Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Davy Johnstone. Davy, we were talking
Speaker 1: before we began about the pronunciation of your last name
Speaker 1: Johnstone or Johnston. You said, there was a story. Tell me, okay, now,
Speaker 1: when I was growing up in Scotland, it was Davy Johnson.
Speaker 1: Because in Scotland they're very offhand, not worrying about the
Speaker 1: T or the E or whatever. Davy Johnson. Just like that.
Speaker 1: When I moved over to the States, people would see
Speaker 1: the spelling and go, oh, Davy Johnstone. And when I
Speaker 1: heard that, I must admit I liked it. I liked
Speaker 1: it the sound of it Americans saying that. However, one
Speaker 1: day when I was on the road with Alice Cooper,
Speaker 1: I'm an airport somewhere and this guy came up to
Speaker 1: me and he said, you're used to play with, right,
Speaker 1: And I said that's right, yeah, And he said you're
Speaker 1: what's your name again, You're Davy And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: Davy Johnston and he said, no, you're Davy Johnstone. I
Speaker 1: immediately when I like that, Yes, I am, thank you busted.
Speaker 1: You know, so, I've always I've used that pronunciation. Now
Speaker 1: for myself. I like it because I'm also I'm an
Speaker 1: American citizen as well as a British one, so I'm
Speaker 1: very tied into this country all the way. Now, So
Speaker 1: Johnstone is okay, let's go back to Davy, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a child of the fifties as am I and
Speaker 1: we all were you know, Bobby Davy whatever, and then
Speaker 1: as we aged people tended to change to Bob Robert Dave.
Speaker 1: Tell me about being Davy. Well, I was always we
Speaker 1: Davy growing up because my dad was Big Dave. My
Speaker 1: dad also but his name wasn't David. It was actually Davidson,
Speaker 1: which is a really interesting Scottish name. Davidson Wallace Johnston
Speaker 1: was his name, and so he was Big Dave and
Speaker 1: I was we Davy, and it just seemed to stuck
Speaker 1: all the way through my childhood, through my soccer days,
Speaker 1: and then when I started playing music, it just seemed
Speaker 1: to be a catchier name. And I suck in the
Speaker 1: e because it was totally accidental. Somebody was taking a
Speaker 1: photograph of me and an Irish singer called Noel Murphy
Speaker 1: who had formed a little folk duo together, and the
Speaker 1: photographer wrote underneath my picture Davy with a E D
Speaker 1: A V E y. So that was purely accidental. But
Speaker 1: now so many fans and people know me as Davy.
Speaker 1: My kids call me Davy. My wife calls me Davy
Speaker 1: when he's been in a good mood. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't mind being called Davy. I'm not the one
Speaker 1: of my sisters in Scotland still calls me David. I
Speaker 1: will not call you Davy. You're David, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's fine. Okay, you've talked about becoming a citizen. How
Speaker 1: do you decide to do that? Well, I've lived here
Speaker 1: for many years. I've lived out near in California for
Speaker 1: thirty over thirty years now, especially in this area of
Speaker 1: where I am now, which I love out in the country,
Speaker 1: just around Calabasas area. And we decided, my wife and
Speaker 1: I together because my wife is Danish. We both decided
Speaker 1: about three years ago, four years ago, perhaps when things
Speaker 1: were getting really really strange here politically. We had a
Speaker 1: long conversation about it and I said, Okay, I am
Speaker 1: not a citizen, so therefore I can't vote. I can
Speaker 1: do everything else. I can pay tax obviously, I've always
Speaker 1: paid my taxes. I do all the other stuff, but
Speaker 1: I can't vote unless I'm a citizen. So I feel
Speaker 1: it's horton now that I get my citizenship and that
Speaker 1: you get years too, so that both of us can
Speaker 1: vote in the upcoming election in twenty twenty. So that's
Speaker 1: the main reason we did it. And when I got
Speaker 1: back from Australia, we've been doing the usual applications and
Speaker 1: the petitions, all the stuff you have to fill in
Speaker 1: and the background stuff. And when I got back from Australia,
Speaker 1: right right as COVID was coming in, my immigration attorney
Speaker 1: who's in New York called me up and said, what
Speaker 1: are you doing tomorrow? And I said, well, I'm getting
Speaker 1: over my jet lag as usual. He said, can you
Speaker 1: go to Chatsworth because I have a date for you
Speaker 1: in a time they're going to swear you in privately.
Speaker 1: So it was really beautiful the fact that I got
Speaker 1: to go, you know, locally and just with a few
Speaker 1: people in the actual office, and I got sworn in.
Speaker 1: My wife was there, our kids were there, and it
Speaker 1: was really a magical thing. And I'm really proud to
Speaker 1: be a born again American. Okay, you say your wife
Speaker 1: is Danish, how did you meet your wife? That's another
Speaker 1: good one. My wife's Danish. I've always had this connection
Speaker 1: with Danish people. Our record producer Chris Thomas was seeing
Speaker 1: this Danish girl, a very beautiful Danish girl called Tina. Now,
Speaker 1: unbeknown to me, I'd met Tina a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but unbeknown to me, her best friend was my wife
Speaker 1: to be Kay. And at that period time, for example,
Speaker 1: Chris Thomas's girl was Tina, Rick Astley's girlfriend was Lena,
Speaker 1: another Dane. All right, it gets really interesting. And so
Speaker 1: on Tina's birthday one year in nineteen eighty nine, Alton
Speaker 1: through a party for Tina because she was about to
Speaker 1: get married to Chris Thomas, and it was a birthday party.
Speaker 1: So I was sitting next to this beautiful Danish girl
Speaker 1: called k and the party was in Paris, so it
Speaker 1: was a very romantic place and it was a very
Speaker 1: romantic evening. And that was it. We were submitting with
Speaker 1: each other and we were together for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and then we got married in nineteen ninety two after
Speaker 1: we had our first child, and it's been wonderful. Were
Speaker 1: over thirty years now and really happy. Is this the
Speaker 1: only time he had been married? No, twice before. First
Speaker 1: time was when I was nineteen years old. At that time,
Speaker 1: I got Diana Partridge pregnant when I was living in London,
Speaker 1: and we had a little boy called Tam. Tam is
Speaker 1: now an engineer and a writer, songwriter, filmmaker, musician, and
Speaker 1: he lives in Cornwall in Southwest England, which is a
Speaker 1: beautiful part of the world. My second marriage was to Rosa,
Speaker 1: a Mexican girl from from Los Angeles with a wonderful family,
Speaker 1: and our marriage spawned two children, Jesse and Daniel, and
Speaker 1: they both still live in California and Kay. As I've
Speaker 1: told you, it was Danish and I brought her over
Speaker 1: here to live with me in California. And this has
Speaker 1: been the one that's um, that's lasted obviously, and there's
Speaker 1: no end in sight. Thank God. I'm tired of all
Speaker 1: that running around and it's over. So how many kids
Speaker 1: do you have with your present wife? Four with this
Speaker 1: this wife? And unfortunately, back in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: we had a tragedy and we lost our firstborn, Oliver,
Speaker 1: in a drowning accident in our pool. It happened when
Speaker 1: I was on the road with the Alton John Billy
Speaker 1: Joel Tour and we were in Chicago playing a show
Speaker 1: that night in fact, and we had two nannies taking
Speaker 1: care of the kids. At that point. Oliver was nine
Speaker 1: years old, Juliet, my favorite and only daughter, was four,
Speaker 1: and Charlie they was two. So they were well shepherded
Speaker 1: and well taken care of while we were in Chicago
Speaker 1: doing this celebration for my birthday, and tragically, our little
Speaker 1: boy got away from the nannies, found his way into
Speaker 1: the pool and took up a tenth type of thing
Speaker 1: in there, which she had always been told you can't
Speaker 1: take that, you can't take anything into the pool, and
Speaker 1: he did and he got tangled up in it. The
Speaker 1: nanny didn't get to him in time, and he drowned.
Speaker 1: I got this news when I was on we just
Speaker 1: played the set of the show in Chicago, and I'm
Speaker 1: backstage and I'm signing next to Elton and with Kay
Speaker 1: and I get this call and the road manager said, Davy,
Speaker 1: there's a call for you. And I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: taking a phone call right now, and you know we're
Speaker 1: doing a show, and he said, no, you've got to
Speaker 1: take this call. I took the call, and this this
Speaker 1: poor doctor had the job of telling me this unbearable
Speaker 1: news that that our son had died in a drowning accident.
Speaker 1: The shock was so immediate. I was obviously very angry
Speaker 1: and denial. It was like, what do you mean? Who
Speaker 1: is this kind of thing? But finally I realized, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the worst news that for any parent, and
Speaker 1: I went and got my wife, I held her, I
Speaker 1: told her what had happened. She immediately fell down, and
Speaker 1: you know, Elton and grabbed her at the other side
Speaker 1: and was holding her up to just the most unimaginable
Speaker 1: feeling and changed our lives, obviously in every possible way.
Speaker 1: He was a wonderful little boy. And what I've tried
Speaker 1: to do when I finally stopped drinking and drugging and
Speaker 1: doing all the other stuff because I felt that I
Speaker 1: felt that I had a license to drink, to drug
Speaker 1: allisas to kill myself because I was so miserable and
Speaker 1: so upset because what had happened. And then I realized that,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll be honoring him much better if
Speaker 1: I stopped drinking, stopped drinking being an idiot, and and
Speaker 1: act like a human being and face up to these
Speaker 1: things and that's what I did. And so that's how
Speaker 1: we honor our child. Now. Every year we celebrate his
Speaker 1: birthday and we celebrate his his death date. And it's
Speaker 1: the only way we could we could get through this
Speaker 1: thing was by facing up to it properly and by
Speaker 1: staying together through it, you know, helping each other. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a total tragedy. And all also my children,
Speaker 1: my other children helped me so much during this period
Speaker 1: of time. Alton was a massive help, and my bandmates.
Speaker 1: But I could never have gotten through it without my
Speaker 1: wife and my kids and are close friends. Wow. So
Speaker 1: it's type of thing you never get over, really right,
Speaker 1: you never get over it, but we've learned to, you
Speaker 1: might say, deal with it because over the years, what
Speaker 1: happens this kind of situation, what happened in my case
Speaker 1: and in my wife's case. Anyway, it starts off being
Speaker 1: like this giant boulder in your heart, and then as
Speaker 1: the years go by, it gets a little softer, less
Speaker 1: jagged edges, and it becomes more of like a small
Speaker 1: manageable that still breaks you up when you think about
Speaker 1: this wonderful little boy that we lost, But you know,
Speaker 1: you get to a point where you can actually go ahead,
Speaker 1: go on and deal with it and possibly help other
Speaker 1: people who are going through similar situations, which we have done.
Speaker 1: I've given help to a couple of friends who've had
Speaker 1: similar types of tragedy because I've realized that people just
Speaker 1: need to talk about it. You can't just hide away
Speaker 1: and not talk about it. This is something that has
Speaker 1: to be faced and dealt with, and you know, and
Speaker 1: you make it part of your life, you know, not
Speaker 1: something that defines you, but something that's part of your
Speaker 1: life that you treasure. And so I'm very grateful. Okay,
Speaker 1: talking about your kids, are they off the payroll? No,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that ever happens. Bob, my youngest
Speaker 1: is definitely not off the payroll. Elliott's um just turned
Speaker 1: eighteen last November, and he's a wonderful singer, a beautiful
Speaker 1: looking kid, and he can't wait to get the hell
Speaker 1: out of school, and he's also an artist and various things.
Speaker 1: The next and Lion Charlie, is a sound engineer, also
Speaker 1: a songwriter, and another musician, brilliant piano player. He went
Speaker 1: to USC here in California for piano and for music production,
Speaker 1: so they're kind of in the family business. My favorite daughter, Juliet,
Speaker 1: who's actually on her way to New York City today.
Speaker 1: She devised a wonderful business. Her name is Juliet Johnstone
Speaker 1: and that's her website and everything. And she decided to
Speaker 1: start painting on clothes about just when COVID was kicking in,
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a wonderful idea because
Speaker 1: many pop stars, models, various personalities, celebs, whatever started wearing
Speaker 1: her clothes. So it's wonderful that she's doing this and
Speaker 1: she's got this ridiculous business. And recently she painted a
Speaker 1: guitar for me for my seventieth birthday. I'm coming up
Speaker 1: for seventy two now, but I she painted. She finished
Speaker 1: it in time for me playing Dodgers Stadium with Elton
Speaker 1: in November, which was awesome. So I got to take
Speaker 1: that guitar on stage and use it. And you know,
Speaker 1: a Bob, I'm blessed. I have some amazing children and
Speaker 1: I'm a very lucky man because it's always kept me
Speaker 1: a little bit grounded in my life, because you know,
Speaker 1: we take our kids everywhere when we travel as much
Speaker 1: as we can whenever it's possible, and so they've seen
Speaker 1: the world many times in different places, and I think
Speaker 1: they've really enjoyed that aspect of it. And they love
Speaker 1: their own Uncle Elton, you know, or Auntie Elton, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: however he prefers to be called. And you know, they've
Speaker 1: got some great friends because of the life we lead
Speaker 1: and their own talents. And they've really helped me because
Speaker 1: I mean I listened to their their music. I listened
Speaker 1: to what they're listening to and it stuns me occasionally. Okay,
Speaker 1: you talked about your daughter painting a guitar for you.
Speaker 1: In the room we're in right now, I can already
Speaker 1: see like twelve guitars on the wall. How many guitars
Speaker 1: do you own? You know? I have no idea. It
Speaker 1: sounds gross to say, but I really don't know. I'll
Speaker 1: find out more accurately when this Farewell Tours over, because
Speaker 1: we have three totally separate rigs outrun the road, which
Speaker 1: one of them, for example, is just leaving Australian Zealand
Speaker 1: where we just finished. Another set is in the New
Speaker 1: York area, and another set is in Europe waiting for
Speaker 1: us to start the next leg of the Farewell Tour
Speaker 1: in the end of March. So each rake contains about
Speaker 1: twenty five guitars, I would say maybe thirty, so that's
Speaker 1: ninety there roughly. I've got another a few dozen at home,
Speaker 1: along with various satars and various other things that I
Speaker 1: don't take on the road with me anymore because they're
Speaker 1: just too delicate. So yeah, it's a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: But in my retirement, I intend to play each and
Speaker 1: every one of them. I intend to get back and
Speaker 1: give each one the love that they really deserve. Because
Speaker 1: I'm very blessed I have so many instruments, so it's
Speaker 1: wonderful I do, and we get to them whenever we can.
Speaker 1: But sometimes I feel that they're being ignored and they're
Speaker 1: not being giving the TLC they deserve. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to retirement when I can line them all up
Speaker 1: and honor them for their part in my life. Now.
Speaker 1: A lot of guitarists have favorite instruments, whether it be
Speaker 1: brand in model, or you know, those of us who
Speaker 1: played guitar. I don't want to say that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all played guitar after the Beatles. Know that if
Speaker 1: we went shopping with guitars, every guitar sounds a little
Speaker 1: bit different. And there are people who take that guitar
Speaker 1: on the road. There are people who only use it
Speaker 1: in the studio. Do you have a couple of favorite instruments?
Speaker 1: I do. I definitely have a couple of go to instruments.
Speaker 1: Right from the beginning day when I first joined album,
Speaker 1: for example, I wasn't playing much electric guitar, but I
Speaker 1: had an electric guitar. But Alton tells a wonderful story
Speaker 1: about me plugging in at the Chateau when we went
Speaker 1: to make the first album, and it's a great story.
Speaker 1: It's not entirely true because I did own an electric guitar,
Speaker 1: so that was a Fender Stratocaster. But as I started
Speaker 1: playing with him and I was able to buy a
Speaker 1: couple of other instruments, I realized that my real favorite
Speaker 1: was going to be a Gibson Les Paul, and then
Speaker 1: later a Gibson Flying V. Because I began I began
Speaker 1: to like the solid guitars because the sustain was more
Speaker 1: evident and more clean, So I really loved that aspect
Speaker 1: of Les Paul's. So yeah, my favorite really has been
Speaker 1: a Gibson Les Paul. Second has probably been a Flying
Speaker 1: V or a reverse Flying V, and then would probably
Speaker 1: become the strat, you know, the Fender stratum. But the
Speaker 1: other thing, Bob, is I I have so many guitars.
Speaker 1: I mean I have a double neck made by a
Speaker 1: company called Fernandez, which is completely jaw dropping brilliant. Um.
Speaker 1: I use it for a lot of slide guitar and
Speaker 1: regular one. I want to switch from neck to neck,
Speaker 1: and it has the most pure gorgeous sound. So I
Speaker 1: mean I I have so many of them, and so
Speaker 1: many mandolins, electric mandolins, so many acoustic guitars, electric acoustic guitars,
Speaker 1: so that I can use them live also, So yeah,
Speaker 1: plenty of instruments. We have them coming out of the
Speaker 1: Yang Yang. When you know, whenever we go to make
Speaker 1: an album, there's so many dough Bros and Mandolins and
Speaker 1: Mando cellos and stuff, dulcimers, you know, you name it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have twenty five guitars approximately in three different rigs.
Speaker 1: Someone who's not sophisticated would say, why do you need
Speaker 1: twenty five guitars? So why do you need all those guitars? Well,
Speaker 1: one good reason is a backup for each guitar. There's
Speaker 1: a prominent For example, I need to have my number
Speaker 1: one less Paul. I need to have a backup for
Speaker 1: that less Paul. I need to have my favorite flying
Speaker 1: v or reverse fee and a backup for that one.
Speaker 1: I need to have my favorite strat vender strat and
Speaker 1: a backup for that one. I need to have my
Speaker 1: favorite acoustic guitar that I'll be using in that particular
Speaker 1: rig and a backup for that one. I need to
Speaker 1: have an acoustic guitar open tuned because for songs like Rocketman,
Speaker 1: I use a particular open tuning which is pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: pretty special, So I need to have a guitar tuned
Speaker 1: in that tuning as a backup. Also, because you know,
Speaker 1: the main thing I don't want to do is hold
Speaker 1: up a show when you have a problem like a
Speaker 1: string popping and it's in a bad part of this
Speaker 1: song where you can't just get through it with the
Speaker 1: rest of the strings. So I have backups for each
Speaker 1: and every instrument. And then for example, I'll have another
Speaker 1: couple of guitars for songs like the Bitch Is Back
Speaker 1: for example, bitches back when I recorded that I did that,
Speaker 1: and an open g tuning very similar to the tuning
Speaker 1: that Keith Richards uses. He uses five strings on his tuning,
Speaker 1: I use all six, so there's a slight difference there.
Speaker 1: I learned to play g tuning from John Martin, famed
Speaker 1: British guitar player who tragically died way too young. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's various tunings and I'd like to have a
Speaker 1: backup for that one as well. So it might sound
Speaker 1: a little over the top for some people, but really
Speaker 1: there's a good excuse for them. And then also, if
Speaker 1: Alton decides on a tour he wants to do Mona
Speaker 1: Lisas and mad hatters, I have to have a mandolin
Speaker 1: ready and a backup for that mandolin. If he wants
Speaker 1: to do a honky cat, I have to have a
Speaker 1: banjo and a backup for that banjo. So luckily I
Speaker 1: have all these wonderful instruments so that I'm never sure
Speaker 1: of one, and I've got a wonderful guitar tech. I mean,
Speaker 1: Rick Salazar is an absolute genius looking after all these
Speaker 1: different guitars, looking after the various tunings, keeping each and
Speaker 1: every one of these instruments in tip top shape. It's
Speaker 1: just I couldn't do what I do without him. He's
Speaker 1: just amazing. Okay, you mentioned Dodgers Stadium this year, and
Speaker 1: of course you played with Elton in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: Dodger Stadium. It's the same building. But what was different
Speaker 1: about those two gigs. Well, let's see, the first one
Speaker 1: was earlier in the year. I think this last one
Speaker 1: was November seventeen, eight seventeen, nineteenth and twentieth, I want
Speaker 1: to say, and end of November, so it was much
Speaker 1: colder and darker. For one thing, the gigs in seventy five,
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly when they were, but they were
Speaker 1: either September or early October, and so it was the
Speaker 1: majority of the shows were in daylight and I could
Speaker 1: see people. I could see this sea of people. It
Speaker 1: was just such an awesome feeling. And we'd never that
Speaker 1: stadium hadn't been used since the Beatles played there, so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of these things going on where
Speaker 1: we were doing. There was firsts were happening that many
Speaker 1: people hadn't done since, for example, the Beatles. So that
Speaker 1: was a very magic gig. And it was special in
Speaker 1: another way too, because we were having to do excuse me,
Speaker 1: we're having to do this particular show with a new band,
Speaker 1: basically because Dan Nigel had been let go at the
Speaker 1: end of nineteen seventy four, so I was tasked with
Speaker 1: putting the new band together once we decided on who
Speaker 1: the members were going to be, so in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: so it was all these different guys and it was wonderful.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had a great band. It was rocking,
Speaker 1: It was totally rocking. But this time, for me, the
Speaker 1: difference was after doing it for fifty years, after playing
Speaker 1: some of these songs for fifty years and writing stuff,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't know. It just had a really
Speaker 1: emotional feel about it, thinking, Wow, we're never going to
Speaker 1: play these songs in America again, and that really is
Speaker 1: what it is. We're never going to play them live again.
Speaker 1: So it was wonderful to see really close friends. They're
Speaker 1: really good musician friends, people you know, like Date, the
Speaker 1: wonderful David Page and James Newton Howard and just all
Speaker 1: these brilliant musicians. Alice in Chains showed up to see
Speaker 1: us so much. Just good friends, Eddie Vedder all these
Speaker 1: cats came to see the show because they're big fans,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was wonderful to see them backstage.
Speaker 1: I must say one point about seventy five that blew
Speaker 1: me away though completely. We were backstage in the trailers
Speaker 1: waiting to go on, and there was people before the show,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the interval and after the show.
Speaker 1: This is on the seventy five show. So one of
Speaker 1: the wives, I believe it was Caleb Quay's wife, Pat.
Speaker 1: She had a really Cockney accent, fantastic London accent, and
Speaker 1: she suddenly says, in a very English accent, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: Gary Cooper out there. And I think to myself, Gary
Speaker 1: Cooper is fucking dead. I'm pretty sure. So I go
Speaker 1: over to the window, pull the curtain back and it's
Speaker 1: Carrie Grant. So I go, oh my god. I love
Speaker 1: Carrie Grant had to be like my favorite actor growing
Speaker 1: up as a kid in Scotland. His movies were all
Speaker 1: over the place and anyway, I just loved the suaveness
Speaker 1: about him. So I went out and had a chat
Speaker 1: with him, and he was knowledgeable about what we were doing.
Speaker 1: He was saying, oh, yes, I'm really enjoying the interplay
Speaker 1: between you and the other guitar player and you and Elton,
Speaker 1: and the way you guys or look at each other
Speaker 1: and smile and laugh, and I was just like going,
Speaker 1: this is unbelievable. I'm talking to Carrie Grant, somebody who
Speaker 1: you know. When I was eight years old we first
Speaker 1: got a television in Scotland and I'm seeing like one
Speaker 1: of his movies, like The Bishop's Wife or something, and
Speaker 1: there he is backstage it does you say to him? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a There were more stars in those days
Speaker 1: that were maybe I'm a bit more jaded now, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned your retirement. This is and people
Speaker 1: can't see my air quote a farewell tour. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are going through the motions
Speaker 1: for the money. I've seen the Farewell toured twice. Elton
Speaker 1: is really digging it. So I just don't see Elton retiring.
Speaker 1: I mean, George Street was the first one to do
Speaker 1: is I'm retiring from touring, but he ended up playing
Speaker 1: single dates. You're closer certainly than I am. What do
Speaker 1: you think is really going to happen? Well? I really
Speaker 1: feel that when we finish off, I believe the last
Speaker 1: concerts in Stockholm, I want to say July eighth. I
Speaker 1: think that's right. I must say that, as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, touring wise, we're done. This is going to
Speaker 1: be it. We're done from touring. There's a part of
Speaker 1: me that obviously thinks, knowing out in the way I do,
Speaker 1: it would not surprise me if sometime in the future
Speaker 1: he decides to do maybe a Vegas, a small residency,
Speaker 1: a short type of thing, because he started to enjoy
Speaker 1: some of those shows too when we got into that.
Speaker 1: From between two thousand and five and two thousand and
Speaker 1: fifteen or so, we had a couple of shows that
Speaker 1: were very There were a lot of fun to do.
Speaker 1: They were a little tedious at times. That whole that
Speaker 1: idea of doing something that we weren't used to. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if he went if he knows
Speaker 1: what it is now, so I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: sometime in the future he maybe does something different, maybe
Speaker 1: with a small orchestra, or maybe something entirely different. I
Speaker 1: have no idea, but that's just my take on it.
Speaker 1: I promise you. We haven't discussed anything. We haven't talked
Speaker 1: about any of it. You know. He calls me about
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, and we're not going there just yet. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I didn't see the Vegas shows. The red piano
Speaker 1: and the other one. What was different about playing in
Speaker 1: Vegas as opposed to a usual tour. Well, I was
Speaker 1: at first, I didn't like the idea at all. I
Speaker 1: just thought it was I was terrified. I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: going to Vegas, that's like a musician's graveyard. I did
Speaker 1: not like the idea at all. But then when the
Speaker 1: fun of it, the fun aspect kicked in, we realized, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a good giggle, and we we trimmed it
Speaker 1: so that we were never there for longer than three
Speaker 1: and a half weeks. There was no I can't I
Speaker 1: can't understand people or artists who are able to stay
Speaker 1: there for a residency for a whole year or whatever
Speaker 1: they do. Impossible. I'd go completely nuts. So we would
Speaker 1: go there three times a year for round about a month.
Speaker 1: The one thing that was good about it was I
Speaker 1: was closer to home. I could literally come off stage
Speaker 1: because the shows in Vegas end early there because they
Speaker 1: want people back, you know, in the casino, they want
Speaker 1: people at the tables and the machines again, So the
Speaker 1: shows would end about ten pm. I would literally have
Speaker 1: my car ready to go backstage. I'd jump in it
Speaker 1: and I'd be on the road before people were out
Speaker 1: of the theater and home in three and a half hours,
Speaker 1: you know, quick drive. I'd just drive myself home, So
Speaker 1: that was a good aspect of it. And obviously being
Speaker 1: able to see my my wife and kids more regularly
Speaker 1: because they could come out to Vegas. Also, the Million
Speaker 1: Dollar Piano Show was a great It was slightly more
Speaker 1: I was, well, a lot more sophisticated. There was various
Speaker 1: people who helped put it on. Mark Fisher, a wonderful
Speaker 1: designer who did a lot of the Stones things, and
Speaker 1: Sam Pattinson in England, and they were assisted by Tony
Speaker 1: King and and Elton's manager slash husband, David Furnish. So
Speaker 1: you know, it was a little more of a of
Speaker 1: a I want to say, smooth, sophisticated and classy show.
Speaker 1: You know, we were wearing like Gucci suits and then
Speaker 1: Burberry suits, and then finally for the Million Dollar Piano Show,
Speaker 1: sorry for the Farewell tour, where we're wearing Gucci, which
Speaker 1: is fine. I mean it's very sharp looking, it's very
Speaker 1: sharp rock and roll. I like it because it remains
Speaker 1: the Beatles. I'm a massive, huge Beatles fan. Nobody bigger
Speaker 1: than me. They'll we all say that, right, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that aspect of it. I do think at
Speaker 1: some point for me personally, I'm getting over the suits because,
Speaker 1: you know what, I got into this business because I'm
Speaker 1: a typical musician. I'm revolutionary. I don't want to wear
Speaker 1: the same as thing as everybody else. You know, I
Speaker 1: was wearing afghan coats and floury shirts and beads and
Speaker 1: bell bottoms as you probably were back in the earliest
Speaker 1: the late sixties, already seventies, so the idea of having
Speaker 1: a uniform still rubs a little bit, robsby the wrong way.
Speaker 1: So I'll be glad to get out of the good
Speaker 1: cheer or whatever suit is I'm in and back to
Speaker 1: some interesting clothes. It's the same songs in the same
Speaker 1: order every night on this tour, right it is. It's changed.
Speaker 1: I would say four or five times. We've changed song selections,
Speaker 1: We've very rarely changed the order of things. We've tried things,
Speaker 1: but each time we seemed to go back to the same,
Speaker 1: the original thing. It's worked well. The only song that
Speaker 1: we took out that I really miss is All the
Speaker 1: Young Girls Love Alice, which I thought really kicked ass
Speaker 1: and I thought a lot of the fans loved the
Speaker 1: fact that there was a really deep cut that was
Speaker 1: in there, but we kind of substituted that with have
Speaker 1: Mercy on the Criminal, which is another another deep cut,
Speaker 1: and that seems to go down great. People love that too.
Speaker 1: So Mona Lisa's was in there for a couple of
Speaker 1: tours way back when we started, and and a couple
Speaker 1: of songs have come and gone and don't Go Breaking
Speaker 1: My Heart comes in when like for the Dodger Stadium,
Speaker 1: Kikid came out and did her party piece on that song,
Speaker 1: and then dual Leapa did her her thing with Elton.
Speaker 1: Instead of it being just backtrack, they still used the backtrack,
Speaker 1: but they were able to use Doua's voice life which
Speaker 1: was great and Elton live, so that was awesome. Okay,
Speaker 1: during the show, is there anything prerecorded? No, we are
Speaker 1: We are totally one million percent live. I mean, we
Speaker 1: have a couple of vocal samples that we've recorded ourselves
Speaker 1: several years ago, which we still use on a couple
Speaker 1: of numbers, which we bolster our own live vocals with
Speaker 1: um similar to the way that bands like The Eels,
Speaker 1: do you know they most bands who have fairly prominent.
Speaker 1: Background vocals tend to use a couple of samples here
Speaker 1: and there. I don't think there's anything unfair about us
Speaker 1: using them here and there. And we still love doing
Speaker 1: the background parts because they're they're really meaningful parts that
Speaker 1: when we wrote them, so it's fun to do them
Speaker 1: live too. Okay, you're the music director, What exactly does
Speaker 1: that mean? Really, I'm like a glorified bandleader. Really, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not really. Music director is something that people
Speaker 1: started calling me many years ago. And you know, I
Speaker 1: don't really give a shit if they call me that
Speaker 1: or not right frankly, but Alton's announcing me on stage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he always says, this is Davy, my band leader. And
Speaker 1: I love that. That works perfectly for me because the
Speaker 1: whole thing about music director started the second time that
Speaker 1: d and Nagel were let go and I was asked
Speaker 1: to stay when I was again tasked with the job
Speaker 1: of or somebody's going to have to run the band
Speaker 1: through their paces tish them the songs. Because as far
Speaker 1: back as especially the second band I'm talking about in
Speaker 1: the early in the mid eighties, when after the end
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty four, when when Dan Najeel let go
Speaker 1: of that time. I had to come up with a band,
Speaker 1: and it took quite a while for me to be
Speaker 1: comfortable with the musicians that we had, and by the
Speaker 1: time and we got to the end of the eighties,
Speaker 1: I was very happy with it. We had people like
Speaker 1: Charlie Morgan on drums, Bob Birch came in on bass,
Speaker 1: Guy Babylon on keyboards. Eventually we got Nigel back, which
Speaker 1: was great. He was out of the band for something
Speaker 1: like seventeen years. So when I think of the various
Speaker 1: combinations of bands I worked my way through. We had
Speaker 1: some wonderful players. Don't get me wrong. We used to
Speaker 1: you know Jonathan Moffatt sugar Foot, you know from Jack
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson Stuff and his band. You know Romeo Williams,
Speaker 1: all these different players. Jeff backs to play with us
Speaker 1: for a while. James Newton heard. Obviously, Ray Cooper has
Speaker 1: been in and out of the band, and he was
Speaker 1: more of Ray was always more of a floating member,
Speaker 1: but when he comes back, he's always my permanent member.
Speaker 1: Ray and I go out to dinner all the time
Speaker 1: on the road. Were the food freaks of this tour.
Speaker 1: So we tend to dine out as much as possible. Okay,
Speaker 1: have you been to Noma in Denmark? I wish i'd had,
Speaker 1: but I believe it's closing the end of this year.
Speaker 1: Ray and I have got our sightset for going there
Speaker 1: when we're there in early July, so we're hoping we
Speaker 1: can we can get in. Okay, So what's the best
Speaker 1: meal you've had on the road. Well, for me, you
Speaker 1: can't go wrong with no Bo. We love Japanese food.
Speaker 1: No restaurants are in very many of the major cities,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know that. Although in Atlanta we found Umi,
Speaker 1: which is a ridiculously great Japanese restaurant in the Buckhead
Speaker 1: area of Atlanta, which we love. That area. There's some
Speaker 1: wonderful restaurants and a couple of friends of mine own
Speaker 1: the restaurants and they started this place and it's just unimaginable.
Speaker 1: It's so great. So it's definitely on a par with
Speaker 1: Nobu and maybe slightly better in some areas. So I'm
Speaker 1: big on Japanese food. But obviously when we want to
Speaker 1: take some of the guys like I take Rick, my
Speaker 1: tech occasionally he likes Japanese food, but he's really big
Speaker 1: on steak, so we'll go to one of the many
Speaker 1: wonderful steakhouses, of which, as you know, there are several.
Speaker 1: We just love great food, so it's one of it.
Speaker 1: To me, it's one of the biggest, big joys of life.
Speaker 1: So I make sure that I eat well on the road.
Speaker 1: Do you work out on the road. I have a
Speaker 1: set of stretchers that I do every morning, and I
Speaker 1: swim whenever I can because I like to swim at home.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm I'm undergoing a bit of shoulder problem,
Speaker 1: so I'm doing physical therapy for that. I've got wonderful
Speaker 1: therapists here in my area that are helping me out.
Speaker 1: So yeah, as we get older, you know, fifty years
Speaker 1: of guitar sling and Bobby, you know that's like you
Speaker 1: play guitar, you know, imagine doing it every other night
Speaker 1: on stage for three hours. You know, suddenly your neck
Speaker 1: and your shoulder starts to give way. So I have
Speaker 1: guitar players neck and shoulder right now. Okay, Elton has
Speaker 1: a huge catalog. If I were to call out a song,
Speaker 1: would you be able to play it right like that?
Speaker 1: Or what would it take to recall it? Well? Put
Speaker 1: it this way, if it was one of the ones
Speaker 1: I played on, absolutely, I mean, because there are quite
Speaker 1: a few that I didn't play on leading up to
Speaker 1: you know the band. Oh, let's face it. If you
Speaker 1: see his greatest hits, I'm on every track. So yes,
Speaker 1: if you caught a few mentioned a track or a
Speaker 1: deep cut that I played on, I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: could play it for you. And doeselt never call out?
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been with him all these years forget
Speaker 1: to farewell tour? Is he ever just playing and say
Speaker 1: let's play you know, Harmony, or let's play Teacher, I
Speaker 1: need you or whatever. Well, he'll suggest, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about sets. We do that, him and I
Speaker 1: do that before each tour anyway, and so we'll come
Speaker 1: up with things like you said, Harmony, you know, high
Speaker 1: Flying Bird or whatever to be. The thing is, he
Speaker 1: has no fucking idea how to play these socks. So
Speaker 1: this is why they call me musical director Bob, because
Speaker 1: when it started happening, I realized he didn't know the songs,
Speaker 1: he'd forgotten them, he didn't know how to play him.
Speaker 1: So what I decided to do. I've got a very
Speaker 1: good friend called Adam Chester, who's a wonderful piano player, singer, songwriter.
Speaker 1: Adams a dear friend. He loves our music. He loves
Speaker 1: Elton's music, all his sides. One day I called him
Speaker 1: up and I said, Adam, I need you. I'm tired
Speaker 1: of showing up for a TV rehearsal, for camera rehearsal.
Speaker 1: Elton's not there because he want rehearse. I'm tired of
Speaker 1: doing a band rehearsal without piano. I'm just sick of it.
Speaker 1: So would you like to be my Elton? And he
Speaker 1: went yeah, So, so I bring him in with the
Speaker 1: whole band. He's not perfect, he sings the songs really well.
Speaker 1: We do a change of key depending on where Elton's
Speaker 1: voice maybe at the current time or whatever. And so
Speaker 1: that by the time Elton's ready to come into rehearsal,
Speaker 1: we're really good to go. We have the arrangements down,
Speaker 1: everything's totally good to go. All he's got to do
Speaker 1: is remember his part. So and he does that so quick,
Speaker 1: Elton so fast. There's a good reason. I mean, he
Speaker 1: hates the rehearse and I don't blame him. It's can
Speaker 1: be a thankless task. I do enjoy it when it's
Speaker 1: fun because these songs are so playable, there's so much
Speaker 1: fun to play. They're not fun to play if somebody's
Speaker 1: not enjoying it. So I don't I don't even think
Speaker 1: about putting Alton through that that phase of it. I
Speaker 1: wait till we're not perfect, and he's pretty much ready
Speaker 1: to just go, Okay, what was that chord? What's this chord?
Speaker 1: And then we work it out and he plays it.
Speaker 1: And usually for a tour, he won't need more than
Speaker 1: about I don't know, an hour to two hours rehearsal,
Speaker 1: and that's for a major tour because we're all good
Speaker 1: to go. He comes in for you know, an afternoon,
Speaker 1: we do a few songs, we have a tea break,
Speaker 1: we do another few songs, we have a tea break,
Speaker 1: and then he goes, I think that'll do. Let's just
Speaker 1: go and do it. So really, we rehearse when we
Speaker 1: were on stage, and we've always done that. So many
Speaker 1: of the of the jams and the various moves, the
Speaker 1: maneuvers that we get into doing on stage are all
Speaker 1: done purely live. We just work him out as we're playing.
Speaker 1: And he's always loved to do that, and I love that,
Speaker 1: and you know, as soon as he might play a
Speaker 1: little thing and rocket Man and I'll jump on it
Speaker 1: and we'll use that for a while. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's all about you know, ebbs and flows, and we
Speaker 1: know each other so well that we do that, and
Speaker 1: the band follows us, and that's the way it works. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Edinburgh. What'd your parents
Speaker 1: do for a living? My mom was a wonderful old
Speaker 1: Scottish housewife. I have two sisters, so there was my
Speaker 1: My two sisters are one is ten years older, the
Speaker 1: other one is twelve years older. So I was the baby.
Speaker 1: I was the afterthought. And my dad worked in the
Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture. He was a civil servant and he
Speaker 1: was also very worldly person. He very well read. Taught
Speaker 1: me a lot about stuff and about manners, about respect.
Speaker 1: He was a really good man. And he also helped
Speaker 1: me so much with my soccer career because football is
Speaker 1: like a religion in Scotland. I mean not American football,
Speaker 1: I mean the real football, so that kids in America
Speaker 1: in Britain, they grew up with football. So I was
Speaker 1: fitball crazy when I was a kid. That's what they
Speaker 1: call it fitball crazy because I loved it. And every
Speaker 1: waking minute I was in the park or I was
Speaker 1: in playing in teams, I was playing for my city,
Speaker 1: I was eventually playing for Scottish schoolboys. So I loved it.
Speaker 1: So Dad was great. He was very supportive and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. He had a very serious injury. He had
Speaker 1: rheumatari arthritis. It really crippled him from quite an early age.
Speaker 1: But he'd still show up at every soccer game that
Speaker 1: I played as a kid. I mean I'm talking in
Speaker 1: the rain and the snow, you know, typical British weather,
Speaker 1: and he'd show up. And when I started playing guitar,
Speaker 1: he was the one who said gave me the most encouragement.
Speaker 1: You know, other people were saying what are you doing?
Speaker 1: You know, like my teachers at school would say, well,
Speaker 1: that's a waste of time. Only one teacher ever said
Speaker 1: to me, you're doing the right thing. Carry on, my
Speaker 1: art teacher when I he asked me what I was
Speaker 1: going to be, when he was asking the whole class,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do when you grow up?
Speaker 1: What are you going to do when you leave school?
Speaker 1: And my answer was I'm going to be a professional musician, sir,
Speaker 1: And he basically was ready to hit me over the
Speaker 1: head with a book and said that's stupid. There's no
Speaker 1: way give that idea up. So um my dad was
Speaker 1: the one who said, don't listen to those guys. You know,
Speaker 1: believe in yourself, go for it. And so by the
Speaker 1: age of fourteen, I was playing in pubs, which is
Speaker 1: where most folk music is played, because I I kind
Speaker 1: of graduated from being a massive Beatles fan. I am
Speaker 1: again a massive Beatles fan again, but in those days,
Speaker 1: learning every George Harrison like by listening to the radio
Speaker 1: Radio Luxembourg or Radio Caroline, one of those pirate ships
Speaker 1: or are rolling stones to it, I'd learn all the
Speaker 1: parts right there sitting by the radio. I graduated from
Speaker 1: that to listening to folk guitar players who, in my mind,
Speaker 1: were way better than anybody I was listening to on
Speaker 1: the pop scene. I was listening to people like the
Speaker 1: Incredible string band John Martin, Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Joni Mitchell.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I was hearing I'm going to like, what the
Speaker 1: hell these people are the real stars, you know, And
Speaker 1: then I started to hear bluegrass people in America, and
Speaker 1: I'm going like, Okay, this is way advanced. This is
Speaker 1: the stuff I want to play. So that's the reason
Speaker 1: that I started playing more acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer,
Speaker 1: and then eventually star a folk singing guy called Archie
Speaker 1: Fisher played the saitar and he invited me to his
Speaker 1: home to hear it one day, and I heard it
Speaker 1: and that I've got to get one. And of course
Speaker 1: i'd heard Jarles Harrison playing on Norwegian wood and thought, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm in. I'm sold. You know, I'm a sucker for
Speaker 1: a great siding instrument. Anything strained, and I got one,
Speaker 1: which I still have to this day. I got it
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen. I still have it to this day,
Speaker 1: the same one. Okay, so you're growing up, are you
Speaker 1: the kind of kid who's a loner? Remember the group?
Speaker 1: You're a good student, bad student. I was a good student.
Speaker 1: I was good, but I was lazy because I was
Speaker 1: more interested in music. I did just what I needed
Speaker 1: to get by, and I was very upset with my
Speaker 1: dad said you got to go to extra math tuition
Speaker 1: because you're failing and you are not allowed to fail
Speaker 1: this class. So I hated him for it at the time,
Speaker 1: but I did end up getting my result all levels.
Speaker 1: Over there, they have all levels and A levels. All
Speaker 1: level is like high school. A level is more like
Speaker 1: what you do to get into college. So I got
Speaker 1: six A levels, which stunned me. I was surprised as hell,
Speaker 1: but it meant I was ready to go to Art
Speaker 1: college because that was my major. And I decided, just
Speaker 1: before I was going to go, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go to Art college. I'm going to go to London.
Speaker 1: So I had about well, my mom gave me what
Speaker 1: she had in her purse. It was eleven pounds, which
Speaker 1: was about twenty bucks. So I got on a train
Speaker 1: with my banjo, my guitar, my mandolin, and I went
Speaker 1: to London and I looked up a guy, Noel Murphy,
Speaker 1: this wonderful Irish folks who just passed away a few
Speaker 1: months ago. Unfortunately, Noel had said to me once when
Speaker 1: he heard my playing in a pub in Scotland. He said,
Speaker 1: listen man, you're crazy good. He said, if you're ever
Speaker 1: in London, looked me up. Well. When I heard that,
Speaker 1: I thought, okay. I went to London and I went
Speaker 1: to his apartment and I knocked on the door, and
Speaker 1: of course he answered it and said, um, what the
Speaker 1: fuck are you doing here? That was literally it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I went, you know, we started playing. He said, okay,
Speaker 1: you might as well play, So we we. We began
Speaker 1: this very successful folk duo partnership, and we were a
Speaker 1: massive draw on the on the folk scene between like
Speaker 1: I don't know, sixty seven and sixty nine, and then
Speaker 1: I graduated to something a little more I don't know
Speaker 1: what you would call it, um folk pop or something
Speaker 1: magna carta, a band like that. And see, there was
Speaker 1: all this folk rock stuff going on at that period
Speaker 1: of time, and very many folk physicians like myself, we're
Speaker 1: getting snapped up by bands. Um, Dave Swarbrick got snapped
Speaker 1: up by Fairport Convention. Rick Wakeman got snapped up by
Speaker 1: the firstly by the Strobs and then by yes um
Speaker 1: people like Ralph mct hell were coming on the scene.
Speaker 1: I was playing with him also Kat Stevens, and then
Speaker 1: I got you know, I was starting to do session work.
Speaker 1: So when I did that a little bit slower, a
Speaker 1: little bit slower, how'd you get session work? Okay? Well
Speaker 1: I got session work because basically from from my studio, sorry,
Speaker 1: from my playing in pubs and playing in folk clubs. Basically,
Speaker 1: people would just call me up. They would hear me,
Speaker 1: and they would say, look, I think you'd be great
Speaker 1: on this record. Will you do it? And I was
Speaker 1: like absolutely, I mean I never turned a gig down.
Speaker 1: You don't do you don't turn a gig down. And
Speaker 1: so I started playing with those kind of people, you know,
Speaker 1: obscure kind of folk artists, but who had record deals.
Speaker 1: Colin Scott, Ralph mctel was a bit of bit better
Speaker 1: known Kat Stevens obviously, and Gus Dudgeon, Elton's producer at
Speaker 1: that time. Wait, before you get to Gus, you knock
Speaker 1: on Murphy's door, you have twenty dollars in your pocket.
Speaker 1: Do you end up sleeping in his apartment? What is
Speaker 1: your lifestyle like before you work with Elton? And did
Speaker 1: you ever contemplate giving up? Okay, this is a good
Speaker 1: run up to that, Bob, So I'll tell you what happened.
Speaker 1: So I'm fifteen years old. I'm working with a partner
Speaker 1: who's a wonderful singer called Titch. So we go by
Speaker 1: the really original name of Titch and Davy, and we
Speaker 1: get really interesting people digging our stuff. Again. Folk clubs,
Speaker 1: all folk music took place in pubs in those days.
Speaker 1: That's just what happened. I think it went to coffeehouses
Speaker 1: later on, but pubs were where it was very rosy
Speaker 1: folk clubs, and again I was playing banjo at this
Speaker 1: By this point, people were going shit crazy. Whenever I
Speaker 1: play one of the Dubliners reels or something Irish tunes,
Speaker 1: they'd be going nuts. Per serk. So I was already
Speaker 1: a bit of an item. When I was fifteen as
Speaker 1: a banjo player, we suddenly started getting gigs supporting people
Speaker 1: like the Incredible String Band, and there was one band
Speaker 1: called the humble Bums. I don't know if you're aware
Speaker 1: of Jerry Rafferty, yes, and Billy Connolly right, was still
Speaker 1: my friend to this date. Billy Connolly couldn't believe again
Speaker 1: my playing and what was going on with us. So
Speaker 1: we became firm friends. And this is again, is all happening.
Speaker 1: When I'm fifteen and sixteen years old. I continue to
Speaker 1: be close to Billy and these other guys who are
Speaker 1: hearing me play, and they're all going, Jesus christ Man,
Speaker 1: you know you can do this or you can do that.
Speaker 1: So me and my friend Titch hitchhike to Liverpool and
Speaker 1: we we just got there. We don't know anybody. We
Speaker 1: end up staying at my aunties house and Soot, which
Speaker 1: is about half an hour on the train from Liverpool.
Speaker 1: And we go to Liverpool because the Beatles are from Liverpool.
Speaker 1: So we go there thinking maybe somebody will discover us.
Speaker 1: So we go to this area of very dodgy area
Speaker 1: near the Bluecoat Museum where some of those guys studied,
Speaker 1: and found this very very dodgy club called the Green Moose.
Speaker 1: And we went in there and there was all these
Speaker 1: hippies and folk singers, and there was one guy called
Speaker 1: Willie Russell who's a friend of mine to this day.
Speaker 1: He was a poet, writer and wonderful, wonderful singer. He
Speaker 1: we got on immediately. Willy Russell turned out to be
Speaker 1: one of the greatest playwrights and he is one of
Speaker 1: the greatest living playwrights in British history. He wrote. He
Speaker 1: went on to write Educating Rita and Blood Brothers Shirley Valentine,
Speaker 1: and he's you know, living. He still lives in Liverpool
Speaker 1: and has a place in Portugal. Anyway, I digress. Willy
Speaker 1: and I became firm friends. So suddenly you had me,
Speaker 1: Willy Russell, Billy Connolly, Noel Murphy, this kind of kind
Speaker 1: of gangster folk people, and we could drink more and
Speaker 1: smoke more harsh than anybody else, So we were rapidly
Speaker 1: getting a name. So I kind of had I was
Speaker 1: ready to go to London. People weren't that surprised when
Speaker 1: I showed it up there because they kind of knew
Speaker 1: who I was. So yes, Noel Murphy, apart from saying
Speaker 1: you know, what the fuck are you doing here, said okay,
Speaker 1: well you better come in. Maybe we should think about
Speaker 1: talk about this, So you know, we rolled a few splits,
Speaker 1: talked about what we could possibly do together, and obviously
Speaker 1: him being an Irish singer and me being an exponent
Speaker 1: of the tenor banjo and mandolin acoustic guitar, we could
Speaker 1: do this folk duo. So we were first called Murph
Speaker 1: and Shagas. That's another one of my names. Shagas was
Speaker 1: a name that he came up with. You probably know
Speaker 1: what a haggas is, Bob, or maybe you don't, yeah,
Speaker 1: but anyway, he thought, well, Davey resembles a shaggy Haggas,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to call him Shagas. So that was
Speaker 1: my name for a couple of years too, and then
Speaker 1: eventually we decided to give ourselves more of a band name,
Speaker 1: and we called ourselves Draft Porridge and in the in
Speaker 1: the latent days of the folks in there, Draft Porridge
Speaker 1: became quite a thing. So all this kind of thing
Speaker 1: was happening. People are starting to talk about us. We
Speaker 1: were getting this massive following, and eventually I get starting
Speaker 1: to ask to do sessions. So that's where the gust
Speaker 1: thing comes in. Okay, so Gus calls you, do you
Speaker 1: know who Elton is? At that point? He's an empty Sky,
Speaker 1: which wasn't that successful the first self titled album, Tumbleweed Connection,
Speaker 1: never mind the live album and the Friends soundtrack. You're
Speaker 1: called by Gus? Is this just another gig? Or do
Speaker 1: you say? Wow? Well? I had heard about Elton from
Speaker 1: Gus because Gus and I took a meeting. We had
Speaker 1: metturing sessions for this group, Magna Carta that I was
Speaker 1: with for about a year, and before I was a
Speaker 1: bona fide member of that group with a three piece
Speaker 1: folk group. Gus was producing them, so I was actually
Speaker 1: a session man on that thing too. So that's where
Speaker 1: we first met and we took a meeting sometime after
Speaker 1: because I was so bold away by what he was
Speaker 1: doing and the way he made my instrument sound. He
Speaker 1: was obviously a schooled engineer as well as a great producer,
Speaker 1: so we took a meeting one day and he told me,
Speaker 1: he said, I worked with this guy called Regge and
Speaker 1: his real name, he's calling himself Elton John and he
Speaker 1: said he's just had a big successful show in la
Speaker 1: and you probably be hearing about him, and I went okay,
Speaker 1: and that's the first time I'd heard of him. And
Speaker 1: I remember going back to Scotland a few weeks later
Speaker 1: for a visit with my folks, and my dad and
Speaker 1: I were watching a show called Top of the Pops
Speaker 1: which I think is probably still on in the UK,
Speaker 1: and Elton was on doing border song and I remember thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this guy's got a killer voice. I love his piano playing,
Speaker 1: and look at that head of hair. My dad and
Speaker 1: me both said, look at this guy's here. He's got
Speaker 1: this thickest, coolest looking head of hair we'd ever seen, right,
Speaker 1: And that was the first thing that kind of I
Speaker 1: noticed about him. So anyway, I went back down to
Speaker 1: London and I've done a couple of months later or something,
Speaker 1: Gus calls me and said, look, I'm doing a poetry
Speaker 1: album with Bernie Taupin. The idea is for to do
Speaker 1: acoustic album whereby yourself, if you're into it, Caleb Quay,
Speaker 1: Sean Phillips, the American musician, and a couple of other
Speaker 1: people here and there are going to be in the studio.
Speaker 1: Bernie is going to recite his poetry and you guys
Speaker 1: will play whatever you want in the background. You bring
Speaker 1: your guitar, your sitar, your mandolin, and Bernie's just going
Speaker 1: to read poetry. You're going to smoke a lot of dope,
Speaker 1: and then you're going to play whatever comes into your head.
Speaker 1: So that's what happened. I showed up at the studio.
Speaker 1: I met Bernie, who was a great guy. Straightaway, got
Speaker 1: un fantastic with him, and that's what we did. We
Speaker 1: sat around and got to know each other. Gus was producing,
Speaker 1: Clive Franks was engineering. Clive went on to be our
Speaker 1: front of house guy. So this album was so much
Speaker 1: fun to record because Caleb and I were just We
Speaker 1: got to know each other on that record, and it
Speaker 1: was obvious that at some point we would do some
Speaker 1: other stuff together. It was just one of those things.
Speaker 1: So after Bernie's recordings, I guess Bernie must have said
Speaker 1: to Elton, you've got to check this guy out. And
Speaker 1: I got the call to do the mad Mare across
Speaker 1: the Water thing, and I showed up with more stuff
Speaker 1: than they asked me for. I was booked to play
Speaker 1: banjo on a song called holiday En, so I brought
Speaker 1: my banjo. I also brought my mandolin, and for some
Speaker 1: reason I brought my sitar and walked into the studio.
Speaker 1: In those days, he was he was reg so Gus
Speaker 1: introduced me, and he was very very shy. Elton was
Speaker 1: sitting his piano, didn't he wasn't really into eye contact.
Speaker 1: He was just looking at the piano and it seemed
Speaker 1: quite shy and nervous. And I said, okay, well can
Speaker 1: you play me the song we're going to do? And
Speaker 1: he played the song and I straight away said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's banjo on that. I think mandolin
Speaker 1: is going to be better. And he said okay, let's
Speaker 1: try that, and then to go one more. After we
Speaker 1: ran the song down a couple of times. He didn't
Speaker 1: have an intro for it, and Gosus said well, how
Speaker 1: are you going to start it? And Elton said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure. And I said, well, why don't
Speaker 1: you just start it? It's just me, like a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old kid from Scotland, and I said, why don't
Speaker 1: you just started straight in? I said, it sounds like
Speaker 1: you've just come in with that bust, and I last
Speaker 1: that just come in you me and I'm coming with
Speaker 1: the mandolin and the piano, and that's what we'll do.
Speaker 1: And he went, okay, let's try that soap full of
Speaker 1: shit young scotsman, you know. So we do that, and
Speaker 1: every he goes, that's great. So here I am surrounded
Speaker 1: by people like Herbie Flowers, Barry Morgan, I mean, brilliant musicians,
Speaker 1: Chris Spedding, Ray Cooper, all these great wonderful session players,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting there and going, okay, this is really
Speaker 1: getting interesting. I'm working with these guys and straight away
Speaker 1: you could tell, okay, these guys are they're the cream.
Speaker 1: I've done a bunch of sessions, but this is another
Speaker 1: another world, you know. So then the next song he
Speaker 1: asked me to play. I believe it was the song
Speaker 1: that they had originally wanted me to try, which was
Speaker 1: the title track of that record, mad Man Across the Water,
Speaker 1: and I found out later they tried it with a
Speaker 1: couple of other guys. They tried it with Mick Ronson,
Speaker 1: who was also a dear friend of mine, and Michael Chapman,
Speaker 1: another friend of mine, who was a wonderful folk guitar player.
Speaker 1: They'd done versions and for whatever reason, it hadn't been
Speaker 1: what they needed, and so they said, this is the
Speaker 1: riff for the piano, like for this song I have.
Speaker 1: So he played the riff for Madman and I was
Speaker 1: sitting there next to him with my guitar, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: what about this? And I'm very much a first I'm
Speaker 1: I'm an ideas guy, and my first ideas are usually
Speaker 1: the ones that are best, just the way it works
Speaker 1: with me. And I played what I thought, and they
Speaker 1: all said, you know, Elton Gus and Steve Brown was
Speaker 1: the manager at that point, that's it, eureka. So we
Speaker 1: cut it and yeah, and I went on to play
Speaker 1: on a few other tracks on that album. See on
Speaker 1: those in those days you probably know this, Boblem. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you do. And those days when artists were doing
Speaker 1: an album, they had to do, you know, a three
Speaker 1: hour session, you know, you had to get at least
Speaker 1: one track done, usually more. If you could do more,
Speaker 1: you would, you know, so for a day's work, say
Speaker 1: if you were doing two full sessions, you'd hope to
Speaker 1: get three finished tracks. And we did, you know one
Speaker 1: of the next afternoon as we got a tiny d
Speaker 1: answer leave on and I think we did some more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I did the overdubs on holiday and I
Speaker 1: did suitar and and extra stuff on that and yeah,
Speaker 1: so the work rate impressed me. The songs really impressed me.
Speaker 1: Elton's voice, the piano playing, I mean, I was hooked.
Speaker 1: I thought, this this guy is great. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the best thing I've heard in a long time. So
Speaker 1: I went back to my little cottage in Oxford Shore
Speaker 1: where I was living with my first wife and our
Speaker 1: little baby. And a few days later I got the
Speaker 1: call um from Steve Brown who who said, um, he
Speaker 1: would like you to join his trio. He wants to
Speaker 1: be a quartet with you on guitar. And I was like, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: I said, well that's really I'm flattered. I said, but
Speaker 1: can I think about it? And he said of course,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and I said you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't need to think about it. I'm in I'd love
Speaker 1: to do it. So that was it. And believe it
Speaker 1: or not, between that conversation, I saw Elton a couple
Speaker 1: of times shopping in the King's Road and he was
Speaker 1: so he was a different character. He was friendly, exuberant
Speaker 1: and buoyant, and maybe because he realized that I wasn't
Speaker 1: just a bullshitter or something, and we became We were
Speaker 1: good mates at that point. But I still hadn't met
Speaker 1: d Murray the bass player. I'd met Nigel, but I'd
Speaker 1: never played with him because they didn't play on the
Speaker 1: albums in those days. So here I am, this upstart
Speaker 1: guitar player just turning twenty, and I'm arriving in the
Speaker 1: chateau nor rehearsal because, as I told you at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this whole thing, Alton makes to rehearse. I said,
Speaker 1: aren't we got to at least have a run through
Speaker 1: with Dea, Nigel and you, and now it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: So we get there and we literally start playing together
Speaker 1: in the chateau, and that's how it all started. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of questions. Yes, the sounds are very different
Speaker 1: from your perspective. What's the difference with Gus Dudgeon as
Speaker 1: a producer Chris Thomas. Wow, Well, I find that all
Speaker 1: producers are really different because they all put their own
Speaker 1: mark on things. Gus being an engineer at Decca Records
Speaker 1: before he even became a producer. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: one of those engineers with a white coat and the
Speaker 1: whole thing, like in Abby Road they had in the
Speaker 1: early days, and so he really learned about how to
Speaker 1: make up instruments properly and the the whole thing. And we
Speaker 1: began to have a wonderful relationship because thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: Alton was the only other melodic guy in the band.
Speaker 1: He played piano and occasionally he would do an overdub
Speaker 1: on Melotron or far Fisa Oregon if something that was
Speaker 1: lying around. But really I was the guy doing the
Speaker 1: other instruments and guitar overdubs obviously, and bought other textures
Speaker 1: who wanted and we'd employ them in every album. It
Speaker 1: was a very very very close knit now and that
Speaker 1: happened for all these classic records now in the eighties
Speaker 1: when Alton when we reformed because Alton famously or whatever
Speaker 1: got the original band back together. At the end of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one called me saying, I want to get
Speaker 1: Dea nageling you together again with me, just the four
Speaker 1: of us, and we go back into the studio. This
Speaker 1: time I want to go in with Chris Thomas because
Speaker 1: I've been working with him and I'd like to try that,
Speaker 1: And I said great, So we all went to We
Speaker 1: did a whole year of touring before we did an album,
Speaker 1: which was kind of cool. Who went straight into touring
Speaker 1: and obviously it was like we'd never stopped playing together.
Speaker 1: And so after the year of touring, we went to Montserrat,
Speaker 1: George Martin's air studio out there with Chris producing. And
Speaker 1: we've always enjoyed that way of working, by the way,
Speaker 1: that residential area where you're kind of prisoners together. You're
Speaker 1: all in one area, you know, where you get to
Speaker 1: live and work together and have breakfast and maybe come
Speaker 1: up with an idea of dinner together and go to
Speaker 1: bed and wake up start again. So we've always enjoyed
Speaker 1: that way of work. So Montserrat was a natural follow
Speaker 1: on to our work at the Chateau and also at
Speaker 1: Carriboo Ranch. So we get to Montserrat. I had met
Speaker 1: Chris previously. I met him up at Paul McCartney's studio
Speaker 1: in the malof Kintire when he was doing one of
Speaker 1: Paul's albums, and we got on very well, and what
Speaker 1: a great guy, you know. And I loved his work
Speaker 1: on Beatle's White album. I loved his work on Tender Stuff,
Speaker 1: which I was starting to hear. Chris and I became
Speaker 1: very close because of what we were started doing straight
Speaker 1: away because he also, like me, likes to work very quickly,
Speaker 1: and also like Gus, Gus was always a very quick worker.
Speaker 1: So we're very fortunate that all those guys liked to
Speaker 1: work the way that Elton liked to work, which is,
Speaker 1: hang onto your hat. You better be stayed with us
Speaker 1: because this is going to be fast, and we don't
Speaker 1: fuck around the studios like Howard Ground to us, so
Speaker 1: that once we've run a song twice, we're ready to
Speaker 1: take it. I mean I'm talking about from when it's written,
Speaker 1: run down, played and recorded. That's what we do, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like hang on to your hat because we
Speaker 1: ain't stopping for anybody. So Chris was quite used to
Speaker 1: work in that way and loved it and loved what
Speaker 1: we were doing, and I loved what he was doing
Speaker 1: because it was a different way of approaching guitars as well,
Speaker 1: because he brought that more chiangly sound of the of
Speaker 1: the eighties guitar wise in but he loved again what
Speaker 1: I'd do Les Paul Wise. In fact, we began to
Speaker 1: call my Les Paul work BF cheese. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that became was who we came to an overdub
Speaker 1: and he'd say, you know what, I can really hear
Speaker 1: some big fact Gibson's on this, and I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great idea. So big fact Gibson's became, you know,
Speaker 1: this term for really loud, overdriven Les Paul sound, you know.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, Chris and I get gotten great for
Speaker 1: all these records. And but in the eighties Elton did
Speaker 1: change around quite a bit. You know. He went a
Speaker 1: couple or three albums with Chris, then back to Gus
Speaker 1: again for a couple of records and then a live album,
Speaker 1: and he kept having hits, which was fucking awesome. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was as far as the difference between them, I
Speaker 1: must admit I equally loved working with Gus and Chris Thomas.
Speaker 1: Both brilliant in their own way. Okay, so you're asked
Speaker 1: to join the band, you're at the chateau. Everyone had
Speaker 1: a fantasy of what the chateau was until the Beg's
Speaker 1: documentary showed it and looked like kind of a dump.
Speaker 1: So what was the chateau like? Well, it was pretty
Speaker 1: run down. I mean it really was, definitely, but let's
Speaker 1: face it, it was a French chateau. I mean, from
Speaker 1: the outside it looked incredible. It was like two buildings,
Speaker 1: both chateau esque and their design wonderful old buildings, beautiful
Speaker 1: old buildings. And one building was the residential part. The
Speaker 1: other side was where the studio was in. And when
Speaker 1: I say run down, you know, they had sweeping staircases
Speaker 1: stuff like that, but there were It wasn't much a
Speaker 1: dormant There wasn't like old fashioned, beautiful framed guilt photograph.
Speaker 1: There was nothing like that. I mean, any pictures in
Speaker 1: the rooms, which were kind of shabby too, were just
Speaker 1: kind of something stuck up there and pinned up there.
Speaker 1: It was definitely not somewhere suave. This was somewhere where
Speaker 1: you'd probably go to make a porno movie, right, And
Speaker 1: I believe later on sometime in the late eighties. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what started going on there, which is tragic, but
Speaker 1: it was the idea of being in France, being about
Speaker 1: twenty miles from Paris and the middle of nowhere, all
Speaker 1: living together, you know, waking up, going down for breakfast,
Speaker 1: having a bit of baguet and some cheese and some coffee,
Speaker 1: and then starting to play. That's what it would be like. Literally,
Speaker 1: I would come down in the morning and Elton that
Speaker 1: would already be there sitting at an electric offender rose piano,
Speaker 1: playing away and obviously writing something, and I'd grab a
Speaker 1: baguette and a coffee and I wander over to where
Speaker 1: he was sit down, and I vividly remember him starting
Speaker 1: to write things like Honky Cat there and thinking, oh
Speaker 1: banjo straight away and late, you know, later in the day,
Speaker 1: would be working on something and he'd go, oh, this
Speaker 1: song called Salvation another wonderful deep Cup, which ended up
Speaker 1: being the first track that we actually recorded for those sessions.
Speaker 1: I remember the way he started Rocketman and we were
Speaker 1: looking at each other at this point, the four of us,
Speaker 1: and going, okay, this is really really special because during Rocketman,
Speaker 1: when we were mucking around with the basic idea for it.
Speaker 1: We'd start doing backgrounds. D and Nigellavy, we start owing
Speaker 1: and I and we've never sung before together, but straight
Speaker 1: away it sounded like, oh, okay, this is going to
Speaker 1: be fun, this is going to be really great. And again,
Speaker 1: because we were so self contained, Alton keyboards, Me on
Speaker 1: guitars and other strain instruments, Nigel and drums, and D
Speaker 1: on bass, and all of us on backgrounds, we didn't
Speaker 1: need anybody else. Because he didn't want to have a
Speaker 1: live I didn't want to have a livish orchestral sounding record.
Speaker 1: He wanted this one to be a band, to sound
Speaker 1: like a band, you know, And I think we achieved that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's successful, and you're on the road. Meanwhile, now you're
Speaker 1: a member of the band. To what dig we are
Speaker 1: you saying I'm getting a steady paycheck, but maybe I'm
Speaker 1: missing out on other opportunities with other people? You mean? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Bob, here's the here's the kicker for the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Because as soon as we started doing this
Speaker 1: um honky Chateau, this first album, I mean, Madman Across
Speaker 1: the Water was already doing very well. It was starting
Speaker 1: to do stuff in the chart, so that was exciting
Speaker 1: knowing that there was something happening for when we went
Speaker 1: to the States. But Honky Chateau, we finished it in
Speaker 1: two weeks. It was all. It was done in two weeks,
Speaker 1: so straight away it was quite obvious, Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to get back to London. We're going to do a
Speaker 1: concert at the Raw Festival Hall with our orchestra, so
Speaker 1: we're going to promote madmu Across the Water. We'll do
Speaker 1: it with you know, all the guys who played on
Speaker 1: the record, and then the second half will be the
Speaker 1: band set, no other way around. Band will do the
Speaker 1: first half set and we'll promote the new album. We'll
Speaker 1: play the new album live and the second half will
Speaker 1: be the orchestral set with the whole of Madness Across
Speaker 1: the Water and a few things from like your song,
Speaker 1: Border Song, Burned Down the Mission, you know all that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So already there was this plan. We
Speaker 1: were on this train and nobody was getting off. It
Speaker 1: was like, this is what it's going to be. So
Speaker 1: we did the festival whole show, which was televised as well.
Speaker 1: I believe there's some kind of anniversary thing coming out
Speaker 1: around about now, about that we did. That show went
Speaker 1: off great, and a couple of weeks later, we're going
Speaker 1: off to America and I'm going there for my first time.
Speaker 1: Twenty year old kid going Okay, this is crazy. And
Speaker 1: I must admit at that point after the Festival Hall show,
Speaker 1: I was a little bit. I was a little bit unsure.
Speaker 1: In fact, I told Elton. I called Elton about for
Speaker 1: the gig and I said to him, look, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think you need a tried, intrude, you know, rock
Speaker 1: guitar player, because I don't know if I'm really into
Speaker 1: all this. Posing See, the band never told me. The
Speaker 1: other guy has never told me what is what their
Speaker 1: live show was like, so I had no parameters. I'd
Speaker 1: know nothing. I'd know, you know, no idea what to
Speaker 1: expect when we got on stage that first time. And
Speaker 1: not that it was that outrageous, but it was different.
Speaker 1: And I was coming into a scene that I was
Speaker 1: wholly unfamiliar with. You know, I was a little folk musician.
Speaker 1: Granted I'd played some good shit on the album and
Speaker 1: I was often running, but I had an awful lot
Speaker 1: to learn. So I was unsure. So I said to Welton,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if i'm your he said,
Speaker 1: you're the guy. He said, I know it. I knew
Speaker 1: it as soon as I met you, as soon as
Speaker 1: I heard you playing. I've you've done the first album.
Speaker 1: It sounds great. Let's just go with it. It's going
Speaker 1: to be cool, You're going to be fine, and so
Speaker 1: we went for it. Yeah, okay, Well let me ask
Speaker 1: you this. Famously, Bernie writes the lyrics, gives him to Elton.
Speaker 1: He comes up with the melody the song to what
Speaker 1: we were others involved, yourself included obviously. Do you mean
Speaker 1: during that writing Yeah, okay, during the writing process, we'd
Speaker 1: all be I mean, occasionally he'd be on his own
Speaker 1: and maybe he'd finished something and rushed through and say, guys,
Speaker 1: listen to this. But much of the time, in fact,
Speaker 1: most of the time, we'd be all sitting together, either
Speaker 1: in the breakfast room, where we had a little semi
Speaker 1: sarkle of instruments and so we could all play whenever
Speaker 1: we wanted, or in the studio, where he'd well, maybe
Speaker 1: we'd we'd go from the breakfast room over to the
Speaker 1: studio to record a track that we were happy with.
Speaker 1: Let's lay that down. And after we'd laid that down.
Speaker 1: He would say, Bernie got a Bernie wouldn't even be there.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, we just look at another lyric
Speaker 1: and go and put it up there on the piano.
Speaker 1: And he started fucking around. And we were just on
Speaker 1: the basic track for the for the first song, and
Speaker 1: he's already writing the second song. So I would be
Speaker 1: sitting next to him with an acoustic guitar, and I
Speaker 1: have a pad of paper with me, and I start,
Speaker 1: you know, sketching down a couple of chords. When I
Speaker 1: see where he's going with it. D would be plunking
Speaker 1: away in the background. We'd all would all be listening,
Speaker 1: so that by the time the song was actually written,
Speaker 1: we all felt invested in it because we were we
Speaker 1: were all there, and you know, occasionally there would be
Speaker 1: the odd thing of oh what about that instead of
Speaker 1: that or something, you know, but it was just like
Speaker 1: this machine that wouldn't stop. And Elton was on such
Speaker 1: a role which carried him on. Really. He went on
Speaker 1: this role for so many years where he was actually
Speaker 1: the song write up, no question about it. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until later on in the seventies when I started writing
Speaker 1: a few things with him and other people did and
Speaker 1: again in the eighties that he started. He was on
Speaker 1: such a role in such a thing for what he
Speaker 1: was doing. It's kind of like I think Leononan McCartney
Speaker 1: must have felt that way when they were writing their
Speaker 1: their you know, classic songs that that five or six
Speaker 1: year period. I often liken that. I mean not saying
Speaker 1: that we're the Beatles or anything. I'm just saying I
Speaker 1: liken it to that time when the creative creativity is
Speaker 1: so off the charts that you really have to hang
Speaker 1: in and pay attention to keep up. But on the
Speaker 1: good side of it, because you feel a part of it,
Speaker 1: you're totally invested all the way, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: what it was like. We were a band. Let me
Speaker 1: just put it that way, Bob, you were a band. Okay,
Speaker 1: fifty years later things are different. Did you ever say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe I deserve credit the publishing. No um, because there
Speaker 1: have been a few songs where I have gotten publishing
Speaker 1: because I did care write several songs with him. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I reckon, I've written about a dozen with him,
Speaker 1: you know, proper compositions. Maybe maybe he's many as twenty.
Speaker 1: I've encountered them, to be honest, I often did toy
Speaker 1: with the fact that some of the bigger guitar driven hits,
Speaker 1: you know, I would think, m that's me all over there.
Speaker 1: There's not much else going on at that point, you know,
Speaker 1: and I would I would toy with the idea. But
Speaker 1: you know, I've got to tell you and all honestly,
Speaker 1: I've never my relationship without and there's never been about that.
Speaker 1: I would never go to him and say, yeah, what
Speaker 1: about my my guitar parts there, I've got to tell you,
Speaker 1: Bob and all honestly, I have seen so many bands
Speaker 1: break up because of that fact. Right there, people squabbling
Speaker 1: over well, that's my bit, so I should get a
Speaker 1: part of that or and that's my part. We were
Speaker 1: a band and didn't think. We didn't presume to jump
Speaker 1: on the train that most other many other bands have done.
Speaker 1: And you know, we stayed together for that reason, and
Speaker 1: I think that's very important. Okay, there is money involved.
Speaker 1: Who did you negotiate with from then to now over compensation?
Speaker 1: There's not been much negotiation allowed, to be totally honest
Speaker 1: with you, Back in the day, it was John Reid,
Speaker 1: and John's was a brilliant manager, absolutely brilliant and really
Speaker 1: made the whole thing happen. His exuberance and his understanding
Speaker 1: of rock and roll, his already his experience from working
Speaker 1: with Motown, and just his old knowledge and his gunghole attitude.
Speaker 1: That was the train that we were all on. And
Speaker 1: John was very fair. There was very There was a
Speaker 1: great deal of difficulty coming negotiation wise from Elton's proper
Speaker 1: manager of the whole thing, who was Dick James. It
Speaker 1: was quite some years before they could, you know, move
Speaker 1: out of that situation. So Dick had Elton locked up
Speaker 1: into a pretty tight situation. So that was the first
Speaker 1: thing that caused breakdowns if you like, or where we
Speaker 1: could never get certain things sorted out. When I started
Speaker 1: writing with Elton, when it became okay, Davy wrote this
Speaker 1: with Elton, there was never any issue. That's what it was,
Speaker 1: you know, Davy, Elton and Bernie, And as I said
Speaker 1: a little while ago, there's many many songs like that.
Speaker 1: So I'm certainly not going to pick bones about a
Speaker 1: couple of songs that have done me very well in
Speaker 1: my career that a lot of fans and guitar players
Speaker 1: have held me in great esteem for quite frankly, it's
Speaker 1: been worth it. To me to have the position that
Speaker 1: I still have after all these years, and that I
Speaker 1: still enjoy because quite frankly, Bob, I know too many
Speaker 1: bands that have broken up for bad attitudes, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm fine put it that way, Okay, irrelevant of the songs,
Speaker 1: like you're on this final tour, how do they decide
Speaker 1: what you make? Well, that's become more of an issue
Speaker 1: of it's a band. It's Elton John is now a brand,
Speaker 1: not a band. It's now a brand. You must have
Speaker 1: seen that coming for several years. It's not a bunch
Speaker 1: of musicians anymore. It's a brand you have. You can
Speaker 1: now have Elton John Walmart glasses, you can have this.
Speaker 1: You can have Elton with a leaper, you can have
Speaker 1: Elton with um you know, various other artists. He doesn't
Speaker 1: always consider that his band is on a par with
Speaker 1: what he does, or at least his management don't. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure Elton feels the same way. When we are
Speaker 1: doing the Farewell tour, we're all on stage. It's just
Speaker 1: a band the same way as it ever was. You know.
Speaker 1: It's me and Nigel and Ray and Elton up there
Speaker 1: with the other guys doing our best you know. As
Speaker 1: far as the money aspect of it, we are. All
Speaker 1: I can tell you, Bob is that we're paid very
Speaker 1: well as musicians. Okay, let's go back. Conkey Chateau is
Speaker 1: a huge success. The next album is Don't Shoot Me.
Speaker 1: I'm only the piano player. You know, back when there
Speaker 1: was so much less information about musicians and music, I
Speaker 1: fame it and I read it all. I family remember
Speaker 1: Elton saying, oh, that album is a throwaway. When I
Speaker 1: love that album, tell me about making that album. I
Speaker 1: love Don't Shoot Me as well, because I stepped up.
Speaker 1: I gained more confidence as a rock guitar player by
Speaker 1: that point, and we had done a couple of tours.
Speaker 1: One of the things about the early days was recording
Speaker 1: tour album, tour, separate single, tour album. To you know,
Speaker 1: it was always we were working very rare. We were
Speaker 1: not working for that first five or six years, seriously.
Speaker 1: But Don't Shoot Me was especially fun for me. Also
Speaker 1: because I had bought a few guitars in America. I'd
Speaker 1: bought the less Ball. Actually, Elton gave me a Les
Speaker 1: Paul that I picked out for him on a tour.
Speaker 1: I picked out a Les Paul and the old Man's
Speaker 1: guitar shop that you might remember, of course, said he yeah,
Speaker 1: and he wanted a Les Paul and I said, well,
Speaker 1: see that one up on the pedestal up there, that's
Speaker 1: the one you should have. And he said okay. So
Speaker 1: I played it and he took it. And when I
Speaker 1: had some guitars on about a month later, he said
Speaker 1: take my Les bowl. So I was like, okay. So
Speaker 1: I was happy. I still have that guitar too, of course,
Speaker 1: but one second, tell me about the guitars getting stolen.
Speaker 1: Uh my god, Bob, what a nightmare? What a what
Speaker 1: a fucking nightmare. We were doing a tour of England
Speaker 1: and this was right before we recorded Don't Shoot Me
Speaker 1: and No Sorry. This was after Don't Shoot Me. This
Speaker 1: was after we recorded Don't Shoot Me. Sorry. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: getting a missing album. So do you want to tell
Speaker 1: the Shall I tell this story first? About this? No,
Speaker 1: I'll just keep going. I can follow you my audience. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we've done a tour in Sheffield, so this would
Speaker 1: be late nineteen seventy two, winter of nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: after Don't Shoot Me and I band I have picked
Speaker 1: up a couple of guitars. In the States. I picked
Speaker 1: up also the third mandolin ever made by Fender, and
Speaker 1: it's an electric mandolin, and the serial number is zero
Speaker 1: zero zero zero three. And I treasure this little thing
Speaker 1: and it sounds killer on stage. I've never had electric
Speaker 1: mandolin before. It sounds amazing that one. I had another
Speaker 1: guitar that I bought in Nashville, which was a sixty sorry,
Speaker 1: a fifty eight les Paul gold Top with soapbar pickups.
Speaker 1: I adored this thing and it sounded incredible. D had
Speaker 1: two bases. I had also my my strat. I had
Speaker 1: another offender. I had a less special, one of those
Speaker 1: wonderful one pickup ones at Leslie West used to play.
Speaker 1: So Yeah. The truck driver without equipment decided he was
Speaker 1: tired one night, and after the show he pulled into
Speaker 1: like this part car park by this pub and locked
Speaker 1: the truck up and went to sleep. Came down in
Speaker 1: the morning and the whole truck had been stolen. They
Speaker 1: took the whole fucking truck and all these instruments were taken,
Speaker 1: and it was just horrible. My first experience of that,
Speaker 1: it didn't go well with me. It happened again in
Speaker 1: the future, but this time that it happened was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be too much of a collector.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pick up really really wonderful ancient instruments
Speaker 1: because I'm scared of traveling with them and having them stolen.
Speaker 1: And I have great instruments still to this day. But
Speaker 1: that was a real setback, one that you learned to
Speaker 1: live back, to live with, you know, But okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't like it. Frampton famously got his guitar back decades later,
Speaker 1: although there was a plane crash involved, etc. Now with
Speaker 1: the internet, have you ever found the stuff that was
Speaker 1: stolen resurface? Wouldn't that be great? Because I promise I'll
Speaker 1: look at because along with that hall that they took,
Speaker 1: they also got an acoustic Gibson mandolin from you know,
Speaker 1: like early nineteen hundreds, like nineteen eight or something that
Speaker 1: was in the hall and it had my name on
Speaker 1: the flight case. Now ten years later, I'm doing a
Speaker 1: session in LA for Eddie what's his name? Who's Eddie? Who? Oh?
Speaker 1: How am I forgetting his name? Who produced Hendrix Nye
Speaker 1: Kremer and Hendrix Eddie Kramer? For god, I'm so sorry, Eddie.
Speaker 1: You're probably gonna hit me the next time I see you.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, oh, I'm working with this
Speaker 1: Polish band and they have one of your mandolins. And
Speaker 1: I'm what, what do you mean? He said, yeah, this
Speaker 1: Polish rock band. They've got you one of your mandolins.
Speaker 1: I saw your name on this flight case in get
Speaker 1: ask and I'm going no, so immediately I get people
Speaker 1: on it. And of course this is the early eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, cell phones are still not happening there and
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that. No, I can't run over there
Speaker 1: and nail it down all the rest of it. So
Speaker 1: I never did get it back, Bob. But I'm I'm
Speaker 1: looking at I have my sources, people who troll around
Speaker 1: looking for things, because I'm sure I'm going to see
Speaker 1: those a couple of those instruments again. As you say,
Speaker 1: with the internet, Spanish show up sometime. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to Don't Shoot Me Right. What a great collection
Speaker 1: of songs on that record. Daniel was almost too easy
Speaker 1: to record because we were literally sitting around the piano.
Speaker 1: He wrote the song. The whole song start to finish
Speaker 1: in about twenty minutes, and let's cut it, okay, Gusta
Speaker 1: let's do it now. Okay, we did. We sat down,
Speaker 1: played it down once, fixed out a couple of things
Speaker 1: in the arrangement, played it again, and a third take
Speaker 1: we got it. We got the master. That was it.
Speaker 1: It was just beautiful, relaxed, laid back feel, and we
Speaker 1: just cut it live obviously electric piano, Elton singing live, vocal,
Speaker 1: drums and bass, and my acoustic guitar, and it just
Speaker 1: sounded so great when we heard it, and immediately everybody
Speaker 1: was going, single, that's got to be a single. It's
Speaker 1: just so singable and so cute and so beautiful. And
Speaker 1: then one of the things that I loved about this
Speaker 1: about Daniel when I think back to that track and
Speaker 1: the way we cut it, were the overdubs that we
Speaker 1: put on it because we kept it very, very sparse.
Speaker 1: But straight away we'd fallen in love with the melotron.
Speaker 1: I've always loved melotron flute sounds thanks to the Beatles.
Speaker 1: You know that wonderful Strawberry Fields sound at the beginning
Speaker 1: of that. I've always loved that sound. So I said, hey, Alton,
Speaker 1: you know what, we need a solo on this. Why
Speaker 1: don't you play a solo on melotron with that wonderful
Speaker 1: fluty sound. He did the solo and and the beginning
Speaker 1: of the track. He just threw in a little thing
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the track, and the first time
Speaker 1: we ran it through, he played it and that was it.
Speaker 1: It was done, and it was like, okay, well that
Speaker 1: was easy. So then I said, well, you know, the
Speaker 1: solo sounds so cool. It's got a great little melody
Speaker 1: that you composed on the spot. And I said, why
Speaker 1: don't we have a little bit of banjo playing mandolin
Speaker 1: style but way back in echo And Gus said, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a good idea. Let's do it. So we
Speaker 1: fucked with the marks and did our usual playing around
Speaker 1: and we have this wonderful banjo that people often wonder,
Speaker 1: what is that during the soul of Daniel? But yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't even much. And one of the cool things
Speaker 1: about it was to get the vocal that Gus thought
Speaker 1: should be on that record. He walked out up one morning,
Speaker 1: because usually what we do is we do all the
Speaker 1: vocals at the end. We changed that, you know, as
Speaker 1: we as we progressed, and it probably was with Daniel.
Speaker 1: So Gus woke Elton up at seven thirty one morning
Speaker 1: and said, Elton, I want you to come and do
Speaker 1: that vocal and he was like, what, I've come fast asleep.
Speaker 1: He said, well, I just wanted you to do the
Speaker 1: vocal when you've kind of got a sleepy voice. He
Speaker 1: said that would be fucking easy because I'm half asleep.
Speaker 1: So Elton arrives the studio and Gus says, okay, let's
Speaker 1: just do a vocal on it. So's he's wrapped up
Speaker 1: in his fur coat and his shades, you know, and
Speaker 1: his headphones obviously, and to run the track and it
Speaker 1: sounds exactly like it should do. He's got that slightly
Speaker 1: husky sound about it, and that was the vocal we use. Okay,
Speaker 1: My two favorite tracks on that album are Teacher I
Speaker 1: Need You and Elderberry Wine. Any stories you can tell
Speaker 1: me about those two, Yeah, because actually another wonderful overdubbed
Speaker 1: story on Teacher I Need You, which I love too,
Speaker 1: by the way, and again it just showed the way
Speaker 1: that we were a band. I mean, it's just a
Speaker 1: band playing on that track and all the vocal the
Speaker 1: background vocals, which were a lot of fun to do.
Speaker 1: But on one of the overdubs there's that there's that
Speaker 1: wonderful teacher A teacher, Oh yeah, teacher. Well guests who
Speaker 1: played the buddom That was Elton Wow, because he had
Speaker 1: the idea for doing that overdub and said, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you fucking play it? You know what it is,
Speaker 1: do you just do it? He said, I'm not a drummer.
Speaker 1: I said, it doesn't matter. Anybody could do that. So
Speaker 1: we take one of Nigel's Tom's out to the studio
Speaker 1: and Elton did it. And I tell you something, Bob,
Speaker 1: I bet Alton doesn't even remember that. He'll probably hear
Speaker 1: this and he'll go, did I Because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that I do remember details, and that was
Speaker 1: one that I thought was so cool that he did
Speaker 1: that because it was such a fun song and very
Speaker 1: much inspired the whole record in fact, was very much
Speaker 1: inspired by Mark Boland because we were kind of in
Speaker 1: glam rock phase that then. You know, we were wearing
Speaker 1: Granny Takes the Trip clothes and you know, lyrics suits
Speaker 1: and platform shoes, the whole thing. We were all the
Speaker 1: way into that whole thing, very much in competition with
Speaker 1: the Bowie thing. Dave Barry was another friend, but also
Speaker 1: it was all new competition. All these records were coming
Speaker 1: out at the same time. You know, you'd get a
Speaker 1: t Rex song and one of ours and one of
Speaker 1: David's and it was just a wonderful time. And the
Speaker 1: other one you mentioned. The other song you mentioned was
Speaker 1: Elderberry Wine, which I love because it's so loose, and
Speaker 1: again very early take of the track, we decided it
Speaker 1: sun It's so cool for two reasons. I really loved
Speaker 1: that track. Two main reasons. One that we discovered what
Speaker 1: could happen with double track and the piano and then
Speaker 1: using the very speed turn it down so you got
Speaker 1: that wonderful you know, pub effect, pub pub piano effect,
Speaker 1: you know, which we went on obviously to use that
Speaker 1: on many other songs in the future. But it was
Speaker 1: Ken Scott who showed us that trick, and it did
Speaker 1: require to play the song. It wasn't like he just
Speaker 1: could take that track and somehow magically have it album.
Speaker 1: Had to play the part again. And so when we
Speaker 1: heard the sound, we all went, oh my god, because
Speaker 1: nobody'd ever heard that sound before on anything. It was
Speaker 1: the first time I'd ever been used. Like shit, we
Speaker 1: are actually innovators. Now we're doing a beatleshit. Here, you know.
Speaker 1: And the other thing was when the guitar parts came
Speaker 1: around for that song, because suddenly, when I double tracked
Speaker 1: the rhythm part and the little lines in there, they're
Speaker 1: all on one track, the same kind of shit started happening.
Speaker 1: We're going like, oh, that sounds a bit like George
Speaker 1: and I love what we're doing here. And and then
Speaker 1: it repeated itself on Midnight Creeper and again on the
Speaker 1: arpeggio things on Have Mercy on the Criminal. We started
Speaker 1: to use these double trackings in a way that I
Speaker 1: think the Beatles were using them kind of, and you'd
Speaker 1: get a slight out of tuneness that would that would
Speaker 1: just bring that sound that would made people just go, oh, fuck,
Speaker 1: I love this, And we did. We loved every thing
Speaker 1: we were doing. We're so excited about the process of
Speaker 1: the recording that we were just lost in that world.
Speaker 1: That was the joy of it. Since we're this deep
Speaker 1: into the album Crocodile Rock, what fun that was to do, Bob,
Speaker 1: I mean, what great fun and what a great little track.
Speaker 1: And you know, ballocks to all the people who said, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just doing this this thing, and you know, that's
Speaker 1: a really cool little track. If people think the time
Speaker 1: to listen to it. It's a brilliant track, great work
Speaker 1: by Gus because the idea was we wanted to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of a rock and roll tribute but
Speaker 1: also a bit of a send up, hence my kind
Speaker 1: of ventures shadows type and Dwayne Eddie takes on that.
Speaker 1: There's about eight tracks of guitar and now all doing
Speaker 1: different things because we wanted that to give, you know,
Speaker 1: to show our love of rock and roll. And obviously
Speaker 1: the la la la la la la rich Alton did
Speaker 1: and you know what a cool little song. And I
Speaker 1: think who was it tried to sue us. I think
Speaker 1: it was Pat Boone or somebody tried to sue us
Speaker 1: on the track said it was Speedy Gonzalez or something.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, please get a life, you know, but um,
Speaker 1: great fun. We weren't doing anything. At least people were
Speaker 1: talking about us, and I think that's something we had
Speaker 1: to realize. You know what, we're going to get this.
Speaker 1: This is going to happen now because people are buying
Speaker 1: our records and a lot of people are are listening.
Speaker 1: So that's a good thing. Okay, Next comes Goodbye Yellow
Speaker 1: Brick Road. When does it become a double album, Okay,
Speaker 1: I believe. Actually it was quite early on. I want
Speaker 1: to say the idea was already in the back of
Speaker 1: their minds because of the success of Punky Chateau and
Speaker 1: Don't Shoot Me Massive, and then again of course, now
Speaker 1: the Black Catalog is started to sell. The live album
Speaker 1: is suddenly a hit, so is the Elton John album,
Speaker 1: and it's all starting to sell. So they're obviously thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, we've done this. We've done a live album,
Speaker 1: we've done this, we've done orchestra done it. We'll have
Speaker 1: to do a double album. So I know there was
Speaker 1: talk of doing it, and I even remember a working
Speaker 1: title of silent film talking Pictures. Wow, that was the
Speaker 1: working idea for the thing. Anyway, we're in the Chateau
Speaker 1: and we have, as usual, we have so many songs
Speaker 1: as a lot of songs. By the way, Elton usually
Speaker 1: refers to yellow Rick Rhode is what's Davy going to
Speaker 1: play on this one? Because it's just it's just so
Speaker 1: guitar heavy, which I love because we we we employed
Speaker 1: so many different sounds, ideas and whatever, and it was
Speaker 1: just so much fun for me and for everybody because
Speaker 1: we were all getting off on it, but there was many,
Speaker 1: many songs and the idea of doing an opening track
Speaker 1: that was going to be something majestic and had an
Speaker 1: instrumental We knew that's what we wanted to do. So
Speaker 1: Elton wrote the first part the piece, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean I don't mean the synthesize of piece. That was
Speaker 1: all done after by David Henschel when we decided we
Speaker 1: need something at the very beginning before the band comes
Speaker 1: in with the slow movement, and so Elton and I
Speaker 1: Indian agel we knew what it was. We'd already Elton
Speaker 1: had already written love Lives fitting I had worked out
Speaker 1: my guitar parts what I thought they should be on
Speaker 1: that song. And we did the whole thing from the
Speaker 1: beginning of the quiet part of Funeral for a Friend
Speaker 1: all the way to the end the basic track, so
Speaker 1: there wasn't any gaps in it. And that's a long time.
Speaker 1: That's got to be I don't know, nine minutes, something
Speaker 1: like that, eight or nine minutes. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: long it is. But it was so exciting because you know,
Speaker 1: we've always liked the red light in the studio. When
Speaker 1: the red light goes on that's like religion. You're in
Speaker 1: the studio, shut the fuck up. But of course we're
Speaker 1: just about to start funeral for a friend, the most quiet, delicate, haunting,
Speaker 1: beautiful thing, and Ellen's by the plan of and I
Speaker 1: can hear Alton going one, two, three and instead of four,
Speaker 1: and we just all completely fall about and there was
Speaker 1: this wonderful far and obviously the tension was so but
Speaker 1: as soon as he let that go and it's we
Speaker 1: have a tape of it somewhere, it broke the tension
Speaker 1: and we all kind of relaxed a bit and we
Speaker 1: stopped laughing, and then we started again and did the
Speaker 1: whole thing through. And then as is my one, I
Speaker 1: started the over dubbing guitars and went pretty crazy on
Speaker 1: on that whole thing too. And you know, it was
Speaker 1: great because you have a song that lyrically, musically is
Speaker 1: already done. You know what's coming up. So we were
Speaker 1: already having ideas about where we would do background vocals,
Speaker 1: where we would do this, what we might add at
Speaker 1: specific points and the song, and nobody really was was
Speaker 1: telling us do this or do that, because it was
Speaker 1: only gossip was obviously there and not being a musician
Speaker 1: that wonderful ideas person and greater interpreting your ideas. But
Speaker 1: nobody was telling us anything. So it was us doing
Speaker 1: exactly what we thought would be right when when we
Speaker 1: were doing it, okay, you know this was about it. Really.
Speaker 1: A couple of years later it became standard de camp
Speaker 1: vocals and a punch in. Well, you guys conscious of that,
Speaker 1: or you say leave the mistakes in or what was
Speaker 1: the philosophy? Um there was in the days that we started.
Speaker 1: It was more a question of punch ins. Because Alton's
Speaker 1: vocals were always so good. There was never a question
Speaker 1: of having to do well. You know, we didn't think
Speaker 1: about it because it wasn't the way that we worked.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, it happened a little bit later on.
Speaker 1: I don't say Elton's vocals was so great. I remember
Speaker 1: him saying to me one time round about the Yellow
Speaker 1: Brick Road period. Oh my god, he said, I hate
Speaker 1: my vocals on on mad Man across the Water. They
Speaker 1: drive me fucking crazy. And I'm going what I said,
Speaker 1: They're so amazing because they're so young, they're so you
Speaker 1: they're just unbelievable. They're vulnerable, but they have that sound.
Speaker 1: That's why people like you man, So so we carry
Speaker 1: on with all that, and really the comping thing didn't
Speaker 1: really start to happen until the early eighties when we
Speaker 1: did the Chris Thomas records, because he had already started
Speaker 1: working that way with Chrissy Hyend and Pete Townsend on
Speaker 1: his solo album and stuff like that. So Chris was
Speaker 1: versed in that and Alton wasn't. He thought that was
Speaker 1: a great idea. Why not? And he still did a
Speaker 1: couple of vocals where most of it he had and
Speaker 1: they just do a quick comp to get certain things
Speaker 1: here and there. But um, I've most of the things
Speaker 1: that I've been experienced when I've experienced Alton doing a
Speaker 1: vocal bar one when need to don the Sun go
Speaker 1: down to me? That was an interesting one. Well that
Speaker 1: was nineteen seventy three. But he threw the wobbler of
Speaker 1: all time during that vocal m He literally was so
Speaker 1: frustrated and kept thinking that it sounded like shit that
Speaker 1: he it was like, fuck, bas I don't want to
Speaker 1: do this anymore. Said it to Anger Hunk, and if
Speaker 1: j doesn't like it, said it to Lulu and we
Speaker 1: were cracking up, obviously because it was funny what he
Speaker 1: was saying, I mean, he's very funny guys, you know,
Speaker 1: And he wasn't laughing. He was deadly serious. He said,
Speaker 1: I hate this. I don't want if this vocal goes
Speaker 1: on the album, I'm gonna fire everybody. I mean. It
Speaker 1: was one of they say, you know. And of course
Speaker 1: when he heard it the next day, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty good. And you know, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, doing vocals with Elton or a pleasure because
Speaker 1: he is so good, I mean live, I never hear
Speaker 1: him sing outitude an ever period. Okay, let's stay with
Speaker 1: the album. You mentioned earlier All the Young Girls Love Alice.
Speaker 1: That happens to be my favorite song on the album,
Speaker 1: which people tend out to talk about but you were
Speaker 1: doing for a while, but fare Well tour, tell me
Speaker 1: about that track. Well, that was just a riot to do.
Speaker 1: Again in our in our beatlesque way of working that
Speaker 1: we developed, we were just into furthering all these different
Speaker 1: sounds and having fun doing what we wanted to do
Speaker 1: and making up different sounds. When Elton had written Alice,
Speaker 1: we loved the song straight away and I had this
Speaker 1: idea around the riff that actually the riff was his
Speaker 1: piano riff. I didn't invent the riff, the actual damped
Speaker 1: vamp little dirt. It's actually a piano lick, God bless him.
Speaker 1: And I learned to on guitar and double it and
Speaker 1: it was sounding great. And then I thought, oh, what
Speaker 1: about if I used my Uni vibe on this, which
Speaker 1: is a really cool pedal in those days where if
Speaker 1: you floored the pedal it had this wonderful super wobble
Speaker 1: effect like a fast Leslie cabinet or something wonderful hairy sound.
Speaker 1: And I just added a bunch of crunch to it
Speaker 1: through my own amplifier and used my volume pedal then
Speaker 1: to bring the whole thing in out of nowhere, so
Speaker 1: you don't hear anything until you hear this good invitation. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been doing it for fifty years. But it was
Speaker 1: such a blast to do because as soon as people
Speaker 1: heard that, it was like, oh fuck, we love this.
Speaker 1: And of course I double tracked it just to be
Speaker 1: a show off. And yeah, it was just a riot, Bob,
Speaker 1: because to have that much fun, it's almost not fair.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't be allowed. You know. We were having so
Speaker 1: much fun, you know, and it was serious work. We
Speaker 1: knew that and we knew it had to be great
Speaker 1: whatever it is what we do. But we were going
Speaker 1: through this phase of it seemed like almost everything he
Speaker 1: wrote and that we recorded together and the way that
Speaker 1: we orchestrated things, we had this magic thing that was
Speaker 1: going on that people loved. And I've heard so many
Speaker 1: people talk about all the young Girls Love Alice and
Speaker 1: like you, many people think that that is just such
Speaker 1: a classic album, which whit is. But getting back to
Speaker 1: what you said earlier, because of the amount of good
Speaker 1: songs that were coming up, there were no songs that
Speaker 1: we were recording that were sounding like B sides. For example,
Speaker 1: usually when you're recording something, you have a few extra
Speaker 1: tracks and Okay, that'll be a B side or whatever.
Speaker 1: Nothing sounded like a B side on good By Yellowick Road.
Speaker 1: So suddenly we had like fifteen sixteen tracks and we're going, well, Gus,
Speaker 1: we're going it's got to be a double album then,
Speaker 1: because now the first track on the album is going
Speaker 1: to be half of the first side, so it's going
Speaker 1: to have to be a double album. So that's when
Speaker 1: it all became that's the target, and that's when the
Speaker 1: running order became important. And Gus is actually a wizard
Speaker 1: at that. He's great at doing sequencing a record, and
Speaker 1: we knew what the beginning was going to be, but
Speaker 1: we let him go with the rest of the sequence
Speaker 1: sing pretty much and what about Saturday Nights all right? Well,
Speaker 1: we knew that was going to probably, you know, annihilate
Speaker 1: some people because of its aggression and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And wow, what fun that was for me to do
Speaker 1: because on the basic track of that one, again it
Speaker 1: was we had tried it to record that previously. The
Speaker 1: song had been around for quite a while. He wrote
Speaker 1: it back in when we tried to do an album
Speaker 1: in Jamaica, and for one reason or another it didn't
Speaker 1: pay off. I mean, the main reason was the studio
Speaker 1: was just not possible. It just didn't have the ship
Speaker 1: we needed to do a record down there. It was
Speaker 1: just what it was. So we went back to the chateau.
Speaker 1: So we knew the song in our head and I
Speaker 1: already had an idea of about some intro parts and
Speaker 1: how I would do, how would approach it. And Alton
Speaker 1: was really Adam meant that there would be no piano
Speaker 1: on it. He just loved what I was doing so much.
Speaker 1: He said, I just want you to keep going. I
Speaker 1: had another guitar at, another one out, another one. So
Speaker 1: being a guitar player, as you probably saw, apart from
Speaker 1: the bassic guitar, all the way through, suddenly there was like,
Speaker 1: I think eight guitars on the intro, but by the
Speaker 1: time we got to the solo section, there's like ten guitars,
Speaker 1: and on the second half of the guitar solo there's
Speaker 1: twelve guitars totally rocking out, all maxed out, you know.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the biggest sounds I got guitar
Speaker 1: wise came from a little Fender Champ amplifier that many
Speaker 1: people use as a practice amp. Well. I found that
Speaker 1: by turning everything up to hell obviously and turning your
Speaker 1: guitar up to hell, and then you got the sound
Speaker 1: from Monster sound. I found out later that that's the
Speaker 1: sound that John used John Lennon used on Revolution. I
Speaker 1: found out when we were chatting one day about guitars,
Speaker 1: and I was like, really, is it does I can
Speaker 1: get it now because it's such an in your face
Speaker 1: sound and it's so distorted it makes sense, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I had the best time with doing it,
Speaker 1: and after i'd kind of done with all my guitar parts,
Speaker 1: and then the slight part at the end of the solo.
Speaker 1: I said, you gotta play piano on this. You got
Speaker 1: you gotta do. Jerey Lewis, you gotta do Little Richard,
Speaker 1: you know, do you somewhere on the track. So when
Speaker 1: the pack piano first comes in at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the chorus, it's not in for the first two verses. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the first part of the song. It comes in that lisando.
Speaker 1: As it comes in, it's like, all right, it's a
Speaker 1: Nott John song. And then it really makes sense. But
Speaker 1: it was such fun to record. And he always talks
Speaker 1: about him dancing around the studio when we were cutting
Speaker 1: the track, and it's true he did. He had a long,
Speaker 1: long micro phone chord because nothing was wireless in those days,
Speaker 1: and he was right, you know, jumping over instruments and
Speaker 1: amplifiers and cabinets and come on, you fuckers. He was
Speaker 1: shutting recording this track. But it all worked. You know,
Speaker 1: the aggression certainly paid off on that track. It comes
Speaker 1: out you know what that is as soon as it starts,
Speaker 1: and again, you know, we played the shit out of
Speaker 1: that and thanks to Gus and the engineers and the
Speaker 1: way that we were working at that point. We were
Speaker 1: just doing whatever, and everything was on hell. You know,
Speaker 1: all the settings were on hell. So the next album
Speaker 1: is Cariboo. Cut it the Ranch and niter Land, Colorado
Speaker 1: with a high altitude. How did you end up cutting there?
Speaker 1: And what was it like with the altitude, etc. Bob,
Speaker 1: you know what, you asked the best questions. I knew
Speaker 1: this would be a long chat we have today. Caribou.
Speaker 1: The plan to go there was because simply we'd run
Speaker 1: out of residential places and the chateau was getting old.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, it was starting to get a bit
Speaker 1: rough around the edges. We just wanted somewhere a bit different.
Speaker 1: We tried Jamaica. It was a kind of a letdown.
Speaker 1: We'd heard about Carbo Ranch because of Joe Walsh's album Barnstorm,
Speaker 1: and I'm a huge Joe Waltz fan and a buddy
Speaker 1: of Joe, and I adore him. He's just a great,
Speaker 1: great player and a great man. And we heard that
Speaker 1: album and me and especially me and Elton were just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, listen to these silence, listen to the
Speaker 1: guitar sounds, you know. So we decided to go to
Speaker 1: Carbo because it was a great sounding studio. What came
Speaker 1: out of there sounding great. So we made the trip
Speaker 1: in January, that's our usual time to go and make
Speaker 1: a new album. That became our time, and off we
Speaker 1: went January, not knowing how fucking cold it was going
Speaker 1: to be there and snowbound. It was amazing beautiful, and
Speaker 1: we each had a log cabin to stay in, wonderful
Speaker 1: beautiful log cabins, beautifully, you know, with um brass beds
Speaker 1: and wonderful quilts and weighing nicer than the chateau. Luckily,
Speaker 1: lots of snow gear, and there was snow plows up there.
Speaker 1: In fact, the first day I arrived, I went looking
Speaker 1: and walking around the property and ran into this guy
Speaker 1: working on a snow plow, and it was Terry Cath
Speaker 1: from Chicago, and we right and we became great friends
Speaker 1: there and then, and it was just it took a
Speaker 1: couple of days to get used to the studio there
Speaker 1: because it was so different. There was no windows in it,
Speaker 1: even though and it was a very large. The thing
Speaker 1: about the chateau that was so special was that had
Speaker 1: these floors ceiling windows and because you know, obviously giant
Speaker 1: double thick windows because in the country, no, we didn't
Speaker 1: have sound to really worry about. There was no other
Speaker 1: outdoor sound. But Cariboo had no windows, so we were
Speaker 1: back to that kind of a little bit claustrophobic studio vibe.
Speaker 1: But it was a big room so that was okay.
Speaker 1: The altitude really fucked with us straight away. We all
Speaker 1: got kind of headaches and stuff and found that we
Speaker 1: had to take aspir in the morning or something like that.
Speaker 1: Nigel got hooked on oxygen. We all kind of did, actually,
Speaker 1: but Nigel still has it on stage these days. That's
Speaker 1: from Cariboo Ranch, believe it or not. And we found,
Speaker 1: to our surprise that Elton was singing about another ton
Speaker 1: and a half higher than he usually does, so that
Speaker 1: when you listen to the songs of Caribou and Captain Fantastic,
Speaker 1: which we recorded there also and the following album, he's
Speaker 1: singing so high. It was very difficult for us to
Speaker 1: reproduce that, you know, after the mid eighties, because he
Speaker 1: couldn't sing that high anymore. He was done after his
Speaker 1: throat issues. He couldn't get up there, so we had
Speaker 1: to eventually scale everything down. So going back to that,
Speaker 1: his vocals were wonderful, but incredibly high. You know, everything
Speaker 1: was pitched really high. You might notice that the next
Speaker 1: time you hear a track from that album. We loved
Speaker 1: working there because we suddenly we made our own. The
Speaker 1: only difference is we didn't have like a little breakfast
Speaker 1: practice room. Everything was in the studio, So we just
Speaker 1: have our breakfast in the lodge, all hang out there,
Speaker 1: do our thing, go for a snowmobile, have a ride
Speaker 1: and a horse, you know, do whatever you know, and
Speaker 1: then go to the studio and start writing recording. There's
Speaker 1: a track on there called on the first Caribou album
Speaker 1: called I've Seen the Saucers, which is a very very
Speaker 1: interesting song. I've always thought it was a it's a
Speaker 1: great deep cut, but the one that not a lot
Speaker 1: of another fans have really paid much attention to. I
Speaker 1: don't think, but I really think it's quirky and a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of fun. For that track, Ray Cooper
Speaker 1: had the idea of using a water gong on it. Now,
Speaker 1: Ray when he does things, he didn't never do anything
Speaker 1: by halves. So Ray's gone was I don't know, ten
Speaker 1: feet in diameter, and we had we've had that in
Speaker 1: the studio It was hard enough getting in the studio.
Speaker 1: Then we had to find a tank big enough to
Speaker 1: drop the water going into because that's the idea. You
Speaker 1: hold the gong suspended above the water and then you
Speaker 1: slowly drop it in. So it goes from this gone
Speaker 1: right the support studio. We almost drowned the studio. We
Speaker 1: almost ruined it with and mold and shit. So but
Speaker 1: the sound was great. The sound was great on that track.
Speaker 1: So the next time you hear it, listen for the
Speaker 1: water Gone okay and the Bitch's Back. Bitch's Back was special,
Speaker 1: um because we wanted to do it was obviously going
Speaker 1: to be a rock track, and Elton wrote it very
Speaker 1: quickly and he said, I want, you know, I want
Speaker 1: a really different intro, something really machine gun doing something different,
Speaker 1: you know, And I went, okay, well that, so I
Speaker 1: did the g tuning idea and came up with, um
Speaker 1: what it was, which is essentially doing a bark or
Speaker 1: they're going to did a little bit, a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit bad about and do the inversions with
Speaker 1: your first and third finger and sorry, your second and
Speaker 1: third finger for all your guitar nuts out there. And
Speaker 1: it's a great sound and the way I got that
Speaker 1: sound was by plugging directly into the console, not through
Speaker 1: an amplifier, so that sound has got a really high
Speaker 1: end kind of fipip sound to it. It's that direct
Speaker 1: sound to it. So we did two guitars like that,
Speaker 1: and then I added a couple of heavier guitars later on.
Speaker 1: We were always great for varying the textures of whatever
Speaker 1: guitars we put on. We would make sure that there
Speaker 1: was one was a bit different from the other, and
Speaker 1: then if a lead guitar track, it was obviously from
Speaker 1: the other four. So I'm the Bitch's back. Had the
Speaker 1: two direct inject guitars doing the riff, then a couple
Speaker 1: of overdriven guitars doing that, and then like a solo
Speaker 1: sign guitar doing other pickup links. But again, a really
Speaker 1: fun track to record, and we had Tar of Power
Speaker 1: come up there for a few days to do some horns,
Speaker 1: and so we had a built in sec solo with
Speaker 1: Lenny and those guys up there. So it was awesome. Okay,
Speaker 1: going to the next job, which you referenced earlier, Captain Fantastic,
Speaker 1: which is also cut in Caribou Ranch. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to dig in there, so maybe leave that for another time.
Speaker 1: But I'm only going to ask you because your memory
Speaker 1: is so damn good. My favorite track on that is
Speaker 1: tell Me when the whistle Blows. Remember anything on that? Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: What a great song and what a different song. Because
Speaker 1: it's such a unique song. We all thought right from
Speaker 1: the off, it's got to be a really different treatment,
Speaker 1: different from the way that we'd play anything else. We
Speaker 1: were going for a real, a real soul blues type
Speaker 1: of thing, and the idea was to cut it with
Speaker 1: electric piano, so none of that melodic pianos, regular acoustic
Speaker 1: piano stuff, really nice dark electric piano sound. D's bass
Speaker 1: and Nigel Strump's really cut it like that, leave it sparse,
Speaker 1: and then later I would overdub some guitar lines. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly the way we did it. The idea from
Speaker 1: my guitar sound. I kind of stole a couple of
Speaker 1: tricks from a couple of other guitar players. I stole
Speaker 1: an idea from Steven Stills about using the bass pick
Speaker 1: pick up on your guitar and taking all the travel
Speaker 1: off that pickup so that it's really round sounding and
Speaker 1: really cool. And I stole a couple of David Gilmore
Speaker 1: ideas with the way he kind of approaches notes so
Speaker 1: that you'd hear all the inflection of just one guitar,
Speaker 1: not a whole bunch of instruments, and so it was
Speaker 1: a very style. It was our most stylized track we've
Speaker 1: done up to that point, I think. And then we
Speaker 1: asked Gene Paige to do the orchestral arrangement because we
Speaker 1: loved what he was doing with that Philadelphia soul sound
Speaker 1: and his stuff was just off the charts. It was
Speaker 1: so cool and at first, in fact, when we first
Speaker 1: when we heard it, none of us liked it. We
Speaker 1: heard it, but it was so fucking weird that when
Speaker 1: we heard it as far as it was like, really,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's a bit cheese, and then there's
Speaker 1: a there's this, But then you know, the more we
Speaker 1: heard it, he was like, Okay, got it because he's
Speaker 1: a really special was a very special arranger. Okay. The
Speaker 1: album after that also cut in uh Colorado Rock of
Speaker 1: the West. He's one of my two favorite tracks on
Speaker 1: that you actually have a writing credit which has grows
Speaker 1: some funk of your own. What happens there? Well, well,
Speaker 1: that song I love on the album The way the
Speaker 1: track comes in after Island Girl, because it follows Island Girl,
Speaker 1: which is the Puppy first hit. I think off the record,
Speaker 1: the way it grows some funk comes in couldn't have
Speaker 1: been more exact the way I imagine it when we
Speaker 1: wrote it. We wrote it the night before and Elton's room.
Speaker 1: We were screwing around writing. We wrote a couple of
Speaker 1: songs in His and His Lug happen that week, three
Speaker 1: songs in fact. But Gross and Funk happened after we'd
Speaker 1: written the song which is the opening song on the album,
Speaker 1: the medley, Yell Help Um, And that was purely my
Speaker 1: idea from I was listening to a lot of Jjkle
Speaker 1: stuff back then, and I was based in my rhythm
Speaker 1: ideas for that song on that. But Gross and Funk
Speaker 1: was much more of a Okay, here's a great rock riff,
Speaker 1: but what about changing the key so that starts off
Speaker 1: with a slamming rock driff and then goes into a
Speaker 1: two part harmony guitar line. Down damn down, Dada da.
Speaker 1: So it was like, oh, yeah, this is gonna work
Speaker 1: because Caleb and I were doing two guitar parts, and
Speaker 1: then later on in the song, Ray Cooper was able
Speaker 1: to use the vibes in such a way, the Eddie
Speaker 1: Kendrick's vibe at the end of the song. You know,
Speaker 1: the musicians we add in that band allowed us to
Speaker 1: do some great things on that album. Apart from Caleb
Speaker 1: and Me doing the guitars, which you were really astounding
Speaker 1: on a lot of that record. But James as keyboard,
Speaker 1: James Newton Harder's keyboard on the album is fucking unbelievable.
Speaker 1: James and I have always really worked well together and
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun together. Yeah, so it's all
Speaker 1: been so much fun. I think you grow some funk.
Speaker 1: I believe Kicky and I did some background vocals on
Speaker 1: that song as well. Okay, the next album is Blue
Speaker 1: Moves in the fall of seventy six. This is simultaneous
Speaker 1: with Elton coming out as gay, which is not a
Speaker 1: big deal today. I think it's been over emphasized. I
Speaker 1: don't think it really was as big a deal as
Speaker 1: they said back then. But the album was not as successful.
Speaker 1: Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Ended up being
Speaker 1: a huge hit. Did you get a bittersweet vibe from
Speaker 1: the reception and what was going on there? Yeah, to me,
Speaker 1: even when we were recording the album. There's some great
Speaker 1: stuff on it, no doubt, absolutely no doubt. But as
Speaker 1: it went on to me, it was a little it
Speaker 1: was almost like diluted. It was almost like fresh orangues.
Speaker 1: It's been diluted. Suddenly it became not what I remembered
Speaker 1: it being. And it wasn't because suddenly there was seven
Speaker 1: people in the studio instead of four, you know, or
Speaker 1: five when Ray would be a part of the band
Speaker 1: as well. It was more than that. It was like,
Speaker 1: hold on, how many people were in that band? Shit
Speaker 1: to Elton, myself, Ray Rogier, Pope, Caleb Quay, Kenny Passarelli,
Speaker 1: James S. Newton heard Roger Pope? Is that right? Roo?
Speaker 1: So yeah, seven people a lot of people. It's a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot more ideas. And I think Alton was being
Speaker 1: extremely generous in suggesting that we write some songs it.
Speaker 1: It was so very very kind of him in that way.
Speaker 1: It kind of in a booknd to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier about about if people think they should
Speaker 1: get a piece of a certain song on this record.
Speaker 1: I feel that Alton was more bringing us in that
Speaker 1: particular band into songwriting, which was a very generous thing
Speaker 1: to do for any artist or any musician, I feel,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it hurts the record in that
Speaker 1: the way the record turned out, because it turned out
Speaker 1: to be a much more to me, a much more
Speaker 1: sober collection of songs than anything we'd come up with before.
Speaker 1: Things that didn't quite make sense to me. To me,
Speaker 1: it wasn't cohesive as cohesive any of the albums that
Speaker 1: we've done previously. That's again chefs my personal opinion. I
Speaker 1: have no idea how the rest of the guys feel
Speaker 1: about it. And I think that the album cover and
Speaker 1: the packaging kind of the album covered that is the
Speaker 1: insert and the picture was kind of happy, and that
Speaker 1: was fine, But the album itself all being blue with
Speaker 1: that Patrick Proctor painting, it was fine, and I guess
Speaker 1: it's what they wanted to do at the time, and
Speaker 1: it was very artsy, but maybe for me I thought
Speaker 1: it was a little too artsy. Okay, do you realize
Speaker 1: the end is coming? After that album? Elton breaks up
Speaker 1: the band? You're on your own? Did you see that coming?
Speaker 1: And what did you feel when that happened. I did
Speaker 1: see it coming. I didn't know what was coming after it.
Speaker 1: I did see an end to the thing, and we'd
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about stuff and because of his
Speaker 1: health mainly and the amount of work we were having
Speaker 1: to do to tour with all the product that was
Speaker 1: out there and the demand to see Elton and the band,
Speaker 1: and it was phenomenal. It was a wonderful time. But
Speaker 1: he was very, very straight up about it. He sat
Speaker 1: the whole band down with Sean Reid, all of us together,
Speaker 1: and he said, guys, I can't do this anymore. I'm done.
Speaker 1: I have to dissolve the band because I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do next. I just need time
Speaker 1: for myself to recover from what we've been doing for
Speaker 1: the last seven years or whatever I've been doing. I
Speaker 1: need a break. I need to be me and find
Speaker 1: myself and have rest, etcetera, etcetera. And he gave everybody
Speaker 1: a really nice handoff to say, you know, you guys
Speaker 1: have been amazing, and all the rest of it now
Speaker 1: all down the line. For myself, the situation has always
Speaker 1: been a little bit different. Elton's always been in touch
Speaker 1: with me. I think the longest period when he didn't
Speaker 1: call me was after what he decided to do another
Speaker 1: band thing and I was already working with Alice Cooper
Speaker 1: and then that segued into some work with Meat Love.
Speaker 1: So I was already a very busy session guy, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to work with with other I think he
Speaker 1: wanted to work with other people. He had asked me
Speaker 1: a couple of times about doing a couple of projects,
Speaker 1: and I did a I think I played on one
Speaker 1: of his solo records, A single Man. I played on
Speaker 1: one track of that. So I've always been in touch
Speaker 1: with him more than anybody else music wise, hence the
Speaker 1: musical director kind of tag. But I did get up
Speaker 1: in jam with a band that he had right before
Speaker 1: we got back together in nineteen end of eighty one
Speaker 1: beginning of eighty two. He had either a tour I
Speaker 1: think that encompassed that Central Park gig that he did
Speaker 1: where he wore the Many Mouse sorry not many Mouse,
Speaker 1: Daisy Duck costume, Donald Duck costume. Right, he had Central
Speaker 1: Park and back then he had d and Nigel back
Speaker 1: in the band, but he had two other guitar players
Speaker 1: he had Um I kind of Tim Rennick, I think,
Speaker 1: and Richie Zero. I want to say that's my guests
Speaker 1: UM and I think, I don't think Ray was even
Speaker 1: in that that band and some background singers, three background
Speaker 1: singers who I can't remember who they were, so it
Speaker 1: was different, but it wasn't people who were owning the music.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel I want to see it at the
Speaker 1: Forum when when the show came through, and you know,
Speaker 1: Elton said, well, why don't you get up on a song?
Speaker 1: And I got up on bite your lip, get up
Speaker 1: on dance and blew some some rock and slight guitar
Speaker 1: and it was great good to see him see them
Speaker 1: and do that again. But I could tell right then
Speaker 1: he wasn't happy with what was going on then, and
Speaker 1: if he was going to tour again, I could tell then.
Speaker 1: It was almost like it's going to happen very soon.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but I was just getting done with the
Speaker 1: meat loaf thing. He hopped to call me and said,
Speaker 1: I really think we should put the band back together.
Speaker 1: It's so funny, Bob, because here in that phrase. I've
Speaker 1: heard it done jokingly in so many sitcoms and different
Speaker 1: things and used in different contexts. But when he said
Speaker 1: I really think we should get the band back together,
Speaker 1: I said, you're absolutely fucking right, we should. You know,
Speaker 1: it was just okay, let's do it. And again we
Speaker 1: went into Mark two and it went the same way. Okay,
Speaker 1: when he does break up the brand, how much does
Speaker 1: that fuck you up? How do you lift yourself off
Speaker 1: the floor? Are you okay financially? What happens in that
Speaker 1: interim before you start to work with Alice Cooper, etc. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I started to do sessions with other people.
Speaker 1: I started to work with other producers like Richard Perry,
Speaker 1: robert A Pere, Bill Schnay because they again knew what
Speaker 1: I did, and they would invite me to play on
Speaker 1: their track and also artist occasional I would just say,
Speaker 1: would you come and play on my record? I'd like
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper and people like that. So I built up
Speaker 1: some I was never really that short of work immediately
Speaker 1: following Elton, and my intention at that point was, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we're going into nineteen seventy seven. I just kind
Speaker 1: of take some time for myself. So I went to
Speaker 1: Tahiti for a month and almost didn't come home. I
Speaker 1: fell in love with Bora Bora, absolutely loved it. Got
Speaker 1: completely away from music and anything to do with touring
Speaker 1: or anything, and really cleansed myself, you know, and and
Speaker 1: we finally came back and slowly got back into life
Speaker 1: in California, because I just started living in California. I'd
Speaker 1: rented a place in Hollywood. And to be totally honest, Bob,
Speaker 1: there was also an awful lot of the rock star
Speaker 1: thing coming creeping into my my life. Then when I
Speaker 1: say the rock star thing, what I mean is dangerous
Speaker 1: amounts of alcohol and drugs and women started to creep
Speaker 1: into the picture. And it began to get very very
Speaker 1: dodgy and scary. Quite frankly, Um, I managed to come
Speaker 1: through the other end, but not through, you know, not
Speaker 1: from a lot of bumps and bruises and and and
Speaker 1: you know, potholes, false starts and what have you. You know,
Speaker 1: as as we all do, as life, as life takes us,
Speaker 1: it can't all be up, you know, it certainly can't
Speaker 1: all be up. And I had a great time. I
Speaker 1: got to tell you, I went on for like a
Speaker 1: couple of years of really having a good time. I
Speaker 1: put it this way, I thought it was having a
Speaker 1: good time. Um. Although the parties were quite legendary amongst
Speaker 1: the people who who came and enjoyed them for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, but like any other person in that situation,
Speaker 1: when you're hosting that kind of event on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: you suddenly wake up and go, well, either you don't
Speaker 1: wake up, or you wake up and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: everybody's around my house? I think what happened? What really
Speaker 1: shook me up? One night, it was about three four
Speaker 1: in the morning when a dear friend of mine happened
Speaker 1: to be Lowell. George May rest in peace. So I'd
Speaker 1: dore little Feet, that one of my favorite things of
Speaker 1: all time. And Richie and Lowell and those guys would
Speaker 1: hang out at the house as well. So they were
Speaker 1: into notorious, notoriously into various forms of you know, stuff,
Speaker 1: and so they'd be they'd be fixtures in the house.
Speaker 1: But I was fast asleep on it, and it was
Speaker 1: about four in the morning, and it was Lowell's wife
Speaker 1: banging on the door, wanting to come in and party,
Speaker 1: you know, and those kind of things. That kind of
Speaker 1: thing already happening, and people like Oliver Read the actor
Speaker 1: showing up. I don't know all of her fucking read
Speaker 1: and he shows up in my house, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was just bizarre. And I suddenly thought, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to get again, a little bit of respectability,
Speaker 1: get that into my life. And I figured the best
Speaker 1: way to do that was to get married and have
Speaker 1: some kids. And that's what happened with my second marriage
Speaker 1: and had two wonderful children. Rosa my wife at that
Speaker 1: time I met. She was a dancer with Alice Cooper's band.
Speaker 1: When I went to work with Alice, so you know,
Speaker 1: mister rockstar picks up the dancer. And the tour was
Speaker 1: Rose my wife at that time, and Cheryl Cooper, Alice's wife,
Speaker 1: with the two female dancers, and there were two gay guys,
Speaker 1: and you know, that period was it was kind of
Speaker 1: interesting because working with Id segued into working with Alice,
Speaker 1: and it was so much fun. It was just hilarious.
Speaker 1: And Alice is still a dear friend to this day
Speaker 1: and his wife, Cheryl. That marriage at that time wasn't
Speaker 1: to be. It really was what I had mentioned to you.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be like a way of me gaining
Speaker 1: some kinds of respectability, responsibility also, but it didn't pan out.
Speaker 1: I just wasn't willing to stop my ways, my rock
Speaker 1: star ways, and I wasn't certainly wasn't ready the quick
Speaker 1: touring when Elton when the band came back together, So
Speaker 1: really that second marriage was doomed. And what about getting clean,
Speaker 1: because Elton famously got clean. Yeah, I thought it was
Speaker 1: amazing when I was so proud of him when he
Speaker 1: got clean. Of course, like many, like many alcoholics and
Speaker 1: drug addicts, you know, it wasn't for me that time.
Speaker 1: When I saw him do it, I thought, it's so
Speaker 1: great he's doing it, and I was so happy for him.
Speaker 1: I was having a wonderful period of time because I
Speaker 1: just met my wife, my present wife, Kay back then
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, and he got sober in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety so it was the perfect timing for me to
Speaker 1: have this year getting to know my new wife. Oh,
Speaker 1: we weren't married at that point. We were together for
Speaker 1: the first two years, had a baby, and then we
Speaker 1: married in ninety two. But it was a wonderful time
Speaker 1: to have a vacation, really start enjoying family. This this
Speaker 1: woman I was in love with, and suddenly I thought,
Speaker 1: that's it. I found the right combination for me and
Speaker 1: you know, for her, I think. And we had a
Speaker 1: beautiful baby and we decided to travel everywhere together and
Speaker 1: that's what we did. There was still a lot of
Speaker 1: party in going on, mainly drinking because the Danes are
Speaker 1: probably as big drinkers as the Scots, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: ready to stop drinking, definitely not. And ten years of that,
Speaker 1: my wife and I was still very much in love.
Speaker 1: But when we lost our son in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: that was such a jolt. Obviously it sounds like a
Speaker 1: very weak way of putting it, but it shook me
Speaker 1: to the core, obviously. But I didn't stop drinking for
Speaker 1: another seven years after that because I was I think
Speaker 1: I was on a course to killing myself. Nothing mattered.
Speaker 1: I didn't matter if I was around or not, and
Speaker 1: I was still when I got back to working. The
Speaker 1: band were always very you know, Elton was great. He
Speaker 1: was very supportive all the way through it. I mean
Speaker 1: he supported me in more ways than I can tell you,
Speaker 1: and the band were kind to me. It was difficult
Speaker 1: because you know, I went back. It was right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Billy Joe whole thing that I
Speaker 1: lost my son and saw that going back after four
Speaker 1: or five months of being away in dealing with that
Speaker 1: grief was really difficult. It was really hard, and you know,
Speaker 1: I found myself getting into antidepressions and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: which didn't help with the drinking. So I wasn't stopping
Speaker 1: any of it until the fall of two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: And with Elton, he invited me back to his place
Speaker 1: where we're doing in the middle of a tour, and
Speaker 1: occasionally over the years he'd invite me back for a
Speaker 1: few days and we'd hang out and you know, listen
Speaker 1: to music and do you know whatever, have dinners and
Speaker 1: just have fun, and to inviting me back after while
Speaker 1: we're on tour in two thousand and nine and the fall,
Speaker 1: and he sat me down at breakfast one day. He
Speaker 1: just comes down for breakfast and we're having like bald
Speaker 1: eggs and toast and marmalade and cups teen we're chatting
Speaker 1: away and he just turned to him and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you should do something about your
Speaker 1: drinking and your drugs and stuff. And my first I said, really,
Speaker 1: I said, the drummer is much worse than me. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the fucking drummer. I'm talking about you.
Speaker 1: So right there was a wonderful nudge from one of
Speaker 1: my dearest friends of all time telling me you better
Speaker 1: sort this out. It's time. So he got me on
Speaker 1: that path and from there I met several people who
Speaker 1: have been so helpful. And the people I've met in
Speaker 1: that program have just been so unbelievable. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: have not a drinks since two thousand November two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine or thirteen years, okay, over thirteen years. So
Speaker 1: you went to AA or you went to rehab, or
Speaker 1: you did it yourself. I've done both, Bob, for good reasons.
Speaker 1: I did it myself first, and I was wonderful and
Speaker 1: got it and got the whole thing and adored it.
Speaker 1: And then some years later the beginning of this Farewell
Speaker 1: tour actually and I was having an issue with pain
Speaker 1: medication for neck and shoulder injuries. I've still go I'm
Speaker 1: still going through thanks a lot of guitars. And I
Speaker 1: decided to go to Eric Clapton's place, Crossroads, which I
Speaker 1: had heard about from some friends. And I have a
Speaker 1: dear friend in music Cares Harold On, who helped me
Speaker 1: hook me up with that. And I decided at the
Speaker 1: end of a leg of the tour, and I sat
Speaker 1: down with Alton and said, look, in two weeks time,
Speaker 1: I want to go and sort this out. And he
Speaker 1: said I think that's awesome you're doing that so because
Speaker 1: I you know, I was worried about the pain medication
Speaker 1: and it never affected my drinking or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but I was worried about other ways of not being sober.
Speaker 1: And I went to Crossroads for a month, had the
Speaker 1: best time I had, you know, wonderful counselors and therapists,
Speaker 1: and came out of there free of everything. And freedom
Speaker 1: is the is the key, Bob. In fact, that was
Speaker 1: the That was the reading I've read this morning. It
Speaker 1: was all about freedom. You know, when you have a
Speaker 1: life where you feel free and you're not worried about anything,
Speaker 1: you're not guilty about anything, you don't owe anybody anything,
Speaker 1: you're not concerned about somebody saying your name, and you
Speaker 1: turn around thinking, well, what the fuck is that? You know?
Speaker 1: It's that's real freedom, and that's what I have nowadays. Okay,
Speaker 1: you cut us an individual project in the seventies, you
Speaker 1: put out an album last year. Did you ever have
Speaker 1: a desire to be your own act or these are
Speaker 1: just side things you had to get out of your system. Yes,
Speaker 1: definitely sight things, you know. The opportunity here to do
Speaker 1: my first solo record was when I just joined Elton
Speaker 1: literally six months in to play with him. He said,
Speaker 1: I love what you do. You've got to make you right.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I do. I said it's not very
Speaker 1: commercial what I write. He said, doesn't matter. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm forming a record label and I'd love you to
Speaker 1: be one of the artists on it. He said, I
Speaker 1: have Kiki d I have a band called Long Dancer.
Speaker 1: I'd like you to be one of the artists on it.
Speaker 1: I said, I love tim. I'm very touched that I
Speaker 1: get to make an album. So I got gusts to
Speaker 1: produce it. Um. I really enjoyed doing it. I used
Speaker 1: a lot of good friends like Joe and Armor Trading.
Speaker 1: I got to play piano on a couple of tracks myself,
Speaker 1: which was fun. I used Dudley Moore's drummer on a
Speaker 1: few tracks. I was able to use d and Nagel
Speaker 1: on a few tracks. I just and I used Elton
Speaker 1: on the opening track on the record, which was really
Speaker 1: great fun and but it was definitely not out of
Speaker 1: commercial venture and but one that many many people mentioned
Speaker 1: how much they enjoyed the music on it over the years,
Speaker 1: and I'm grateful for that. It never got slammed because
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people heard it, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: but the people who did hear it seemed to love it.
Speaker 1: So fast forward almost fifty years to COVID and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting it home, thinking, wow, I'm going to be home
Speaker 1: for a while. This might be a good time for
Speaker 1: me to write some music and enjoy early retirement, because
Speaker 1: who knows what's going to happen. So that's exactly what happened,
Speaker 1: except in this case what I've written something. I've got
Speaker 1: some talented kids, Bob, I've told you that I would say.
Speaker 1: There was one song I wrote it brings to mind.
Speaker 1: You know why all started again. It's to do with
Speaker 1: the Beatles, I suddenly thought, and I got the kids together,
Speaker 1: Elliott the singer, Charlie the engineer, keyboard player. I said, guys,
Speaker 1: why don't we just record a song. We're just sitting
Speaker 1: at home here, nothing's going on, you know, let's wrest
Speaker 1: record something together. And they said, okay. So I picked here,
Speaker 1: there and everywhere. Well, just a great Beatles song, as
Speaker 1: you well know. And we didn't copy the Beatles version,
Speaker 1: but we did it in a way that was I
Speaker 1: think beautiful, and we did it all up in Charlie's bedroom,
Speaker 1: literally sitting on the bed doing it, and you know
Speaker 1: it said the acoustic guitar part first, then the Mandolins,
Speaker 1: then put some bass on it, and then I had
Speaker 1: Elliott sang on it, and then Charlie put some keyboard
Speaker 1: on it. This is the way we did the whole record. Really. Obviously,
Speaker 1: as I started to write more, I started to concentrate
Speaker 1: more on the guitar aspect because I was writing a
Speaker 1: thing that was more my kind of record. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: what came out was just a really enjoyable collection of
Speaker 1: songs I feel, and Elliott sang lead on almost all
Speaker 1: of them. I sung the vocal on one and I
Speaker 1: did two instrumentals, and it was just a joyous thing
Speaker 1: to do this stuff with my children. And the studio
Speaker 1: that I'm in right now belongs to my friend Marlin Hoffman,
Speaker 1: who's sitting next door, I think, eavesdropping, And we did
Speaker 1: the whole thing in the studio which is Marlin's home studio. Okay,
Speaker 1: what is one thing people don't know about Elton or
Speaker 1: a misconception? Quite a lot of thing that Elton doesn't
Speaker 1: remember about Elton. Elton makes a really good cup of tea.
Speaker 1: Once in the studio in Book Studios, another residential place
Speaker 1: in Denmark, who were making a record called Sleeping with
Speaker 1: the Past, and I was doing a guitar overdub and
Speaker 1: he came over to me, came into the room where
Speaker 1: I was, had my amplifier and my guitar and put
Speaker 1: a cup of tea down and I said, oh, thanks, Helton,
Speaker 1: and I carried on doing the soul or whatever it
Speaker 1: was I was doing. How to drink of the tea
Speaker 1: A few seconds later, put my guitar down, put the
Speaker 1: headphones down, and went out of the studio to find him.
Speaker 1: I said, Elton, this is the best cup of tea
Speaker 1: I've ever had. I said, how would you know how
Speaker 1: to make the tea that I love? He said, Davy,
Speaker 1: I've known you for like sixteen years already, surely i'd
Speaker 1: know how to meet you a fucking cup of tea.
Speaker 1: And there's another thing about album that people don't know
Speaker 1: that I'll squeeze in. And it's another domestic fact about
Speaker 1: our hero, Sir Elton. He and I went up on
Speaker 1: we went up to see the Warner Brothers tour. It
Speaker 1: was a rock and roll tour with little feet tier
Speaker 1: of power Graham Central Station. This is in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three in the fall, and what a tour. And we
Speaker 1: were both little feet freaks. So he says, come on
Speaker 1: jumping my rolls. We jumped in the rolls with his driver.
Speaker 1: We took off up to Manchester. We checked into a
Speaker 1: sleazy little hotel, had some Indian food and went to
Speaker 1: see the concert, which blew our minds. We ended up
Speaker 1: on stage with the Dubies and Lowell and all these
Speaker 1: people and having a great time. And we ended up staying,
Speaker 1: you know, hanging out partying with the band. And we
Speaker 1: came back late lately. We probably got back to my
Speaker 1: house in London about five in the morning. I opened
Speaker 1: the door and again I've got a nanny. My wife's
Speaker 1: away at that time, the first wife. There is a
Speaker 1: disaster in the kitchen, my young son, Tam, who's only
Speaker 1: just coming up for a year and no by this
Speaker 1: time he's three. There's coffee, tea, milk, whatever you can find,
Speaker 1: PORI jokes, everything all mashed up together on the floor.
Speaker 1: And he's in the middle of the kitchen floor and
Speaker 1: I walk in and he goes Da Hi and Alton.
Speaker 1: We both look at it and he shrieks. Obviously he
Speaker 1: doesn't like mess. And I said, oh man, I can't
Speaker 1: believe this, and he said, look, you take take take
Speaker 1: time upstairs and change him, clean him up, do what
Speaker 1: you gotta do. I don't know what that is. I'll
Speaker 1: clean up down here. This is Alton Joe. And I'm
Speaker 1: taking my infant son, my three year olds down upstairs
Speaker 1: to clean him up and bathe him. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: Alton's a good guy. You know, he's downstairs cleaning my kitchen.
Speaker 1: And I go downstairs and I swear it's fucking spotless.
Speaker 1: So I don't know many other people who can claim
Speaker 1: that to have something that Elton has done for them,
Speaker 1: but a great cup of tea and a great kitchen cleaner.
Speaker 1: Plus he's my buddy. Great stories. Let's say it really
Speaker 1: is the end? Yeah, can you sit at home and
Speaker 1: be retired? I mean, is that really an option for you? No?
Speaker 1: I wanted at home and be retired. I would never
Speaker 1: do that, Bob, I'm not. I'm not that guy at all.
Speaker 1: I'll be I'll continue to make music forever. And I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of things up my sleeve. One that
Speaker 1: I've been working on for many years, just gathering slowly
Speaker 1: gathering stuff for it, which is a documentary based on
Speaker 1: the original band and the way this whole thing came together.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm talking about you know, Elton, Me, d
Speaker 1: Nigel and then later on Ray and it's really coming
Speaker 1: together and the stories are hilarious for the most part.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's some deep other kinds of stuff going on
Speaker 1: in there. You know, there's everything you could imagine. So
Speaker 1: when this thing is over, I'm getting back to it
Speaker 1: and probably take me about a year to finish, I
Speaker 1: would imagine. So either the very end of next year
Speaker 1: or the beginning of twenty twenty five, there'll be a
Speaker 1: documentary and it's a tentatively titled Harmony. Okay, one other thing.
Speaker 1: If you're not working, you playing the guitar every day,
Speaker 1: you know what. Normally I don't because I wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: pick up a guitar between tours because I just wanted
Speaker 1: to get away from music. But I found that, especially
Speaker 1: with COVID, as soon as I felt free enough and
Speaker 1: loose enough to do something for myself, the daily playing
Speaker 1: became fire against something that I haven't done for many,
Speaker 1: many years. So that's a very very acute question you
Speaker 1: asked me there, Bob, Because Yeah, I suddenly started to
Speaker 1: enjoying it again. Because there wasn't a deadline. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about doing a certain thing, working a
Speaker 1: new song, a song that we've done with Elton for
Speaker 1: the band. It was just all about what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, and that's what I'm enjoying. I'm going to
Speaker 1: enjoy getting back to well on that. No, Davy, this
Speaker 1: is a natural point of demarcation before the band gets
Speaker 1: back together, and so many things, and they're certainly you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about sleeping with the past. I got a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about that, but I think we're going
Speaker 1: to bring it to an end for today. So I
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for spending this time
Speaker 1: with my audience. I've enjoyed this so much, Bob, and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on here. And I'll call Dave Page to thank
Speaker 1: you for suggesting it. Oh listen great, I'm going to
Speaker 1: contact Page two in any event, till next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left Sex