Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Fred Malin, record producer, composer, Songwriter's
Speaker 1: got a new book, Unplugged.
Speaker 2: Fred. Why this book and why now?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Bob, I felt that the hard drive
Speaker 3: up here gets a little full, so I wanted to
Speaker 3: make sure I remembered stuff. And that was probably the
Speaker 3: first reason why I started putting stories together on paper.
Speaker 3: And I also wanted to leave something, you know, for
Speaker 3: my kids and grandkids, et cetera. That would be sort
Speaker 3: of a story of, you know, how to survive through
Speaker 3: a life of music.
Speaker 2: Okay, and how long did it take you to do it?
Speaker 3: Started, you know, sort of dictating stories into my iPhone
Speaker 3: about six years ago and then got serious about a
Speaker 3: year and a half ago.
Speaker 2: Okay. One of the most striking things in the book
Speaker 2: is you dropped out of high school at sixteen. How
Speaker 2: did you convince your parents to let you do that?
Speaker 3: Well? I had a very understanding mom and a good dad,
Speaker 3: but who didn't quite understand as well. And you know, Bob,
Speaker 3: I think we're the same age. But they saw it
Speaker 3: coming and so my mom realized that I hated school,
Speaker 3: especially by the time I was sixteen years old, and
Speaker 3: she knew that I wanted to make my life in music,
Speaker 3: and she believed in me, and she was a very
Speaker 3: very much the wind beneath my wings. And we walked
Speaker 3: to the high school together in Merrick Long Island and
Speaker 3: Calhoun High School and on my birthday and we said goodbye.
Speaker 2: What did the administration say?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think they gave a shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're in a middle class suburb. Did anybody
Speaker 2: else drop out at sixteen?
Speaker 3: No? You know, listen in nineteen sixty nine, growing up
Speaker 3: in Merrick Long Island, which is a very sort of
Speaker 3: middle class suburb of New York. You know, I do
Speaker 3: have a vivid memory, Bob of me sort of sitting
Speaker 3: outside of our house but not particularly close by, but
Speaker 3: close enough to hear a conversation that my mom was
Speaker 3: having with a neighbor. And this is right after I
Speaker 3: quit school, and the neighbor was saying to my mom,
Speaker 3: you know, Peg, I'm so sorry about Fred. And I
Speaker 3: was thinking to myself, you know, they must think I'm
Speaker 3: going to the circus or that I'm dead, But I
Speaker 3: felt more alive than ever.
Speaker 2: Okay, you drop out a high school with the vision
Speaker 2: of making any music. Now you're not busy all day,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? Well?
Speaker 3: I had a part time job at a bookstore because
Speaker 3: I'm a bookworm, and there was a lovely lady in
Speaker 3: America who had a paperback bookstore, and I would make
Speaker 3: some money there. But also, you know, i'd be knocking
Speaker 3: on doors in New York trying to get a record
Speaker 3: deal as a singer songwriter, and really wasn't quite in
Speaker 3: my opinion, I don't think I was as good as
Speaker 3: I needed to be in that particular way. And then
Speaker 3: shortly after I went and spent a really interesting year
Speaker 3: in upstate New York with my older brother Larry and
Speaker 3: a bunch of poets in a commune.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, wait, let's go back those in the book
Speaker 2: you tell some tales you're knocking on doors. You actually
Speaker 2: have an audition with John Hamm and tell us about that.
Speaker 3: I God bless you for reading even a few books.
Speaker 3: That's just wonderful. You know. I was fifteen and I
Speaker 3: had a fourteen year old dear friend, Sam Kashner, who's
Speaker 3: become a very esteemed novelist and a biographer. And Sam
Speaker 3: wrote a scrawled letter literally I saw the letter later
Speaker 3: to John Hammond, and his secretary read the scrawl somehow
Speaker 3: made it out, and John Hammond agreed to let me
Speaker 3: audition for him with my buddy who I was fifteen,
Speaker 3: he was fourteen, and we took the train to New
Speaker 3: York and went to Black Rock and I had a
Speaker 3: loaned out Martin I was using and I played a
Speaker 3: few songs for John Hammon, and it was just I was,
Speaker 3: you know, ten feet off the ground, because if anyone
Speaker 3: doesn't know, John Hammond was the esteemed day and our
Speaker 3: man who discovered Bob Dylan, Billie Holliday, and Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was pretty cool and he was very
Speaker 3: kind to me. Bob. He said, I like what you're doing.
Speaker 3: He said, I want you to come back in about
Speaker 3: two years. I want you to have some life in
Speaker 3: front of you.
Speaker 2: Okay, when you were performing for John Hammond, did you
Speaker 2: think you were worthy of a record deal?
Speaker 3: I hoped I was. I don't know if I don't
Speaker 3: know if I believe that, but I hoped I was.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know, you talk about your mother being the
Speaker 2: wind beneath your wings in that era, we are the
Speaker 2: exact same age, or close to it. And no one
Speaker 2: wanted their kid to be an artist because an artist starve.
Speaker 2: Were you convinced you were gonna make it?
Speaker 3: I had a drive, and at that point, my drive
Speaker 3: was very focused on, you know, the people, and when
Speaker 3: I was sixteen, the people I really admired, like Neil
Speaker 3: Young and James Taylor and Joni Mitchell and all these
Speaker 3: kinds of people that were really breaking the rules and
Speaker 3: becoming these autobiographical singer songwriters. And I felt like I
Speaker 3: was obviously young, but I thought that might be part
Speaker 3: of the interest that people might have in me. And I, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was, you know, I just hoped. I don't think
Speaker 3: it was you know, I don't think I was arrogant.
Speaker 3: I think I was just really hopeful.
Speaker 2: Okay, you drop out of school, you put all your
Speaker 2: eggs in one basket. It is almost impossible to make it.
Speaker 2: What was going through your head? You were definitely gonna
Speaker 2: make it because you were good enough, or you were
Speaker 2: gonna work long enough and hard enough to make it.
Speaker 2: What was happening?
Speaker 3: I think all the above. I think I was. I
Speaker 3: think I had talent, and I think I had I
Speaker 3: was co writing songs with my older brother, and I
Speaker 3: thought they were cool. But yeah, I mean, I just
Speaker 3: I had a lot of belief in myself and I
Speaker 3: had quit school because of that belief.
Speaker 2: Okay, you were knocking on doors New York City before
Speaker 2: you went up state. What kind of reaction did you get.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't get much reaction at all, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it was, first of all, I didn't know anybody.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't come from a show of business family,
Speaker 3: and I didn't have anybody at age sixteen that I
Speaker 3: could network with. So, you know, I knocked on some
Speaker 3: doors and most of them were closed. And I did
Speaker 3: get one song published by Warner Brothers Music when I
Speaker 3: was sixteen that my brother and I had written, and
Speaker 3: I remember the person who signed that song was a
Speaker 3: guy who was in the Belmonts with Dion. His name
Speaker 3: was Fred Mulano, so he was on the Buddy Holly
Speaker 3: death tour. I found that pretty fascinating. But yeah, outside
Speaker 3: of that song being published that year where I was
Speaker 3: sort of working part time at a bookstore and then
Speaker 3: the rest of the time trying to knock on doors
Speaker 3: didn't really work.
Speaker 2: So how did you decide to go move up north
Speaker 2: with your brother who was considerably older.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Larry is seven years older, and at that point,
Speaker 3: at sixteen, we had become each other's best friends, and
Speaker 3: he had become very creative. He wasn't supposed to be.
Speaker 3: He was in Georgetown University, actually in the same dorm
Speaker 3: room as Clinton, and two years later he found acting.
Speaker 3: And then Quinton went to Ithaca College, which destroyed my father.
Speaker 3: But Larry became my best pal because he wanted to
Speaker 3: be a poet and he wanted to write, and so
Speaker 3: he wrote songs together. And when he moved from a
Speaker 3: poetry commune where he was living after he finished school
Speaker 3: in Ithaca, New York, in Trumansburg, actually a little bit,
Speaker 3: I guess north of Ithaca, he then decided to go
Speaker 3: to Canada, to Toronto.
Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait, wait a little bit slower. Sure you
Speaker 2: got to visit him, Yes, you try to go back
Speaker 2: to school for a minute.
Speaker 3: Oh in Ithaca. Yeah, I went to visit Larry and
Speaker 3: we did this hang for about six months where I
Speaker 3: stayed at this commune, this poetry commune. It was lovely
Speaker 3: and at the same time, you know what, I was
Speaker 3: turning seventeen and there was some not pressure but maybe
Speaker 3: even internal pressure. But I should try to go back
Speaker 3: to high school to get my high school diploma. And
Speaker 3: so I stayed with a friend of Larry's in Ithaca
Speaker 3: and tried Ithaca High School for that, you know, for
Speaker 3: that shot. And I only lasted two days. It was
Speaker 3: so poisonous. I just said gotta go and I went back.
Speaker 3: And then shortly after Larry went to Toronto, and I
Speaker 3: followed him.
Speaker 2: Okay, were you a bad student or not interested?
Speaker 3: Was I a bad student? I really hated school. So
Speaker 3: I hated math, and I hated you know, social studies
Speaker 3: was okay, English. I could have taught the class because
Speaker 3: I was a you know, a bookworm, but no I
Speaker 3: a science class. I mean, these things still give me
Speaker 3: the chills.
Speaker 2: So you have kids, would you have let your kids
Speaker 2: drop out? And what'd you tell them?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I have two great kids and two
Speaker 3: grandkids now. But when I was raising my kids, if
Speaker 3: they had shown me that kind of drive and musicality,
Speaker 3: I would have said, go for it.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, no one really likes homework. So when
Speaker 2: they would be there with math and science, would you say, no,
Speaker 2: you gotta do this, you got to get your degree.
Speaker 3: I was so busy at that point when they were
Speaker 3: going through their school at that point. They didn't come
Speaker 3: to me with those things. They just got their work done.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're living in Ithaca, and next door is Bob
Speaker 2: Mogu tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Well, isn't that a great great story?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean we were in this lovely old house where
Speaker 3: this poetry commune was, and sometimes we didn't have enough
Speaker 3: running water for showers. And Bob mog and his wife
Speaker 3: Shirley lived down the road and Ithaca, the neighborhood of Ithaca,
Speaker 3: as well as Trumansburg where we were. Trumansburg's a very
Speaker 3: small upstate New York town, and we had all sort
Speaker 3: of known each other through different sort of community outreach things.
Speaker 3: And Bob had heard that I was a musician, and
Speaker 3: someone said, oh, you should really invite Fred to your studio,
Speaker 3: your workplace, and I did. I got to go to
Speaker 3: his Trumansberg studio and try to play with one of
Speaker 3: his you know, mile high tall synthesizers, and he was
Speaker 3: kind to me, and surely especially they would let us
Speaker 3: take showers at their house when we couldn't shower at home.
Speaker 3: And then, yeah, that was just a I have a
Speaker 3: great photo. I think I might have put it in
Speaker 3: the book of the of the Mailbox that says Mogue.
Speaker 2: You will also say that Mog goes to work for
Speaker 2: kurtzwhile and you end up using that connection to get
Speaker 2: an instrument at a deep discount. Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I started to make my way without planning it,
Speaker 3: I fell into film and TV composing in around nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, and I needed to have this. You know,
Speaker 3: there was there, there were fair Lights, there were Saint Clavier's,
Speaker 3: and there were Kurzwele's and Bob Mogue was now the
Speaker 3: chief scientist at Kurzweil. So I reached out to him
Speaker 3: and he was really happy to hear from me. He
Speaker 3: had known that I had become a record producer. Now
Speaker 3: he heard I was become a TV film composer film
Speaker 3: and TV composer, which I told him all about. And
Speaker 3: I said, Bob, I need a great deal on occur
Speaker 3: as well, and he said, oh, no, don't you worry,
Speaker 3: You'll get my deal, and away we went.
Speaker 2: Do you remember how much that was?
Speaker 3: I think it was around twelve thousand, down from like
Speaker 3: twenty four or something, so I.
Speaker 2: Know it's ancient history, but what exactly was the difference
Speaker 2: between the fair Lights Sinclavier and the kurts Wow.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, the price, the sink Clavier and
Speaker 3: the fair Child were very expensive in the I think
Speaker 3: I think a sinclavier could have cost one hundred grand.
Speaker 3: I don't even remember anymore. It was very stupid high.
Speaker 3: But you know, these were the first digital sequencing instruments
Speaker 3: and sampling instruments, and everyone you know was using them
Speaker 3: in film and TV composing, and Kurzwew was this very
Speaker 3: unique one, but it was affordable.
Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit more about the Kurtzwaw.
Speaker 3: Well. Kurzwaul was developed by Ray Kurzweil, who was an
Speaker 3: incredible scientist, and if you read all about him, his
Speaker 3: his work on the reading machine for the blind alone
Speaker 3: should get him a Pulletzer or whatever they give you
Speaker 3: these days, a Nobel. But he also created this wonderful
Speaker 3: instrument which has onboard fantastic samples of piano and synth
Speaker 3: and all sorts of orchestral sounds, and you can keep
Speaker 3: adding sounds and you can create your own sounds. So
Speaker 3: the nice part about it for me was it was
Speaker 3: sort of an inspiration machine. It had it was very
Speaker 3: easy to use, so I could literally record something like
Speaker 3: a piano pass and then hit track two right on
Speaker 3: the same keyboard air and then overdub and then hit
Speaker 3: track three, and I would have twelve tracks. And then
Speaker 3: I started to mity things all, you know, I start
Speaker 3: to get very involved in film and TV. But it
Speaker 3: was a wonderful I still keep my Kurzwell two fifty
Speaker 3: here in the studio because occasionally you need a certain
Speaker 3: sound that is a curswew sound.
Speaker 2: Okay, how'd you get out of the draft?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I was real fortunate. I had moved to Toronto and
Speaker 3: I became a member of draft Board one hundred, which
Speaker 3: was a draft board that they would only grab people
Speaker 3: from in case of absolutely you know, if everyone else
Speaker 3: couldn't go, they would go to draft Board one hundred.
Speaker 3: Then on top of it, Bob I got a really
Speaker 3: high lottery number the next year.
Speaker 2: Okay, Toronto, I've been many times. I'm going next week
Speaker 2: as a matter of fact. But you're there in the
Speaker 2: early seventies. Is it provincial? What's Toronto like?
Speaker 3: In the early seventies, Toronto was really a wonderland. I
Speaker 3: had made friends on my first visit to Toronto in
Speaker 3: seventy two, made friends with Tony Kosnek, who was living
Speaker 3: in a house close to my brother, and it was
Speaker 3: again a very free and lovely time in Toronto was
Speaker 3: really blooming and you know, just a lot of artistic
Speaker 3: things were happening, and Tony was making a record and
Speaker 3: he wanted me to be in the band, and I
Speaker 3: was again as a seventeen year old fresh out of
Speaker 3: Long Island, Toronto was just exciting to me and working
Speaker 3: with Tony was thrilling. In the band was Paul Schaeffer,
Speaker 3: who was our piano player, who was fresh out of
Speaker 3: Thunder Bay, Ontario. And the guitar player quit and I
Speaker 3: had to become the bass player, and Paul actually had
Speaker 3: to teach me how to do a better job on bass.
Speaker 2: Let's go back at step. What instruments did you play?
Speaker 2: How did you learn how to play growing up?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I was always a drummer because I
Speaker 3: would drum on the tin can garbage cans as a child.
Speaker 3: And then when the Beatles hit, I grabbed guitar and
Speaker 3: became very studious as far as just immersing myself and
Speaker 3: trying to play guitar because I was absolutely you know,
Speaker 3: just my whole life changed with the Beatles. So I
Speaker 3: really was a guitar player who played some drums and
Speaker 3: had to learn how to play bass for Tony.
Speaker 2: Okay, So continue the narrative from there.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the one thing that was really fascinating
Speaker 3: was when I got there, the Canadian government had passed
Speaker 3: a Canadian content ruling that from this day on, everything
Speaker 3: on the radio and television had to be thirty three
Speaker 3: and a third percent Canadian. This had never happened before. So,
Speaker 3: in other words, a Canadian radio station before seventy two
Speaker 3: could play all the UK and American music they wanted,
Speaker 3: and played two Canadian songs a day if they wanted.
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, now there was this incredible
Speaker 3: gold rush on for Canadian artists to be signed and
Speaker 3: Canadian music to be on the radio.
Speaker 2: Okay, And how did that affect what you were doing?
Speaker 3: I think it just opened up the doors all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, you know, all the doors that were closed
Speaker 3: to me in New York. Toronto was such an open
Speaker 3: city anyway. And then on top of it, there was
Speaker 3: a frenzy almost to sign anybody who could play guitar,
Speaker 3: anybody who could write songs, because they had to fill
Speaker 3: this thirty three and a third content all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: and Tony was one of the recipients of that. You know,
Speaker 3: there was also you know, the government would give you
Speaker 3: grants to record records. I mean, it was really quite
Speaker 3: a country. But at the same time it helped me
Speaker 3: immensely a few years later when I started to produce records.
Speaker 2: Just stopping here for a second, you know, we're living
Speaker 2: in an era of political turmoil and there's friction between
Speaker 2: Canada and the US. Having lived so much in Canada,
Speaker 2: what is the difference between Canada and the people in
Speaker 2: Canada and the people in US.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, first of all, I'm a
Speaker 3: dual citizen, and I've been a Canadian citizen for many years,
Speaker 3: but a landed immigrant for many years before that. But
Speaker 3: I feel more Canadian than I do American. I find
Speaker 3: it to be very much. I just feel very Canadian.
Speaker 3: I feel very lucky to have been sort of allowed
Speaker 3: in the country. I feel lucky to have had my
Speaker 3: life there. The weather is terrible, but the people and
Speaker 3: the history and the living history that we love there
Speaker 3: shows it to be a much more compassionate and a
Speaker 3: much more I don't know, tolerant place.
Speaker 2: So tell me about joining a comedy troupe in Toronto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think, first of all, you know,
Speaker 3: in those days especially, you just take every opportunity you
Speaker 3: can get. And my brother and two colleagues who were
Speaker 3: doing underground theater at that point in Toronto, decided to
Speaker 3: try to create their own improvisational comedy group and they
Speaker 3: called it homemade theater. But they needed someone to do
Speaker 3: music and that was me. So I was the fourth
Speaker 3: member of this improvisational comedy group and I would do
Speaker 3: the music for each of their improvisational skits and it
Speaker 3: was really quite fun. And then it actually turned into
Speaker 3: a situation where the other improvisationally comedy group, Improvisational Comedy Group,
Speaker 3: came around from Chicago Second City, and they opened up
Speaker 3: in Toronto and they had a real facility and a bar.
Speaker 3: So we sort of lost our uniqueness, but we loved
Speaker 3: all the folks who had become part of the Second
Speaker 3: City Toronto troupe.
Speaker 2: But this was not really amateur. I had success. You
Speaker 2: were working for the government, you were getting paid. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, you know again, Toronto was a very
Speaker 3: wide open place at that point, very accepting of all
Speaker 3: new ideas and all creativity, and we were, you know,
Speaker 3: we were embraced, and yes, we worked for the government. Eventually,
Speaker 3: Homemade Theater had their own television show on CBC for
Speaker 3: three years, which was a show for children called Homemade Television,
Speaker 3: and we were so completely improper on so many levels.
Speaker 3: We should never have been on that show. But we
Speaker 3: were sort of like Monty Python for kids.
Speaker 2: So in the back of your mind, we were saying, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not on the right track anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, you see, he has a lot of derailment, isn't there, Bob.
Speaker 3: I mean there's a certain amount of you know, he
Speaker 3: starts out wanting to be the Beatles, and now he's,
Speaker 3: you know, a singer songwriter, and now he's this, now
Speaker 3: he's that. You know. I just took all the gigs
Speaker 3: I could because I could try to do them. And
Speaker 3: at the same time, when we were doing Homemade Theater,
Speaker 3: I was still doing my gigs as a singer songwriter
Speaker 3: in certain clubs, and I was starting to produce records
Speaker 3: because I had fallen into that. So there was a
Speaker 3: lot of things going on, Bob that were paying the
Speaker 3: bills in a way that was good enough, but I
Speaker 3: could keep doing all of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, how did you end up producing records? And
Speaker 2: how did you end up giving up being a singer songwriter?
Speaker 3: Yeah? How did I give up the dream? Well, first
Speaker 3: of all, I want to be honest and say that
Speaker 3: I don't think I had what was needed to be,
Speaker 3: you know, in the pantheon of the James Taylors and
Speaker 3: the Neil Young's and the Joni Mitchells, et cetera. I
Speaker 3: think I was good, And I think what was really
Speaker 3: obvious to me, though, is I fell into producing a
Speaker 3: friend's demo, and because I sort of knew a little
Speaker 3: bit about what producing is, which of course were is directing,
Speaker 3: I sort of fell into this and we got a
Speaker 3: record deal from the demo, and that was Dan Hill,
Speaker 3: a Canadian artist that I had been playing gigs alongside of.
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden we had a first album
Speaker 3: of Dance released in Canada and it went gold. We
Speaker 3: had a hit record in Canada. It got released in
Speaker 3: the States, it didn't do anything. We had a second
Speaker 3: album of Dance, which again went gold in Canada but
Speaker 3: didn't get well received in the US on twentieth Century
Speaker 3: Fox Records and by that time, I had really said,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm not going to go in front
Speaker 3: of the camera. I'm going to go behind the camera.
Speaker 3: I like arranging music, I like producing records. I want
Speaker 3: to do this and I liked it.
Speaker 2: So tell us about making the hit with Dan Hill?
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean our third album, which was going to
Speaker 3: be called Longer Fuse. This was nineteen seventy seven in Toronto.
Speaker 3: Had been told by Harvey Cooper, who's a lovely man
Speaker 3: and we still stay in touch, who was at that
Speaker 3: point head of twentieth Century Fox Records in LA. He
Speaker 3: was politely told that if he didn't have a smash hit,
Speaker 3: he'd be dumped. And we were just kids, you know.
Speaker 3: I was twenty three, my partner was twenty two. Dan
Speaker 3: was twenty two, And just the long story short is
Speaker 3: that Dan went to LA and tried to co write
Speaker 3: for the first time and wasn't really successful in that.
Speaker 3: But ATB Music was taking his music in the US,
Speaker 3: and so they said, why don't you try writing with
Speaker 3: Barry Man. And of course Barry was, along with his
Speaker 3: wife Cynthia, while you know, probably two of the most
Speaker 3: revered songwriters in the history of radio. And so they
Speaker 3: didn't do well working together, but Dan left him a
Speaker 3: lyric and Barry then that night put music to the
Speaker 3: lyric and sent us a little cassette that he had
Speaker 3: done on his boombox where Barry sang and played piano.
Speaker 3: And here we are sort of with this sort of
Speaker 3: damocles over our head, no knowing if we don't have
Speaker 3: a hit, we're going to be dumped. And we hear
Speaker 3: this demo that came in from La and it's sometimes
Speaker 3: when we touch and it's really like an Elton John
Speaker 3: Your song, Like it's really beautiful and super hooky, and
Speaker 3: you know, we just looked at each other and here's
Speaker 3: a great thing.
Speaker 2: Bob.
Speaker 3: Then, back then in seventy seven, these kinds of things
Speaker 3: were possible, Like you could say, you know, this could
Speaker 3: be a hit, and you really thought it could be
Speaker 3: a hit. You know, it wasn't that you had one
Speaker 3: percent chance of having a hit. You actually had a chance.
Speaker 3: And this was the song we knew that could be
Speaker 3: the hit, and we did cut the track of it.
Speaker 3: Dan had a terribly hard time doing the vocal We
Speaker 3: probably had ninety six different vocal moves in the comp
Speaker 3: done meticulously on faders onto twenty four track tape, and
Speaker 3: no matter what, I don't think anything could have stopped
Speaker 3: that particular song, especially with women. Women really loved it
Speaker 3: and it was a absolute smash all over the world.
Speaker 3: We didn't get to number one. I think we got
Speaker 3: to number two and some of the charts, and then
Speaker 3: I think Jimmy Sorry, Billy Joels just the Way You
Speaker 3: Are or Saturday Night Fever or some song from that
Speaker 3: might have kicked us out of number one. But it
Speaker 3: became an iconic record, which I'm very proud of. Although
Speaker 3: I have to be honest, you know, that wasn't my wheelhouse.
Speaker 3: Elton John was or James Taylor was. But I found
Speaker 3: that sometimes we touched, you know, was so commercial and
Speaker 3: so emotional that I couldn't believe it couldn't be a hit.
Speaker 3: And some melodic too.
Speaker 2: By the way, Okay, you're working in Canada. You got
Speaker 2: a guy who's got a couple of stiff records. In retrospect,
Speaker 2: were you world class or you just had a great
Speaker 2: song and you managed to get it down.
Speaker 3: I think we wanted to be world class, and I
Speaker 3: don't think we really were the way I had hoped
Speaker 3: we would be. But I think when it came to
Speaker 3: making Dan's records, especially the third album, which had sometimes
Speaker 3: when we touch on it, I think we did damn well.
Speaker 3: I think became pretty close to being world class producers.
Speaker 2: So ultimately you picture all this money coming in and
Speaker 2: then the label goes under tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well there you go. Isn't show business great?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I again one of the how many hits are you
Speaker 3: going to have that are that long lasting and that iconic?
Speaker 3: And the answer is probably very few in your lifetime.
Speaker 3: I was so fortunate to have that hit. And then
Speaker 3: I was young enough that we sort of spent the
Speaker 3: money before we had it, and we at that point
Speaker 3: had moved to LA and we got word one day
Speaker 3: in the studio that the Canadian company GRT that had
Speaker 3: signed Dan and then we're distributed by twentieth Century Fox
Speaker 3: in the US were going bankrupt and all of the
Speaker 3: money that had started to come in from you know,
Speaker 3: early late seventy seven, seventy eight, when the record hit,
Speaker 3: all that money and the album sales and everything were
Speaker 3: basically heading towards GRT or probably had been received by GRT.
Speaker 3: And we actually sent somebody there who watched grt's office
Speaker 3: be padlocked and I never saw and my partner and
Speaker 3: I and Dan as an artist, never saw probably seventy
Speaker 3: percent of that of money. Ever, you know, later on
Speaker 3: down the line we would see money. But you know,
Speaker 3: as producers and as the artist, you don't get money
Speaker 3: from radio play. You only get it from mechanicals, from
Speaker 3: the actual record label. So that was a pretty big blow.
Speaker 3: And we couldn't get the money because we were so
Speaker 3: low on the list of people that were owed money
Speaker 3: that I guess we would have gotten pennies. So what
Speaker 3: happens next with you and Dan, Well, we did a
Speaker 3: fourth album by the time we found out that the
Speaker 3: royalties weren't coming in from times sometimes that we touch,
Speaker 3: and that album did come out. But after that, there
Speaker 3: was just some things that happened, which again happened in
Speaker 3: show business. My partner, Matt McCauley's parents had financed Dan's
Speaker 3: original record so that was their production company that did
Speaker 3: the albums, and so Dan's lawyers found a way out
Speaker 3: of their contract and Dan then re signed with Columbia,
Speaker 3: leaving Matt and I no longer involved in producing him.
Speaker 3: Matt and I had moved to la under the umbrella
Speaker 3: of Clive Davis, and you know, we stopped working with
Speaker 3: Dan and there was some lawsuits Buteen Matthew's parents and
Speaker 3: Dan and I was out of that loop. But you know,
Speaker 3: things happen, you know, crap happens.
Speaker 2: Okay, we talk about how well or poorly streaming pays
Speaker 2: today in a year. How much money do you make
Speaker 2: for sometimes when we touch?
Speaker 3: Now, well, you know I can't divulge that, but it's
Speaker 3: not the kind of money you would hope. Sorry, is
Speaker 3: it six figures? No?
Speaker 2: No? Okay, So how do you get to deal with Clive?
Speaker 2: And what is the experience with Clive?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, a lot of good things come out
Speaker 3: of having a hit record, like sometimes when we touch,
Speaker 3: and so once we did. I had produced a demo
Speaker 3: with matt of a guy named fran mckendrey, which Arista
Speaker 3: then signed, and then Clive took notice of us and
Speaker 3: realized we had a big hit and said you should
Speaker 3: work for Arista as staff producers. And I really wanted
Speaker 3: to move to la at that point because I thought
Speaker 3: that's where everything was happening. And so Matthew and I
Speaker 3: and not Yeah, Matthew and I moved at the same
Speaker 3: time in seventy eight, Clive Davis put us up at
Speaker 3: the chef to Marmont for six months. We've produced a
Speaker 3: number of interesting projects for Clive and then I had
Speaker 3: a falling out, which I talked about in the book.
Speaker 3: And I don't mind discussing that if that's what you're
Speaker 3: looking for.
Speaker 2: So tell us. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we were sort of Clive's fair haired boys,
Speaker 3: and we were doing some nice projects, including an album
Speaker 3: for Randy Edelman, and Randy had been signed to Arista
Speaker 3: because of his writing a song called Weekend in New
Speaker 3: England for Barry Manilow, and so we did a new
Speaker 3: album with Randy once we got to LA in the
Speaker 3: summer of seventy eight, and in the middle of the album,
Speaker 3: we got a phone call. I should say I got
Speaker 3: the phone call. It was an early morning phone call
Speaker 3: at the shot to Marmont. I got it, and it
Speaker 3: was Clive saying, hey, listen, I want you to stop
Speaker 3: working on Randy. I've got a smash hit from Melissa
Speaker 3: Manchester and I would love you and Matt to produce it,
Speaker 3: but you have to stop everything on Randy. And that
Speaker 3: sounded wonderful and I literally just said okay, Well, will
Speaker 3: you call Randy and let him know that things are postponed?
Speaker 3: Or should I? And he said, you don't get it,
Speaker 3: and he hung up, and then he called Harry Maslin.
Speaker 3: Harry Maslin had a hit with Don't Cry Out Loud,
Speaker 3: and I love Harry, so, you know, I pat him
Speaker 3: on the back. He did a great job, but we
Speaker 3: lost out because I didn't understand. What I should have
Speaker 3: said to Clive was whatever you say.
Speaker 2: So how did it literally end with the STA.
Speaker 3: Shortly after? You know, we were asked to, you know,
Speaker 3: find a home in LA and finish off the projects
Speaker 3: and then say Levy, bye bye. That's life.
Speaker 2: So you go back to Toronto. Do you feel like
Speaker 2: you have your tail between your legs? What's your state
Speaker 2: of mind? Well?
Speaker 3: I spent the next couple of years in LA. I
Speaker 3: married my wife from Toronto in LA and then we
Speaker 3: did We had a nice time, and I was busy
Speaker 3: as a producer, but nothing particularly exciting. And my partner
Speaker 3: at that point, Matt McCauley, decided not to produce anymore
Speaker 3: because he had married someone quite wealthy and so he
Speaker 3: didn't have the same passion I had for working with
Speaker 3: artists and making their records sound great, so we decided
Speaker 3: we want to have kids. So in the winter of
Speaker 3: eighty one, Dina and I moved back to Toronto. And
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say I had my tail between my legs,
Speaker 3: but I was certainly hopeful that I had become a
Speaker 3: hometown homecoming hero. And I don't think I was. I
Speaker 3: think it was sort of, oh, you're back, you know,
Speaker 3: So it was it was a little bit of a
Speaker 3: rude awakening, you know.
Speaker 2: So how did you restart?
Speaker 3: It's amazing what drives people. We had our first child
Speaker 3: in eighty four, so I spent a couple of years
Speaker 3: back in Toronto, you know, getting a few projects here
Speaker 3: and there. One of them was great fun, which was
Speaker 3: producing Ronnie Hawkins, and just for the laughter quota, that
Speaker 3: was really I mean, I'm good for the next two
Speaker 3: hundred years. So you know, I did some cool stuff,
Speaker 3: but it, you know, but it was intermittent. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like people were knocking down my door to get the
Speaker 3: guy who came home. But I think the thing that
Speaker 3: really drove me was my first of all, my passion
Speaker 3: to keep working musically. And secondly, we had our first
Speaker 3: child in eighty four, and I just looked at my
Speaker 3: little baby and I just said, I cannot let this
Speaker 3: kid be worried about money. So I got to find
Speaker 3: an answer, and I would, you know, I just put
Speaker 3: it out there. I fell into a couple of TV
Speaker 3: movies that I scored, and you know, that's when I
Speaker 3: went to Robert Mogan asked for her as while at
Speaker 3: a discount, and all of a sudden, by eighty five,
Speaker 3: I had fallen into composing for TV and film in Canada,
Speaker 3: doing us work a lot of the times because they
Speaker 3: needed Canadian content for certain parts of these Canadian American productions.
Speaker 2: So at first your thrilled just to be paying the bills.
Speaker 2: But then you wake up and you're a film and
Speaker 2: TV composer. You talk about it in the book that
Speaker 2: it's basically a lot of work alone. What's your state
Speaker 2: of mind? Then?
Speaker 3: Well, I think initially the money was good and the
Speaker 3: back end of airplay is wonderful. It gets paid by
Speaker 3: at Skapper BMI. And in those days, you know, it
Speaker 3: was in Toronto, probably there were about ten other composers
Speaker 3: I'd be vying against, you know, and competing against, and
Speaker 3: it was just really challenging. Bob. I mean, I liked
Speaker 3: the challenge of all of a sudden writing music for TV.
Speaker 3: I felt that it was a good instinct.
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 3: It helped my keyboard chops because I would do everything
Speaker 3: on the keyboard and improvise and use the Kurzweilds multi
Speaker 3: track sequencer. And I was started doing orchestral scores, just
Speaker 3: learning while I earned, and the earning was good.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a hierarchy. It's an international business. There are
Speaker 2: household name composers. Once you're doing this, you're saying that's
Speaker 2: my goal.
Speaker 3: No. I had such a tremendous respect for the true
Speaker 3: top echelon, you know, the John Williams and the Jerry Goldsmith's,
Speaker 3: and you know, and of course Randy Newman's brilliant scores
Speaker 3: and Thomas Newman, all these wonderful people who I wouldn't
Speaker 3: even want to consider myself a film and TV composer
Speaker 3: compared to them. But I think where I was working,
Speaker 3: which was in TV mostly TV series, dramatic series with
Speaker 3: sometimes a lot of horror elements or sci fi elements,
Speaker 3: I think I was pretty good for what I did,
Speaker 3: but I had no belief I could ever step into
Speaker 3: those big shoes.
Speaker 2: So you do this for a number of years. Are
Speaker 2: you muddling along or you feel like, oh I'm mistending
Speaker 2: what's going on career wise?
Speaker 3: These are good questions.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My again, the money was really good, and it was
Speaker 3: stable money in the sense I didn't have to depend
Speaker 3: on a record label and their unique ways of making
Speaker 3: sure you didn't get paid how much you really earned.
Speaker 3: You know, you got your money from as gap every quarter,
Speaker 3: and you got good money for doing the shows by
Speaker 3: the productions. So all of a sudden, I was lifted
Speaker 3: into a really good level of success financially and had
Speaker 3: two kids by eighty seven, and I was just enjoying
Speaker 3: everything about life. And even though that it was a
Speaker 3: lonely occupation, you know, I worked out of the house,
Speaker 3: so everything worked out really well. And I don't think
Speaker 3: I muddled along. I think I really tried to do
Speaker 3: better each time. But again, you know, I have a
Speaker 3: certain amount of belief of what I'm good at and
Speaker 3: what I think I'm not quite as good at. But
Speaker 3: I think I was good at what I did, and
Speaker 3: I tried to please my producers.
Speaker 2: So you start off going to John Hammond's office trying
Speaker 2: to be James Taylor singer songwriter. Now you're doing film scores,
Speaker 2: definitely faceless behind the business, maybe an end credit in
Speaker 2: many of these cases. Sometimes up front now you say,
Speaker 2: oh man, I'm thrilled to be in music, or how
Speaker 2: the fuck did I get here?
Speaker 3: I think if you look at my career, there's just
Speaker 3: these incredible sort of left turns, you know. And when
Speaker 3: I fell into TV and film, what really made the
Speaker 3: difference was I was a new dad, and my record
Speaker 3: career had really been very, very minimal compared to what
Speaker 3: I hoped it would be. When I moved back to Toronto,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, the money was coming in
Speaker 3: and I just became a human jukebox throwing music into
Speaker 3: the computer, and you know, and I was doing three
Speaker 3: series at once generally for about fifteen years.
Speaker 2: So there are other rock musicians who've gone into this
Speaker 2: scoring and done even Mark Mother's Law of Devo never
Speaker 2: mind Danny Elfman, etc. Is there a natural connection or
Speaker 2: is just pure hard work?
Speaker 3: Well? I think someone like Danny or Mark Mothersbow, I
Speaker 3: think those are wonderfully talented guys who clearly I think
Speaker 3: it was very suitable for them to do that work.
Speaker 3: For me, I was doing it against the fact that
Speaker 3: I like being around others. I like to work in
Speaker 3: a team. When I produce a record, I like to
Speaker 3: be with other musicians, and I like to work with
Speaker 3: my artists and my engineers. And so when you're doing
Speaker 3: TV and film score, you're basically by yourself, staring at
Speaker 3: the screen all day under deadlines. So for me, I
Speaker 3: think what I would like to be able to say
Speaker 3: is I think that people who worked especially on certain projects,
Speaker 3: if you were a songwriter or understood good songwriting and
Speaker 3: you were a film composer, you could write really hooky
Speaker 3: music because that's what you felt in your head. So,
Speaker 3: for instance, if you're writing a theme song, like for instance,
Speaker 3: Danny wrote the Simpsons theme song, that's because he's a
Speaker 3: wonderful songwriter and he knew how to make a simple
Speaker 3: phrase da da da. He just knew. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that reminds me of the Jetsons. I think he sort
Speaker 3: of got that good help from the Jetsons. Hey, here's
Speaker 3: George Jetson's meet the Simpsons. It's sort of liked that,
Speaker 3: and I think that, you know, but it takes someone
Speaker 3: like Danny, who who was an Oingo blanco artist and
Speaker 3: a great songwriter. I thought, unique songwriter, and I think
Speaker 3: that may be a skill that I had which made
Speaker 3: some of my music for certain TV series better because
Speaker 3: I could write music that actually had more melodic hooks
Speaker 3: and more interesting production because that was my background.
Speaker 2: Okay, you go on in the book saying if you
Speaker 2: missed a deadline, you were out. Are the composers really
Speaker 2: that fungible or they say, oh yeah, we like Fred.
Speaker 2: You know, hey, he's got something going on, he's overloaded.
Speaker 2: What was really the situation there?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I was doing three series at once,
Speaker 3: and you never wanted to tell anybody else you were
Speaker 3: doing those other two series, so you know, you're always exclusive,
Speaker 3: and even though contractually you weren't, but you you know,
Speaker 3: it was like having three girlfriends. You don't want to
Speaker 3: tell the other two. But you know, Randy Newman once
Speaker 3: told me, and I've spent a little time with Randy,
Speaker 3: but only a little. And when I was in the
Speaker 3: midst of my big TV in film years, he just
Speaker 3: said to me one day, he said, you know, Fred
Speaker 3: were just lowly dogs in a film. And I said,
Speaker 3: you know, you're right, because we really are just part
Speaker 3: of a team. And what really matters, is you know,
Speaker 3: to get to that broadcast date without any problems. And yes,
Speaker 3: if you got sick and you fell off the treadmill
Speaker 3: or something happened and you fell off the treadmill, they
Speaker 3: wouldn't blink an eye. It was like, Okay, gotta go.
Speaker 3: Someone else has been hired and a way and you're done.
Speaker 3: So that kind of sort of damicles pressure was really hard,
Speaker 3: but I got through it. I don't think I ever
Speaker 3: fell in the fifteen sixteen years that I did it.
Speaker 3: I don't think I ever missed a deadline.
Speaker 2: How much of getting the gigs is hustle? How much
Speaker 2: is waiting for the phone to ring?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, in TV and film you have an agent,
Speaker 3: and I've had different agents, and they're all people I've
Speaker 3: really loved and they've done good things for me. But
Speaker 3: their job basically was to let me know what was
Speaker 3: out there, and then they might make a phone call
Speaker 3: about it and I might have to audition a demo
Speaker 3: of ideas musically, and that would be then I'd be
Speaker 3: competing against other composers. So the phone didn't ring generally
Speaker 3: with a phone call saying hey, Fred, you're the right guy.
Speaker 3: But certainly it did happen to some degree, but it's
Speaker 3: a combination of everyone's efforts. Keeping your ear to the
Speaker 3: ground and being tenacious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, you meet a woman, you chase your to Paris,
Speaker 2: you leave your wife. Oh, Bob, you go to therapy,
Speaker 2: and you stop composing. Walk us through this.
Speaker 3: Well, now, Bob, come on, now you know phem the book? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, we're only human. Well, I make it a
Speaker 3: very short part of the book. You know, the truth is,
Speaker 3: the book isn't about me. It's really about the people
Speaker 3: I've worked with and the projects I've worked with, and
Speaker 3: my life in music. So you know, the actual personal
Speaker 3: stuff is only there to help the depth of it.
Speaker 3: But I did. I'll tell you what happened simply. In
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety eight. I had been scoring film relentlessly, TV
Speaker 3: and film relentlessly since eighty five, so you know, that's
Speaker 3: a long haul, and I continue to do it till
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, actually, But by ninety eight I
Speaker 3: was starting to get pretty pretty burnt out. And I
Speaker 3: met this lovely girl who was quite young, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, legal but young, and my marriage had been
Speaker 3: sort of becoming quite you know, not ugly, but not comfortable,
Speaker 3: and I clearly was having a midlife crisis and I
Speaker 3: fell in love with someone and left the family to
Speaker 3: be with that girl. And it was interesting two years
Speaker 3: that we were together. And I don't recommend it for people,
Speaker 3: but I mean I sort of had to go through
Speaker 3: what I went through. That relationship ended because I couldn't
Speaker 3: find a way for the new relationship to ever work
Speaker 3: out and be part of my children's lives, and there
Speaker 3: was my responsibility was the children first, And so that
Speaker 3: ended that relationship. And you know, I tried to get
Speaker 3: back with my wife. We both tried. I failed and
Speaker 3: decided by two thousand and one that I needed to
Speaker 3: move out of Toronto. I needed to go to Nashville
Speaker 3: and go back to making records, which is what I
Speaker 3: frankly thought I did well. And I was pretty tired
Speaker 3: of the life of a TV and film composer.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go back a couple of chapters. If you're
Speaker 2: working around the clock, how'd you meet this woman?
Speaker 3: Just happened to meet her. And I have a home
Speaker 3: in Martha's Vineyard that I had for years that again
Speaker 3: was you know, bought by the great money I was
Speaker 3: making a TV and film and you know, she was
Speaker 3: a friend of the family. Basically of this family we
Speaker 3: knew and we just met her one time and there
Speaker 3: was some initial sparks.
Speaker 2: And when was the last time you had contact with her?
Speaker 3: I saw her with her child on Martha's vineyard, probably
Speaker 3: about eleven years ago.
Speaker 2: Okay, you buy a condo in Toronto, do you go
Speaker 2: to therapy multiple times a week? What do you learned
Speaker 2: when going to therapy?
Speaker 3: The first thing you learn is that in Toronto, your
Speaker 3: medical is free. So I had a great psychiatrist and
Speaker 3: I saw him five days a week for probably five months,
Speaker 3: and it was absolutely wonderful. I mean, I really got
Speaker 3: myself back together, you know. I mean, by the way,
Speaker 3: I was still working the whole time, but I just
Speaker 3: I had Brian McDermott as my doctor and he was lovely.
Speaker 3: And after that, you know, as I said, then it
Speaker 3: just came. I just came to the realization that I,
Speaker 3: you know, I spent two years from ninety eight to
Speaker 3: two thousand and one, and then that relationship ended. And
Speaker 3: once once I decided to make a change, I also
Speaker 3: wanted to make a change and go back to making records.
Speaker 2: Walk us through that a little bit in detail. You
Speaker 2: have a career, you can continue to work, you have
Speaker 2: a desire. That must have been a very hard decision.
Speaker 3: I don't remember it being a hard decision. I remember
Speaker 3: it being something that was so pleasurable in my head
Speaker 3: that I could be living in Nashville, which I had
Speaker 3: spent some time in and really loved it, working with
Speaker 3: the greatest musicians that have ever been in the same
Speaker 3: place together. And I loved making records, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to see if I could go back to making records
Speaker 3: full time. So I was excited. It really wasn't a
Speaker 3: hard decision. And plus Bob, I was so tired of
Speaker 3: my years of TV and film score I really had.
Speaker 3: It was like a fastball pitcher who lost his fastball.
Speaker 3: I really could not pitch that that way anymore.
Speaker 2: For getting divorce and splitting up the assets after seventeen
Speaker 2: years of doing this, theoretically, could you have retired and
Speaker 2: lived off the money that you'd made. Was it that lucrative?
Speaker 3: No? No, but it could have taken good care of
Speaker 3: me if I hadn't gotten divorced.
Speaker 2: Possibly, And so just on a divorce, how do you
Speaker 2: heal the family.
Speaker 3: With my son? It took longer and with my daughter.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, she got it and she was easier.
Speaker 2: And your ex wife we're.
Speaker 3: Still great friends. My daughter now lives in Tarzana and
Speaker 3: she moved from Toronto with her husband and her two children,
Speaker 3: and my ex lives in the guest house than I
Speaker 3: see her all the time. She's great.
Speaker 2: So your ex never got remarried.
Speaker 3: She's with other men, but never married.
Speaker 2: Okay, why move to Nashville.
Speaker 3: It's because it's so close to the ocean. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I wish it was. Why Nashville, Well, because there were
Speaker 3: one hundred studios and the greatest musicians in the world.
Speaker 3: So for me to make records with them really upped
Speaker 3: my game and gave me such pleasure that to this day,
Speaker 3: every day I'm in the studio is a blessing. I
Speaker 3: just love it.
Speaker 2: That's why. Okay, Nashville has evolved in the last twenty
Speaker 2: five years. You know, in the first decade of the century,
Speaker 2: a lot of people in La saying, hey, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to start over in Nashville. Now seemingly everybody
Speaker 2: moved there. There's a lot of traffic. What was it
Speaker 2: like moving in two thousand and one to Nashville being
Speaker 2: a Long Island Jew.
Speaker 3: Well probably you know, as goofy as it was for
Speaker 3: Long Island Jew to be in Toronto or you know.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of Jews in Toronto.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they weren't Long Island though. Believe me, it's
Speaker 3: a different Jew.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I can tell you that when I moved to Nashville
Speaker 3: in two thousand and one, it was a sleepy town
Speaker 3: still and I had been there over the years and
Speaker 3: had always enjoyed it. It was quite foreign to me,
Speaker 3: but fun, and I just, you know what, I was
Speaker 3: welcomed there. I've never had one moment of in my
Speaker 3: face anti Semitism ever in Nashville.
Speaker 2: You know. Okay, so you're now in Nashville, how do
Speaker 2: you get work?
Speaker 3: Well, I would bring work there. You know. I never
Speaker 3: fell into the world of country music. I did a
Speaker 3: few projects here and there, but when I got to Nashville,
Speaker 3: I was already doing work for Disney Records, So I
Speaker 3: had kids music I was doing, which was a lot
Speaker 3: of fun, generally attached to a big Disney animated feature.
Speaker 3: And I was also doing some singer songwriters that I
Speaker 3: liked who liked me. I had just come off of
Speaker 3: doing a Christopherson album, a Jimmy Webb album, and a
Speaker 3: Barry Man album. And so I guess my cred was
Speaker 3: good with the kind of artists that I wanted to produce.
Speaker 3: So I brought work to Nashville. Nashville did not give
Speaker 3: me the work.
Speaker 2: Okay. So when you're doing the Jimmy Webb, Chris, Christopherson,
Speaker 2: Berry Man records, you're still living in Toronto.
Speaker 3: No, No, I'm well, okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, did Tennessee
Speaker 3: Pieces for Jimmy in nineteen ninety six, did the Austin
Speaker 3: Sessions for Christofferson in nineteen ninety seven, and did Barry
Speaker 3: Man's Sole In Inspiration in nineteen ninety seven. So yes,
Speaker 3: I was living in Toronto and hadn't left my marriage yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So tell us how you got those records off
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the longest client I have as a
Speaker 3: producer is Jimmy Webb. I've been producing Jimmy since nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight. He was a hero of mine, and I
Speaker 3: actually loved his soul albums and his solo voice, and
Speaker 3: once we had some times when we touch. It gave
Speaker 3: me the ability to reach out through twentieth Century Fox Records.
Speaker 3: They reached out to Jimmy in seventy eight and we
Speaker 3: met my partner Matt McCauley, at that time was still
Speaker 3: working with me and Jimmy. Matt and I just fell
Speaker 3: in love with each other, and Matt and I produced
Speaker 3: an album called Angel Heart seventy eight, and then when
Speaker 3: Matt walked away from producing, by nineteen eighty, I still
Speaker 3: was working with Jimmy and continued to this day, and
Speaker 3: I've been his musical director at times and his record
Speaker 3: producer over seven albums.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're a wet behind the years guy. This guy
Speaker 2: has gigantic kids. How do you convince him to work
Speaker 2: with you?
Speaker 3: Well, we had the big hit, we had some times
Speaker 3: when we touch and we had Harvey Cooper at twentieth
Speaker 3: Century Fox Records telling Jimmy's manager that we were geniuses.
Speaker 3: I don't believe we were. I think we were really
Speaker 3: good and we were very precocious, Bob. I think that
Speaker 3: that's how we I think we perceived ourselves as really good, surprisingly,
Speaker 3: really good as a team to produce, but also I
Speaker 3: think we were just really good for our age. So
Speaker 3: it was thrilling that Jimmy Webb looked at us, and
Speaker 3: don't forget, Jimmy's biggest hits happened when he was twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one and twenty two. He looked at us like,
Speaker 3: you know, I get these guys.
Speaker 2: They're like I was, Okay, Jimmy has these iconic songs. Yes,
Speaker 2: he has these solo albums that have not been as
Speaker 2: commercially successful. Is that because his voice is not as good,
Speaker 2: the times have changed, the songs are not as good.
Speaker 2: You've been working with him for almost fifty years. Give
Speaker 2: us your take.
Speaker 3: Well, again, this is an interesting question. I think a
Speaker 3: number of things hurt Jimmy, which shouldn't have because I
Speaker 3: think he is probably one of America's greatest songwriters, along
Speaker 3: with the top five greatest songwriters. I think his voice
Speaker 3: was really good. It was raw and lovely. And I
Speaker 3: think that the problem was is that Jimmy was perceived
Speaker 3: by the public in those days, and I'm talking about
Speaker 3: the early seventies as the guy who wrote for the
Speaker 3: Fifth Dimension, the guy who wrote for Glenn Campbell, who
Speaker 3: was Republican, the guy who wrote for Richard Harris, who
Speaker 3: was a British theatrical guy, and it just seemed to
Speaker 3: be his perception by the public. The perception by the
Speaker 3: public was that he was a square and a Republican,
Speaker 3: and of course it couldn't have been further from the truth,
Speaker 3: but that perception hurt him. And then on top of it,
Speaker 3: then he would do his solo albums, which were really creative,
Speaker 3: soulful singer songwriter records. They weren't produced so well. I mean,
Speaker 3: Jimmy produced the first couple himself, and they're raw. You know,
Speaker 3: I love them, but they're raw, and you know, I
Speaker 3: just think that he They people couldn't make the translation
Speaker 3: that Jimmy Webb, this wonder kind who did MacArthur Park,
Speaker 3: could be again a vital singing, singing songwriter, autobiographical songwriter,
Speaker 3: and they were wrong because he's one of the greatest.
Speaker 2: How he ended up working with Chris Christophers and what
Speaker 2: is that experience.
Speaker 3: Like, well, that was one of the great experiences. You know.
Speaker 3: I had done ten easy pieces for Guardian Records, which
Speaker 3: was a part of EMI Records. And Jay Landers, who's
Speaker 3: been a great support to me all of my career,
Speaker 3: literally as early as seventy eight. You know, Jay called me,
Speaker 3: you know, sorry, I called Jay let me go. Back
Speaker 3: in ninety six, and I'm going to tell you a
Speaker 3: story which is true because everything I'm saying, you're getting
Speaker 3: the truth out of me. And I like that. Jimmy
Speaker 3: was having a very hard time in his life in
Speaker 3: ninety six, going through the worst divorce I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: He had six children, he had an irs attachment that
Speaker 3: was millions of dollars, and he was extremely depressed and
Speaker 3: there was absolutely alcohol, etc. That were causing problems because
Speaker 3: he was so depressed. And I loved him, he was
Speaker 3: part of my family. And I convinced him to come
Speaker 3: to Toronto, get out of ground zero, come to Toronto and
Speaker 3: we would make a quick little album of Jimmy doing
Speaker 3: his most famous songs, but for the first time him
Speaker 3: doing them, and to do them in a very sort
Speaker 3: of intimate, unplugged manner. And I had to really convince him, Bob.
Speaker 3: He was very, very adamant. He did not want to
Speaker 3: do it. Finally I convinced him because I told him
Speaker 3: that he should do it for his kids, just to
Speaker 3: have it on record, and we went to Toronto. He
Speaker 3: went to Toronto. I put him up in a hotel,
Speaker 3: got him out of the fire, so to speak, and
Speaker 3: we made ten easy pieces, which is really one of
Speaker 3: the greatest projects I'll ever be involved with, and that
Speaker 3: because it was such a cool idea. I called Jay Landers,
Speaker 3: who was at Emi at Guardian, and Jay said, I
Speaker 3: love Jimmy. If you'll do it for twenty five thousand,
Speaker 3: I'll give you the green light. And I said, I'll
Speaker 3: take it. And at that point I was doing my
Speaker 3: TV and film score years. I was making good money,
Speaker 3: so God, if I needed to not get paid, it's fine,
Speaker 3: I do it anyway. So I brought Jimmy in. We
Speaker 3: made the record and it got incredible response review wise.
Speaker 3: It didn't sell initially, but then Jay was able to
Speaker 3: then go, who do you want to do next? Let's
Speaker 3: take a look, and we sort of talked about different people.
Speaker 3: Barry Man definitely, who I had also spent my adult
Speaker 3: life I'm working with, and he said, what about Christofferson?
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, yeah, that's a cool idea. And
Speaker 3: I had known christ Dopperson's work. I didn't like his
Speaker 3: old records that were like the monument albums from the
Speaker 3: seventies because they put him with the same Nashville musicians
Speaker 3: who were doing Conway Twitty the same day, and the
Speaker 3: music sucked and Chris was crooning, and he's not a crooner.
Speaker 3: And I also remember Bob. I'm sure you know this
Speaker 3: is that Chris loved Bob Dylan so much that in
Speaker 3: the early days when he was in Nashville, he actually
Speaker 3: got a job as a janitor at CBS Studios just
Speaker 3: to be close to Dylan, who was making Blonde on Blonde.
Speaker 3: But that's how much he revered Dylan. He would literally
Speaker 3: empty out ashtrays just to catch a little bit of
Speaker 3: the music. So we presented this to his manager and
Speaker 3: then to Chris, and I said, I'd like to make
Speaker 3: a record that sounds a little bit like a Blonde
Speaker 3: on Blonde vibe of all of your great hits. So literally,
Speaker 3: you know, bring four or five great players in just
Speaker 3: you know, let it be sort of somewhat free in
Speaker 3: the arrangements, and you know, if you need to talk
Speaker 3: through the songs, you talk through the songs. But I
Speaker 3: wanted him to be something he would want to aspire to,
Speaker 3: and blonde on Blond were the three keywords for him.
Speaker 2: You make the record, you have an ongoing relationship with
Speaker 2: Jimmy Webb. Was it one and done with Chris? Christoph
Speaker 2: person or do you have contact with him after.
Speaker 3: I had some contact with Chris after. He has always
Speaker 3: told me, and I know he's passed on. He he
Speaker 3: always told me that the Austin Sessions was his favorite record,
Speaker 3: and I've seen it in Prince I know it is
Speaker 3: true that he said it to other people. And we
Speaker 3: tried to stay in touch here and there. I actually
Speaker 3: had him guessed on a couple projects that we were doing,
Speaker 3: and I loved him. I mean, the guy was just
Speaker 3: one of the most amazing people. My memories of Chris
Speaker 3: are so full of love and such and I have
Speaker 3: such gratitude that I had the chance to work with him.
Speaker 3: But we never made another album again.
Speaker 2: No, Okay, Berry Man with his wife Cynthia Well have
Speaker 2: iconic kids in the league of Jimmy Webb. You work
Speaker 2: with Barry Man. What is the magic there?
Speaker 3: What is the magic of Barry's writing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well again, you know, tenaciousness, a drive. He's a sort
Speaker 3: of a Brooklyn guy who you know, had to get
Speaker 3: out of Brooklyn and like Carol King and Jerry Goff
Speaker 3: and Barry Man and Cynthia while were products of the
Speaker 3: even though they didn't work at the Brill Building, it
Speaker 3: was during the Brill Building years. They were actually at
Speaker 3: sixteen fifty Broadway, but you know they came out of
Speaker 3: a place where they got a phone call sitting at
Speaker 3: the publishing office in New York, Connie Francis needs a
Speaker 3: follow up to such and such, and they all all
Speaker 3: these right would sit together and then they'd go into
Speaker 3: their cubicles apart and try to write the follow up
Speaker 3: for Connie Francis. Let's say that kind of training along
Speaker 3: with a gift, which Barry had and Cynthia had, and
Speaker 3: Carol and Jerry had, and all these wonderful writers from
Speaker 3: you know, from those Brill Building days, what training that
Speaker 3: was if you had a gift, it was amazing. And
Speaker 3: so that's the magic that Barry had. Its just it
Speaker 3: was a combination of just being in the right place
Speaker 3: at the right time for what he did, which was,
Speaker 3: you know, he could just sit the piano and just
Speaker 3: come up with a great melody, and Cynthia could write
Speaker 3: a great lyric and it was just bang, bang bang.
Speaker 3: In a sense, they were doing what I was doing
Speaker 3: in my TV and film years, in the sense it
Speaker 3: was an unrelenting you know, every day, you know, just
Speaker 3: writing music, writing you know, and that's thrilling on some levels,
Speaker 3: but even more thrilling for them because they were seeing
Speaker 3: their records go to the top of the charts, and
Speaker 3: they were also working with other people and it was
Speaker 3: you know, I imagine it was great fun. Although interestingly enough,
Speaker 3: and Barry is truly extended family to me, when I
Speaker 3: asked him one time, you know, if that was the
Speaker 3: happiest time of his life, he said, that's the worst time.
Speaker 3: And I said why. He said, because as good as
Speaker 3: your hit was, you had to get the next one.
Speaker 3: And the pressure was terrible.
Speaker 2: Just staying with some of these iconic writers. Most of
Speaker 2: these people have a very hot era and then they
Speaker 2: don't have the same level of success. Why do you
Speaker 2: think that is?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, this is again it's a great question,
Speaker 3: and I write it. I write about it in my book.
Speaker 3: That especially the what I call the autobiographical singer songwriters,
Speaker 3: you know that we've mentioned before, the Paul Simon's, the
Speaker 3: James Taylor's, Neil Young, all these wonderful writers who Jackson Brown, etc.
Speaker 3: You know, they give so much in the early part
Speaker 3: of their lives, and I think it's an understandable thing
Speaker 3: that they just probably get somewhat written out after ten
Speaker 3: or fifteen albums of brilliance. It may just be that
Speaker 3: the well is dry comparatively. And you know, you had
Speaker 3: a great piece about the Elton John Brandy Carlisle album.
Speaker 3: To me, that's the great example, because Elton John is
Speaker 3: a god to me. But I don't think there's any
Speaker 3: gas in the tank anymore to be able to write
Speaker 3: the brilliant songs he wrote. And I think it's just
Speaker 3: it's an emotional situation, but it's also just the fact
Speaker 3: that you you know that part of you may not
Speaker 3: be there anymore. So I know that it's different when
Speaker 3: you're looking at someone like a Burt Backerack or a
Speaker 3: Barry in Cynthia. You know they can still craft a song.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. I don't know if a great songwriter,
Speaker 3: you know, who gave us so much can continue to
Speaker 3: give us that much every single time into their seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties. I don't think that's possible.
Speaker 2: Okay, needless to say, you're a ficial.
Speaker 3: Are people gonna hate me now? They're gonna hate me
Speaker 3: now for saying that.
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I have my own theories about it.
Speaker 2: I wanted to hear your theory my theory, and I
Speaker 2: don't say yours is wrong, but these artists tend to
Speaker 2: be maladjusted, alienated people, and they believe that this success
Speaker 2: will make their lives work. And when they have their
Speaker 2: success and their lives still don't work, they can't do
Speaker 2: it anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great element of it, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think what's another great element is that And
Speaker 3: something you just hit on is that I think the
Speaker 3: great singer songwriter is the autobiographical singer songwriters. They generally
Speaker 3: had some sort of real sadness or trauma which they
Speaker 3: work out through their writing of songs. And like you said,
Speaker 3: once that trauma's gone down the road, maybe it's not
Speaker 3: quite there anymore. But you know, I actually sat with
Speaker 3: Sting one day and I only sat with him once
Speaker 3: in my life, and we were sitting at a bar
Speaker 3: with Rita Wilson and a few other people, and he
Speaker 3: and I sort of, you know, started talking about something,
Speaker 3: and I just, you know, I didn't know why I
Speaker 3: felt so bold, but I just said, you know, I
Speaker 3: have a feeling that, you know, we were talking about songwriting.
Speaker 3: I said, I have a feeling that your background contains
Speaker 3: some trauma or real sadness that your songs help you
Speaker 3: work through. And he said, you're right, And I said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I think it's very common that, you know,
Speaker 3: James Taylor had a rough teenage years. You know, we
Speaker 3: know all this. Joni Mitchell had polio, I mean, you
Speaker 3: name it, they had it. Neil Young had epilepsy and
Speaker 3: other stuff. And all I'm saying is and Jimmy Webb
Speaker 3: his the wind beneath his wings was his mom and
Speaker 3: she died when he was fourteen. And so all of
Speaker 3: these things make the Jimmy Web songs brilliant, and sometimes
Speaker 3: they make these other people's songs brilliant. That's why James
Speaker 3: Taylor can write a fire and rain that still is amazing.
Speaker 2: Today, let's witch back to you. Yeah, you're a film composer.
Speaker 2: You go to Nashville, you're making records. The business changed
Speaker 2: along the way. Okay, needless to say, there's Napster, there's
Speaker 2: the iTunes store. Now they're streaming an on demand thing.
Speaker 2: In the old days, the record companies would pay more
Speaker 2: to record, the records fee for producer. You make a record,
Speaker 2: the odds of consumption being so large that there's a
Speaker 2: big win or low. So what is your perspective and
Speaker 2: how does it work out financially.
Speaker 3: Well? When I make records, and certainly ever since Napster
Speaker 3: and then of course streaming, well, first of all Napster,
Speaker 3: then downloading, and then streaming, we saw that the album
Speaker 3: as a way to make money in royalties was going
Speaker 3: to be really jeopardized. I'm not in it for the money,
Speaker 3: so it does not cause me a lot of duress
Speaker 3: that a record I'll make ninety five percent of the
Speaker 3: time now will not sell. But if it makes people
Speaker 3: happy or if it gets a certain amount of streams,
Speaker 3: I guess I'm okay. I just have to live with
Speaker 3: what it is. You know, you can't really fight technology,
Speaker 3: and I can't be a naysayer about it. I wish
Speaker 3: things would have gone back to the way they were
Speaker 3: when music wasn't free, but it's just the way it is.
Speaker 3: And so you know, Bob, it's my love of music
Speaker 3: that makes me do what I do. It's not about
Speaker 3: making money. If I wanted to make money, I would
Speaker 3: have done something else.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you make these records, how much does it
Speaker 2: cost to make them?
Speaker 3: You know, every record is different. Sometimes we have a
Speaker 3: great budget. I meaning a great budget could be, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, one hundred and fifty thousand. Sometimes you have
Speaker 3: a budget of thirty five or forty thousand, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, you make them work, You make your deals
Speaker 3: with the studios. You you know, everyone wants to work.
Speaker 3: That's what happens now. You know, in the old days
Speaker 3: of Nashville there were triple scale players. That's never going
Speaker 3: to happen again. Everyone gets a single scale. You know.
Speaker 3: That's just the way it is. And you know what,
Speaker 3: I used to get great production fees. Every production fee
Speaker 3: now is different. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's you know,
Speaker 3: I want to make this record, so I'll do it
Speaker 3: for that. It's not what powers me. What powers me
Speaker 3: as the music.
Speaker 2: And in most cases is it a label paying or
Speaker 2: is there a vanity project or a deep pocket.
Speaker 3: It's all the above.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at my schedule over the
Speaker 3: past year, you know, I did a wonderful album with
Speaker 3: Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers just came out in
Speaker 3: February of Bill doing iconic old country songs done in
Speaker 3: a very sort of intimate and Americana style, and I'm
Speaker 3: so proud of it. That record was commissioned eventually by
Speaker 3: Curb Records. I had the idea for it, and we
Speaker 3: were trying to shop it, and then my Curb got
Speaker 3: involved and said I want this record, So that was
Speaker 3: a Curb record with Curb paying the bill. But then
Speaker 3: the next album I did might have been a project
Speaker 3: for Brooke Morriber, who's a great New York artist, completely
Speaker 3: self financed. So it really runs the gamut.
Speaker 2: And are most of these records you do idea, you pitch,
Speaker 2: where someone comes to you again.
Speaker 3: It just there's no rhyme or reason. Certainly I have
Speaker 3: ideas and I'll pitch those, and I'll have certain artists
Speaker 3: that I might know. I might suggest a concept to
Speaker 3: them or again, or an artist just happens to email
Speaker 3: me or call me, or a record label emails me
Speaker 3: or calls me. It just where you take it, wherever
Speaker 3: it comes from.
Speaker 2: Okay, you are in living in music city. You are
Speaker 2: not the only producer there. What's your special sauce that
Speaker 2: someone should work with you as opposed to anybody else.
Speaker 3: Well, of course you know I'm the best. That's the
Speaker 3: first reason. No, that is so not true, because there
Speaker 3: is no best. I think I'm really good at what
Speaker 3: I do. But I think I'm particularly good at making records.
Speaker 3: But I'm an artist producer. I try to fulfill the
Speaker 3: artist's vision. That's my job. Ego is not involved in
Speaker 3: making a record, but I want to make the record
Speaker 3: that the artist wants to make. And sometimes the artist
Speaker 3: knows exactly what to do, and sometimes they need my
Speaker 3: help on every level. But we do it together until
Speaker 3: I fulfill their vision. And that's what makes me a
Speaker 3: producer people want to work with in all different genres.
Speaker 2: You know, there's been an evolution in producers. Without going
Speaker 2: through sixty years worth of history for a while, they're
Speaker 2: engineers to this day became producers and that is not
Speaker 2: that that's an important skill, but not the same skill.
Speaker 2: So are you someone who's gonna say, give me the demos,
Speaker 2: maybe move the chorus to the front, maybe need a
Speaker 2: bridge here, or you that kind of producer?
Speaker 3: And that's exactly the kind of producer I am. But
Speaker 3: it's not me telling them what to do. It's me saying,
Speaker 3: what do you think about this? I like this idea?
Speaker 3: What do you think If they say it's great, we
Speaker 3: do it. The artist has the final decision every time,
Speaker 3: and so if they say, oh I love that, Fred,
Speaker 3: then we make that change on the bridge. But yes,
Speaker 3: I'm a musician and I'm I'm an arranger, and so
Speaker 3: my engineering skills are zero. So I have wonderful engineers
Speaker 3: that I work with, and they really allow me to
Speaker 3: be even a better producer and a better person with
Speaker 3: the artist.
Speaker 2: Okay, I call you, Fred, I want you to produce
Speaker 2: my record. I want you to produce my record, but
Speaker 2: your book for a year solid? Who do you tell
Speaker 2: me to go work with?
Speaker 3: Hmm? It would depend on the genre, you know. But
Speaker 3: that's a good question. I have people I love, who
Speaker 3: are you know, the right the right call for the job.
Speaker 3: One of my great pals is Kyle Lenning out of Nashville.
Speaker 3: You know, Kyle can do country really well. He can
Speaker 3: do pop really well, you know, in the sense of
Speaker 3: singer songwriter stuff. I like Kyle. You know, if I
Speaker 3: was too busy to do something, I would give Kyle
Speaker 3: a call. He'd be someone. There's other people as well.
Speaker 3: No one comes to mind immediately, and luckily I haven't
Speaker 3: had I mean, I guess or unluckily I haven't been
Speaker 3: booked a year in advance in a while.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you just said I'm going to rely on incoming.
Speaker 2: Are enough people looking for you to keep you busy?
Speaker 2: Or do you have to hustle to a degree.
Speaker 3: What I'd like to say is is that I wouldn't
Speaker 3: use the word hustle, but I would use the word
Speaker 3: I'm still driven. So I'll create concepts and make those calls.
Speaker 3: And sometimes I don't like to just wait around for
Speaker 3: the next thing I want, you know, I'd like to
Speaker 3: be purposeful. I mean my home listen, I look at you,
Speaker 3: and I look at everything you're doing on how many
Speaker 3: hours in the day, and how many of those hours
Speaker 3: are you working. I like to be purposeful too, you know,
Speaker 3: And so I try to make things happen if things
Speaker 3: aren't happening.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in terms of music today, you're in music City.
Speaker 2: A lot of you know, countries cut there. It can
Speaker 2: be cut a few other places, but it's not only country.
Speaker 2: What's your view of the music scene today. Let me
Speaker 2: set it up a little bit. We're of the same
Speaker 2: Vintage music really drove the culture in the sixties and said,
Speaker 2: if you want to know what was going on, you
Speaker 2: turned on the radio, you got the music, you got
Speaker 2: the news. Okay, we had in the early nineties hip hop.
Speaker 2: You know, fuck the police that we found out what
Speaker 2: these rappers were saying was true. Now we have a
Speaker 2: mortgage board of sounds. Where's the excitement and where is
Speaker 2: the business going?
Speaker 3: Well, I had a feeling you'd ask me that kind
Speaker 3: of question, and I don't really have an answer. I
Speaker 3: think that where we're going for me is not a
Speaker 3: direction that I particularly enjoy, because I like, again the
Speaker 3: quality of someone's personality and gift to come off on
Speaker 3: record or live. And when I see a lot of
Speaker 3: records that do really well now, especially in the pop realm,
Speaker 3: are generally you know, the seven songwriters on one record,
Speaker 3: there's four programmers and two this and that, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's much more about you know. It doesn't feel
Speaker 3: melodic to me. So I can't tell you where it's going.
Speaker 3: But I know one thing, and that AI can't possibly
Speaker 3: be helpful to give us the kind of soul of
Speaker 3: a Ray Charles or a James Taylor or Paul Simon.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that you're in Nashville. To what
Speaker 2: degree is there cross pollination in a community in music?
Speaker 3: I don't feel there is. I feel that the country
Speaker 3: world really is quite there's a fence around it. I've
Speaker 3: never been able to cross into that fence. But that's
Speaker 3: okay because I don't really love a lot of pop country,
Speaker 3: so I don't really feel like I should be a
Speaker 3: part of it, although I could have done it, especially
Speaker 3: ten or fifteen years ago, but I think the cross pollination.
Speaker 3: I don't feel as there within the country world, and
Speaker 3: that's pretty well their own world, and it's a boys
Speaker 3: club to a great degree. But I also feel that
Speaker 3: there's so much music being done in Nashville that's not country,
Speaker 3: that's everything else that that area is quite fluid and
Speaker 3: quite lovely.
Speaker 2: So let's say I came to you, I'm a developing artist.
Speaker 2: You know, are you so network? That's got a bad connotation,
Speaker 2: But is the community such they say, oh, this is
Speaker 2: a guy you should co write with, or this guy's
Speaker 2: got a band. Do you tend to know everybody in
Speaker 2: your world?
Speaker 3: In my world, yes, I don't know the worlds that
Speaker 3: are the more processed, you know, pop stuff that's out there.
Speaker 2: And to what degree are you actively following the scene,
Speaker 2: whether it be the music itself, where the business, or
Speaker 2: you and your own little niche and your sort of focused.
Speaker 3: I'd like to believe I have one foot looking around
Speaker 3: and listening to everything, and clearly my other foot is
Speaker 3: just very much about the music that propelled me, that
Speaker 3: came before me and during my years.
Speaker 2: And what do you have coming down the pike for you?
Speaker 3: Well, right now, I've got an interesting project, which is
Speaker 3: the Gena Cecilia album on Blue elon small label that
Speaker 3: does a lot of cool things. And Gina is a
Speaker 3: wonderful blues singer that I met and we had some
Speaker 3: mutual friends and we did a gig together. I occasionally
Speaker 3: do a Fred Mallin and Friends night at a Nashville club,
Speaker 3: which completely saves me and replenishes my performer part. And
Speaker 3: she sang a couple songs and we did a couple
Speaker 3: of Sam Cook songs, and I said, We've got to
Speaker 3: make a record together of Sam cook songs, you know,
Speaker 3: one of my greatest inspirations. And no one has really
Speaker 3: done a good covers album of Sam and we just
Speaker 3: did one. It's coming out next month. The singles out already,
Speaker 3: but it's just a beautiful record of of of really
Speaker 3: cool covers of the great Sam Cook stuff.
Speaker 2: Anything else you can talk about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I mean I'm there's another Jimmy Webb album.
Speaker 3: We're signing a deal next week to finally do the
Speaker 3: first album of Jimmy of new material of Jimmy's since
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, So there's a lot of songs
Speaker 3: to choose from, and Jimmy and I are both absolutely
Speaker 3: thrilled to be back in the studio.
Speaker 2: So tell me a couple of artists in a dream
Speaker 2: that you would like to produce.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd always want to produce James Taylor. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I still think there's there's gas in that tank.
Speaker 3: That's amazing. I would always I always wanted to produce
Speaker 3: Elton John. I'd love to pitch Elton John on One
Speaker 3: More Album, which is an album of his favorite songs,
Speaker 3: covers of his favorite songs. I think that will be
Speaker 3: the record to do. And I also would love to
Speaker 3: do Mark Knopfler in the same way I did Jimmy
Speaker 3: Webb and Barry Man and Christopherson. And I've talked to
Speaker 3: Mark about it and he's into it, but he wants
Speaker 3: to wait a little bit.
Speaker 2: Let's just assume you were producing James Taylor.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I have to interrupt, I've got
Speaker 3: to say it now here it is. I wrote a
Speaker 3: letter to Bob Dylan. I'm sorry, I just hold that thought. No, God,
Speaker 3: I have to tell now. I have to tell you
Speaker 3: that a year and a half ago, the Bob Dylan
Speaker 3: book came out, Philosophy of Modern Song, and in the
Speaker 3: chapter about by the time I get to Phoenix, he
Speaker 3: picked the version that I did with Jimmy on ten
Speaker 3: Easy Pieces, and I was app gobsmacked that Dylan would
Speaker 3: know that. And I wrote to Jeff Rosen, Dylan's manager,
Speaker 3: and I said, oh my god, you know, I'm so
Speaker 3: touched and Jimmy and I are so touched, and can
Speaker 3: you please thank Bob. And in the letter I said him,
Speaker 3: by the way, and I was joking. I said, you know,
Speaker 3: when Bob needs a new record done, you know you
Speaker 3: want me to produce it, I'll be open twenty four
Speaker 3: to seven. He wrote back right away saying, Bob knows you.
Speaker 3: He wants to know where you'd want to do it
Speaker 3: and when. And I literally had to take my car
Speaker 3: off the highway because I was hyperventilating because I saw
Speaker 3: it on my on my email on my phone. And
Speaker 3: then the next question was from Jeff Rosen do you
Speaker 3: hear covers or do you hear Bob's original material? And
Speaker 3: I talked about doing it in Nashville with the New
Speaker 3: A team, so he'd come back to the to the
Speaker 3: Blonde on Blonde, you know, to where he started with
Speaker 3: Blonde on Blonde, and they loved the idea. And sadly,
Speaker 3: Bob's been on the road now for probably ten out
Speaker 3: of twelve months, and so nothing has come to pass
Speaker 3: on that. But you know, that was one of the
Speaker 3: great moments. And I have the letter. I printed out
Speaker 3: the letter on the email and hung it in my
Speaker 3: studio that Bob will work with you wherever you want,
Speaker 3: whenever you want, because yes, I would do anything to
Speaker 3: produce Bob as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to move on because there's no response
Speaker 2: to that. Yeah. So, assuming you work with James Taylor
Speaker 2: had a long career, what would you bring to the
Speaker 2: picture that another person would not.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, as much of a fan as I am,
Speaker 3: I'm also understanding of what brings out the best in him,
Speaker 3: and I would be the one to sort of say, Okay,
Speaker 3: you know, let's let's make this. You know, you're Joni
Speaker 3: Mitchell Blue, you know, let's make it something that's so
Speaker 3: profound and so musical and so emotional, and I just
Speaker 3: think I could take the emotional angle as well as
Speaker 3: the musical angle, and and and give him a lot
Speaker 3: of joe and a lot of protection.
Speaker 2: Well, Fred, I want to thank you for taking the
Speaker 2: time to speak with my audience. If you want much
Speaker 2: more depth on the stories that have been told in
Speaker 2: news stories, you can read his new book, Unplugged. It
Speaker 2: was great talking to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Buddy, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Until next time, This is Bob Left says