David Carradine – Fascinating? Maybe. Weird? Definitely
- Place – De Lane Lea Studios, Wembley
- Time – 1974
- Artist – David Carradine
David Carradine was best known as an actor although he did dabble with a music career it would always be dwarfed by his acting abilities, his most famous role being Kwai Caine in the 1970s hit TV series, Kung Fu.
Although he worked constantly in television and movies nothing ever came close to his success as Kwai Caine.
He was no stranger to being arrested and was prosecuted for an assortment of offences, often related to substance abuse.
In 2003 and 2004 a new generation discovered Carradine through Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies.
In 2009 whilst in Bangkok working on the movie Stretch, Carradine was found dead in his hotel room, hanging by a rope in the room’s closet.
At first it was rumoured that Carradine had committed suicide but after two autopsies it was concluded the cause of death was accidental asphyxiation.
I am often asked who was the most fascinating artist I had ever worked with but with so many characters to choose from it’s very hard to choose one person.
Having said that, David Carradine was a serious contender and his was possibly one of the strangest sessions I ever witnessed.
In 1974 I was only aware of Carradine through his big hit television show Kung Fu, certainly not as a singer songwriter. So naturally I was very surprised when Jet Records booked the studio to record an album with him.
Having been a big fan of the TV show, to me he had star quality before I had even met him but this would soon erode, bit by bit as each session passed.
Stranger Than Fiction
Usually after the first day or so of a recording session you would gain a rapport with the artist, this was not the case with David, even his producer was having difficulty conversing with him.
Sometimes you might ask him a question and get no response at all or he may answer with a completely unrelated assortment of words spoken in an uninterested monotone voice. I remember him replying to a completely normal question with,
“Everyone’s three degrees”
To this day I still have no idea what he was talking about but it certainly was Sheila Ferguson.
Although the sessions had an air of peculiarity, the most extreme was when David had asked the producer to book five session musicians comprising of a flute, violin, oboe, trumpet, and a saxophone.
When the musicians arrived, David sat at the piano and told everyone there would be no usual run through or rehearsal with this song, there would be one take and one take only.
Before we started recording, each instrument would be listened to individually to determine a correct recording level.
There was no written music for the session players to refer too and furthermore he refused to tell them what key it was in.
The idea was that once the multi-track was in record he would start to perform and the musicians should play whatever they felt.
The look of fear on the musician’s faces was a real picture to behold.
The Session Starts
The red light went on and the producer announced,
“Take one, the tape is running.”
David started playing and singing.
He was the only one in the studio that knew the song and the key, you could not imagine the cacophony that these instruments managed to achieve.
The next four minutes was excruciating, at one point the producer turned and said,
“He’s completely lost it.”
After what seemed like an eternity the last notes rang out from the piano and David turned to the producer and asked,
“How was it?”
In the politest voice he could muster he replied,
“Come in and have a listen.”
David and the musicians came into the control room.
Listening to the playback of the song was more agonising than when we were recording it.
Finally, the track finished and everyone in the room, apart from Carradine, looked mortified.
The silence in the room was deafening.
David sat motionless staring at the floor, not saying a word.
The producer broke the silence with a confident tone saying,
“Well David that’s it for the ensemble, we should let them go and move on to something else.”
A sigh of relief exploded across the room.
The musicians went back into the live room to put their instruments away.
Autograph
One of them returned to the control room with a piece of paper and a pen and asked Carradine if he wouldn’t mind signing an autograph for his son.
David looked straight through him as if he wasn’t there, he then stood up and left the room leaving the guy just standing there holding his piece of paper.
It could have been that David was upset that the track never materialised as he imagined, or it could have been his total exhaustion with his fame due to the character Kwai Chang Caine.
The track was of course unusable and never did make the album.
On the last night of the session a few guests arrived to listen to a playback of the finished album.
The playback was well received and for the first time since these sessions had begun, there was actually a euphoric atmosphere in the control room.
Assuming this would be the last time I would ever cross paths with Mr Carradine, plus having a little Dutch courage due to a couple of glasses of wine, I decided to attempt the impossible and try to make him smile.
I asked David if he knew how his TV show, Kung Fu got its name.
Looking at me with a bemused expression, I continued,
“You know at the beginning of each show, several spears are being thrown at you and you are cleverly fending them off, well, apparently the story goes, that in the rehearsals one of the spears hit you in the chest and you said, – what Kung Fu that?”
Everyone in the room roared with laughter, except for David Carradine.
Arrested again
A few weeks later I read that he was arrested in Los Angeles for attempted burglary and malicious mischief, he was naked and under the influence of drugs.
David Carradine – Fascinating? Maybe: Weird? Definitely!
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