Jimi at McVan's. I just finishing reading the book Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius by Steven Roby and Brad Schrieber. I love musical biographies and this is one of the best in recent memory. The authors devote the book to Jimi's life before he became a superstar – his life after Are You Experienced? is almost a coda to the main story: how a boy who grew up in very difficult circumstances learned how to play the guitar and scuffled his way to getting signed by Chas Chandler and then heading off to England. Jimi spent a lot of time backing up some real greats: Little Richard, Isley Brothers, and King Curtis to name but a few. He played the great guitar riff on Don Covay's Mercy, Mercy single on Atlantic (later covered by the Stones). He was a journeyman but on his way to something much bigger. Everyone knows the story of what happened after the Monterey Pop Festival. The story and insights into how he developed as an artist are far more fascinating than yet another rehashing of his relatively brief time in the spotlight. The book reinforced one of my beliefs about music today: one of the reasons why few artists of real note (when compared to the 1950s through mid-70s) have emerged in the past thirty years is there are few opportunities for a potential Hendrix to go out on the road with a number of greats and develop his or her craft. Everyone wants to be a headliner right out of the box. And therefore, we don't get many younger headliners who have any sort of staying power.

Along the way, Jimi did a stint with twister misters Joey Dee and the Starlighters. In my researching my book I came across some references to Jimi playing behind the Inkspots at McVan's in Buffalo. That apparently isn't true – this really well-researched book makes no reference to Jimi playing with the Inkspots. However, he did play at McVan's with Joey Dee for an entire week in November of 1965 and there's a picture of Jimi onstage with Joey where they're pretty much standing in the same spot of the picture of Alex and me onstage. I actually have some poorly shot photos of us playing taken from the same angle where you can see the audience alongside the stage. The 1965 photo shows men in sports jackets and ties. The 1979 photo shows my college friend and his brothers in t-shirts. A lot of musical legends passed through McVan's in its heyday. Alex was one of the last before it was torn down (before it collapsed) to make way for a convenience store.

Hi Friends...If you're like me, you associate some of your favorite albums with specific times of the years. Radio City always makes think of warm spring weather. John Barleycorn Must Die puts me right back to the first week of September – back to school (the album came out just before my first year of college and was a dorm hit on arrival). I associate Van Dyke Parks' album Song Cycle with the first chilly and rainy week of autumn – when the leaves are turning and you know that summer is definitely over. I've actually been playing Song Cycle a lot over the past six months and my interest was piqued when I saw that a 33 1/3 book was coming out about the album.

I'm not familiar with Richard Henderson, the author of the Song Cycle book, but I can tell you that he did a great job. I've read pretty much everything written about Van Dyke Parks and the album but this book is a real revelation. In a way, the book pretty much follows the pattern of my Radio City book: author discovers album (with help of knowledgeable record store clerk), background leading up to the recording of the album, details about the sessions and the songs from the participants, the (non) commercial life of the album after it was released, and a brief but excellent summary of VDP's career post-Song Cycle. Henderson got to know Parks and had his full cooperation. The bottom line is that if you like Song Cycle and you liked my approach to writing about Radio City, you're going to love the book. It certainly inspires you to hear the album in a new ways and pick up a lot of details you might not have caught or known - even if, like me, you've been listening to it for the past 40 years.

Well, it's been awhile...I was driving in my car last night, headed towards a sunset with the latest Teenage Fanclub disc playing, thinking that it was just a year ago that the Big Star box set was just hours from being released and everything that's transpired since. I remembered that last year it even crossed my mind that someday perhaps Alex, Andy, and Jody would perform Radio City from start to finish in the recent tradition of artists performing classic albums in their entirety. Now, just a year later, Big Star is in the heavens for good.

The Teenage Fanclub record (Shadows) is a fine record and reminded me that Alex thought highly of the band. During the interviews for the book I asked Alex what he thought of the many artists who worshipped at the altar of Big Star. He was complimentary of several (Chris Stamey, I recall) but then said with a twinkle in his eye "You know who's really good? The Fannies...they're really good." Most of you have probably heard the radio broadcast of Alex with TFC – certainly one of the highlights of Alex's post Big Star career. Hopefully one day a clean copy of the broadcast will find its way into circulation. Every version I've encountered has some serious issues (drop outs, speed ups). An official release would certainly be well-received and a fitting tribute to the trans-Atlantic musical friendship.

More soon...

ANDY HUMMEL IN HIS OWN WORDS PART THREE. Here's the third and final installment of my written interview with Andy (see previous posts for more background) three years ago. One thing that came across loud and clear was how much he enjoyed his life – family, work, community, hobbies – and even though he still loved music, he had not an ounce of regret from walking away from Big Star. He participated in two of the greatest albums ever made and then went out and lived a great life without looking back. I listened back to the long phone interview that we did after the written part and you can just hear the enthusiasm and contentment in his voice. One funny bit was that when he brought up Led Zeppelin (who he like as much as Alex didn't like), I told him that I had a lot of LZ boots. He had never heard the word "boots" used to refer to bootleg discs and thought that somehow I had a large collection of Led Zeppelin footwear. Pretty amusing.

O My Soul

Co-written by Chris Bell?

Song seems to have been demoed several times – was the final album version recorded when the band regrouped after the Rock Writers Convention (May 73).

Who played Mellotron?

I have real memory problems on this song. I get the impression from everything I’ve read that it is considered an early one in the R.C. story. But everything about it, including what memory I do have, tells me it happened closer to the Dolby Fuckers period later in the process. I remember very consciously trying to depart from the “standard” Big Star sound on this. It sounds much more sparse than our previous stuff. I remember we were working with Jody to try and get out of the usual sort of rock and roll drum style of ride cymbal, bass drum on the downbeat, snare on the upbeat, etc. And in fact that’s what you hear. Jody’s just playing lots of sort of broken rolls and stuff, almost like an eclectic drum solo throughout the song or something. Also I’m not sure it isn’t an overdub. The bass part is definitely an overdub. This is the one where, once again trying to find different sounds, we put that old Showman out in the middle of the studio, turned it up until it distorted mightily, and recorded it through a Neuman set several feet away. All as opposed to running the bass direct. It’s my old Precision Bass for sure. I was trying to do a Paul Kossoff (or whatever his name is) [note - later we confirmed it as Andy Fraser] off-the-wall sort of bass part. And Alex pretty much did the same on guitar – very little strumming. I think this was when he really started getting great on guitar, picking out Little Wing, the Bach Bouree’ he liked so much, etc. Definitely Alex on the Mellotron. I think we had it set up in the control room. All in B studio of course. Also note the structure of the song. It starts off like it’s going to be a traditional sort of Big Star rock song, but then he started adding other parts different than the original line. This was very anti traditional Big Star and much more like Daisy or Dolby Fucker-like. In fact if no one had told me otherwise I’d say it was a Dolby Fucker song. If I had to guess I’d say the initial line was something that was written early on, then when we got around to producing it all the other parts and the different sounds got dialed in. Don’t know about the demo’s. Never really paid much attention to them. They were just a means to an end.

I can’t help you much on the convention timing issue but I’d guess it was way after.

Life Is White

What part(s) would you have worked on?

When recorded? (i.e. after Writers Convention?)

Who played piano? Alex?

I heard an acoustic demo by Alex and it was pretty astounding how complete it sounded in terms of having the arrangement worked out. It had to have been done after the song had been completely written (i.e. it was all there). Was is it common for him to do a demo once the song was finished?

From a standpoint of production concept I’d say this was a predecessor to Soul for sure. I hear all the same stuff, just not as mature in implementation. I’m playing the Rickenbacher direct I believe. I think I recorded the harp overdub with Alex playing out in the sound lock but it could have been Fry of Richard. I’m pretty sure it’s Alex on piano but it could very well be Dickenson or even Jack Holder. At this point Alex pretty well came into the studio with his parts completely worked out if memory serves.

Way Out West

Most accounts I’ve read confirm that this is solely your composition. However I did find one article that asserted that Chris was involved. Would like to nail down once and for all that you wrote it, how it developed from piano ballad to guitar song, and the unusual structure (how after the first verse and chorus, it gives way to a verse and chorus of guitar – not your usual pop song format). Did that come about when the song was cranked up in the studio with the band?

When recorded?

Was this worked on early on i.e. before Chris left?

I definitely wrote all of West except Alex’s solo. Chris wasn’t even around by then. He and I arranged it. I had written it late one night on my mother’s Knabe. I had planned to do it as a solo act. It’s about Linda of course. She was at college in Denver at the time. I don’t remember if I had a demo or not, I might have. We had all the equipment set up in A studio for jamming. We did this a lot. Jammed in A, recorded in B. So I played this song, on the Yamaha I guess, and Alex immediately turned it into a rock and roll song. Oh well – best laid plans and all. We got it completely down that night arrangement wise. The arrangement is because there weren’t any more words. I had written the lyrics before the music and they were what they needed to be – no more. So the solo broke up the two verses. I was way too afraid to try singing after the India experience so Jody did it with Alex on back-up. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I hear the Bangles had covered it.

That will have to do for tonight.

What’s Going Ahn?

This one is intriguing because you’re a co-writer (any recollections as to what parts you worked on?) and yet it was recorded with with Richard and (likely) Danny Jones. Richard says that unlike the other two “Dolby Fuckers” tracks that this was a John Fry session and not done “after hours”.

So might this have been written in the second half of 72 before Chris left (or around then) and then recorded by the Alex with Richard and Danny sometime in the first half of 73 before the band reconvened? Or…???

The acoustic demo that exists of Alex is again pretty spectacular – pretty much the entire arrangement is right there. Might that have been done…when?

This is the only song for which no track sheet extists (although Adam Hill @ Ardent is still looking). Do you recall any overdubs being done later? (electric piano, some tom toms I think – sound like the tom overdubs on September Gurls and Daisy Glaze)

General question about the three “Dolby Fuckers” tracks. When the band started to work on Radio City after the Writers convention, how did these three songs enter the mix? Was it assumed from the beginning “well, we can use these tracks…” or did Alex (or someone else) introduce the idea of including them later on as a way of shortening the time for completing an album (i.e. getting over the magic 30 minute mark)?

OK, I’m going to try this again. I’m on a different PC and email account now so maybe things will go better. I think this is where we left off.

If I recall, this is a song written in one of those songwriting sessions at Alex’s. As I’ve said before, I kind of think this occurred early on while Chris was still around but I could be wrong. It’s neither inconceivable nor unlikely that we might have had other such events later on. We hung out at Alex’s in his bedroom and listened to LPs on that cool little KLH stereo of his frequently there for a while. I don’t think it would be possible to say I wrote a particular thing or Alex wrote a particular thing. That’s not the way I remember it happening. The song was basically his idea. I just helped by throwing out the occasional chord turn, lyric, whatever. I think I took 10% writer credit or something like that. It’s his song.

I wouldn’t disagree with Richard about recording it, especially since I wasn’t there! That sounds about right.

The timing you suggest is about as close as I could come.

The only overdubs I kind of remember are the toms and the lead guitar parts. Once again, I wasn’t that involved with the recording of this song very much.

You Get What You Deserve

When (approx.) was this song written and developed. I’ve read accounts that say that it was possibly the fourth track you recorded with Chris in late 72 (same demo session) as O My Soul, Got Kinda Lost, and There Was a Life. Speaking of these songs, I listened to a demo at Ardent that I believe came from your collection(?). Adam Hill and I both thought that they sounded like they were recorded post –Chris (sounded like the three-piece with Alex singing). When do you think the demo might have been recorded?

I’m pretty sure this is another of those songs we had from early on. It was probably written before Chris left, but entirely by Alex I think. I also think this was one of the four we did in the famous mono session. My recollection is that they were Deserve, Car, Lost, and the other Chris song. By everyone else says different, so who am I with my 35-year old memory to press the point?

The mono session was definitely done while Chris was still around. I mean you can clearly hear him singing on both the surviving Bell tracks on my ¼ track copy, even though Alex sings lead on the slow one! [Note: see discussion before the first installment. Chris was not there and Jody sang the backup.]

Back of A Car

I’ve read a quote from you that this was “only recorded once” and that it was the first song recorded. When might that have been? Before Chris left in late 72 possibly?

Do you recall your input into the song?

It seems pretty established that this is one of the songs that Chris worked on before leaving and dividing up songs with Alex. Do you have any clear recollection of what the other song(s) might have been (this is a expansion of the question about O My Soul)?

There have been a lot of conflicting accounts as to whether or not Chris actually played on the album…any thoughts, recollections? It would seem that if that were the case that this would be the song.

As I’ve said, I believe this is one of the songs originally recorded in the mono session. To me it has Chris written all over it. I think the concept of the song, the verse chord change and the initial words were something he came in with. But we collaborated in turning it into a song. You guys have unrealistic expectations if you expect us to be able to remember every little lick we may have contributed to a song. I mean a song writing session is not like, let’s see how much of me I can get into this. Whoever was there was just trying to come up with a song we could play. In any case, I remember this as being the first song we recorded with John as a 3-piece and that it went very smoothly. I also think this was on our set list at the Rock Writers Convention.

I am pretty sure Chris did not play on any of the RC songs. We started from scratch when we decided to do RC after he left. We probably would have used the mono session masters in some way, shape, or form but of course they couldn’t be found. They were the only recordings of any of the RC material that existed at that time as far as I know. I guess it’s possible he did some overdubs or something later on but I’m not aware of it.

This song reminds me of driving through the Big Boy and Krystal parking lots in my old man’s Lincoln listening to a Led Zepplin tape right after their first LP came out. It floored us both. We had rigged up an early cassette recorder in the glove box.

Daisy Glaze

Any significance to the original working title of Knoxville? (John Fry actually speculated that Chris might have had input because it refers to where he / you went to school. Jody didn’t think so.)

Richard says that this song took a long time to develop and that Alex worked on it – jamming with various people – over months. I’m thinking that he may be confusing it with O My Soul (which would lend itself more to that.) The only song credited to you, Alex and Jody, how do you recall it being written? When recorded (before or after Writers Convention)?

This has some of the most inventive overdubs on the record. Who do you recall playing pump organ? Any recollection of the guitar in the first half of the song that more or less modulates on the beat? Any other recollections?

I don’t particularly recall the name Knoxville but then we used a lot of obscure nomenclature in those days and a lot of stuff had gone down in Knoxville over the years.

I don’t remember Chris having anything whatsoever to do with this. It was entirely (and probably the only) true Alex/Jody/Andy collaboration. My recollection of the genesis of this song was of Alex playing one of Handel’s Concerti Grossi (opus 6) for me on the little KLH in his bedroom. It’s the one with the intro where they play the same note over and over but twice as fast each measure or whatever. I’ve got the LP around here somewhere. I think John used to have it too – or maybe I have his, not sure. In any case we were in B studio later and just began playing licks and stuff around this. We all input and eventually, after several sessions of this, it became the music for a song. I kind of remember that we actually recorded it as we wrote it although that’s probably not the final band track. John probably recorded us doing that from scratch at some point. The Handel riff starts off the fast part of course. Then Alex went off and wrote some words and we finished it up. I know I overdubbed the pump organ part although it’s conceivable it was later re-overdubbed. I don’t think so however. The bass is my Rickenbacker direct. The acoustic rhythm guitar part was done as previously described in my email exchange with John. I think Alex played oscillator and I console on that. But it could have been John on console.

Once again I have difficulty remembering the timing of things with respect to the convention. My sense of time just wasn’t particularly focused on that event. I do think this one was in work a while before it was actually produced into a song. But I don’t think we were working on it as late at the Dolby Fucker period

She’s A Mover

You overdubbed the bass part and mention using a Fender Showman. What would have been your regular bass amp in the studio?

After listening to this I become a bit confused because I think it’s the same bass rig on both this and Oh My Soul – or at least parts of the latter which is possible due to punching in and out which we did obsessively. But I thought we had only done this once. Obviously not. It’s my Precision Bass through the Showman as I discussed earlier. It was a pretty cool sound.

When I was obsessing over the poor quality of the bass sound I’ve been getting lately my current guitar player, who has a very cool rig with a Rivera tube head and Mesa Boogie speaker, actually had the gall to suggest the amp sound doesn’t matter for a bass. So why don’t I just get one of those modern Ampeg high power non tube amps with all the elaborate “effects”?!?!. How wrong. The Showman rig’s sound is a perfect case in point although I liked the HiWatt better.

But as I’ve said before, we usually ran the bass direct. In an ideal world I suppose I would try to recreate the direct/tube compressor sound on stage. That would take some doing though.

September Gurls

Quite the masterpiece to say the least. Listening to the master tapes at Ardent I was floored that you did three takes and used the first take. If you isolate what the trio did live in the studio, it’s easy to hear that the band had real potential as a live band. Any thoughts?

About when do you think you worked on this song?

Any thoughts / impressions upon first hearing it? Anything specific you recall about recording it?

Yes – if there was ever a BS star that had major potential as a hit this would be it. Too bad. Remember, our goal when we started doing the RC band track sessions with John, based on the experience we had on the mono session, was to try to get them in as few takes as possible. Also this was the period not too long after the 4-piece “tour” and was right around the time of the convention, etc. So we had indeed been playing a lot and this was almost certainly one of the songs on the playlist. So we were tighter at this point than any other in BS history I suppose. We could indeed have been a pretty good live act if things had worked out a little differently. I didn’t use to like playing live. It scared me to death. Now I love it although it still scares me to death sometimes!

Once again, can’t help you much with the timing other than to note that this was certainly one of that early group of RC songs we did with John.

As far as the song itself, it seems to me this was kind of the high point of the original sort of Chris-inspired Big Star sound I believe I discussed earlier. We were all still playing in that style. The song was written pretty much in that style, although much more evolved. And we had become kind of expert at it. All three of us came up with great parts, it was a great song to begin with, and it just worked.

Morpha Too

I’ll close with a brief comment on my recollection of this. I remember very late in the process, but while I was still running with Alex some, we ended up in A studio late one night, both blasted on Quaaludes or whatever I’m sure. He started playing this song on the Yamaha and we decided to record it. I can’t remember if we ran one or two mikes but I know the piano went through a compressor which we turned up as much as it would go, essentially totally eliminating the dynamic range of the instrument. It’s a very cool piano sound. The decay of the notes is a loud as when they’re first played. John later re-recorded this properly I believe but kept the compressor thing.

This was pretty much my last hurrah with BS. After this Alex, or John and Alex, properly became concerned with finishing up the LP and getting it released. I was drifting off into other pursuits, like getting out of college. Alex was/had drifted off into the Lesa thing that consumed them both for a while. I was not involved with mixing the LP at all. That was pretty much a John and Alex effort. I remember getting together in John’s office or somewhere to divvy up the writer’s credits once it was sure it was going to be released. I also remember a discussion among the three of us about the Northeast tour they were planning after release (I think it was after the release). But it was nearly September and I needed to matriculate. So I did. And as fun as it is to remember all this stuff every 5 years or so when someone wants to do an interview, I’m glad I did. No offense to anyone, but from what I can tell, the music business sucks. And being involved with designing and building airplanes is kind of fun.

ANDY HUMMEL IN HIS OWN WORDS PART TWO.

Here's Part Two of what will be three parts. See the last post for background info. Again, this is Andy is writing in response to my questions in July 2007.

I’m trying to recreate as much as possible a timeline for how the album came together. Here are the key dates as far as I can tell. So even being able to place when songs were written and / or recorded within these blocks of time would be helpful.

June 1972 – #1 Record released

October 1972 – live dates wind down

Dec 1972 – Chris leaves the band

May 1973 – Rock Writer’s Convention

December 1973 – Radio City mastered

So many writers have micro-analyzed this subject that whatever you have must come from more accurate sources than my memory. Instead of addressing this directly, let tell you a bit about musical relationships. You should be able to overlay the timeline on this fairly easily. This might be somewhat helpful.

First, just for the record - In the early days, before Big Star, Chris and I were pretty inseparable musically as I recall. Outside the studio we both played with various combinations of folks occasionally. And, of course in the studio one went with the flow of who was present on any given evening. But our primary musical vehicle/core was the 3-piece of Jody, Chris, and me, with Tom Eubanks doing a stint as a fourth for a while. We actually played out quite a bit doing fraternity parties, department store openings and the like. The other people we, and especially Chris played with, like Terry Manning, Steve Rhea, etc. have weighed in so heavily on this subject that you get the impression early Big Star and pre Big Star was some sort of commune as opposed to a cohesive band. Of course they’re just going by their recollections and this is what they remember. At one point a few years ago I had read so much of that type of stuff I almost became convinced myself. But nothing could be further from the truth. Especially by the time we hooked up with Alex we were very much a committed 3-piece band with a decent amount of both gig and studio experience.

Anyway, as we recorded the 1^st LP on National Street, and later Madison Ave, Chris and Alex became very tight musically. There was never any question we four were the band and we behaved as such, but Alex and Chris were just way more experienced than us so Jody and I were pretty much side men at this point. They each had songs they brought to the table, but when it came to producing and recording them they collaborated pretty seamlessly. I think they were rather surprised when I showed up with that horrible India Song. I never should have let Alex talk me into putting it on the record.

As we neared completion of the 1^st LP however, for whatever reason, Alex and Chris became increasingly independent of each other musically. Alex was all about branching out and experimenting musically while Chris was going through a personal crisis which inhibited his ability to socialize musically.

So Alex and I began to hang together. By this time I had taken John’s Audio Engineering course and was competent to run the studio solo. Previously we had been dependent on John, Chris, or Richard to provide this skill set. For the two of us, like most of these folks, hanging out meant hanging out musically. We did all sorts of crazy things, recording until the wee hours of the morning, listening to all sorts of odd musical influences and the like. We recorded Do Right Woman at Dan Penn’s studio with Spooner at 4:00 one morning. I’m sure it was horrible. I guess this would all have been happening roughly throughout 1972.

Anyway, the reason for going into all this is that by the time we began R.C. there was kind of a concept of operations (ConOps) in effect. Alex and I did lots of demo type stuff in the middle of the night with whoever was around. I have a really cool demo I recorded one night of Vera singing DIVORCE with Alex playing all the instruments and singing backup. I usually ran the studio and Alex played the music. When we were ready to do a real band track we’d get John to record it if necessary, then we’d spend the next month or so doing all the overdubs ourselves – of which there were a lot as I’m sure you know. Most of what I call the “mainline” R.C. songs were done this way. Alex later used a similar ConOps for the Dobly Fuckers stuff, usually, but not always with Richard recording.

Anyway, all that stuff about early BS is just me venting a little about the perceptions past articles and books have created. But this latter stuff is how I remember R.C. happening, at least at the 20,000 foot level as we say in the aircraft business. And I think it’s useful to understand this ConOps of how we operated in the studio before going into details about each track and stuff.

As far as the specific timelines go for R.C. … and this is not my strong area … first I’ll have to download the LPs from iTunes. I don’t seem to have copies. In the meantime, please note the following disclaimer: It has been about 35 years since all this occurred and I do not pretend to remember it all perfectly. So if you run into other evidence which seems to contradict me, it is probably more correct.

As an interlude while we’re waiting I’ll tell the keyboards story.

I started studying classical piano in the 3^rd grade. My mother had a small Knabe grand at our house she got about 1947. It was a great piano. It had easy action and a nice mellow sound. I studied formally with various teachers for about 7 years, until about the 9^th grade.

But I played that piano constantly experimenting with all sorts of stuff including figuring out a lot of rock songs. I can’t think of anything better than growing up with a nice piano at your disposal like that. You can’t help but learn a lot.

I actually played organ for a while for a soul band during my R&B period.

When we first started going to Ardent on National they had what must be about a 5’5” Chickering grand. I think it had a walnut finish. It must have been early 60s vintage. This was also a great piano. It was brighter and with a bigger sound than the Knabe. Most of the piano on the 1^st LP was this Chickering. Everyone used it for everything. When we moved to Madison we brought the Chickering with us and installed it in the B studio, the one we mostly used. So most of the piano on RC was also the Chickering. One hopes Fry still has it. Often I – and others – would go in and just play it for hours alone.

For the A studio they had to buy an additional piano. Fry, I expect at Terry’s urging, did not skimp. He got a brand new Yamaha concert grand. I think it was 7’ at least. It was solid black. It was a wonderful instrument. Smooth action, not the pronounced double action you get with Steinways, and a beautiful big bright tone. We used it some for recording but since it was in A studio, which we liked less and which was less accessible (all the big paying sessions were booked there) not nearly as much as the Chickering. But I – and a lot of others – loved to just go in there, close the door, and play and play, and play. Again, I hope it’s still there and in good shape. I liked that piano so much when it came time for me to by my own after I moved to Texas, I got a big black Yamaha C3 – with was their 6’ concert model at the time. I still have it and taught 3 kids how to play on it, not that it took with any of them. I taught myself to site read in the process though!

Alex had a Chickering at his house we played some too. I gather he grew up with this piano much like I did the Knabe. I remember it as being almost identical to the one in the B studio. His Dad was a jazz musician and used it when he jammed with his buddies,

I don’t believe Chris ever had a piano. I gather his family wasn’t musical like Alex’s and mine.

Also in B studio was a Hammond B3 organ with a big old tube Leslie. Hammonds are kind of a special case in the keyboard world to me. You play them kind of like lead guitar players play except on a keyboard. Also you have all those drawbars to manage. I never quite got it although I played it all the time trying to. Love B3s though. I wish I had one. I don’t think we ever used the B3 on a record but we used its Leslie all the time. Ever since Eric Clapton first ran a guitar through one, I think either on Abbey Road or Badge, everyone wanted to use that sound. And we did. It didn’t hurt that in addition to the rotating Leslie speakers it also had a great tube amp that distorted perfectly.

Other keyboards in the studio:

• • They had one of the first Moog synthesizers. The damn thing was so complicated to operate I don’t remember using it very much. Then they replaced it with an Arp. I didn’t think it was much better but the Beatles apparently did so we screwed with it a lot. It probably ended up on a record somewhere. I’ll listen for it when my download completes.

• • For a critical while they had an old pump organ out in B studio. I played this on Daisy Glaze. It belonged to someone though and they took it away finally.

• • Frequently Jim Dickenson would bring his tacky piano over. This was an upright and someone had actually stuck thumbtacks into all the hammers to get that tacky sound.

• • They bought an early Mellotron. We all loved it. Notionally you didn’t need to hire strings or horns anymore! They were very controversial with the musicians union as you can imagine. We used it a lot.

That’s all I can remember about keyboards so let’s resume with the timeline discussion.

As the Number 1 effort, and its very lame tour, wound down in mid to late 1972, new songs had already been written, both separately and jointly, mostly the latter. We hadn’t laid any tracks down to speak of but we had played many of the songs quite a bit in practice sessions, studio jams, and the like. Some writing occurred with the three or four of us in Alex’s bedroom. I know we did What’s Going Ahn there. Ditto Life is White and Back of a Car. It’s probably safe to say that the songs listed with both Andy and Alex writing credits were done this way. I’m almost positive Chris was present during some or all this. So it happened early on.

So we had these songs nearly ready to record. We also had a couple of Chris songs, Got Kinda Lost and another slow Chris song that escapes me right now. So there came a point where we were like, hey let’s record again. We were all getting kind of sick of the conventional method or recording; close miking everything, laying down 30 tracks before you settle on one, then millions of overdubs to get the final song. Plus we were really interested in mono. So – to make a long story short – we got Fry to engineer a session in B studio in mono, basically using one old big Neuman microphone in the middle of the room, with the whole band at once, and recorded four songs. I don’t remember how well we succeeded but the goal was to do them all in one take. I think we came pretty close. They sounded great. They were hot, fresh, full of enthusiasm, etc. and the mono sound Fry came up with was amazing I know we did Got Kind of Lost and the other Chris song. We also did Back of a Car. I’m not sure about the last one but it was probably Oh My Soul or You Get What You Deserve. I still have a tape of the Chris songs. I think Fry does too. You should listen to it. Anyway the master of this eventually got lost but it became the genesis of RC.

So after Chris left and we finally decided to do another LP, we started with these songs, subject of course to the deal Alex and Chris had cut on who would get writer credit on what, so we didn’t use the two Chris songs. Pity. But since the master was gone we had to re-record them. I recall a fairly long tortuous period during which we laid down the band tracks for Car, Soul, probably Life, Deserve, and later September and West. We then spent months producing and overdubbing them, often using the ConOps described above although eventually Alex took Fry’s course and started soloing on the console. This was sort of the Mainline part of the LP.

As we got well into this process Alex and Richard started up the Dolby Fuckers thing. I believe they/we did all that ourselves. Fry wasn’t needed to do the tracks because they were usually just a guitar and drums with everything else overdubbed.

The last two Alex songs were done way later right before mixing started.

ANDY HUMMEL IN HIS OWN WORDS.

Andy was the first person I interviewed for the book. We did it in two stages. First I sent him a list of questions which he answered over several lengthy emails. Then we did a long phone interview. This was all in July 2007. Andy's wealth of information and good spirit really set the tone for the book and influenced its direction. I was always committed to writing about the music rather than the surrounding "drama" but an offhand remark by Andy, which you'll read below, about people who weren't in the room having an awful lot of say in the Big Star story made me think that the book would be best served if the interviews were confined only to those who actually had a direct hand in the creation of Radio City. So that was the seed planted by Andy and I think the book was far better for it.

As with any sequence of events nearly fort years ago memories can differ. One thing you Big Star experts will note is that Andy remembered Chris being part of the four song demo sessions between #1 and RC. This differed from what John Fry, Jody, and Alex remembered. In fact, they were adamant that it had just been the trio in the studio. A possible source of the confusion is that Andy heard background vocals on the reference tape he had saved and thought it must be Chris. However, Jody told me that he had done the background vocals. This is all perhaps a minor footnote but it involved a lot of research – including listening to the demo tapes at Ardent – and I came away certain that it was just the trio. Also keep in mind that these guys spent a lot of time together in the same studio so it would be easy to confuse one session with another. I wanted to publish this as Andy wrote it. (There were also some other things that people had different recollections of but there was always a very solid majority on one side and some external facts that made a final decision relatively easy.)

So here is Andy Hummel in his own words Part One. The italics are my questions, designed just to gather some basic facts to establish a framework for future interviews. Over a series of evenings, installments would arrive in my inbox. For a Big Star fan just starting to dig into the story, each one was a real revelation. I'll post the next installment in a few days. Enjoy.

Did you play any instrument besides bass on the album? Any of the keyboard parts?

The only instruments I specifically remember playing were the bass parts I did and the pump organ on Daisy Glaze. During the initial 3-piece period of the 2^nd LP there could have been others though. We operated very collaboratively at this point. See below under the timeline discussion for more on this.

What bass(es) did you use (make / model / approx. age / origin). (We’ll talk about your influences etc. when we talk. I also want to talk about your development as a musician and how, with more room to work, you really delivered the goods on Radio City. Also, what you would have been working on at Ardent when during the hiatus after #1 Record etc.)

I love to talk about guitars, so bear with me as I tell the Big Star guitar story.

Chapter 1 – electrics:

When Chris and I first began playing together in our dorm room at UT in 1969 I had a cherry red Gibson 335-style hollow body bass with black nylon flat wound strings. It must have been a 1966 or so left over from my days playing R&B - a very cool, unusual bass. Chris played a cherry red Gibson 335 6-string guitar with P80 or P90 pickups. I’m pretty sure it had a Bigsby. It must have been mid-60s as well. I can’t remember Chris ever owning another electric guitar. He was a one guitar kind of guy with that 335 and he played the hell out of it. I had a Kustom bass amp I never liked or used to speak of and he had a Fender Twin Reverb he used all the time.

A little after we returned to Memphis I traded my Gibson in for a new, sunburst Fender Precision Bass (I believe they call them P-basses these days) with a maple fretboard. This must have been late 1970 or so. Chris and I were obsessed with the sound John Entwhistle got out of his bass and heard him say the words “Rotosound Strings” on one of the songs on “Who Sellout”. We figured he must be talking about guitar strings and, sure enough, I went out and found some. Of course Rotosounds were all round wound in those days – may still be – and no one I had ever heard of used them except Entwhistle. I put them on the Fender, turned the treble way up, and that was the sound. This became my primary bass throughout the Big Star years, and other folks’ at Ardent too for that matter. It was always in the studio and got used a lot. Precision Basses are very reliable and musically flexible. You can play any style of music on them. I flatter myself that I was one of the first folks (beside Entwhistle obviously) to kind of pioneer that trebly, twangy sound the Fender got with those strings which later became a mainstay bass sound, although I’m sure no one picked it up on my account since no one ever heard us.

When we hooked up with Alex he had a gold Les Paul and a Super Reverb. The Super Reverb was the most deafening thing I ever heard. I think the Les Paul had humbuckers but they may have been P-style pickups. It’s hard to remember and doesn’t matter anyway because he didn’t use it much. They both played it a little on the 1^st LP but then Alex got a Fender Stratocaster which became his primary electric for some time. I’m pretty sure it was ivory colored.

So all those trademark trebly Big Star electric guitar sounds you hear on both LPs were primarily Chris’s Gibson and/or Alex’s Strat played through old Fender tube amps. Most of the bass parts are the Precision bass recorded directly through the console and one of two old vacuum tube compressors Fry had in the “B” studio. We hardly ever amped the bass. I’ll bet he still has those compressors. If not it’s a great tragedy.

The studio had an old tube Fender Dual Showman everyone used a lot for everything. It was a great amp. More on that later. When we were getting ready to go “on tour” Ardent bought us all new equipment. Chris and I got HiWatt heads because that’s what The Who used a lot. I can’t remember whether they were 100 or 200 watt. Alex had a Marshall he found somewhere. We had HiWatt speaker cabinets, I think with 4 12-inch speakers each. The original plan was for the guitar players to use two of these each with their heads like Cream or somebody. This was ridiculously loud so we backed down to one cabinet each. It was still too loud. I had two JBL bass horns John Dando built for me but they wouldn’t do the twang sound so I ditched them and used one of the HiWatt cabinets. The HiWatt head and speaker cabinet was a perfect stage bass rig. I don’t recall recording with any of this stuff much, except maybe the Marshall, but we kept it all in A studio quite a lot and it was the standard Ardent jam setup off and on for a while. More on this later.

While we were practicing to go “on tour” after the 1^st LP I lucked into a Gibson Thunderbird which, of course, is precisely what Entwhistle used. I think I got it at Strings and Things back when it was a “mom and pop” operation on Cooper. Unfortunately I didn’t get to play it much because Chris and I got into a big fight at practice at Alex’s house and he smashed the bass. So I went back to the Fender. I always go back to a Precision Bass it seems.

Later while we were “touring” somebody gave me a Rickenbacker to play at that gig we did in New Orleans. I think it was a supermarket grand opening or something ;-). I loved it and got my own when I got back to Memphis. Unfortunately there was something wrong with the neck. The guitar wasn’t fret true. So, as usual, I reverted to the Fender.

This entire time there was always a Hofner at the studio – may still be. Hofners are great. There’s no other sound like it. They have that short scale which is very easy to play and they are very light. We used it some before and during the 1^st LP. Later Terry Manning or somebody put round wound strings on it and ruined it I think. Hofners need flat wound strings. He bought a new one in the Bahamas or somewhere but he wouldn’t let anyone play it.

I didn’t own a bass at all from about 1974 until a couple of years ago. Not that anyone will care, but these days I play a black American Fender Precision bass with the extra Jazz bass-style bridge pickup, BassLine Quarter Pounders, and a rosewood fret board. I’m about to take the round wound strings off and put proper Beach Boys-style flat wound strings on it. I got it at a guitar show in Arlington about a year ago. I don’t like it much. It seems like the level is not well balanced across the strings and scale. Also, while the treble is nice I can’t get the bass tone I’m looking for. Maybe the new strings will be better. Or it could be the amp I’m using. It’s a newish 100 watt Bassman. I think I need a big tube Ampeg or a Trace Elliott. Or better yet, an old tube HiWatt like we used in Big Star days – good luck with that.

I also play a Hofner I bought new at Craig’s Music a couple of years ago. I love it but it’s hard to play at gigs because there are no dots on the upper edge of the fret board making it hard to know where you are in dim stage lighting with that short scale. Also there’s something about the way I hold it that causes the G-string to pop off of the bridge a lot. What I really want is a Gibson SG-style solid body. They used to call them EB3’s I think, with two humbuckers. The guy in Free played one of these. I’m sure I’ll wind up back on a Precision Bass but it’s fun to experiment and you can never have too many guitars. I’ve only got around 12 right now.

Lot’s of people have hundreds these days. I don’t know what they do with them all though. Also Japanese collectors are buying up all the nice old American guitars for ridiculous prices. I bet the dealers sell them a lot of fakes! I mean there can’t really be that many 1957 Les Pauls in this world. And it seems like you see a couple of hundred at every guitar show.

Alex told Patti (my wife) he has 20ish, but that was before Katrina. I’m guessing he may have lost some in the hurricane. Also he’s not sure where they all are. He travels quite a bit and apparently leaves them around or something. My current little band’s guitar player, Mike, only has 3 that I know of. I don’t really know anyone else that plays guitar.

I guess the interesting thing is that Big Star basically did the 1^st two LPs with just 3 electric guitars - the Precision Bass and the Strat, plus the 335 on No. 1 - and a couple of old Fender amps. I don’t think people are that “efficient: these days.

Chapter 2 – Acoustics (this is a shorter story):

I taught myself to play guitar on an old Silvertone flattop I bought new at Sears, probably for $15 or so, in Junior High School. I don’t know how I ever played it. I must have had very strong fingers and thick calluses. Later on in Big Star days I studied classical with a gypsy named Rene Fusco or Fuste’ – something like that. He sold me a classical guitar made by a well-known transcriber named Frantz Schmidt. I still have both of them. I used the classical for some demos at Ardent and wrote India Song on it (for what that’s worth!).

When Alex joined the band he showed up in the studio to record 13 and Watch the Sunrise with two Martin acoustics, I think a D-35 12-string and a D-28 6-string. I’m sure he had used them there previously in his work with Terry but I hadn’t seen them. They were wonderful guitars. Apparently he had been doing a lot of folk music in New York right before he joined with us. They were used extensively on both LPs, especially the 6-string. I played both a lot.

Chris bought a Yamaha dreadnaught-style acoustic, I think while we were recording the 1^st LP. It was a good guitar and used extensively on that LP and later on his solo stuff although it too was a victim of violence at one point. We were a very emotional band.

Prior to going “on tour” when Ardent bought us all those ampsI discussed earlier I also got a new acoustic. It was a Guild D-25. I put Schaler tuners on it, had the frets dressed down, and the action lowered. It turned out to be a pretty good guitar and the only serious guitar I had for many years after Big Star. Tommy Hoenn used it a good deal.

John Dando installed Barcus-Berry pickups on all the acoustics so we could play through the amps live. These were a very early version of internally mounted acoustic pickups. They fed back like crazy and had to have standalone preamps between the guitar and amp. John built some from scratch. We never used them much though. Nowadays that technology has advanced tremendously with Fishmans and some of the factory pickup systems people like Taylor use. It’s amazing. It’s suddenly practical to play amplified acoustic music with your neighborhood band.

By the way, Dando would be a good guy to talk to. He was sort of our technical manager. He knows a lot about the technology side of things back in those days. I think he’s still in Memphis. Fry will know.

Nowadays I have about a 7 year-old Taylor 314 Koa with a Fishman, which I love and play all the time; the Guild which now has a Fishman but is in the shop to be refurbished; a 1968 NOS Gibson J-50 I bought at a little shop on Madison Avenue the weekend of the NARAS awards, which I love but don’t play much because the strings are a little too close for finger picking; and the old acoustics I already mentioned.

I’ve played a lot of acoustic guitars in my time and I have to say Taylor has broken the code. Their guitars are to die for. Unless you’re just married to old school luthier methods Martin, Gibson, etc. hang their hats on your primary acoustic needs to be a Taylor. I don’t think the Martin and Gibson new technology guitars light a candle to the Taylors.

That’s my Big Star guitar story. Would you like to hear my Big Star piano story?

I’m trying to recreate as much as possible a timeline for how the album came together. Here are the key dates as far as I can tell. So even being able to place when songs were written and / or recorded within these blocks of time would be helpful.

June 1972 – #1 Record released

October 1972 – live dates wind down

Dec 1972 – Chris leaves the band

May 1973 – Rock Writer’s Convention

December 1973 – Radio City mastered

So many writers have micro-analyzed this subject that whatever you have must come from more accurate sources than my memory. Instead of addressing this directly, let tell you a bit about musical relationships. You should be able to overlay the timeline on this fairly easily. This might be somewhat helpful.

First, just for the record - In the early days, before Big Star, Chris and I were pretty inseparable musically as I recall. Outside the studio we both played with various combinations of folks occasionally. And, of course in the studio one went with the flow of who was present on any given evening. But our primary musical vehicle/core was the 3-piece of Jody, Chris, and me, with Tom Eubanks doing a stint as a fourth for a while. We actually played out quite a bit doing fraternity parties, department store openings and the like. The other people we, and especially Chris played with, like Terry Manning, Steve Rhea, etc. have weighed in so heavily on this subject that you get the impression early Big Star and pre Big Star was some sort of commune as opposed to a cohesive band. Of course they’re just going by their recollections and this is what they remember. At one point a few years ago I had read so much of that type of stuff I almost became convinced myself. But nothing could be further from the truth. Especially by the time we hooked up with Alex we were very much a committed 3-piece band with a decent amount of both gig and studio experience.

Anyway, as we recorded the 1^st LP on National Street, and later Madison Ave, Chris and Alex became very tight musically. There was never any question we four were the band and we behaved as such, but Alex and Chris were just way more experienced than us so Jody and I were pretty much side men at this point. They each had songs they brought to the table, but when it came to producing and recording them they collaborated pretty seamlessly. I think they were rather surprised when I showed up with that horrible India Song. I never should have let Alex talk me into putting it on the record.

As we neared completion of the 1^st LP however, for whatever reason, Alex and Chris became increasingly independent of each other musically. Alex was all about branching out and experimenting musically while Chris was going through a personal crisis which inhibited his ability to socialize musically.

So Alex and I began to hang together. By this time I had taken John’s Audio Engineering course and was competent to run the studio solo. Previously we had been dependent on John, Chris, or Richard to provide this skill set. For the two of us, like most of these folks, hanging out meant hanging out musically. We did all sorts of crazy things, recording until the wee hours of the morning, listening to all sorts of odd musical influences and the like. We recorded Do Right Woman at Dan Penn’s studio with Spooner at 4:00 one morning. I’m sure it was horrible. I guess this would all have been happening roughly throughout 1972.

Anyway, the reason for going into all this is that by the time we began R.C. there was kind of a concept of operations (ConOps) in effect. Alex and I did lots of demo type stuff in the middle of the night with whoever was around. I have a really cool demo I recorded one night of Vera singing DIVORCE with Alex playing all the instruments and singing backup. I usually ran the studio and Alex played the music. When we were ready to do a real band track we’d get John to record it if necessary, then we’d spend the next month or so doing all the overdubs ourselves – of which there were a lot as I’m sure you know. Most of what I call the “mainline” R.C. songs were done this way. Alex later used a similar ConOps for the Dobly Fuckers stuff, usually, but not always with Richard recording.

Anyway, all that stuff about early BS is just me venting a little about the perceptions past articles and books have created. But this latter stuff is how I remember R.C. happening, at least at the 20,000 foot level as we say in the aircraft business. And I think it’s useful to understand this ConOps of how we operated in the studio before going into details about each track and stuff.

As far as the specific timelines go for R.C. … and this is not my strong area … first I’ll have to download the LPs from iTunes. I don’t seem to have copies. In the meantime, please note the following disclaimer: It has been about 35 years since all this occurred and I do not pretend to remember it all perfectly. So if you run into other evidence which seems to contradict me, it is probably more correct.

As an interlude while we’re waiting I’ll tell the keyboards story.

I started studying classical piano in the 3^rd grade. My mother had a small Knabe grand at our house she got about 1947. It was a great piano. It had easy action and a nice mellow sound. I studied formally with various teachers for about 7 years, until about the 9^th grade.

But I played that piano constantly experimenting with all sorts of stuff including figuring out a lot of rock songs. I can’t think of anything better than growing up with a nice piano at your disposal like that. You can’t help but learn a lot.

I actually played organ for a while for a soul band during my R&B period.

When we first started going to Ardent on National they had what must be about a 5’5” Chickering grand. I think it had a walnut finish. It must have been early 60s vintage. This was also a great piano. It was brighter and with a bigger sound than the Knabe. Most of the piano on the 1^st LP was this Chickering. Everyone used it for everything. When we moved to Madison we brought the Chickering with us and installed it in the B studio, the one we mostly used. So most of the piano on RC was also the Chickering. One hopes Fry still has it. Often I – and others – would go in and just play it for hours alone.

For the A studio they had to buy an additional piano. Fry, I expect at Terry’s urging, did not skimp. He got a brand new Yamaha concert grand. I think it was 7’ at least. It was solid black. It was a wonderful instrument. Smooth action, not the pronounced double action you get with Steinways, and a beautiful big bright tone. We used it some for recording but since it was in A studio, which we liked less and which was less accessible (all the big paying sessions were booked there) not nearly as much as the Chickering. But I – and a lot of others – loved to just go in there, close the door, and play and play, and play. Again, I hope it’s still there and in good shape. I liked that piano so much when it came time for me to by my own after I moved to Texas, I got a big black Yamaha C3 – with was their 6’ concert model at the time. I still have it and taught 3 kids how to play on it, not that it took with any of them. I taught myself to site read in the process though!

Alex had a Chickering at his house we played some too. I gather he grew up with this piano much like I did the Knabe. I remember it as being almost identical to the one in the B studio. His Dad was a jazz musician and used it when he jammed with his buddies,

I don’t believe Chris ever had a piano. I gather his family wasn’t musical like Alex’s and mine.

Also in B studio was a Hammond B3 organ with a big old tube Leslie. Hammonds are kind of a special case in the keyboard world to me. You play them kind of like lead guitar players play except on a keyboard. Also you have all those drawbars to manage. I never quite got it although I played it all the time trying to. Love B3s though. I wish I had one. I don’t think we ever used the B3 on a record but we used its Leslie all the time. Ever since Eric Clapton first ran a guitar through one, I think either on Abbey Road or Badge, everyone wanted to use that sound. And we did. It didn’t hurt that in addition to the rotating Leslie speakers it also had a great tube amp that distorted perfectly.

Other keyboards in the studio:

• They had one of the first Moog synthesizers. The damn thing was so complicated to operate I don’t remember using it very much. Then they replaced it with an Arp. I didn’t think it was much better but the Beatles apparently did so we screwed with it a lot. It probably ended up on a record somewhere. I’ll listen for it when my download completes.

• For a critical while they had an old pump organ out in B studio. I played this on Daisy Glaze. It belonged to someone though and they took it away finally.

• Frequently Jim Dickenson would bring his tacky piano over. This was an upright and someone had actually stuck thumbtacks into all the hammers to get that tacky sound.

• They bought an early Mellotron. We all loved it. Notionally you didn’t need to hire strings or horns anymore! They were very controversial with the musicians union as you can imagine. We used it a lot.

That’s all I can remember about keyboards so let’s resume with the timeline discussion.

As the Number 1 effort, and its very lame tour, wound down in mid to late 1972, new songs had already been written, both separately and jointly, mostly the latter. We hadn’t laid any tracks down to speak of but we had played many of the songs quite a bit in practice sessions, studio jams, and the like. Some writing occurred with the three or four of us in Alex’s bedroom. I know we did What’s Going Ahn there. Ditto Life is White and Back of a Car. It’s probably safe to say that the songs listed with both Andy and Alex writing credits were done this way. I’m almost positive Chris was present during some or all this. So it happened early on.

So we had these songs nearly ready to record. We also had a couple of Chris songs, Got Kinda Lost and another slow Chris song that escapes me right now. So there came a point where we were like, hey let’s record again. We were all getting kind of sick of the conventional method or recording; close miking everything, laying down 30 tracks before you settle on one, then millions of overdubs to get the final song. Plus we were really interested in mono. So – to make a long story short – we got Fry to engineer a session in B studio in mono, basically using one old big Neuman microphone in the middle of the room, with the whole band at once, and recorded four songs. I don’t remember how well we succeeded but the goal was to do them all in one take. I think we came pretty close. They sounded great. They were hot, fresh, full of enthusiasm, etc. and the mono sound Fry came up with was amazing I know we did Got Kind of Lost and the other Chris song. We also did Back of a Car. I’m not sure about the last one but it was probably Oh My Soul or You Get What You Deserve. I still have a tape of the Chris songs. I think Fry does too. You should listen to it. Anyway the master of this eventually got lost but it became the genesis of RC.

So after Chris left and we finally decided to do another LP, we started with these songs, subject of course to the deal Alex and Chris had cut on who would get writer credit on what, so we didn’t use the two Chris songs. Pity. But since the master was gone we had to re-record them. I recall a fairly long tortuous period during which we laid down the band tracks for Car, Soul, probably Life, Deserve, and later September and West. We then spent months producing and overdubbing them, often using the ConOps described above although eventually Alex took Fry’s course and started soloing on the console. This was sort of the Mainline part of the LP.

As we got well into this process Alex and Richard started up the Dolby Fuckers thing. I believe they/we did all that ourselves. Fry wasn’t needed to do the tracks because they were usually just a guitar and drums with everything else overdubbed.

The last two Alex songs were done way later right before mixing started.

Ok, now that you have the overall history of how the thing flowed we can start looking at specific songs. But that will have to be a subsequent installment.