In these times of quarantines, face masks and no concerts, it’s wonderful to see so many musicians of every genre finding ways to share music with those of us missing it. If they’re not doing virtual performances from their living rooms, they’re digging through their archives for something “new” fans might enjoy hearing. For guitarist Dave Mason, he took the latter a step further and re-recorded one of his best-known songs, “Feeling Alright?” with a few of his talented friends. The track, featuring Mick Fleetwood, Sammy Hagar and some Doobie Brothers, has become a hit all over again. And even though Mason says the song wasn’t really a feel good song, it’s been made into one over the years, and everyone from Gladys Knight to Grand Funk Railroad, Huey Lewis and Joe Cocker has covered it. “Who would have thought that this would go on to be covered by so many different artists and bands,” Mason said upon the song’s release. “But what I do know today is that people need some hope and comfort and especially music, which is why I called up some friends to re-record a special version of the song.”
Mason had originally recorded the song with his band Traffic for their self-titled second album in 1968; an album he wasn’t initially slated to appear on. Mason had left the band after their debut, Mr Fantasy in 1967, but rejoined back up during the making of the Traffic album before departing again. Leaving Traffic certainly didn’t slow Mason down any; he played on “All Along The Watchtower” with his friend Jimi Hendrix, played on “Street Fighting Man” with the Rolling Stones, toured with Delaney & Bonnie and Fleetwood Mac, added his talents to records by everyone from Donovan to George Harrison, and recorded numerous solo albums, beginning with 1970’s Alone Together. He was supposed to tour with John Mayall this year but coronavirus has put that on hold for the time being.
Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2004 alongside his Traffic bandmates Steve Winwood, Chris Wood and Jim Capaldi, Mason is ready for music to be happening again. When I asked him during our interview recently what he has been doing during quarantine, he said with a laugh, “I’m running out of TV series, honey, is what’s happening!”
But it looks like you’ve been having some fun during this pandemic, getting together with some of your music buddies. What can you tell us about that?
Well, different people kept going, “You need to do something and get something out on the internet or something.” So I went, “Well, gosh, let me think. What am I going to do that would be kind of cool?” “Feeling Alright?” would be kind of cool to redo but rather than individual artists or bands having stuff up there, it would be interesting to see if I could gather up a little group of artists in their own right, have their own careers. Mick I’ve known for a long time. I was with Fleetwood Mac from 1994 to 1996 and we’ve been friends and he also lives out in Maui. Sammy Hagar I met this Christmas in Maui at a mutual friend’s of ours, Shep Gordon’s house. And the guys in the Doobie Brothers, I mean, I’ve played shows with them since back in the early seventies but really got to know everybody about three or four years ago when we did a tour with myself, the Doobie Brothers and Journey. And Michael McDonald, I’ve known on and off, mostly from Maui. A lot of the people have a place over there and Shep Gordon has an annual event that he does every New Year’s to raise money for the Maui Food Bank and pretty much everybody has been at that event at the same time or we’ve all done it.
So that’s kind of how everybody really got to know each other and then it was a matter of calling everybody and going, “Hey, what do you think? You want to give this a shot?” And everybody was up for it. John McFee, from the Doobie Brothers, was very instrumental in getting the audio of this put together. We did back and forth between his studio and my studio. Everybody is scattered all over the place and everybody had to do their parts separately so it was sort of back and forth with the audio until we had that done. Then a gentleman named Rob Arthur, who is actually in the video, playing organ, put all the visual aspects of it together, did all the editing. And that was basically April, May. Over those two months we sort of put this together and it came out so good. It’s as if we’re all just playing it together. And that was really my intention from the get go, was to put a little something together to brighten up everybody’s day. That was the basic idea of it.
Is this the beginning of new music coming out for you?
You’ve already got people saying, “Are you going to do another one?” (laughs) Listen, it took a minute to get this done, because I’m dealing with people that are busy with their own stuff here. Whether I can do something again like this, I don’t know. But this is sort of like a one-off thing basically for the moment. Other than going through some old archival stuff, and there are a couple of interesting performances from the Journey/Doobie Brothers tour, there are some things that I’m posting in my YouTube channel. There’s new stuff in there, some archival stuff. I just posted some stuff in there from me and Cass Elliot, which I hadn’t seen in years.
Are there still people coming up to you and saying they loved what you did with Mama Cass?
Yeah, I mean, let’s put it this way, it was an odd combination for me to do something like that but I had just moved here to America and I spent a lot of time at Cass’s house. There was a couple living at her house that were really good friends of mine from England so it was somewhere familiar for me to be since I didn’t really know anybody when I first came here. So it really came out of just sort of hanging out and a friendship more than anything. Looking back on some of this stuff, it’s kind of interesting, the music. I was a lot younger, I was twenty-three years old, twenty-four years old, but, you know, it was cool. I have a pretty broad eclectic past (laughs).
Jumping back to “Feeling Alright?”. What part of that song came to you first?
Well, it sort of came together kind of all at the same time. Part of it for me was, I was trying to write something really, really simple and that was basically two chords, which is all it is. The same two chords over and over and over again and just built the melody around that. Then I had the words from my unrequited love affair (laughs). There’s a bunch of those. But the song, basically the title is “Feeling Alright?” with a question mark. In other words, it’s a question and the song is about not feeling too good myself. It’s not about feeling alright at all. It’s a question and it’s basically a timeless thing because it’s basically an unrequited love song is what it is (laughs).
So many people have covered that song. Who do you think brought the most uniqueness to their version?
If you listen to the original recording and the way I did it, you would have to say it’s probably the best and it is the most unique, because right from the get go is Cocker’s version. That’s what changed it. That changed it into “Feeling Alright?” (laughs) His is still the stand out version as far as I’m concerned. I mean, his version is what spawned all the other versions. I’m flattered that so many people did it, some fifty-plus artists have done it, major artists, and every bar band has played it and still play it. But it’s Cocker’s version that spawned all that, not my original version. Like I said, the original version is a little bit of a down song, even musically. If you listen to the original, the version that I put on Traffic, it’s not about feeling alright. It’s about I’m not feeling too good myself. That’s what the song is about.
When you brought it to the band, what was their initial reaction?
You know, I’d left after the first album and they were, I think, in New York and they were working on the second Traffic album and all they had were five songs. I went to the studio and it was like, “Well, I’ve got five songs.” So it was like, “Oh okay, cool, let’s just record them and you’re back in the band.” (laughs) Basically, that was it. They had five songs, I had five songs. Okay, we’ve got an album (laughs).
Was it a very democratic type band when choosing songs for the albums?
Well, it turned out that they had to have it their way in the end. That’s why I eventually had to leave.
Did Jim fall into that category too since you had known each other a while before Traffic?
Oh, he fell right into that. He was going to do whatever Steve Winwood wanted. He sort of became a turncoat in the end (laughs). There’s only Winwood and myself left at this point. [Capaldi died in 2005, Wood in 1983]
Several of your songs on that first Traffic album, Mr Fantasy, have a strong exotic quality to them. How did you get turned on to that sound?
That East meets West thing was starting and came along with LSD and all the rest of it. And that was finding it’s way into music. I was young and into all kinds of stuff, musically, and I wanted to start playing sitar and George Harrison gave me a sitar to get started on. Then I used it on a couple of Traffic tunes, one of them being the biggest hit single they ever had in England and Europe, which is a song called “Hole In My Shoe,” which is the first song I ever wrote, frankly. It went to #2 in the charts. Engelbert Humperdinck kept me from #1.
I read recently that you’re not the one playing the guitar solo on “Dear Mr Fantasy.” Why didn’t you?
Probably because Steve and Jim, that was their song, they wrote that basically. And Winwood played guitar. There was no bass player in Traffic. It was either Steve would play bass or I would play bass. I played guitar and other things, I played harmonica. The bass on that and the bass on a song called “Dealer,” are the only times I ever really played bass on a record.
When you first started playing guitar, what was the hardest thing for you to get the hang of?
It was a number of things. A lot of it is just coordination between the hands, timing and you need to get calluses on the tips of your fingers otherwise it’s very painful. Which reminds me, it’s something I need to get back since I haven’t been on the road (laughs). That’s basically it but, you know, I was in a rush to play. I’m not trained and I don’t read or write music.
Did you take lessons at all?
Nope, just jumped right in listening to records trying to learn the parts. I was listening to the Shadows. They had many hit records all over the world except here in America. The Shadows, and a similar equivalent would have been the Ventures over here. I was listening to stuff like that, Duane Eddy, Chet Atkins. Then I sort of grew into the blues stuff later. But mostly my influences are all guitar but it had to do with melody. I have a strong melodic sense.
Do you think you achieved it what you were originally wanting to do on guitar?
Well, yeah, to an extent. I’m not very technically adept on the guitar. I still don’t really know my way around it. I just sort of fumble around till I find what I want (laughs). Then I work on the parts, basically. But yeah, I guess so at this point. I’m a lot more comfortable, especially when I’m on the road and playing shows cause I have a bad habit: I don’t practice. I’m just terrible that way. But I’m just basically a lazy son of a bitch (laughs). But once we’re out there on the road and we’ve played a few shows, then yeah, I’m having a great time. I’ve gone back and listened to stuff in the past and it’s like, who is that? Oh that’s me! I didn’t know I did that! (laughs) I just love playing guitar. It’s been my little passion since I was sixteen years old. That’s going on nearly sixty years.
Did you get into other instruments like the mandolin or banjo?
No. I love listening to somebody who knows how to play it. I love real country music, not what they’re pushing off as country music these days. I guess it would be bluegrass. I like real country music. There are some awesome players and when I talk about players I mean people like Earl Scruggs and a lot of the guys that I don’t really know their names. I just know that when I hear it, I like it; in more terms of the pickers, the guitar players, the mandolin players, the banjo players. More in the traditional country music style.
The Appalachian music, other than stuff like the original Appalachian music which really has it’s roots in Europe, everything else is the other way around. All contemporary music is uniquely American. When you get to Jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, then you’re talking about truly American music, which basically all the Brits just copied it. If it wasn’t for BB King and Albert King and Freddie King and Elmore James and all those people, there would be no Eric Clapton, there’d be no Jeff Beck, there’d be none of those players. There’d be no me. We just copied all that stuff, wrapped it up in a different bow and sold it back to you (laughs). It’s true and in doing so, it turned you on to your own music. Back then, we didn’t have segregated radio in Europe so we got to listen to it all as opposed to here in America where up until the sixties or something basically there was a black station and a white station.
When you did your first solo album, what was going on in your world at that time?
I was twenty-two years old and pretty much all those songs would have been, or a lot of them, would have been on the third Traffic album if they hadn’t of gone off on their little trip about not wanting my music on there anymore (laughs). Otherwise, I had just moved here in 1969.
That was kind of a tumultuous time period to move to the States
I guess, I mean, I really wasn’t paying that much attention to that. When you’re twenty-two, twenty-three, who gives a damn, you know (laughs). I had no wife, no kids, no nothing. I had a guitar in a bag and hey, I’m going west young man (laughs).
The songs on Alone Together are more bluesy. On “Look At You Look At Me,” you do several big solos. Were they separate to begin with or was it one long guitar piece that you broke into pieces?
No, I played them as is. There’s a middle solo and then there’s the long solo at the end. They are played straight through. Not, here’s a lick and then stop and put another one. They are played straight through. I have actually re-recorded that entire album, Alone Together. It’s going to be called Alone Together Again and it’s officially coming out, hopefully, at the end of October, beginning of November. It’s all finished, it’s done. I’ve got it in CD form with the same fold-out jacket with a multi-colored CD like the original multi-colored vinyl.
What made you want to do that album all over again?
A lot of the stuff I had been doing live and a couple of the songs I thought could have been done a lot better. Like “Sad & Deep As You.” I think the new version is so much better. I didn’t really like my voice at the time, at all. It was young. It’s gotten better over the years. It’s more seasoned. And also some of the arrangements and also as good as all the players were on that album, and they were great players, it would have been just another dynamic to it had I had that band and those people on the road for like a month actually playing those songs and then gone into the studio and recorded them, cause basically they were coming in cold and just recording. It’s great but it would have been just a little bit more like these tracks are because I’ve been doing them with my band and they’ve been playing them a lot live; so they have a certain energy that is not there in that original stuff.
So if you would have gone on the road with those guys, which drummer would you have used [there are 3 drummers on the album]?
Probably Jim Gordon. He’s one of the better drummers that I’d ever worked with. It’s too bad what happened with him. But there are a bunch of great players on that album.
You play guitar with a lot of different people but you don’t seem to write a lot with somebody.
Yeah, I’m not very prolific as it is. I mean, Alone Together has eight songs on it and it took about two years to write those eight songs. So I’m not exactly the most prolific of people so I’ve never written a lot with others. There’s some songs, like “Look At You Look At Me,” Jim wrote the words to that but he already had the words written and I had this piece of music and I was looking through some of his lyrics and was like, “Oh wait, this will fit right on here!” (laughs) So I just put those lyrics right into what I was writing cause they fit.
But no, I tend to mostly write on my own. Other than doing “We Just Disagree,” which I did not write at all. It was written by Jim Krueger, who was a guitar player that played with me for about eighteen years. He just came to me one day and said, “Hey, I wrote this song and I think it’s perfect for you.” He played it to me and I said, “You know, you’re absolutely right. It is perfect for me and it’s a great song.” So I’ve done other people’s stuff.
Peter Green just passed away. Did you ever meet him?
No. In fact, someone just asked me if I’d write some words about him and I was like, I don’t know him and the only things I know would be as a listener, which is I love “Oh Well” and I love “Albatross.” Other than that, I was not a Peter Green follower.
How did you end up playing on “All Along The Watchtower” with Hendrix?
Well, I did spend a little time hanging out with Jimi at different times and we got up and jammed a couple of times at different little clubs when we were out or nights at his apartment just listening to music. Then at one point, there was a rift regarding Noel Redding in the band and Jimi and I were seriously talking about me taking Noel Redding’s place. So it wasn’t just a casual we met one day and here’s this song. There was a little bit more to it. We were just at somebody’s place listening to the new John Wesley Harding album one afternoon and then found myself in the studio with him, I can’t remember exactly when, a few days later and just me, him and Mitch Mitchell; and actually Brian Jones was there but Brian was just non compos mentis. That’s how we laid the track down for it, just myself on twelve string, Jimi and Mitch Mitchell. Then I also sang on “Crosstown Traffic.” Then I did about three other tracks with Jimi where I played bass and sitar and I have no idea what happened to them. Somebody sent me something because they thought it was Brian Jones and I said, no, that’s not Brian, that’s me playing sitar. Maybe it’ll emerge.
And Brian wasn’t in good shape when you saw him?
Brian? No. Unfortunately, it’s too bad with him cause musically he was the most talented guy in the Rolling Stones for sure.
Was he in that condition when you did Beggar’s Banquet?
Not when we laid down the rhythm track for “Street Fighting Man.” It was me and him and Keith and Charlie sitting on the floor in a little circle putting the basic track down. Then, I guess later, somewhere or another day or something, I played that little weird horn thing on the end cause Brian was not around.
What was it like being on that tour with Delaney & Bonnie?
They were some of the first sort of people that I got to know over here. Gram Parsons introduced me to them or rather he introduced me to the Palomino Club over in San Fernando Valley and I saw them. I went back to England raving to Chris Blackwell, “You should sign this band.” Then when I came back over and got friendly with them, we ended up being represented by the same management and in the meantime of doing my own thing, finished up playing guitar with them for a while. Then they had a #2 record with “Only You Know & I Know.” We opened up a number of shows on the Blind Faith tour, which of course is where Eric got to steal most of Delaney’s band to become the Dominos.
Was there a setlist pretty locked down for those shows or more free-for-all?
There was always a setlist. Mad Dogs & Englishmen might have been a bit chaotic. I was going to be on that except I went to rehearsals and I was like, uh-oh, no, no, no, I don’t think I want to do this! (laughs)
Do you like to collect guitars?
Not really. If I knew how much they were going to be worth, I probably should have done so. But then there are probably a lot of things I should have done! (laughs)
What was your favorite venue to play in in the sixties?
I have no idea (laughs). The sixties, I was working with Traffic and we were playing theatres, did some shows over in Scandinavian countries. The most interesting one would have been playing Budapest back in the sixties, which was a communist country. We played there and we spent the whole night sitting up on the hills around Budapest with these kids. They just wanted to know about the West. We were like, “Why don’t you guys just leave and go.” And they said, “We can’t. If we did that they’d throw our parents in jail.”
Tell us about you as a producer?
I’ve always produced or co-produced my own stuff but I’ve always put somebody else in there to bounce off. Basically the rhythm section is what you want first and maybe there is a keyboard player. So it’s like, “Here’s the song, let me hear what you guys want to put to this.” I want to hear what you’re going to put on my song. Hopefully, you’re going to come up with shit that’s cool. I want them to enhance it. Some things I might have fixed ideas about but otherwise I am pretty much like, “Play, go ahead, let’s do something on this, blow me away.”
How complete is the song when you bring it into the studio?
My songs are done and it’s just what can we come up with musically, how are we going to interpret the song. I don’t want to waste time in the studio room writing a song. I mean, if the song doesn’t stand up with just a guitar or with a piano, it’s just a waste of time to me. You know when you’re writing it whether it’s got any legs or not.
Do you like all this advanced technology in the studio?
For me, sitting at home by myself, yeah. I’m playing everything – the bass, the drums, the keyboard part – and I can pretty much flush out a pretty decent track. So from that point of view, it’s great in making stuff like that. But I still approach it the same way as I always did.
Have you ever done a show solo, just you on a guitar?
No, I’ve never done that. I don’t want to. I’ve done a number of shows acoustically with myself and another player but solo, it would just bore the hell out of me. I want to be able to step out and play some electric guitar. I’m a guitar player who sort of came to singing cause I started writing – okay, now I’ve got to sing these things! (laughs)
Are you happy with your voice now?
Yeah, I suppose but I wish I sounded like Marvin Gaye (laughs)
