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2 9 0   C h ap t e r 2 2 Going in Circles Even the late arrivals were settling in now, and the players had grudgingly gotten used to them—Johnny Christopher, in particular, was a fixture. Hayward Bishop, the most recent arrival , still seemed to be an unknown quantity, but the group was becoming familiar with his abilities as percussionist, and they even liked his work as engineer—Mike Leech remembered Hayward’s mixes as being thoroughly arrived at and “very, very clean.” The distribution deal with Capitol Records was a particular prestige note for the company—they were now on the same label as the Beach Boys and the Beatles. In the studio, the rapport the musicians had with one another when they were recording seemed uncanny even to people who were familiar with it—people like Rick Yancey, who was attempting to make the transition from promising writer to solo artist with a record deal of his own. “You wouldn’t believe it, they could communicate with each other across the room with Morse code,” Rick said, still awestruck after years had passed. “Gene would listen to the demo and write the charts down.” The group used the Nashville system of numerals symbolizing the chord changes, but due to their style of deconstructing the songs to insert their own creativity they were not as dependent on the system as comparable players in Music City would have been. Decisions on whether the approach at any given time was working were made by consensus . “Most of the time when we are working on a song, blatantly spoken ideas are snubbed,” explained Mike Leech. “Somehow in the finale, the product is better than it would have been [had] the outspokenness been heeded. That’s just [our] way of doing things. Stall as long as possible till something magic appears, all on its own.” “We always respected each other’s input, which I think made for an extra effort on our part,” said Bobby Wood. “If Reggie or one of the guys heard something that would be a good musical hook for the song, we would jump in.” The final arbiter was the producer; at this point in the group’s history the producer was almost always either Chips Moman or Tommy Cogbill. But even Chips often left the decisions about song construction up to the group, who mostly preferred the consensus approach (Bobby Wood was usually the most outspoken). “We were a plethora of feedback,” declared Mike Leech. “Emmons didn’t say too much, because so much was being said and done by everyone else, me included. I was right smack in the middle of helping put it all together, and I loved it.” “My theory has always been that if you just shut up and listen, the song will tell you what it wants put on it,” said Bobby Emmons . If a recording conveyed stoic suffering, Chips was apparently satisfied, and the fact that he did not seem to know that he sought such moods gave the records their power. Although Marty Lacker had observed the musicians a great deal by this time, he would never cease to be amazed at what he saw. “I have long believed and have often stated on numerous occasions to others that those seven musicians, the American rhythm section, are the most creative and innovative studio musicians I have ever heard or know of,” he said emphatically. “I often think and believe that some mediocre records by artists cut somewhere else, including some of Elvis’s so-so records , would have been hits to some degree if they had been cut at American with this group. They were, and still are, phenomenal creative talents. There are individual musicians just as talented, but as a group, in my opinion nobody touches their creativeness.” Glen Spreen agreed wholeheartedly. “You know, the fact is that they all were better, by far, than almost any of the players who were considered very good to the best of breed,” he reflected. “They created. Most of the others did not create that much or consistently .” It was all the more astonishing because each man was equal in talent to the others. “They were all just stalwarts in their position,” was g o i n g i n c i r c l e s    2 9 1 the admiring estimate of Jimmy Johnson, who by now had become established with his own Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. That was...

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