That one where Team Free Will is a band.
August 10, 2012
.com
Hey guys! Becky here.
Okay so everyone has heard about the Tweet Heard Round the World by now. I can't believe that some of you had unfollowed VoiceofFW! Anyway, I thought, given the news, that this would be a good time to repost the History of Free Will essay I wrote last year. The one that linked to. OMG, remember that, it nearly crashed the page.
Anyway. Here it is, to remind us all why we love the boys, and why they NEED to get back together and do more shows so that I can buy more backstage passes. LOL!
Free Will started in a garage in Lawrence, Kansas, three skinny teenagers in faded Metallica and Led Zeppelin tees. Dean had his dad's '67 Gibson Flying V, Sam had a piece of shit Chinese Fender knock-off base, and Ash was banging the shit out of some drums his aunt had given him for Christmas. They'd been jamming for a couple of months before Dean pulled out a swatch of folded, scribbled-on paper and tossed it on one of the toms.
"Like it was nothing important," Sam said once in an interview with Rolling Stone. "Like it wasn't killing him inside, waiting to find out what we thought."
It was the rough draft of what became "White Lady," the first single from their first album, Family Business.
John and Mary Winchester were both active in the music scene in the early seventies, he a guitarist for a series of bands that made one record and then busted up, she a rising folk star as the lead vocals for The Campbells. They got married, he opened a garage, and she gave up the life to raise their family. Mary died young, in a house fire not long after Sam was born, and John raised the boys with the help of friends, most of whom were old rock and rollers from his glory days. They grew up steeped in music, the culture and the lore and the love of it.
When Free Will started gigging, they played mostly covers, in bars and clubs that Sam was technically too young to enter. John booked them into all his old haunts, rubbed shoulders with his friends at the bar and bragged about his boys to everyone who would listen. It was Sam who pushed for them to play their own songs, to book venues with younger crowds, to have an online presence and develop their sound.
Dean never likes to talk about his father, but it's clear that it was the rift between John and Sam's musical sensibilities that drove Sam to hang up his guitar and head for college. John stepped in on bass. Dean never protested. But they did start playing more original songs, mostly stuff that Sam and Dean had written together. Family Business was released on the Az Records label in 2004, a solid rock album that got some national attention. John turned the garage over to his business partner and they went on tour.
It was a disaster from the start. John's alcoholism blossomed on the road. He fell off the stage in Topeka. He wrecked the tour van in Seattle. When they hit San Francisco, he disappeared on a three-day bender, leaving Free Will without a bassist. Dean showed up in Sam's dorm room and begged him for an assist, for old times' sake.
The show at Bottom of the Hill is legend now, the show where Bobby Singer discovered the Winchesters, the show where Dean and Sam rocked so hard the second act refused to go on, the show where history was made.
And yes, I was there.