Dowd:
It was going on to Easter of 1967. By now I had
established, I was country cou-, city cousin to the country boys down in
Memphis. The Stax tour was inevitable. Most of the people who were on Stax
had not played more than a 500-mile radius of Memphis. And the thought of
them going to Europe was like, wow. Most of them were scared of the thought
of flying across the ocean. They'd never -- they flied from Memphis to
Atlanta, but that was over ground, never mind flying over an ocean, that was
terrifying. Okay. The clamor was that the people on the Continent, not just
Great Britain, but the people on the entire Continent were dying to see
them. They had never seen or been in touch with a variety of seven or eight
artists. They'd seen one artist here do a show and this and that, but they'd
never seen a whole review come to them of all these historic American
artists. When the Stax Revue arrived in Europe, the ones to greet them were
the Beatles. Because they wanted to meet them and touch them and shake their
hands. I mean they were guests of the Beatles for dinner and for reception
and a press party. And the English press of course loved it. Because here
they are with their favorite money making product for Great Britain at the
time and here they are welcoming the great American soul artists, the Stax
Revue. They were there, the Stax Revue, was in London, if I'm not mistaken
for at least four, maybe as many as five days before the first show. Uh, the
first show was scheduled for -- there were two shows in London, scheduled
for a theater called Finnsbury Park. You now know it as the Rainbow. But it
was scheduled for Finnsbury, and Finnsbury had been used sparingly since
World War II, maybe once a year or something like that. And when the Stax
show was booked for these two nights in Finnsbury, it was sold out like in
ten minutes time. It was gone, full, and I guess it might have held 1500,
2000 people something like that, and it was a typical old music house type
theater with a balcony across the back. And I was there and asked to record
them at Finnsbury and then follow them into Paris and record them, as well
as being like the big brother for them, because I'd been to England many
times and I could front for them. The same thing in Paris, I could speak
French and I could introduce them to people in Paris so that they wouldn't
be scared. Because they were very reserved and very shy. I started recording
in Finnsbury Park, and all of a sudden something went wrong with the drums
and I came running upstairs to look on stage to see had a microphone fallen
or what had happened? And I looked, and here's Al Jackson, and when I'm
looking at him from the wings and, and trying to motion to him, he points to
his drum and there's a hole in the snare drum this big. He, the first time
he hit the doggone thing, the stick went through the head, so now he's
playing the backbeat -- on the tom-tom, the whole show, okay? And I just
looked and I gaped, and while I'm looking at Al, all of a sudden I look at
Duck, and Duck, who's usually so cool, Duck is standing there, and he's
creeping over to Steve as he's playing, and Steve is playing with his eyes
closed, and Duck is going, everything but kick Steve, and he's saying, Steve
-- and I wonder what the hell is he doing? Finally, he gets Steve's
attention, and Steve looks, and all of a sudden the two of them are staring
like out into the audience, but they're not looking into the audience,
they're like looking up here, and Steve is going towards stage left, and
Duck is going towards stage right, and I'm wondering what's going on? And I
look out and I got scared. From the time of the downbeat and they hadn't
finished going into -- the show never stopped. When one band, when the band
would finish a number, they would vamp for like ten or 15 seconds, the horns
would come on and do a number, then on would come the next artist. The band
never stopped the entire show. Here they are finishing the first number and
Steve and Duck are looking in the audience, and here's the balcony
undulating, literally, I'm telling you, you could see it with the naked eye,
it was moving ten to 15 inches up and down, with the people up there
pounding, and here's this cloud of dust because this place hadn't been
vacuumed since World War II, and here's this cloud of dust and you were
waiting for the plaster and the balcony to come down in a crash and the two
of them are looking for stage left and right -- get me outta here.
I was called into Memphis on short notice for a weekend. Uh,
the band and the people in Stax Records had put out albums heretofore
assembling cuts from various recording sessions. They had Otis Redding, a
major hit artist on their label now, who had two days, and they wanted to
make an album in two days time. So they asked if I would come down and
assist them, because I could expedite things, my communication with the
band, my communication with Otis, etc., etc. I flew in from a Friday, we
recorded, excuse me, I flew in on a Thursday night. We recorded all day
Friday, we recorded all day Saturday. Sunday, we could only try to repair
one or two things or make another cut on one of the songs we'd already
recorded, because Otis had to leave like at one or two o'clock. He had a gig
that afternoon or earlier in that evening in another city. So we did the
album literally in two days and a couple of hours. It was the first time I
ever met Phil Walden, who was Otis's manager, who had just been discharged
from three years in the military, serving as a lieutenant and as a military
police officer in Germany. And he came in, because Otis had become a hit
while Phil was gone. He came in and he said, man, I love the way you handle
that man, I love the way the recording went, and Otis and Phil, everybody
was happy. And Phil said, man, I just, have you ever had anything like this
before? And I remember saying to Phil, and Phil reminded me of it years
later, I said to Phil, I've had this experience, this man is in charge of
what he's doing, he knows what he's doing, he knows what he wants done
around him. It's reminiscent of Ray Charles and Bobby Darrin, who were two
of the most take-charge people that I knew in the studio. And he's right in
that category.