Interviews

[ekforum]

Back In Arms

An Interview with Ed King by Beverley Keel (09-02-97)

On a recent Thursday evening, Ed King received the call of his life. A nurse informed the former Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist that the heart he had been awaiting for two years was available immediately. After endless days and nights waiting for this call, King had to make a split-second decision. Without hesitation, the 47-year-old turned the heart down. "She asked how I felt, and I told her I hadn't felt this good in three years," says King, who suffers from cardiomyopathy. "I told her, `If you had called me a year ago, I would've taken it.' "

Given the way King's luck had been going, it's amazing he was even offered a heart. Two years ago, he was forced off the road by doctors; as a result, he was edged out of the band. When he wasn't dealing with divorce proceedings, he became embroiled in legal battles over his removal from Lynyrd Skynyrd

So why would he turn down a perfectly good heart, especially when the one he has is in such bad condition? As it turns out, King's luck had already begun to change. And the burst of good news gave him the courage to go with what his defective heart told him. Whether it's his heart or his music, King prefers original equipment.

For years, King had been on an exhaustive search for a 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar that had been stolen at gunpoint from his New Jersey home in 1987. Over the past decade, King, who now lives in Nashville, had diligently called every pawn and guitar shop in every town he visited. Just hours before he received the call from the nurse, King had gotten another call from attorney Diana Lopo. She called to tell him that her client, New York billionaire Dirk Ziff, had agreed to return King's long-lost Les Paul.

After all the searching King had done, it was only through a complicated series of events that he was finally able to track down his instrument. In March, he attended a guitar show in Dallas--the last trip his doctors allowed him to take. He stumbled upon a booth promoting the book The Beauty of the 'Burst (which, incidentally, was printed only in Japanese). After thumbing through the first 15 pages, he recognized his guitar by a distinctive red blotch near the toggle switch. At first he couldn't believe it, but he returned the next day and bought the book. "I didn't have the serial number with me, so I spent the weekend just looking at the photo saying, `There's no other guitar that looks like this.' I just knew it had to be mine."

One of 1,700 Les Pauls made by Gibson in 1959, King's guitar is now valued at $40,000. "They are in a world all by themselves," he says. "To a guitar player like myself who grew up in the '60s and '70s, the 1959 Les Paul was the ultimate blues guitar. The guitar seems to play itself; it can cry and scream and evoke almost any emotion you can imagine. There isn't any guitar being made today that can do that."

King returned to Nashville and matched the guitar's serial number in the book with the one on an old inventory list. Unfortunately, the New Jersey State Police couldn't help him because the statute of limitations had expired on the stolen instrument. So he decided to focus on Perry Margouleff, the collector featured in the guitar book. King's girlfriend, Sharon Brock, eventually tracked down Margouleff's Long Island address on the Internet.

Before he went any further, King called a guitar expert in Florida, who told him that Margouleff acted as the chief procurer of guitars for Dirk Ziff. Brock quickly returned to her computer to find out more about the billionaire, who she soon learned was an avid guitar collector and player. He was, she also learned, the largest individual contributor to the Democratic Party in 1996.

Visiting the Web site of a band called The Gathering Field, Brock got a glimpse of Ziff's "secret" studio in New York. On the site, bassist Eric Reibling described the walls, which were lined with rare and exotic guitars. "And these were just the ones for playing," Reibling wrote. "The other ones were in a vault you could only enter after donning one of the felt jumpsuits at the entrance."

Armed with this knowledge, King called Margouleff, who said he purchased the guitar in 1988 from Hollywood-based Voltage Guitars for $9,500 and had then traded it to a friend. "Would that friend be Dirk Ziff?" King asked. Confirming his suspicion, Margouleff offered to help get the guitar back; he wouldn't, however, accept any further calls from King.

In April, King sent a certified letter to Ziff outlining his position. "As a musician, you understand that there's a special relationship that develops between a player and certain guitars," he wrote. "I have that relationship with this guitar. My musical creativity has all but ceased this past year due to the stress of needing a heart transplant, going through a divorce, and having my bandmates turn their backs on me. The hope of getting my guitar back has changed my outlook on the future. I pray that it might bring my music back."

In early July, after being led to believe that the guitar's rightful owner was Lumberman's Mutual Casualty, the company that originally insured the guitar, Ziff's attorneys offered to buy the instrument. But even then, it still wasn't clear who had rights to the guitar. "Mr. Ziff's attorneys spent the next several months trying to establish who was the current owner of the guitar--Mr. King or the insurance company," says Ziff spokesman Tim Metz. "Repeated approaches to the insurance company seeking relevant claim records were unavailing."

King received a letter, dated July 28, from Lumberman's attorneys stating that the company could not verify that a claim had been paid; therefore, it could not help King recover his guitar. He was free to pursue it on his own. After receiving this verification from Lumberman's attorneys, Ziff finally offered either to return or to purchase the guitar.

King, of course, opted for the guitar's return. Former Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Mike Estes flew to New York to retrieve it; upon Estes' return to Nashville, King greeted him curbside at the airport. After placing his prized possession in the back of his Chevy Suburban, he drove only a few miles before deciding he had to see it right there and then. "I pulled into an Amoco station under the lights," King says. "I just stood there and stared at it."

Once home, King restrung and tuned the guitar--and instantly felt inspired to compose a new song. "It will probably be the only guitar I'll ever use again," says King, who hopes he can also stick with his original vital organs. "I'm still sick, and I still need a heart. But it may be two years, and who knows what technology will develop by then?"

[ekforum]

The Ed King Interview

An Interview with Ed King by Michael B. Smith (1999)


Ed King was one of the original members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and when the group reunited at the 1987 Volunteer Jam, Ed once again joined forces with the surviving members of one of the South's best-loved rock and roll bands.

King kindly agreed to an interview with GRITZ, in which he expounds upon the legendary band, lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, the band reunion and the article in SPIN magazine that has many Skynyrd fans ready to spit nails.

Ed, tell us a little about your pre-Lynyrd Skynyrd career, "Incense & Peppermints" and your other accomplishments.

I grew up in Southern California and the Strawberry Alarm Clock was my first real major band...I was 17. By November, 1967, we had a #1 song with "Incense and Peppermints" and our picture on the cover of Cash Box magazine (do they still print that? I don't think so). We never had another hit and the band went bankrupt in late 1968. But it was on one of our last tours that I met Ronnie Van Zant and the Lynyrd Skynyrd Band. They were our opening act for about 3 months of college dates we did in the South in 1970. Ronnie and I got along real well and I told him if he ever needed another guitar player or bass player he should call me. And he did in 1972 when Leon Wilkeson quit the band. By the way, even though the music to "Incense" was written by myself and Mark Weitz, the keyboard player, we were not given credit and never paid a dime for it. We were ripped off by managers and publishers and the like. Oh well, we had a good time.


Sum up your days with the original Lynyrd Skynyrd band.
I played on the first three albums along with the "First and Last" album...which was actually the first album (that had been rejected by various record companies).

I was recruited to play bass on the first album Pronounced but, during rehearsals, Leon came out to the rehearsal cabin. While there, the band played "Simple Man" with Leon on bass. I had never heard the song before. After hearing Leon play bass, I decided HE should be the bass player. He's the best I've ever heard. To this day, I never write a bass part without asking myself "What would Leon play?"
As a matter of fact, the last two songs we recorded, "Free Bird" & "Simple Man" contain my bass parts that are very far removed from all of the other bass parts on that album. Mainly because I had caught the vision from Leon of HOW the bass should be played for this band.
One night, after the first album was done but not released, Ronnie came to me. I was sitting on my bed playing my Stratocaster. He put his arm around me and said "Ed...you're really the worst bass player I've ever played with." So the next day Ronnie and Gary went out to this ice cream factory where Leon was working. They asked him to return to the band. Two days later, with Leon on bass, we wrote our first two songs with the new lineup. "Sweet Home Alabama" & "I Need You". Not bad for the first day.
I really enjoyed working with Al Kooper. I believe, had it not been for Al, no one would've heard of Skynyrd. He was the visionary behind the band and how it should be presented to the world. We didn't always agree with Al, but I certainly enjoyed his presence.
When we drove up to Atlanta to record "Simple Man," we played the song for Al in the studio. He hadn't heard it. He didn't care for it and said "You're not putting that song on the album." Ronnie asked Al to step outside. He escorted Al to his Bentley and opened the car door. Al stepped in. Ronnie shut the door and stuck his head in thru the open window. "When we're done recording it, we'll call you."
Al came back a few hours later, added the organ part and it was a keeper. I don't think any band before or since, making its debut album, could get away with doing that to the record producer. There was a healthy respect happening there...and that is a really funny story that reflects that.


There's a somewhat controversial article-at least among Skynyrd fans on the web- in the April issue of SPIN. In it, the author mentions a time during the early 90's when Leon got his throat cut in his sleep, and some people blamed it on you. What's the story?

We had just finished playing a gig in Nashville. That night Leon walked on stage totally drunk and really screwed the gig up.We were all pretty annoyed. Seems that he had waited all day at the Nashville airport for his girlfriend Rhonda to fly in...she was five hours late...and he had spent the entire day at the airport bar.
That night some of the guys flew back to Jax except me, Randall Hall, Leon and Rhonda. Early in the morning I woke up (been sleeping in the lounge in the rear of the bus) and walked to the front to talk to the driver. On the way back to the rear I noticed Leon's arm dangling out of his bunk and some blood dripping from it. On further examination Leon's throat had been cut and he was laying there in a pool of blood with Rhonda. We went straight to a hospital and had him stitched up...what a mess. Never did get to the bottom of it. Leon said he'd stumbled and must have "cut" himself in the bus hall way. Hmmmmm.
His girlfriend had been a source of problems...bringing a hand gun on the road and holding Leon hostage in his hotel room...not letting any band members talk to Leon on the phone. And, at one point, told us Leon couldn't tour with us anymore unless he got more money. That was in '93 when we had to hire a sub bass player for two legs of a tour because Leon had "quit". Later that year he beat Rhonda up, got sentenced to 3 months in prison. They SHAVED his head! Man, it was ugly.
So...as soon as we reached Jax that day, the word started circulating that I had cut Leon's throat. Does this photo look like someone who would cut someone's throat? Or...even a "pooch-hater"?!?!
By the way, Rhonda (Leon's ex) some how slashed Leon's wrist a year after this incident...and that left Leon with no feeling in his little finger and some damage to his ring finger (right hand...the one uses to fret with).
It's a reporter's job to write about what he experiences. I spoke several times with the guy who wrote that article...it seems he wanted to get the facts straight.



I know you probably get this a lot, but would you mind sharing your thoughts on Ronnie Van Zant?

Ronnie was two people. When he was straight, he was one of the finest people I'd ever met...when drunk, he was a mad man. Unfortunately, towards the end of my tenure with the band, he was drunk the whole time. That's mainly why I left...working with him just wasn't fun any more...and he was the only reason I wanted to join the band anyway.
One of my fondest memories of Ronnie, one that displays his genius, was in January 1975. I had written this entire musical piece in my hotel room. We were working on "Nuthin Fancy." He came by the hotel room to hear it and all. I told him was "It sounds to me like the song should be about a train." It took him only 15 minutes to write "Railroad Song" that night. Ronnie never wrote anything down- ever. But as long as the band could remember the "groove" of the music, the lyrics would always come back to him.
One other thing comes to mind- and this is so cool. Many times in rehearsal while writing, the band would be playing...it'd get loud...and Ronnie, after completing a verse or two of lyrics in his head, would walk over to me. He'd cup his mouth to my ear and sing me the song! On at least three occasions I was the first person to hear what he'd come up with. I remember hearing "Saturday Night Special" this way and my jaw dropping. He was an inspiration. I wish we could've parted on easier terms.


Tell us about the original reunion of the band, why you left and what you know about Artimus' leaving.

I guess I stuck with the reunion band because I was chasing some kind of dream. I was under the impression that just maybe we could write some music that mattered, and that maybe Johnny Van Zant would do a good vocal. I was misguided, I guess. I did it to myself.
The '91-'93 version of the band was fun. Custer was a great drummer, and we had some great live shows. Artimus left the band because...you'll have to ask him. It's way too complicated and I'm not sure I understand why. But that version of the band Ronnie would've been proud of. We were tight, energetic and inspired. Every night was a musical surprise...I had a blast.
In September of '95 I went into congestive heart failure while on the road. I had been diagnosed with an enlarged heart back in late '92. I caught a really bad cold and the infection landed in my heart. The only remedy is a heart transplant. I held my own from '93 thru '95. Though touring did get a bit rough at the end.
I had hoped to get a new heart and re-join the band eventually. But the band kind of deserted me and maybe it's just as well. The doctors say my health is doing a lot better than they expected, and that I may not need a new heart for 5 years. By that time, they say, new technologies might be available so that I won't need the new heart at all. Who knows.
I had thought the guys in the band were closer friends. I was mistaken. Took me a while for that to sink in. I didn't expect them to support me financially, but I didn't expect them to forsake me either. The way they handled my "leave of absence" was a disgrace. I should be grateful to be away from their influence, and I am. I wish I was 20 again, but there's no going back. I AM enjoying this time off. I do some writing, play with my dog & my toys, enjoy an "island" smoke once in a while, take a ride in my Jag convertible, it's pretty damn good. I'm doing just fine, thank you.



Would you contrast for us the equipment you used in the early 70's and what you prefer to play these days?

In the 70s I used several old Strats (rosewood neck models) and a great amp given to me by Hartley Peavey- a prototype Road Master. During the reunion tour I used two custom made Strats by John Suhr and a Peavey Mace, and later used PRS guitars. Now, I'm back to old Strats, maple neck models this time. Almost any amp that can pump 70 watts is good enough for me, tubes only.
Did you hear the story about me getting my stolen 1959 Gibson Les Paul returned to me in August '97? The whole story is still posted on the Nashville Scene Website. (Go to nashvillescene.com and do a search under “Ed King" to see the story. -Ed.) It tells how my stolen guitar was returned to me. I think my health did a major turnaround when that happened. I was in the midst of this lawsuit against my "friends" and was really down in the dumps big-time. Getting "Lester" back was a real lift, as you can imagine. I never, EVER thought I'd see that guitar again.



Who were some of your major influences, and who do you like to listen to today?

I don't listen to anyone these days. I like my old influences and, when I want to get a musical rush, I always return to those: Pete Townsend, Duane Allman, Lonnie Mack and James Burton. My style is the culmination of my undying admiration for those players.



What were your favorite Skynyrd songs to play?

"Sweet Home Alabama," "Simple Man," "Saturday Night Special,""Needle and the Spoon" ... I had a lot of favorites. "Curtis Lowe" was a good one to play. The original version of the band only played "Curtis Lowe" ONE time on stage. We were playing in a basement in some hotel and thought we'd try it. We never played it again until the Tribute Tour with Johnny. But the songs, they were pretty much ALL good ones.


What would be your advice to a young hot-shot guitar player or other musician who thinks they have what it takes to make it in the music industry?

Of course, we live in a different world than we did when I was 15 years old. Back then, rock guitar was still in the pioneer stages...of which I'm proud to say I was a part.

But one thing is probably still important. I always felt that, even though I wasn't the best player around, I had style. Most people could pick my parts out on a record and identify them. The intro to "Sweet Home Alabama" will always be a radio staple. And how many songs can you think of can be identified within the first 2 seconds? (I'm really proud of THAT one).

So, if you're really convinced you have style and that you have something to say musically, then you don't let anything hold you back. I didn't, although I could've quit many times. I had confidence in the little things that I know I can do well.
It also helps to learn and hang out with as many musicians as possible.



What projects are you currently involved in?

I've written three tunes with this fellow Gwil Owen who's been nominated for an Academy Award (best song - "The Horse Whisperer") Pretty cool stuff. Other than that, I'm trying to get real proficient as a fretless bass player. The bass is STILL my favorite instrument. Always has been, always will be.



Are you and Jeff Carlisi working on a project?

We've written a half dozen tunes and we're lazily trying to get something together so the songs can be laid to tape.



If you could have one wish granted, what would it be?

I think my one wish would be to write the title track for a "Grade-A" movie...I'm working on it.

[ekforum]

A Second Helping

An Interview with Ed King by Michael B. Smith (2001)

Ed King is a walking rock and roll lesson. From his teenage success with the Strawberry Alarm Clock, to his cult status as guitarist for everybody's favorite Southern Rockers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, King has written and played on some major recordings.

This is our second helping of Ed. Be sure to read our archived interview as well here. In light of Mitch Lopate's interview with Alarm Clock's Paul Marshall, we decided to revisit King, and toss out a few questions aboy both the "Clock" and Skynyrd. As always, King was a pl;easure to work with. GRITZ wishes Ed continued Success, and we hope to see much more of him in the near future.


This issue, we are proud to feature an interview with an old band mate of yours, Paul Marshall. How did you guys come to form Strawberry Alarm Clock? Who was in the band to begin with? Was Paul in at the beginning?

The "Clock" was really put together out of two bands. Mark Weitz, Lee Freeman, Gary Lovetro & myself were in Thee Sixpence - Randy Seol and George Bunnell were in another band. Can't recall the name. Mark lived in Sherman Oaks, Randy & George in Woodland Hills and the rest of us were from Glendale. (California, of course.)

Randy mainly joined our band because our drummer, Gene Gunnels, had quit prior to the release of our hit single. Then Randy became appointed to sing "Incense & Peppermints" on stage because Lee's voice wasn't right for it. The guy who sang on the record, Greg Munford, was asked to join but declined. He would've been a real asset to the band - at that time, he had a real good musical vision for his age (16, I believe). I'd probably be up for a Clock reunion if we could drag him out of the D.C. area where he now lives. From what he says, he's real busy working with politicians! Funny... that's where a lot of us hippies wound up. Getting "respectable."

Paul Marshall didn't join the band until around 1969-70...after Mark left. Then Gunnels came back. It was in this version of the Clock that I met Skynyrd on a tour in Florida in 1970.


Were you in the band when "Incense & Peppermints" hit big? Tell us about the beginnings of the band?

Mark Weitz and I wrote the music track to "Incense..." - then our manager took it to a publisher in town who, in turn, sent it off to some lyricists in Denver. "Incense..." came back except our names weren't on the sheet music as writers. What a PISSER.

Our first tour of the States was in Nov. '67. I had just turned 18. What an experience. That winter we did a tour with the Beach Boys and the Buffalo Springfield and the next Spring we did it again, this time on the Beach Boys own private plane. The tour started the day after Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis- and we were scheduled to play there! There were reports of snipers at the airport, so we went to Nashville to spend the night. That evening a gun salesman went from room to room with a flight case full of handguns. Many of us bought one. I never went on stage without a .38 Special in my back pocket. Quite an education.


How many albums did you record? Tell us about them?

I'd rather not go into the albums recorded at this time-they were very forgettable as very little of the material was any good. Some of it, however, provided me with an opportunity to play what I consider to be my best playing ever. I think my lack of knowledge of the instrument was supplemented by my inspiration. My solo on "Tomorrow", "Black Butter" and "They Saw the Fat One Coming" are my favorites. I was in learning mode and it was a lot of fun - even though we suspected we were being exploited financially to the max.


What were some of the high points with SAC?

You must mean the time we flew from Jacksonville to Honolulu to do a gig for a Dick Clark show- and then to Miami in the same day to re-join the Beach Boys tour. I'd wondered what the hell that was that made me itch and scratch all the way there- geez, it was torture. Found out I had my first case of crabs. Maybe I got some bad advice, but I was told to shave the entire area and pick those little guys off with tweezers. So that's how I spent my 8 hours in Honolulu. Definitely a high point.


What caused the band to break up, and how did you end up in Skynyrd?

High intensity discord and bad management (and bad material) caused the breakup. In 1970, we dida 3-month college tour in Florida. That's when I met the guys in Skynyrd. That was a real fun tour, the most fun I'd had in years. We got ripped off by the promoters day after day. Totally screwed over. But we made the best of it. Haven't had that much fun since. When the tour ended, I told Ronnie to call me if he ever needed a guitar player or bass player. (More on this in our previous Ed interview)


We've covered a lot of your Lynyrd Skynyrd history in a previous interview, but if you would, and in light of Leon's death, could you share any thoughts about Leon? Any memories? What about the "throat cutting" in SPIN magazine? I heard from Leon that that was BS.[/i] [/b](Again, see our ‘99 interview with King.)[/color]

I'm glad to hear Leon didn't believe I'd do something like that. Leon was a kind-hearted soul. NEVER intrusive - although he could be annoying at times - we all loved him. His presence helped make Skynyrd what it was. The greatest bass player I ever played with. You never knew he was there because his parts were so seamless. I've said it before - I never, ever write a bass part without first asking myself "What would Leon play?"


What are some of your happiest memories of Skynyrd?

Hearing "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio for the first time. That was a great feeling. Ronnie'd say, "That's our 'Ramblin Man' ." There were lots of great times on the road, especially before the band made it. Those times traveling in a beat-up car towing a trailer - the reward IS the journey.


How's your heart and health these days?

My heart has stabilized, thanks to the transplant team at St. Thomas Hospital here in Nashville. I feel better than I've felt in years.



Are you involved in any music projects at the present? Is there any truth to the rumor about your rejoining Skynyrd?

I pretty much burned my bridges with Skynyrd and that's probably for the best. I am really enjoying my life as it is right now. I've got many tunes on tape that I'll put on a couple of CD's one day - stuff I've recorded in hotels, on buses, here at home - stuff that was fun to write, fun to record. As for right now, I'm just laying low.



Are you planning to attend the October 20th Celebration of Life that Artimus is doing?

If I go anywhere, I need to travel to Nevada to visit my mother. But I'm still pondering where I'll be in October.[/size][/b]

[ekforum]

Classicbands Interview

An Interview with Ed King by Gary James (2005)

It's not often that you get to talk to someone whose been in not just one, but two legendary groups. But, such is the case with Ed King. Ed was a member of The Strawberry Alarm Clock and Lynyrd Skynyrd. What a fascinating story Ed King has to tell! What a fascinating life Ed King has led!


Ed, let's start off with your association with The Strawberry Alarm Clock. You formed it and helped name it?

I helped name it. Actually, it was pretty much a group activity. Three or four of us were in the room when we named it.


You did write "Incense and Peppermints" did you?

Well, me and the keyboard player, Mark Weitz wrote the music track. We went into the studio with a drummer that was in the band. We cut a three piece and I over-dubbed bass on it. We had no lyric or no vocal. So, our manager took it to a producer in Hollywood. The song came back with a lyric sheet and a melody line and our names weren't on it. So, the answer to your question is, yeah. I feel we did write it, but I think we got taken kind of advantage of.



You were definitely taken advantage of. Why, when you saw your names weren't on the song, didn't you consult an attorney?

We were told that to get into the music business, that's what you had to do. I was talking to somebody yesterday about somebody he knew, who's working on getting this Country (music) deal. And really, you have to give up a lot of stuff. He was telling me the record companies now are even wanting a chunk of your merchandising and road money. I always thought that the record companies sponsored you when you went on the road and getting started, because you're not making that great of money. So, I don't know. I know it's real rough out there, I mean, to be an artist nowadays. I would hate to be a guitar player out there trying to make a living 'cause the whole thing is just so difficult than when I grew up. When I grew up, I was pretty much a pioneer. Matter of fact, when I first started making records with the band that was to become The Strawberry Alarm Clock, we actually got into our car and rode up and down the coast of California going to radio stations saying "Here's our record, would you play it?" You could never do that today.

That was a whole other era.

It was. Can you imagine walking back to your car after visiting a radio station and driving out of the parking lot and hearing your song on the radio? That actually happened. It was just the time it was back then. It was just great. Everybody did it back then. Nowadays, there's only three people who make up the playlists in the whole United States and it's just really difficult to get heard. Not that there's that many artists who are really different. A lot of 'em, to me, all sound alike. I could just be getting old and jaded too. But, back then, there were some records and artists who were really different. To me, all that stuff from the 60s, every hit record that came out of the 60s to me was so definitive and different. You'll never hear music like that again. It was some of the greatest music.


When did you start playing guitar?

Probably at the age of twelve. 1961 maybe. I really didn't make any progress at all until The Beatles came out. I bought a Beatles chord book. I mean, I was learning some surf tunes...a lot of surf music. But then, when The Beatles came out, I learned the entire catalogue and that really taught me a lot about chords and chord patterns and movement and the whole bass line stuff. Matter of fact, after a while, I sold my guitar 'cause bass was far more interesting. Plus, I was getting so much work at the age of sixteen. I was making $75 every weekend, playing at military bases and little venues. When I was learning how to play, my mother kept telling me, don't get into this business because there are just too many people out there playing. To my way of thinking, what I was looking at, man, there weren't. I was in a very select few. For me to have a number one record at the age of eighteen; I pretty much expected it, 'cause there weren't too many people out there.

Would you wear the psychedelic type clothing when you'd perform in public?

We had these outfits made up from this East Indian clothing shop in Westwood, California. It was Mark's idea. He went into the shop and said we should all wear these. I hated the stuff. It was like big pajamas. Great sleepwear, but I don't want to play in it. So, eventually after we took the album cover, I think I had one more gold lame' outfit made, which was actually pretty nice. But, when I went out, I actually wore something different, more like a velvet type shirt with some fancy collars, something a little more comfortable that I could wear pants with. That was my big thing. I just wanted to wear pants; pants that fit...not these big baggy things.


Enough about The Strawberry Alarm Clock. Let's move on to your association with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Well, I'll tell you...with Strawberry Alarm Clock, the highlight of my life even to this day, over and above Skynyrd, was the two Beach Boys tours that I did. That was. For an eighteen year old to be on tour with them and Buffalo Springfield was an amazing thing.


It's while you were on the road with Strawberry Alarm Clock that you first me Ronnie Van Zant?

Yeah. What happened was, the Alarm Clock, several of the members left. We got a couple of other guys to take their places. We fired our manager too. So, he put together some local California musicians and booked them for a whole tour of the South, like a college tour. We found out about it. We got an attorney to file an injunction and we decided what the heck, we might as well do the tour 'cause we're not doing anything and we're broke. So we did that tour and Lynyrd Skynyrd was our opening act the whole tour. At that time, they only had two original songs. The rest of their set was Zeppelin and Cream stuff.


What year would that have been?

That would have been February, 1970.


Did you think much of the band?

Not really. But, I thought a lot of Ronnie. As a matter of fact, Ronnie called me one day when I was at the hotel and he said "Look, we're practicing downtown at this club. We wrote another tune. We'd like you to come down and hear it." So, it was like, two o'clock in the afternoon. So, I went in and sat right in front of the stage and listened to them play this new tune they had written. I was just blown away. I told Ronnie afterwards, "if you ever need another guitar player, you should look me up. I'd love to play some music with you." You could see it coming. You could see he was just a genius waiting to happen.


You were originally asked to join the band by Ronnie as a bassist?

That's right, yeah.


But, you were a guitarist.

Yeah, but I played a lot of bass. On the Alarm Clock records especially from the second album on, I played bass on a lot of stuff.


So the transition wasn't very hard for you.

Oh, it was difficult. Yeah, it was, because the kind of music they were writing, I had a hard time adapting to. I did my best. I was very uncomfortable with it. It wasn't until we were just about finished recording our first album. The old bass player, Leon Wilkeson, decided to visit us out at the cabin in the woods where we used to rehearse. He comes out and Ronnie says to Leon, "Leon, put on your bass. Let's play Ed the song called Simple Man", which I had never heard before. So, they played it and I saw Leon play it and I go "OK, that's what the bass player in this band is supposed to play like." So, we went up to Atlanta and recorded Simple Man and that's why my bass part is so different from the other bass parts on the record. Right after we finished that album, Ronnie came up to me, I was sitting on the edge of my bed playing my Stratocaster, which I had just gotten by the way, and he puts his arm around me and goes "Man, you're the worst bass player I ever played with." I thought I was out of a job. After all this, he was gonna fire me. He said "No, we'll just switch you over to guitar and get Leon back in the band." So, the next day, we had off. Leon was working at an ice-cream factory. They went out to get him. Then the next day was our first rehearsal with Leon back on bass and me on guitar. And the first song we wrote was "Sweet Home Alabama". We actually wrote "I Need You" the same day. That was a pretty good day.


You wrote that guitar riff for "Sweet Home Alabama" didn't you?

Right.


How long did it take you to write that?

Oh, man, we wrote that song in half an hour, but it took us about a half a day to put it together. The song came real quick. I started off with that riff and Ronnie was sitting on the edge of the couch, making this signal to me to just keep rolling it over and over. Finally, after maybe 10 - 15 minutes, he got up and sang a verse and a chorus. Then, I just put the song together. I knew where to take it. It wasn't very difficult. There's not many changes in it. Every verse, there's like a new wrinkle added to it, but it pretty much stays the same. That wasn't even work. That was too easy. Anything you wrote with him was pretty easy. If he didn't latch onto it in the first five or ten minutes, then you'd go on to something else.


So you were writing the music and he was primarily writing the words?

Yeah, that's right.



Did he play any instrument?

No. He'd sit on the edge of the couch, pretty much with his head in his hands. He never wrote anything down, ever. So, we'd work real hard to make sure we'd remember the groove of the song, how it felt, and the changes, 'cause if you came back the next day and couldn't play it with exactly the same feel, there was a good chance the song was lost. Ronnie wrote his syllables so that they fit inside the groove. So, you really had to know when you left rehearsal that day, what you had.


How do you explain the fact that of all the Southern rock bands that were around in the early to mid 70s, Wet Willie, Marshall Tucker, the Allman Brothers Band, it was really Lynyrd Skynyrd that touched a raw nerve with audiences, particularly in the Northeast?

Well, we had the better material. I think the three guitars all being different. We weren't really that great musicians, but we worked real well together. There was a great chemistry. 'Live', people really picked up on that. We enjoyed playing together. And, as I already said, our material was top notch.


You quit the band on May 26th, 1975. How hard is that to leave a band when they're really on top?

Well, I was out of my mind for quitting. But, it was the best thing I ever did. We signed with a new manager in New York and the manager didn't really have a clue as to what the band was about. He was interested in Ronnie only. He was kind of like putting wedges between...well; he put a wedge between me and Ronnie for sure. Ronnie was drinking a lot. It was just an unpleasant situation. I never drank, but I was into drugs pretty good. I had gotten fed up with frankly all the violence. Our new manager used to tell Ronnie "Hey, the crazier you are, the better you're gonna be." And I think, he kind of took it to heart. It just got a little too nutty for me. So, in the middle of the night, I just walked out. It had been a bad night the night before. I had good reason to leave. (Laughs) I should never have done it the way I did it.



Would the new manager have been Peter Rudge?

Yeah.


He managed The Who.

He managed The Stones and Tanya Tucker at that time. Big time. His English accent really won Ronnie over. He couldn't see any longevity for the band. His thing was just to pull as much of it out now as you could. Everything kind of changed once we signed with him.



Were you with Skynyrd when they played the Syracuse War Memorial in the early 70s? They were staying at the downtown Holiday Inn. What happened?

The band was staying on the 13th floor of the Holiday Inn and the Syracuse Police were called in to investigate some kind of a disturbance on the floor. What was going on anyway? I don't remember Syracuse. I remember a bunch of other nonsense that happened up there. I mean, I can't remember every time the cops were called. (Laughs) Unless somebody lost their life or the tour bus ran over a sports car in the parking lot...which happened. Things like that I remember.



You re-joined Skynyrd in 1987?

Right.


That had to be hard, 'cause it really wasn't the same band.

It wasn't that hard of a decision. It was something I felt I had to do to kind of make it right.


Did you see that plane crash coming in '77?

I could see something coming, but I didn't know it was that. I didn't even know they were flying. When I was in the band, we hated to fly. There was one flight that Ronnie and I took, just the two of us, from Atlanta to Detroit one time. We got off the ground and it's like the engines cut off or something. The plane floated and you could feel your stomach roll up into your esophagus.



That was a commercial flight?

Yeah. Everybody on the plane gasped. Ronnie and I looked at each other and went "whoa...this might be it!" We kind of agreed, why fly when you can take a bus? He hated to fly.



Did you ever talk to anybody in the band after you left, about the plane, prior to the plane crash?

I never talked to anybody about that plane. I never talked to anybody about the crash. I never brought it up.



Are you still in Skynyrd?

No. I haven't played in Skynyrd in ten years.


So, that means you’re doing what today?

I'm doing nothing. I'm retired and enjoying it. I don't have to be any place at any time. I really like that.


The royalties must be good then?

That whole catalogue sells about a million and a half to two million copies a year. It does very well. I don't have to work and I really don't enjoy going out and doing that whole thing anymore. I just kind of enjoy being by myself. Just me and my wife and my dogs. (Laughs)



What do you do with yourself in the course of a day?

Oh, we go places and see things. Robert Nix of Atlanta Rhythm Section put together this band with him and Dean Daughtry and Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special, myself, Artimus Pyle of Skynyrd and Jimmy Hall of Wet Willie and a couple of others from Memphis. We're going to be out doing some gigs in the next few months and in the next year. Eventually, that's gonna take me out some weekends. Then I've been playing with a Skynyrd tribute band in Long Island, New York and that's really been a hoot. These guys are really good. They're called Saturday Night Special and actually in the band is myself and Artimus Pyle and two of the original Honkettes, Leslie Hawkins and Jo Jo Billingsly. And the band is really good. If it wasn't, I couldn't do it. The band sounds just like the old records. The lead singer, his name is Thane Shearon. He's from Nashville. He sounds like a Van Zant. He's got great pipes. As a matter of fact, I haven't heard anybody sing the old Skynyrd songs as well as Thane. I'm also doing some things with Jeff Carlisi and Derek St. Holmes (Nugent's band) and Liberty DeVitto & Mark Rivera (Billy Joel's band). That band is a REAL blast; totally spontaneous and unrehearsed. It just falls into place natural like!

Reproduced and edited from "Gary James' Interview with Ed King..." at www.classicbands.com

[ekforum]

earvolution Interview

An Interview with Ed King by David Schultz (03-29-06)

On March 13, 2006, Ed King, one of the key members of legendary southern rock forefathers Lynyrd Skynyrd was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. King, along with Gary Rossington, Billy Powell, Artimus Pyle and Bob Burns accepted the Hall of Fame accolades for Skynyrd and on behalf of departed members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Leon Wilkeson and Allen Collins. After spending the late sixties and early seventies with the psychedelic rockers The Strawberry Alarm Clock, King joined Skynyrd in 1973, giving them the powerful signature three guitar sound found on their first three albums, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd, Second Helping and Nuthin' Fancy.

On "Sweet Home Alabama," King provides the song's defining riffs and solos after kicking the song off with an audible count off just before Ronnie's famous request to "Turn it up" - which wasn't planned as Ronnie was telling the engineer he needed more volume in his headset. On the night before the Hall of Fame ceremony, King appeared with his former band mates for the last third of Skynyrd's celebration concert at Times Square's Nokia Theater, joining in one more time on the song that helped propel Skynyrd into the classic rock pantheon. On the heels of his recent honors, Ed King graciously took the time to speak to Earvolution.

On the night before your induction into the Hall of Fame, you appeared on stage at the Nokia Theater, looking extraordinarily svelte. In fact I didn't think that the thin guy on stage could be Ed King.
It took about 10 years for me to get to that point! It was a good thing that I came out to play with them. They were all very accommodating and I was treated like royalty.

At the Nokia

It took 7 years for Lynyrd Skynyrd to finally be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, what do you attribute the delay too? Could you describe your feelings from that night?
I still don't think the induction has fully sunk in. It's a great honor to be up there with the "greats" of the business. I believe the delay of the induction might have been due to the fact that there were so many members in the band; it was hard to decide who to induct. And maybe the committee didn't want a band with 2 original members playing at the award ceremony. So they wound up with 5 original members plus the 2 living original Honkettes, Jo Jo Billingsley and Leslie Hawkins.

Were you confident that it was only a matter of time before the Hall of Fame acknowledged Skynyrd's contributions?
It's just real difficult to deny a band that sells over 2 million units per year for the past 30 years.

In the sense that Kid Rock has always been outspoken in his love for Skynyrd, what are your thoughts on Kid Rock and his part in keeping Skynyrd's music alive?
I would've liked to have seen Al Kooper at the ceremony. There are a lot of mixed feelings about his involvement with the band. Some believe he exploited the band for his own gains. All I know is, he did a fine job producing those first 3 albums. He believed in Skynyrd when no one else did. As far as Kid Rock goes, he's quite a guy. We spoke for a long time that night at the Nokia. I've never known much about him but walked away thinking he was a proper choice for the ceremony. Hard to believe he was born 4 years AFTER I had my first #1 record!

Your appearance at the Nokia was described by some as miraculous. Would you share that assessment?
Gary Rossington was very gracious in allowing me to share the stage with him. As far as how I felt about it, I am always glad to play but my emotions about playing have pretty well left me. It may have something to do with the fact I just don't think those songs are played with the same "feel" and "pocket" as they need to be. However, "Sweet Home Alabama" at the Hall of Fame show the next night felt perfect, thanks to (drummer) Bob Burns.

Over the years, a mythology has been created about and around Lynyrd Skynyrd. What are your favorite myths about the band?
People ask me "What was Ronnie Van Zant like?" I always say, just listen to any 6 songs he wrote. He wrote about his life and his thoughts and he spoke like he sang: very poetic, very eloquent. So the "myth" is that Ronnie was all about whiskey, women and brawling. He was way more than that.

What are your fondest memories from playing with Skynyrd?
We used to write and rehearse in a little 20 x 30 cabin out in the woods in Green Cove, Florida. It got hotter'n hell in there . . . 6 huge amplifiers add a lot of heat to an already scorching Florida sunshine. But we arrived EVERY morning at 8:30 . . . and never left til sundown. EVERY day. There were no hard drugs or alcohol at "Hell House." We arrived early every day wondering what great song would be written by day's end. That is my finest memory, even though my initiation into the band was spending every night out there for a week. We had to do that to guard against thieves coming up the creek behind the cabin and stealing our equipment! One morning an alligator had come ashore. And the noises out there at night scared me half to death. I slept with the lights on and a loaded .38 by my side. My finest memory!

Any young artists out there that you think can pick up and carry on some of the legacy your music will leave behind?
It was hard back then and it's hard these days to find musicians who are talented AND WILLING to work long hours to perfect a craft. Most people just don't want to sacrifice that much. People think we partied all the time. Maybe on the road we did. But when it came to writing and recording, we were ALL business. And we all gave up A LOT to get where we wanted to go.

[ekforum]

The Gibson Interview

An Interview with Ed King by Jaan Uhelszki (08-26-07)


Just back from the Custom Shop Summer Jam—where he fell in love with a chambered VOS ’58 Les Paul that he swears equals his original ’59 Standard—Ed King discusses his long journey with Lynyrd Skynyrd and his passion for Gibson guitars.

Yes, that really was Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd sauntering through Gibson's Custom Shop Summer Jam a few weeks ago. When not shaking hands, or answering questions about who "Free Bird" was about, or if it is true that he wrote "Sweet Home Alabama" in his sleep, this member of Skynyrd's formidable three-prong guitar army was stationed at a wall of beautiful Custom Shop Les Pauls. At the Jam, King found a chambered 1958 VOS Les Paul, which he swears measures up to his original 1959 Les Paul Standard. In fact, since he brought the new guitar home, his ’59 has hardly been out of the case.

In this candid interview with Gibson.com, King holds very little back, talking frankly about the his stormy relationship with Skynyrd lead singer and majordomo Ronnie Van Zant, who once said King "wasn't a pimple on Allen Collin's ass," to how he's always hated the band’s name, to the violence and mean-spiritedness that led up to what was the second most infamous plane crash in rock history—something that he avoided by a fortuitous combination of luck and providence. King also doesn't pull any punches about the guitars he has played and hated, the Gibsons he champions, and why. This is a story of a man who has seen it all, remembers most of it, and the guitars that he has loved and lost.

I understand that you were at Gibson Custom Shop's Summer Jam a few weeks ago.
A couple of friends from the East Coast, they come down to the Custom Shop Summer Jam, and they invited me over to the party. Once I got there I saw that they had all these Les Pauls on the wall, and this guy says, "I want you to try this guitar." It's a 1958 Les Paul reissue, a chambered guitar. They've routed out some of the mahogany and then put a maple top on top of it. I said, "Sure, I'll try it out." Well, I played it acoustically because to me that's the test of a real good electric guitar, if it has a real good resonance acoustically. And it had it. I said, "Okay, now I need to find an amp." So he finally located, out in some trailer, a little Epiphone amplifier. I plugged it in and the guitar just melted in my hands. And it sounded great. I said, well, I think this guitar sounds and plays as good as my '59. So I bought it. I brought it home, and that was about, maybe three weeks ago. I've been playing this guitar every day. It’s funny. I went up and got my '59 out the other day, because I've been playing this new one now for three weeks, and I plugged it in, and sure enough, it's the same exact thing.

That's amazing.
Yeah, it is amazing. The new guitar has a little bit fatter neck. But as far as tone and feel and just the way every note, you can feel go through you, it's the same experience. See, that's the thing. It's the same experience. I am just as satisfied playing the new one as I am the old one, and that's the key to it, is what makes you feel that feeling of satisfaction when you play it, is when every note just rings true and it has that honk to it.

How else does it compare to an original '59?
Well, as for an original '59, like I said, I've owned five of them, and I've played quite a few more, and a lot of them are great guitars. You might find a couple that aren't as good. But I think a lot of it had to do with the old wood they were making guitars with back then. I mean those guitars sounded as good the day they were made. A lot of people think it's the aging of the wood. For the old ones, I think it had a lot to do with the wood itself, but I think the fact with the new one that they hollowed out some of the mahogany and were able to, how can I say this, compensate for the lack of the aging of the mahogany. They were able to compensate the resonant factor in this body, and the maple on top is real nice and the neck is really great. I think it's the closest thing you can get to an old Les Paul, and to me it's just as satisfying.

Well that was a great commercial; you should have gotten it for free.
Well, I don't know. I have a saying: "Cost nothing, worth nothing." And I don't ever mind paying for a good guitar.

Do you play guitar every single day?
Every day, yeah. I've been playing this Les Paul every day since I got it three weeks ago. And of course I A/B'd it with the old one soon as I got it, but then I put the old one up for three weeks. Just the day before yesterday, I took the old one out again, and yup, it's the same exact feeling.

Can you talk a little about some of your earliest guitars?
My first guitar was a Gibson. It was a Melody Maker, probably 1962. I begged my mother to get it for me, and we didn't have any money. And so that was my first electric. And then after playing along with the radio for a while I kind of realized the only job I could really get was playing bass, so I traded the Gibson for a Japanese bass. And now at the age of 15, I was making like 50 bucks a week playing bass; I guess that was 1965 or '66. That was pretty good.

That's kind of amazing that you could get a job as a bassist and not a guitarist. I imagine because everyone wanted to be a lead guitarist.
Yeah, there were no bass players. Every band I was in had an awful bass player, so I figured, well…. Actually I knew where all the notes were. I'm actually a better bass player than a guitar player. And so anyway, I was playing with these guys who were like six, seven years older than I was, playing bass. There came a time when I was asked to join this band, so I traded the bass and some cash for an old Fender Telecaster, which is the only thing I could find. And I hated that guitar.

Why was that?
I hated Fender guitars because they were too tinny and they didn't have a real fat sound. I played that Telecaster, I played it on “Incense and Peppermints,” actually. But as soon as I got the money I went down to my local guitar store and I got this Gibson SG Special, which is the same kind of guitar that Robby Krieger of the Doors used, and I really loved the sound he got. I bought one of those in, and in Memphis I bought a Gibson SG Standard once I finally got on the road with the Strawberry Alarm Clock. That guitar was probably two years old, sitting in the shop, when I found it. Those two were my main guitars for a number of years, and just to make a long story short, when I joined Skynyrd as a bass player, okay, I had these two Gibson guitars. I actually had a Gibson SG Standard and I had a '54 Les Paul at that point. And when Ronnie Van Zant fired me as the bass player, because he said I was the worst bass player that he'd ever played with, that's what I was using.

He really said that to you? What was the circumstance?
It happened one day at rehearsal. Our first album was just about done, and Leon Wilkerson showed up at rehearsal. And Ronnie said to Leon, he said "Leon, put on Ed's bass and let's play Ed the song called ‘Simple Man.’ I had never heard the song before. And I had already been in the band about eight months. I'd never heard the song. So they played that and it hit me like a ton of bricks, like, "I'm the wrong guy for this job. This is your bass player, you know?" But I did learn a lot from Leon just that one day, and so that's why the bass part to "Simple Man" is really different than any other bass part on that record.

So you saw how he played it and then you played it Leon-style.
I actually didn't play it Leon-style, because I can't remember his bass part. His bass part was different than mine—it had more of a rolling feel to it, and so I tried to emulate the way I felt that day when he played. And to me that felt good. But anyway, right after that album was done, that's when Ronnie fired me. And I thought I was out of a job and he said no, he said, "We're gonna go down to this ice cream plant where Leon works. We're going to talk him back into the band, and we'll switch you over to guitar."

After I left Skynyrd, to just jump way ahead in the story, like in the '90s, I'd go to these guitar shows and I'd always take my Les Paul with me. But then everybody'd say, well, play "Sweet Home Alabama," and you cannot play that song on a Les Paul. Now to back up a little bit, I hated the Fender Stratocaster. I mean it was just tinny. I couldn't really get any sound out of it. It's funny, I only owned that guitar for probably three months before I recorded "Sweet Home Alabama," and now there's no guitar that I could ever use on that song.

I read that you said you didn't particular like the sound you got out of the guitar that you used on "Sweet Home Alabama."
Yeah, it was a horrible guitar. But I do think it was the banjo-like tone that prompted Ronnie to write about Alabama, like "I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee." But that didn't help; I still hated the guitar.

So tell me about your relationship with your Les Paul.
There are things you can play on a Gibson Les Paul that you can't play on anything else.

And why is that?
Okay, well, the old vintage Les Pauls, which are my favorite, every note has a certain honkish quality to it. I'm saying, not even plugged in. I heard someone describe it as like a woodwind type sound. Every note. And the best recorded sound I can think of to demonstrate that would be the first minute of ZZ Top's "Brown Sugar." That is the sound. And I'd say Paul Kossoff on Free's "All Right Now" is a good example. But the guitar has a certain honkish quality to it, and you can play blues on it forever. A Les Paul through a Marshall is just a great sound. Cream's first album, Fresh Cream, is the ultimate vintage Les Paul sound, just all around. I mean his solo on "I'm So Glad" and "Sweet Wine," that's a classic Les Paul sound. There will never be any Les Paul sound better than that.

Let's do a little bit of your history, too.
Oh, wait, wait, wait. I'm not quite finished with the story yet. So anyway, I'm stuck with this Stratocaster, and like I said I was making up different guitars on the road and I remember I bought an old Les Paul on the road that I played on like one or two songs onstage, but the Stratocaster set me apart in the band as a totally different sound. And that's why I had to use it. I had to use it on the majority of everything, just so I wouldn't sound like Gary, and I wouldn't sound like Allen.

What did Allen and Gary play?
Allen used a Firebird. And Gary used a Les Paul. You can listen to those old Skynyrd records and you can pick out who's playing what, because everybody sounds so different. Actually there's one writer who put it perfect, he said in Skynyrd you had really James Burton, Paul Kossoff, and Eric Clapton kind of playing in the same band.

Can you talk a little about how you wrote the solos to "Sweet Home Alabama" in your sleep? Gary had done some part of it and then you went home and finished it in your dreams?
Well, when I came to rehearsal that day Gary was playing this riff that you can hear in the verses. It's not the main riff that I play; it's a part that he plays. And as soon as I picked up the guitar I immediately bounced off his riff. And that's when Ronnie looked at me and he gave me this whirling sign with his finger, like keep going, keep playing that over and over. And so I mean if it hadn't been for Gary writing his part, I never would have written my part. And once I heard what Ronnie had, I just wrote the rest of the song in like a half hour, it just came so fast.

Have you ever written a song in your sleep before, or the whole solo?
No, that was the only solo I ever saw in a dream. And I saw both of ’em. And I pretty much play them note for note, even today, except one part I change. But I remember when I recorded that in Atlanta, like we recorded that song four days after we wrote it. And we were thinking about putting it on the first album because our first album wasn't even out yet, but Al Kooper wanted to save it for the second album. But Kooper argued with me the whole time I was there, saying "You're playing the solo in the wrong key." Because it starts on a D chord but it really resolves in G. It's really in the key of G. And he says "The solo should be in D." And he, unbeknownst to me, was telling the rest of the guys, "Look, we can't have this guy do the solo on the record."

That is really funny.
But the guys stood behind me. You know why they stood behind me? Because they said, man, he saw the solo in a dream. And you know how like the whole Southern mysticism thing really kind of fell in, played in my hands, because I'm not that big into Southern mysticism, you know? I'm from Southern California. But I figured, well, it meant enough to them that I saw it in a dream that it has to be used. I thought that was pretty cool.

I know you say that, and you've talked about this before in other interviews, the fact that when Steve Gaines replaced you and he had the same birthday, and it was almost like he took your place in all things. Including the crash. The way I always look at your life is that if you hadn't gotten pissed when Peter Rudge came into manage the band, and ultimately quit, you wouldn't be here. You seem to have a lot of those kinds of coincidences in your life.
Yeah, I know. Don't think I haven't thought about all that stuff.

Even though you're a Southern Californian, your life certainly has been like a testament to a sense of destiny or serendipity. Or for you, really like a guardian angel, you know?
I call it Providence, too.

Actually that's a better way to describe it.
Yeah. With a capital P.

Didn't providence play a role in meeting Lynyrd Skynyrd in the first place? You were in the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the band was all but broken up, but you decided to go out on tour one more time after you heard another band had fraudulently booked a tour under the Alarm Clock.
Yes, exactly. We filed this injunction against this band who had booked a three months college tour as the Alarm Clock. We had just gone through a bankruptcy and we figured we got no money, so we figured, "We're broke, let's just do it." Skynyrd was our opening act. Actually it was their first tour as Lynyrd Skynyrd. They had just changed the name of the band. I would have never met those guys had it not been for that bogus Strawberry Alarm Clock wanting to tour as us.

I know, and that's that sense of destiny. When Ronnie Van Zant called you on the phone and asked you over to listen to some of their songs, did you have an inclination that he wanted to hire you?
No, I didn't even think about it. I said, "Just get in the car and come pick me up. I don't have a car." And they were there the next day. The moment I met him, I really understood what Ronnie was about, even though he had only written three songs by then, the last one being a song called "Need All My Friends." That was the song that he asked me to listen to. They played the song for me at a club in Jacksonville called the Comic Book and that's when it hit me. I said to myself that I would do anything to play music with this guy. And so when he called me two years later, I didn't have to think about it.

What do you think that he saw in you?
You know, I can't answer that. I mean you would think there would have been a bass player in town that they could have called. I mean Larry Junstrom, I know he was the original bass player. Larry Junstrom is like one of the best bass players. He's very melodic. Matter of fact, when they played that song for me that day at the Comic Book, Junstrom's bass part was just, it was miraculous. It was just genius, you know. So I don't know what Ronnie saw in me. Like I said, it's Providential with a capital P. There's no logical reason for me to be in that band when you think about it.

No, there's not.
I had some real problems with Ronnie. I didn't understand why a genius had to act like that. And I was real sorry to give it up but I didn't have any regrets. I had regrets on how I did it—I just walked out mid-tour—but I had to because it was just one of those things that the longer you stay, the more it has its teeth in you and you can't let it go.

I remember you said that if Ronnie had called you and asked you back, you would have come back.
I would have come back. Yeah, absolutely.

Did you spend much time wondering why he didn't?
No. No, I knew that it was, well, it had to do with two things. Number one is pride. I walked out on him. And number two, Rudge said, "We don't need him." I mean he was really mesmerized by Peter Rudge, which I—he was the only person that I'd ever met that mesmerized Ronnie. Because Ronnie had it all over everybody. But he didn't have it over Pete Rudge.

To me that was the beginning of the end.
I wasn't surprised that it ended badly. I knew it would, I just didn't know it would end like that.

It had gotten so violent and it had gotten so mean.
It had gotten mean. And I had seen so many mean things. Not necessarily against me but just against people that were close to him, that to me was totally unnecessary. So I got out, and I've never regretted. I never went through a day sitting around the phone saying, boy, I wish he'd call. It's just if he had, we'd have had a talk and I would have gone back. But I would have had to set some ground rules, you know? I mean like I think I told you there's a picture of the band standing in front of Hell House. You've got six guys on one side and you got Ed King on the other, and that says it all. I'm from Southern California, I'll say it again. I'm like from a different mindset from those guys. I was just there to play music. I wasn't in there to get beat up, get spit upon, get dragged around a room, get jagged glass held up to my throat. I wasn't into all that. So, yeah, that was unfortunate.

But it always amazed me that everyone put up with it.
Had to. They had to. What else were they gonna do?

He gave them an out, but there was a price to pay.
No, there was no out.

No, I meant out of the blue-collar life that faced them growing up in Jacksonville.
No, there was no out for anybody, because when you're born on the west side of Jacksonville and you've got this success on your plate right in front of you, what are you going to do, walk away? And I wasn't from there. So I could. I just, I didn't know what the future held but I knew it wasn't there.

Did you ever have a day where you felt accepted? You were kind of close to Leon Wilkerson, the bassist, right?
Leon talked a lot, but I wouldn't say we were close.

What was your last straw? I mean was there one moment that you knew you couldn't go on?
Well, yeah, the night before I quit. We had, actually two nights before, we played in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Ronnie got thrown in jail along with this guy I knew, John Butler, who took care of my guitars. And it was his job to change my strings every day. Anyway they didn't show up at Pittsburgh, the next show, until like five minutes before the show. They showed up, they'd gotten out of jail. Got into Pittsburgh and that night during “Free Bird,” I broke two strings, which I never did. And by the way, I played a Gibson on "Free Bird." Played that Gibson SG every night, which I still have.

Anyway, on the limousine ride back to the hotel, Ronnie was just telling me that I didn't amount to a pimple on Allen Collins' ass, which, I wasn't going to argue with any of that, but then Ronnie started, you know, wanting to fight in the limousine and the driver pulled over and got out of the car and said, "You guys can drive your own car back." When I got back to the hotel I said, well, that's it. I just don't need this. You know. I mean, if they want to act crazy and fight amongst themselves, that's one thing. But don' t steer it my way.

You had already had a number one song with "Incense and Peppermint," when you joined Skynyrd, did you think that they had a hit single in them?
No. I hadn't heard any of their material until I walked into their first rehearsal, and "Free Bird" I didn't really care for because I didn't understand it. I didn't understand "Free Bird" till it was completely recorded, then I got it. "Gimme Three Steps" I thought was great. "Things Going On," great song. "Tuesday's Gone," I didn't care for. Of course “Simple Man,” when I heard it, which was the last song on that album. That song just blew me out of the water, just incredible. There were just too many things, too many songs that were good. Actually, there were some songs they recorded in Muscle Shoals before I joined, called "Was I Right or Was I Wrong," "Lend a Helping Hand." Those songs are just absolute genius, which the majority of people out there have never heard. They think it's just "Free Bird," "Alabama," "That Smell," and that's it.

I always remember Ronnie Van Zant saying he never wrote anything down because if it wasn't good enough to remember, it wasn't good enough.[/b]
Oh, yeah. I never saw him write a lyric down. Also, if you ever showed up at rehearsal the next day and couldn't recapture the groove? I mean you might have the chords right but if you'd lost the groove of that song, the lyrics were gone forever. We did it one time and he said, "I can't remember it." And we were just shocked. We go, "What happened?" And he said, "You guys lost it, man." He said, "You lost it." So you know, that song was gone. But that didn't happen anymore. I mean we'd stay there till dark—not too much after dark. By dark we were pretty much gone, but we played stuff over and over until we were playing it in our sleep that night. No wonder that solo came to me in a dream, because we just played and played and played.

It just seeded your subconscious.
Yeah, it was in the subconscious. Ronnie ruled with an iron fist that way, and that was fine with me. But really, the songwriting was the best part, and rehearsing. Going on the road, that was an ugly part. But the writing and rehearsing, that was a lot of fun. Even in hot Hell House, with all those hot amps and no air conditioning, sweat just pouring off, it was fun, man. Like when we were writing "Saturday Night Special." I'm showing Ronnie this riff and it's really loud in Hell House, and we're playing this thing, and Ronnie's sitting there in the corner of the couch with his head in his hands, and 15 minutes later he comes up and cups my ear with his hand, and sings me the whole first verse. I was the only one to hear it.. I was the only one to hear it. And I went, " Well, I know right where to take this." You know, and it just, bam, bam, bam. You finish the song and it's done, you know.

I have a picture of all of you at Hell House on my office wall. It's funny you bring that up because I've always thought that was such a revelatory picture about the dynamic of the band. You're the lone Northerner.
Oh, when I saw that picture for the first time when that box set came out—I went, "Oh, my. Man, that's it, right there, isn't it?"

That always seemed a polarizing thing for me. That and the crash. After Skynyrd came back together in 1987, at the Volunteer Jam, there was a division between those of you who were in the plane crash and those who were not. It was like that polarized every single thing.
Oh, sure, and for good reason.

They went through something, it was like they were in Vietnam together and you weren't in Vietnam.
That's exactly right, and I had no problem with that. I mean if I felt that certain thing going on, I would never interfere with that because that's something that you just don't mess with.

I know, it's true. So how do you think "Sweet Home Alabama" stands up next to "Free Bird?"
Oh, it stands up great against anything. CMT did a special of the best Southern rock songs of all time and of course "Alabama" was number one, and it should be. I'm sure Dickey Betts disagrees, but "Alabama" is the Southern anthem.

Didn't Ronnie say something like "That's our ‘Rambling Man’"?
That's what Ronnie said after we wrote it. He goes, "Well, Ed, that's our ‘Rambling Man.’"

The Allman Brothers really were the standard that all Southern rock is compared to.
Well, yeah, but I mean the Allmans were so different from us. I remember one time we played Macon, Georgia, and three guys from the Allman Brothers came, and they walked out during the first song.

They did not.
Well, yeah. I mean we just weren't as talented as they were. We couldn't jam and improvise. Our songs were written, they were structured. We had the four-minute song. At the most, five-minute song, and that was it, you know? Where those guys just could play, just play and play and play, and it was two totally different things.

What do you think the secret of Skynyrd's success was, the reason that Northerners liked it?
You know, that I can't answer. I mean like the first time we played up North with Black Sabbath, they threw shit at us. We could only play like three songs and get off the stage. And then three months later we came back and we were headlining. There's no answer to that. But I mean Ronnie has a universal appeal to rednecks no matter where they live. And I didn't know that, but I didn't know there were rednecks in upstate New York and in Michigan and Idaho and everywhere. I didn't know that.

They liked them despite the name.
I always hated the band’s name anyway, but that's another story.

What, you always hated the name Lynyrd Skynyrd?
I didn't care for it, no. But it was Ronnie's idea. The funny thing about it, about Skynyrd and rednecks everywhere, is that in my mind Ronnie Van Zant really wasn't a redneck. Ronnie Van Zant was very sophisticated. I mean people think he was just this rowdy, whisky drinking, going out, gathering other women, but Ronnie had a level of sophistication that even early on just grew so fast. Every day you'd see a change. So I wouldn't, didn't even classify him as a redneck. But the thing about him that appealed to everybody is you could tell by listening to him sing that that's exactly what he was like in real life. I mean it's exactly him. All you had to listen to was six Skynyrd songs, and then you'd have the whole gist of what that man was about.

Where were you when you heard about the plane crash?
I was making dinner. My mother called me, actually. She had heard the news first. And I flipped on the TV, and saw a little bit and then got in the car and went to Mississippi. I went to visit everybody in the hospital. And then I went to Ronnie's funeral after that, then I just drove home. It was an unbelievable week.

You rejoined Skynyrd in 1987 at Charlie Daniel's Volunteer Jam. What got you to rejoin? Why was that a good idea?
Gary Rossington called me, and asked me to come back, and I figured it would be a way to make it right. And I really missed playing guitar, and I thought it would be the right thing to do. You know, it's funny, I didn't know that Steve Gaines and I shared the same birth date until I actually was at rehearsal and one morning I went out to Ronnie's gravesite and Gaines is buried next to him. That's when I saw 9/14/49. And I went, oh, man, I did not know that.

Let's talk a little more about your guitars, the 1959 Les Paul that you like so much.
I've owned five old Sunburst Les Pauls. I guess I've owned eight or nine altogether. But of this particular year, I've owned five of them, and I had one that was the best one I'd owned, and somebody at gunpoint stole it from me back in 1987, on Father's Day. I had some other stuff for sale and it's a long story, but I kind of got caught unawares and that guitar left, and it's a good thing I didn't get shot and killed over it.

Anyway, ten years later I'm thumbing through a book at the Dallas Guitar Show. It's a guitar book, pictures of different guitars, and there's my guitar in this book. And so I bought a copy of the book. I took it home, and the serial number of the guitar was in the book. So I matched it up against some old inventory records that I had and sure enough, it's the same guitar. So I tracked it down. Here I thought the guitar may have landed in Japan because the book I bought was totally written in Japanese, but my wife figured out that this guy in Long Island had it. And so we got him on the phone, and it was April Fools Day, 1997, and he thought I was just pulling a joke. He owns a recording studio on Long Island. He was glad to talk to me because he thought I might want to use his studio, and I said, no, I'm calling for a different reason. So he was very upset, and anyway the guy that I talked to was the procurer of very special vintage guitars for this billionaire in Long Island. And the billionaire owned the guitar, along with many other fine guitars. So anyway a few months went by and, see, I'm going to make a long story short here. We haggled about it. A writer here in town, Beverly Keel helped me get it back. She wrote a story in New York magazine about it and she talked with the attorneys for this guy in New York. Anyway I never talked to the guy who had the guitar, but after six months the attorneys called up and said, "You can have the guitar back. Do you want the guitar or the money?" I said, "I want the guitar." So they said, "Well, come up and get it." So I sent a friend of mine to get the guitar, and I still have it. And it's the best '59 Les Paul I've ever played. It just about plays itself.

What are you working on now?
I am not doing anything. I mean I am in my twelfth year of retirement. My pool is open four months a year and I swim in it every day. I go out there with a Cuban cigar. I have a butterfly net in my right hand, a Cuban cigar in the left hand, my umbrella hat, and no swimsuit. And I swim around in the pool and I pick up leaves and whatever else is in the pool. Every day I spend two hours out there, and I love it.

Okay, I'll let you have that one, because that's very rock. What's the most rock thing you've ever done?
The most rock thing? I'm not like that.

You must have been.
Okay, when I was 18 years old, I bought a brand new Ford Mustang and then I went out and bought eight of the guitars I'd always wanted, and I put them all in the back of the car and went for a ride. I took my guitars for a ride. [/size]

[Zap]

This is from the French website "Road To Jacksonville" Southern Rock Webzine and Radio Show www.rtjwebzine.fr/

Ed King's interview
by John Molet and Dominique Turgot - June 2002

First of all, how are doing ? How is your health ?

I feel really good (as you can see in the picture). The doctors put me on the "inactive" waiting list for a new heart. I'll need one some day, for not now.

When did you start playing guitar ? Was it your first instrument ?

I took piano lessons very early...8 years old. I didn't like the piano so I quit...I wish now I hadn't.
I took up the guitar in 1961...a very-hard-to-play Kay acoustic. I learned all of the popular Southern California surf tunes at the time.

Did you study guitar all by yourself or did you get lessons ? Did you work a lot on your guitar ?

I took lessons for 3 months. When the teacher had me play a recital ("Beautiful Brown Eyes") I quit. I practiced just about non-stop from '62-'67.

How did you develop your "staccato" style ? Who were your main influences at that time ?

I can't answer that...my guitar heroes were James Burton, Lonnie Mack & Duane Eddy.

How did you start playing slide guitar ? How did develop your slide guitar style ?

I played a bit of slide in the late '60s, but it wasn't very "cool" .... until Duane Allman made it popular.
I saw Duane play 10/9/71 and 10/13/71 ... he was killed 10/29. I learned a lot by watching him play. Though NO ONE can EVER measure up to Duane...oh wait....Ry Cooder can. Ok...it's Duane and Ry. But that's IT. I don't listen to any other slide players, not even me.

What kind of music do you listen to today ?

Oldies. '50s & '60s. The last great rock album was Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits. After that, nothing strikes me. I really like to listen to the stuff I grew up on.

What is your favorite gear (guitars and amps) ?

I always loved old Gibson Les Paul...but they're a very one-dimensional instrument. The Fender Stratocaster or Telecaster are what I play the most. There are many great amplifiers out there. I used a Paul Reed Smith solid state amp for MANY years and LOVED it. He doesn't make them anymore, but they were outstanding. I played over 400 shows with the one I had and it never needed servicing.

Are there people you would really like to play with ?

I always wanted to play with James Burton and I had that chance at the Dallas Guitar Show in '94. It was myself along with Greg Martin (Ky Headhunters), Brian Setzer, Seymour Duncan and Burton. We did "Hello Mary Lou" and we each took a solo. I knew Burton's solo "note for note", so I really got off on that. When it came time for Burton to take his solo, he played something totally different. I suppose he's allowed to do that, isn't he?

Ed King in Paris, '92
Photo by John Molet

Imagine you can start the band of your dreams. Who would be in that band ?

Leon Wilkeson on bass...Jerry Edmonton on drums...Pete Townsend on rhythm guitar and me in the background somewhere. Oh yeah...Ronnie Van Zant on vocals.

While you were touring with the Lynyrd Skynyrd band, which bands did you like as an opener for your show ?

Charlie Daniels always. Later, in the '90s, I thought Ted Nugent and Skynyrd worked great together. Nugent is great....I can't stand his music but I think he's a great character!!

If you did not have this successful musical career, what would have been your life ?

The same thing I am now....a bum and a recluse.

During your career, did you have the chance to meet all the musicians you wanted to ?

I never really felt I HAD to meet anybody....but I think I DID meet all of heroes, except for Lonnie Mack.

What was your life between '75 and '87 ? Were you in the musical business ? Which projects did you work on ?

I invested in some real estate and did some computer programming...nothing, of course, can beat playing a guitar for a living.

What is your feeling about southern rock today ?

Do you mean the current Southern bands? Outside of the Drive-By Truckers, I don't really listen to anybody. The Truckers are pretty good !

Are there musical styles you really don't like ?

I never cared for Detroit soul music. I like Philly soul....love Memphis soul...Chicago soul is great. For some reason, never got off on the Detroit thing. Oh yeah...you can add rap music to the styles I don't like.

If you had the opportunity, would you like being on the road ?

I love the road...it doesn't like me.

What do you think about the southern rock bad connotation (often assimilated to racism) in some countries ?

I'm from Los Angeles...I don't get the whole southern racism thing at all. The whole business about the Confederate flag....I mean, "So What?"

How did you react to the Sept 11th events ?

"The End Is Near".

We were very sad when we learned you stopped your "Bonnie Blue Band" project. Is there a chance you start an other superband ?

I may have wanted to get on with that, but Jimmy Hall didn't seem interested so I figured we're ALL probably too damn old to deal with this.

We've talked with a lot of French fans and everybody were sad while learning your departure from the band in '95. Most of the fans think the Lynyrd Skynyrd 's music changed since you left the band (the songwriting and the arrangements are not as rich as when you were in the band). What do you think of their music ?

I haven't really listened to Skynyrd since I left the band. I'd say, without hearing it, that the music would HAVE to be radically different without me there...but even MORE SO without Leon Wilkeson. If something happens to Billy Powell, you can just forget it.

Did you have relationship with some band members after your departure ?

No.

Ed King and Johnny VanZant in Paris, '92
Photo by John Molet

Don't you think they should have ended the Lynyrd Skynyrd band after Leon passed away ?

No...Gary Rossington has most certainly earned the right to do whatever it is he cares to do with the name Lynyrd Skynyrd. I hope he tours til he drops...it's his right.

What is your life today ? Do you still write songs ? Is there a chance you'll release an album on the future ?

You saw the picture I sent you! I'm really happy and as content as I have ever been. I have a bunch of tunes I've recorded in my home studio over the years. When and If the band ever gets into the Hall of Fame, then I'll release some of it.

If you had to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, which albums would you take with you ?

Who's Next. That's the only one. Maybe a Beach Boys greatest hits collection.

If you could 're-start' your life, are there things you would change or would not do ?

The ONLY thing I would "change" : I would've been a little more aggressive in the music business and taken my talent more seriously. I should've moved to San Francisco and joined a band in the 60s. But, judging how things have turned out, I can't complain.

www.rtjwebzine.fr/rtjenglish/interviews/edking.html