Chords for Lynyrd Skynyrd: What Really Happened at the Muscle Shoals Recordings - Told by The Swampers

Hi, this is Joe Chambers.
Welcome to Musicians Hall of Fame backstage the vault series
Today's clip comes from an interview we did with the swampers down at Muscle Shoals sound back in 2008 in
This interview we talked to Jimmy Johnson Roger Hawkins and David Hood
About a subject a lot of people are not familiar about which is that Leonard Skinner recorded their first sessions at Muscle Shoals sound
Things didn't quite work out
But they came back together in the end the album was released with two new singles added to it after the horrific plane crash happened
It's called Leonard Skinner first and last
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Hope you enjoy it the swampers
Leonard Skinner
My understanding is it they you or y'all found them first and then
That album didn't come out until you couldn't get a deal with him or something and it came out after
Al Cooper had done his thing with him.
Alan Walden came to us from Macon, Georgia and
He had of course he and his brother Phil had worked with Otis Redding as a manager
And after Otis's death, they were looking for different ones and they found that all my brothers and then
Alan came up with Skinner.
Well Phil didn't want nothing to do with them
and so Alan took him himself and brought him up here and
Presented to our new public production company and
Barry played the product for me and I love the two [Bb] twinning guitars and I love Ronnie's voice and
And I thought I wanted [B] to do and so we
We [N] started cutting them on weekends at our second studio and
and to when I could get them in here on weekends we cut here and
most time here and
So we cut the first album here
before Al Cooper or anybody and
It took us two years to do it and we had a total of 17 songs that we recorded and and
We when we started pitching it around we pitched I [Bb] think original
Thing we was full 16 [N] or 17 cuts
all the labels couldn't handle the length three three and a half minutes was the
Longest for a single they would tolerate.
So what happened with the
when you sent it initially to
where the tape was
Turned around well
Actually
_ _ _ _ What a math comfort
Either Alan or Phil they hurt us.
It was Alan.
We [E] put it on a seven inch
_ _ [Eb] That time I think it was two track
quarter inch and
[N] Somehow Alan got the tape turned around
His plan on the backside
So when he was carried in to play it to the A&R people he was playing the backside of the tape
And you know, that sounds awful
Well, of course they got turned down every time he pulled the tape out nobody would touch it and
and
She can imagine right and then I think the few places that maybe before it turned around
they turned it down because the songs were too long and
in a couple places have asked me to read if I they love free bird and they said would I
Edit free bird down to under three minutes and I refused because it was like a [Gm] nine minute song
I said there's no way [Em] that would [E] totally disrupt the whole thing of Leonard Skindred if you
Cut that song down [N] and you know, I just said no and so
everybody passed
But most of people heard the backside of the tape and they were it was called it sounded so terrible
Muffled and nobody knew it until two years later
I had gotten a call from Ronnie cussing me out because he heard it too
And he thought of course it was the worst sound he ever had and he was right and I didn't know what had happened
And so I told him I said if you don't like that mix
You don't like Leonard Skinner and I slammed the phone didn't talk to him for two years
And so we just had a real falling out
So music is and then Ronnie calls me one night two years later and they're in the studio working with Al Cooper
And Al Cooper wanted to hear one of our cuts off of our albums
Well, they stuck the real on Rodney Mills of the engineer over in Atlanta, and he immediately recognized what was wrong
So he said hold it pop hit stop flipped it over hit play said the speakers almost came out of the wall
And I mean and Ronnie was completely destroyed that you know [E] that he wanted to kill Allen
and
Good thing he wasn't there and
Eat his words a little bit
and so he calls me right while they're in the control room and
and Ronnie's crying and
Asked me to forgive him and I said man
Done deal.
I said I did I said, I'm sorry all this happened, but I [N] said I didn't know that it happened
He told me about flipping it and so it just made me and him both feel a lot better
and so and then
Later on when they put out first and the last after the crash
We
We got back together again in the summer when they were off tour and we were redoing parts of
Which became the first 11 songs now the first and last which was their retrospect album.
So and
and so
and [Gm] then later on around 1998 that put out a CD of
Whole muscle show 17 songs and it's Kyle Skinner's first
_ [Eb] _ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
_ [D] _ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _