songs up there and thought, “Now what am I gonna do?” I said, “I know, I’ll call up Graham and see what he thinks.” I could always call Graham and ask his opinion. He might say,“It’s a load of rubbish, start again” or whatever. But he said, “Come over and play me the songs.” So I did—and he loved them. He went, “Tex, you wrote all these? You wanna make a record?”And I went,“Let me think about it—absolutely!” [ laughs ] So Graham hooked me up with ABC-Dunhill Records and put the whole thing together, ’cause it was [Nash’s business manager] Jerry Rubinstein. Next thing I know, voilà, we did a contract with them.And Graham says,“All right, we start in two weeks time!” I said, “Well, what about musicians?” and Graham says,“No problem, who do you want?” So I got Lee Miles [bassist from Ike andTina] and James Gadson, who I still talk to and who is the man. I mean, God almighty!
In addition to Lee and James, I had Soko Richardson [drummer for Ike and Tina], who I stand in awe of. Soko we lost, he passed away a few years ago, but, you know, here we are still talking about him. Half of my jokes are from him. [ laughs ] He was brilliant. He was with Albert Collins as well, you know? He played with Little Richard as well. And John Mayall for a bit too. He’s your quintessential, unorthodox, Louisiana drummer. He’s from New Iberia—you know the Tabasco sauce? Yep. [Soko] was Creole, so he thought in all those different terms—how we got rock and roll. We all came from the way he thinks. [ laughs ] While Gadson and Richardson are listed as drummers on Seed , there is no percussionist listed on the LP,but there is percussion.Who played the parts? Doesn’t it say Milt Holland on there? That’s who did all the percussion. He fascinated me. I mean, what a gentleman. “Anything else? You want more of anything?” he’d say. He had a box of tricks, some things I’d never seen in my life before. “Oh, you gotta hear this, let’s try this!” He was there all day, and he couldn’t do enough. He has a doctorate in rhythm. When I first got the LP, I was looking at the credits and was blown away by the cast of players. I mean, everyone from Ben Keith, who played with Neil Young, David Lindley, and Al Perkins from Flying Burrito Brothers to Fred Wesley, Clifford Solomon of Ray Charles and Johnny Otis, and trumpeter Blue Mitchell. Yeah! Fred Wesley! He had his trombone with electrical tape wrapped around it. [ laughs ]“That’s how I get my tone,”he would say. Graham is the one who got all those guys in there, but of course, most of those guys knew each other already. Graham knows everybody. Graham was the one who talked Bill Withers into playing piano on his songs. Seed of Memory came out in ’76. How did you track this LP? Rhythm section first? Most o f it was drums and bass first, and I’d play acoustic. I’d use two Auratones out of phase on two music stands so it don’t bleed onto the microphone, that old trick. I learned a lot on this album, and still to this day, one of the best engineers that ever was born is Al Schmidt.
Moving forward to making Seed of Memory . It was recorded two places in California, right? Well, yeah, one was Graham’s studio in his house, up in Buena Vista Heights [in San Francisco].We started in this studio right off of Argyle and [Yucca called Sound Labs in Hollywood, Los Angeles]. It was this little studio run by Armin Steiner who, I’m pretty sure, was responsible for setting up Studer machines in America. They had Studer power amps in this beautiful studio, which was more of like a testing ground than a real big studio like Ocean Way or something. It was comfortable though and really well done. I had left Atlantic and was writing and staying up in the mountains on Deer Creek [Road in Malibu] on this big ranch, which is where I met Garth Hudson [who was the keyboardist for the Band]. I wrote all these
Everybody’s capable of playing music , but it’s that thing of whether they’re capable of mentally getting on the same track of what you’re there to do.
78
From back cover of Terry Reid’s Seed of Memory (ABC; 1976). Original photo by Tom Kelly Studios.
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting