TALES FROM THE OTHER SIDE

Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen toured the UK in June. Spencer Leigh met them in Chester.

This feature appeared in Country Music People in September, 2005.

“Doesn’t anybody have a job around here?” asked Chris Hillman when I arrived at Telford’s Warehouse in Chester one sunny afternoon in June. It was the day of the Chester races and he was surprised to find it was being held on a Tuesday. “I don’t have a job myself,” he added, “I say I’m retired and then things happen.”

“We’re retired but we just don’t know it yet,” laughed his musical partner, Herb Pedersen.

“Well, the industry has retired us and put us to pasture. If it stops tomorrow, I’m happy. I’m enjoying it right now, more than ever really.”

And so two musicians with even more remarkable pedigrees than the horses came to Chester. Chris Hillman was with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers and Herb Pedersen with the Dillards and Country Gazette. Together they founded the very successful 80s group, the Desert Rose Band. They were both born in California in 1944 – Pedersen in Berkeley and Hillman in Los Angeles, but how long had they known each other? “Since 1963,” said Pedersen, “and we met at the Troubadour which is a club in Los Angeles. We were both working in different groups and there was a lot of folk music and bluegrass going on. Chris was raised in southern California and me in the north in the Bay area, but we both grew up listening to the same music. As well as folk and bluegrass, I also heard some jazz and rock’n’roll.”

“I can think back to those golden years of rock’n’roll around ’55, ’56, but I didn’t have any intention of playing it then,” said Hillman, “Making music didn’t even cross my mind. I started to listen to folk music in 1960 and then I wanted to play the guitar.”

Pedersen took up the banjo as his main instrument, although, oddly enough, he only played guitar at Telford’s Warehouse. “I loved the sound of it and when I heard Earl Scruggs, I only wanted to do that. There was already a mandolin player and a guitar player in the band I wanted to join, so the banjo was the natural choice. It can be very rhythmic and the back-up role is really important when the mandolin is taking a solo.”

Now, after years of being in a cultural backwater, bluegrass music is to the fore, thanks to O Brother, Where Art Thou? “Well, that soundtrack was so well put together that it was better than the movie,” said Chris Hillman, “and the movie was very good. It created a ripple in the market, sure, but I don’t think that bluegrass is ever going to be a mass selling market. It’s a very healthy scene at the moment with lots of great young kids coming up.”

Herb Pedersen added, “Chris is right. The film has helped not only bluegrass but acoustic music in general. The audience has settled back down now and it is pretty much as it was for the last 20 years. It will never have a huge appeal, but it has one great thing going for it. Fans of bluegrass stay that way forever. People of our age teach our children and hopefully they’ll take it up too. It is a very intricate music and you have to have a good sense of timing to play it well. A lot of young bands play it lighting fast, but we don’t play that fast anymore.”

They both laughed. “Actually, I do Little Birdie faster now,” said Chris, “I used to play it for my daughter when she was a little girl. If I’d played it fast, it would have scared her.”

I asked Chris how he came to join a rock’n’roll band, the Byrds, in 1964. “Well, the Byrds weren’t rock’n’rollers. We came out of folk music and although we did eventually plug in and become the Byrds, we had no idea what we were going to do. We started out copying the Beatles and ended up developing our own sound. Their manager felt that I would be a good addition.”

As a Liverpudlian, I naturally think that the Byrds owe their sound on Mr Tambourine Man to the Searchers’ Needles And Pins. “We knew about them and we listened to them, sure, and we certainly owe the Searchers something. They were a harmony group and it was similar to what we were doing but Roger McGuinn took the 12-string to a giant level of proficiency, way beyond George Harrison and the Searchers. I don’t think that Needles And Pins particularly influenced Mr Tambourine Man, but if you listen to Gene Clark’s song, I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better, you can hear that we stole something from When You Walk In The Room. That opening guitar riff is the same.”

Did Chris have any idea that they were making a record with Mr Tambourine Man that would live on and on? “No idea at all. We had to be talked into it by our manager and we were resisting at first, but I was just the bass player and had no say-so at that point. I was very shy then and Roger, Gene and David Crosby were making all the major decisions. Our manager was right and that record stands up today. It is a beautiful song and Bob Dylan was peaking with his poetic verses. We’re doing it tonight. Herb and I do it the way Bob wrote it: it had more of a two-four country feel than the Byrds. They did it as a four-four feel, more of a pop sound which worked very well. I give Roger full credit for that arrangement.”

I pointed out that the new single was Chris’ version of the Byrds’ Eight Miles High.” He was astonished. “Are you sure? I haven’t been a singles artist for 12 years. Since the Desert Rose Band, in fact.” “Yes,” I said, pulling it out of my bag, “I’ve brought it along for you to sign. It’s a radio single and so I don’t know if it’s in the shops.” Chris commented, “Herb and I had a good time with the song but it’s not meant to be a comparison with the Byrds. It’s just another take on the song, this time from an acoustic standpoint. I thought the Byrds peaked musically with Eight Miles High.” “A psychedelic classic,” I retorted. “No, no, I thought we were going into more of a jazz place with that single.”

“Eight Miles High is also on the new album, The Other Side,” said Chris, “Have you seen it?” I said I hadn’t. “I’d like to know where they are. They were meant to arrive in Sheffield last night and they’re still not here today.” Similarly, the new 24-track compilation CD, Cosmic Fireworks, from the support act, Michael Weston King, was missing. Michael used to be with the Good Sons but they broke up “with hatred and resentment”. What went wrong? “The bass player was getting the girls.”

To me the answer to the question, “What was the first country-rock record?” is Elvis Presley with Blue Moon Of Kentucky, but country-rock, as we know it, is often attributed to the Byrds’ 1968 album, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo. However, two years earlier Chris wrote Time Between for the band. “Yeah, I’d go on the chopping block and say that was the first country-rock record. It was the first time I had written lyrics and we brought in Clarence White who became a member of the Byrds down the road. It was a good little song and the Desert Road Band recut it in the late 80s and did it even better. Herb and I still do it on stage, so that song’s had a long life.”

And how much of So You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star was tongue in cheek. “All of it! We were taking a mild jibe of the music business as a business. The record business was going from a small cottage industry into a corporate monster where they would put things together in the hope of selling them. We were a little jaded by then. That record was fun to do and it was a wonderful record.”

Meanwhile, Herb Pedersen had joined another rock band with country leanings, the Dillards. “I was replacing Doug Dillard in late ’67. They were in the middle of making Wheatstraw Suite for the folks at Elektra, so I had a lot on my plate right away. The Dillards had a great act because Mitch Jayne was very funny. He would be constantly working at his typewriter writing comedy bits and it was very effective. As a result, we would play places that normal bluegrass bands wouldn’t be able to get into like the Hungry i in San Francisco. The Kingston Trio, the Smothers Brothers, Bill Cosby and Bud and Travis, who were a great folk duo, were all at the Hungry i.”

Herb didn’t stay with the Dillards. “No, I left after my second album with them, Copperfields because I was getting a lot of studio work. My favourite track with the Dillards is Reason To Believe, which still sounds pretty good. I never met Tim Hardin but his songs like Reason To Believe were very very good. Chris played bass with him for a time.”

Chris Hillman: “Yeah, I knew him in 1965 and I did some rehearsals where he would play piano and I would play bass but I never played on his records. He was a very physical, very aggressive guy and that was because he was an ex-marine and he had all that Marine Corps, tough guy stuff going. He was a tough guy but I got on great with him and I liked him a lot. He became a victim of excess living.”

Herb Pedersen played banjo or guitar and sang harmony on hundreds of records, so did he take everything that was going? “Oh no, I didn’t swing at every pitch, but fortunately there were a lot of calls back then. There were some sessions that I didn’t care to be involved with and I’m glad I was selective as I can stand by my work. I worked on Linda Ronstadt’s first album which was called Hand Sewn, Home Grown. She was part of that Troubadour scene and everybody in town thought she was fabulous, a great singer.”

Chris Hillman interrupts, “Do you know how many records Herb has sung on? He has made everybody sound good - James Taylor, Kenny Rogers, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne. Herb is the man to call – he’s made Vic Damone sound good!.” More laughter.

Herb Pedersen: “Thanks for that testimonial, pal.”

Chris Hillman: “It’s true, you make us all sound better. Herb has a beautiful voice and he has the ability to blend with whoever is the lead singer. Emmylou didn’t have a hit until he sang If I Could Only Win Your Love with her.”

Herb laughed. “They were great sessions and most of the players came from Elvis’ band. We did the sessions at Emmy’s house because Brian Ahern, who was producing her, had a remote truck. I did some US dates with her and I’d like to have done more. Emmy’s done a lot of harmony singing herself. I can always tell when she is on a record as she is such a stylist and not really a blender. It was real difficult for her, Dolly and Linda when they were making the Trio album and I was brought in to help them put it together.”

When Gram Parsons joined the Byrds for Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, Chris Hillman found he had a new songwriting partner. “It developed that way but at that point Graham was a pretty normal kid. He was focused, ambitious and disciplined and he was good to work with. We wrote some great songs together.”

In 1968 Hillman and Parsons founded the Flying Burrito Brothers, which sounded like the Byrds if they had truly gone country. “Sort of, but the Burritos were a lot more traditional. All in all, these groups are like one big, incestuous family.”

What about some of their songs? Say, Wheels. “Graham had a slight motorcycle accident and he limped home with his BSA, an English bike, as he couldn’t ride it. We wrote this song Wheels: (sings) ‘We all have wheels to take ourselves away.’ It’s a funny little song but there is some relevance to it. There are some interesting innuendoes in that song but I would leave them for the listeners to decipher. I never tell anybody what a song’s about. My new record company asked me to describe each song for some publicity, but I would never do that. It’s like a painter having to tell a viewer what the paintings are about. The listeners can work it out for themselves!”

I wondered if the current big US film, Sin City, owed something to the Burritos and if Chris Hillman was collecting royalties. “Sadly, no, as I wouldn’t mind a percentage of a Tarantino film. That title had been coined for Las Vegas long before we used it. It comes from the fifties, I think.”

Herb worked with Gram Parsons on his solo albums: “I may have done some overdubs on GP, I can’t really remember, but I was certainly on Grevious Angel. I remember him showing up late for the first session. We were at Wally Heider’s studio in Los Angeles and he wandered in with Emmylou and that was the first time I had done any recording with him face to face. We had 12 tunes to record and very little time to record them. He had some talent and had his moments here and there, but I don’t think he was a great talent. There were a lot of great singers who contributed a lot more to country music as we know it. He got caught up in the whole glitz and glamour of the Hollywood scene.”

Indeed. Herb has more praise for John Denver. “Oh, playing with John Denver was really good. I came on a UK tour with him in 1977 and he was a great guy who treated the band well and that doesn’t always happen. He decided to tour with the recording band that he’d used in the studio and there was Hal Blaine, Emory Gordy, James Burton and myself. We were all used to being punctual and professional and he’d never had a band like that. It was a new experience for him! But you know, at the end of the day, the bands can melt into each other and it’s the vocals that really sell it. Neil Diamond doesn’t sound like Kenny Rogers who doesn’t sound like James Taylor.”

And how did Chris and Herb come to form the Desert Rose Band? Herb Pedersen: “Chris and I were working on a Dan Fogelberg record, High Country Snows, and he wanted us to go out with him and be a part of his show. Chris met John Jorgenson at Disneyland who was there with the Thunder Mountain Boys and John was a marvellous player, playing mandolin, guitar and all kinds of stuff. So John, Chris, Bill Bryson and myself went out as an acoustic quartet and opened for Dan on a six week tour. Chris and John thought of making it an electric band and added Jay Dee Maness and Steve Duncan, and that was the start of the Desert Rose Band.”

Chris Hillman: “I know the Desert Rose Band doesn’t mean much in the UK but that is because we were marketed badly. We also had trouble in the States as we had No.l singles on the radio and yet the product wasn’t in the shops. We would play huge shows with Reba McEntire, the Judds and the Oak Ridge Boys, and the next day the people couldn’t find our records. We had a good run though, eight years of really successful stuff. All the bands I’ve been in have been good and had great moments, but the Desert Rose Band was just about perfect as far as musicianship, singing and playing went. It was a nice experience and it’s the only band that stopped without any huge animosity or fighting. We just said, ‘That’s enough, we’re done.’”

The duo were to include a bluegrass version of the Desert Rose Band’s Love Reunited in their set and I wondered what had prompted them to work together again. Herb Pedersen: “I started working with Chris when he was doing his solo albums on Sugar Hill and it worked well. We have known each other so long that we think the same way about vocal harmony and phrasing. Chris is very consistent as both as a live singer and in the studio too.”

Chris Hillman: “The album, The Other Side, is mostly new songs, but we did a recut of Eight Miles High and also It Doesn’t Matter, which is a song that I wrote with Stephen Stills for Manassas. I was in England when we made that record: it was torture as I didn’t see the sun for three months!. There are also a couple of Desert Rose songs that we did for fun, but 10 of the songs are new.”

Are you writing all the time? “No, only when I need to. As I say, I’m retired.” But what if you had an idea today? “I would write it down but I don’t know whether I would go through with it. I don’t have the same work ethic or ambition. Maybe I should have said ‘I’m lazy’. I like touring though and I love the intimacy of small places like this: it reminds me of when I started in little coffee houses. I can relate to the audiences better. Herb and I play a lot of little theatres in States, perhaps 1,000 seaters. If gets more than that, then for what we do, things get a little lost.”

It was time for Chris and Herb to do their soundcheck and their harmonies sounded wonderful on I Hear A Voice Callin’ Me with Herb’s high tenor complementing Chris’ awesome voice. Not that I could hear too much of them as I was talking to Michael Weston King. “I have some new songs and I’m recording at the end of June at the Charlatans’ studio in Manchester. Chris and Herb have already contributed to one of the tracks and so I am very excited about having them on the record. They played great too. I have just come back from Germany with Alan Cook, who plays pedal steel, mandolin and dobro for me. We did a week there and the whole set was virtually all new material. It’s a change from the stuff I’ve played over and over again. Of course it’s not like Chris who must have played Eight Miles High a zillion times. I have to do that Tim Hardin’65 song everywhere I go as I’m always been asked for it. I don’t mind but it’s always more exciting to be playing new songs and getting the feedback. I’ve got a new song called The Last Hurrah which possibly will be the album title and it seems to be striking a chord with people. I always liked the phrase, and maybe the song is about a last throw of the dice in the music industry.”

Michael was loving the tour. “Chris and I have worked together before. This trip is just the UK and Ireland and then just after Christmas, they are coming back for Spain, Scandinavia and Holland, possibly Italy. I’ve got a UK tour of my own in September and it looks like I will be touring with Jimmy Webb in November which will be great. I’ve not met him yet but his music has meant a great deal to me over the years. Sometimes it isn’t good to meet your heroes but Chris doesn’t disappoint and nor did Townes. There is no star trip with Chris and Herb. I just asked them to play on my record and they did.”

Telford’s Warehouse is a warehouse with a restaurant on the top floor and a bar and stage area at ground level. It can seat 120 people and it is very pleasant to be so close to the stage. The room has low beams so T-Bone Burnett couldn’t work there, although Michael Weston King performed one of his songs, Anytime At All. The canal along the side of the warehouse intrigues me – there is no fencing and I can imagine a good few drunks stumbling in.

Michael Weston King with Alan Cook opened the show. Sitting down and hunched over his guitar, Michael began with Tim Hardin’s Black Sheep Boy which skilfully wove itself into Tim Hardin ’65. He did a song about playing in Bootle in his early years, Broken, and some familiar material from the Good Sons’ catalogue. The Last Hurrah was impressive: Michael saw an old man shuffling to the corner for a coffee and likened this to his own career. Indeed, if a theme runs through Michael Weston King’s work, it is his obsession with being a performer. I Fall Behind describes how he hasn’t had the financial success of some former schoolfriends, and Always The Bridesmaid, Never The Bride is about not making the front cover of the NME. “We believed every pretentious word that Paul Morley wrote,” he said, “and then when we were 35, we became miserable, dark, depressing, singer/songwriters.”

At one stage, Michael said to the engineer, “A little less of my loud-mouthed voice please.” It’s a joke but it rang true as he did lambaste the audience with his intense songs. As he comes from Merseyside, I would guess that Pete Wylie has been an influence. His mellow songs tend to be the best. Michael closed his set with a telling tribute to Townes Van Zandt, Lay Me Down. “I was watching a video of his funeral and Guy Clark and Steve Earle got up to do songs which was great. The first half hour was wonderful but it went on for two and a half hours and by then anyone who could hold a tune was getting up. I wrote the song after watching it.”

After a short interval, Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen took the stage for a fantastic 23-song set. Their harmonies were wonderful, almost like brothers. Mostly, Chris played a mandolin and I was surprised that his clumpy fingers had such dexterity around the small fretboard. They opened with a 200 year old song about a burial, Weeping Willow, and many of their songs such as Cross Roads and The Water Is Wide (with Michael and Alan) were about death and redemption. When they do I’m Gonna Make Heaven My Home Sweet Home, Chris fluffed the ending. “I missed that as I couldn’t see the dots,” he said, and they repeated the final verse, doing it perfectly. “Sorry about that. You’re paying good money to watch me learn songs.”

The set was beautifully balanced. There was an exquisite version of Bill Monroe’s A Good Woman’s Love, Pete Seeger’s Turn, Turn, Turn and from the Burritos’ days, Christine’s Tune (Devil In Disguise). There were new songs from The Other Side (True He’s Gone, Driftin’) and one even newer, A Heart Always True. They performed Tried So Hard To Please: “Gene Clark always wrote great songs and I worked on most of his projects. Herb also did this one with Country Gazette.” Herb was given lead vocals on four songs including his own touching song about being on the road, Wait A Minute.

The audience loved the show and their applause sounded like 500. Maybe next time, the ticket touts will at Telford’s Warehouse rather than the racetrack. Chris and Herb were very content with the evening and I hope they don’t retire as such high-quality bluegrass and acoustic music is hard to come by. But, I wondered, could the Byrds (Hillman, McGuinn, Crosby) and an assortment of others ever get back together? “No, that’s competely dead,” said Chris Hillman. “Not a chance.”