In The Studio with Redbeard

Category: Beard’s Blog

  • Guess Who- American Woman 55th- Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman

    Guess Who- American Woman 55th- Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman

    Guess Who songwriters Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman were a prolific pair from the very outset with hits “Laughing, “Undone”, “These Eyes”, and “No Time”, but none of them were bigger or more timely than “American Woman” in December 1969. If you have not listened to the Guess Who’s January 1970 classic parent album American Woman in quite awhile, I predict you will be amazed at how strong the songs were, such as “No Sugar Tonight”; how environmentally aware lyricist/gifted singer Burton Cummings was on “New Mother Nature”,  “Hand Me Down World”, and later “Share the Land”; and how rockin’ Randy Bachman could complement Cummings’ pop side on “American Woman” and before that, “No Time”. So why did Bachman leave at the Guess Who’s peak?

    If you lived within five hundred miles of Chicago, Detroit, or Toronto between 1968 and 1972, seemingly there wasn’t a day when the Winnepeg band The Guess Who didn’t have a hit song on the radio:”These Eyes”,”Laughing”,”Undun”,”No Time”,”No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature”,”American Woman”, all written by terrific singer/pianist Burton Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman. Even after Bachman left, the hits continued for the Guess Who with the eco-aware “Hand Me Down World” and “Share the Land”. Both Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman take the guesswork out of popular myth and tell me the real story here In the Studio.

    A postscript to what we believed to be the entirety of the recorded Guess Who projects: a four-channel Quadrophonic surround mix of the Best of the Guess Who  has been released. Now as you can surmise, not every one of their earliest hits benefits from the long-ago SQ/QS attempts intended for four-channel records in the early Seventies, but the title song to American Woman, plus “No Time”, “No Sugar Tonight” and “Share the Land” in quad certainly were worth the wait. And speaking of interminable waits, The Guess Who have been eligible for nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for  thirty-five years. Guess how many times they have been nominated? Nada, zippo, not even once.- Redbeard

  • Kansas @50: Wayward Songs & Dust Busters- Kerry Livgren, Steve Walsh, Phil Ehart, Rich Williams, Robbie Steinhardt

    Kansas @50: Wayward Songs & Dust Busters- Kerry Livgren, Steve Walsh, Phil Ehart, Rich Williams, Robbie Steinhardt

    Over a half century of being America’s leading Progressive Rock band, the Topeka-based progressive rock band Kansas sold about twelve million albums just off of back-to-back blockbusters  Left Overture  in 1976 and Point of Know Return  barely eighteen months later. But there is a lot of quality before “Carry On Wayward Son” and after “Dust in the Wind”, including the epic title song from their second album, “Song for America”; the soaring “Icarus: Borne on Wings of Steel” from Masque  in 1975; and then post-Point…  hits “People of the South Wind”, “Hold On”, “Fight Fire with Fire”, and “All I Wanted”.

    With five decades of musical statehood, Kansas original members Kerry Livgren, Steve Walsh, Phil Ehart, Richard Williams, and the late singer/violinist Robbie Steinhardt (d. 2021) all join me In the Studio  for the rest of the best on Kansas’ fiftieth anniversary. – Redbeard 

  • Pink Floyd- The Wall- Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason

    Pink Floyd- The Wall- Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason

    Upon the album’s release in late 1979, one of the more ironic trivia “bricks” in the original limited concert staging of The Wall by Pink Floyd was that, unbeknownst to hardly anyone then outside the band’s tight inner circle, the internal power struggle, dissatisfaction with the contributions of two members, and the thinly-veiled attitude of a third had finally resulted in original Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright being forced out. Ultimately, Wright was hired to play on The Wall  tour as a sideman, but The Wall concept creator Roger Waters insisted that Rick’s severance include a clause forbidding Wright from ever officially rejoining Pink Floyd again, a barely submerged shoal of contention that would emerge far into the “endless river” of Pink Floyd’s future.

    The original performances of The Wall  were so elaborate, so expensive, tickets so limited (Roger Waters refused to do it in stadiums originally), and the dates so few (about thirty) that Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason all lost money touring it, whereas as a salaried employee with expenses paid by Pink Floyd, keyboardist Rick Wright was the only one who actually made money!

    “Time has a way of making you behave,” David Gilmour reminded me when recounting performing as a guest with Roger Waters in 2011 at London’s O2 Arena, but it could just as easily have been said by the surviving Pink Floyd alumni Nick Mason or even Waters himself, all of whom rejoined me for the first of our two-part peek behind The Wall. For instance, Roger Waters admitted to me that, in 1980, Pink Floyd had been guaranteed one million dollars per night to perform The Wall  on a stadium tour. “And I refused to do it outdoors,” Waters tells me in this classic rock interview. “But how can you do a show that’s about the alienation you feel about doing stadium shows, in a stadium?”

    Apparently Waters reconciled that personal dilemma, as evidenced by his multi-year globetrotting tour recently. This is part one.- Redbeard

  • Pink Floyd- The Wall pt2- Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason

    Pink Floyd- The Wall pt2- Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason

    Whether architectural student-turned-musician/composer Roger Waters would have designed an actual structure more acclaimed or lucrative than The Wall, his musical concept for the Pink Floyd November 1979 double album, is pure conjecture, but the numbers that it has generated are starting to rival the Great Wall of China: #129 ranking on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2020 Top 500 Albums of All Time; worldwide sales of an estimated 30,000,000; a historic performance, broadcast and film at the actual Berlin Wall in 1990 by Waters and guest stars; a multi-year multi-continent extended live concert production of The Wall  by Roger Waters, and most recently his politically-charged Us + Them tour. 

    Waters talks about the original Pink Floyd album, the limited initial live performances in late 1979 and early 1980, and The Wall  film which followed three years after the album, with pre-Live Aid organizer and Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof as the disillusioned, increasingly isolated “Pink”. David Gilmour and Nick Mason also disassemble The Wall pt2  in my classic rock interview here. – Redbeard 

  • Rolling Stones- Let It Bleed- Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman

    Rolling Stones- Let It Bleed- Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman

    So very many impressions immediately come to mind, and conflicting emotions of great joy and  admiration compete as well with terrible dread, when referencing the Rolling Stones’ November 28, 1969 masterpiece, Let It Bleed.  And that goes double for the Stones themselves who made the landmark recording, including poker-faced original bass player Bill Wyman, and then baby-faced twenty-one year old lead guitarist Mick Taylor, who both join me here In the Studio.

    The magazine writers at Rolling Stone publication voted as recently as 2020 that Let It Bleed  should rank as the #41 album of all time for the music, but here we add the  stories of recording “Midnight Rambler”, “Live with Me”, “Monkey Man”, and not one but two quintessential rock classics, “Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. The fastest selling Rolling Stones album to date, the artistic and commercial successes of Let It Bleed, and even their notorious image are all tied inexorably to one particular event on the subsequent American tour with a single concert appearance near San Francisco at Altamount Raceway. Both Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor were there for the ramp up, the planning, and eyewitnesses to the violence which effectively slammed the door on the Summer of Love and the Woodstock promise of peace. Of special note in this classic rock interview is Mick Taylor’s eyewitness account of what really happened leading up to, and the day of, the murder during the November 1969 Rolling Stones’ performance.  –Redbeard

  • Don Henley- Building the Perfect Beast- Don Henley, Danny Kortchmar

    Don Henley- Building the Perfect Beast- Don Henley, Danny Kortchmar

    With the mothership infamously waiting for Hell to freeze over, Eagles singer/songwriter/drummer Don Henley recovered impressively from an unremarkable first solo attempt with his  November 1984 Building the Perfect Beast. Containing “The Boys of Summer”, “All She Wants to Do Is Dance”, “Sunset Grill”, and “Not Enough Love in the World”, Building the Perfect Beast reached #13 on Billboard album chart, won a Grammy Award, four MTV Video Awards, and sold over three million copies.

    While sitting with his Building the Perfect Beast  collaborator Danny Kortchmar, my   guest here In the Studio Don Henley made a prediction that day that haunts me to this one. “We certainly don’t have all of the answers,” Henley admitted regarding the big issues facing America, “and there are many people who think that performers and recording artists should keep their mouths shut and not have anything to say about that kind of thing. But I’m a citizen, I’m a taxpayer, and I got a right to put my two cents’ worth in.”

    In early Autumn 1984, Don Henley released a pivotal song and unforgettable video in his solo career, “The Boys of Summer”, which created great anticipation for the strong album effort which followed. Building the Perfect Beast was indeed a monster but certainly only in a good way, containing Kortchmar’s “All She Wants to Do is Dance”,” Sunset Grill”,”Driving With Your Eyes Closed”, the poignant “A Month of Sundays”, “Not Enough Love in the World”, and the “The Boys of Summer”, easily near the top of any list of the Eighties’ best songs. Don Henley’s November 1984 solo album Building the Perfect Beast  was so stacked with hits,  was so wildly popular ( #13 Billboard  album chart with  over 3,000,000 sold in the first year), and widely celebrated (a Grammy, four MTV Video Awards, and Rolling Stone magazine’s #73 on the “100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s”) that it is easy to mistake Building the Perfect Beast as his likely first post-Eagles sortie.

    Back to Don’s prescient warning from 1989: even then he was pragmatic, careful not to let the naive quest for the perfect be the enemy of the  good. “All politicians aren’t perfect, just as all musicians aren’t perfect,” admitted Henley.”But some of ’em are good guys. I know several politicians who have perfectly good intentions, who have good hearts and good minds, and they are being run out of office for one reason or another, to the point that nobody who is qualified, brilliant, and sincere is going to run for office anymore…There’s going to be a dear price to pay sooner or later if we don’t participate more in what goes on in this country.” –Redbeard

  • ZZ Top- Deguello- Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard

    ZZ Top- Deguello- Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard

    Released November 1979, ZZ Top Deguello (“dee GWAY oh”, Spanish for “no quarter, no mercy” ) contained  the timeless “Cheap Sunglasses”,”I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide”, the sublime blues “A Fool for Your Stockings”, the jump blues “She Loves My Automobile” featuring the mysterious Lone Wolf Horns (!), and a whole jar of ear candy in ZZ Top’s cover of the Sam and Dave Memphis Stax standard “I Thank You”.

    It is ironic that one of the least popular albums in the ZZ Top catalog, Tejas, nevertheless came out during the legendary “Worldwide Texas Tour “1976-77 tour, which resembled not so much a rock concert tour as a Lone Star version of Noah’s ark on wheels. “The buzzards were tethered to the backline amps on either side of me,” drawls ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard, “so when Billy (Gibbons) and Dusty (Hill) fired up the amps on the first song each night, all the buzzards started pukin’.” When the lengthy extravaganza concluded and the longhorn steers, buffalo, and rattlesnakes were rounded up for the last time, Billy, Dusty, and Frank holed up in Memphis’ Ardent Studio for the better part of 1979 making Deguello,  which permanently established tonemeister Billy Gibbons’ legend among his guitar brethren everywhere.(L-R the late Dusty Hill, Billy Gibbons, Redbeard November 2007 in Dallas)

    In this classic rock interview, Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard discuss why Dusty thought that being a trio contributed to ZZ Top’s longevity, all the while retaining the same personnel which continued until his passing, a record unsurpassed by any working band; what Billy saw as the challenges of superstardom after Eliminator;  and why Frank Beard is the only member without one.

    As to the ZZ Top fifty+ year legacy, Billy Gibbons says, “There’s a lot of luck, to start with. Some of these things you would like to prophesy, to plan this going a certain way. And yet it it’s always unpredictable, always probably exactly opposite what you think you’re going to d. But the first few notes that you’re rippin’, the first few chops that you’re stabbin’ at, you just don’t really know where you’re going.” –Redbeard

  • Bryan Adams- Reckless

    Bryan Adams- Reckless

    In November 1984 Bryan Adams’ fourth album, Reckless , had only just begun spinning off what eventually would be a total of six Top 15 hits, including “Run to You”,”One Night Love Affair”, “Somebody”, “Summer of ’69”, “It’s Only Love” with superstar Tina Turner, and the #1 single, “ Heaven”. At the time only Michael Jackson’s Thriller  was the equal of Reckless for sheer mass appeal sales. Ponder that for a moment.

    By mid-August 1985, a month after I had witnessed him & his band from sidestage at Philadelphia’s massive JFK stadium performing to more than a billion people as part of the televised Live Aid charity concert, Reckless  was the #1-selling album in America.

    Seated at Bryan’s kitchen table late on a Saturday night at his home in Vancouver, we talked about that remarkable year. Then in his basement studio overlooking the glassy water of the bay, he played early demo versions of “Run to You” with backing vocals  which undermined the taut urgency that the song eventually demanded. Finally, at about 3 a.m. on a clear starry September night, Bryan set up a telescope on a tripod in the middle of his suburban Vancouver  neighborhood street & showed me the rings around Saturn, seemingly as eager to share this natural wonder as he was displaying the vintage recording consoles in his basement.  –Redbeard ( Backstage in Dallas/Ft.Worth with Bryan Adams (c) and Sirius/XM’s Kurt Gilchrist (r) )

  • Pink Floyd- Endless River- David Gilmour, Nick Mason

    Pink Floyd- Endless River- David Gilmour, Nick Mason

    My revelatory interviews with David Gilmour and Nick Mason aboard Pink Floyd’s floating studio on the Thames River in 2014 were regarding the surprise album so far of the 21st century, Pink Floyd’s The Endless River. This is the fascinating back story of a “final ” musical statement, 1994’s The Division Bell,  which was never intended to be the superstar progressive rock band’s last word, as told by Pink Floyd singer/ guitarist/ composer David Gilmour and percussionist Nick Mason, and featuring historic final performances by Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright , who passed away in September 2008.

    UK Music Hall of Fame 2005 - Backstage( Nick Mason  (l) with David Gilmour ).

    The backwaters of The Endless River  saga run deep and the tributaries feeding it are many, and Gilmour and Mason do a very comprehensive job here in my classic rock  interview detailing the many heroes at the headwaters who are responsible for the first Pink Floyd new studio release in the 21st century. The Endless River peaked at #1 sales in the UK, #3 in the States and has sold over two and a half million copies. –Redbeard

    ( Rick Wright  recording with Pink Floyd at London’s Brittania Row studio in 1993 ).PINK-RICK-e0af7b45e7ddb84dd86334d96cb7edc8

     

     

     

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  • Led Zeppelin II – Jimmy Page, Robert Plant

    Led Zeppelin II – Jimmy Page, Robert Plant

    Though barely ten months had passed between the  releases of their debut and follow up in 1969, so much had transpired in that brief time with the band- and the world- that by the time Led Zeppelin II erupted in late October 1969, the largest music event in history had occurred at the Woodstock Festival barely six weeks after two Americans walked on the Moon. And then “Whole Lotta Love” blew up my car radio that Autumn and changed everything.

    The first Led Zeppelin album in  1969 was released, like the vast majority of unknown untested “baby bands”, in January that year. It was unhyped, particularly in America, as three of the four members of the British band had no reputations Stateside whatsoever, and only band founder/lead guitarist Jimmy Page had some fame in the dying embers of the Yardbirds. Fast-forward ten months to Led Zeppelin II, and by then all of that had changed. Led Zeppelin II  was released the same year 1969 in October, when record companies put out their blockbusters guaranteed to rack up holiday sales. And unlike the first album, Led Zeppelin II  hit American Top 40 radio  fifty-five years ago like a thunderclap. When I heard both Chicago radio powerhouses WLS and WCFL play “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin in Fall 1969, it changed my life and the lives of millions worldwide by forging the template for hard rock/heavy metal for half a century. In classic rock interviews, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant join me here In the Studio for Led Zeppelin II to document what had ensued in the ten months between the first two releases, and to reveal the songs you know by heart including “What Is and What Should Never Be”, “Thank You”, “Heartbreaker/ Living Loving Maid(She’s Just a Woman)”, and “Ramble On”. –Redbeard