Muscle Shoals Page #9

with the truckers

'cause their long hair,

and basically,

all they had to eat

was peanut butter sandwiches

the whole time,

but I loved this band.

I didn't know if it'd be a hit,

but I'll tell you one thing,

if you listen to those songs,

some of the best

rock and roll songs

I've ever heard,

especially one.

At the time we were

cutting "Free Bird,"

we took a little lunch break,

we walk in, the engineer

had started playing the tape.

Billy Powell, who's the roadie,

he was sitting there

playing this concert piano

that was so unbelievable

that we walked in

just in, like... awe,

with our mouth open.

And I look at Ronnie

and he looks at me,

and I say, "I gotta go

and record with that."

I don't know

about you."

And he said,

"You got it."

We put him on the record,

and then he became

a band member

within a few months.

He was a concert pianist,

and nobody knew it,

not anybody.

I think he thought

they wouldn't like that,

you know, that he had studied,

but what a great thing

he added to their records.

But there was something

different about this band.

I mean, on this album,

I had a nine-minute single,

and I'm gonna go and try

to sell it to a record company

that's never had a single

over three and a half minutes.

I mean, I got problems.

If I leave here tomorrow

Would you still remember me

But there started to be

a lot of interest,

and they said,

"We want you to cut it down

to 3:
45

on this one."

I said, "Nope,

can't do it."

And I knew that if I did that,

I'd destroy the integrity

of the band.

I said, "Go listen to 'em live",

and then you'll know

what to do."

If I stay here with you now

Things just couldn't

be the same

Not one A&R department

would go listen to 'em,

so it wound up, I lost a band.

And here, I had

all these great cuts,

I cut the first "Free Bird,"

"Simple Man,"

I mean, all this

stuff, you know?

And I wasted almost

two years of my life,

and it's very

depressing for me,

and I'm sure it was for them.

And this bird

you cannot change

Oh

But the Skynyrd boys

had one thing

in their favor going for them:

that guy, Alan Walden,

that I talked to about,

he got 'em on a Who tour.

World tour with The Who.

When they came off

of that Who tour,

they were a hit band.

Lord, I can't change

Won't you fly high

Free bird, yeah

And then the crash happened.

And Gary and Allen got

well enough from the crash,

they come to me and say,

"We want 11 songs

of your 17 to be

the next album,"

and it was called,

"First and... Last."

My father raised me,

he cooked the meals,

he got us off to school.

I spent hours and hours

in the woods with him

cutting timber.

He preached to me constantly,

"You got to be the best

at whatever you do,"

and good is not good enough,

you've got to be

the best in the world,

"not just the best

in this county."

He had worked hard,

and I'd worked hard

with him all of our lives,

and so I wanted to do something

to make life easier for him,

so I bought him a new

John Deere tractor.

He'd always wanted a tractor.

We never could

afford a tractor.

During this time,

my dad was plying

on the little tractor

about a quarter of a mile

from our house.

My stepmother went out

to look for my father,

and she saw the tractor wheels

turned up in the air,

and she knew something

bad had happened.

He was pinned

under the tractor.

He had tried to get away

and had pawed in the ground

trying to free himself.

Of course, after his death,

I went into a deep stupor.

I mean, it's just overwhelming.

I was playing in Texas,

and Rick Hall

called me and told me

he had a song he wanted me

to come up there and do.

I was born and raised

down in Alabama

On a farm way back

up in the woods

I was so ragged that folks

used to call me Patches

Papa used to tease

me about it

Of course, deep down

inside, he was hurt

'Cause he'd done

all he could

When Rick played

the song to me,

I said, "We're going

the wrong direction."

He didn't like the song

because he thought

it was a downer

for his people,

the black people.

My papa was a great old man

"My papa was a great old man,"

I can see him with

a shovel in his hand.

Education he never had,

"but he did wonders

when times got bad."

The little money

from the crops he raised

And it was my story

about me and my father.

Oh, life had kicked him

down to the ground

When he tried to get up,

life would kick him back down

One day Papa called

me to his dying bed

Put his hands on my shoulders

and in tears he said

He said, Patches,

I'm depending on you, son

To pull the family through

My son, it's all

left up to you

All the things

went through my mind

of how he killed himself

working for his son

and had lived

vicariously through me

thinking, "I couldn't make it",

but maybe my son,

Rick, can make it."

Sometimes I felt

that I couldn't go on

I wanted to leave,

just run away from home

But I would remember

what my daddy said

With tears in his eyes

on his dying bed

So, I was so taken by the story

that I wanted to do a special

production on it with strings,

and I wanted to go to L.A.

and do it, and I did.

...To do the rest

I was a believer in Rick Hall

knowing what to do,

and if he said

that was a good song,

okay, let's sing the song.

Patches, I'm depending

on you, son

To pull the family through

When it came out,

it was going up

the charts in a hurry.

That was a number one record.

Patches, I'm depending

on you, son

I tried to do my best

It's up to you

to do the rest

The artists who come here,

they come to get

away from it all.

They can rest,

stay away from the telephone,

hustle and bustle,

and people bugging them

regarding autographs

or what have you.

Nobody knows them here,

in other words.

People like to go to places

that had a kind of magical

kind of vibe about them,

but they also liked

to get out of New York

or out of L.A.

or out of London sometimes

to do these sessions.

I mean, that was really

the first of its kind

that attracted music people

from all over the world.

Sure, people go

to New York to record.

You know, big deal.

You know,

go to Muscle Shoals where

you can actually get

lunch at a meat and three

and really experience

the Southern way of life.

I mean, there's

nothing like it.

When I went

to Muscle Shoals to record,

for me, it was more

like going to my village

in Somerton in Jamaica.

I did actually

feel I'm at home.

Sitting here in limbo

But I know it won't be long

Jimmy had a very definite

Jamaican songwriting style,

and this was

pre-Bob Marley,

so nobody was really hip

to the Jamaican sound that much.

Here I am, going there

with a different

brand of feeling,

and they were readily

adaptable to it.

When an artist would come in,

what our job was to us

is to become their band.

They were able

to change who they were

depending on the artist

that walked in the door.

That was the true genius of it.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes