{"id":2372,"date":"2021-11-22T01:47:24","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T01:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2021-11-22T01:53:56","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T01:53:56","slug":"ftv-right-place-right-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2372","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Right Place, Right Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The old saw, \u2018there are no accidents,\u2019 came from . . . whom?\u00a0 We all seem to use this phrase but have you ever wondered where it came from?\u00a0 Famous quotes tend to get corrupted, rearranged, and jumbled all the time (see Yogi Bera) with no apologies offered to whomever originated them.\u00a0 Oddly enough, the full quote, \u201cThere is no such thing as accident;\u00a0 it is fate misnamed,\u201d is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821).\u00a0 As students of history remember, his life certainly had its share of \u2018fate(s) misnamed.\u2019\u00a0 In more recent times, nowhere is this phrase more evident than the music industry.\u00a0 Many a hit song, album, or career has been made (or not) when\u00a0 the stars align in what I frequently call (with my apologies to Napoleon) \u2018happy accidents.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Los Angeles, one hub of the west coast music world in the late 1960s and 70s, was much like the Large Hadron Collider.\u00a0 The LHC was created to slam atoms or parts of atoms together to see what new exotic particles might be discovered.\u00a0 Some of the things created were new and some were previously observed entities, but many were so short-lived they were difficult to label.\u00a0 In the LA scene, the music industry was the machine doing the slamming and the particles were the singers, songwriters, and musicians.\u00a0 Like the particles uncovered by the LHC, some of LA\u2019s byproducts were \u2018flash in the pan\u2019, \u2018here today, gone today\u2019, fragments of the larger musical environment.\u00a0 Others would go on to alter the musical landscape for decades to come.\u00a0 Author David Hepworth\u2019s book, <\/span>Never A Dull Moment – 1971 – The Year That Rock Exploded <\/span><\/i>(2016 – St. Martin\u2019s Press) gives us a glimpse behind this very fertile period of \u2018happy accidents\u2019 centered on Ted Templeman\u2019s career.\u00a0 One might not be familiar with Templeman\u2019s name, but the list of his Large Hadron Collider-like particles, discoveries, and creations will certainly be recognizable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Ted Templeman began his career in music as the drummer in The Tikis and later a guitar player in the light weight pop band, Harpers Bizarre (<\/span>The 59th Street Bridgesong<\/span><\/i> being pretty much their one hit entry into the charts).\u00a0 Session ace Jim Gordon handled the drums on their 1967 cover of Paul Simon\u2019s tune and working with other pros like Leon Russell (who arranged <\/span>59th Street<\/span><\/i> and also played piano on the track), Glen Campbell (on guitar), and session bassist Carol Kaye provided Templeman with a solid background in how to make hit records.\u00a0 When Harpers Bizarre broke up, Templeman found work at Warner Brothers records as a seventy-five dollar per week \u201ctape auditioner.\u201d\u00a0 It was the lowest rung one could find on the recording industry ladder, but it put him in position to observe sessions for artists like Sinatra and Elvis.\u00a0 As Ted sponged up knowledge about how records were made, he decided he knew how to produce records and make bands sound better using techniques he borrowed from others or invented himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Templeman\u2019s first effort producing a record for a band hailing from the other California hub of music, San Francisco, flopped when released in April 1971.\u00a0 His work with this biker band called Pud was cheap enough (as in \u2018inexpensive to produce\u2019 not \u2018flimsy\u2019) that Warner Brothers gave him another shot:\u00a0 the impossible job of producing the irascible Van Morrison.\u00a0 Morrison ended up in the Bay area after recording <\/span>His Band and Street Choir<\/span><\/i> album in Woodstock, NY.\u00a0 Like Bob Dylan, Morrison and his wife Janet Planet (the more \u2018worldly\u2019 name she adopted after shunning her original \u2018Janet Rigsbee\u2019 handle) found Woodstock to be overrun with tourists.\u00a0 As a result, they transplanted themselves to Marin County, CA.\u00a0 As Van\u2019s hit single <\/span>Domino<\/span><\/i> climbed the record charts, Templeman hunkered down with Morrison to record the <\/span>Tupelo Honey <\/span><\/i>LP which would put another hit on the radio and charts, <\/span>Wild Night.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Morrison had little patience for recording too many takes.\u00a0 Templeman learned to work around the problem by getting the vocals down before Morrison lost interest.\u00a0 With Morrison retired to his farm (replete with a horse named Moondance), Ted took the template sound of the <\/span>Street Choir<\/span><\/i> album and turned what Hepworth calls, \u201cthat Irish show band lineup with horns\u201d into a hit making formula.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Other musicians, like a young New Jersey boy named Bruce Springsteen, took notice and imitators were soon following the sound template Ted had created with Morrison.\u00a0 After Templeman spent two days doing the final mix of the album, he found out Morrison had rushed forward and released an earlier rough mix (which he later admitted to Ted was \u201ca mistake.\u201d)\u00a0 Templeman later said, \u201cI would never work with Van Morrison again as long as I live.\u00a0 He is a marvelous talent, but he\u2019s fired everyone who\u2019s ever worked with him, he understands nothing about the recording process.\u201d\u00a0 There were some hard lessons learned in 1971, but Templeman would find them useful in the future.\u00a0 It seems the entire industry followed his lead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For Templeman, one take-away from the <\/span>Tupelo Honey<\/span><\/i> record was an introduction to studio guitarist Ronnie Montrose.\u00a0 The signature \u2018Montrose pop metal\u2019 sound they put on vinyl for his first album (<\/span>Montrose<\/span><\/i>) would surface again when Ted worked with Van Halen.\u00a0 The second album he did with Pud (newly rechristened The Doobie Brothers) also drank deep from Templeman\u2019s well.\u00a0 Again, Hepworth\u2019s assessment is to the point:\u00a0 \u201c[The Doobie Brother\u2019s second album] started off with a song called <\/span>Listen to the Music, <\/span><\/i>the first in a string of Templeman productions that would go on to enjoy a seemingly eternal commercial life.\u00a0 It was formula music but done in the best possible taste.\u201d\u00a0 FM radio and the TV concert shows could not get enough of the Doobies and the hits kept coming for them well into the \u201870s.\u00a0 They remain a staple of classic rock stations to this day and are valiantly trying to tour again (like many other bands) in these COVID-19 times.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Warner Brothers was attracting artists via the artist friendly approach producers like Templeman employed.\u00a0 The \u2018artist friendly\u2019 approach inspired former William Morris agent David Geffin to launch Asylum records.\u00a0 Geffin had made a fortune managing the likes of Laura Nyro and Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young.\u00a0 When Geffin complained about not being able to get any label to bite on his newest young artist, Jackson Browne, he followed the sage advice of Ahmet Ertegun:\u00a0 \u201cstart your own label.\u201d\u00a0 He named it \u2018Asylum\u2019 because it was supposed to be a \u201cshelter away from the depredations of the majors (big record labels).\u201d\u00a0 Geffen became one of the first music publishers to add \u2018record company boss\u2019 to his already crowded letterhead (next to \u2018artist manager\u2019), a move that would eventually add another definition of \u2018asylum\u2019 to the mix.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With a stable of artists now including Browne, Joni Mitchell, John David Souther, Jo Jo Gunne, Linda Ronstadt, and an \u2018as-yet unnamed group\u2019 featuring Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner, Glenn Frey, and Don Henley, Geffen was sitting on the musical equivalent of the golden egg.\u00a0 Ill health would force Geffin out of the game and this cozy arrangement between the label and the artists would end.\u00a0 The wheels would fall off Geffen\u2019s wagon in the future, but in 1971, the intertwining of all these talents could not help but create some memorable music.\u00a0 Ironically, Asylum was eventually bought by Warner Brothers and later merged with Elektra Records to become Elektra\/Asylum Records.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Browne began recording with James Taylor\u2019s engineer (Taylor being the top male solo act at the time) using the same band that recorded Carole King\u2019s mega hit album from 1971, <\/span>Tapestry. <\/span><\/i>\u00a0It was on a break during these sessions that Browne took a Jeep trip through Arizona and Utah to clear his mind.\u00a0 He came back with\u00a0 a kernel of a song, <\/span>\u201cWell I\u2019m runnin\u2019 down the road, trying to loosen my load,<\/span><\/i>\u201d which he showed to his neighbor, Glenn Frey.\u00a0 Frey begged Browne to let him finish it for his new group, now named Eagles.\u00a0 It came out on their first album and it is safe to say both Browne and the Eagles did pretty well from that point on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile, back at Warner Brothers, they had matters to attend to despite losing a couple of their artists to the upstart Geffen label.\u00a0 They even took a flyer on an album by Gram Parsons who had been given the soft boot from Keith Richards’ rented home at Nellcote because he was distracting Keith.\u00a0 The truth be told, Parsons drinking and drugging with Keith was more like a bad buddy movie.\u00a0 After his ouster from the Stones exile in France, Parsons landed in New Orleans.\u00a0 It was there he received a call from Chris Hillman who was in the middle of a tour with his post Byrds band, the Flying Burrito Brothers.\u00a0 Parsons joined Hillman to record <\/span>Last of the Red Hot Burritos<\/span><\/i> and was then asked to join them on a few dates in Maryland.\u00a0 While in Maryland, and again at Hillman\u2019s suggestion, Parsons and his wife Gretchen tracked down a folk singer Chris had seen at a club earlier in the week.\u00a0 It would be the first meeting between Gram and Emmylou Harris.\u00a0 It would also be the break she needed as an artist.\u00a0 No one then could foresee Parsons\u2019 untimely death or that Harris would become the designated \u2018keeper of the flame\u2019 when it came to his all too short career and amazing catalog of songs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the most tangled webs of \u2018being in the right place at the right time\u2019 involves a whole host of troubadours meeting other troubadours.\u00a0 It is best if I let Hepworth explain the complex deal as it is beyond me to try and keep it all straight:\u00a0 \u201cKris Kristofferson was on a flight to Chicago when he met the sixties balladeer Paul Anka, who told him he had recorded one of his songs.\u00a0 Once in Chicago, Kristofferson went to see Anka\u2019s show in the lounge of an expensive hotel.\u00a0 In return Anka came to see Kristofferson at a club date, where he was being supported by a local songwriter named Steve Goodman.\u00a0 Anka was impressed by Goodman\u2019s own <\/span>City of New Orleans<\/span><\/i> and a song about a returning Vietnam veteran called <\/span>Sam Stone,<\/span><\/i> which was written by Goodman\u2019s friend.\u00a0 Goodman took Anka and Kristofferson to another club where the friend, a mailman named John Prine, was having a nap between sets.\u00a0 As a result of that encounter, both men got recording deals.\u201d\u00a0 Interestingly enough, both John Prine and Steve Goodman were names I had heard but neither\u2019s music was in my wheelhouse in 1971.\u00a0 Hearing Prine live in Marquette in the mid 1970s and Arlo Guthrie\u2019s version of Goodman\u2019s <\/span>City of New Orleans<\/span><\/i> live in Calumet\u00a0 years later were experiences I do not think I would have appreciated when they were newly discovered.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Future star Linda Ronstad also benefited from some 1971 \u2018happy<\/span> accidents\u2019, but they would not boost her career until the mid to late 1970s.\u00a0 A contemporary of Prine\u2019s, folksinger Loudon Wainwright III, happened to be married to Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle, of the McGarrigle Sisters.\u00a0 The other sister, Anna, had written a song called <\/span>Heart Like a Wheel <\/span><\/i>which she performed at the 1970 Philadelphia Folk Festival.\u00a0 In attendance that day was Texan singer\/songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker.\u00a0 Although he only partially remembered the tune when he sang a snippet for Ronstad, she immediately remembered the song and decided she needed to record it.\u00a0 The album bearing the same name was released in 1974 and became her biggest seller.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the most unlikely stars to emerge from 1971 was Don McLean.\u00a0 Like Lou Reed, McLean tended to not advertise that he grew up in comfortable postwar prosperity, in his case in New Rochelle, New York.\u00a0 McLean\u2019s family wasn\u2019t as well off as some, but as he recognized he was well enough off, stating, \u201cI knew a lot of kids who were born on third base and thought they hit a triple.\u201d\u00a0 Using his prolonged absences from school due to various illnesses, McLean\u00a0 became proficient on guitar.\u00a0 He also took opera lessons (paid for by his sister) and used swimming underwater as a means of learning breath control.\u00a0 Don was only fifteen when his father died and he began venturing into New York City to pick the brains of artists playing the folk circuit.\u00a0 Though he dropped out of college in 1963, he still pursued a degree in business administration during the six years he spent playing at every folk club that would hire him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0McLean\u2019s first album was, like Carole King\u2019s, also called <\/span>Tapestry<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 Released in 1970 on the small Mediarts Records label, it would eventually top out on the charts at No. 111.\u00a0 Don joined the United Artists stable when they bought Mediarts, just in time for the release of his second LP.\u00a0 This album\u2019s title track first debuted on March 14, 1971 when McLean was opening for Laura Nyro in Philadelphia.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t click with everyone, at least not right away.\u00a0 Don played this tune and other new songs for a producer at his new label.\u00a0 The suits from the label inquired why there was no obvious \u2018single\u2019 among his songs.\u00a0 According to Hepworth, McLean told the producer and money guys, \u201cNot only was <\/span>American Pie<\/span><\/i> going to be the single, it was going to be the title track.\u00a0 He was so confident that he\u2019d already taken the cover photographs in which a star and stripes was painted on his outstretched thumb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After producer Ed Freeman had McClean and his band work on the arrangement for two weeks, he brought in piano player Paul Griffin on the day of the recording session.\u00a0 Griffin had previously made notable contributions to other records (Dionne Warwick\u2019s <\/span>Walk On By<\/span><\/i> and Bob Dylan\u2019s <\/span>Like a Rolling Stone<\/span><\/i> as prime examples) so one would not consider him just another studio hack.\u00a0 Hepworth further describes the eight minute long single as, \u201cnotable for riddling words and a hooky chorus . . . [it was] Griffin\u2019s rippling, almost facile piano that prevented <\/span>American Pie<\/span><\/i> from collapsing under the weight of its determination to be the Great American Song and makes it one of the first great pop records that is about great pop records.\u201d\u00a0 The single was released in November, shot up the charts and spent five weeks at number one on earth in 1972.\u00a0 The length necessitated it being mastered at half-speed and split over both sides of the 45 RPM record.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>American Pie<\/span><\/i> is one of the few songs to become widely known, even to those who were not rabid consumers of records.\u00a0 Everybody was soon familiar with the line, \u201cthe day the music died\u201d and volumes have been written analysing the song and who some of the characters referenced in the cryptic lyrics might actually be.\u00a0 Mike Mills, who would later be a founding member of R.E.M. heard the song and thought, \u201cThis is how you can write a song.\u201d\u00a0 The release of <\/span>American Pie<\/span><\/i> also seems to have acted as another salvo in a mood of musical nostalgia that began to build in 1971.\u00a0 The <\/span>Village Voice<\/span><\/i> claimed this nostalgia movement had already reached \u2018epidemic proportions\u2019 and McLean\u2019s iconic song certainly poured gas on the fire.\u00a0 McLean wrote more memorable music, but <\/span>AP<\/span><\/i> was a meal ticket with no sell-by date.\u00a0 He auctioned off the song\u2019s original manuscript for more than a million dollars in April of 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As Hepworth pointed out in the Epilog of <\/span>Never A Dull Moment<\/span><\/i>, most consider the release of <\/span>Rock Around The Clock<\/span><\/i> in 1954 to be the birth of the rock and roll era.\u00a0 This means rock was only 17 when it hit the momentous year of 1971.\u00a0 If you can guess who else was also 17 in 1971, then you can probably figure out why both rock music and the year 1971 are still with me after all these years.\u00a0 Like many of the artists who produced the memorable music released in 1971, I was in the right place at the right time to be greatly influenced as a music lover and performer by this pivotal year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 So many referenced songs to choose from so we will go with Pud…I mean The Doobie Brothers and a live version of\u00a0Listen to the Music<\/em>….After all, this is exactly what 1971 has compelled us all to do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The old saw, \u2018there are no accidents,\u2019 came from . . . whom?\u00a0 We all seem to use this phrase but have you ever wondered where it came from?\u00a0 Famous quotes tend to get corrupted, rearranged, and jumbled all the time (see Yogi Bera) with no apologies offered to whomever originated them.\u00a0 Oddly enough, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2375,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}