All Things Must Pass Away: Harrison, Clapton, and Other Assorted Love Songs by Jason Kruppa Kenneth Womack

Author:Jason Kruppa, Kenneth Womack [Jason Kruppa, Kenneth Womack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, music, History & Criticism
ISBN: 9781641603287
Google: fAT3DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2021-07-20T23:36:53.385521+00:00

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Beginning the next series of sessions with a Dylan song seemed a propos, because in shaping the sound of these recordings, one of Harrison’s continuing reference points was Dylan’s recent work, both with the Band and in his incarnation as a country singer on the previous year’s Nashville Skyline. Harrison’s decision to call Pete Drake, the pedal steel player who appeared on Nashville Skyline and John Wesley Harding, only underlined this connection and suggests how in thrall to Dylan’s country sound he was. It also indicates that he’d planned out the next week of sessions, at least to some degree, because Drake’s sound perfectly fit the songs Harrison had lined up for recording. Drake had already been playing for over a decade when he crossed the threshold at Abbey Road. After a grueling period backing various country acts on the road, he settled in Nashville in 1959 to become a session musician, and while he struggled for the first year and a half, by the middle of 1960, following a notable appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, he started picking up session work, clocking twenty-four sessions the first month. Two of those sessions produced number one country hits, and the demand for Drake increased until he was voted Instrumentalist of the Year in 1964 by Cash Box magazine. Work with Elvis Presley followed in 1966, and by the late ’60s, Drake was playing “fifteen sessions a week, usually three a day.” He began diversifying too, starting a publishing company and becoming a producer himself. When in 1966 John Sebastian sang the praises of “Nashville Cats” who “play clean as country water” and “wild as mountain dew,” he had people like Drake in mind. Playing on Dylan’s albums expanded his reach even further. Drake told Guitar Player magazine in 1973, “Bob Dylan really helped me an awful lot. I mean, by having me play on those records he just opened the door for the pedal steel guitar, because then everybody wanted to use one. I was getting calls from all over the world.”33

While in New York in May, Harrison had met Charlie Daniels, who was playing bass on the Dylan session he attended, and who had also played on Nashville Skyline. A Nashville session musician himself, Daniels connected Harrison with Drake. “One day my secretary buzzed me and said, ‘George Harrison wants you on the phone,’” Drake recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, where’s he from?’ She said, ‘London.’ And I said, ‘Well, what company’s he with?’ She said, ‘The Beatles.’ The name, you know, just didn’t ring any bells—well, I’m just a hillbilly, you know (laughter). Anyway, I ended up going to London for a week where we did the album All Things Must Pass.” Even before he arrived at Abbey Road, Drake sensed a certain kinship with the musicians he was about to meet. Learning that the pedal steel player needed a ride, Ringo Starr sent his driver to pick Drake up from the airport. On the trip to the studio, Drake saw a cache of country music cassettes in the drummer’s car.

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