Bang The Drum All Day: February 2020

I've been thinking of writing about the 1975 Warner Bros Music Show for a while.

Now would seem to be the ideal time, because I've just discovered a recording of the legendary concert at London's Rainbow Theatre, when Little Feat stole the show from headliners The Doobie Brothers.

For once, the legend doesn't lie; they really did blow the headliners off the stage!

To begin at the beginning, this sampler album (59p, how could I refuse?) pointed the way for me, in terms of new musical discoveries in 1975.

The back cover of the sampler

The Warner Bros Music Show was released to coincide with a European tour of the same name in January 1975. Each band - The Doobie Brothers, Graham Central Station, Little Feat, Montrose and Tower of Power - were given two tracks on the promo album. As a result of hearing this sampler I bought records by all of them. So well done Warners, you got me!

The 1975 tour included dates in Germany, France and the Netherlands, plus shows at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester and London's Rainbow Theatre.

On the last day of the UK tour, Sunday 19th January, two shows were scheduled. The afternoon show had The Doobie Brothers as the headline act, supported by Little Feat. In the evening, the support act was Graham Central Station.

History doesn't record how GCS fared, but Little Feat's exploits have become truly the stuff of legend.

Clearly, Little Feat were not unknown, because from the recording it's obvious the audience was in a state of deep excitement from the word go.

Appearing on the BBC's 'Old Grey Whistle Test' show, 1974

Their music had snuck into the UK through various means. I can remember hearing DJ Nicky Horne play Willin' and Dixie Chicken on his Capital Radio program, 'Your Mother Wouldn't Like It'.

The band were already a favourite of hipster music journalists and fellow musicians, including the Rolling Stones. Mick and Keith were at the Rainbow shows, as was Rod Stewart.

Little Feat's set from this time will be familiar to anyone who has heard the various bootlegs from their mid-70s concerts, such as Electrif Lycanthrope. Indeed, it was on the strength of that particular bootleg album that Little Feat's reputation had grown in the UK at this time.

The show started with a shout-out to Robert Palmer on his birthday. Lowell George had played on Palmer's first solo album, Sneakin' Sally Thru The Alley, alongside The Meters. And Palmer used Little Feat as his backing band on albums two and three (Pressure Drop and Some People Can Do What They Like).

George would often tell little stories between songs and for this gig he repeated the story, heard on one of the bootlegs, about meeting his hero, Howlin' Wolf.

Davey Johnstone & Elton John meet Lowell George backstage

It involved George asking Wolf to play a guitar he'd just bought. Wolf told him to fuck off.

As Little Feat's show drew to a climax with Tripe Face Boogie, the audience acclaim was unrelenting. Remember, this was the support band, you're not supposed to get this kind of adulation and show up the headliners.

Skunk plays the steely guitar

Called back for their usual encore of Willin' they enlisted Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter from the Doobie Brothers (and formerly Steely Dan) to play pedal steel guitar on the solo. As far as I know, this is the only time Skunk ever played with Little Feat.

Mick, Keith and Rod meet the Doobie Brothers backstage

And finishing with Teenage Nervous Breakdown, the crowd would not let them go. The stage announcer tried to tell the audience they were running to a tight schedule and there was no time for a second encore. The crowd went crazy - Boo! More!!

So the Feat came back on stage and played Wait Til The Shit Hits The Fan.

And that's the story of how Little Feat blew the Doobies off the stage at the Rainbow. It's all true folks...

Hear it for yourself here, with grateful thanks to PMH5001 for taping it on his Philips cassette recorder back in the day, digging it out recently and posting it on youtube last month.

On tour, Larry Graham jamming with the Doobie Brothers

His memory of the show is "It was hard on the Doobies (who were actually pretty good) being completely upstaged by Little Feat.

"I turned off the machine after a few seconds of Black Water, quite a few of the audience walked out at that point. After about three numbers the Doobies stopped, invited another round of applause for Little Feat and started again."

Here's the track listing for Little Feat's performance:

00:00:00 Intro/Dedication to Robert Palmer (birthday) and Howlin' Wolf
00:01:41 Apolitical Blues
00:05:17 Two Trains
00:09:54 Walkin' All Night
00:14:22 On Your Way Down
00:21:12 Spanish Moon
00:30:42 Fat Man In The Bathtub
00:36:33 Sailin' Shoes
00:41:13 Rock And Roll Doctor
00:45:16 Oh Atlanta
00:49:23 Cold, Cold, Cold
00:54:10 Dixie Chicken
01:01:54 Tripe Face Boogie
01:05:59 Bag Of Reds
01:07:01 Tripe Face Boogie
01:09:01 (Encore Applause)
01:10:49 Willin'
01:15:21 Teenage Nervous Breakdown
01:19:00 (Encore Applause)
01:22:24 The Fan
01:28:51 Intro Doobie Brothers
01:29:08 Black Water (The Doobie Brothers)

Footage of the Warner Bros tour is rare indeed, but there are a couple of very rough clips from the Paris show by Little Feat, playing Tripe Face Boogie and Willin'.

Tripe Face Boogie, live in Paris, January '75

About five years after buying the Warner Bros Music Show, I was working on Fleet Street in London. The record shop across the road from my office still had several copies of the album on sale. So I bought another one. I kept it in mint condition for years and continued to pay the first one to death. When I began playing vinyl again in this century, I put the mint album on the deck and it was just like being thrown back in time. What an amazing collection. I only wish I'd known about the tour sooner, I was too late onto that one.

Nonetheless, I got a musical education for just 59p.