The Tommy Bolin Legacy

Aleady touting a reputation as something of a prodigy, Tommy Bolin, born in Sioux City, prodigy, Tommy Bolin, born in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1951, was a 24-year-old musical veteran when he was tapped in by Deep Purple to replace founding guitarist Richie Blackmore. in 1975. Bolin had recently departed from The James Gang, where he'd replaced Joe Walsh, recording two albums with them before splitting to cut his solo debut, Teaser, which featured contributions from a number of fusion players he'd worked with in the band he formed just three years before, Energy. Bolin wrote or co-wrote seven of the nine tracks on Deep Purple's Come Taste The Band album, after which they decided to split. He then headed out with his own band, recorded a second album, Private Eyes, before unfortunately dying of a heroin overdose 3 December 1976, after opening for Peter Frampton and Jeff Beck earlier that evening.

Released in March this year, Great Gypsy Soul is a 2CD set credited to Bolin and Friends, coproduced by guitarists Greg Hampton whose credits include albums for Alice Cooper and Lita Ford, Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule and the Allman Brothers. The set is comprised of previously unreleased original outtakes and alternative versions of songs recorded by Bolin and his band, lifted from the original master tapes, with the addition across various tracks of a stellar cast of guest guitarists, including Peter Frampton, Nels Cline, Steve Lukather, Steve Morse, Brad Whitford, Joe Bonamassa, John Scofield, Derek Trucks, Myles Kennedy, Glenn Hughes, who was in the version of Deep Purple Bolin played in, and Haynes himself.

“Sonically,” Hampton suggests, “it sounds amazingly… I wouldn't say modern – it's very current-sounding. Some of the playing is just breathtaking, it's ridiculous – so ahead of its time. [Surprisingly] it was recorded actually kinda shitty,” he laughs, recalling that the unfinished recordings used for Great Gypsy Soul and the finished Teaser album were done between Deep Purple dates. “They'd get in there and the engineer guy would be out of his mind and would flip the reels over and only record on x amount of tracks. There would be some amazing performances that were in there, but the way the drums were recorded in certain capacities were the biggest challenge because of the stupidity of some of the mic'ing techniques, so we really had a lot of work to do on those. So as far as Tommy's stuff, he had a lot of foresight in recording DI tracks and amps as well at that point, so we were fortunately able to utilise that.”

Inevitably, with multitrack tape more than 30-years old, they had to be “baked” in order to get them useable to lift the tracks off and into the digital realm.

“As for some of those outtakes on the tribute with Warren Haynes, there's some incredible performances that Tommy had done that no one ever heard and it really spurred on some great performances with the other players alongside Tommy on the multitracks. Warren and I had talked about who we thought – friends of ours – who we felt would be the most appropriate for certain recordings. Like, when you create a song from scratch – it was a song without lyrics or anything, just a funky thing that became a song recorded 35-36 years since Tommy passed away – that was pretty emotional.”

Particularly emotional was Steve Lukather getting in effect to play once again with his former Toto bandmate Jeff Porcaro for the first time since the drummer died from a heart attack aged just 38 in 1992.

“Subtle changes make all the difference in the world,” Hampton says, explaining his own approach to equipment and guitar choices when working in whatever context he finds himself. “I want my musical voice, speaking as a guitar player, to blend in with the fabric of the music. So whatever makes that happen the best is what I want to do.”

As well as Hampton's own Hampton Hacienda Laboratory, recordings were done at a variety of studios that suited the various guests, including Wyman Studios, The Steakhouse, Command Studios, Tarpan Studios, Carriage Hose, Echo Mountain Studios, Sunset Lodge Studios and Perdenales Studios, with additional production by Fabrizio Grossi, who also mixed the album with Hampton, the results mastered by Pete Doel at Universal Mastering.

“At the NAMM shows every year,” Hampton continues, “all these cats come to LA or Orange County over that course of time in January, and we were very fortunate to get quite a few performances within that time frame. In two nights we got Warren and Joe Bonamassa, Steve Morse and Myles Kennedy [Alter Bridge]. Brad Whitford [Aerosmith] we did back east in Carolina and Warren's from that area. The younger cats, Nels Clines [Wilco] did some amazing stuff with [Israeli jazz guitarist] Oz Noy on that Flying Fingers track [on Disc 2]. The version without Nels and Oz on that outtake from Teaser is incredible, seventeen minutes with Porcaro playing all those drum parts.”

Completing that second disc is a piece called Marching Bag, which is broken up into four movements with Prairie Prince playing Michael Narada Walden's drumkit, “doing his best Narada imitation,” Hampton laughs in recollection, “on a twenty-eight minute version of Marching Powder [the version released on Teaser featuring Narada], which was taken from seven different takes, all different tempos and most of that drumming on there was dodgy at best. We did that at Narada's studio outside San Francisco. Prairie actually redid some of his drums on Savannah Woman [featuring guest guitarist John Scofield], which he'd played on the original Teaser session, which was kinda neat. It took some finessing and we had to take it in stages. Narada has this drumset that never moves – he just did the new Jeff Beck record on it – it's always mic'd, sitting in the corner, this big double-bass kit, green sparkle, and it's got to be the best sounding drumkit I've heard in my life. Prairie didn't realise he wasn't re-recording the original Marching Powder. He said he'd been listening to it and I laughed saying it's a bit longer than that!”

Sharing production tasks between Hampton and Haynes was a natural thing – the pair have worked together for years, and Hampton plays in a band, 9 Chambers, with Haynes' bass player in Gov't Mule, Jorgen Carlsson. “We've known each other long enough that communication comes fairly naturally,” Hampton admits. “It's never laboured.”

The Teaser album was originally recorded at The Record Plant, Electric Lady and Trident Studios, with Bolin producing with Lee Kiefer, apart from two tracks produced by Dennis MacKay, who also mixed the album. Hampton produced, with Bolin's drummer brother, Johnnie, the other two CDs of alternate and outtakes included in The Ultimate Teaser, mixing them again at Hampton Hacienda Laboratory with Jeremy Mackenzie, the pair also supervising the mastering and remastering done by Dabmye Mastering.

Hampton's approach to this record was simply – “Trying to make it sound as good as I could.

The drums, again, were the biggest juggling act, but [Bolin's] playing is just stellar – that was the main thing. There was just so much stuff. There's some other jammy stuff that is gonna be released, absolutely, some things that he would do live up here.