Basic HTML Version
24
winter
|
spr ing
“The Heavies” outside Abbey Road Studios in London’s St. John’s Wood area
would later tell me he had dreaded the experience on stage, but conceded
that it had been a real “confidence and morale booster.” For David and
Jesse, that’s what Mainstage is all about.
Back on Abbey Road
Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios, where George Martin and the Beatles
collaborated on several albums, is not just a recording area. It’s a huge
storage space for rock and roll relics. Several instruments are set aside and
stacked and look as though they’ve been untouched for decades. Against
one wall sits the Steinway & Sons piano used by Paul McCartney for many
songs, including “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and another piano, upon which
the final chord of “A Day in the Life” was played. Most of the ivory on
the middle keys has been worn off, but
the piano still produces the same loose,
tinny sound that comes from the
shellac coated on the hammers.
“There’s Beatle DNA all
over this piano,” said Jesse
while tapping the keys.
Footsteps away, Mike was still dithering, unconvinced he could play the
guitar. “Come on Mike, you rock,” David prodded. “Just play like you
always have in Santa Barbara.” Upstairs in the sound booth, studio engineer
Chris Bolster
, who was part of the team that remixed and engineered the
Beatles’ “Love” album, was looking on and waiting. Mike punched out a
couple of riffs, but shook his head again. “I just don’t know how to play
the guitar, I guess,” he grumbled. He labored through, later summoning 20
seconds of manic but crisp heroics, a solo that brought to mind the best of
Lynyrd Skynyrd. David ripped into laughter: “Are you kidding me? What’s
crazy, Mike, is you don’t realize how freaking good that is.”
Later on, Vince was laying the vocal tracks to “Change is Coming
Around,” a pure rock song that evoked the works of all-American
contemporaries like the Black Crowes and Hootie & the Blowfish. As
Bolster polished the sound and fused the tracks together, the Heavies
sat and listened in the same place the Beatles might have sat many years
before. It was, as Mike would later reflect, “the realization of a dream.”
Along With The Ride
The following was gleaned from Ride member Don Fergusson’s notes and
remembrances of his Mainstage Dreams Tour, taken in June of this year:
“I can’t remember when I’ve had so little sleep, so many amazing
experiences back-to-back, and so much fun,” said
Don Fergusson
. “I kept
asking, ‘How does it get better than this?’”
Fergusson, former president and chairman of paint manufacturer
Rust-Oleum and now a Montecito-based life coach, attended the
(Clockwise,
from left, standing)
Jon Payne, Stacey
Fergusson, Don
Fergusson, Dave
Hekhouse, and
Jesse Benenati are
“The Ride”