Joe Vitale Remembers

Transcribed from a recent talk he gave before a live audience. Hi everyone. It was great meeting you all and I was very pleased to meet up with you. I have to admit that I really don't remember many details, other than I have very few memories of that time in my life. I'm addressing Sweaty Teddy here. I'll try to keep it brief, but that's not going to be possible. I'll address Ted and half the Right Wing BS Guitar. Forums like this are for Guitar stuff, some appreciate escaping from the politics, and most subscribe here for what the title sez. Ted Nugent, is a fantastic guitar player, though his heyday is long past. His Politics were included, so I'll offer the reasons that they are BS. No one stays that polific for 50 years. Tooth, Fang and Claw era to the live Album had the quality mixed with the bombastic in proportions which allowed his most memorable work. Then his ego took over, and a very small handful of work has been memorable since. Seen him 6 times, 70s & 80's. No desire to hear the political ramblings since. Just cant understand how anybody can whitewash their past to now back up their present shtick ( could have said narrative, Shtick is more accurate.) I go back far enough to recall the bragging about the (very) young pussy he said he was mowing down, so the line kept moving and all the gals got something to take home from him, before Mom picked them up, and he moseyed on down to San Antone to take the virginity of another long line of panting and heaving young lasses. As he said then, it was his only vice, as he did no drugs, & no drinking. He hunted with a rifle then, used a bow to shoot an arrow into a target to open the show, then Tarzaned on a rope for a while. Never much mentioned Boars, just deer, and the other (little) vice of Safaris to kill and stuff every animal known, which he said was his decor of choice. Conservation, was the big evil then,as there was plenty of everything to shoot. As I understood him, as it was his birthright to kill and stuff what he wanted, and he was a better shot than Jed Clampitt. (Well, that was the wrong thing to say, the last 3 shots Jed made , resulted in several million dollars worth of oil, and the other 2 were long distance trick shots, involving mirrors to aim over his shoulder, and a carom. On the mark each of those. No scope, Revolutionary era musket. He licked his finger, put it to the wind, aimed 2 seconds and shot. Long distance, low velocity shots will be moved some distance by the wind. Ted's last 3 were from a Howitzer, .60 caliber maybe. Big Scope. Straight shot to a Elephant. Jed shot varmints, a deer if he could. Howitzers require precious little wind accomodation. Aimed straight up, you likely get space debris. Yes, they were hits too. But Ted had an editor, and didn't nail every take. So, those 3 could heve been Takes 4, 27, and 19 spliced together. You can't be shootin' over and over in Beverly Hills. Jed's last 2- were direct hits. There should be little doubt there. Never mind, if Ted woulda tried to get in Ellie Mae Clampitts jeans, he'd be swingin' with one arm in a cast. Not even close. Jed knew he was gonna go flying, when he was 3, & grabbed his newly gifted musket to shoot a varmint. He aimed, and held it steady, squeezed the trigger. His Granny found him onconscious in a ball by the cabin, brushed him off. He couldnt much talk, just pointed. Grannny picked him up and walked the 1/4 mile where he was pointing. Eventually, she stopped at the creek to get some water, and then expected to clean his booty up, but found him clean as a whistle, even though he couldnt hear until the next Sunday. Ahead, she found the racoon, perfectly shot, entrails removed, head blown off and half skinned. From one shot She remarked that the shot was pretty decent. Jed couldnt hear a word she said. Back to the creek drank some more, filled her bucket, and lil Jed walked the rest of the way. He reckoned that his next shot should be from further away from the cabin, to allow for the kick to keep him from banging against it. The recoil is a bitch to a 3 yr. old. He was proud he didnt shit in his britches, and enjoyed breakfast, as Granny explained lil Jedediah had continued in the Clampitt tradition of putting food on the table.And at 2 years and 4 months, had done it at a near record young age. Ted, is awesome, but no Jed Clampitt. Yes, smarter than Jethro, but he did get more yrs at school than that Double Naught Spy. The Self proclaimed Great White Hunter, the character he was in the Great White Buffalo, had transcended, in the space of 5 or 6 albums into the arrogant greatest slayer of pussy & beast on the planet. He needed no Derek St. Holmes, he needed no band- he could entertain with a Gibson Guitar, a wall of amps and a few buddies. This guy could not be more wrong! What a lot of people don't seem to remember is just how much of an asshole Jethro was as a person, and if he was capable of having a conversation on any topic with anyone in a band that wasn't an instrument or pedal. He once made "an effort" to talk with the band I used to be in. He didn't even like music, even though he was probably the greatest rock and roll musician of his generation. His ego was insane. My old friend, who used to hang out with him and I on many occasions, talked about one time when they were in their teens and they actually talked at all. The guy used to be so full of himself and have an incredibly annoying habit of talking out loud while he was playing. I remember an instance where he talked about something I had said to him, and a few days later he said, "I got nothing, and you got nothing, and I'm gonna take your name and you're gonna end up in nothing!" I was so pissed. What a great ego. And what a complete asshole, too. I have no respect for his musical legacy, nor any desire to pretend to know a great deal about the history of his music and it's creation. But I'd be interested in knowing what other bands other posters can remember with whom Jethro once had a conversation about anything. I know a very few bands that met him for a brief moment, but not in any band that I was in. I've never even talked with him, as I was with a few other guys in his last band, "The Jethro Tull." But the only time I ever talked with him was when I met him when he was hanging out with his old girlfriend, Jane, at the time. We got to talking and I asked him about some music he had recorded with her and his own career, and he didn't really know much about his own music so I didn't talk about it too much. That's not too unusual of him to get confused and lose track of the thread. I've met plenty of people who say that they had no idea who I was when they talked to me, but they remembered what I said and thought I was one of the guys they had talked to recently. He was an extremely friendly guy who loved the Beatles and all things British and was a big jazz fan, so he'd always know if the person he was talking to were a Jethro Tull member because he'd mention their name. He liked George Harrison, but he was a big fan of all the other Beatles (and other Beatles' songs). I'd be interested in knowing what other bands other posters can remember with whom Jethro once had a conversation about anything. I know a very few bands that met him for a brief moment, but not in any band that I was in. I was in the band "Dry Bones" in the late '70s. We met him one time at the Blue Room in NYC. We were going there after a show to pick up another drummer who had just flown in to town. When we got there, the place was packed, and it seemed as if he hadn't gone home yet. We were lucky enough to meet him and ask him to sign a guitar. He was very polite, and he signed our strings for us and said something about how the guitar was like the one his own brother had given him years ago when he had just begun to play. He signed it "John." We had a chance to thank him, and he took a picture of us, and then he went back to his dressing room. He was very friendly and warm to us, but that was the only time I had ever met him. I've only met him once after that in public at an Alligator Farm Concert, which was a free concert he gave in the late '70s. I remember he was sitting near the front of the stage watching the concert from a table. I don't know if any band met him. I know I never went to the studio with him, but I went to the studio a few times with him. This was in the early 80's. He and I would come into the studio. He would always sit near the front of the booth, sometimes on a couch. He would look at me and see what the hell I was doing. I was writing songs in the studio and he would look at me and say, "Oh wow. That's pretty cool." He would look at me and get a kind of grin on his face. Then he would look at me and say, "Where's my guitar?" and I would tell him I would find it and get back to him. He then would turn to the guitar player and say, "What do you think of that?" I would walk back into the studio and be thinking how can this man really be so nice? It was then that I decided to write the song The Man. I knew when he asked me, he wasn't asking for one song, he was asking for a whole album. So it was right after our last tour, (I was the roadie for his tour, and yes it was in the Pacific Northwest). It was after we did a two week European tour, that I went to see him in his office in LA and I told him that we need to do a full album. He was talking about how he was going to go to New Orleans and record a New Orleans style album. I told him that New Orleans was what we should do. He said that he would take me to this recording studio in New Orleans, I would come back with a demo and he would listen to it. He would let me know what he thought, and then we could discuss the next steps. That was the first time I ever thought that I was in this band for a reason. It didn't happen for a reason, it just happened and it was destiny. It was after our European tour. We played in Germany, England, and Poland. But then it was time for the European tour to end, and what are we going to do? We were flying to Florida to go see Alice Cooper and were going to spend two days in the studio, recording for the single. I asked him, "Who are we playing with?" He said, "I don't know." We never worked that out. So we flew into Florida, and we had no tour. We had two days in the studio. Then we were flown to Europe again to play for an army-sponsored show. We had no tour. Then it was over and time for the American tour. It was then that he decided, "Let's call my manager and see if he can get us some time in the studio." We were going to do a tour in the summer and this record would be a single and we'd use that time in the studio to record some other songs for the new album. I remember he called him and that was the first time I remember he said, "We're not going to do a tour this summer." **B ARIN:** When they called up and said, "We have time for a few days in the studio to do the song," the first thing I thought was, "Oh my God, the timing is wrong!" For the previous three months we had been rehearsing and touring the world. We hadn't had much time together at all. We had barely been together in a month. But the thing that really helped with "Thriller" is that Michael had an incredible team around him. He knew he could trust them. With me it was always, "Okay, Michael wants to do this. So we're going to do this." His father had died not long before, and I think he was looking for a bit of peace and quiet. I know he was looking to get away from the press and from the studio and the tours, because he just wanted to do something that was a little bit more personal. He was at my place and we worked on the song for a couple of days and we really had a really good time with that. You can hear it in the song. I think, looking back, that's the first time we really worked together as a songwriting team. There was a lot of chemistry between us. That song also had such a fantastic arrangement. That's something Michael always knew how to do. When you hear the music on the _Thriller_ album, it's all fantastic. But at the time, it was a very complicated arrangement. The song had to be edited down to fit the space of a song on an album. Then he added all the other overdubs, the horns, the strings, the backing vocals, the rap vocals, everything. We have to thank the engineers, because he recorded it in such an amazing way and they kept finding new sounds and new sounds that he wanted us to use. It's a phenomenal track. But I think what really sold the song was that we knew what we were doing. I think Michael, in a lot of his music, could be very good at knowing what he wanted to do. We knew what we were doing and we knew what he wanted. As with all the best songwriters, his melodies were fantastic. I think he would have written it again if he had the chance to do a whole album like that again. But I don't think that was the way Michael wanted it. Because there were so many overdubs and there was so much of it, it would have taken a very long time to learn all that and put it together. As it was, he was able to complete _Thriller_ by putting a lot of songs together and getting them down on tape in six or seven days. We would rehearse in the afternoon, then we would get home in the evening, do the last bit of vocals, and make the song ready for the next day. So the process would start at 4 a.m. in the morning. If we did eight songs, we would start at 4 a.m. We would then run through it all the next day and make the arrangements perfect. We did the last few songs after that, on the last day of recording. We still had to run down to Studio B to do some more overdubs. That was in mid-May. It took about three weeks to do all the vocals, and we were very happy to be done. It was hard work, but I really enjoyed it. It was a very enjoyable experience. I was pleased when the song became a number-one hit. I think Michael really enjoyed recording it. It was the last one. I think it made him very happy that _Thriller_ did so well, and there were so many awards, so many honors. We were so proud that we did such a great record. I remember we did the _Thriller_ album the first time, and people were saying, 'Oh, Michael Jackson, you're not going to put your name on a record and give it away. You must be a rich man or a king!' But we did. When you're recording a song, it's not important whether you're famous or not. There was only one way of making a record, and that's by the will of the musicians. And we all wanted it to be a real contribution, because it meant a lot to us that so many people listened to it. I hope the songs were interesting and good, and that's why they were put on the album. When I first heard _Thriller_ , I thought I heard something different. It was like a big sound. And when I went to Europe I saw how many people were waiting for it. And I also saw that the girls in the audience were wearing tight clothes. I was worried that they were ready for it! [ _Laughs_.] But it was quite a funny thing. I didn't realise it at the time, but it was because the girls had been waiting for it all their lives, because Michael Jackson was really cool. He knew what he wanted to do. It was like, 'Why did I do all those other stuff? Why can't I just make a Michael Jackson album?' So when I heard the album, I was very happy.