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My Blackfoot
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When I was
ten years old, two friends and I formed our first band called The Rockin' Aces. I
had been taking piano lessons since I was six and had also learned enough guitar
chords necessary to play the pop hits of the day. One of my friends lived close by
and had just completed a five year run on a TV show with his grandfather. He was
teaching me to play drums and both he and his grandfather were helping me learn
more guitar chords. I had known them since I was three or four, as early as I
could remember life itself. This would be Rickey Medlocke and his grandfather,
Shorty. The other friend and I had started kindergarten together at age five and
shared a love of sports as well as music. He was a gifted athelete even at that
age and excelled in all fields whether it be a school, Pop Warner or city league
competition. Had he not become one of rock's greatest drummers of all time, he
could have easily turned pro in later years and played the sport of his choice.
This would be Jakson Spires. We began playing at our elementary school, skating rinks, burger joints and community centers. Rickey and I had written our first song together called "Time Is Wasted" and had it notorized. This was the first proudest moment of my life. So began our fledgling songwriting careers. Our first gig paid us $1.60 each and all the free cokes and popcorn one could consume. Rickey had a pair of matching guitars that we played and we thought we were the coolest. All three of us shared vocal, guitar and drum duties and once in a while had a bass player with us. We began playing more and more and were enjoying our new hobby and local success when all hell broke loose. THE BEATLES came out!!!! All of a sudden we got real excited and serious and knew in an instant what we were going to be when we grew up. (It's ironic that as I am writing this "Strawberry Fields" is playing on the radio) Throughout the next six years we would get better as players and get the top gigs in the area with at least two out of the three of us always in the same band together. In the summer of 1969, Rickey and I had a new band playing seven nights a week at the famed Comic Book Club in Jacksonville. We had a great keyboard player from New Jersey who often spoke of the band he was in before called Mountain and featuring a guitar player named Leslie West. Rickey was on drums and I was on bass, the first for me as I had always been the drummer, guitarist or keyboard player in our earlier bands. We had the hottest guitar player in town and he could play anything out on the radio at the time. He had a commanding appearance being real tall, having long hair and fast fingers. This would be Charlie Hargrett!!!! We played all summer and drew good crowds every night. During this time Jakson was in a band in Gainesville playing six nights a week at the now famed Dubs. One day I drove over to Rickey's house and told him I wanted to get Jakson in the band as it had been some time since the three of us had played together. His keyboard player was a childhood friend of ours as well and he, Jakson and I had had a band together two years earlier. I wanted to put a dream band together assembling the cream of the crop. I began to put my plan in motion and called Jakson down in Gainesville. As fate would have it, his band was having problems with their guitar player as were we with our keyboard player. We arranged a time to meet and discuss the possibility for a merger of our two bands. It took about five minutes to figure out this would be the ultimate band! It would mean Rickey giving up his drum spot but he wanted to move up front to be lead singer and rythym guitar player. Both our bands gave two week notices to the clubs we were playing, honored our committments, got together for our first rehearsal and Blackfoot was born. In one afternoon we learned seven songs and the next day played a battle of the bands in Gainesville. After the show we were approached by a guy asking if we would like to play the Miami Pop Festival a few months later in December. Having already heard of Woodstock, we jumped at the chance. We rehearsed another full week and started playing six nights a week in the same club Jakson had just been the house band for. Between then and December we had written enough songs to do an original set for the Miami show. To name all the bands we met and played with that weekend and went on to do hundreds of shows with during the next seventeen years would fill up a page by itself. We went back to Dubs and continued for three more months. We had been playing five sets a night, six nights a week for six months and had gotten real tight and written a lot of songs. That time of steady playing became the launching pad for the career that followed. On one of the nights at Dubs, a girl had been in the audience who worked for a small record company in New York. She was in Gainesville visiting her family at the time. She asked for a demo tape she could play for her people so we bought studio time and promptly produced a tape. The company liked what they heard and asked us to come up there. In March of 1970 we packed up and moved to New York City. There were five of us in the band plus a roadie living in this girl's one bedroom apartment. On our third day there most of our equipment was stolen and we were in dire straits. Her boss floated us a loan and we replaced what was necessary in order to keep playing and we forged ahead. We were going under the name Hammer at the time and soon found out a band on the west coast had released an album under that name. So, we changed our name to Free and a few weeks later Alright Now came out. Faced with another name change we were looking for something that sounded bold, powerful and made a statement. At the time, Johnny Cash had a weekly TV show and often included a segment on American Indians. Native ancestry was another common thread Jakson and I shared so he started thinking of "indian" names for the band. Since neither of us came from bold sounding tribal names nor were we full blood, Blackfoot was the name Jakson came up with and was accepted by all. Charlie had been teaching Rickey lead licks from the beginning and they were playing duel and harmony parts together early on. Rickey was a quick study and before long would be sharing lead duties equally with Charlie. We now had two excellent guitar players and the sky was the limit. Jobs were hard to find but we played where we could. After a few months of broken promises and pipe dreams we packed up and moved out to New Jersey. It was tough out there as well but we managed to get a few gigs and got in good with a couple of colleges, sometimes getting to open up for big names. Our keyboard player was already frustrated with the lifestyle and decided to quit the band and move back to Florida. Now we were four piece. In the fall of that year we found a house out in the country where we had a little room to breathe and a basement to rehearse in. It was a long, cold winter and by the next spring we lost the house and were forced to move once more. A band down near Princeton had a big, old house and let us move in with them. Gigs were scarce there as well and we had a lot of idle time those days. Being very young, broke, hungry and frustrated doesn't make for easy living conditions. One day the phone rang and it was Ronnie VanZant looking for a drummer to replace the one in his band. We had already known these guys for years and the band they called The One Percent. They were about to change their name to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rickey answered the call and took off to Florida. The band split up and we parted ways. Six months later I got the call to replace Skynyrds bass player so I went to Florida. Rickey and I played and recorded with them for a while but I was not happy and wanted our band back together. I told Rickey I was leaving and he could stay if he wanted but he agreed with me and Blackfoot was reformed. It wasn't long before the same problems arose as before so we split up and Rickey went back to Skynyrd. I moved to New York and began playing with The Tokens, who had changed their name to Cross Country and had a new record deal with Atco. We recorded and album and began touring while the record company released a single. It hit the charts and rose to #16 in Billboard Magazine's Hot 100. By now Rickey had quit Skynyrd, Charlie had joined a band in North Carolina and soon Jakson was in the same band with Charlie. The other guitar player quit so they called Rickey and talked him into coming up and joining them. All of a sudden there was 3/4 of Blackfoot in the same band. Then, their bass player became ill and said he would not be able to continue playing much longer and would have to quit. The guys drove up to see me and asked if I would come back with them to make it the original Blackfoot again. I decided to stay in New York for a while but my heart went with the guys. So I flew down to North Carolina and spent a week talking things out and wondering if any old wounds may be reopened. I followed my heart, an easy decision, and called the guys in New York to give them notice. They were ready to kill me except for one, who remains one of my best friends to this day. Here it is 2003 and he is still playing 78-80 shows a year hitting the high notes with ease singing the classic "Lion Sleeps Tonight". God bless you, Jay Siegel, and thank you for letting me go with your blessings and allowing me to go back to where we both knew I belonged. We had one more show to do plus a taping of Don Kirshner's In Concert so I told them when that was done I would be returning to my dream band, Blackfoot. A few weeks later I was back in North Carolina and Blackfoot never again looked back. Soon we were back up in our old stomping grounds playing the tri-state area. The club scene had opened up and Rock'n'Roll was happening.We quickly found work on a fairly regular basis and the timing was perfect. Rickey and Jakson had written a lot of songs during the North Carolina period and between all of us had a lot of original material we could play along with the required copy tunes club owners demanded at that time. Rickey and I contacted our friends at Muscle Shoals Sound who had produced the Skynyrd sessions we were involved in and they consented to hearing a demo tape of our originals. Upon hearing the tape they agreed to produce an entire album at no charge feeling certain they would be able to secure a record deal and recoup their initial investment. Two years of steady playing had honed our skills and prepared us for the studio.In a few days we had recorded the basic tracks and began overdubs. In the span of twenty eight days we had recorded, mixed and mastered a complete album. Within a few months the producers had us a record deal and our first album "No Reservation" was released on Island Records. It was 1975 and was the second proudest moment of my life. The album got little promotion and sales were weak so Island dropped our option for a second one. We went back into the studio and recorded another one anyway and CBS picked up the option and "Flyin' High" was released in 1976. Again with no promotion and weak sales we were soon without a label once more. With two albums under our belt but not a household name we crisscrossed the country the next few years playing small clubs and occasionally opening up for big acts. We did short runs with Kiss, Ted Nugent, ZZ Top and most of the Frampton Comes Alive tour with Gary Wright. There were many others too numerous to list. At last, Atco signed us in 1979 and we recorded our third album. "Strikes" was released and went gold in eight months. All of a sudden we were in a bus and touring with Ted Nugent playing to 12,000 people a night on a national tour. We quickly became a ten year overnight success. The next year we released "Tomcattin". It was 1980 and The Who called and asked us to do the North American/Canadian tour with them. We had a blast and they treated us like gold. We went to Europe and took it by storm. While there we did our first video for MTV, a live video for "Train Train" filmed at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. We were touring with just about everyone you could imagine. 1981 saw the realease of "Marauder" and we were in Europe again. We were no longer an opening act, we were headling on both sides of the ocean to sellout crowds. Some of the festivals would draw 80,000 people and we were having the time of our lives. We recorded our first live album "Highway Song" in Europe in 1982. We used the Rolling Stones mobile unit that followed us around to different countries and recorded a lot of shows. It was a huge success overseas but was realeased in the US as an import with limited quantities. Never figured the logic to that. What was the record company thinking, or were they thinking at all? One day Jakson and I were sitting in a hotel bar in Liverpool, England and he asked"who would have thought we would be sitting in the very place The Beatles came from and getting ready to go play a sold out show in their hometown?" I said "we all did, it's what we talked about and dreamed about when we were kids. It shouldn't be so much of a surprise, it's what we wished for." We toured constantly on both sides of the ocean and were at the top of our game. But, MTV had begun to blossom and the video star was born. Album sales fell off a little and the way things had been done up to now were being replaced with new ideas, new record company personnel and a new kind of music was taking hold. Under pressure to stay afloat with the new times and being the hardheads we were was not a match made in heaven. But, we wanted to try and reluctantly agreed to do something new. We added a keyboard player. We had known John Lord from Deep Purple for a while and called him. He had just signed on to do a new project and couldn't back out. The only other clear choice was Ken Hensely from Uriah Heap. He was currently living in the US so we were able to contact him in a short time. We met and he agreed to join the band. It was 1983 and we were already half way into our next album. We were able to add Ken on most of the tracks and record the new ones from scratch with him on keys. One thing was clear from the start, it did change the sound of the band and was a disappointment to a lot of our existing fans while not gaining many new ones. "Siogo" was released and we made two new videos for MTV, then hit the raod with a new album and keyboard player. The album did fairly well but was not the big push in terms of sales the record company was hoping to see. When it was being pressed and readied for distribution they thought it was the best album yet but started pointing fingers when the sales reports started coming in. Everything is so black and white to those guys. Regardless, they panicked, management panicked and everyone around us started making us nervous. So, back into the studio we go to begin work on the next album. We wanted a change so opted for a studio closer to our neck of the woods with a new engineer. We headed to Eddie Offord Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. He had converted an old movie theater into a studio and still had the big stage to set up on in front of the screen that used to show movies. It had the feel of playing live and we were thrilled with the change of scenery. After months of hard work we completed what we felt was some of our best work ever. The material was great, the playing was great and Rickey had never sang better in his life. The top brass from Warner Brothers flew down and listened to the final product and said we had outdone ourselves and created a masterpiece. Full of confidence and all the adulation one had ever received, we decided to take a well deserved break for a couple of weeks, something we had never done before. We shook hands and one by one flew out to our destinations of choice. On the third day of our vacation Rickey called me and stunned me with news from the record company. They had gone back on their word and decided it was not the kind of album they were looking for and wanted the entire B side replaced with different songs. Now hold on, are these the same people who, less than a week before, had showered us with praise saying we had re-invented ourselves? Yes!! To this day I have a telegram from one of those very people. With vacation thrown out the window, a whole new batch of songs are readied and once again we head back to the studio. Now WE are starting to question people and trying not to panic. Charlie was very frustrated at this point and feeling like he was being pushed out of the band. There were things going on behind the scenes a couple of us were unaware of. Charlie wound up stepping aside and we were back to four piece again. Rickey assumed all guitar duties and we continued recording until the album was once again completed. "Vertical Smiles" was released in 1984 without Charlie having played a single note on it. At last we got a few days off then headed to LA to make another video for MTV. Train Train was still being shown as well as Teenage Idol in light rotation. Send Me An Angel was considered not suitable for kids and was being shown on the Playboy channel only. We went to Charlie Chaplain's old studio and most of the new video was shot on a soundstage. Morning Dew was the song chosen from the new album and it was soon released for MTV. We headed back out on the road with a new album and video and one less member. We played our hearts out and pretty soon made another trip to Europe. Once again we returned to menial record sales and really got put under the gun. Venues were getting smaller and were went back to traveling in a van and the tours got shorter. There was not much talk about the future and you could feel the tension starting to build. As if this weren't bad enough, Ken quit towards the end of a tour with only 12 shows left during a three day break. I had been home a couple of hours when Rickey called me with the news. Just hours earlier Ken and I had shaken hands at the airport in Philly and went our separate ways. The last thing he said was "I'll see you in a few days in Chicago." Rickey and Jakson were in Ann Arbor, Michigan so I grabbed my luggage and went straight to the airport and caught the first flight out to meet them. In the meantime, a freind of ours who was managed by the same company as we were was in town and said he would fill in if we wanted to finish the tour. I took a cab straight to the studio where the band gear had already been set up and we began rehearsing with the new guy. His name was Bobby Barth from the group AXE. He was a great guitar player, singer and could play keyboards well enough to cover Ken's parts. We rehearsed all the next day until late that night and the crew started packing up to head for the next show. All these years I wondered why Ken quit the way he did. I was never mad at him for quitting, but was at the way he went about it. I contacted him in December of 2002 and asked for an explanation. I was satisfied with his answer, though he admitted it was the wrong way to go about it. On that we agreed. We finished the last twelve shows and it really sounded good, so we booked another tour and kept going. Again, tours got shorter, tensions ran high and a lot of shifting the blame was taking place. We were being pulled in so many different directions we hardly knew which way was up. Our song list, performance and stage presentation was as good as it had ever been. We did another live recording and taping of a show in Detroit at the Royal Oak Theater. Deep Purple asked us to do their North American/Canadian tour so once again headed out and had a blast. They were great to us. We went back to the smaller venues again and things started to unravel. On December 16, 1985 at the end of a tour winding up in Ohio, it all came crashing down. That would be the last night Blackfoot would ever play again. I was shattered, though it took some time for it to really sink in. I think the medical term is called shock. There was no use fighting it, it was over. On February 1, 1986 Rickey, Jakson and I dissolved the corporation known as Blackfoot, Inc. We agreed the name would never be used again and shook hands on it. These were the greatest years of my life. We lived our dream, worked hard at our craft and made some incredible music together. We traveled the world and met many interesting people. We shared stages with many of the greatest bands in the history of Rock'n'Roll and made friendships of which some endure to this day. But, on the very day the band ended, a piece of me died. My family and those close to me know this and still mention it to this day. I will never again be the man I was during my life with Blackfoot. I love you Rickey Medlocke, I love you Jakson Spires, I love you Charlie Hargrett. Thank you Ken, thank you Bobby and thank you Great Spirit. And to the millions of fans all over the world who supported us and continue to buy our music, you are the ones who keep the dream alive. Thank you from all of us. It was an honor and priveledge to have played for audiences all these years. I am fortunate to still be playing today and getting to see old fans and meet new ones. I will always pray for a Blackfoot reunion so we can play one more time. I am man enough to admit as I write this last line, I have tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat....Greg T. |
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