Stories and Anecdotes
1985 was Fagan's first visit to Nashville, and he'd only been to The Bluebird and a few other clubs that featured songwriter nights. But wanting to see "the real Music City," he headed downtown, to the honky-tonks on Lower Broadway. In those days Lower Broad was a wild an' woolly area, with drunks passed out on the sidewalks, fights breaking out all over the place, an' all sorts of strange-lookin' characters lurkin' an' loomin' or just hangin' around. To give you an idea: when he went to The Rhinestone Cowboy and asked the bouncer, "Is there any cover here?" the guy just laughed and said, "Yeah--we usually just duck behind the bar!"
Later that same night Fagan got up an' played
a few songs with the band. When he left the stage and went over to ask the
owner how he did, all he got was, "Well...you ain't Country."
So Fagan went back to the bar. That's when the guy on the next stool leaned over an' whispered, "There's gonna be trouble." As if to reassure Fagan, he added, "But don't worry--I know karate."
Sure enough, in the blink of an eye a fight started, and next thing Fagan knew, his bar-mate got his ass kicked and was tossed out the door. Seeing that the guy had left his cigarettes and cap on the bar, Fagan took them out to where the poor guy was now lying on the sidewalk.
Handing them over, Fagan said, "Hey, man, I'd have helped you....but I don't know karate!"
In 1986 Fagan cut a dynamite rockin' version
of "God Bless America" with friends,
Ethel & the Shameless Hussies singing backup. He had performed it (see video) at
the International Kickboxing Tournament in New York, and the crowd really
loved it, as had everyone else who heard it. So OF Music pressed a 45 single
and on its cover added a slogan meant to suggest how much Rich's version
differed from the original hit recording of the song. It said, "Move
over Kate Smith, Rich Fagan has arrived!"
It was a tremendous project, but they worked hard to prepare this release for a mailing--all at once to hundreds of radio stations all over the country.
Unbelievably, they no more than put all these 45s in the mail when they heard the news: Kate Smith had died that day....
Imagine what DJs and Programmers all over America thought when they received their 45, days later, brandishing that slogan. Needless to say, virtually no one played it. Talk about some unfortunate timing. A great song went unheard. That will soon be remedied, however, when OF Music again releases "God Bless America" on its upcoming all-sports album, "My House: The Tailgate Opera."
Fagan and "The Hussies"
Not pictured: Ethel (aka Kacey Jones), no doubt partaking of Vienna Sausage with Bubba...
Fagan at the Bluebird
John Michael Montgomery and Fagan
Fagan was performing for a variety of Nashville music execs--including MCA's Tony Brown--one day. "Can everybody see me OK?" he asked. Crowd murmurs came back with a "yes."
"Great!" Fagan said. "Because they keep telling me at MCA that Tony Brown can't see me--so I figured I better make sure!"
