The drummer Richie Hayward, who has died aged 64 after treatment for liver cancer, will be remembered for his 40 years of service with the renowned Californian band Little Feat, of which he was a founding member, as well as for his work with a gilt-edged roster of rock'n'roll greats. Hayward's powerful combination of swing, funkiness and formidable rock'n'roll muscle was widely admired by fans and fellow musicians.
He was born in Clear Lake, Iowa, and used to claim that his earliest memory was of running away on his first day of kindergarten. His early enthusiasm for school work lasted until the day he saw Count Basie's band on television and was overwhelmed by the abilities of Basie's drummer, Sonny Payne. Hayward took his first halting steps into the world of percussion by banging out rhythms on an orange crate. By the time he was 10, he was developing his own style, and soaking up the music of jazz and R&B artists such as Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Sonny Rollins and Dave Brubeck.
Having acquired a set of real drums, he played his first gig at the Moose Lodge in Nevada, Iowa, on New Year's Eve 1959. Recognising that in his home town, Ames, "there was no place for a drummer except the Ramada Inn lounge", Hayward scraped together the cash for a plane ticket to Los Angeles. After a stint with the Rebels, he answered an advertisement in the LA Free Press in 1966 which read "Drummer Wanted, Must Be Freaky", and was recruited into the Factory, an offshoot from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. Despite Zappa producing some tracks for them, the Factory fizzled out, though not before making an appearance in the TV sitcom F Troop, billed as the Bed Bugs. However, the Factory's guiding light, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Lowell George, had ambitions to build a new band, and set about forming what would become Little Feat. Hayward, after a brief stint with the Fraternity of Man, was summoned to the drum stool, and the lineup was completed by the pianist Bill Payne and bassist Roy Estrada, another Zappa alumnus.
The early Little Feat was a raw, bluesy outfit with a surreal line in songwriting. After being turned down by Atlantic's Ahmet Ertegun, they signed a deal with Warner Bros, also home to Neil Young, Ry Cooder and Randy Newman. Their first album, Little Feat (1971), bristled with beefy rock epics such as Hamburger Midnight, driven from the back by Hayward's piledriving beat, alongside gutbucket blues and George's classic truck-driving song, Willin'. However, setting a pattern for the band's career, the disc was adored by discerning critics and ignored by the public. The follow-up, Sailin' Shoes (1972), was richer, stranger and more ambitious, but continued lack of sales caused despondency and a temporary break-up of the band.
When they returned for 1973's Dixie Chicken, the Feat had morphed into a six-piece with a swampy, Louisiana-like slant to their sound, Hayward proving himself adept in the rolling gait of the title track or in such funk-inflected pieces as Two Trains or Fat Man in the Bathtub. Dixie Chicken was one of the best albums of the year, but when it sold a paltry 30,000 copies, the band was thrown into renewed crisis. Tensions over their lack of progress even caused George to sack Hayward temporarily but they were rescued when their management discovered a cheap studio in Maryland, called Blue Seas, where they set about what would surely be their final roll of the dice.
The result was Feats Don't Fail Me Now (1974), a seething brew of rhythmic ingenuity (spectacularly so in its opening track, Rock and Roll Doctor) and formidable collective songwriting. Miraculously, the album sold 150,000 copies and staved off financial collapse. The Last Record Album (1975) was a less cohesive effort, but continued the group's upward commercial progress. In hindsight, there is bleak irony in the way George chose to decorate the album's sleeve with the medical bills racked up by Hayward following a serious motorcycle accident (one of several suffered by the drummer). During his final illness, when he had moved to Canada, Hayward's lack of medical insurance left him facing huge bills for treatment.
Little Feat's glimpse of fame and fortune was undermined by George's own declining health, caused by a regime of epic party-going and drug abuse. His role was conspicuously diminished on Time Loves a Hero (1977) and although the live album Waiting For Columbus the following year brought the band their first gold disc, the George who appeared on it was clearly no longer the leader of his own band. Little Feat split for the last time, George departing to make a solo album. He was touring with a new band in June 1979 when he suffered a fatal heart attack. Hayward, recuperating from another motorcycle crash, had spoken to George the day before. "He called me at the hospital and said that when he came back from that tour we'd start a band up again," he recalled. "Next day he was gone."
Though devastated by George's death, Little Feat's highly regarded survivors found themselves in demand for session work. The whole band had recorded with Robert Palmer on his 1975 album Pressure Drop, while Hayward had played sessions with Cooder, John Cale, the Doobie Brothers, Peter Frampton, Carly Simon and Arlo Guthrie, and with the long-term Feat ally Van Dyke Parks. Among many other engagements, Hayward was recruited by Joan Armatrading for her 1979 Steppin' Out tour, and Robert Plant, with whom he toured in 1983. In 2005, Hayward toured with one of his long-time idols, Bob Dylan. Still, the Little Feat veterans felt a sense of missed opportunities. "Some of us were fighting big demons at the time," Hayward once recalled. "That was the reason for all the dissension in the band, and if we'd lasted just long enough for us to all discover abstinence, I wonder what it would have become?"
In 1988, they finally felt the time was right to attempt a reunion, and in place of George they recruited the guitarist Fred Tackett and the vocalist Craig Fuller. Let It Roll was the first of a sequence of "new" Little Feat albums, and was a pleasant surprise for fans, though none of the comeback discs have matched the best of their work with George. The band have toured regularly over the past 20 years, with a female vocalist, Shaun Murphy, replacing Fuller in 1993. When she left in 2009, the band opted not to find a replacement. Along the way, Hayward found time to perform with the jazz-funk outfit Endangered Species, who released an album in 2001.
In 2009 Hayward announced that he was being treated for a liver condition, later identified as cancer. He had moved to Vancouver Island with his Canadian wife, Shauna Drayson, whom he married in 2008, but did not qualify for state medical treatment and had no medical insurance. With his treatment costs running at $5,000 a week and a liver transplant in prospect, Little Feat and numerous friends, fans, fellow musicians and the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund organised benefit concerts and eBay auctions to raise money for him. "My intent is to come back to the band as soon as I am physically able," said Hayward on the band's website. "Your love and support will mean a lot to me, more than I can say."
He played his final live performance last month when he sat in with Little Feat at the Vancouver Island Music Festival. He died after contracting pneumonia, which became fatal because his lungs had been damaged by untreated adult respiratory fibrosis.
He is survived by Shauna and his son, Severin.