As told to the Awizard list by Mark "Moogy" Klingman...
Part 5
5/17/99
[ From: (Name Deleted by Walter)
I don't appreciate being called a lair. My source for the "Something/Anything" drug references was Rick Derringer. Maybe the fact that Quaaludes were being done in the bathroom was to hide it from others---- like you, for instance. Just because you didn't see it, doesn't mean it didn't happen ]
Hey Steve,
You still got it wrong. Rick was mistaken, if he told you that TR popped Quaaludes during the "Hello, It's me" session (Rick's only S/A session). It's an impossibility. Whatever Rick Derringer may have told you, he did it in confidence, as a secret. So, now that you have violated his trust, you've done a double whammy -- betrayed one of the legends of Rock and Roll, and at the same time spread a story that is totally untrue about another legend of R &R!!!! Steve, baby, you ain't getting into Rock and Roll Heaven!!
[Anyway, I recorded the entire interview on tape, including the drug remarks, which he asked me not to use. I lied about none of it. If there is a falsehood in any of my statements, it was originated by Rick. I guess I should have never opened this cans of worms, because now I have had to betray a confidence just to save face, & prove I'm not lying.]
Rick has been one of my closest friends since years before he met Todd (who I introduced him to). Rick also loves to tell story. He could spend the nite 'til dawn filling your head with Rock and Roll trivia. During these story telling sessions, he could sometimes be mistaken in his facts. If, in fact, he told you that TR went to the bathroom to take downers during one of the live recording sessions for S/A, he slipped up. He was wrong. He asked you not to repeat this bull****, so why did you? Rick would never want his name used to smear Todd or any fellow musician with "drug" charges. That's a fact. It's also a fact I love Rick like a brother, so, don't besmirch this man in your McCarthy style finger pointing campaign.
Todd called me late on a Friday nite to set up and book a whole band with horns and background singers for the Sunday all day recording session. I had about 24 hours to get people to the session. Rick was one of the people I called but he had a scheduling conflict and could only stay for the first song. He only played on that one song on S/A. On that Sunday, we recorded three songs live to tape, without overdubs, for S/A. The first one was "Dust in the Wind". Rick played guitar on that one and then had to leave. If Rick saw TR taking Quaaludes, it would have to have been then. That means that TR would have been stoned on Quaaludes for the next 8 hours, recording his hit "Hello, It's Me", in a stupor. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury ------- does that song sound like a guy stoned on Quaaludes?? Todd also sang, engineered, arranged (with my help) and played piano on "Hello" and "You really left me sore", that day. It was a fruitful 12 hours.
So desperate was I for a guitarist, after Rick left, that I brought in my childhood friend, Robby Kolgale to play on the next two songs, including "Hello, It's Quaaludes".... I mean, "Hello, It's Me"! See!! You got me doing it!! Anyway, Robbie never did another recording session after that, in his life, but he was always proud that his only studio session had gotten into the top five.
Now, stop the madness.
Moogy
5/18/99
"Freak Parade" wasn't based on Varese or Grieg, but on Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". The way the slow, blues section comes back at the end as a big orchestral theme is based on the same idea in "Rhapsody in Blue". Nothing stolen from it, just structural inspiration. I wrote the music to that section and John Seigler and I wrote all the music. Seigler wrote the weird, funky, odd time section, that TR sings the verses over. We brought our music to him and a day or two later, he had written all the words and had come up with the very idea of "Freak Parade". Todd even insisted I sing one section solo - (the only lead vocal on the first Utopia album not by TR.... The section I sang solo went,
"In a world, full of freaks,
you can creep, you can crawl,
but the worlds biggest freak,
is the one with no balls".
As we got into performing it live, Todd and I would act out a kind of ballet, in the middle fight section..... playing dissonant noises on our instruments and with our bodies, making it feel like punches. Some nites those pantomime music fights in "Freak Parade" where TR and I really went at it.......... well, they were very therapeutic.
Moogy
?/?/?
Between 69 and 75, (when I constantly worked with him), I never saw TR take a pill, or do a line. .... ever! He only started smoking pot after I talked him into it. I turned him on to his first joint (I think). He was a real nerd. I was a genuine, pot smoking hippie, from age 16. TR was very straight 'til he got into pot. No drinking or pills. I think S/A was an album with some pot influence. LSD came later, in the Wizard A True Star thing. But I didn't turn him onto acid. Tripping with him was something to avoid cause he was my boss. Would you wanna trip with your boss?? While recording A Wizard we would watch the Watergate hearings on TV and smoke pot and make jokes. (secret sound, where we recorded wizard, was in my loft). If you think side 4 of S/A (or any early TR album) was done on Quaaludes, you gotta be downright crazy!! As for the inspiration for that 2 record set, Todd said to me one day, in the middle of recording it, "Moogy, I don't know what it is. But the songs are just pouring out of me and I can't stop it." Man, was that the truth!
Moogy
7/31/99
It's one of those six degrees of separation. I was quite close with James Taylor, at a very early point in his career. From the start of the flying machine, when James was 19 and I was a few years younger (about two years before I met Todd).... I was close friends with Joel O'Brien, the drummer in the flying machine, James on rhythm guitar, Danny Kortchmar on lead guitar. They played at the nightowl club on macdougal street in the village, for about a year. In 1967-68?I would see them play many nites and go back to Joel's house with him and James and hang out all nite while they shot heroin and I smoked a joint. (I never could stand needles or downs of any kind) Joel would play jazz records for me and James til dawn. we were the 3 musketeers,.... the young pothead and the two junkies. I had played in the Jimi Hendrix band a year earlier, when it was called Jimi James and the Blue flames a year earlier. This was right before he left for England and formed the Experience. My point being, that I recognized greatness, even had played in a band with greatness, and I knew James was great. He was extremely cool and homespun, and with his long hair, tall presence, and occasional goatee, I always thought he was the Second Coming of Christ. The fact that he had just gotten out of a mental hospital before becoming a member of the flying machine was pretty impressive in my book. And every last word out of his mouth was carefully thought out and cleverly spun in a soft and humble, country, intellectual way. And Joel and Kooch (Kortchmar) were also moonlighting, by playing with Carole King at the time. Doing all her demos.......So at the age of 17, I was already a veteran of the Jimi Hendrix band, and hanging close with JT and occasionally with Carole King (Joel, Kooch and James played on Tapestry, a few years later).... before any of them had made records!!!! (though Carole was a big songwriter since the 50's). So you might say that I was there at the birth of heavy metal and the singer-songwriter explosion. Anyway, when the Flying Machine broke up with James going into rehab and a mental hospital... I didn't see him for awhile. I was playing with a group called the Glitterhouse, that a lot of record companies were interested in. I met Paul Rothchild, and invited him to our loft to hear us play. I met him at a club or on a plane. I don't remember which. He was the producer of all the Doors records (which I personally couldn't stand), and other big artists like Paul Butterfield and many others.
Anyway, Rothchild was excited about the Glitter house and wanted to sign us. But eventually we went with Bob Crewe (producer of the Four Seasons) and his label Dynavoice. Cut to: James out of the hospital and rehab and hanging out at Joel's and looking for a record deal as a solo artist. I told him I could bring him to Electra and Paul Rothchild. So I called Paul and set up a meeting with the three of us. Me, James and Rothchild. James played many of the songs that would be on his apple album and Rothchild flipped for the songs! But staff producer at the biggest folk rock label in the country (elecktra), Paul Rothchild of the Doors fame, thought James had no future as an artist. He only wanted to have Tom Rush record a few of his songs. Rush did "Carolina in my Mind" and "Something in the way she moves" on his next album. Though Tom Rush was handsome, he was only a minor singer and stage presence, and James moved on to the Beatles and apple records. In my mind, the man who produced all the doors records made the biggest mistake of his life, when he passed on James Taylor and had Tom Rush do his tunes.!!!!!! But he was the man who produced the Doors and I hated the doors. Many people did at the time. Postscript: A few years later, when I was staying at TR's house in LA to form RUNT with Tommy Cosgrove and Stu Woods and ND smart, I took Todd to a James Taylor concert at the LA forum. Joel O'Brien on drums, Danny Kooch on guitar and Carole King on Piano. James was huge. "Sweet baby James" was the #1 album in the country and his picture was on the cover of Time magazine. This was about two or three years later. Todd hated James Taylor (jealously?) and had no interest in meeting him when we went backstage. I don't think anyone liked Todd's mod English look, and the vibes between them all were pretty cold with me in the middle trying to smooth things over. Kooch had liked the record "we gotta get you a woman" though and definitely liked meeting TR (Todd hated Kooches guitar playing).... so TR missed out on hanging with JT and Carole King and Kooch... while I would often go and hang with them, when I was with Joel.One final upshot would be that Ralph Schuckett was also playing with James Taylor and Carole King at the time, and as you know Ralph came east and joined Moogy and the Rythm Kings and that other band.........what was it called????? ah yes! Utopia.
Moogy