Eric Jaeger
From:
Oakland, California, USA
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Posted 25 Nov 2008 7:40 am |
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I thought I'd cross-post this from the Music section on the forum, since it's really more about Sneaky than Chris.
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Something finally convinced Chris Hillman to go on the record with his story of the FBB. I can't say that it really breaks any new ground, except that its existence makes the point that there were several people critical to the FBB, and they weren't all named "Gram Parsons".
There are a couple of sections of interest to steelers. But there are several also specific to Sneaky Pete and his style. One of my favorites:
"A true eccentric, Kleinow was nonetheless the key ingredient needed to bring Hillman and Parsons's grand musical concept to fruition. He had a distinctive sound and playing style all his own. As the lone lead instrumentalist in the first incarnation of the Burrito Brothers, he broke new ground for pedal-steel players everywhere. 'He added so much to the sound,' says [Chris] Ethridge. 'It was unbelievable. He could sound like a whole symphony orchestra on that little one-neck steel. He could do everything. You couldn't really call Sneaky a country player.'
Part of what made Kleinow's playing so innovative was his own unique approach to the instrument, as Bernie Leadon notes. 'In steel guitar there is this sixth tuning which is actually a C chord but with a sixth in it. That was the kind of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys tuning. Pete had an eight string Fender cable pull steel. By the time the Burritos began this E9 tuning had started and there were a lot of country guys, especially in Bakersfield, playing that tuning. In the key of E the dominant chord is B, so instead of tuning the sixth tuning to C6, Pete tuned down to B6, which allowed him to play easily in the key of E with everyone else. So he played E stylings out of a B6 tuning with weird cable pulls that nobody else did. It was all ass backwards.'
Kleinow's choice of instrument had a futher effect of his playing. 'Pete played a steel that barely had pedals on it, from the pre-pedal era,' Leadon notes. He was one of the guys who invented ways of doing that. So he invented his own tuning, his own cable pulls, and then played the B in the key of E, having to think backward. There was no way you could wrap you brain around what his brain was doing. He was coming at it from an impossible angle. It's so unusual. So you had to laugh sometimes. It was like watching an acrobat. "How the hell did he do that? How did he make that leap from there to here?"'
Another of Kleinow's innovations was his use of fuzz tone. 'I had used a fuzz tone for a long time before that first Burritos album,' he later recalled. 'I had been piling up gadgets I could get that would work with the steel guitar. I started hanging outboard equipment on my steel way before that even when I was playing the clubs. I tried to be as innovative as possible. I always felt the steel guitar was an instrument that could be very repetitive and boring so I wanted to get as much variety into the sound as possible.' Finally, according to Al Perkins, who would later replace Kleinow in the Burritos, 'One other thing that made Sneaky's sound unique was his use of an echo unit to compensate for the low sustain factor plus his use of a large diameter steel bar.'"
All told, not a bad book, with some good stories.
-eric |
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