Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke is always ready to ‘Rumble’
Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke (center) appears with directors Catherine Bainbridge (left) and Alfonso Maiorana prior to the world premiere of "Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World" on Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival.
Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke points to a member of the audience this past summer at USANA Amphitheatre.
Music and documentary film fans got ready to rumble this week in Park City, but it had nothing to do with trading punches inside of a boxing ring.
No, the roar that reverberated in various theaters emanated from the intriguing new doc, “Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World.” The doc’s premise is that there is a chapter missing when it comes to evaluating contemporary music history, and that is the Native American contribution and it how it influenced popular culture.
The film uses the 1958 instrumental single “Rumble” by guitarist Link Wray as its main jumping off point. Wray, a Shawnee, and his band, the Wray Men, stumbled across the song while improvising live. The tune made use of distortion, feedback and power chords — techniques which became staples of rock music in the years ahead, but that were largely undeveloped at that time. The song went on to influence many musicians, especially guitarists — many of whom shared Wray’s Native American heritage.
The documentary makes the point that the Native American influence has never really received its due credit, especially when you consider that many black musicians also had some Native American heritage mixed in. Jimi Hendrix, for example, was part Cherokee. Other prominent musicians featured in the film include Robbie Robertson of The Band, noted session guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, rock drummer Randy Castillo and Black Eyed Peas rapper Taboo. All share Indian heritage of one kind or another.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Rickey Medlocke at Deer Valley Resort the morning following the movie’s premiere for a wide-ranging interview. Medlocke, who was a participant in the film and was in town to support the project, has both Lakota and Cherokee bloodlines, along with a mixture of Scottish, English and Irish ancestry.
Medlocke came from a musical family. His grandfather, Shorty Medlocke, was a well-known Delta blues musician. He was raised by his grandparents and it was Shorty who put a miniature banjo in his hands when he was just 3 years old.
“He taught me to play the basics,” Medlocke said, “and I worked some songs up with him. The country music show that he was in, that originated out of Jacksonville and went all over the South and Southeast, he went to the guy who was the head of the show and he said, ‘My grandson and I have worked up a song. Can I bring him on the show and let him play together with the band?’ He said, ‘Great, now that’s different.’ So we came on the show, and we did the song. I ended up staying on the show until I was 8.”
Medlocke started playing guitar when he was 5 and then also picked up the drums as well. Both of those talents paid off in a big way a few years down the road.
“Music became the dominating factor in my life,” Medlocke said. “It was a way of expression, it was a way of release, it was a way of friendship. It was everything.”
Growing up in Jacksonville, Fla., Medlocke said he was able to catch all the great rock acts from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s — which turned out to be big influences on him. It’s obvious the magic of those shows left an indelible mark on him, he still became extremely animated discussing them. Among those concerts that stood out to him were Elvis Presley, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
One of the documentary film clips showed Hendrix performing at Woodstock, which Medlocke was fortunate enough to attend.
“They showed the clips of Hendrix from his back and you can see the audience … I thought that I could almost see me and my two buddies standing right there. I got to see the whole festival. As a matter of fact, I’ve still got my original program, my T-shirt and my ticket. The great thing about it is my grandparents allowed me to explore what I was naturally coming up to do.”
Medlocke remained heavily immersed in the music scene, playing in bands throughout his teen years. He recalled a humorous conversation around the family dinner table as he progressed toward graduating high school. His grandmother, who he described as being very old South prim and proper, put down her utensils and told him that she realized he loved music but asked it he had ever thought about going to college and furthering his education so that he would he would have something to fall back on.
His grandfather, he said, had a completely different reaction.
“Now my old man is totally the opposite,” he laughed. “He’s brash, loud and outspoken. I hear a ‘clang’ and he goes, ‘Juanita, have you looked at him lately? Have you taken a really good look at him?’ And she goes, ‘Of course.’ He goes, ‘No, no, no, he’s got all this chocolate hair, he’s Indian, he’s got this dark skin and something else, he ain’t going to college. He ain’t going to be a brain surgeon, he ain’t gonna be no lawyer. You know what he’s getting ready to do as soon as he gets a graduation paper? He’s out of here!’ She goes, ‘OK,’ and that was that.
“And he was right. As soon as I graduated, boom, I was off and running, you know what I mean? And I didn’t look back.”
Medlocke went on to found Southern rock band Blackfoot and was also the original drummer in Lynyrd Skynyrd, before leaving to re-kickstart Blackfoot. He returned to the Skynyrd lineup in 1996, this time on lead guitar, where he has remained ever since.
As for Wray and “Rumble,” Medlocke said he had already been following Elvis guitarist Scotty Moore and so Wray provided a bridge to the next level.
“When (‘Rumble’) came out, I equated that as these (other guitarists) giving way to Link Wray and furthering it, you know what I mean?” Medlocke said. “It’s all kind of an evolutionary thing. It grows out of each other. From Link Wray to Hendrix, and then from Hendrix to Eddie (Van Halen) and so forth and so on. And that’s how I equated it.”
– “Rumble,” written and directed by Catherine Bainbridge, continues with Sundance showings scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. (Library Center Theatre, Park City), Friday at midnight (Broadway Centre Cinema 6, SLC) and Saturday at 11:30 a.m. (Holiday Village I, Park City).