Time Loves A Hero: Remembering Lowell George
Revisiting one of the Little Feat frontman’s final print interviews
I’m not certain it was the last print interview Lowell George ever gave, but if not, it was certainly one of them. (I do know there was one done for a Hartford rock radio station after ours.)
Obviously, neither I nor Dean Johnson, who conducted the interview with me backstage at the Paradise Theater following a gig in Boston June 19, 1979, had no clue that he’d be dead in 10 days at a hotel in Arlington, Virginia, following a show in Washington, D.C.
So, it’s been 45 years.
Yes, George was every bit the fat man in the bathtub he sang about in the Little Feat song — certainly medically defined as obese — and I would wager his heart had a lot of work to do supporting that bulk. But he’d been in that shape for a long time and he was only 34. We didn’t know about his prodigious cocaine and heroin usage; that only came out later.
George was on a tour (with backup band), supporting his solo debut LP, Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here. He’d exited the country rock-Southern blues band he’d co-founded in L.A. in 1969 after making seven albums. The lineup had solidified in 1972 and made its mark the following year with Dixie Chicken (song and album).
But here he was, sans Feat, and he was enthusiastic and effusive about this new life, music made under his own name.
We had some fun at the gig we’d just seen. And he had some fun. “Yeah,” he said, “happy to be there because even with the mistakes it feels good. We’ve had a week and a half of rehearsals, and this is our fourth night playing. With Little Feat, I couldn’t always be sure that everyone’s attention was on the singer. To me, you have a song, you have a singer, and he has to demonstrate it with his voice and if he has to sing out of character it’s a big drag.
“Now, the attention is on what the song’s all about — whether it be a horn solo or a piano solo — the focus of everybody there is not to stand out in front and go, ‘Yeow! Boy, can I play!’ My whole concept of getting up in front of an audience, whether it’s the notes, the absence of notes, the dynamics, or whatever, is to render a piece of music so you can touch people with what you’re doing.”
With the possible exception of The Band, no musical group or individual in modern pop came close to capturing the beat of this country and its way of life than George and Little Feat. Whether it was the obvious tunes like “Willin’” and “Dixie Chicken,” or the less obvious songs like “The Fan” (“You were a sweet girl/When you were a cheerleader/But I think you’re much better now”) George had a firm grasp of the essence of American living, and he was almost frighteningly clever at transforming it into songs.
I had not seen Little Feat live, but my partner Dean – we were writers and co-editors at Sweet Potato magazine – had and he wrote this: “In all the times I saw and heard Lowell George and Little Feat live, I’ll always remember the first and last impressions. The first time I saw the band was in Paul’s Mall [a small, long-defunct Boston club] around the time Feats Don’t Fail Me Now was released. Lowell was in the process of giving up, albeit grudgingly, his ‘benevolent dictator’ role in the band, and guitarist Paul Barrere and keyboardist Bill Payne were beginning to stretch out. They were magnificent and dished out hours of red-hot, sweltering music. It was a galvanizing performance.
“Lowell George’s last show in Boston ended in style with the man himself joyously rhumbaing off, on, and off again the stage — singing, clapping, and testifying his way through ‘Spanish Moon’ while the rest of his band followed him like the Pied Piper; horns wailing away off into the night.”
Backstage after the show, I asked George if the spectre of Little Feat was hovering somewhere in the shadows?
“It’s not a spectre,” he said. “It’s not even a ghost. It’s a series of events — people, places and things — that took place over a period of ten years that wound up in a spot that was uncomfortable for people that were involved in it. I can appreciate where everyone was coming from, like one afternoon Bill Payne said, ‘Man, I quit. I can’t do it anymore,’ and I can appreciate his position entirely because he wanted to do what I’m doing now. He wanted to do something on his own and not have to fall back on the same kind of patterns that people develop over that length of time. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t ever get back together again, and it may not get together again with the same personnel, but as far as I’m concerned it may be a break and it maybe will happen again. I loved all those guys. I still love ’em, and I want the best for them.”
George had earned a reputation as a virtuoso slide guitar player, but there wasn’t a whole lot on Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here.
“It’s whatever works,” he said. “Sure, I can get up there and crank it out. Of course I can play guitar. But I’m not afraid not to play guitar. A lot of guys get up and start playing guitar and they do this” — he made the motion of shielding one’s self — “because they’re afraid of what they have or don’t have down” – he motioned to his heart – “My whole point of view about it is that I hate long instrumentals. That’s one of my things that was one of my gripes with the previous situation.”
“I wrote ’em. Fuck it,” he added. “I mean, those are songs that I enjoy playing and singing, and they’re songs that fit this band really well. I have no qualms about it now ’cause they’re turning out real good. In some ways they’re better, in some ways they’re not quite so good. They’re different. In some ways they excel. I’m just doing it.
“’Two Trains’ is a new song; it’s not eyen a Little Feat song the way it’s done now. ‘Dixie Chicken’ is an old standard. ‘Rocket In My Pocket,’ ‘Fat Man In The Bathtub’ — those particular songs are, you kind of might say, my trademark. ‘A Apolitical Blues’ is very close to my heart, it was written for Howlin’ Wolf and it gives everybody in the band an opportunity to play a solo, and one of these days I’ll figure out another tune we can do like that. I’ll have to write a ditty.”
George was unflinchingly straight-up and self-deprecating. I noted, politely as possible, that his career had not been one of a steady upward trajectory. “Nope. Up sideways, down,” he said, with a laugh. “I figure it’s lonely at the top, and I figure with all the money I’ve made if I can have a band like I played with tonight, who cares if I’m moving sideways, up, down, backwards or anything? It’s more fun than I’ve had in long time. I’m getting off on it.”
Little Feat had been something of a critics’ darling, but the critical response to his solo album – two and a half years in the making – had been somewhat lukewarm.
“I would work on it a month and then it’s time to go on the road with Little Feat,” George said. “Although no one believed it, my attention for that period of time was on Little Feat. Everybody said that I was keeping my songs from my solo album, but that was horseshit. I really wasn’t. What I did with my solo album is use my voice — I wasn’t trying to outplay the guitar, I was trying to sing and develop a style, and I think I was very successful in that regard. ‘What Do You Want The Girl To Do’ — I think I’ve got a definitive version of that song. It’s a little slick, but the song’s a little slick with all the background parts and all the movement in it.”
So, it was a conscious attempt to make it work as a vocalist’s album as opposed to a guitarist’s?
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I can show off playing the guitar, but, gee y’know, the next time maybe I’ll play more guitar. But every time I started to get something going — Wheee! New Little Feat record, or a tour. So whatever energy I started to develop just got lost. You can hear the lack of continuity. The reason ‘What Do You Want the Girl to Do’ really doesn’t cook is the tape is worn thin. It’s been played 50,000 times.”
And after it was finished, relief?
“I think I drank for three straight days, went fishing for a week and came back burnt to a crisp and very happy,” he said. “I had the occasion to work with an engineer, Roy Thompson, who opened doors to the way to make a record so I never have to go through what I’ve gone through in the past.
“You have your basic tracks, and we overdub there, this and them, and he said, “Cut the crap. You have your basic record and you don’t overdub nothin’. You go in and do it on the spot.” ‘Easy Money’ is a live vocal. ‘Can’t Stand the Rain’ is one take. The next time I’m going to do that on everything. I’m going to do an album in two weeks. I’ve already made a bet, and I have to buy my manager a new set of exploding golf clubs if I lose.”
It was noted that many bands, especially some of the punk and New Wave bands like Boston’s The Cars were also going into the studio and knocking out albums in two weeks or so.
“I believe that that is what’s happening,” George concurred. But “I believe that there’s a great deal of rehearsal that goes into it, and there’s some demo time. But boy, when you get it all together, I wanna see a chart in front of people, and I wanna be able to sit down and get my hit hat, my Frank Sinatra hit hat, and one of those funny real round microphones in the booth, you know, and do ‘My Funny Valentine’, except now. Today. Like ‘Two Trains.’ Two takes, you know? Bang. Done. No overdubs.”
The punk and New Wave explosion was blasting all around us, so it made sense to ask one of the guys definitely not part of that what he thought. George had after all had done some stuff back in the day with the Seeds and the Standells, pre-punk bands that it could be argued became part of the punk ethos.
“I’m sorry, I disagree with the whole punk/New Wave scene,” he said. “Gene Vincent: If you wanted to see real punk rock, I mean, ‘Oh yeah?’ Ka-wham. That was Gene Vincent. And there were hundreds of other guys. Jerry Lee Lewis was in that category. You know, some drunk is going (slurs), “Hey man, why don’t you play something that everybody can dig?” And he goes, “Yeah? Dig this!” Bam! You know? To me, that’s more punk than all the razor blades in your ear lobes and safety pins in your nostrils. Gee, it’s wonderful, but it’s really been done before in a much more direct and honest way. All of a sudden, a punk group becomes successful. What happens? They’re no longer punk… that’s the old Catch-22.”
“Kinda like trying to sing the blues when you’ve got velvet sheets at home?” Dean said.
George let out a hearty laugh. “That’s very easy, believe me.”
I loved it when George veered off track a bit, such as his mulling about others in his profession. “I have to say that if I owned property and a musician came up to me and wanted to rent a house from me, no way. The walls would be punched in, and the sink would be filled with grease, and all the pipes would be clogged up, you know?”
Go on … “Originally musicians were provided for by society, and they lived in a little house off by themselves in Greece and played Pythagorean scales, or whatever the heck they played. And they didn’t own possessions.
“At one point somebody said, ‘Hey, I’m bad. Dig this,’ and played Bach. ‘I’m Bach. Wow!’ It began to evolve out of the church-oriented, monkish, monasterial, Gregorian attitude into something to draw people into the church. And they said, ‘This is glorious,’ and the people came to the church to hear the music. ‘C’mon and dig. Boogie.’ And that evolved into governments, monarchies and churches and provided an income for musicians aside from a patron.
“And here we are today watching me sing ‘da bluz’ with a Z. That evolution is really fantastic. It’s the first time in history that a music student can take a piece of music and put it on a record player and play it back and learn it. It’s amazing. I learned a great deal about singing that way from Indian music.”
Seeing that a door had opened, what was it he got from Indian music?
“You have a note sings right?” He sings. “Two notes, right?” Sings again. Three notes, right” Sings more. “The Western scale. Variation, right?” More singing. “Okay, but what about this note” – he slides notes together into an ascending melisma – “that’s not ‘this note,’ that’s ‘dem notes.’ There’s literally a zillion notes between the first and the second note. that’s the whole thing.”
George went on. “Indian music is very strict and well-defined about how you sing and how you play.” He sings a few melancholy notes. “Then you have the ones that are way out on the edge.” Another bit of singing. “You listen to that scale for a few hours and you think that you’re part of the wall, you’re not there anymore. Literally, your mind escapes. And I learned a great deal from that. Aretha Franklin does it. Stevie Wonder does it. Tony Bennett does it. Dolly Parton does it.”
Were there any unintended or after-the-fact ironies in our conversation? Sure.
Local Warners Brothers promo man Mike Symonds dropped by while we were talking and complimented George by saying, “I’m looking forward to a long career with you as yourself.” George deadpanned, “So was I.” Or when talk ventured over to the last Little Feat album, George said, “It’s in the process of being finished. Another two weeks of work — who knows what’s going to happen after that? I have plans.”
Interview over, Dean and I prepared to make our exit and bid George adieu. He wagged a finger at is in jest at and jokingly threatened, “If you make me sound bad or look bad …” and then graciously thanked us for being so well-informed.
Shit. That doesn’t happen much.
Well, they say that Time Loves a Hero. Has time been kind to Lowell George?
I’d say yes.
Dean Johnson died Dec. 7, 2021 at 67.
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Well written article. Especially for one who hadn’t been touched by the live Little Feat. To have seen them live was divine. Lisner Auditorium 1975 to 1977.