Three Dog Night - Jimmy Greenspoon
What sort of unreleased recordings of Three Dog Night are there laying around somewhere?
Gosh! There's a few. A couple of them
made it onto the "Celebrate" thing (NOTE:
The CD is called Celebrate - The Three Dog Night Story 1965-1975 - T.W.)
. When we first did the Elton John songs - when we were in London and
Elton posed as a roadie to get in - he gave us a whole bunch of songs to
listen to, and essentially put a "freeze" on them, this was
before he got his record deal. He said, "You're the only group I
want doing my songs (NOTE: This
was after 3DN had released the Elton John/Bernie Taupin-composed
"Lady Samantha." - T.W.)."
So he gave us "Your Song," which we did, and he gave us
"Border Song" and somewhere there's about a ten-minute version
of "Take Me To The Pilot." And we never finished that - it's
somewhere in the tape archives.
There's a bunch of jams, there's a bunch of (alternate) takes of things
that never saw the light of day. There was a single version of
"Sunlight," the Jesse Colin Young song, that we did with
strings. We were going to have that as a single, but, for some reason,
we canned it. So there's a wonderful mix of "Sunlight" that
would be a great single. And later on, at a period that I like to call
the "dark period," the very, very last album ("American
Pastime") that was probably one step below the stuff that collects
under the toilet, we won't get into that. Anyway, we did a GREAT version
of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself."
| Really!?!
Yeah, and we put that in the can and instead released some disco fodder, and that album got to #150 (on the chart) and then sank like a stone and the group broke up. God knows where that is, but it's hidden somewhere in the vault, too. But there's a few that would be interesting to resurrect someday, when they're doing some compilations and stuff. |
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Will that ever happen?
I don't know. Every time they say there's gonna be a compilation or a boxed set they say they're gonna dig up stuff. But in order to do that and finish them they'd have to go in and do vocals. Like "All By Myself" didn't have a vocal on it, "Take Me To The Pilot" just had a rough vocal. So I think they'd like to get something that's already there and just remix it or whatever. Some of that stuff, the tapes are probably such bad quality that it would take so much to get them up to standard and then transfer them to computer. I was trying to put together some stuff, some outtakes and intros that I had done with the 'Dogs and all the sessions I'd done throughout the years. A lot of the stuff that Richie and Bill - our producers - had in the studio. And the process of taking the tapes and "baking" them and transferring them and then you gotta put them into Pro Tools (computer program) and then to a hard disc, you'd lose a lot and the tape might disintegrate ... So it's come a long way from the old days of two-track with a couple of room mikes. But, as far as the "hidden gems," I don't think they're going to dig up anything that's going to change the course of history.
Talk a little bit about the arrangements, and the interplay you had with the other guys in getting those things together.
No interplay; in fact, I erased all their parts and recorded everything myself ... No.
(Laughter) Of course you did it all!
The interplay was, we worked so well
together - the four of us, Michael, Floyd, Joe and I - we pretty much
knew what the other guys would do. That was one of the qualities that
was so good. We would sit down to do an arrangement and we'd just fall
into a groove and didn't step on anybody's toes. You can get so many
people together that are really good players, but they're all over each
other. Everyone soloing at the same time, and we didn't have that. We
had that ability to know when to play ... and in the very beginning we
had that thing when we were first getting together and it was "I
can play fast," and someone would think "I can play
FASTER," and after a while it was "Guess what, guys? LESS is
more."
It's like everyone disecting Alvin Lee's solo from Woodstock (NOTE:
A grab-bag of 50's classics titled "I'm Going Home" - T.W.)
and it was like "Oh! He's setting the fretboard on fire," but
I thought "Excuse me; can you pick any NOTES out of that whole
thing?" So, after awhile, we just had this ability to play off each
other know what we were going to do, and, as each album progressed, it
was like putting on a pair of well-worn shoes; we knew instinctively
what to do and what not to do. And everyone had equal parts in
contributing and the singers would come in and suggest things and vice
versa, so it was a very collaborative effort in getting to the final
product.
But the focus was always on the song itself.
Absolutely, and also taking a song that was just a b-side or a song by some unknown and taking it and making it our own, and of course we got totally chastised by the press or the critics. We'd just take the best material we could by unknown people and ... the critics forget that we were the first group to have a hit by John Hiatt and Nilsson and Elton John ... and Neil Young wrote "The Loner" for us. I was just reading in the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young book that THEY were the first to do a stadium tour in '74, when WE did that in '71. Hello! And how Stephen (Stills) thought "The Loner" was written with him in mind. No, he wrote it for Three Dog Night, but we won't tell you, Stephen.
But, Sinatra didn't write his songs, and Elvis didn't write his songs.
No, exactly. And that's the whole
thing, too, of why we'll never be inducted into the (Rock & Roll)
Hall Of Fame. Two people who induct people hate us, one of them I like
to call Jann "Weiner" and the other being Ahmet Ertegun,
president of Atlantic Records, because we didn't go with Atlantic, we
went with Dunhill because they had a better offer, and he hated us for
that.
That's fine, too, because those guys (critics) are probably doing Taco
Bells now, and we're still playing sold-out shows. There was this one
guy that just gave us a wonderful review in the Chicago Sun Times
and he thought we were the greatest thing since sliced bread, and called
us the greatest interpreters of anyone on this planet.
Well, that's nice.
Yeah, at least this guy got it.
But that was the point about Sinatra and Elvis too, wasn't it?
Yeah ... Exactly! They were great interpreters of other people's songs. But the other side of the coin was if we had turned around and done an entire album of originals they would have said, "Oh, well this stuff sucks." Excuse me, but we all can't be Jackson Browne.
You mentioned "Prelude To Morning" earlier, and there was a great tremelo sound on that, as well as "Freedom For The Stallion" from that same album.
That was actually a grand piano, miked, and that mike was run into an amplifier and we miked the amplifier. And the actual beginning to that was actually just me plucking the strings on the open piano, and it was miked into this old Sears Silvertone or (Fender) Vibrolux or some cheesy, cool guitar amplifier, with the tremelo turned up to "10." And they put a couple of mikes on that and ran them back into the board, and that's how they did that and "Freedom For The Stallion."
Any other little tricks like that?
Well, there was a song on one of the albums ... I think it was "Circle For A Landing." Someone was really counting on me to come up with this great effect. I walked in, and I tripped, and as I tripped I hit the drawbars on the organ and at the same time hit the notes, and in the booth they're saying "That's it! That's great!" "Yeah! You're right! I planned that. No problem - I don't know what the hell I did, but let's go for it." So that was a happy mistake. I actually just tripped and made a boo-boo, but they guys seemed to think I planned it, so okay. But there were so many things, like the way Michael would use his guitar through a Leslie to match my Leslie, to get that whole stereo panning thing going on between the guitar and the keyboard. Or using the Wurlitzer piano through a Leslie, which worked great for "Mama Told Me" and just little subtle things like that.
How does the current lineup approach the songs that may be different?
We've all done little subtle changes. We have arrangements now that are so superior to the way we recorded them, in part due to the fact that we've done them for 32 years and we got so bored doing them the exact same way. So there are several little nuances and complete different intros, different chords, different solos and stuff. We're doing that out of necessity ...
Just to keep yourself interested.
Right. And it's not like someone - who I won't mention - taking something like "Joy To The World" and turning it into a disco song, or "Never Been To Spain" and making a rap version out of it. Oooookay; I don't think people want to hear that.
I don't.
No. If you want to hear that you can go out and get the Bee Gees or Ice T or someone like that. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
What would be your favorite tunes from the albums?
Gosh, I could go by each album and run
down a list of stuff. The first album would be "Heaven Is In Your
Mind" and "Chest Fever" and "The Loner" and
"Let Me Go."
And, on the second album I liked "Lady Samantha," of course
"Celebrate" and "Eli," and "Circle For A
Landing." On It Ain't Easy I liked "Mama" and "Out
In The Country."
You said that you thought that some of your best playing was on "Out In The Country."
Yeah. That was a very pretty, melodic
line, and the sound I got on the (Hammond) B-3, to this day, people
still think it's a flute. Oh! And I loved "Woman.;" that's a
great tune. We've just started doing that again; that's one of those
heavy tunes. You put that next to something like "Joy" and you
think "Oh my God! These guys are lightweight, and on the other side
they can ROCK!"
On the Harmony album I loved "Murder In My Heart For The
Judge." It took me years to get the guys to do a Moby Grape tune. I
loved "You," the Marvin Gaye tune, and I loved what Chuck did
with "Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer." A lot of the stuff
I loved was the album cuts. On Naturally I loved "I'll Be Creepin',"
the Free tune, and there was a Spooky Tooth tune called "I've Got
Enough Heartache" which was really cool. "Heavy Church;"
liked that one, and "Sunlight," which was always a great tune.
Going on to Seven Separate Fools, I really liked "Chained,"
that was an Argent thing, and I was a big Argent fan - I was the one
that took "Liar" to Danny because I loved Argent - and
"In Bed" was a cool tune, and "Freedom For The
Stallion." On every album there were two or three tunes that
weren't hits but I really liked them, like on Cyan there was "Ridin'
Thumb" and "Play Children Play."
