That day, alone with Bob Dylan on a hill in the bright California sunshine, I felt that by virtue of the words of “Forever Young” being sung directly to me, I was being christened and blessed by the premier guru of ’60s rock culture. It was like having a private audience with Woody Guthrie incarnate. I was sure to have a privileged life from that point on. It didn’t hurt that I’d had a few hits on a joint of fine California Gold.
He could make rhyme and compose melody at the drop of a hat.
Who can say what the true powers of music and words are?
Bob wanted to know if I thought the stuff was any good.
“That sounds great, Bob! You should record it,” I told him.
He did. The record sounded nothing like what he sang for me that day. Not even close. Only the lyric “forever young” was the same. The bridge chords were completely different, except on the demo version he released.
BURBANK, CA—1973—7
A few months later, Bob knocked on the door shortly after midnight. He knew I was a bass player.
“Hey, Booker, you know we’re doing a movie over in Burbank with Jason Robards and Sam Peckinpah”—name dropping—“why don’t you grab your bass and meet me over there?”
“Aw, naw, Bob, I’m not going out to Burbank at this hour.”
I grabbed my bass, went out to Burbank, walked into the studio, and there was Kris Kristofferson up on the screen.
Bob walked over to the microphone. Mama come take this badge from me. I can’t wear it anymore.
Turns out I played bass for one of the most charismatic scenes in a motion picture, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
Gradually, I became a session man. Starting with Bobby Darin in the midsixties, I started to get more calls as a sideman on Hammond B-3 and piano. Living at my ranch, I played on music by Richie Havens, Barbra Streisand, Joe Tex, Rita Coolidge, Stephen Stills, Bill Withers, Willie Nelson, Marc Benno, Bob Dylan, and Kris Kristofferson.
MALIBU, Winding Way Ranch—1970—3
Meanwhile, businessman Clarence Avant was busy selling Stax Records to Paramount Pictures for millions of dollars. Al Bell made sure I knew who he was. Every time I talked to Al, it was “Clarence this, Clarence that.” Then, in the summer of 1970, my phone rang.
“Booker, this is Clarence. There’s a guy out here in Inglewood building airplane toilets who writes songs. I think you ought to hear him.”
“All right, man. Send him out.”
I hung up the phone. I didn’t know Clarence Avant that well, but he was a friend of Al Bell’s, and he had just arranged the sale of Stax to Gulf & Western Industries, quite a feat for a black man in the seventies.
I looked out the window, and up walked a man who looked like he had everything but his lunch pail with him. Big brogan shoes and overalls, with a smile and a short Afro. He brought his guitar and had a big, thick, worn notebook.
After the perfunctory introductions, he sat down on the couch, guitar on his lap, and even before hitting a chord, Bill patted his foot on the carpet for the beat and sang:
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone—It’s not warm when she’s away.
Bill had hardly gone into the second verse before I got up and went into the next room, my studio, and started making phone calls.
Still listening to Bill sing out in the living room, I called Heider’s. The studio was unavailable for an extended period.
I put in a call to Al Jackson in Memphis. Phone was busy. Finally, I got Duck on the phone.
Bill stopped singing and meandered into the room, his face a question mark.
“Oh, I’m sorry, man; I had to make some calls. Let me hear something else.”
Priscilla wandered in from the bedroom, smiled, and took a chair to listen.
Grandma’s hands used to issue out a warning.
I got Cropper on the phone. “I’m producing a session. Sorry, Booker; I can’t make it.”
I found Stephen Stills’s number in my book.
By the time Bill got to the song “Harlem,” I had put together a band and had Conway studio on hold.
I could get into Conway Studio without paperwork, and as soon as everyone confirmed, the session was booked for Clarence Avant’s Sussex Records.
Al Jackson and Duck Dunn flew in from Memphis, and I picked them up at the Hyatt on Sunset on my drive from Malibu. Once again, I used Bill Halverson at the board. Filling in for Steve Cropper was Stephen Stills, who I’ve long considered to be the tastiest, highest-caliber rock guitarist.
Already there when I arrived, Bill showed up for the recording session in the same clothing he wore to the ranch—he was a carpenter at heart.
Bill poked his head in the control room door. “Who’s going to sing these songs, Booker?”
“You are, Bill.”
And he obediently walked back out into the studio and up to the microphone.
Once Bill started singing, his habit of slamming his foot down on the floor made an annoying sound, leaking into the mike, indistinguishable from the drums. Al suggested we mike the sound of Bill’s foot instead of trying to mask it. Bill Halverson went out back to the alley behind Heider’s and found an old wooden crate. He stood it up right under Bill’s knee and stuck a mike in front of it.
When we got to the breakdown, Bill just started to repeat “I know, I know, I know,” over and over again. He said he couldn’t think of any more words and wanted to edit that part out.
“Leave it in!” I insisted, and I had Halverson turn up the volume of Bill’s foot stomping on the crate during that part. It sounded like a good hook to me.
I hadn’t paid much consideration to the budget, and Clarence balked when I told him I had written strings for the song. I flew to Memphis and recorded a low-budget string session with Noel Gilbert at Ardent with Terry Manning engineering.
I still had no savvy about the music business. Naively assuming I could do as I wished, unaware of the possible legal consequences of leaving Stax, I had no attorney for advice.
MALIBU—1971—4
On my birthday in 1971, my contract with Stax Records was suspended. I didn’t learn of the suspension until months after. Maybe there was a legal situation that required them to take action. I don’t know. With that action, the life of Booker T. & the MGs came to a formal, if inconspicuous, end.
Priscilla was anxious to record some of the songs we had written together, and I hastily signed a recording agreement with A&M Records to record the two of us as a duet, “Booker T. and Priscilla.” We played a few shows and met with some moderate success.
I had strangers tell me they were inspired by the relationship I had with Priscilla and by the music I recorded with her. They saw us as a couple not unlike Minnie Riperton and Richard Rudolph, or Bruce Sudano and Donna Summer—interracial, fairy-tale, musical love-marriages in the Age of Aquarius, blazing a new trail. Our relationship bore no resemblance to the love songs we sang.
In 1970, I produced Priscilla’s first album, Gypsy Queen. Over the next three years, we recorded three albums together: Booker T. & Priscilla in 1971, Home Grown in 1972, and Chronicles in 1973. I also produced Priscilla’s solo album, Flying, in 1979.
Money was funneled from my accounts at A&M for Priscilla’s solo projects. I had objected to paying for her session from my A&M funds. A&M Records were my champions and benefactors when I came to Hollywood. They pulled out all the stops when it came to getting me out of my obligations to Stax. The owners, Herb Alpert of the Tijuana Brass and Jerry Moss, a promotion man from New York, had faith in my creative abilities. Herb and Jerry, along with Gil Friesen, the president of A&M, embraced an expanded view of me that included collaborating with their writers and producers as well as my recording as a featured vocalist. I was entrusted with unlimited free range to explore my artistic possibilities, unrestricted to soul music, and surprising shifts and changes in my musical direction were regarded with a positive attitude. To boot, they put me front and center among producers being presented to Hollyw
ood’s top-notch talent. I was living the California dream.
Little did I know, but as injustice and inequality chased me out of Memphis, so would the incessant Santa Ana winds chase me out of Malibu.
I never made friends with the Santa Ana. It didn’t seem to be the same entity I loved when I was out at sea on a fishing boat. It was a strange, cruel wind that drove the fire down the hill and burned my hay and my fencing.
Fred May, the de facto mayor of Malibu, befriended me. “True Malibuites don’t leave, Booker; we stick it out.”
Chapter 14
Stardust
Remote Northern California Road—February 1974—5
Priscilla may have been flattered by being mistaken for a woman who was thirteen years younger. Not much was more important to her than her looks.
Numerous highway patrol cars and sheriff’s deputies surrounded me and my Caucasian wife.
The authorities seemed convinced the woman in my truck was Patricia Hearst, heiress and daughter of publishing magnate Randolph Hearst, who was the subject of a nationwide manhunt at the time. The highway patrol had allowed me to drive more than seven miles inland off California Highway 1 before they pulled up behind, turned on the lights, and drew their weapons.
Guns were everywhere. The forest was lit up like searchlights at a movie opening.
Knowing better than to be out of the car alone, I refused to leave my vehicle but did show my license. I survived, but not without spending anxious moments sitting still in my truck waiting to have my license plates, my life, and my future verified.
Finally convinced of my identity, they allowed us to continue to our ranch on top of a mountain of old-growth redwood.
The old-growth trees were the main attraction to the area and to the property. They were held in reverence by a number of my friends because of their age and the fact that they seemed to have an eerie presence about them—like an awareness of your presence.
COMPTCHE, CA—1972—1
My friend who spoke of the old-growth redwoods was a lanky, long-haired, slow-talking bass player from Meridian, Mississippi, named Chris Ethridge. He was a great player and played on my demo for “Higher and Higher.” His child, Necia, was the first baby I ever witnessed born into this world. At a session one day, Chris asked, “Booker, how’d you like to be the owner of a thousand acres of redwoods in Mendocino?”
“What? I’d love that, Chris!” My newfound mentality embraced a love of the outdoors and gardening.
Chris had a friend who was onto a deal to buy some acreage. The road to the house site was treacherous. Overgrown, not maintained for years. Lumber trucks had traversed it in years past, but there had been no ditching, graveling, or grading since I don’t know when. Still, I wanted that land more than anything.
Kris Kristofferson and Rita came to visit and see the land. They had just gotten together—all touchy-feely and intoxicated with one another. I took them on hair-raising rides up and down steep hills in my trusty 4x4, but they never really took their eyes off one another.
Other partners started to buy into the land deal. John Barbata of the Turtles and the Hollies bought in for 160 acres. Then Chris Ethridge and Joel Scott Hill bought in. Finally, Tyrone Hill, Joel’s cousin, bought a prime piece of land at the bottom of the hill. I ended up with a 238-acre parcel with old-growth redwood on it and, after a period of time in Malibu, made the move to Comptche, the rural Northern California community near Mendocino.
As it turned out, Malibu, with its coyotes and rattlesnakes, was tame compared to this new territory. Ranchers kept shotguns near the doors to keep the mountain lions away from their chickens and sheep. The cats were smaller, leaner, and fiercer than I had expected.
Regardless, I drew plans for a geodesic dome for our dwelling. I thought building a simple, uncomplicated dome would be a trouble-free, elementary process with few difficulties because it’s basically only a series of intersecting triangles. A piece of cake. I purchased connector plates for the two-by-four frame lumber at a company on Melrose Avenue in LA. I stacked over two hundred steel plates (each about the size of a large hubcap) into the bed of my Chevy three-quarter-ton pickup and hauled them six hundred miles to the Northern California Comptche building site. Altogether, gathering the materials was a sizable, costly undertaking that I sunk a lot of effort into.
I submitted my plans and applied for a permit to the Mendocino County Department Planning and Building Services. After waiting six weeks, my permit was denied. The reason given was that the building was unsafe. The plans were noncompliant with county code—a geodesic dome lacked “structural integrity.”
Ruefully, my gaze fixed on the heap of rusting steel plates on the red dirt. Abandoned, fading, rejected, discarded, and wasting in a humongous lonely stack near the shed, their heads poked out, looking like so many uncrowned stars and landfill. I realized my nonconforming dream was not to be. The planning department would determine the anatomy of my new home.
We pulled our old camping trailer onto the property and rented a three-bedroom farmhouse on a property known as the South Forty for the Coolidges, my in-laws. I was keen to build my “mountain house,” so I drew a traditional blueprint with a sixteen-hundred-square-foot plan, consisting of three bedrooms, two baths, and a loft. The building department issued a permit almost immediately.
I opened an account at Rossi’s Building Supply in Fort Bragg, bought some gloves, a shovel, a Stihl chain saw, and a new four-wheel-drive Chevy truck. I ordered a propane gas tank and a 5-kW Briggs and Stratton generator to build the house with. Also, since I had paid for, watched, and helped Reverend Coolidge build his house on the hill in Malibu, I figured his carpentry skills could be helpful in putting my house in the mountains together.
A cold drizzle greeted us the morning we started building the forms. I wanted to try to get in the house before fall, so we started excavating right after Christmas. I chose a site high on a hill to catch the panoramic views for miles to the south and east. I hired Bill Shandel, the tall Russian whose family we bought the land from, and his brother Norm to cut out the pad. I figured they knew the lay of the land best since they had owned it, and their equipment was closest by. They rolled their big Cats up the hill and cut a new road.
While my only skill was knowing how to drive a nail, I was so excited to build my own house on my own land that nothing could stop me from helping out. We built forms and laid a concrete pad for the propane tank about fifty yards from the house site. Then we constructed another pad for the generator about twenty yards from the house site. The tank came first, looking like a white missile being towed up the hill through the trees. The generator was shipped, and I brought it from Fort Bragg on my truck. Once propane was fed to the generator, we had power, and the real work could begin.
There was a community of hippies in the area, and I made a lot of new friends. During the grading process for cutting out the pad for our house on the hill, I had the tractors level a nearby acre on the hill in anticipation of planting a garden. All the locals were garden savvy. I visited a large number of gardens and got tips from everyone.
I went crazy. I had cantaloupe, tomatoes, corn, carrots, green onions. I used a hoe and planted everything from seed in hills and rows. All around the garden’s perimeter were my sunflowers, which grew to eleven feet tall and were the crowning glory of the whole group, glistening yellow in the morning and afternoon light. And I had five marijuana plants—two tall males and three short females.
Before all that, however, I had to finish the house. I ordered three-inch nails, two-by-fours, plywood, concrete blocks, and braces for the foundation. Then I got two-by-sixes and brackets for the floor joists.
By the time we poured concrete, the short, cold, wet winter days had given way to the fresh sunshine of spring, and my body took on the shape of a carpenter.
SAN FRANCISCO—Fall 1974—12
That fall, Gigi called and insisted I meet her in San Francisco to take our son. She refused to give a reason why—i
nsisting I send him back to her after one year. I consented, drove down, and picked him up.
“Oh, by the way, I noticed a bottle of birth control pills in your bathroom in Malibu when I was out there last,” Gigi said. “Just thought you might like to know.”
I didn’t answer.
In Comptche, at the South Forty, you would have thought my ten-year-old boy had died and gone to heaven. Every day he was down at the stream catching frogs, playing with polliwogs, or running breakneck through the field. The school Paul, Laura, and T attended was a one-room country schoolhouse down the road. The kids walked. It was the first time in years I didn’t have to get up in the morning and drive them.
However, after we moved into the new mountain house, the children started going to school in Mendocino on the coast, and it was my job to get Paul and Laura to the school bus, as it had been in Beverly Hills and Malibu. If we missed the bus, I drove them the eighteen miles into Mendocino. Most nights dinner was at Priscilla’s parents’ house, just a short drive down the road on our own property, consisting of canned corn, white bread, applesauce, and canned peas.
Having resources for houses and cars made us an anomaly in a subculture. Most of our land-group partners, save John Barbata, who was busy drumming with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and most of my friends eked out a meager living off the land, eating from huge gardens. We were land poor. My income sources dried up. I received no money from Stax, which was in bankruptcy. Having left LA, I was no longer in demand for session work.
Desperate, I called Quincy Jones. “I’m sorry, man; I don’t have anything for you.”
With two families to support, and a $4,600 annual mortgage to pay, I needed to work. Also, busy as I was with building the mountain home, I still had a burning in my chest to make new music.
EVERGREEN ALBUM—1974—2
Time Is Tight Page 20