A Fire Gone Out: Remembering Dwight Twilley
Looking back at the power pop great’s amazing life and sudden death
Dwight Twilley was an anomaly in popular music in more ways than one.
Firstly, in the sense that his career has consisted largely of near misses and surprise hits. Secondly because one wouldn’t normally expect one of the great, Anglo-influenced pop craftsmen of the 1970s to come out of Tulsa, Oklahoma – which is exactly what he did.
The teenage Twilley met fellow Oklahoman (and pop purveyor) Phil Seymour in their native Tulsa. Sharing a love for The Beatles, they formed the group Oister, which later evolved into the Dwight Twilley Band. (The third member of the band’s nucleus was lead guitarist Bill Pitcock, who was sort of a part-time member.) Twilley handled rhythm guitar and wrote most of the songs, Seymour played drums and bass, and they shared lead vocals. Oister was an apt name for the burgeoning band as, early on, it appeared that the world actually was their oyster! Twilley and Seymour made a trip to Memphis in the early ‘70s including a stop at the legendary Sun Studios. Jerry Phillips — son of the legendary Sun owner Sam Phillips — liked what he heard and sent them into the recording studio with producer Ray Harris.
The band, however, would find success with “I’m on Fire,” recorded at The Church in Tulsa, a ridiculously infectious amalgam of rockabilly and pure pop. Despite the fact that they had little promotion and there wasn’t even a full album yet, “I’m on Fire” became a Top 20 hit in 1975! Quite a feat for these two young Tulsans.
Unfortunately, the Dwight Twilley Band’s luck did not continue as forces soon conspired against them. One problem was that Shelter Records, which signed the band, was having serious financial problems and eventually went out of business. In addition, the planned sophomore single “Shark” was pulled before it was released for the strangest reason – the folks at Shelter were afraid it would attract negative publicity because of the then-popular movie Jaws, which was about shark attacks and was holding American in its grip, so to speak. In addition to these factors, the mid-70s was not a time when power pop was in vogue. A few years later, of course — when bands like The Knack, The Records and Cheap Trick arrived on the scene — it would be a different story. But timing, as they say, is everything.
AUDIO: Dwight Twilley Band “I’m On Fire”
By the time the Dwight Twilley Band’s full-length debut Sincerely appeared in 1976, the momentum generated by “I’m on Fire” was largely gone, and the album did not make waves commercially. It was well-received by critics, however, and over the years has become something of a touchstone for fans of power pop. Highlights ranged from “I’m on Fire” to the softly psychedelic title track to “Three Persons,” which recalled Roy Orbison. Their second album, Twilley Don’t Mind, was released a year later but again didn’t prove to be a breakthrough despite the songs being of uniformly high quality. Seymour left the band in 1978, later scoring a solo hit with “Precious to Me” before his life was cut short by lymphoma in 1993. Twilley, meanwhile, carried on as a solo act.
In 1979, Twilley released his self-titled solo debut. But that album and its follow-up, Scuba Divers, went largely unnoticed. Then came his third solo effort, 1984’s Jungle. This album finally returned Twilley to the Top 20, nearly a decade after he was first there with “I’m on Fire.” The song that did it was “Girls,” which featured a typically infectious melody, a sentiment that most men can relate to and a nice counter-vocal from Tom Petty. Still, his time back in the spotlight was brief. It’s often been said that Twilley should have been huge — and I can’t disagree. He seemed to have it all: good looks, a major label behind him and a talent for writing great pop songs. But for most of his career, Twilley was a cult artist (albeit a God in the power pop community!).
From the ‘90s forward, Twilley remained in the Tulsa area and recorded sporadically. But he never left music. In fact, his most recent album — an anthology called The Best of Dwight Twilley: The Tulsa Years — came out earlier this year. He was active on Facebook as recently as this week — which is why his death on October 18th came as such a shock.
A few days ago, I myself noticed that Twilley made the following post:
I’m not feelin’ that great today… My leg is Very Messed up. They have me on Michael Jackson Milk. Nighty, night, night.
Sincerely,
D.T.
Still, like most people, I had no idea how serious his injuries were. According to TulsaWorld.com, Twilley had been driving alone recently when he suffered a massive stroke and his car crashed into a tree. Sadly, he succumbed to his injuries and passed away yesterday at Ascension St. John Medical Center with his wife Jan and close friends by his side. He was 72.
Strangely enough, I couldn’t sleep last night. Well, actually, that’s not so strange in and of itself. What was truly bizarre was that I got up briefly, scribbled the word “Twilley” in my notebook (a reminder to listen to The Tulsa Years ASAP) and then logged into Facebook — where I immediately saw posts about his death. This prompted me to search my archives for the transcript of my one interview with Twilley.
We spoke about a dozen years ago when he had a lot going on; he was gearing up to release a new studio album called Green Blimp (an homage to The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine”) as well as a greatest hits collection called On Fire.
Looking back at this interview today, I had forgotten how much ground Twilley and I covered — from his and Seymour’s legendary trip to Memphis in their youth to some of his biggest hits to his then-current projects.
Take me back to Tulsa, to your childhood, and tell me how you first got into pop music.
I think like so many of us did, looking at that black and white television and hearing Ed Sullivan introduce these wacky guys from England. [That] really changed my life… I had had the interest in music before that but everything changed [after that].
According to legend, you and Phil Seymour made a trip sometime during the first half of the ‘70s to Sun Studios.
We ended up there but that certainly wasn’t our intention. We were just little kids and I was writing these cute little songs and recorded them probably on a little cassette or something and we thought, “Oh, let’s go to a big city where they have record companies!” So we got in my little ’50 Chevy station wagon and, you know, we couldn’t afford to go all the way to New York or L.A. or anything like that, but we learned that they had record companies in Memphis. So we drove to Memphis and we were literally just driving down the street looking for anything that [resembled] a record company. It turned out we found one, and went in and played our tape for some guy named Phillips – and he liked [it]!
The fact that it was Sun Records — we were completely ignorant of what that meant. [But] Phillips liked it and hooked us up with an early Sun recording artist turned producer and sent us down to this little city in Mississippi called Tupelo. That didn’t mean anything to us either. But along the way, we figured it out!
It’s a pretty remarkable story, actually.
Yeah, you know, when you look back on it – you almost couldn’t make that up.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about your relationship with Phil. I remember the song “Precious to Me” from my childhood. Obviously, he was a talented guy in his own right and he passed away much too young. Just wanted to ask about your relationship with him over 25 years or so.
We were partners and best friends. And he was a super talented musician in so many ways. You know, there was a lot of [rumors] when we split up as a team that we were in a big fight and we were enemies… But we remained very close friends up until the time of his death. We had planned to do a reunion album but his health didn’t permit it.
Take me to the present. I know one of the things you have going on right now is the new album, Green Blimp. Tell me about the significance of the green blimp and the title track.
In a way, it sets the pace for the record. It’s kind of a tip of the hat to “Yellow Submarine.” You know, it’s nothing to be taken that seriously. But it does have kind of a message – which the whole album does – it’s sort of an anti-war message. But not particularly pointing at the wars we’re in now or anything political, really – more just kind of a fantasy feeling of non-violence. Right now, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a little fantasy about floating through the sky having cocktails and cherries, and a little bit of tranquility in the world.
The other new song I wanted to ask you about is my favorite on the new album, “Me and Melanie.” What inspired that one?
I think [with] a song like that, there’s nothing really in the lyric that is important. It’s more like just the feeling of the song and the melody and where the song takes you mentally as opposed to a specific person or the lyric really meaning anything. It’s more just the overall feeling of the song.
AUDIO: Dwight Twilley “Me and Melanie”
I noticed that you [also] have a new anthology out, on an Australian label I think, which is called On Fire.
Yeah. We just learned about that a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t know anything about it! But I believe it’s on a label called Raven and they seemed to do really good work repackaging the old stuff. It’s nice to have out there.
Can I ask you about some of your older songs and any memories or associations that you have with them? I wanted to start with “I’m on Fire,” which was your first tune, a big hit and one that’s held up over the years.
Probably the most significant thing about “I’m on Fire” was the fact that we had just been signed by Shelter Records and [before that] we had been recording in a little Teac 4-track studio in Tulsa, and it was pretty primitive equipment. So when we were signed by Shelter, they asked us to come into a studio here in town that Leon [Russell] owned called The Church Studio. They [said], “Now, you guys [are] not in there to make a record. We simply want you to start getting yourselves familiar with recording on a real 16-track machine.”
And of course, the very first night that we went into the studio, my pal Phil took me into the side room or something and said, “Come on Dwight, let’s make a hit!” (laughs) So the very first [song] that we recorded in a real studio for a real record company was “I’m on Fire.”
When the album Sincerely came out, the title track was a great song – but it sounded nothing like “I’m on Fire.”
I think even if you listen to that first album you can tell that it’s a wide range of material. It was our first album, so I think we were trying to wave the flag that we had a lot of different areas that we could move into as opposed to just doing straight-ahead rock and roll songs. In the case of “Sincerely,” that song was literally written, recorded and mixed in the same day.
Another song I wanted to ask you about, which was not a big hit but which I always liked, was “That I Remember.” Any memories of that one?
I think we were out on tour when I wrote it and we went into a little tiny studio – I think it was actually in Memphis again – and recorded a demo for it, which was like seven minutes long or something (laughs). And then we later recorded it for the Twilley Don’t Mind album, and we performed it on this television show called Wacko. It was a Saturday morning television show… People talk about it a lot because at that time, there was Phil Seymour playing drums and our guitarist Bill Pitcock of course. And on the television show, the bass player was Tom Petty!
Petty sang with you on “Girls.” What is it like working with [him]? Because to an outsider he seems like a hell of a guy in addition to being talented.
He’s a great guy and a super talented guy. We were kind of all in the same boat on Shelter Records back in the early days and you know, having him on [Wacko] with us kind of gave him a little bit of help [before he became well known], and Phil Seymour sang on “American Girl” and “Breakdown.” So it was kind of like we were label mates and friends and helping each other out along the way.
“Girls” was your other real big hit and came out in the ‘80s. What was it like after not having a hit for awhile to have another real big [one]?
A huge relief! Yeah, it had been awhile since “I’m on Fire.” It wasn’t easy to get into that position again, so it required a lot of work. And the album that it came from, Jungle, I’m still very proud of today.
Let me ask you about something you did awhile back that doesn’t relate to music. You wrote a book about being a Dad.
That was I think [in] ’94. I wrote a book called Questions from Dad. It was kind of a tool to help people that were separated find a better way to communicate. I was personally separated from my daughter. She lived in a little tiny town in Arkansas and I was living in Los Angeles. And of course being on the road, being in my business, there was a lot of difficulty in establishing communication.
I did the book thing and it was fun. I got an award from the Children’s Rights Council and I got a lot of letters from people saying that it was really helpful to them and all that. But I don’t think that I’ll be rushing to get into another book again for a long time. It seemed a little awkward for me to go on television with no guitar!
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