The
Rolling Stones
"The
phone rang," remembers Hecht, "and there's Mick Jagger on the
other end. He's saying 'You know how it is when you put a tour together.
Someone will say, 'add horns' – why not hire a whole f**king orchestra!'
And I'm saying to myself, 'Okay, Mick Jagger is calling me up to tell
me why the Stones don't need horns on the road – and I'm
agreeing with him!' I'm like, 'You're right, you don't need horns
on the road.' At the end of this whole thing he said, 'but if we
did hire horns would you be into it?' Three and a half months later he
calls back – just nine days before a world tour – he calls and
asks if we can be at the rehearsal tomorrow with 12 songs arranged. We
had less than 36 hours ….'No problem!' we said! The next
day we were at the Nassau Coliseum in a little room with keyboardist
Chuck
Leavell and Mick …."
Robert
Plant/Jimmy Page
"On
the way to perform at NY's Byrne Arena, former Led Zeppelin singer Robert
Plant told us that Zep guitarist Jimmy Page would be making a guest appearance
to perform the Otis Rush song So Many Roads. We knew the original
horn arrangement, right? Wrong. Once in NJ we crossed our fingers and
called a record collector friend who obligingly played the track over
the phone. Within a few minutes we were practicing the 25-year-old horn
lines. That night, Robert Plant grinned onstage when we got it right."
Sammy
Davis Jr.
"We
were in Vegas to back up Sammy Davis for a special broadcast of the
David Letterman
Show," says Funk. 'We suggested Davis do For Once In My Life
and he went for it. Paul Shaffer decided we should rehearse it once – and
the tune wasn't nearly as fresh for the show as it was for the rehearsal.
Sammy turned to Shaffer and said 'Just think how good it would have sounded
if we didn't rehearse!' Sammy was my hero – after I played
this one riff he even hugged me onstage in the middle of the broadcast –
and at the end of thegig we rushed to the exit to have our photo taken
with him. Suddenly this huge wall of mean looking bodyguards grabbed
us
and Sammy jumped out of the limo yelling, 'No, no I love these dudes – they're
great.' Later we found out there was no film in the camera."
The
J. Geils Band
"The
mighty J. Geils Band initiated us into national touring. Freezeframe
had just gone platinum (1982). With lead singer Peter Wolf, here was
a
band that routinely received six encores a night. Arno played tenor sax
solo on the band's version of Land of 1000 Dances. One night,
in the middle of his long solo, two roadies emerged and covered Arno's
shoulders with a long flowing purple velvet cape with a big black "A"
in the center. Arno was completely oblivious as the entire J. Geils Band,
including the drummer, dropped to their knees and bowed at his feet in
rock's first 'we're not worthy' scenario. The crowd went wild!"
The
Uptown Horns at the Stereo Society (selected
links):
To
Uptown Horns homepage (all
links)
To
Uptown Horns Biography
To "On
the Road"
To Uptown
Horns albums
To
Uptown Horns interview with Mike Thorne
To audio
clips from the Uptown Horns interview
To
Bob Funk (trombone)
To Crispin
Cioe (alto sax)
To
Larry Etkin (trumpet and flugelorn
To
Arno Hecht (tenor sax)
To
external Uptown Horns sites:
To
www.Crispinmusic.com
To
Burnzy's Last Call soundtrack
To
www.Phunque.com
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