as I had and were glad to hear that.
And you remained friendly?
Yes. So that was a good thing.
What types of things were becoming difficult on the third album?
Just getting along in the studio — attitudes. The third album was a very tough album to make because they didn't have the preparatory time that they had on the first two albums. For instance, the guitar solos were not composed. They were made up in the studio.
And that probably got frustrating.
Well it was something that they had never done before. I had more arranging input in that album than in the other two for that reason. But in that place we were all on the same page, we were all coming from the same place, so I don't think they resented that.
Did you enjoy the career switch to teaching when you were at Berklee? Well it's good to teach, because [you] can impart that
knowledge to people. I felt that was a really good thing to do. But in 2001 I lost two thirds of my sight and I couldn't teach anymore. I did it for four years, and that was enough of that, but it was good to do it. I don't mind lecturing and stuff like that.
