Rossington Collins Band - Live

[cottonmike]

Cool. You guys know the history. For the record, Ed never actually had to get a heart transplant. He's managed to recover with healthy life changes and diet, and good Doc's.

Ed still has a website. Only, it's the "Unofficial Ed King Forum". Maybe the 4th or 5th incarnation of his web-forum history. There is a nice accumulation of stories, history, FAQ, ect.......Not allot of daily interaction any more but Ed is still there. If you ask a good question, he'll rise up and take up the discussion.

And, yes, he does love those Quebe Sisters.

http://www.edking.proboards.com/index.cgi

You'll have to join to get inside the forum, I think. It's very well moderated and a tight knit community of members who have been around a very long time, for the most part. It's always great to get new people and perspectives. Everyone is very respectful of each other, Ed, and the legacy of the band.

[jjiimm]

Originally Posted by Joe Robinson

Back to the topic. I saw The Rossington/Collins Band at the Santa Monica Civic sometime in the summer of 1980. It was a good show. Rossington and Collins in particular were tight and controlled in the best sense of that term.

During the encore (you know the song) the whole stage output went dead during the outro, so the band walked off, then the crew got it going, the band came back and tried it again, but again, once the outro got cooking, the stage power died again, and that was the show. I don't believe they played any LS songs beyond Freebird.

I was always a huge Allen Collins fan. I thought his songwriting was better and his songs seemed to have more groove (speaking about the LS catalogue).

I was very sad the day I heard that Allen Collins died.

I was at that concert with my younger brother, who doesn't remember being there. I'm getting to a point in my old life where I'm constantly saying to myself "I'm pretty sure I remember that such-and-such happened and that so-and-so was there, but if he/she can't remember it too, did it really happen?"

Thanks for the corroboration!

[DustyRhodesJr]

[QUOTE=cottonmike;11038177] For the record, Ed never actually had to get a heart transplant. He's managed to recover with healthy life changes and diet, and good Doc's.

{/QUOTE]


Glad to hear this, could have sworn I had read he did get the transplant.

Love the RCB ,they had some great music. Especially love the female
vocalists and the way they mesh with the band.

[mikeguy53]

I saw them at the Great Southern Music Hall in Orlando, can't remember what year, but it was billed as their first gig. I would imagine they probably played Jacksonville first but can't say. Artimis was there wandering around on crutches. They kicked ass. Freebird encore with sole spotlight on a bare microphone with a RVZ hat on the microphone. I remember Dale doing a great job on lead vocals.

[Rich_S]

I, too, was in a band that covered "Don't Misunderstand Me" around 1983.

Fond memory of that song: for a long time from the disco era into the early '80s, I could get a gig. There just wasn't much demand for rock bands around then. My town had one rock band, and I was friends with the brothers who played guitar in it. They were pretty good players and had a thriving local teaching business. "Rock Stars" in our little town. They were good friends, but I was always a bit jealous that they had a gig and I didn't.

Once I found a band, I told them one day that we were doing "Don't Misunderstand Me". Being southern rock fanatics, they said they had tried it but couldn't get it to sound right, and asked how I played it. I immendaitely tuned my E string down to D, and off I went. They (the two hot guitar teachers in town) were amazed. They'd never seen dropped-D tuning before. "How did you figure that out!?!", they said. I explained it was pretty obvious... the guitar was playing a low D that simply wasn't there on a normal guitar. That forced you to tune down, and once the guitar was in dropped-D, the whole song was a cinch.

Fun day, when I could teach the teachers a lil' sumpin.

[DRS]

Love AAA when it came out. Wore the record out.

[SteveGaines]

Sad story...

Summer of 1983...MTV is ruling the roost. Boy George and Culture Club is THE thing on radio. New Wave is taking over. There is a little hope with the release of ZZ Tops Eliminator.


Me and some friends of mine buy tickets to the old Memphis Cotton Carnival which is held on the Mid-South Fair grounds. Molly Hatchet and The Allen Collins Band. We are running late for the show when we hear..."WHISKEY BOTTLES AND BRAND NEW CARS"...
We take off in a slow jog and there is The Allen Collins Band. AC is dressed in his all white outfit he wore on the cover of "STREET SURVIVORS". It's the same band as R/C but Randall Hall has taken Gary's place and they have a lead singer named Jimmy Dougherty.

They played mostly LS songs that day. What a thrill it was to see ONE of my guitar heroes up close and personal. Allen strutted around that day and when they played Freebird during Billy's piano solo: He would point up at the heavens and smile... Here it is 1983 and Rock and Roll is basically DEAD right then...and I'm seeing one of my all time heroes for fair admission.

Later on Molly Hatchet takes the stage. They are doing the hits from their first couple of albums when I spot AC sitting in the wings looking on...Hatchet gets him to come out for a version of "CROSSROADS". Not long into the solo, there is no hiding it..."ALLEN IS WASTED". He starts jumping up and down in a monitor and kicks the thing off stage..SPLAT, it fell about 10 feet and busted on the pavement. After the song, he starts swinging his guitar around and almost hits the lead singer ( Jimmy Farrar) in the head..
Afterwards he goes back and takes his seat off stage...I kept staring at him and he looks DEAD at me. HUGE BLACK circles under his eyes. I smile and wave. He gives me the old "THUMBS UP" shot I've seen in many a picture and goes back to watching Hatchet.

Now in 1983 I was 21. Thought I knew EVERYTHING there was to know but like most people that age I didn't know what the WORLD was all about. But I knew one thing: This guy was HURTING and was self destructing. I told my friends going home: Man, it was like he is trying to kill himself he was so wasted. This was in the era BEFORE social media and we all didn't know after the release of the SECOND R/B album his wife Katy had collapsed at a movie theater while pregnant with their third child. Both she and the baby died. So this guy had gone from a few seconds back in 1977 from being in one of the top rock and roll bands in the world to NOTHING. Putting the R/C band together and seeing it blow up and Dale and Gary marry and split from the band. I can see now why the guy had problems..

January 1986 I heard that Allen had been in a terrible car crash. He supposedly was driving drunk and the wreck killed his female passenger. The crash paralyzed him from the waist down. He and Artimus Pyle were in the process of putting together Lynyrd Skynyrd II when this happened. Allen it seems had been DRINKING and had so many tickets he wasn't supposed to be driving but he bought he way out and paid off judges for years..

The saddest thing was at the Charlie Daniels Volunteer jam in 1987 when they wheeled Allen out in a wheelchair. As part of his plea deal with the prosecution, he had to tour with LS during the reunion tour and talk to the audience about the dangers of drinking ad driving.

January of 1990 my girlfriend was surfing the channels and there was a picture of Allen on MTV. He had just died of complications from pneumonia. He was just 37 years old.

"FLY ON FREE BIRD"

[mark norwine]

[QUOTE=DustyRhodesJr;15280240]

Originally Posted by cottonmike

For the record, Ed never actually had to get a heart transplant. He's managed to recover with healthy life changes and diet, and good Doc's.

{/QUOTE]


Glad to hear this, could have sworn I had read he did get the transplant.

This is the problem with dredging up old threads.

In July 2011 when Cottonmike wrote that thread, Ed had not (yet) had the transplant.

In Jan '12, he did have one..

[xjojox]

Originally Posted by cottonmike

He says, after almost 40 years, "Sweet Home Alabama" is still paying the rent. Call's himself the "Luckiest guitarist on earth". He was smart, and lawyered-up, and successfully laid legal claim to most of the music he created with the original band, 2-3 decades ago.

I suspect that Ed learned his lesson after getting no credit for co-writing "Incense and Peppermints" when he was with Strawberry Alarm Clock. He learned, as many do the hard way, that royalties trend towards the writers. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Good for Ed!

[SteveGaines]

Originally Posted by xjojox

I suspect that Ed learned his lesson after getting no credit for co-writing "Incense and Peppermints" when he was with Strawberry Alarm Clock. He learned, as many do the hard way, that royalties trend towards the writers. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Good for Ed!

Mention the song I & P.

[frankencat]

Love this thread. LS and RCB love it!

[Blessed Tone]

I saw them at the Cap Center in Landover, MD in 1981

RC Band (headliner)
38 Special (opener)
The NightHawks (opener)

Great show!!!

I got play Gary's LP in August 2012 !!! (my buddy is a tech on their crew)

[TTripp]

Man, that is cool.

[SteveGaines]

Originally Posted by Blessed Tone

I saw them at the Cap Center in Landover, MD in 1981

RC Band (headliner)
38 Special (opener)
The NightHawks (opener)

Great show!!!

I got play Gary's LP in August 2012 !!! (my buddy is a tech on their crew)

Isn't it?..."BERNICE" has been retired for sometime I believe.

[Dawg76]

Last time I saw it (Sept 2004), Berniece was in the R&R Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Rightfully so.

Feeling fortunate to have seen the orginal Skynyrd band (June '77), I did not see RCB, but very much enjoyed their records. I remember an article in People magazine around the time of RCB's first tour, referring to themselves as the "All-Scar Band".

Allen's post-crash story is especially tragic. Such a great talent, and after nearly having to have an arm amputated from plane crash injuries, he never got past even more personal tragedy and alcohol abuse. Dale said in an interview that he could never find any peace. I will remember him, at my second concert ever, nearly pulling of the trem bar on his Explorer at the end of FreeBird.