all the versions that were ever cut of the song and it's the best version for him.
“Song for Adam. “That was Chank. That’s Chank’s. That's a Chank Middleton production! (Laughter). I know Gregg was excited about cut- ting the song, but Chank really lobbied to get that song on the record.
Chank Middleton: When me and Gregg started living together in ’74, I didn't know that much about Jackson Browne. He was he was always singing this “Song for Adam,” but to me it sounded like a song he had written about him and Duane. Then about the sixth time I heard it, I asked, “Did you write this song?” and he said “No, this is a Jackson Browne song. He wrote it about a friend that died.” When we were putting songs together for Southern Blood, we were in LA. Don Was, me and Greggory. We met at breakfast that morning to go over the songs that Don had, and he had something like 17 songs, 18 songs. Greggory had about 8 or 9. We sit down at the table, they go through the songs and listen to them. Don had brought some really good songs to the table. Right before we got ready to wrap things up Don asked “Chank, what would you liked him to record on the new CD?” I told him “Song for Adam” and that’s how that song got on the CD.
NEXT KUDZOO December 20
AD DEADLINE December 16
Scott Sharrard: Chank was sitting in the room with us, almost literally holding Gregg’s hand on a stool while we cut it. Don Was is a master at reading the emotional architecture of a situation to get a performance out of it. Song For Adam was the last song cut for the record, it was the song that Gregg was the most reticent about singing because of the attachment to the story being associated to his brother. Also, because he really respects Jackson as a songwriter. He felt like it had a lot of words, and there were a lot of issues he had with the arrangement. For budget- ary reasons they had sent the horns and Mark Quiñones home, and after eight days in the stu- dio as a gang, where we all have this dynamic, we walk into the studio, and it's Ron Johnson, Steve Potts, Peter Levin and me. The air was out of the room man, this is only half the band, what are we doing today? And then Don Was set us up in a circle. He set the four of us up in a circle and put Gregg in the middle of it with a microphone. I gotta tell you, man, that was the most painful day of working in the studio that I have ever done. We worked on that song for several hours. Trying to get the arrangement and I can tell you as a picker, it's like I'm doing all the guitars on that track. I think Val McCallum did some at- mospheric delay guitar stuff on it, because when Jackson Browne put his vocal on it later, Val did some of that stuff to kind of shade Jackson's voice and play off all those acoustic parts. We spent several hours getting the basic take and the vocal live, then Gregg went home and I stayed for a few more hours doing all that guitar layering and it was crazy. It was a crazy day at the office man! I couldn't get that song out of my head for weeks.
Brennan Carley: It must have been super emotional. Scott Sharrard: It's interesting how he didn't get that last line. He thought he was singing guide vocals. Every vocal on that record that Gregg did is a live on the floor vocal. I don’t remember him overdubbing anything. He did the Low Country Blues mostly live, as a matter of fact, and I think those are some of his best vocals in his history of
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