Saturday 26 October 2019

Tribute to Little Feat's Paul Barrère

"Livin' the life, livin' the life, lovin' everyone"
Sad times for fans of Little Feat as news comes through that guitarist Paul Barrère passed away on Saturday, after a prolonged bout of liver cancer.

Paul was a mainstay of Little Feat from 1973 onwards, when he joined the band in its second incarnation, as they moved away from the folk rock style, to the more funk jazz style of albums like Feats Don't Fail Me Now and The Last Record Album.

As well as being a master guitar player, he was also a good songwriter, contributing several key compositions during Little Feat's classic period, including Skin It Back and All That You Dream. He also co-wrote Feats Don’t Fail Me Now and Romance Dance, among others.

In the band hiatus after Lowell George died in 1979, Paul had various solo band set ups, and penned one of my favourite song titles – If The Phone Don’t Ring (You Know It’s Me).

He kept busy between Little Feat's latter-day touring schedule by playing acoustic live shows with his guitar partner in Little Feat, Fred Tackett.

In 2015, he was diagnosed with liver cancer but managed to continue working while undergoing treatment right until this month, when he cancelled appearances on Little Feat's 50th Anniversary tour. At the time, he wrote:

"Dear Friends,
As many of you know, for the past several years I have been dealing with liver disease. When we finished the second leg of our 50th Anniversary tour, I was beginning to develop some edema, which has been making some things a little more difficult. It has been a bit of a roller coaster as I go through the treatments my medical team has prescribed, and I have had good days and not so good days. Lately, the not so good days have been more common. 

“I have met with my team at UCLA and they have told me that what I am experiencing is common and treatable. However, the timing is not ideal, as they have directed me to stay home in October while they fine-tune the treatment in order to get me back to where the good days are the norm.

“Needless to say I am beyond disappointed as I was really looking forward to the shows in October. This whole year has been a musical dream come true and none of it would have been possible if not for the enduring support of all of you, the Feat Fans!

“Fortunately, the shows will go on. I have no doubt the band is going to rise to the occasion. As a band, for over 50 years we have always had each other’s backs and I know they will continue to put on the best possible show each and every night. That’s the way we roll."

"My plan is to follow my doctor’s orders and sit tight, but I have every intention of getting back to Jamaica in January and rock’n on the beach with all of you. Until then, keep your sailin’ shoes close by… If I have my way, you’re going to need them!

"Very best wishes, Paul
".

As news of his death came on Saturday, the band's official website posted this message:
https://www.littlefeat.net/news.html?n_id=3859&fbclid=IwAR38joBqW5bKGtFu-kqXC84toUFx5ekoOnVANKOyP_DHlAZGeEHmr9n6raA

The future of Little Feat would appear uncertain. The core members are now just founder member and bandleader Bill Payne, with Tackett, bassist Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton. Payne has been on tour this year with The Doobie Brothers, who have been supporting Santana on their US tour dates.

Whatever happens, it's the end of an era, as Little Feat loses another of its key members and the voice for so many of their songs, since the loss of Lowell George.

Thanks for the music Paul.

Bill Payne has posted a very personal statement about Paul on his Facebook page, which I've pasted here as it's well worth reading:

The Fierce Terrain: A Friendship and Alliance

I will leave it to others to memorialize, to exalt into the heavens someone who wouldn’t have wanted it. Paul Barrere was my band mate, my friend, someone I leaned on and occasionally pushed away. We spent a good measure of our lives engaged in the art of making and playing music with a band that could have only been conjured in a dream. But it was all too real. Little Feat was the one thing that could collectively bring us all together for the purpose of creating something with purpose, our place of refuge and exploration, of comfort, of dismay, and of ultimately what Paul might have called Home Ground. 

I met Paul in the summer of 1969 at Lowell George’s rustic home, tucked a bit off Rowena Avenue in Los Feliz. The story of Paul auditioning to play bass with Little Feat is well documented, but what isn’t as evident, or wasn’t to me at the time, was just how well he played guitar. Three years later, following the recording of Sailin’ Shoes for Warner Brothers, Lowell alluded that he needed someone to take over some of the guitar duties in Little Feat. He wanted to concentrate more on playing slide—I thought he also wanted to spend more time writing, and having another person in the band might give him more freedom to pursue that and other avenues. Richie Hayward told me about a warehouse in downtown L.A. where Paul would be performing and that we should check him out. 

That evening Paul Barrere was tearing up the stage with some remarkably aggressive riffs on the guitar. He had a command of the blues that floored me. Richie and I took one look at each other and smiled. Little Feat is shrouded in myth, of course, so there were many roads and scenarios as to how Paul joined the band, and given how life works, they all probably aligned with his becoming the second guitarist. Myth gives way to reality, though, and it wasn’t merely a matter of keeping Lowell happy; Richie and I had to embrace whomever came in, as well. Paul more than exceeded our standards. It was obvious to us he should be in Little Feat. Paul felt the same way.

The miles upon miles and time warps that envelop 50 years of knowing someone, the sharing of life’s fortunes and missteps, is what brought me to a convulsion of tears following the second to the last show of our 50th Anniversary tour, October 26, 2019. Leaving yet another hotel—I had been away from home for three months—I saw my friend and manager Cameron Sears standing outside the bus. 
 After putting my luggage in the bay, I came back around to ask if he had any news on Paul. He solemnly told me Paul had passed away at 1:15 that morning. I had been dreading the news ever since he had had to cancel coming out on what would be the last leg of the tour. 

The cliché that our lives pass before our eyes before we die might hold some truth, but I can tell you that Paul’s passing left me with a kaleidoscopic montage of his and my life, interrupted, by life unfolding in real-time. Images of Paul and I breaking down in tears after the tribute gig to Lowell at the Forum in Los Angeles; surfing with Bert Toulotte on the East Coast; playing golf in Essen, Germany, with older club members and their Lolita-like caddies; taping a jam at our rehearsal room near Cahuenga and Barham, where we somehow spontaneously and simultaneously played a series of licks that came out of the ether, accompanied by our looks of utter disbelief as to just how we had accomplished that, while much later inserting them into what became “Day At the Dog Races”; the drive to his house discussing putting Little Feat back together in 1986, resulting in Let It Roll in 1988; plans and more plans; one of our last calls about his health, his concerns for everyone in the band and his hopes for rejoining us again at some point.

The fierce terrain we were enjoined in over these 50 years was reflected in our music, in our journey, and in our understanding that none of it would be easy. Honesty is not always benign, but it is necessary if you are to be truthful to yourself and others. That honesty translates into the songs we wrote, which is why they resonate with so many people. Paul touched many hearts and minds by sharing the gifts he possessed. 

We have the songs, his voice and all the inflections he commanded, his incredible musical sense as a player, whether playing a searing and soaring slide part or a gentle acoustic guitar. He was a master at rhythm and creating stellar parts to songs of almost any genre. I still can hear the laughter in his voice, still feel the reverberations over misunderstandings, along with knowing that throughout it all we were brothers. I know well the intensity of who he was as a musician, as a man, and I honor that.

My tears are of sadness, both for him and for those of us that knew him, that loved him and that carry him in our hearts.

The souls circle the sun
They play with the moon
Live amongst the stars
Their reflections on the river
Are gifts to your heart

from Bill’s River Blues

Bill Payne, Montana, October 29, 2019

See also on this blog: When Lowell George Was The Future Of Rock n Roll
https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2012/06/when-lowell-george-was-future-of-rock-n.html

Friday 25 October 2019

Automatic Man - they could have been huge

File this one under ‘Buried Treasure’. In 1976 I bought an album called Automatic Man, having been drawn in by their single My Pearl and in the knowledge that the band included one of my favourite drummers, Michael Shrieve, formerly of Santana.

It’s an oddity for sure, with its mixture of funk, rock guitar and cosmic lyrics. It still sounds great today though. I heard one of the tracks played over the PA at a large festival, so I figure there must be a few people out there who think the same way.
Mike Shrieve was already a big name from Santana

How did this cosmic funk prog band come to be? When Mike Shrieve left Santana in 1975, he was keen to develop a new band project and so got together with guitarist Pat Thrall and jazz keyboard player Todd Cochran, also known as Bayete.

Shrieve met Thrall when he collaborated with Steve Winwood and the Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta on the ‘Go’ albums. Bayete, an established recording artist in the jazz field, had the songwriting skills, and it was his influence that would prove to be the greatest in terms of the band’s direction. The fourth member of the band was bassist Doni Harvey.

They were signed by Island Records and moved from San Francisco to London, for sessions at Olympic Studios in Barnes with engineer Keith Harwood.

The result was a collection of songs high on melody and set to a background of synthesiser swirls, wild guitar solos and with Shrieve’s dramatic flourishes propelling the whole thing. The balance of the rock and funk elements was pitched just right, making the album accessible and appealing, potentially, to a wide audience. It certainly deserved more recognition than it gained.
The problems came when they tried to reproduce it live. Automatic Man played in Europe and the US in 1976, but by all accounts they struggled to capture the magic of the album. Since much of its dynamic was due to the layered synth lines and the various effects applied to the guitar and drums, it’s easy to see how they might have found it hard to reproduce.

Expectations had been high though; the record was good and the album artwork had been expensive to produce, so Island were looking to recoup. But the single only just scraped into the top 100 and the album failed to capture a wide enough audience. I suppose the music didn't fit with rock radio or the R'n'B stations.

The band, minus Shrieve, moved back to the US. Bayete and Thrall recruited a new rhythm section and recorded a second album, Visitors, which lacked the panache of the first album. Shrieve was the big name in the band and without his distinctive drumming style, there was even less interest in the second album. Automatic Man disbanded in 1978.

Mike Shrieve said: “I put a lot into Automatic Man. We had great players, Pat Thrall on guitar, Bayete, a genius on keyboards, David Rice on bass at first, then Doni Harvey. We rehearsed every single day at my house in San Francisco. I bought instruments for everybody, my girlfriend at the time, Maria Ysmael, cooked wonderful dinners every single night.

"We moved to London to do the record, which we were really excited about. We just couldn’t seem to get it together live, though. We had a falling out and the rest of the band moved to LA and made another record without me, and that was that.”

Todd Cochran's career continued to thrive as he wrote and performed with artists including Aretha Franklin and Peter Gabriel. Pat Thrall went on to work in the fusion field with musicians including Narada Michael Walden and Alphonso Johnson. He joined the Pat Travers Band and later worked with Glenn Hughes.

Doni Harvey continued to play sessions and for a time was a member of the fusion band Nova. I saw Nova play a support slot at the Hammersmith Odeon around 1978. Harvey obviously modelled himself on Jimi (right down to the spelling of his name – and see back cover photo of Automatic Man) and on this night he was pulling all the Jimi shapes and moves. It was remarkable but also faintly ridiculous.
In 2004, a remastered version of Automatic Man was released by Lemon Records. Tom Karr of Progressive World gave the disc a five star rating in his review:  "People have a strong desire, an urge, to categorise things, to put them in boxes. In the sense of Automatic Man fitting into a pre-conceived sub-genre of progressive rock, then no, they are not a prog band.

"But they are much, much more than any label given them could describe. This San Francisco band had strong elements of spacey synthesizer driven progressive. Definitely. They could just as well be described as a hard rocking funk band as well. Both are true. Neither is accurate. No group I can think of so defies categorisation as does Automatic Man."

I’ll stick with Cosmic Funk Prog.


The track 'Geni-Geni' from the album Automatic Man, 1976