Them’s fightin’ words for a lot of folks. I mean, Lynyrd Skynyrd was like America’s Led Zeppelin, although Aerosmith made a decent but drug-impaired attempt at that title, but I digress. Some purists will say that the Allman Brothers were the first or (gasp) best Southern Rock band. Granted, they used the slide guitar to great, soulful effect. Talk about feeling in the fingers!
Tunes like “Ramblin’ Man,” “Whipping Post” and “Midnight Rider” are great, classic tunes. But the Allman Brothers were too much blues. Purists like that, but not a Southern Rocker like me. I want the guitars louder and faster.
The Outlaws were the Florida Guitar Army, and they’d bring the house down each night with a 23+ minute rendition of “Green Grass and High Tides” each night – complete with a triple guitar solo with trade-offs. It was a moment so electric and magic that it could go on forever and not bore the audience. It was like a John Henry Bonham drum solo in the middle of a wayward tune like “Moby Dick.” The members of Led Zeppelin would leave the stage for a good while during this solo, it was said in an interview. It was about 16-minutes long itself, but so good, so tribal, with so much feeling, inventiveness and skill that the crowd could not get enough.
Lynyrd Skynyrd was surely the king of Southern Rock. There is no dispute about that. They have at least two fistfulls of hits – from “Gimme Three Steps” to “Saturday Night Special” to “Simple Man” to “Tuesday’s Gone” to “Free Bird.” Their Gold & Platinum double album is a must-have (that is, if you don’t already own One More From the Road, Street Survivors, Pronounced… and all their older studio albums). It’s Southern Rock blasphemy to even suggest that any other band was better than Skynyrd. I mean, you never hear some stoned dude at a show yell out, “Play some Blackfoot, man!” Or hold up his lighter and scream, “Highway Song!!!” Nope, it’s always, “Play some Skynyrd!” or “Free Bird!”
I like what the Violet Burning used to do when someone in the audience would pull that joke. “Do you know the words? If so, come up here and sing it. We’ll play it.” I bet they never got any takers. They sure didn’t the night I saw that happen in Austin many moons ago.
Blackfoot tops Skynyrd in my book because they were just as tight, great songwriters, full of Southern Rock soul and all that. They just had more of a metallic bite to ’em. And that’s why I liked ’em more.
They had a great run in the late ’70s, with Strikes, Tomcattin’ and even Marauder, which came on the heals of some major radio success. They mixed boogie with blues and soul with metal. Tunes like “Train, Train” and “Highway Song” got on mainstream America’s radar. And don’t forget the Brits! They caught on to Blackfoot and you can hear their enthusiasm on Highway Song Live, released in June of 1982.
I remember seeing Molly Hatchet (another Southern Rock staple from the late ’70s) with Blackfoot in Biloxi, Mississippi. I got a kick out of reading their long-sleeved “baseball style” t-shirts at the show. They had the band’s logo and the word “TOUR” on it but the years “1982-1987” or some such long span of time on it. Blackfoot were road dogs and their live performance showed their veteran experience and prowess. Rickey Medlocke was a great frontman. He knew all the rock and roll tricks of the trade – how to make the audience respond, how to elicite cheers and how to take his band on a wild, building crescendo in a jam.
They knew the importance of soul – Motown soul – and they showed it on covers like, “I Got A Line on You.” They understood groove. Their drums were nice and prominent. Their rhythm section of drummer Jakson Spires, bassist Greg T. Walker, guitarists Charlie Hargrett and Rickey Medlocke was locked in and seemed to breathe together as they powered up and rocked.
Tomcattin‘ followed up Strikes with a great collection of tunes. Their lyrical wit was prominent in tunes like “Every Man Should Know (Queenie),” which states:
Well, don’t mess with my Queenie,
Or I’ll mess with your nose
Yes, you can stand there dreamin’
But don’t you dare step on my toesCause, every man should know
Can’t take what you owe.
To own a body you got to own a soul
So every man should knowww oh ohhYes
Yes, you might take my money
But I won’t take second place
Ooh, you mess with my honey
I’ll mess with your face
Yeah, they had wit. Plenty.
Tomcattin‘ had some great tunes, which I think got some pretty good airplay on FM radio. “On the Run” showed their rhythm section in the pocket and hypnotic as hell. It was so powerful live. “Dream On” was nothing like the Aerosmith ballad, but instead a nice put-down. “Street Fighter” was gritty. “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” sported more of their wit:
“Gimme, gimme, gimme,
that’s all I ever hear.
I ain’t got no money to buy me a beer…”
“Spending Cabbage” continued the “I’m broke” lament so common to us all at one time or another. “Fox Chase” spotlighted Rickey Medlocke’s granddad, “Shorty” Medlocke,” who got on the mic and talked about his hunting dogs, “Old Ring, Old Tiger and Old Rover.” He laid down a mean harmonica solo and the song was off.
Marauder caught the band with some commercial success. Its sound featured a little more polish, featuring the hit, “Fly Away.” The tune “Good Morning” sported yet more of that Metlocke wit:
“The young exec, he hits the deck
And ooh, he’s dressed to kill
Before he goes to work, he knows
He’s gotta have a wake-up pill
From nine to five he’s feelin’ alive
Jumpin’ to the speed of sound
But the young exec, he hit the deck
‘Cause his little pill let him down
Good mornin!”
A wake up call to be sure.
The band toured on after this, but the knockout punch after knockout punch of studio albums stalled for some reason. For a season, though, they surely had it going on. Looking back, prior to Strikes they had an album called No Reservations that was already in the cut-out bins when I was still in high school. It had another “Shorty” Medlocke appearance and a tear-jerking and heart-string-pulling ballad called “Mother.” I still reference it for my mom every now and again. A sweet little ditty.
Do yourself a favor and discover Blackfoot.
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