the direction of the club’s door. Our view for the rest of the show was unobstructed.


Share your best memories of the Capri- corn Picnics. The picnics started out as a employee office party at Phil’s lake house. But, my best mem- ory was the one at Lakeside Park when Presi- dent Jimmy Carter attended. He along with other celebrities; Bette Middler, Don King, Richard Prior, Ed Bradley, Andy Warhol danced to the music of our bands. I’d helped organize the party and was happy just to sit and watch it all go down. My friends and I sat on the sidelines as people scrambled to be seen or photographed with Jimmy Carter stir- ring up clouds of dust as they followed his en- tourage. But, most people just had fun, ate BBQ, drank beer, smoked weed and hoped to get the attention of celebrates the press or the bands.


Tell me about how Elvin Bishop went to number one with “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” Frank was playing tapes of Elvin Bishop’s new album and his favorite track was “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”. After hearing it for a couple of days I liked it too, but told him if we were to make it the single it needed a dif- ferent arrangement. So, Frank handed me his cassette and on my duel tape deck I cut a drum part in the middle and made it the opening and a few other minor cuts that I knew would make it a better fit with radio for- mats. We sent it to the producer to master it and we released the Elvin Bishop single and with Micky Thomas on vocals, it went off like a rocket, radio loved it and it rapidly went to number one! By that time Capricorn had became a


drug orgy that took a toll on Phil, he had trou- ble keeping up with daily business and began a downward spiral into self-destruction. Phil was always high on coke, screaming like “Tony Montana” at Warner Brothers people,


picking fights with promoters and local peo- ple. Frank and I tried the best we could to cover Phil’s misadventures but we couldn’t restrain him and he destroyed most of the valued connections Frank and I had estab- lished. I’d seen other people like Phil lose control of their lives on drugs, one by one they’d crash and burn, usually end up broke with no friends and wonder what happened. It was sad to watch Phil progressively destroy the company and instead of being a leader be- came an embarrassment to the great and tal- ented people who had helped built it. After what I saw happening inside


Capricorn I knew that it was a sinking ship, and before it took me down too I made plans to abandon ship. During the height of success at Capricorn, with Elvin at the top of the charts and after four years of promoting a dozen or so gold and platinum records for Capricorn, I arranged to leave Frank and Phil on the best of terms and went home to plan my next adventure.


Yeah, it’s pretty much well known that there were a lot of drugs going around at the time. I know Frank and Phil were both avid drinkers. Did you and them get into the big cocaine boom? I had heard that after the success came, Frank and Phil would start the day doing lines instead of coffee. I never liked coke, it made me anxious and I was already so high-strung that it bummed me out. My drug of choice was ice-cold beer with a little cannabis. But Phil fell in love with coke, he’d start the day with a few lines to get going then at lunch several vodka martinis. After lunch it was more coke to counter the vodka haze then in the afternoon it was a few joints to mellow out and listen to new music. At 5 o’clock Phil would break out a bottle of J&B and we meet in his office to talk over the day’s events. After the J&B was gone and night fell it was more coke to straighten up for the drive home. Next day same thing…


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