Need Your Love so Bad

The Zoo Crew has been leaning into a slow burner that still stops the room cold, and the Zoo Freaks know the one. Rocky Athas takes "Need Your Love So Bad" off his 2017 album Shakin' the Dust and treats it like a letter he has been meaning to send for decades. The tune sits near the back of the record, a five-minute stretch of slide, rhythm guitar, and a vocal that never hurries. It is the kind of cut the hippie and rock and roll biker DJs at THE ZOO will ride all the way through, because the solo does not show off so much as it confesses.

The song was not born in a Texas studio. Mertis John Jr., older brother of Little Willie John, wrote it, and Little Willie John cut the original in 1955. Solomon Burke later gave it a deep soul reading. The version that stuck with Athas, though, was the one Peter Green played with Fleetwood Mac. On his own site, in a note about the stories behind Shakin' the Dust, Athas said that Fleetwood Mac take was the first time he heard the song. He called it an overlooked gem, and he has never let go of that opinion.

There is a road story attached to it that the Crew likes to tell between records. While Athas was out with John Mayall, Mick Fleetwood sat in on a jam in Hawaii. Athas has said that session was the best jam of the whole tour. Somewhere in the middle of it, the talk turned to "Need Your Love So Bad," and the two of them agreed the song had been passed over for too long. A Texas guitarist and the drummer from the band that first put Peter Green's version in his ears, talking about the same slow blues on a Pacific island, is about as good a pedigree as a cover gets. Athas has also said he pushed the tune toward Casey James when James was on American Idol in 2010, which tells you how long this particular record had been living in his head before he finally cut it himself.

When he did cut it, he was not working alone in a vacuum. Shakin' the Dust came out on Cherryburst Records on October 15, 2017, which happens to be Athas's birthday. He co-produced it with Jim Gaines, the Grammy-winning engineer whose credits include Stevie Ray Vaughan's In Step and Santana's Supernatural. The band on the track is a family affair in the literal sense. Rocky Athas II holds down the bass, and Walter Watson handles drums, percussion, and vocals. Reviewers who heard the album when it landed pointed straight at the slide on "Need Your Love So Bad," the quiet rhythm guitar underneath, and the way the solo gets meaner without losing the pleading in the lyric. The record picked up an Album of the Year nomination, which felt like a proper send-off after eight years carrying the lead guitar chair in the Bluesbreakers.

Athas came up in Oak Cliff, on the Dallas side of the river, born October 15, 1954. He has told interviewers the first paid gig happened in the eighth grade, a party for a childhood friend named Mario Martinez. Three kids in a band, seven dollars apiece. That is the whole origin story in one sentence, and it is better than most press releases. From there he built Lightning, a club band that became one of the biggest draws on the Texas nightclub circuit and opened for national acts passing through. Buddy Miles first caught him when Lightning opened for the Buddy Miles Express. By 23, Athas was on Buddy Magazine's early list of top Texas guitarists, one of the youngest names on a roll that also held Eric Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Billy Gibbons, and Johnny Winter. Folks around Dallas started calling him the Texas Tornado and, with a grin, the Malice from Dallas.

Oak Cliff also put him in the same neighborhood as Stevie Ray Vaughan. The two of them were friends before either one had a reputation, playing the same rooms and the same parties. Athas later shared stories of those years for Kerri Leigh's book Stevie Ray: Soul to Soul, and in 2000 he recorded Blues Berries with Buddy Miles and Stevie's old rhythm section, Double Trouble. Another Dallas room, Mother Blues, is where Thin Lizzy guitarist Scott Gorham and Queen's Brian May turned up on a break. May asked where the touch harmonics were coming from. Athas told him he had seen Billy Gibbons do something close and had worked it out all over the neck. May said he was going to steal the lick. Athas told him to go for it. Years later May talked about that Dallas night when he described the tapping on "It's Late."

The phone calls that changed the career came without auditions. He opened for Black Oak Arkansas in Paris, Texas, and Jim Dandy rang him not long after and asked him to join. Athas wrote "Ready as Hell" and "Wild Bunch" for that band, both of which landed on a greatest-hits set, and he did three albums with them. Through Black Oak he met Tommy and Johnnie Bolin. After Tommy died, Athas played tribute shows with Johnnie Bolin and Glenn Hughes for the Tommy Bolin Archives, and he later toured and recorded with Hughes on his own. Joe Walsh and Mick Taylor both crossed his path in the studio and on stage. Then, in the late 2000s, John Mayall called out of the blue and asked him to play lead on Tough. Athas has said he figured the call was a prank from a buddy. It was not. Guitar Player later described him as a veteran Texas gunslinger with a wicked tone, and Uncut compared his work on A Special Life to the young Eric Clapton. He stayed with the Bluesbreakers until 2016, when Mayall went back to a trio and picked up the guitar himself.

Shakin' the Dust was the record that marked the walk back to the front of his own band. Seven of the songs are originals he wrote with his wife Jessica and with bandmates past and present. The covers are personal. "Looking Back," the old Johnny "Guitar" Watson number, is the one he says reminds him of meeting Jessica, looking over his shoulder to see if she was looking back. "Need Your Love So Bad" sits right beside that confession. Same album, same band, same producer, same Texas tone, just a slower heartbeat. The Crew will tell you that is why it belongs on the air at the station. It is a Dallas guitarist, raised on Oak Cliff gigs and British blues, finally cutting the song he and Mick Fleetwood agreed the world had overlooked.

If you want the rest of the story from the man himself, the official home is Rocky Athas, where the notes on Shakin' the Dust and the long road that led to it are still posted. The official pages worth following are Facebook, Instagram, and X. Spin it loud, Zoo Freaks. The slide does the talking.