By Larry Schwartz
HE’S the surviving member of the original line-up. “I guess so, technically,” says Bill Payne, co-founder and keyboard player in Little Feat.
The California-based rock band founded in the late 1960s is known for its accomplished musicianship and eclectic approach, merging country, blues, jazz, and other genres.
Payne notes that guitarist Paul Barrere, bass player Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton joined Little Feat just a few years later; guitarist Fred Tackett “has also been there from the beginning, not with the band but certainly with the early guard of the group”.
However, it seems Payne might have been forced out of the band, if the ill-fated co-founder, lead singer and guitarist Lowell George — who wrote their best-known songs — had his way. George left Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention to form the group named after a remark about his feet. (“They were like a hobbits’, as wide as they were long,” Payne says).
Just days before he died of a heart attack, aged 34, in June 1979 while touring in support of a solo album, George told music writer Bill Flanagan that he planned to reform Little Feat without Payne and Barrere.
“Well, the feeling was somewhat mutual,” Payne says, “in the sense that by the time he left I said, ‘Lowell, I have had enough. Let’s move on. If you want to keep the band going, please do. But you can do it without me.’
“I think Paul and I were blamed for a while for having shut Lowell out of the process. Once the hysteria died down, I said, ‘Look at his solo record’, which took him close to five years to make. If we shut him out of the process, why are there so few Lowell George songs on Lowell George’s solo record?”
They completed their most famous album, 1979’s Down on the Farm, after George’s death and re-formed in the late 1980s. They set up their own label, Hot Tomato, and have released live and studio compilations of their work with George and in later years.
Drummer Gabe Ford, in his late 30s, took over after Richie Hayward died in 2009. “Gabe was Richie’s drum tech for 2½ years. His uncle is a guy named Robben Ford, who is a wonderful guitarist . . . I didn’t know the kid played drums. I waltzed into a sound check early one day and I said, ‘Who is that?’ “
George’s Willin’, Dixie Chicken and Fat Man in a Bathtub are among the favourites in the repertoire; as is Payne’s Oh Atlanta and Barrere’s now aptly titled Old Folks’ Boogie.
“We play it at people’s birthdays including our own,” 62-year old Montana-based Payne says. “It’s a great old song. So hopefully, we will be playing it down there.”
The Age, 21-Apr-2011
Larry Schwartz Writer 