BY THE WAY, WHICH ONE IS BLUE? – MICHAEL GAIMAN (Part Two)

Michael Gaiman: It’s no consolation for the tours that lost money, but I often look at the first Blue Floyd tour with (Allen) Woody and the discs we put out of those shows. The actual playing in its own obscure little way, this is for me, in my own little heart, is the greatest thing in the jam psychedelic sense that ever existed. Obviously I’m biased because it’s my child but I’m also a fan. I’m 47 years old and I’ve seen everybody play. Only that first tour with Woody did very well.

Dennis Cook: It made me sad that people stopped paying as much attention after Woody passed because they really developed, especially the first run of shows as a four piece. I like where they were developing the songs in neat ways and the absence of Allen meant the rest of them stepped up and tried to fill that open space.

Michael Gaiman: One of the interesting things about Woody was how he was coming from a strange space/place musically & personally. Musically, although he was partners in Gov't Mule it was run like a traditional band where it’s a corporation where the musicians draw a salary and the rest of the money goes into the business for whatever purpose. The musicians themselves don’t make that much money but hopefully the corporation does and at the end of the year there’s dividends. My projects are done the same way the big bands are done. I’m going to hire a musician for a salary and it’s my gamble win-lose-or-draw. I pay everyone pretty good. In the case of Blue Floyd, Allen told me it was the most money he’d made since the Allman Brothers. He was thrilled about that. The other thing was generally speaking, Warren Haynes, because he sang & played lead guitar was the leader of Gov’t Mule. If not the de facto leader then the real leader. Allen didn’t have a problem with that but now there was a band where he was in many ways the leader. Technically I’m the leader but I made him a leader.

From the beginning I had an idea of who I wanted to hire & how I wanted to do it and Allen said let me get Marc Ford. I’m not a Black Crowes fan so I wasn’t familiar with his playing. Then Allen says let me get Johnny Neal. Again, I hadn’t followed the Allman Brothers during Johnny’s tenure there. Berry (Oakley Jr) was a client of mine. I’d represented Robbie Kriegor. Once I’d heard Berry sing “In The Flesh” at the Coconut teaser I knew he was in. Allen was really instrumental in putting it together. And by then he’d revealed that he collected stringed instruments and that he played mandolin, 12-string and steel and it really opened it up musically. I was the one who suggested they do a song with double bass. They said, no one ever does double bass, it never works. I told them that in 1979, The Who opened their 2nd set with “Trick of the Light” with Pete Townshend and (John) Entwistle both playing bass. So, they stopped because they couldn’t dispute my scholarship. We picked “Set The Controls For The Heart of the Sun” and did “Mountain Jam” with it.

I came off that tour with strep throat. I had a 106-degree fever. At the end of a tour like that you have to be near death to remember it fondly. For it’s moment in time it was a comet through space. I’m not saying it’s dead but sad fact is, as we both know, in rock & roll and jazz, sometimes what fuels the passion for the music is chemicals. I have a client who is the most famous Pink Floyd cover band in the world called The Machine. You look at The Machine doing Pink Floyd and it’s note for note like the records. They are very good musicians but they are straight. I tell them, you know what your problem is? You never took acid, you never smoked pot. They all kind of look at me funny. Then I’d say to the Blue Floyd guys you’re too stoned, you guys are too fucked up. Some of that may be the remorse of Allen’s death. They were always sort of shambling down the road Grateful Dead style or Hot Tuna in the ‘70s. They were just trying to keep the train on the tracks and that led to some really amazing music.

Unfortunately, Marc, one of the most brilliant guitarists I ever saw, had problems reconciling in his own mind that this was not a purely organic band, that it was a put together band, that it was my band. He’d never encountered a manager saying here’s what we’re playing, boys, here’s the repertoire, here’s where we’re gonna go. I think he had a hard time not doing his own music. Maybe he overindulged a little bit. I hear that now with his own group he’s back to his old self. I certainly wish him the best. The Blue Floyd experience, for a second in time, the Rock Gods looked down on it kindly.

It was one of those rare things that made me want to actually jump up & down because the music was so electric. Every time I saw them they hit a pocket of that special energy at least once in every show.

If I’d had a champion like you (trails off). The other thing is, wrong, right or indifferent, I’m a one-man operation. I’ve got tour managers and webmasters, though I design the websites and I’m computer literate to put it mildly. A lot of my products suffer from a lack of delegation. I’m not proud of this but it’s who I am. Just to give you a bit of the insanity, the main reason I’m taking Jefferson Starship to Europe, besides the fact that I’ve known Paul (Kantner) and Marty (Balin) since I was a kid, is because I do their sound. They’ve come to this notion that I have to do their sound. I know the music as a fan better than anyone. So, after all these years of their success they have this need for me to be along because they say I’m the best engineer they’ve heard. I’m the manager and act as the tour manager but basically I’m going to mix these shows. Let’s face it, they’re 60 years old and who knows how many years they have left. So it’s sharing that last little bit of Autumn Summer camp with them. If Blue Floyd had a champion or a record deal or the PR support it might have done it. In its short life, and again it’s not dead, its had so many lives from when it started only in 2000. They played a couple of shows in Mexico. (Allen) Woody and Matt Abts had gotten the Steve Miller tour with Gov’t Mule at the last minute and couldn’t come. This was our second Blue Floyd tour and since our first tour had been very successful I booked a big tour including big dates in Mexico City and Guadalajara. We subbed from Barry’s band Dickey Bett’s kid, and Roy Orbison’s kid, Alex Orbison. Dickey’s son played with a raw fire that was really interesting as second guitarist. Alex Orbison was no Matt Abts. I don’t know if you know who Joey Covington from the Jefferson Airplane was.

Yeah, I know who he is.

So, we had this Joey Covington type of drummer that had a lot of personality but wasn’t that good. Everyone had to kind of fill in things. Three-quarters of the shows were awful but one-quarter of them were unbelievable even with that line-up. The first shows were in Mexico City and Alex & Duane were young guys sowing their oats. And you’ve got a bunch of guys in their late 30’s and 40’s and everyone was fucked up. This should be like a Rolling Stones story. I’m talking about having to get hotel room doors opened so I could revive people with a cold bucket of water because they would not wake up.

Good God…

We tramped around the country like that. The last two dates of the tour Woody and Matt were able to join us at Alligator Alley in Hollywood, Florida on the hottest night of the year. They played these amazing shows. It was the last time Allen played with the band. Then, the Mule guys went back out and Blue Floyd played in front of 25,000 people at the Gathering On The Mountains with the B-team of Alex and Duane. This is all in like one year. Then we played Halloween in New Orleans. Last summer we played at one of the biggest festivals in Europe on an island in Denmark. I’ve been doing shows there with a promoter for many years. He had lost James Brown and was stuck at the last minute. He needed something rootsy, he needed something bluesy. And he says Blue Floyd isn’t enough but it’s almost enough. So, I went out and got Steve Cropper and Matt “Guitar” Murphy as ringers. So, there we are for a one off in Denmark for $35,000 bucks. I mean who are these guys? Blue Floyd did an hour of their thing and then backed up Cropper & Murphy on “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” and “Midnight Hour” and stuff like that. I was thinking this was like the Howlin’ Wolf London Sessions in an alternate universe.

Since Marc Ford left as lead guitarist, Audley Freed of the Black Crowes has stepped in for the Beatlejam shows.

Funny thing about Audley is I was never a fan of Jimmy Page who he sounds like. He’s unlike Marc, who’s loose & spacey and he’ll just peel off an 8-bar solo out of nowhere. Audley is solid throughout but he’s never transcendental. He’d be great in Guns & Roses, he’d be great in the modern rock band de jour or a rootsy band. I’ll tell you something, Marc and I did not like each other but I loved his playing. I tried to get under his skin. I’m an old musician and I speak musicianese but I just couldn’t get on with this guy. He looked at me as a suit and felt that it was a put together band but I adored his playing. I always made him feel uncomfortable. He’d say, “I don’t like you being around at shows.” So I just stopped coming because I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable. But Audley has just never been transcendental. It’s a business so we went on but we’ve never done the Blue Floyd repertoire with Audley. We’ve done Blue Floyd as Beatlejam. Not to say that Audley couldn’t be that guy but he doesn’t have whatever quality David Gilmour brings of not overplaying & not underplaying. I’m not putting his playing down. He was good in terms of name value just like in the Black Crowes where he replaced Marc. Certainly Matt, Barry and Johnny have a special thing and with Marc they had a special thing. Who knows maybe after the passage of time we could go back and do it with Marc again.

DC: Let’s jump back and talk a bit more about the current Jazz Is Dead tour.

Billy (Cobham) called me and told me it was the 30th anniversary of Spectrum (Cobham’s solo debut release). Obviously Tommy Bolin is dead but I got Lee Sklar and I put together a band. He wanted me to book it. I said, Billy post-9/11 unless Rhino Records is going to support this, tour business is really bad. And he gives me this arbitrary figure of money he needs. I said I’m not gonna get it done. He tells me that, no disrespect, but if I don’t do it he’ll find somebody who will. So I book this tour and he sells out every date. It’s unbelievable. Don’t ever count Billy Cobham out. So, after the tour I said what about Jazz Is Dead and he said sure. He called sometime during this past Summer and said let’s do it.

How did you settle on Europe ’72 as the theme this time?

I’ve had Europe ’72 on my mind for a long time. I was a freshman in college and I’d been following the Grateful Dead for a few years. I was pre-med at the time so this was just a hobby for me. I had no idea what they would go on to do. When that record came out it became one of my favorite records. That “Morning Dew” is one of my all time favorite tracks. As the years go on, I’m very sentimental. So, it comes to 2002 and I’ve got this tour for Jefferson Starship in Europe and it’s going to be our Europe ’72. They’ve got 108 songs from every Starship record. Their repertoire is vast even “Baron Von Tollbooth” and all that kind of stuff.

When Billy called me up I was in the middle of booking this Jefferson Starship tour and I know that Steppin’ Out With The Grateful Dead is coming out. I’d had a little contretemps with Alphonso Johnson, who’s a great guy and an amazing musician but when it comes to doing business we laugh about it. We can talk about our kids, we can talk about sports, we can talk about music but when we when we have to talk about business it’s just difficult. I wanted to take some stress out of my life and I noticed that Little Feat was done touring at the beginning of November and I’ve known Kenny Gradney for 20 years. I call him and he said he’d love to do it. And of course (Jeff) Pevar and T (Lavitz) are still there. When I mention this to Billy he said, “You want to do these 3-chord Dead songs, even though I love Alphonso, Kenny is better. He’ll be right in the pocket and let Pevar do his leads.” I did well with the first Pevar tour because people loved “Workingman’s Beauty.” They dug those songs being played. What I’m hoping to do is not present the Europe ’72 that hardcore fans like us know of the expanded repertoire of Rotterdam & of all of that but to present that Warner Brothers record, those 8 or 11 recordings.

They are going to do the entire recording in the same order?

The same sequence exactly. I had a problem of wanting to make it different every night. When I started the band with Billy what he said he does is he picks a repertoire for a tour and plays it every night in the same order. That’s not the Grateful Dead style but I thought for this particular project I wanted to set out a concept that people could sink their teeth into. Especially because post-9/11 business is awful. When I took this band out in ’98 String Cheese wasn’t anything. There was no Dark Star Orchestra, there was no Les Claypool, there was no Karl Denson, there was no Robert Randolph. Now, it’s the most competitive scene and I wanted to have a concept to float to people, which is Europe ’72 top to bottom.

That’s what good musicians are really good at. When you tell them there’s a lot of competition out there and you guys need to stand out. You have to step up to the plate and knock it out. I find that with guys that really sweat the notes this kind of situation brings out the best in them. I’m hoping that’s the case with this particular group.

Any band that Billy plays in sounds like a Billy Cobham band. He plays like a machine gun. And Jimmy (Herring) was a shredder. Jeff Pevar plays very open like Michael Hedges. He’s about sound designs and tones. Jimmy is about riffs. So I think the wide open spaces that Pevar creates and the minimalist playing Ken Gradney supports and then Billy’s whole oeuvre, I think it won’t be too much but it will be interesting.

Dennis Cook
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