This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you possibly can go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.loudersound.com/music/tracks-singles/marshall-tucker-band-cant-you-see-story-behind-the-song
and if you wish to take away this text from our web site please contact us
Although it’s greater than 50 years later, Doug Gray nonetheless remembers the day that his Marshall Tucker Band bandmate guitarist Toy Caldwell, launched the group to a brand new composition known as Can’t You See throughout a rehearsal of their residence city of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
“Toy walked in and said: ‘I want you to hear this song I’ve been working on. I’ve got a great first verse,’” the singer relates nostalgically. “I had to write down the second verse on a piece of brown paper because Toy couldn’t remember it. I’ve still got that piece of paper, as a matter of fact.”
Caldwell’s first association of it was pretty primitive, and after the band determined that what it actually required was a flute intro they turned to their gifted multi-instrumentalist Jerry Eubanks. The flute isn’t used a lot in southern rock, however Eubanks’s swooping, summery solo, evocative of a summer season skylark, grew to become a signature ingredient of the music.
Article continues under
“We knew that we did not want a run-of-the-mill guitar or a piano part, so to make it unique we called up our buddy Jerry and he came up with something that fitted,” Gray explains.
It’s made us a substantial quantity of mates, and that’s earlier than we get into contestants masking it on TV singing exhibits like The Voice.
Doug Gray
Although he might have gotten territorial, when the quintet arrived at Capricorn Sound Studios in Macon, Georgia to work with producer Paul Hornsby, Gray proposed the music’s composer, Caldwell, ought to sing the music as an alternative of himself.
“It was better suited for a rougher voice than mine,” he causes. “I knew right away that that song did not belong to me [as the singer], it was America’s song. It belonged to the universe.”
However, Caldwell disagreed. Although Gray was adamant about passing over the music, Caldwell demanded to listen to it within the arms of the group’s lead vocalist.
“I ran through it a couple of times and purposely sang like crap,” Gray laughs. “So we gave it again to Toy and he laid it down in ten minutes, much better than I might. He sang like he was testifying. Now that it’s turn into a common music, I all the time ask the viewers – which is comprised of parents from ten years of age to individuals older than me – to sing the primary verse. Now all of these people testify too.
“Even yesterday I was singing that song up in North Carolina, and in Nevada the day before that, but we had no idea that the song would become so popular,” he continues. “Can’t You See has been heard in pubs and clubs and on stages right across the world.”
Coloured by lyrical references to driving a freight prepare, Can’t You See paints an evocative image of the American South, though with its topic aiming to ‘find me a hole in the wall’ and ‘crawl inside and die’ there’s additionally darkness current. It’s definitely a music of contradictions.
“It truly is,” Gray agrees. “And we didn’t realise this until five years ago, that the titles of all our albums from the second one onwards have references that all correspond to each other [and escapism in general], from A New Life [’74] and Searching For A Rainbow [’75] right through to the most recent one we did [2007’s The Next Adventure]. That wasn’t intentional, it just happened that way.”
The Marshall Tucker Band’s self-titled debut album was a US Top 30 success, however when Can’t You See was launched as a single it peaked at No.108. Later on, Capricorn gave it one other attempt, nevertheless it barely grazed the Top 75. Although the music was by no means a large hit when it got here to gross sales, it has loved longevity and renown.
“That’s true, and I don’t know why,” Gray says. It definitely helped that the band loved a few greater hits throughout the identical decade, notably Fire On The Mountain and Heard It In A Love Song, which allowed them to develop.
“I could play you a version of Waylon Jennings singing Can’t You See [in 1976],” Gray enthuses. “The Zak Brown Band cut it with Kid Rock [2010]. It’s made us a considerable amount of friends, and that’s before we get into contestants covering it on TV singing shows like The Voice. It’s in five Netflix movies right now.”
I did my share of each drug you may discover and any expertise you may have needed.
Doug Gray
The music was additionally lined by Black Stone Cherry and, er… Poison. Is Gray conversant in these? “Yuh,” he affirms. “I’ve got about forty versions of Can’t You See by other artists.”
With this 12 months marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall Tucker Band, Gray intends to proceed gigging till the second he drops.
“The original band was only together for eight years and I’m the last of those guys, but what makes me proudest is that we are still going strong,” he beams.
“Most of the current guys have been with me for twenty-five years and it’s a solid band. It’s going to be that way until I wave goodbye from my gurney after I die on stage. I won’t be retiring. There’s still too much fun left in me.”
I had the flexibility to behave straight to clarify away a TV set exploding after a beer had been poured into it.
Doug Gray
Lynyrd Skynyrd are on their ultimate lap, and the MTB’s buddy and collaborator Charlie Daniels died in 2020. When Gray is requested if he fears for the way forward for southern rock, he sidesteps our query.
“The new way is the old way – that’s the way it should be,” he insists. “Blackberry Smoke are doing it right. They’re not hard rockers, they have meaningful songs and they’re creating new memories from what’s gone before.”
But when in comparison with the goliaths of the style, why are the Marshall Tucker Band not higher recognized?
“We never took advantage of a death,” he replies, leaving that comment to hold within the air for a second. “So many other bands did it. People tried to make us do the same [Toy Caldwell died in 1993, a decade after leaving; his bass-playing brother Tom died in a traffic accident in 1980], but we just wouldn’t.”
Marshall Tucker visited the UK solely as soon as, with labelmates Grinderswitch and Bonnie Bramlett as a part of a 1976 Capricorn Records package deal known as Straight Southern Rock, however Gray has no regrets.
“I wouldn’t have done anything any differently,” he concludes, eyes twinkling. “I did my share of every drug you could find and any experience you could have wanted. When the southern bands went out together, I protected them.
“I had the ability to act straight to explain away a TV set exploding after a beer had been poured into it: ‘I don’t know what happened, sir… that thing just blew up!’ I knew that my brother Ronnie [Van Zant, of Skynyrd] had done it, but I lied like a motherfucker. Somebody had to!”
Originally printed in Classic Rock challenge 304 (July 2022)
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you possibly can go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.loudersound.com/music/tracks-singles/marshall-tucker-band-cant-you-see-story-behind-the-song
and if you wish to take away this text from our web site please contact us
