Complete Guide to the 2016 Candidates’ Favorite Music
With Capitol Offense, Huckabee has covered “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Louie Louie” and other classics. But his one-time performance of Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” didn’t thrill Tom Scholz, who publicly complained. Says Huckabee, “I didn’t care what he thought. We only played it one time, and there was this allegation that we were playing it all over events, which was nonsense. And the reason we did it was because Barry Goudreau, who played with Boston as lead guitar player for a good bit of time, was a guest artist and played with our band, so of course we played with the song. It was really kind of stupid of [Scholz] to complain. If he doesn’t want to get the royalties, then take his song off the market.”
Favorites
Abbey Road is his go-to Beatles album. (“Some of the songs have more orchestration, and a little bit deeper sense of the use of minor chords on some of the songs. ‘Come Together’ has a great bass line, obviously, so that was one that talked to me.”) Discussing one of his other favorite records, Grand Funk’s 1970 Live Album, Huckabee taps into his inner Homer Simpson in the 1996 “Homerpalooza” episode: “They were just unbelievable live, and the live album just captured all the energy of a rock concert. In the original days of Grand Funk, there were only three of them, and they had to make enough music out of the three of them to carry the whole thing. Mel Schacher is one of the truly underestimated bass players. Mark Farner’s a guitar genius. And Don Brewer was a great drummer. It was just an electric combination.”
That era remains his favorite: “The Eighties is kind of a lost decade for me, musically. That’s when music went to hell, and here’s why. From the Eighties on, pop music became just that: ear candy, it was no longer about musicians having a unique, very empowering kind of signature sound. It was so heavily produced and engineered that the artists were secondary to the engineering. The track that goes underneath is very repetitive. There’s nothing in particular that’s unique about the music of it. It’s a catchy rhythm. It’s like musical soda pop, and I just don’t get it.”
Rock-the-Vote Moment
Talking about certain acts, Huckabee instantly turns gear-head. “The first time I heard ‘Purple Haze,’ I was just completely mesmerized,” he says. “Hendrix was doing things with his guitar that today requires three foot pedals to get done. And he had a fuzz box, and that’s it. Everything else was done by his control of feedback, and he had this ability to just burn his amp up to get that very muddy sound otherwise you never could get. You just sit there in awe that this is one human being making those sounds, and it’s not a bunch of engineers in the studio overdubbing it 10 times.” Huckabee also recently obsessed over the B3 organ and bought a bunch of classic-rock standards featuring that instrument, including Arthur Brown’s “Fire” and Deep Purple’s “Hush.” “It’s the most unmatched musical instrument ever,” he says. “Think about Procol Harum’s ‘White Shade of Pale’ without that B3.”