The Fall Guy star Lee Majors had a huge impact on the action movie world. But the 85-year-old movie legend is responsible for another pop culture cornerstone: “Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight & the Pips.
Reflecting with PEOPLE on his famous marriage to Farrah Fawcett from 1973 to 1982, Majors recounts the little-known story that songwriter Jim Weatherly was inspired to write the 1973 hit by a phone conversation with the couple.
“I had a friend I used to play flag football with on the weekends when I was trying to get into business,” he says The Six Million Dollar Man star. Weatherly (who died in 2021 at age 77) was an all-star quarterback at the University of Mississippi before becoming a prolific songwriter.
Lee Majors, 80, reflects on his famous marriage to Farrah Fawcett: ‘It was hard to navigate’
Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors circa 1978.
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“He called the house one day,” Majors recalls. “I don’t know if I am [or Farrah] answered, but I think I said, ‘She’s taking a midnight flight to Houston,’ and that was a true statement.”
A few weeks later, the actor continues, Weatherly arrived at the couple’s home in Los Angeles. “He had his guitar with him and he played that song — he called it ‘Midnight Plane to Houston,’ and it’s on the album he put out [in 1973].”
When he pitched the song to various bands, Majors adds, it was tweaked to better suit each singer. Knight, now 79, reportedly asked for both the title and lyrics to be changed. “It came down to, ‘Well, Jimmy, we don’t really go to Houston and we really don’t like to fly!’ So they changed it: ‘Midnight train to Georgia.’ ”
The life of Gladys Knight in photographs
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Gladys Knight and the Pips at the 16th Annual Grammy Awards in 1974.
Michael Ochs/Getty Archive
Speaking with Gold mine magazine in 2010, Weatherly recalled that it was Fawcett (who died in 2009 at age 62) who answered his call. “She stated that she was packing her clothes, that she was getting ready to take a midnight plane to Houston to visit her parents,” Weatherly said at the time, recalling the line as a “little buzz” that went through his head.
“The song was relatively easy to write, because I was actually using Lee and Farrah as a mental movie in my head about a girl who comes to LA to make it, and struggles, and then comes back, and the guy she falls for. love returns with her,” he explained. “Of course, it wasn’t their story, but an interesting song was created.”
“Midnight Train to Georgia” won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus, as the category was known from 1973 to 1980, and reached No. 1 on the pop and R&B charts. He was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
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Majors — who celebrated his 85th birthday in April and “61 years in this business,” he told PEOPLE — has been married to his current wife, Faith, since 2002. Among his recent projects is a cameo in Ryan Gosling- plays the movie The Fall Guy (currently in theaters), which is based on Majors’ 1980s ABC series of the same name.
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Source: HIS Education