ND: But a song like “Tuesday’s Gone” sounds more like it could have been a Let It Bleed track than on some southern rock album. Something in Skynyrd transcended the southern rock tag.
AK: I didn’t think of them as southern rock when they initially mesmerized me in Atlanta. They were a unique band in many ways and were great at arranging, which is usually the weak link in many bands I have worked with, but they were genius arrangers. Unbelievable how good they were. That particular track, “Tuesday’s Gone”, just screamed Mick Jagger to me when I heard it, so I guess there was an element of me bringing some of that to it, but they also had some great things in the song that weren’t Stones-like at all — some cool little riffs and things.
ND: Did you have any idea at the time you were making those records that they would be considered classic or would be so successful?
AK: Well, let me put it this way: When I first heard “Freebird”, I just thought that every male rock ‘n’ roll youngster in America would hear that record, put their head down and charge into the most immediate wall. [laughs] I thought it was just irresistible to not go berserk when you heard that record. I know it is a cliche now, but if you think back to when you first heard it…in that context it is pretty fucking headbanging.
ND: Is it true that they composed all of their lead guitar parts?
AK: Yes, and the only band I ever worked with that composed all their guitar leads before the session. No one does that!
ND: They wanted them to sound the same every night live too, right?
AK: That’s correct, and I tell you, they were incredible arrangers. Seriously. For example, after we recorded the first album and it was at the manufacturing stage, Ronnie called me from Jacksonville and said they had a new song and he wanted to come up to Atlanta and just record the one song, and he wanted to get it down right then “before it matures,” is how he put it. I thought it was weird, but I thought if he was that excited about it, I probably would be too, so they came up and they set up and played it for me. And the song was “Sweet Home Alabama”!
When they first played it for me, I made them stop and play me the intro a second time, because I wanted to make sure they did it exactly the same — because as a guitar player, that riff just blew me away. You know they sound like a bunch of seasoned studio guys already and their first album isn’t even out yet; they don’t sound like kids, I can tell you that. So we went straight into the studio the next day and cut it, and as usual they had the arrangement completely down. I added the girl background vocals later, but that is what Ronnie Van Zant wanted, to have it in the can in the original spirit right after they worked it up. So I made sure we did that.
Over the years I have seen in print that they cut it for the first album but I didn’t let them put it on there, which I find almost libelous. [laughs] If you were a record producer and heard that song at that time, you would’ve had to have been a moron to not know it was going to be a hit. And I loved it from the first time I heard that opening lick.
IV. ‘HOLY MACKEREL, WHAT AM I DOING PLAYING A PIANO?!’
ND: Earlier you mentioned the Elvis ’50s TV appearances. Did they have a big effect on you as a teen that wanted to rock?
AK: Oh yeah! That was mind-blowing! I had heard “Heartbreak Hotel” on the radio and had imagined a black guy with a pork-pie hat and cigarette dangling from his mouth, sitting at the piano and singing. That is what I got from that record. So you can imagine the look on my face when I saw who was really doing that. I went, “Holy mackerel, what am I doing playing a piano?!” So I took up the guitar like everybody else because of Elvis and I guess invariably because of Scotty Moore.
ND: Interesting, because I think that your distinct keyboard sound became the catalyst to that classic “Electric Dylan” era in the same way that Scotty’s guitar did for Elvis on the Sun Sessions. Both seem to act as anchors and at the same time set the music free somehow, and it is impossible to imagine either sound happening without them.
AK: I haven’t heard that before, but one of the things that they did have in common is both sessions were basically jams, with no written music. Also there was no premeditation for a certain sound or anything, and everybody at the Highway 61 session was of course raised on that Sun stuff.
ND: So two of the pivotal moments in rock are basically like the greatest accidents of all time?
AK: Yeah, that’s true.
ND: Did you ever meet Presley?
AK: Yes, once, in the early ’60s, when I was 16 or 17, because I worked as a songwriter at a publishing company that was owned by a guy who wrote a lot of Elvis songs, named Aaron Schroeder. So Elvis actually came up to the office one day to see Aaron, and we all knew he was coming. I was like, “I’m going to shake his hand and I don’t care what happens, even if I get beat up by his bodyguards, I don’t care, I got to shake his hand.” I was a huge Elvis freak. So he did come and he was with a couple of his guys and I said, “Please, I’ve got to shake your hand, I’m a gigantic fan” — something that he had heard a million times by then. And he shook my hand and I even did the “I’m never going to wash my hand again bit” [laughs]. But he was very cool and nice about it.
