go get us a bottle of champagne, and bring back some cups. That’s when he told the boys, “You guys are terrific. I like what you are doing and I’d like to produce your first album and see if I can get you hooked up with MCA.” And of course, right after that the plane went down. An interesting story. Hatchet was playing


cles, and they’d tape it to the microphone stands, and the band would be sucking on them all night. She called up after the third day and said “I think we are going to have a problem. The boys are get- ting $1250 for the week, and they’ve already drank about $1500 worth of alcohol.” I said “What?!” (Laughs) I told her they have to have enough money to get to the next gig. I said, I guess this is the last time they play your bar, huh? She said “NO!” She said business had increased three-fold while Hatchet was there, and as a mat- ter of fact, she wanted to see when she could get them back! I told her we needed to figure out some way they could have 300-400 dollars to get to the next gig. It ended up being a real solid mar- ket for the band. The Hatchet boys were down in Daytona


playing on a pool deck. I talked to Ronnie Van Zant, and asked him to come and listen to them and tell me what he thought. So, he came down with Dean Kilpatrick, and he and I are sitting on the side of the pool with our feet in the water and the band is playing on the other side. They went into “Gator Country.” That one line comes up, “I been down to Alabama, ain’t a whole lot to see. Skynyrd says it’s a real sweet home but it ain’t nothing to me.” Ronnie looks at me and says, “What, did you call me down here to embarrass me?” I said “No! It’s like when Neil wrote ‘South- ern Man’ and you responded.” Well, he laughed about it. Then when they finished, he told Dean,


in Clarksville, Tennessee, and on the other side of the river was the 101st Airbourne. I had some- body coming in from MCA Records. It was a guy who had just been hired as head of A & R. So, I drove about 50 miles to Nashville and picked him up and brought him back. Everybody was onstage ready to go and I asked Mike the roadie where Danny Joe was. He said he was out in the truck. I said “Go get him! It’s time to go.” Now, the whole front of the place was glass, so everyone could see. The roadie opened up the back of the truck and there was Danny, getting head! This girl was just going at it. Everybody in the place just howled! The record company guy says “What’s going on here?’ I said are you kidding? What are you, a puritan? This is rock and roll! (Laughs) The band played really well that night and we had a date at Pinocchio’s the next evening. So, in the morning, I got them up. There was this place called Duff’s smorgasbord. All you can eat. It cost $2.50 a head. So, I am walking the band in and this girl says “Y’all are Lynyrd Skynyrd, aren’t you?” We said “No, no, we’re Molly Hatchet.” She says, “No, no you’re not! Your Lynyrd Skynyrd!” She said “If you’ll sign this slip here, we’ll pay for your lunch.” So, I asked the guys what they wanted to do. They said “Great. We’ll tell Ronnie thank you for lunch, and he won’t know what the hell we’re talking about!” They said they could hardly wait to tell Ronnie about it. On the way out, there was a record store, and we stopped in. They had the new Skynyrd album, Street Sur- vivors, but the girl said they couldn’t sell them yet. The band was going to be playing close by soon at Austin Peay State University, and they were going to promote it. The guys finally talked her into opening up the package to let us see the cover, with the flames on it and all. Somebody remarked that that was pretty weird. She opened one up and asked what song we wanted to hear. We said it didn’t matter, just drop the needle. She did, and it was “That Smell.” On the way to Look- out Mountain we were listening to the radio, and


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91