By Bruce Borgerson
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Despite the frenetic pace of the Traffic tours, the experience helped Hood and Hawkins hone their chops for their next superstar sessions. When Paul Simon ventured into Muscle Shoals, he had four seasoned pickers ready to pounce on him.
"When he come down here to our turf, we jumped right in and knocked his hat in the creek," says Johnson. "This wasn't his usual style of recording, where he gets to call all the shots."
Recalls Hawkins, "He had heard "I'll Take You There" by the Staples, and thinking it was Jamaican backing, he called Stax to find out where it was done. Then he called us, planning to come down for just one tune, "Take Me to the Mardi Gras." Well, we knocked that out in two takes, and he was just amazed. He started playing some other songs, we told him which ones we liked, and we cut them. That's why we got co-production credits."
Those sessions also produced "Kodachrome" and "Loves Me Like a Rock." But when he invited the rhythm section to come to New York for "Still Crazy After All These Years," the magic dissolved. Simon reverted to total control mode, and progress on the tracks slowed to a crawl. "He made us so paranoid that we were afraid to play," laments Hood.
If Paul Simon seemed a bit intellectually aloof, Bob Seger connected on a gut level. His association with the 'Bama boys stretches back to 1972, and the Detroit rocker recorded many of his top hits in Muscle Shoals, including "Mainstreet," "Old Time Rock & Roll," "We've Got Tonight" and "Katmandu."
"He's a real nice guy but he's not going to make it big," was David Hood's first impression. But he soon changed his mind. "By the time of "Katmandu" he was getting the point across about what kind of records he wanted to make. Before that, we were throwing in R&B licks. Everybody wasn't thinking in the same direction." (…)