tour buses was a neat way to do it.
JW Who named it the windbag? WP I don't know who exactly came up with that nickname but it was probably Red Dog or Butch. It was definitely the Windbag!
JW Tell us about the infamous Grover Lewis interview in Rolling Stone pub- lished around the time of Duane's un- timely death. WP We found out he was going to do a fea- ture on the band in Rolling Stone. Grover Lewis was well known back then because he was involved in doing the screenplay for the movie The Last Picture Show. In fact he had a small part in that movie. He was a guy with some southern roots from Texas. When we started out with the interviews we all felt pretty good about it. He was like there with his little note book taking stuff down and tak- ing the guys off to the side and talking to them individually. He was mostly observing the group.
about it I didn't feel that way. Also Grover Lewis made a big to do about drugs that I did- n't think was necessary. He took some per- sonal comments that we made as joking and wisecracks about each other and made it ap- pear that there was dissention within the band, which was not true. In general when he put this article on paper he painted some real negative connotations which I didn't care for. Also the article coming out at Duane's death was in poor taste.
Duane’s funeral.
JW Now, as I recall the majority of his interview was with you? WP Yeah. A lot of it was. He really made a point of everybody's southern accents. The whole slant of the thing was not a hatchet job, but it was really not a very positive piece in my opinion. I remember when it first came out someone said to me that I came off really well. But after I read it and really thought
JW Where were you when Duane died and how did you hear about it? WP Well, when the band had taken a break, they had told me that they were going to pay for me and my lady to go on a vacation to- gether which was typical of the band's gen- erosity. I had taken a plane to the Bahamas on a Friday. I had just gotten down there and checked in to the hotel and basically was get- ting ready to have dinner and do a little gam- bling. I got a call from Bunky Odom from Macon that Duane had been in a terrible acci- dent and that it was touch and go as to whether or not he would survive. And of course that put a damper on everything. I was just kind of in a fog there. A little later I got another call back that he had not survived. I immediately came back the next morning. Phil Walden and his wife had been in Bimini, which is a little island between Miami and the Bahamas. It was really hard to locate him there as far as phones and everything at that point. It was real primitive at that time down there. There were no hotels or anything there. Phil and his wife were just staying at a private residence. There was maybe only one phone on the island so it was really tough getting word to him. At any rate we both came back and hooked up in the Miami airport and then flew back to Atlanta and then drove down to Macon.
JW What was it like at Duane's fu- 33
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