The Indelible Bridge Between Gumby & Gram Parsons
By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Knoxville Voice, March 2008
During my senior year of college, my roommate and I decided to purchase a pet tortoise to serve as our apartment’s resident mascot. With little discussion, we dubbed the little guy “Sneaky Pete”—not just because it’s an undeniably appropriate name for a turtle, but because we knew it would give us some opportunities to tell people about the man to whom we were paying homage— “Sneaky Pete” Kleinow.To our dismay, only about a half dozen people ever bothered to ask about the origin of our tortoise’s handle, but we made damn sure we educated them something fierce about the incomparable talents of the world’s all-time greatest steel-guitar playing, special effects guru. Those were the days.
Sadly, and with little fanfare, Sneaky Pete (the man, not the tortoise) passed away on January 6, 2007, at the age of 72, having succumbed to a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. When the obituaries started rolling in—small snippets though they were—Kleinow’s incredible career came off sounding like two wholly separate existences.
In one paragraph there was Peter E. Kleinow, a pioneering special effects artist who worked on ‘60s stop-action animation programs like Gumby and Davey & Goliath, before eventually moving on to major film projects like The Terminator, The Empire Strikes Back, Gremlins, and Army of Darkness. He even won an Emmy for Special Visual Effects in 1983 for his work on the TV movie The Winds of War.
As admirable and influential as his stop-motion artistry was, however, the more prominent paragraphs in his obits told of the man better known as Sneaky Pete—“the Jimi Hendrix of the steel guitar.”
Like most great rock n’ roll folktales, Kleinow’s unlikely rise to cultdom was rooted equally in talent and fate. Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1934, Kleinow became enamored with the steel guitar in his teen years. It wasn’t so much the Grand Ole Opry sound that moved him, but the more upbeat Hawaiian origins of the instrument. Around the same time, he began developing his talents in arts and production, which eventually led him to Los Angeles in 1960.
Through much of the ‘60s, Pete Kleinow was a very busy man, working during the day on special effects for classic shows like The Outer Limits, while moonlighting as a session musician for various L.A. bands. The two jobs had little in common, except in Kleinow’s consistent status behind the scenes—always heard, but never seen.
That would change in 1968, when the aforementioned fate stepped in. One of rock’s most successful American bands, the Byrds, were radically revamping their look and sound, and band members Chris Hillman and the newly recruited Gram Parsons wanted Sneaky Pete to be a part of things.
While Lloyd Green manned the steel on the Byrds’ landmark album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Kleinow played in many of the band’s subsequent live shows, inspiring Hillman and Parsons to request that he become a full-time member. Apparently, the idea of a permanent pedal-steel player didn’t quite sit right with fellow Byrd Roger McGuinn, and the already heavy dissent within the band soon led to Hillman and Parsons exiting the Byrds all together. Fortunately, they brought Sneaky Pete along with them, as well as Chris Ethridge, to form the iconic country-rock band the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Decked out in rhinestone suits and palling around with the Rolling Stones, the Burrito Brothers didn’t necessarily make believers out of their numerous doubters with 1969’s now legendary LP, The Gilded Palace of Sin. In retrospect, however, many critics now say the record was the most significant moment in country-rock, while others call it the birth of alt-country. Whatever the case may be, Sneaky Pete was a major part of it, adapting the same innovative spirit he used in his animation work to transform the steel guitar into an exciting new rock n’ roll instrument.
While Gram Parsons developed a considerably larger cult following of his own off the strength of heartfelt classics like “Sin City” and “Hot Burrito #1,” Kleinow helped give the songs a lot of their texture and mood. On many tracks, he experimented with channeling the steel guitar through fuzzboxes and Hammond Leslie amps, giving the traditionally weepy instrument an edgier, more dynamic sound.
As country-rock came into prominence in the ‘70s, Kleinow’s contributions made immediate and major impacts on the way the steel guitar was played. Everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Eagles took notes, and during the alt-country boom of the ‘90s, bands like the Lemonheads, Wilco, and the Jayhawks began singing Pete’s praises anew.
Kleinow recorded three records with the Burrito Brothers before returning to his life as a session musician in 1971. Across his many travels, he cut tracks with some of the biggest names in rock history, from John Lennon to Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa, Fleetwood Mac, and perhaps most famously, the Rolling Stones on their classic tune “Wild Horses.”
After taking some time out to make Gremlins and killer robots look thoroughly animate, Kleinow returned to music in the ‘00s, recording a solo album and three records with the band Burrito Deluxe.
When he passed away over a year ago, there were mentions of Gumby and Gram Parsons, but probably not anywhere near enough about the legacy of Kleinow himself—a legacy still carried on by hundreds of steel players—and to a somewhat lesser extent—a tortoise named Sneaky Pete.
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