In a new chat with Ernie Ball, Steve Morse talked about how Gary Rossington reintroduced him to rock after he quit.
Before returning to music, the guitarist had worked as a commercial airline co-pilot. He recalled those days:
“I felt maybe I should take advantage of the fact that I had a bunch of flying time from flying my band around. My friends, they were airline pilots. They were telling me what a great job that would be.”
Morse thought it would help his music career:
“And I thought, ‘You know what? If I had that job, I could just record anything I wanted. And I could do music without having to worry about, you know, pleasing anybody in the business end.’ And that really appealed to me.”
His Lynyrd Skynyrd Helped Morse To Continue Music
So, Morse recorded his first solo album, ‘High Tension Wires,’ with the goal of simply making music. He enjoyed working as a co-pilot but realized every job has its downsides. Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd later called him and tried to encourage him to return to rock music. Despite being tired and having cut his hair, Morse was inspired by the call. He stated:
“So I [finally] got there. They’re already playing. They look over, and Gary gets the message that I’m here. He says, ‘All right, everybody, we’re gonna bring up Steve Morse to play on the song ‘Gimme Back My Bullets’.’ So somebody pushed me up on stage. And here’s an amp I’ve never plugged in before…”
The musician added:
“One of the Lynyrd Skynyrd albums is me sitting in with them. And I said, ‘If it’s ever going to be this cool again, I should get back into music full-time. Because this is awesome.’”
Morse didn’t have time to think, as the band had already started recording what would become ‘Southern By The Grace Of God: Lynyrd Skynyrd Tribute Tour 1987.’ He later joined Deep Purple and played with them for 28 years before leaving in July 2022. The next year, he reunited with The Steve Morse Band for their first tour in 10 years.