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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:21:31 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:21:31 GMT -5
Original Release - 1991
1. Smokestack Lightning 2. Keeping the Faith 3. Southern Women 4. Pure & Simple 5. I've Seen Enough 6. Good Thing 7. Money Man 8. Backstreet Crawler 9. It's a Killer 10.Mama ( Afraid to Say Goodbye ) 11.End of the Road
What did I think of the '91 album? It's a good thing Bill Graham's people allowed us to re-mix it without Tom Dowd there. I have the original mixes and, admittedly the album isn't a classic, but Dowd's mixes made us look like idiots. I think that was a point he wanted to make.
I have a tape of a conference call between all the band members and Dowd after it was re-mixed. He's actually crying during the phone call and blaming ME for doing it all behind his back. He went so far as to claim the added acoustic guitar (by Brent Rowan) on "PURE & SIMPLE was out of tune. (Like Brent would DO such a thing!)
Graham's people told me beforehand we could do the needed overdubs and re-mixing with Dowd's blessing. Turned out he knew nothing about it, fortunately. Til his dying day Dowd thought I was under-handed about it but that's not the case at all. As a matter of fact, if I HAD known of Dowd's displeasure, I wouldn't have messed with it.
The album was outstanding musically...as musicians, we poured our guts into that one. Other than that, it had some strong shortcomings.
I wrote a lot of lyrics for this album. No, I'm not comfortable with it.
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:22:19 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:22:19 GMT -5
I hated that song while we were writing it...even more once we recorded it...and the video was the last straw. I think the lyrics to INCENSE & PEPPERMINTS" made more sense. For a "Skynyrd" song, it was just stupid.
Q - How long did it take to shoot the video for "Smokestack Lightning"?
I can't watch that SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING video. Gives me a migraine headache. There's an edit every second. Lousy song, anyway.
How long did it take to film? ALL DAY. I got home after midnight and my ex-wife yelled at me because I was late. <groan> After a MISERABLE day of shooting that video in a hot, sweaty Florida garage, I DIDN'T NEED THAT!!
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:23:13 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:23:13 GMT -5
ITS A KILLER about drug dealers. A line in the song seems to go "A fifty dollar gram...is what the n****** sayin". Actually the 'n' word is 'neighbor'...but it sure doesn't sound like that. We did get some racist backlash on that.
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:23:50 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:23:50 GMT -5
Q - Your licks were always consistently "tasty". (I.E. the outtro in Mama from '91, to me that one 10-15 second lead was the high point of the album.)
Thanks for the compliment about the ending on MAMA...I wish the "whoa" I screamed was on tape, too. That happened because the whole out-tro was improvised and when I played a certain part, I reacted loudly. But that song was not well written and totally mis-guided (as was that whole album).[/b][/size]
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:24:35 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:24:35 GMT -5
Q - Who plays the opening riff to Keepin' The Faith? I believe that's you Ed playing the licks over it at the beginning before the whole band starts. Is this you? And what guitar did you use for 1991? Pensa-Suhr?
You're correct on all counts. I think I used the Suhr Strat on most everything (on that album) except the slide parts ...that was my custom PRS (that my son David now plays).[/b][/size]
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:25:17 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:25:17 GMT -5
Johnny and 2 other guys wrote the chorus. He showed it to me one night. Then I wrote the verses and the bridge. Not much to it.
I recall during the recording of the vocal, Tom Dowd eventually threw me out of the studio. He kept needling Johnny about how he sang the words "Oh - whoa" in the chorus. Dowd correctly says that Johnny has a hard time with the vowel sound O. ...but he was such an asshole about it. He and I got into it and he threw me out. It was the ONE time when Dowd WASN'T playing his GameBoy machine. Actually was paying attention.
A few months later when he sent the first mixes out, I objected to a lot of what went on in that song. So I hired Brent Rowan (Nashville session guitarist) and Bill Cuomo (piano) to come in and do some overdubs. Brent re-did most of the acoustic guitar stuff (Randall and I were no good at that stuff) and Cuomo did the keyboard parts. (Billy was in rehab at that point.) Yeah, I thought the song turned out as well as it could have.
Here's a case where I had written a guitar solo for the song. I wanted to do it. Then Gary called me to his hotel room and played me what he'd written. I thought his idea was better. Don't say I'm NOT a team player! (I am playing a second lead part intertwined with his...surely you can pick it out.)
Dowd, in a conference call after the album was done, cried (he CRIED!) saying I had ruined the song it was now COMPLETELY OUT OF TUNE. I think he was merely projecting.
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:25:49 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:25:49 GMT -5
Q - Who does the voice in Money Man on 1991?
It's Randall Hall. He's got a great voice, doesn't he? He should've been in radio. Does a lot of great impressions, too. I've never heard a better Popeye or Walter Brennan. [/b] [/size]
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1991
Dec 2, 2009 13:26:30 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 2, 2009 13:26:30 GMT -5
My favorite rocker by the latter day Skynyrd hands down would have to be Backstreet Crawler. All the guitars smoked on it. Leon had an awesome bass thing in the middle and Billy's piano was all over it too. That song should have been 1991's lead off single instead of Smokestck Lightning. That was probably Randall's finest moment in Skynyrd.
Actually...Billy was in rehab when I hired Bill Cuomo to do the piano work on that tune.[/b][/size]
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1991
Dec 4, 2009 11:00:47 GMT -5
Post by ekforum on Dec 4, 2009 11:00:47 GMT -5
Q - Ed is there any chance Allen heard any songs from 91 album and if so what were his thoughts?
Allen died in January 1990. I'm pretty sure after the '88 tour, he stopped coming around. So the answer is NO, he never heard any of those songs (to my knowledge).[/b][/size]
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