CD Release - Phil Walden (1940-2006)

The first time I met Phil Walden, I was a cub reporter in Macon who regularly passed by the once-famous building with “Capricorn Records” in gold lettering on the facade at 535 Cotton Ave. It was early 1984. Capricorn had been closed for several years, the Allman Brothers Band had left town, and Walden was in what he later described as the bleakest period of his life. When I arrived for our appointment, I entered the old Capricorn headquarters without realizing that Walden’s office was actually in the two-story brick building next door.

The front door to the headquarters was ajar. The place looked like a vandalized museum that held the lost remnants of Southern rock music — gold records laid on the floor and framed music posters stacked against the wall, many of them shattered and water-damaged from a leak in the roof. There was even a box with admission buttons to Capricorn’s famed annual picnic, which was once so hip it brought Jimmy Carter, Andy Warhol, Don King and a host of other “it” people down to Macon. Yes, Macon, Ga.

When I finally found Walden’s building, he was alone in a semi-darkened office — no secretaries, no employees. He was bitter at his fortunes but not shy about boldly predicting that both he and Capricorn Records would come back. And they did. He revived the label in the ’90s with such bands as Widespread Panic, 311 and Cake, before it disintegrated again a few years later.

I heard through the grapevine that Walden didn’t like the story I wrote. He also didn’t like the book I wrote in 1995 about the Allman Brothers Band, which detailed his acrimonious breakup with Capricorn’s flagship group. And he most certainly didn’t like the book I wrote in 2001 about Otis Redding — to demonstrate his displeasure, he sued my ass for $15 million. Never let it be said that Phil Walden ever did anything on a small scale.

Yet, when a friend e-mailed Monday with the news that Walden had died of lung cancer at the age of 66, it felt like I’d lost a friend. A friend in the sense that he was the conduit for so much of the music that has touched me. It’s no overstatement to say that without Phil Walden, there would be no Otis Redding. Without Otis, there would be no Stax/Volt Records; without Stax, there would be no Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section; and without Muscle Shoals, Aretha Franklin would be just another obscure jazz singer.

After Redding died in a 1967 plane crash, Walden shifted to rock ‘n’ roll. What kind of vision and daring was it that led him to sign a deal to manage an unknown studio-session guitar player named Duane Allman? The guy didn’t even sing. But, together, they created a new style of music, and did it in Macon of all places.

Duane Allman became the South’s Jerry Garcia and aspiring musicians were soon descending on Macon — the Marshall Tucker Band from Spartanburg, S.C., Wet Willie from Mobile, Ala., Chuck Leavell from Tuscaloosa, Ala,, Elvin Bishop from Chicago, and Lynyrd Skynyrd from Jacksonville, Fla. Walden single-handedly revived the rock scene in the South. Walden didn’t demand hit records from the bands he signed to Capricorn; he demanded great music. As I write this, I am listening to Duane Allman’s soaring lead guitar on “Blue Sky.” That great music exists because of Phil Walden. And that great music is his truest legacy.