There's nothing like live music.I've spent a lot of money over a lot of years just to go some place where a band can turn it up and make people smile. It's why I always jumped at any opportunity to go out and play with friends in the local bars.
Whether it was some local dive, which I've played plenty of, or some race track where 250,000 people have gathered for a full day of rock 'n' roll, I've been there.
I've seen the famous, the almost famous and the guys who should have been more famous.
Some of my favorite shows were when I'd go out to The Roxy in Los Angeles or the world-famous Palomino in North Hollywood to see Jimmy Rabbitt and Renegade.
Rabbitt is one of those guys your mama warned you about. I guess that's why I loved him for so many years.
I first came to know him when he blazed a trail through the L.A. radio scene. Back then, even if you never met the people on the air, you knew them because the good ones made you feel like they were talking directly to you. He worked in L.A. for just about every station that built a tower and threw a signal into the night air.
Didn't matter, either, what the station "format" was, Rabbitt turned it into his own.
Fresh from Dallas, by way of Tyler, Texas, Rabbitt was pioneering what was known as "freeform, progressive rock" on the radio long before anybody knew what that all meant.
He could segue the most incredible music sets -- whether through music or lyrics -- you could imagine. In fact, some of them you couldn't imagine until you heard them. Radio has always been the most intimate medium to me. It was somebody sitting behind a turntable, talking directly into your ear, playing music to touch your soul, lift your mood, make you think or just flat out entertain you. I was lucky to meet and get to know some of the legendary radio personalities from a time when radio was still worth listening to before the consultants got hold of it. Guys like Murray The K, B. Mitchel Reed, Jim Ladd, and, of course Rabbitt.
About the time I got to meeting him, he had already done a couple albums, including one produced by Waylon Jennings, and he was working at KROQ in Pasadena, where he was tearing it up in his usual fashion.
Music was music back then and when Rabbitt opened a mic, the playlist went out the window. It got him in trouble on more than one occasion when some station exec would ask why the hell he was playing stuff by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, or David Allan Coe, with whom he wrote "Long Haired Redneck."
He was playing a lot of what was called "outlaw" country music at the time, mixing it in with the rock stuff in an eclectic blend that was like nothing else on the air. He was also playing places like The Roxy, Sweetwater and the Palomino pretty regularly with a band comprised of Matthew and Daniel Moore on back-up vocals, Don Preston on guitar -- all three, by the way, had been part of the Joe Cocker Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour/album -- with Dave Johnson on bass, sometimes Frosty (who played previously with Lee Michaels) on drums and the Flying Jerry Zaremba, as I used to call him, doing his handiwork on lead guitar.
Zaremba, who played Eddie Cochran in the Gary Busey film about Buddy Holly and did the major guitar work on the soundtrack, was sizzling. He became known for his table walks where, during a song, he would step off the stage, onto a table and walk along the tabletops while pumping out blistering leads. Uh, yeah, he did face-plant at least once that I know of, but, even then, he never missed a beat, even while facedown in a heap of drinks and food.
Rabbitt and Renegade were gearing up for a gig at The Roxy. I was the L.A. Herald-Examiner rock critic. I had done some radio stories -- my favorite was one on the crew from the Mighty Met, KMET -- and, well, I wanted to meet Rabbitt and write something.
We got together at the KROQ studios, near, I believe, the Hilton Hotel in Pasadena. Rabbitt wanted to get out of the studio so we walked to the hotel lobby, plopped ourselves in a couple of chairs and then I waited as he excused himself for a moment and reappeared with a couple of tumblers, which he proceeded to fill with Wild Turkey he had somehow carried into the hotel with him.
Now, the Pasadena Hilton was a pretty classy joint, as I recall, and there, sitting in the lobby, sipping Wild Turkey, were a couple of guys in "old, faded Levis," rock 'n' roll T-shirts and sunglasses, passing the time of day. I'm sure it freaked a few people out.
But, we really didn't care.
It was a cool interview and Rabbitt had me set up for the show at The Roxy.
I remember being seated right down front, against the stage. Some rock 'n' roll magician was opening the show and he was pretty lame. Maybe it was the whiskey, I don't know, but somehow I pissed the guy off and ended up handcuffed. Don't know to this day how the son of a bitch did it, but the magician snuck a pair of metal bracelets on me, moved back to centerstage and did a good portion of his set before doing some weird magician thing involving a big white napkin he put over my hands while he cut me loose. It was a bit awkward.
Ever try drinking a whiskey and Coke with handcuffs on? I don't recommend it.
Rabbitt and Renegade hit the stage in full force, a tub of beer at the rear of the stage, an open bar tab for the guy in the front row who had just gotten out of handcuffs.
And, did he deliver. "Ladies Love Outlaws" and "Luckenbach, Texas" still ring in my half-deaf ears.
It was a rave review and Rabbitt said he'd set me up any time he played locally.
Next time I saw him was at The Pal, one of the truly great bars in American history. Everybody, as Tommy the Owner once told me, would eventually pass through there. Elton John played there. Rod Stewart played there. Ringo Starr played there. John Lennon played there. Waylon and Willie practically lived there when they were on the Left Coast. And, one night George Harrison, Bob Dylan and John Fogerty were at somebody's house, drunk and jamming, when they decided to pack up a couple of guitars and wander over for a jam session. I wasn't there, but I heard it was pretty crazy.
So, anyway, it was another boy's night out, so to speak, that ended up with Rabbitt telling me a day or two later, "You can come see me any time, but you're off the tab!"
Guess the bar bill was a little steep.
I miss those days when radio was something special, when the jocks would broadcast live and actually put together sets of music instead of dropping in little spots on a computer between songs. I miss those days because those folks were storytellers. They could give you a set with social relevance, political awareness. They introduced me to music I never knew esxisted. In fact, I think the first time I heard Willie Nelson was when Rabbitt spun one of his records.
Since the early '80s, radio has been held hostage by the consultants. Everything is rigidly controlled by playlists, audience data and research, completely washed of personality and that intimacy we once shared. That's why a radio station in the middle of the Great Plains sounds exactly like one in New York or San Francisco unless you escape to one of the NPR stations, where they still know how to tell stories.
There's some hope. You can still hear guys like Rabbitt online (KOCI -- out of southern California at http://www.kociradio.com/ and KAFM at http://www.kafmradio.org/ in Grand Junction, Colorado) and, I'm happy to share, Geno Michellini who does a really cool, freeform thing at http://www.turntablehits.com/ every Friday. And, yes, he still "bangs the drum," as some of you who remember him from his days at KLOS -- where he invented the "Five O'Clock Funnies" segment, might remember.
As far as Rabbitt?
I still don't know if my liver has recovered.
