Richie Hayward at his final show – photo by Polly Gray
On August 12, 2010 Little Feat’s founding drummer Richie Hayward, who was suffering from liver cancer, passed away from complications of lung disease while awaiting a liver transplant. Little Feat’s Bill Payne has written the following essay on his longtime friend and band member.
Part One appears here, with a look at Hayward’s later years over on Relix.com.
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Vancouver Island Music Fest 7-11-10
We were all in anticipation of seeing Richie. It had been almost a year. We traveled up to Vancouver Island to play a concert, taking the next day off to visit with Richie and his wife Shauna at their home. Throughout that long year I had many conversations with Richie on the phone. There was not one time I didn’t hang up without crying. He was a brother to me, to all of us. Family. Our family. So much had changed. Gabe Ford, Richie’s drum tech for two-and-a-half-years was playing with the band. My girlfriend, Polly Gray, was coming up to meet me from Seattle. She had her camera with her. This would be the last time to document Little Feat and Richie together. Shauna had been posting on CarePages the last year, keeping everyone, fans and band alike, current as to Richie’s situation. Hope is everlasting, they say. We all wanted him back in the band. Gabe was ready and more than willing to move back into the slot of his drum tech if that happened. In my heart, I knew it couldn’t happen. When we arrived at the gig he was there with Shauna waiting for us. It was a tearful reunion full of hugs and love. Shauna posted what happened that evening:
From Shauna Hayward:
Then the gig….. The weather had turned a bit cold, and the wind picked up….but did not take away from anything yet to experience. We kept Richie warm beside Dave’s board, with blankets, and love, then Paul invited him up to sing the Jamaican national anthem! It was amazing x Smiles and laughter larger than anything I could describe x Richie was beaming x He played three songs….Spanish moon, Skin it back, and Fat man. I cannot touch with words…all that happened….just know, that it was the magic of love, everywhere.
The band did several songs before they did Willin’. During Willin’ Paul stopped and called Richie out to sing Don’t Bogart That Joint with him. It was a huge singalong with the crowd. Richie then took over the drums from Gabe and played on Spanish Moon, Skin It Back and Fat Man. The band finished the set and all came to the front of the stage and did a wave and a bow. Richie stood slightly off stage only to play percussion for the encore: Oh Atlanta. It was amazing site and sound, lot`s of tears and cheers.
Polly took a defining photo of Richie that night. The joy on his face says it all.
A month later, August 12, 2010, Richie passed away. The band was in Falmouth, UK.
More tears. Where did all the years go?
Iowa Meets Hollywood, CA
I try and imagine what it must have been like for Richie Hayward to venture west from the confines of Iowa to the free-for-all of Hollywood, CA, La La Land, in 1966. Richie never struck me as someone with much patience; his entrance into the chaos and excess of that time must have resembled a balloon after someone let the air of it.
He was a buzz saw let loose in an environment of studied indifference to cultural norms, at least those norms associated with the 50’s that still lingered with some folks in the Midwest—one thinks of Iowa and conjures up images of fire flies flickering away on a hot summer night, the folks on the porch talking about the weather, family, Lawrence Welk, and the size of that pork tenderloin sandwich they had for lunch. Iowa. Flat, the heartland of America, flags, corn dogs, 4-H clubs and livestock at the State Fair, eating corn picked fresh right off the stalk in the ubiquitous cornfields. Then there was the weather everyone talked about incessantly and for good reason: the extreme heat and cold, incapacitating ice-storms, tornadoes, floods, droughts, locusts—Old Testament reckoning—more flat landscapes, and, ultimately, a place of mind-numbing reality conducive to over eating and inertia, or conversely lending to an over active imagination where one filled in the blanks. But for others it was a place for honing one’s skills to nuance, to an open mind and an acceptance of the beauty of simplicity, coupled with the desire to enhance it where one could. (I would recommend William Least Heat Moon’s book on Kansas, PrairyErth, for more on the minutiae of what lies beneath the surface of a place, its people and history.)
And while Richie tried and tested each of the above, nothing was going to keep him in Iowa. His imagination, along with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake mentality, would never afford him that luxury (the foot on the gas took precedence).
He was destined to carve a place in musical history as one of the most unique and arguably best drummers there ever was.
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