by Al Kooper
What to do????
The scene for Skynyrd’s second album was the Record Plant in Los Angeles. Now I hope words are sufficient for me to describe that environment. Chris Stone, a businessman, and Gary Kellegren, an engineer and idea man, had opened a studio in New York that had become very successful. They took their winnings and moved to Los Angeles, where they opened a studio like none other that had ever existed. Previously, studios were kinda antiseptic and dentist-officey. But the Record Plant’s design was futuristic and rustic all at once. Lots of different-hued woods and tie-dyes. There were three studios, a jacuzzi room, and three bedrooms. It was Gary’s pleasure palace. Gary had become one of the hottest engineers in New York, and he was a wild man. The design and concept of the studio was his, and Chris’ business acumen brought it to fruition. Rock stars immediately flocked to a place that had a jacuzzi, three bedrooms, and the finest studios in Los Angeles.
The personnel that staffed the place were trained to accommodate every whim of every client. It was literally like ancient Rome in its heyday. My best friend Mike Gately became the nighttime receptionist. He was the keeper of the gates to heaven and hell. Every night, in-the-know young women would come to the reception area hoping to be allowed access to this rock star nirvana where a machine-vended beer cost a quarter and the game machines were free. It was not uncommon to walk out of Studio B, which was adjacent to the jacuzzi, and see laughing women clad only in towels strolling down the hall.
It was here that we set up our tents and began work on Skynyrd’s second album, eventually titled Second Helping.
“Sweet Home Alabama” had already been recorded in Atlanta. Ronnie had been real excited about it and wanted to record it ASAP. I added the background singers in Los Angeles. There’s also a little secret hidden in there. Right after the line “Well, I heard Mr. Young sing about her,” if you listen real close in the left speaker, you can hear me sing in my best Neil Young imitation, “Southern man, better use your head....” It’s nearly subliminal. Check it out....
The lads had some great material, and they were chompin’ at the bit to git recordin’. Tracks were cut pretty quickly. In retrospect, if one listens to the basic guitar parts on “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Swamp Music,” or “Needle & the Spoon” there is a musical knowledge and maturity far beyond their mid-twenties age range. No attempt was made to do “Free Bird ll.” This was just the natural evolution of a talented band. Horns were added on J. J. Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze,” and “Don’t Ask Me No Questions.” “I Need You” was cut late one night when Bob Burns and I had already gone home thinking the session was over. There are time problems in it, but the band loved the spontaneity and we left it as is. On each album I did with them, there was always one song that was an out and out tribute to Free (the band). “I Need You” was the one on this album. On the first album, it was “Simple Man.”
While we were toiling away in Studio B, my friend Bill Szymczyk (pronounced “sim-zik”) was in Studio C producing the Eagles album that would eventually be known as Hotel California. It was not uncommon for people to be dropping in on each other’s sessions, and the camaraderie was excellent.
One night, in 1995, Bill and I were having dinner together in Nashville. “Hey Bill,” I said, reminiscing. “It was almost twenty years ago today that we were both in the Record Plant doin’ Hotel California and Second Helping. So now it’s twenty years later, and practically all of today’s country music is founded on either one or both of those albums, and nobody calls us to produce anything while they just imitate what we did twenty years ago! Is that hilarious or what?”
We just cracked up and enjoyed our dinner. Seniority is your enemy in the record business. They think you’re not cutting-edge enough if you’ve been around longer than twenty minutes. Fortunately, Bill and I can laugh about it; other people have turned to drugs or taken their own lives because of it.
In the midst of recording Second Helping, on my thirtieth birthday Skynyrd came over to my house unannounced around dinnertime. “Better take off your watch, Al,” Ronnie said. “You’re fixin’ to get a birthday baptism!” And with that they all grabbed me and headed for the pool. A picture of this happy event adorns the back of the Second Helping LP (and its twenty-bit remastered CD). To my credit, I did not go in alone. I took that pesky Van Zant character with me. Life was good. Everyone was happy.
We finished recording pretty quickly, and the boys went back to Jacksonville while I mixed the album. I sent them the mix and they went bonkers. Too much cowbell here, not enough vocal there, etc. I booked time at the Record Plant’s newer studios in Northern California. It was a beautiful location right on the water in Sausalito, Marin County’s little flower just over the Golden Gate Bridge. This time, Stone and Kellegren also rented a couple of houses in Mill Valley, all equipped with many bedrooms and jacuzzis. Skynyrd dispatched poor Ed King to represent them in the remixing of three or four tracks. We had the run of one house. Ed and his wife occupied the downstairs, while my engineer, Lee Keifer, and I abused the upper level. The downstairs residents were playing heavy domesticity, which manifested itself in early retiring and early rising for them. One night, Lee and I were grooving hard on a Beatles album about 1 a.m. when Ed appeared out of nowhere growling, and using the time-honored Southern-style volume control, ripped the arm right off the turntable. Bummer, dude.
A friend of ours, engineer John Stronach, was living at the other house and working at the other studio with Dan Fogelberg. John would hang with Lee and me in the evenings. Much Peruvian marching dust (cocaine) was in the air (not for me, however—my insomnia and new good sense precluded it).
One morning about 8 a.m., Ed came walking up the stairs and stumbled onto this scene in the livingroom: In the hanging wicker chair was a completely naked woman posed as if for Playboy. As John manned a camera on a tripod, Lee was brushing makeup on her nipples, while I directed the remnants of this all night photo shoot. Ed just walked outside shaking his head. Somehow, we actually got those mixes done to Ed’s satisfaction, and I returned to L.A.
At the Third Street Record Plant, Los Angeles closing party with (left to right) Leopard Man, Chris Stone (owner), Tom Werman (producer; last name sounds like “Fuhrman ”), Bill Szymczyk (producer; last name sounds like “sim-zick”). (Photo: Ed Freeman—courtesy of Record Plant Archives.)
Second Helping came out to rave reviews. We all knew “Sweet Home Alabama” was gonna be a hit single, but we had nothing on the album to follow it. I decided to put out “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” first, because if it hit, “Sweet Home” would be a great follow-up as opposed to the reverse. I remember the ad in Billboard. It said over and over again:What is the name of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s great new single?
DON’T ASK ME NO QUESTIONS!
What is the name of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s great new single?
DON’T ASK ME NO QUESTIONS!
Etc., Etc.
Needless to say, it was a bomb, but I don’t believe there was any harm done other than a few vinyls dying so that singles could be pressed. We then came with “Alabama” and it was a complete smash. It became their biggest track. “Free Bird” from the first album—and the capper to their live show—began to get tremendous airplay as well.
On a recent remastered version of Second Helping, some MCA underling named Ron O‘Brien wrote in the liner notes that I hated “Sweet Home Alabama” and didn’t want it on the album. Now I may have occasionally been a fool in my time, but I sure wasn’t deaf or stupid. Anyone who heard that track knew it was a hit, and I was no exception. Mr. O’Brien was probably shitting in his diapers when we recorded that song. If I’ve fucked up in my life, I admit it. And I think that I’ve admitted many of those errors right here between the covers of this book. When I confronted this O’Brien character with the truth, he said that he got his quotes from band members via old magazine articles. I asked him if he had spoken to anyone in the band lately who was present at those sessions. He said no one he contacted would ret
urn his calls. I told him I could see why. In my opinion this was irresponsible journalism from a person whose only qualification for writing liner notes was that he was a fan. This is the person who is the current curator of the Skynyrd Archives at MCA Records. It’s a sad time for the record business, folks.
I had my attorney call O‘Brien’s superior and threaten MCA with a libel suit if these notes were not withdrawn immediately and replaced with the truth. I even arranged for O’Brien to “interview” Ed King, who was happy to speak with him and kill off all this revisionism. After two tries, O‘Brien wrote ninety-five percent truth and I accepted that. Will the real truth about the past ever be known to students of rock ‘n’ roll in the future? Not if “fans” like this instead of journalists with a passion for truth and research are employed by record companies in the future. This is some of the “new music business” I have to deal with today, whether I like it or not. I wish I were more like Keith Richards and could just laugh it all off, but alas, I can’t. And now, back to our story.
Overnight, Alan Walden disappeared from the management fold and Peter Rudge (manager of The Who) took over. The boys opened for The Rolling Stones at Knebworth in England and for the Allmans at Atlanta Stadium. Things were very good. Everyone was extremely happy (except probably Alan Walden).
My label deal was up for re-signing. Stan Polley and I went into a meeting with MCA. They said they wanted to change this, this, and that in the contract. We said, “Fine; redraft it and send it to us.” Weeks went by and no contract arrived. We called MCA. They said, “By the way, we also want to change this and this as well.” We said, “Fine; send us the redraft.” Weeks went by and no contract arrived. Polley sat me down and explained the following facts of life to me: • Under the existing contract, Skynyrd was getting five points and I was getting ten, and it was time to switch that around.
• I had an exclusive producer contract with MCA under the SOS deal and could not produce for anyone else under the existing contract.
• MCA wanted to buy me out and were withholding payment of any royalties in an effort to force me to accept their buyout, which was as yet unstated.
• It would take MCA a year to realize that we were holding the points they needed to give Skynyrd and, if we just ignored them all this time, we could charge them an inflated sum for those points in retaliation for their trying to starve us out by withholding our royalties.
• Polley would bankroll me for the next year in order to cause his hypothesis to happen.
“Well, if I can’t produce anyone else,” I reasoned, “what will I do for a year? He countered: ”Why don’t you write that book you’re always talking about doing?”
And so, for the next forty-nine weeks, we did not hear a peep out of MCA or Skynyrd. I sat by the pool each day and typed out the story of my life from 1958 to 1968. That story became Backstage Passes, published in 1977 and edited by my friend, Ben Edmonds. It’s the first version of the book you’re holding in your hands and hopefully enjoying so much now. Then three weeks shy of Stan Polley’s prediction, MCA phoned up:
“We want to buy the extra points you’re holding and dissolve the deal,” they said.
“Fine, no problem. The price is one million dollars and that is nonnegotiable,” Stan countered.
They said they’d get back to us. Well, they called back rather quickly and said we’d have to hand over everything we owned of the label for the one million; which meant our total of fifteen points and our production royalties from the first two albums that were in escrow.
The deal was signed and the money changed hands. Then, a curious thing happened. Skynyrd went back to MCA and said:
“We want Al to produce our next album.”
So then MCA once again had to pay me royalties on the third album. Revenge is sweet in real life. If MCA had come to us straight and honest a year before, they could have saved a great deal of money. Later, I found out they charged the million to Skynyrd’s account! In spite of that, a year later it was paid off!
The downside for me was that, despite any fantasies, I was not a millionaire. After Stan Polley, agent Jeff Franklin, and Uncle Sam took their ends, I netted $375,000. I figured in order to really be a millionaire, one would have to gross at least four million. That wasn’t gonna happen to me in this lifetime unless Lot’s wife turned both my parents into solid gold, so I decided to bank the $375,000 and just get on with it. The thought of clinging to a hostile contract just for the sake of a future large pay-off is best left to music business lifers. I prefer my life simple and friendly.
Like “Sweet Home Alabama” before it, “Saturday Night Special” was recorded way before the album it was featured on. Through some connections, I was able to secure the song for the soundtrack of a new Burt Reynolds film, The Longest Yard.
Skynyrd’s drummer, Bob Burns, had succumbed to the rigors of the road and was replaced by Artimus Pyle. We rented a club in Atlanta for an afternoon to rehearse Artimus on “Saturday Night Special.” The boys counted it off and began playing on beat 2 of the second bar of the count-off. The downbeat or pulse of the song kept coming on the second beat instead of the first. I yelled: “Wait a second, guys! Hold on! You’re coming in a beat late. Why are you doing that?”
Ed King said: “It all works out perfectly when we get to the guitar solo before the vocal.” This set off my warning light; there was probably a 3/4 bar in there somewhere and they were not dealing with it as such. I asked them to play it again and damned if the drum fill between the first two sections wasn’t a 7/4 bar!
“Artimus, you’re playing a 7/4 bar for your solo and that’s what’s throwing you guys off,” I explained. “What in the hell are you talkin’ about, Al?” said Ed. “You can’t have more than four beats in a bar!” That’s what I loved about those guys. They had no book knowledge of music—they were just instinctively brilliant. I explained how you could have any amount of beats in a bar and they looked at me like I was crazy. It was like telling Truman Burbank he was a TV star.
“OK, OK, count it the way you want. It all sounds the same anyway,” I said, backing down from an argument I knew I could not win.
The same thing had happened back when we cut “Sweet Home Alabama,” and I heard Ed play the solo. I freaked. “You’re in the wrong key, Ed!”
He looked at me with this sly look on his face and said: “This song is in the key of G, Al. That’s the chord we end the song on when we play it live.”
They actually ended on the IV chord (G) live as opposed to the root, which was D, the key the song is actually in. In their book of music theory, whatever chord you ended on was the key the song was in.
I listened again to the solo, which was in another mode, not unlike John Coltrane’s work. “It’s very progressive, Ed. I can live with it if that’s what you want,” I said, once again backing down from any kind of music theory debate.
By the time I mixed the song, I loved the solo, but I’ll always know why he played it that way. Ed felt the opening chord of the song (D) was the V chord. And he still does to this day.
Al’s advice: Don’t stand in the way of genius!
This third album was gonna be completely different from the other two. The recording took place back in Atlanta again, but this time at Bang Studios instead of Studio One. I opted to use the engineer that came with the studio, one Dave Evans. This later became the bane of my existence, but I had no way of knowing that in advance. The atmosphere was already tense. Consigned to the road for the latter part of a year, there was no time for the usual Skynyrd modus operandi. No rehearsals, no planned-out guitar solos, and, in fact, no songs! I don’t mean they had bad songs, they had no songs! They arrived believing they could combine the entire process into one month because they had no choice but to do that. After one month they were scheduled to be out on the road again. It was the first album with Artimus, and I spent the entire first day meticulously getting a drum sound. Finally, at 11 p.m., I felt we were fifteen /sixteenths there and call
ed it a night. Imagine my horror when I walked in the next morning, and all the microphones had been pulled back from the kit and they were starting again.
“Dave says he can get a better drum sound so we let him have a go,” Gary said.
I was furious. It is incredibly unprofessional for an engineer, especially one who is brand new with the client, to override the producer’s instructions. In fact, in ninety-nine out of a hundred scenarios, the engineer would be rightfully sacked. The band was siding with Evans, however, and I let it go. This was a very bad foot to start off on. I decided right then and there that I would just step back and let him make any mistakes that were going to be made in that area. All engineering decisions would be his. The band would be happy, he would be happy, and I would live with it and pray I could correct any overt lapses of sound judgment on Evans’ part in the mix. There was incredible tension between him and me from that point on. As the first couple of days unfolded, it became obvious that things were proceeding at a snail’s pace, and we would never finish by our deadline.
I took Ronnie aside and said: “Listen, I know you and how you work. I’m gonna gamble on that and leave you alone for two weeks to write this album here in the studio. I trust you, and I believe in you, and I know you can do it. I’m gonna go to New York, and I’ll call every few days and you tell me how you’re doing. But remember, we’ll only have two weeks left to record everything after that, so you must be done writing and arranging everything in the first two weeks.”