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\nContinued from Part Four<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n
Friend Sound \u2014 <\/strong>Joyride <\/strong><\/em>The group\u2019s next project was a wholly unexpected musical left turn. \u201cIt must have been the drugs,\u201d Phil laughs. Not done as part of the two-album deal for RCA, it was an experiment. \u201cWe brought the tapes to Terry Melcher; he was considering releasing it on his Equinox label,\u201d Phil recalls. \u201cBut he decided it wasn\u2019t commercial enough.\u201d It\u2019s easy to hear why: credited to Friend Sound, Joyride<\/em> is an excursion in musique<\/em> concr\u00e8te <\/em>influenced by Cage, Stockhausen, Zappa\u2026and hallucinogenic substances. \u201cIt\u2019s a part of our body of work that I\u2019m very proud of,\u201d says Phil. In contrast with the year taken to record Brotherhood<\/em>, \u201cWe did that album in about three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt started out as a free-for-all jam session with some friends,\u201d Phil recalls. \u201cBut then Drake and I got a vision of where we wanted to go with it. Because of our assertiveness and our dominance over the project, the friends that we brought in started to feel, \u2018Well, this is a Drake-and-Phil deal.\u2019\u201d That approach bore creative fruit, but it would soon lead to the band splintering. The record was cut at Valentine Recording, and the studio bill went unpaid until Drake and Phil got some cash from RCA. \u201cDon Nelson sold Joyride<\/em> to RCA for twenty-five hundred bucks,\u201d Phil recalls.<\/p>\n \t\u201cThe client that had been at Valentine right before us was Frank Zappa,\u201d Phil says. \u201cZappa\u2019s music was a direction we were trying to take this Friend Sound album, putting our own spin on it. So Ed Valentine said, \u2018You guys want to do something crazy? Let me play you what we just did with Frank Zappa.\u2019 He played us some masters [possibly Uncle Meat<\/em>], and they were almost symphonic, orchestral.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe reason Ken Dunbar and those cats were in on it,\u201d Phil says, \u201cis that some of those guys played with Nooney Rickett; we were always big fans. Nooney Rickett did dance steps that we incorporated into the Raiders\u2019 choreography.\u201d Phil describes the network of players and friends as a \u201cboys\u2019 club.\u201d Other players included Davey Burke from the Standells and Chris Etheridge, later of the Flying Burrito Brothers.<\/p>\n \tThe Joyride<\/em> title track is a one-chord jam with spoken words floating in and out of the mix. Ron Collins\u2019 celestial organ sounds similar to the textures Rick Wright was using on Pink Floyd\u2019s A Saucerful of Secrets<\/em> around the same time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Phil recalls the circumstances leading up to the \u201cChildhood\u2019s End\u201d track. \u201cI had inherited a lot of portable recording gear from my brother, who had recently died in Vietnam. And I loved to do remote recordings of things. I was building a swimming pool, and a concrete\/gunite mixer was parked in front of my house.\u201d When the machine was pumping, \u201cit had this perfect rhythm. So I set up the recorder close to the truck, and scraped a shovel onto the sidewalk in time with the beat.\u201d True to the vibe of the era, Phil and Smitty \u201cjammed with the concrete truck.\u201d An outtake snippet from one of Drake\u2019s 1966 solo sessions is tagged onto the short track, which explains why the rhythm section of Jim Gordon and Jerry Cole is listed on the song\u2019s credits.<\/p>\n \tPhil recalls that the sessions for the ethereal \u201cLove Sketch\u201d made them crazy. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have a beat; it started to sound like a tape loop. Guys would come in the studio and get a contact high just from hearing it.\u201d Even after putting the track on the Friend Sound album, they weren\u2019t quite done with it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/friend_sound_joyride.jpg\")
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