In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: ROCK 103 Memphis

  • Rossington Collins Band- Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere- Gary Rossington, Dale Krantz Rossington, Allen Collins

    Rossington Collins Band- Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere- Gary Rossington, Dale Krantz Rossington, Allen Collins

    There is an old adage,”Sometimes it pays to be good, and other times it pays to be lucky.” It turns out that any honest appraisal of my fifty year broadcast career reveals my success to have hinged as often on the latter as anything. Case in point: the World Premiere radio special in July 1980 for the Lynyrd Skynyrd band survivors’ highly-anticipated (and highly emotional) return as the Rossington Collins Band on Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere, for which I was chosen inexplicably to be the interviewer, producer, and host of the radio show on hundreds of North American radio stations. But why me?

    When MCA Records National Promotion Director Beth Rosengard,  charged with the radio rollout of the Rossington Collins Band debut, the company’s major effort to replace the gaping hole in the label’s lineup and ledgers since Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane fell out of the sky three years earlier, called ROCK 103 in Memphis to offer me the golden opportunity to interview band namesake guitarists Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and their surprising choice of singer, 38 Special backup vocalist Dale Krantz, I was stunned and baffled at my good fortune. The songs “Don’t Misunderstand Me”,”Prime Time”,”Opportunity”, and “Getaway” which Beth secretly sent several months before the album’s release, were all strong, with an unmistakable sonic signature that was immediately comfortable like your favorite pair of jeans, yet somehow fresh as cut flowers due to the special delivery of unheralded vocalist Dale Krantz.(L-R: Derek Hess, Gary Rossington, Barry Harwood, Dale Krantz, Leon Wilkeson, Billy Powell, Allen Collins)
    “You know these guys, right?” Beth exclaimed by way of explanation. Well sure, I had played every Lynyrd Skynyrd album since Pronounced  “out of the box” on radio stations in Ohio, Lincoln NE, and Hartford CT where I was live on the air the night of October 20, 1977 and had to break the news that nobody wanted to hear to our stunned audience. Now  May 1980 found me hosting a huge nightly regional audience as Music Director at Memphis’ soon-to-be #1 station ROCK 103, and while no outlet on the planet played more Southern Rock in general, or Lynyrd Skynyrd in particular, that still could not explain my good fortune to be offered complete interview access to the very reclusive survivors, plus the unfettered producer/host role for such a high profile release. Overnight this project launched my career as a rock musician interviewer and program producer.

    Decades later it would finally occur to me that this opportunity was a complete fluke, simply a case of mistaken identity. You see, some seven years earlier, Memphis deejay Jon Scott had indeed championed a new “baby band” with the funny name, even spearheading a legendary live-in-the-studio Lynyrd Skynyrd broadcast from Ardent Studio in late October 1973…but on another Memphis radio station (ironically the tapes of that performance, long missing, would mysteriously fall into my hands decades later and finally get an official release). Scott went on to a lengthy career in the record industry, but apparently when the time came to release Anytime, Any Place, Anywhere,  two things were painfully clear: 1) every newspaper, magazine, radio, and tv interviewer would want to talk about Lynyrd Skynyrd and, morbidly, about the plane crash still fresh in the traumatized minds and visibly scarred bodies of the surviving band members; and 2) it would be cruel and invasive torture to subject the band members, both old and new, to such scrutiny repeatedly in city after city on tour. So the decision wisely was made to do just one national interview, but with no restrictions. Somebody in the Rossington Collins Band sphere of influence held over from those early 1973 Lynyrd Skynyrd days probably instructed MCA Records’ exec Beth Rosengard to “get that night deejay from Memphis. The guys love him.” By that time, ROCK 103 was the only rock station in Memphis, and you-know-who got the call. There really is no other plausible explanation for it, totally a dumb lucky break for me. After  forty-five years, hopefully you will still enjoy this classic rock interview which effectively closed one chapter of the Southern Rock saga, and opened the door for me. –Redbeard

  • Jethro Tull- Stormwatch 45th Anniversary- Ian Anderson

    Jethro Tull- Stormwatch 45th Anniversary- Ian Anderson

    Revisiting Jethro Tull’s 1979 Stormwatch  for its forty-fifth anniversary in September proved to be surprisingly revelatory for me on multiple levels. First, the 2022 Steven Wilson remix of the music on Stormwatch revealed layers of voices and instruments in a fuller, more substantial presentation that were simply not evident on the original. In turn, the more seductive warmth lends several of the subjects and story lines, in songs such as “North Sea Oil”, “Something’s on the Move”, “Old Ghosts”, and “Dun Ringill”, more gravity.

    As it turns out, my guest Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, in explaining the dual meaning of the Stormwatch title, may have been among the very first rock composers to observe the coming climate change, as well as the socio-political storms brewing in the former Soviet Bloc nations, Europe, and America. This was my first of many subsequent Ian Anderson interviews about Jethro Tull, and was conducted at ROCK 103 in Memphis back on Halloween 1979. –Redbeard

  • The Police- Outlandos d’Amour- Sting, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland

    The Police- Outlandos d’Amour- Sting, Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland

    “Outlandos d’Amour  has a certain grotesque, naive charm about it,” Sting confessed in my classic rock interview about the Police late ’78 debut,”but Regatta de Blanc  was infinitely a much better record.” He was absolutely correct, of course, but it was due simply to his, Police founder/drummer Stewart Copeland’s, and guitarist Andy Summers’ initial lack of experience in the recording studio, not the songwriting which Sting provided. That is evidenced by Outlandos d’Amour‘s  “Next to You” and “Can’t Stand Losing You” being on par with the quintessential “Roxanne”, but also how the Police chose to perform, even more muscularly, the jazzy “Hole in My Heart” and “So Lonely” from their debut on their record-setting 2007-2008 reunion world tour.

    In his book One Train Later, Andy Summers was kind enough to recall meeting me & doing our first Police interview on the infamous station wagon Outlandos d’Amour  U.S. tour. However, his memory failed him slightly, & in the book he places the meeting “in New Mexico or some place in the Southwest…” (understandable, since I did relocate to Dallas Texas subsequent to our first two interviews). Actually it was Memphis Tennessee at my radio station ROCK 103. The band headlined a concert earlier that night at the 2600 seat Orpheum Theater in early 1979, but only 200 people showed up. I introduced the band wearing an actual Memphis Police Department riot helmet & uniform shirt. When Sting joined me at the microphone, the first words to the small audience were,”This should have been in a club.” After the 1979 Orpheum Theater show, Sting & Andy accepted my invitation to go to ROCK 103 at around 12:30 a.m. & record an interview. Unfortunately that tape has never been found. What’s REALLY odd is that I can’t seem to find the Memphis Orpheum date on any Outlandos  tour schedule, so I think the concert was a last minute date to fill an open day on the tour. With their first inauspicious event in Memphis, I can see why they would choose to forget it! –Redbeard

  • ZZ TOP- El Loco- Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard

    ZZ TOP- El Loco- Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard

    Even forty-five years later, every time I hear the ZZ Top song “Tubesnake Boogie”, which was the advance single  from the El Loco  album, I’m reminded of an actual phone call in July 1981 from legendary ZZ Top manager/producer the late Bill Ham, asking me how the ROCK 103/ Memphis audience liked their new song. “Great, Bill, it’s our most requested song,” I assured him. “But Bill, I’ve heard several of the deejays stumble over the title. I mean, isn’t the euphemism tubeSTEAK ? You know, like a hotdog?”  There was a pregnant pause on the line, then Bill Ham lowered his voice and solemnly replied, “Red, you can’t say tubeSTEAK on the radio.” Gee Bill, thanks so much for thinking of us, no one will ever guess to what “Tubesnake Boogie” is really referring. Now Bill, about this other song on ZZ Top’s El Loco, “Pearl Necklace”…”

    The Three Wise Men of Rock, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, the late Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard are my guests here In the Studio  for this classic rock interview spinning Lone Star Texas tales about the many colorful songs on earlier albums leading up to El Loco , the bridge between the excellent 1979 DeGuello  and 1983’s worldwide phenomenon, Eliminator .- Redbeard

  • Styx feat. Tommy Shaw- Crystal Ball- 1981 Memphis

    Styx feat. Tommy Shaw- Crystal Ball- 1981 Memphis

    When the Paradise Theater tour rolled into Memphis in Spring 1981, Styx singer/songwriter/guitarist Tommy Shaw rolled out of bed and used a borrowed acoustic guitar to sing live on my afternoon show on radio station ROCK 103.  Just for fun I combined Tommy Shaw’s exclusive In the Studio  1981 acoustic version of his “Crystal Ball” (with the extra verse not on the Styx version) with the full Styx band live in concert. –Redbeard