Nowadays, it’s hard to think of Steve Morse not being a pillar of the guitar community. He’s been a music industry mainstay for nearly five decades with a CV that notes the Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Deep Purple, and Lynyrd Skynyrd among his employers throughout an illustrious career.
But there were two occasions when he was on the verge of quitting music for good, and it took the efforts of two of those bands to save him.
As Morse explains in the latest episode of Ernie Ball’s String Theory video series, the first instance was around 1981 after Dixie Dregs, the band with which he made his name, broke up.
By that point, Morse felt that “the music industry was a little bit too weird for me.” He needed to escape.
“So,” he says, “I started doing some odd jobs. Running a bulldozer, cutting hay for people, stuff like that. Not trying to work as a musician.”
Thankfully, he admits “it didn't last too long because I felt like I really missed it.” So, a compromise was needed. “I had to figure out something to do to eat,” he says.
“Phil Walden from Capricorn Records was very encouraging for me to make my own band,” the guitarist continues. “Whatever the problems were in the past, ‘do your own thing.’
“I thought if I had a trio I could manage everything and get through the lead times better. It would be a real workout for me, musically, but that's something I relished. So we did the Steve Morse band for years, [but] we kinda burned out.”
Burnout is sadly a recurring theme for Morse, but it was here that Kansas came to his rescue.
It was 1986, and Kansas were reforming after a three-year hiatus. What was initially presented as an invitation to help write a song for what would become 1986’s LP, Power, quickly snowballed and saw Morse turning on his inclination to quit the industry.
“I got the opportunity to work on a song with Kansas,” he recalls, “which turned into more songs, then a tour and an album.”
Another album, 1988's In the Spirit of Things, and another tour followed, with Morse very much in the spirit of being in Kansas.
However, burnout and the cyclical nature of rock n' roll soon ground the guitarist down. Once more, Morse looked for an out road.
So, instead of being part of a band that flew around the world, he transitioned into being the one doing the flying, as a commercial airline co-pilot.
With that as his job, he says: “I could record whatever I want. I could make music without having to worry about pleasing anybody in the business end. That really appealed to me.”
Thus, his first solo album, High Tension Wires, was born; a record from the heart and not from the marketing rulebook.
“The whole intent of that was to [tell the] record company people ‘I don't care’: I'm gonna make my living. If this sells that's one thing, but I'm here to make music and that's it.”
That carefree attitude was crucial for an industry-cynical Morse. Suddenly he was writing for writing’s sake. However, his work as a pilot took up more and more of his time, and Morse came to an extremely sobering realization.
“Getting that job was a big challenge and I really enjoyed it,” he says. “But once I did it and did it repetitively I realized that every job has things you don't like about it. Sometimes you just have to deal with stuff.”
With these thoughts as a backdrop, he received a call from Gary Rossington: Lynyrd Skynyrd were rolling into Atlanta and they wanted him to join the party.
Says Morse: “I remember coming back from a long, long day that started at 2 a.m. I still had my uniform on and on the phone was Gary Rossington.”
They were playing the city’s Omni Coliseum and, as Morse remembers it, Rossington told him, “‘Man, you gotta come down, bring your guitar, we're recording tonight.’”
Morse protested; his long, tiring day and freshly cut hair his reasons. He was no longer a rock star.
Rossington simply repeated himself: “Bring your guitar, I'll see you at six.”
In the end, Morse half obliged: He came with his guitar, but at that point, the band was already entertaining the Omni’s 16,500-strong crowd.
“Gary gets the message that I'm here,” Morse details. “He says [to the crowd] ‘Alright everybody, we're gonna bring up Steve Morse to play a song called Gimme Back My Bullets.’ Somebody pushed me on stage and there's an amp I've never plugged into before.”
What followed was captured on the band’s live album, Southern by the Grace of God, and it sparked something in Morse that has never since extinguished.
“I said ‘If it's ever it's gonna be this cool again, I should get back into music full-time because this is awesome.’ Having guys that remember me and being part of something, it's special.”
Since then, Morse's career has gone from strength to strength, with a 28-year stint in Deep Purple and his more progressive endeavors with Flying Colors two clear highlights.
His influence in the industry can't be downplayed, either. In 2022, John Petrucci praised his talents, telling Guitar Player: “There are moments that you can pinpoint and say they were truly life-changing, and for me, hearing Steve Morse play guitar was one of them.”
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