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All Music Guide:
As Little Feat was disbanding in late 1978, their lead guitarist/songwriter Lowell George recorded a solo album, Thanks I'll Eat It Here, that sounded as loose and funky as the band in their prime. After its release the following year, he set out on tour to support the album. Sadly, George died of a heart attack while on the road; he left behind a body of gritty, eclectic, and funky rock & roll. On the first five Little Feat albums, his songwriting and instrumental talents are more apparent than on his solo effort, yet that doesn't detract from the record's pleasures.
Wikipedia:
Lowell Thomas George (April 13, 1945 – June 29, 1979) was an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, who was the main guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Little Feat.
Early years [edit]
Lowell George was born in Hollywood, California the son of Willard H. George, a furrier who raised chinchillas and supplied furs to the movie studios.
George's first instrument was the harmonica. At the age of 6 he appeared on the Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour performing a duet with his older brother, Hampton. As a student at Hollywood High School (where he befriended Paul Barrere and future wife Elizabeth), he took up the flute in the school marching band and orchestra. He had already started to play Hampton's acoustic guitar at age 11, progressed to the electric guitar by his high school years, and later learn to play the saxophone, shakuhachi and sitar. During this period, George viewed the teen idol-oriented rock and roll of the era in a contemptuous light, instead favoring West Coast jazz and the soul jazz of Les McCann & Mose Allison. Following graduation in 1963, he briefly worked at a gas station (an experience that inspired such later songs as "Willin'" and "Truck Stop Girl") to support himself while studying art and art history at Los Angeles Valley College for two years.
Performing [edit]
Early years [edit]
Initially funded by the sale of his grandfather's stock, George's first band (The Factory) formed in 1965 and released at least one single on the Uni label, "Smile, Let Your Life Begin" (co-written by George). Members included future Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward (who replaced Dallas Taylor in September 1966), Martin Kibbee (a.k.a. Fred Martin) who would later co-write several Little Feat songs with George (including "Dixie Chicken" and "Rock & Roll Doctor"), and Warren Klein on guitar. Frank Zappa produced two tracks for the band, but they weren't released until 1993 on the album Lightning-Rod Man, billed as Lowell George and The Factory. The band made an appearance on the 1960s sitcom F Troop as "The Bed Bugs". They were also featured in an episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., "Lost, the Colonel's Daughter" (season 3 episode 27). Although not visible in the scene inside the A Go-Go club, their music can be heard playing loudly. They received credits at the end of the episode as "'The Factory' Lowell-Warren-Martin-Rich, Courtesy of Universal Records".
Following the disbanding of The Factory, George briefly joined The Standells. In November 1968, George joined Zappa's Mothers of Invention as rhythm guitarist and nominal lead vocalist; he can be heard on both Weasels Ripped My Flesh and the first disc of You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5. During this period, he would absorb Zappa's autocratic leadership style and avant garde-influenced conceptual/procedural-oriented compositional methods. He earned his first production credit (in conjunction with Zappa and Russ Titelman) on Permanent Damage, an album recorded by "groupie group" The GTOs. George later asserted that "he performed no real function in the band" and left the group in May 1969 under nebulous circumstances. GTOs member Pamela Des Barres has claimed that George was fired by the abstemious Zappa for smoking marijuana, while he claimed at a 1975 Little Feat concert that he was fired because he "wrote a song ["Willin'"] about dope." On the contrary, biographer Mark Brend asserts that Zappa "liked the song" but "thought there was no place for it in the Mothers' set"; George himself alternatively claimed that "it was decided that I should leave and form a band" by mutual agreement.
Little Feat [edit]
After leaving the Mothers of Invention, George invited fellow musicians to form a new band, which they named Little Feat. George usually (but not always) played lead guitar and focused on slide guitar. Ry Cooder played the slide on the debut Little Feat album after George badly injured his hand while working on a powered model airplane, although George re-recorded some of his material. Mark Brend wrote that George's "use of compression defined his sound and gave him the means to play his extended melodic lines."
Outside of his band, George played guitar on John Cale's 1973 album Paris 1919, Harry Nilsson's Son of Schmilsson album (Take 54) and (uncredited but verified by Leo Nocentelli) The Meters' Just Kissed My Baby in 1974. Also with The Meters, Lowell George's slide work features prominently on Robert Palmer's first solo studio album Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley recorded in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1974.
In the 1970s, Little Feat released a series of studio albums: Little Feat, Sailin' Shoes, Dixie Chicken, Feats Don't Fail Me Now, The Last Record Album, and Time Loves A Hero. The group's 1978 live album Waiting for Columbus became their best-selling album.
In an interview with Bill Flanagan conducted eleven days before his death, George stated that he was keen to re-form Little Feat without Bill Payne and Paul Barrère in order to reassert his full control over the group. Due to tensions within the group, especially between George and Payne and, to a lesser extent, Barrère, regarding musical direction and leadership, Payne and Barrère left the group in 1979.
George was also a producer, and produced the Grateful Dead's 1978 album Shakedown Street, as well as Little Feat's records, Valerie Carter's 1977 release Just A Stone's Throw Away, and George's 1979 solo album Thanks, I'll Eat It Here.
Death [edit]
On June 15, 1979, George began a tour in support of his solo album. On June 29, 1979, the morning after an appearance at Washington, DC's Lisner Auditorium where the bulk of Waiting for Columbus had been recorded, George collapsed and died in his Arlington, Virginia hotel room.
A post mortem report later stated that heart failure was the cause of death. George's body was cremated in Washington, D.C. on August 2. His ashes were flown back to Los Angeles, where they were scattered in the Pacific Ocean from his fishing boat.
